Auguste Forel

“ As a result of exaggerating the above-mentioned phenomena certain theorists have imagined that ethics can be founded upon pure egotism. But this is a mistake. Without the altruistic impulses of sympathy and duty among its individual members no common social existence can thrive; on the contrary, it must degenerate.
The power of the emotions in man is much too strong to allow of any other result. Any one who imagines that he is completely master of his emotions makes, if possible, a still greater mistake than one who avows that he has never lied, or that his actions are governed by free-will. ”

“ Speaking generally, a rational system of morals must subordinate the welfare of the individual to that of the community at large. A man who is unprejudiced and possesses the ethical and social instinct will therefore hold it as a principle first of all to do no man any injury; then to develop his own individuality as highly as possible, which will be both for his own good and that of the community; and as far as in him lies to be of service to others and to Humanity. ”

“ Moreover, sexual intercourse which is bought and sold has no relation to love. As a mode of gratifying the sex instinct it stands even lower in the moral scale than the habit of self-abuse. And any man who makes use of prostitution becomes an accomplice in creating this miserable class of outcasts whom we speak of as “unfortunates.” In short, whoremongery and prostitution are a social cancer, and therefore in the highest degree immoral. They furnish an instance of the manner in which money corrupts our whole civilisation. ”

“ In order to understand natural human ethics we must consider its natural source, that is to say, the origin of the sense of duty or social conscience.
The sense of duty is, as an inclination, inborn, and therefore hereditary. It can indeed be developed or dulled by education, but it cannot be acquired; and only diseases of the brain can destroy it where it once [21] clearly exists. What is actually inculcated or acquired, as the case may be, is not the conscience, but the object towards which it is directed, as is the case with the feeling of shame or modesty. ”

“ In his criticisms of alcohol and the abuse of capital, Professor Forel opposes himself to the most powerful of vested interests. Well, if you invest your interests in any other bank than that of the laws of life, you or your heirs will find that theirs is but a rotten concern. The history of organic evolution is proof enough that the higher life and the things which buttress it, “sagging but pertinacious,” will always win through in the long run. As a direct enemy of human life, and notably through its influence upon the sexual instinct, alcohol is certainly doomed. ”

“ In the absence of parenthood, a sexual association between man and woman is on the same plane as any other human association; it means neither more nor less, and must be judged as they are judged. It is when the life of the world to come is involved that new questions arise—questions as momentous as is the difference between the production of human life at its best and of a child rotten with syphilis, or permanently blinded to the [11] light as it opens its eyes for the first time, or doomed to intelligence less than a dog’s. ”

“ The imperative of the conscience is in itself no more categorical and absolute than that of the sexual impulse, of fear, of maternal love, or of other emotions and instincts.
In the first place daily observation shows us the existence of people born conscienceless, in whom the sense of duty is lacking, who are aware of no “Thou shalt,” and in whose eyes other individuals are merely welcome objects for plunder or inconvenient hindrances. For these “ethically defective” persons there can be no categorical imperative, because they have no conception of duty. ”

“ It is just in this very respect that we see that social hygiene and ethics are one and the same thing. Only the idiotic one-sidedness of your specialist could declare such a monstrosity as State-established prostitution to be hygienic. A system which makes for the mental and physical ruin of the race cannot be hygienic, and the delusion that by its aid men are protected from venereal disease is in direct conflict with the actual facts. ”

“ Professor Forel speaks of subduing the sexual instinct. I would rather speak of transmuting it. The direct method of attack is often futile, always necessitous of effort, but it is possible for us to transmute our sex-energy into higher forms in our individual lives, thus justifying the evolutionary and psychological contention that it is the source of the higher activities of man, of moral indignation and of the “restless energy” which has changed the surface of the earth. ”

“ We may remark in passing that the altruism of many lovers of animals, who prefer their favourite pets to human beings and to the social welfare, is typical of the exclusiveness and stupidity of misdirected impulses of sympathy.
Morality must therefore in the future consist of a common social impulse—it must itself become social. This impulse must overthrow not only egotism, but also the exclusiveness [30] of individual sympathies. We are still, alas, far from this goal! The family is often a thieves’ kitchen; patriotism is a prolific parent of wars ”

“ Unfortunately this fundamentally false conception of free marriage and free love is at the present time widespread, and it cannot be too vigorously combated. In the first place, two persons are concerned in the sexual act, and any exercise of constraint by one upon the other is immoral and even criminal. The same holds true of every seduction.
Moreover, the highest freedom of man lies in his mastery of self. The only man who is truly free is the man who is able to control his lower instincts. ”

“ It has no right to lay claim to or to pass a verdict upon everything which ethics may discover or attain. Laws and the constraint they imply are a necessary evil, a crutch for the lame and defective social conscience. They must be reduced to an indispensable minimum. The ethical and social instincts, on the other hand, can never be too highly developed. Humanity must gradually develop in the future to such a point that jurisprudence may be completely replaced by an instinctive and inculcated social impulse. ”

“ In this way there appeared among mankind instinctive and exclusive impulses of sympathy and of duty, combined with intensely selfish predatory desires. The extraordinary complexity of the human brain is responsible for the strange many-sidedness of character which resulted. For example, crime and heroism developed side by side; child murder, parricide, rapine and robbery, slavery, war, and in particular the vilest subjugation of woman as an article of commerce or a beast of burden—these represent [27] the fruits of egotism and its attendant cunning and meanness. ”

“ The compulsion which must be exercised in a mutually happy sex relationship conformable to ethical principle must, however, be no external legal compulsion, but an inward self-repression. Fidelity in marriage must be a matter of mutual trust [46] and yet a matter of honour. The State and the laws cannot compel it, and have never been able to do so; external constraint begets only hypocrisy, strife, and treachery. On the other hand the State and the law must, as time goes on, become more and more adapted to the protection of the helpless offspring of sex unions. ”

“ The falsity of the theory of absolute good and evil is demonstrated by the whole disposition of a world in which living creatures are designed to prey upon one another. When a spider devours a fly it is good for the spider and bad for the fly. The ethical value of the act itself is therefore purely relative.
It is just the same with human ethics. To attempt to explain all the evil in the world by the sin of Adam is to attribute a miserable incapacity to God. ”

“ Finally certain species have developed the senses of sympathy and duty to such an extent that they have led to a complete anarchistic Socialism, as is the case among wasps, bees, and ants. Here the social sense has so far overcome both egotism and altruism limited to a few individuals that it wholly dominates them. The individual devotes his whole energy and labour to the communal existence, and even sacrifices his life for this object. ”

“ The Earth is small, and human intercourse becomes more extensive every year; the union of all civilised peoples into a single great civilised community is inevitable. Ethics must, therefore, as far as reason permits, be directed towards this object. We require animals and plants in order to live, so that we can further extend our altruism at most to a moderate protection of other animals, if we are to avoid injury to our own race. ”

“ The instinct of fear and the lust for power, the hypertrophy of the Ego and the ethical sentiments have here intermingled in a thousand different ways. More especially we may mention the fear of the unknown, of darker powers, and of death; the expansion of the beloved Ego, which becomes idealised in the conception of godhead, and then immortalised; the feelings of sympathy, antipathy and duty towards other individuals, and so forth. ”

“ Any one who is infected, and nevertheless has sexual connection with a person not [54] infected in the same way, commits a basely immoral act, if not a crime. This is done, however, daily, when the infection is concealed. Nay, more, the medical men who officially visit and examine prostitutes are well aware that they can at most only temporarily remedy a few of the worst symptoms, and that they are powerless to cure the disease itself. In spite of this such women are set at liberty once more to carry on their disastrous trade! And very few prostitutes ever completely escape venereal infection. ”

“ There are duties towards one’s self, which serve to increase the worth, and particularly the social worth, of the individual by self-culture and education. In these days of effeminate culture it is too often forgotten that self-discipline and restraint, and even a certain degree of asceticism, fit the individual for freedom and happiness, while the craving for pleasure makes him useless and dependent.
Then there are duties towards the family and those nearer to us, towards the State, towards existing Humanity, and towards posterity. ”

“ It is true that we cannot change the present hereditary nature of man, but it is none the less our duty, now that Science has revealed this nature to us, to prepare for our posterity a greater degree of happiness and a higher standard of social life than we now possess. ”

“ The unfortunate people who suffer from these perversions are treated unjustly and, for the most part, far too harshly. Perverse instincts which injure no one when carried into practice (fetishism, for example) , are ethically indifferent and harmless, in that their possessors, generally speaking, do not multiply. It is, however, immoral for such persons to marry. Any one who suffers from an hereditary perversion of the sex instinct should avoid marriage and all procreation of children. ”

“ Everything that we enjoy to-day in culture [36] and knowledge we owe to the toil, the suffering, and often the martyrdom of our forefathers. Our most sacred duty is, therefore, to secure for our descendants a loftier, happier and worthier existence than our own. ”

“ His claim for posterity on the ground of our debt to the past may be amplified by the reflection that, in serving the racial life, and in making its welfare the criterion of our sexual ethics, we are serving human beings as real as we are ourselves, [8] and tens or hundreds for units whom we can serve to-day. There is always an interval—nine months at least—and no one expects babies or politicians to associate cause and effect over such abysses of time; but there are others who are learning to think in generations, and Professor Forel will yet add to their number. ”

“ The climax of immorality in the cult of Mammon is reached, however, by the capital employed in maintaining the two great evils of alcohol and prostitution, both of which act as bloodsuckers upon the vitality of the individual, the race, and all that is holiest in men. ”

“ If every pregnancy were at once legally recognised in this way, and if the law would determine the responsibilities of both parents [48] towards their offspring, untrammelled by marriage laws and with the well-being of society as its only aim, the most pressing need of our time, from the standpoint of sexual ethics, would be satisfied. A complete equality can only be attained by naming all children after the mother. ”

“ Every woman who is healthy and strong should be proud of becoming a mother. If sexual intercourse were frankly and naturally treated as one of the most important acts in human life, the paternity of the child would be easily ascertainable. ”

“ As every living creature, particularly if it possesses a separate nervous system, has the instinct of self-preservation, the conscience therefore results directly from the conflict between this instinct and the secondary emotions of altruistic sympathy. ”

“ The libido sexualis, or sexual desire in mankind is infinitely stronger than is necessary for the reproduction of the race. Man has no breeding season; he is always ready for sexual intercourse. Although the number of women in the aggregate only slightly exceeds that of men, the male has usually an instinctive inclination to polygamy. ”

“ The latter may then fall victims to famine and distress, as in the case of the Chinese, or the rabbits of Australia; and only disease, starvation, or slaughter can bring about a return to the normal condition. It must be obvious to every unbiassed person that this is not moral. And as there are harmless methods of regulating the number of births and to some extent the quality of the offspring, the just and proper use of these methods must be described as ethically positive. Everything is moral which makes for the happiness and well-being of society ”