W.E.A. LECTURE

Southland Times, Issue 20522, 26 June 1928, Page 5

W.E.A. LECTURE

THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE SEXES. The W.E.A. psychology class met at the Y.M.C.A. building last evening when there was a large attendance. Mr R. R. Macgregor occupied the chair. The lecturer, Mr A. G. Butchers, said that love, in the sense of affection, w'as not instinctive, even in children, but post-natally built in or acquired All love was, in this .sense, cupboard, or comfort love, the physical fundaments of which were the individual’s need for sustenance a comfort and company. Comfort meant something more than mere material comfort; and many otherwise exemplary parents forfeited the affection of their children by constant nagging and impatience in bringing them up. In filial affection as in adult friendship genuine love was proportionate to the amount of sympathetic understanding, thoughtful consideration, and unswerving loyalty that mutually njanifesi between the parties. To the Freudists all love was sexual. Ow ing to the physiological association of the organs of sex with those of excretion, wes tern society had conditioned sex from infancy with complexes of secrecy and shame. The consequent continual repression of an instinct essentially natural and emotionally powerful had in the end wrought havoc in the lives of many and made rational behaviour difficult for all. For want of proper instruction the physiological and psychological changes which puberty caused had often to be met with prurient half knowledge obtained from anywhere but from parents. Wise parents who had taken the trouble to win and hold the confidence and affection of their children, never refused them information suited to their age, and never under any circumstances told them lies about sex, or evaded their honest questions. Nature study afforded the best avenue of approach to such knowledge and it was better to anticipate the possibility of objectionable outside instruction by beginning early to unfold nature’s plan of bisexuel reproduction. The days of monastic and conventual training of adolescents were past and co-education together with ordinary wholesome social intercourse was fast becoming the custom in all Englishspeaking countries. The specialized mechanism of sex differed from that of our other appetites in being subject in the first instance to autonomic impulses. With anything like reasonable self-knowledge, self-control was not difficult of accomplishment. Complete repression was impossible without grave mental and moral risks. Sublimation through work, hobbies, sport, and so on used up physical energy and provided the mind with strong interests that took the attention away from matters of sex and robbed its impulses of much of their otherwise over-powering urge, for the reduced emotional affect of which ordinary social friendships afforded abundant opportunity for innocent expression. History, science, invention, literature, music and art also helped to fill the mind with worthy complexes calculated to give stability of character and strength of purpose sufficient to enable young people to view sex in proper perspective and keep a sane control over their behaviour. Unfortunately very few young people were receiving adequate preparation for adult life and. in general, the type of motion picture being continually displayed did not help them to restrain and control the powerful impulses that assailed them. The prodigality of nature’s provision for the continuance of species was proverbial. Many bacteria reproduced every half-hour. Nature never intended all this potential life to come to maturity. The survival of the fittest was her “golden rule,” With tooth and claw, tempest, fire, famine, disease and accident she ensured that all the weak should perish, and that the next generation should be the progeny of the strongest and fittest. “Mate-hunger,” said Dr. Dorsey, “is driven by unconscious mechanism, and not by any desire of offspring. The primary impulse is not eggs, nests or cradles; it is for a mate.” In short, nature had made mating an end in itself. The reproductive aspect, like the destruction of the weak, she had always looked after herself. She had no moral laws, and was indifferent whether a man married his sister, like the kings of Egypt; or his deceased wife’s sister; or has, like King Solomon, “700 wives and 300 concubines,” or was not married at all. Her only concern was, that a man should find a mate.

The population of Europe had doubled itself during the last hundred years in spite of wars, disease, infantile mortality, family limitation, and emigration overseas. Man had outwitted nature. The defectives of the human race did not now go to the wall. On the contrary they bred faster than the effectives, who, again outwitting nature, had found a way of cheating her of offspring by the practice of what is called birth control. “The result is,” as Professor Julian Huxley pointed out in a series of lectures broadcasted in England in 1926, “that insofar as such defects depend upon heredity—and all the evidence goes to show that the bulk of them do so—we are allowing the portion of defective stocks and of defective factors to increase. The time is in sight when the world will be full up with people. Obviously, this differential fertility is altering the inherited constitution of the nation as a whole. The only remedy which can at present be envisaged is the spread, equality to all classes, of some method of restriction of family, including under this term what is generally called birth control.” Segregation and artificial sterilization were also suggested by Professor Huxley as being necessary in the effort to eliminate the reproduction of feeble-minded and congenitally unsound stocks. “Pity,” continued the Professor, “is one of the highest virtues of civilized man. But what are we to think when pity for suffering individuals leads us not only to preserve them, but to allow them to reproduce and .so not only to lower the quality of the race, but to produce more suffering in individuals yet unborn ?”

These were matters which personally affected women more than men; for modern methods of sterilization and contraception did not interfere at all with physical mating. They merely cheated nature of offspring. They had, however, had one profound effect, more powerful than all the Franchise Acts in the world, in giving to woman the same absolute control over her body as men had always had over theirs. They had made possible woman’s entry without fear of interruption upon any vocation in life she might choose; they had given her an economic independence and personal freedom; and had enabled her to do as men had always been free to do, that is, to enter upon companionate mating without fear of awkward consequences. This had changed the whole character and outlook of the relationship of the sexes in modern times. At the same time the rigour of the old divorce laws had been completely relaxed. In New Zealand to-day women who found their marriage, intolerable and desired immediate relief, in most cases, might at once obtain separation from their husbands, either by mutual agreement or through the court. After three years freedom to re-marry might usually be obtained. Through the procedure known as an order for restitution of conjugal rights the dissolution of the marrjage tie could, in certain cases, be effected within a few months. As far as the unmarried were concerned the birth statistics showed that of first births in the Dominion for the quinquennium 1922-26 over 31 per cent, were extra-maritally conceived. As these represented the cases in which the preventive measures taken had failed, the extent to w r hich the youth of New Zealand to-day were indulging in companionate mating out of wedlock must be regarded as being very considerable indeed. Although the Government banned books on contraception, with amazing inconsistency it allowed the importation and free sale of contraceptives. That these facilitated the illicit, but in general not illegal, intercourse of the unmarried was unquestionable. In America the old Scottish practice of handfast, or avowed probationary marriage, had been recently revived and was attracting much attention. This consisted in the open avowal by the young couple and their parents of a betrothal which carried with it a recognition of the freedom of the betrothed to mate. It was usually inaugurated by their going away together for

what corresponded to our honeymoon.- On their return they continued to live with their respective parents, spending week ends and holidays together at one another’s homes as they might desire. Prior to the marriage they were instructed in methods of contraception. At the end of the period for which such companionate or trial mar riage had been arranged, they might either enter upon a legal and, to that extent, permanent marriage, or might agree to part. There was, however, something essentially British in the old-fashioned marriage contract which men. and women of character looked upon as one neither to be lightly entered upon nor lightly to be broken. To such the words of the promise “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, till death do us part” meant what they sajd, and to that pledge they remained true through thick and thin, no matter what happened. “Falling in love and winning love,” wrote R. L. Stevenson, “are often difficult tasks to overbearing and rebellious spirits; but to keep in love is also a business of some importance, to which both man and wife must bring kindness and goodwill. The true love story commences at the altar, when there lies before the married pair a most beautiful contest of wisdom and generosity, and a life-long struggle towards an unattainable ideal. Unattainable? Ay, surely unattainable from the very fact that they are two, instead of one.” An interesting discussion followed tlhe lecture in which Messrs R. R. Macgregor, W. Fisher, E. J. McLauchlan and I. L. Petrie and Mesdames Macgregor, Hannah, Watt took part. The subject of next week’s lecture will be “Personality and Religion.”