MARRIAGE AND BIRTH CONTROL.

Otago Witness, Issue 3996, 14 October 1930, Page 79

MARRIAGE AND BIRTH CONTROL.

VIEWS OF DEAN INGE. CHANGES SINCE THE VICTORIAN ERA. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, August 21. Dean Inge gave his views on presentday morals and birth control in his presidential address at the Modern Churchmen’s Conference at Oxford. “ In the Victorian age,” said the Dean of St. Paul’s, “ all voluntary self-denial of the old type had disappeared. But one aesthetic practice remained, and was inculcated with great severity—l mean the duty of sexual continence for the unmarried. This obligation is really founded on the belief that all irregular indulgence contaminates the body, wnich ought to be kept clean, as the abode of the Holy Spirit. So the maintenance of strict continence became the crucial test for those who wished to take upon themselves the whole yoke of the Lord. Men and women set themselves severe trials to prove that they had completely mastered the lust of the flesh.

“ In practice a large majority scarcely attempted to observe this duty, but all the greater was the reverence felt for those who had achieved that virtue. In the age of Queen Victoria the average standard of sexual morality was probably much higher than in the so-called ages of faith. But continence was not generally regarded as a part of the sesthetism which, since the Reformation, had been almost discarded in theory. _ “ But our own generation, especially since the war, has revolted against the rule of Mrs Grundy. It has realised, find has not been ashamed to proclaim, that the. facts are very different from the Victorian convention, which, indeed, was only kept up .with the help of a vast amount of hypocrisy. The Victorians, in recognising the eesthetica) origin of the Christian rule of continence, were fond of emphasing the cruelty which masculine license entailed upon the weaker sex. Our generation admits that the cruelty certainly exists, but it is the work of the Puritans. Many of them do not admit that there is anything necessarily contaminating in uncontrolled union. “ They attempt to dignify lust by calling it love, and argue that if a married man or woman felt a physical attraction to a person other than his or her legal mate, ‘ love ’ should be the law-giver, and give dispensation to all earlier vows. “ Here we have in a repulsive form the result of the complete repudiation of the ideal of self-control and self-denial. In the place of the harmony of unified purpose in the control of the highest faculty of the soul we have an attempt at the harmony of gratified impulses or instincts, although moralists of all ages agree that this disorderly mob could only in order by stern discipline. “ The proper idea for Christian teachers to emphasise with regard to adultery is that for a man or woman to break the most solemn contract into which they entered in the whole course of their lives is an exceptionally disgraceful act, which no decent person should be seriously tempted to commit. On the other hand, the Victorian idea towards unmarried girls who had borne in sin was cruel, unjust, and unchristian. We have no wish to put the clock back 50 years. “Another very difficult and delicate subject is birth control. I have Ion" viewed this question in all its bearings, and I have come to certain conclusions, home method of checking the natural growth of numbers beyond the means of subsistence has nearly always and everywhere been practised. It is useless to diecuss the morality of birth control apart from these considerations. “We cannot leave the question of numbers to laissez-faire 9 while every branch of social life is brought under rational control. The question of quality of the population is at least as urgent as that' of quantity. The whole future of our country is at stake, and we shall get little help from politicians, who know that the unborn have no vote. “We cannot prevent the new knowledge being used by unmarried persons and by selfish couples who wish to have “o ch pdren. The problem bristles with difficulties.”