MORALS OF TODAY
[To the Editor of Tin: SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Mr. Graham Lipstone's article is timely and salutary. It is probably not possible to assert dogmatically that sexual laxness is more common today than before the War, but there are signs that are significant. Many novelists, and some dramatists, are more suggestive than they have been for fifty years : the Cinema often provides (with much that is good and artistic) films that are grossly indecent ; and our Picture Press publish pictures showing a aide of life that would not have been tolerated a generation ago.
To those who accept the Christian view of life, self-control needs no justification ; it is part of the teaching which governs their outlook ; but to those who are not guided by this view-point, the question as to why our natural instincts should be held in leash does arise, and they are entitled to know whether there is any good reason for this attitude.
There are, I think, cogent reasons. Psychology, which has often mistakenly been used as a justification for sexual licence, teaches us that no act in life is fruitless, and that conduct creates habit, and habit shapes character. Self- discipline has its own good fruits ; but a casual departure from sexual continence before marriage makes further self- control much more difficult. Further, it sets up mental inhibitions which may cause real and permanent injury to one or both of the parties involved. Promiscuity certainly creates a gradual declension of character, as self-gratification in any direction always does. No one would care to know that their married partner had practised an illicit sex life before marriage, and instinctively would not tolerate this after marriage, with the result that an attitude of furtivity tends to dominate the whole experience. Neurologists con- firm the fact that nervous and mental disorders are the common fruit of lax moral standards, and that self-control, with the sublimation of the sex instinct, where this is necessary, is part of a healthy mental life.
As a Magistrate I frequently meet the sad fruits of a lax standard of morals, and am often told that the recollection of casual sexual laxness has become a lifelong sorrow ; white men and women now well on in life, who can look back on a disciplined past, say that there is nothing that has made life more worth while.
To youth, experience would say that pre-marital continence, while sometimes difficult, is abundantly rewarded, if judged only by human standards ; but that sexual laxness brings in its train sorrows unnumbered, and releases forces that are frequently as tragic as they are unforeseen. The physical union has spiritual reactions that are far-reaching, and no understanding of the problem is possible until this is recog- nized. H.unan experience, down the ages, would appear
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