CHAPTER V.

THE REASONS UNDERLYING OUR CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEE OF A FREE PRESS, APPLIED TO SEX-DISCUSSION.1

Arguments which deal with the inexpediency of abridging freedom of speech and of the press necessarily restate the considerations which moved the framers of our constitutions to prohibit such abridgment and therefore exhibit to us that conception of freedom which they intended to perpetuate. It follows from this that all argument which concerns itself with a consideration of the inexpediency of abridging intellectual freedom, unavoidably illuminates the the whole problem of a judicial interpretation of our constitutional guarantee of an unabridged freedom of speech and of the press.

Only a few decades ago, the mighty governed the many, through cunning, strategy, and compulsory ignorance. A lay citizen was punished by law, if he presumed critically to discuss politics, officials, slave emancipation, astronomy, geology, or religion. To teach our African slaves to read, or to circulate abolitionist literature, was in some States a crime, because such intelligence conduced to an "immoral tendency" toward insurrection. To have the Bible in one's possession has also been prohibited by law, because of the "immoral tendency" toward private judgments, which general reading of it might induce.

One by one the advocates of mystery and blind force have surrendered to the angels of enlightenment, and every enlargement of opportunity for knowledge has been followed by the moral elevation of humanity. Only in one field of thought do we still habitually assume that ignorance is a virtue, and enlightenment a crime. Only upon the subject of sex do we by statute declare that artificial fear is a safer guide than intelligent self-reliance, that purity can thrive only in conceal

1Revised from Liberal Review, Aug. and Sept., 1906.

ment and ignorance, and that to know all of one's self is dangerous and immoral. Here only are we afraid to allow truth to be contrasted with error. The issue is, shall we continue thus to fear full and free discussion of sex facts and sex problems? Does the constitution permit the suppression of such discussion? Later this will be thoroughly discussed.

The first question to be answered is, why discuss the subject of sex at all? There are those who advise us to ignore it entirely, upon the theory that the natural impulse is a sufficient guide. To this it may be answered that all our sex activities cannot be subjected to the constant and immediate control of the will. We cannot ignore sex by merely willing to do so. Our attention is unavoidably forced upon the subject, by conditions both within and without ourselves. That we may deceive ourselves in this particular is possible; that we all can and many do lie about it is certain.

Without sexual education, we cannot know whether we are acting under a healthy or a diseased impulse. It is known to the psychologist that many are guilty of vicious and injurious sexual practices, without being in the least conscious of the significance of what they are doing. Everywhere we see human wrecks because of a failure to understand their impulses, or to impose intelligent restraints upon them. Many become sexually impotent, hyperaesthetic, or perverted by gradual processes the meaning of which they do not understand, and whose baneful consequences intelligence would enable them to foresee and easily avoid. Since individuals will not go to a physician until the injury is accomplished and apparent, it follows that there is no possible preventive except general intelligence upon the subject. At present the spread of that knowledge is impeded by laws and by a prurient prudery, which together are responsible for the sentimental taboo which attaches to the whole subject. The educated man of to-day measures our different degrees of human progress by the quantity of intelligence which is used in regulating our bodily functioning. No reason exists for making sex an exception.

THE PHYSICAL FOUNDATION FOR MORAL HEALTH.

To those who accept a scientific ethics, moral health is measured by the relative degree to which their conduct achieves physical and mental health for the race. To the religious moralist, who has other ends in view, pathologic sexuality is probably the greatest impediment to the practical realization of his

ideal of sexual morality. Everywhere we see that disease is the greatest obstacle to moral health. From either point of view, it follows that one of the most important considerations in all purity propaganda must be the diffusion of such knowledge as will best conduce to the highest physical and mental perfection. This seems so self evident that we necessarily ask, Why is our conduct so contrary?

THE DESIRE TO PERSECUTE.

The desire to persecute, even for mere opinion's sake, seems to be an eternal inheritance of humans. We naturally and as a matter of course encourage others in doing and believing whatever for any reason, or without reason, we deem proper. Even though we have a mind fairly well disciplined in the duty of toleration, we quite naturally discourage others, and feel a sense of outraged propriety, whenever they believe and act in a manner radically different from ourselves. Our resentment becomes vehement just in proportion as our reason is impotent, and our nerves diseasedly sensitive. That is why it is said that "Man is naturally, instinctively intolerant and a persecutor."

From this necessity of our undisciplined nature comes the stealthy but inevitable recurrence of legalized bigotry, and its rehabilitation of successive inquisitions. From the days of pagan antiquity to the present hour, there has never been a time or country wherein mankind could claim immunity from all persecution for intellectual differences. This cruel intolerance has always appealed to a "sacred and patriotic duty," and masked behind an ignorantly made and unwarranted pretense of "morality."

"Persecution has not been the outgrowth of any one age, nationality or creed; it has been the ill-favored progeny of all." Thus, under the disguise of new names and new pretensions, again and again we punish unpopular, though wholly self-regarding, non-moral conduct; imprison men for expressing honest intellectual differences; deny the duty of toleration; destroy a proper liberty of thought and conduct; and always under the same old false pretenses of "morality,” and “law and order."

Whenever our natural tendency toward intolerance is reinforced by abnormally intense feelings, such as diseased nerves produce, persecution follows quite unavoidably, because

the intensity of associated emotions is transformed into a conviction of inerrancy. Such a victim of diseased emotions, even more than others, "knows because he feels, and is firmly convinced because strongly agitated." Unable to answer logically the contention of his friend, he ends by desiring to punish him as his enemy. Because of the close interdependence of the emotional and the generative mechanism, it is probable that unreasoned moral sentimentalizing inducing superstitious opinions about the relation of men and women will be the last superstition to disappear.

The concurrence of many in like emotions, associated with and centered upon the same focus of irritation, makes the effective majority of the state view the toleration of intellectual opponents as a crime, and their heresy, whether political, religious, ethical or sexual, is denounced as a danger to civil order, and the heretic must be judicially silenced. Thus all bigots have reasoned in all past ages. Thus do those afflicted with our present sex-superstition again defend their moral censorship of literature and art.

These are the processes by which we always become incapable of deriving profit from the lessons of history. That all the greatest minds of every age believed in something now known to be false, and in the utility of what is now deemed injurious or immoral, never suggests to petty intellects that the future generations will also pity us for having entertained our most cherished opinions.

The presence of these designated natural defects, which so very few have outgrown, makes it quite probable that the battle for intellectual freedom will never reach an end. The few, trained in the duty of toleration, owe it to humanity to re-state, with great frequency, the arguments for mental hospitality. Only by this process can we contribute directly toward the mental discipline of the relatively unevolved masses, and prepare the way for those new and therefore unpopular truths by which the race will progress. The absolute liberty of thought, with opportunity, unlimited as between adults, for its oral or printed expression is a condition precedent to the highest development of our progressive morality.

Men of strong passions and weak intellects seldom see the expediency of encouraging others to disagree. Thence came all of those terrible persecutions for heresy, witchcraft, sedition, etc., which have prolonged the midnight of superstition

into "dark ages." The passionate zeal of a masterful few has always made them assume that they only could be trusted to have a personal judgment upon moral questions, while all others must be coerced, unquestioningly, to accept them upon authority, "with pious awe and trembling solicitude."

THE DANGERS OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

Such egomania always resulted in the persecution of those who furnished the common people with the materials upon which they might base a different opinion, or outgrow their slave-virtues.

One of Queen Mary's first acts was an inhibition against reading or teaching the Bible in churches, and against printing books. In 1530, the king, pursuant to a memorial of the House of Commons, issued a proclamation requiring every person "which hath a New Testament or the Old, translated into English or any other boke of Holy Scripture, so translated, being in printe, to surrender them within fifteen days, as he will avoyde the Kynge's high indignation and displeasure," which meant death.

Another and similar proclamation was issued, covering the New Testament and writings of many theologians. The act passed in the 3rd and 4th Edward VI., repeated this folly. So thousands of Bibles were burned under the personal supervision and benediction of priests and bishops, because of the immoral tendency toward private judgment involved in reading the "Divine Record."

Poor William Tyndale, who took the infinite trouble of translating the scriptures into English, found that "his New Testament was forthwith burnt in London ;" and he himself, after some years, was strangled and burnt at Antwerp. (1536).

So now we have many who likewise esteem it to be of immoral tendency, for others than themselves, to secure such information as may lead to a personal and different opinion about the physiology, psychology, hygiene, or ethics of sex, and by law we make it a crime to distribute any specific and detailed information upon these subjects, especially if it be unprudish in its verbiage or advocate unorthodox opinions about marriage or sexual ethics. This is repeating the old folly that

"Vickers' Martyrdom of Literature, pp. 190, 225 to 227. See also Paterson's Liberty of the Press, p. 50.

Books Condemned to be Burnt, page 9.