Bertrand Russell

“ At puberty, the elements of an unsuperstitious sexual morality, ought to be taught. Boys and girls should be taught that nothing can. justify sexual intercourse unless there is mutual inclination. This is contrary, to the teaching of the Church, which, holds that, provided the parties are married and the man desires another child, sexual intercourse is justified however great may be the reluctance of the wife. Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other’s liberty; ”

“ The view that criminals are "wicked" and "deserve" punishment is not one which a rational morality can support. Undoubtedly certain people do things which society wishes to prevent, and does right in preventing as far as possible. We may take murder as the plainest case. Obviously, if a community is to hold together and we are to enjoy its pleasures and advantages, we cannot allow people to kill each other whenever they feel an impulse to do so. ”

“ It is a method of enabling men to live together in a community in spite of the possibility that their desires may conflict. But here two very different methods are possible. There is the method of the criminal law, which aims at a merely external harmony by attaching disagreeable consequences to acts which thwart other men’s desires in certain ways. This is also the method of social censure: to be thought ill of by one’s own society is a form of punishment, to avoid which most people avoid betheir set. ”

“ One is tempted: to think that they value morals as affording a legitimate outlet for their desire to inflict pain: the sinner is fair game, and therefore away with tolerance!
Let us follow an ordinary human life from conception to the grave, and note the points where superstitious morals inflict preventable suffering. I begin with conception, because here the influence of superstition is particularly noteworthy. If the parents are not married, the child has a stigma, as clearly undeserved as anything could be. ”

“ Moral codes have not always been faultless. The Aztecs considered it their painful duty to eat human flesh for fear the light of the sun should grow dim. They erred in their science; and perhaps they would have perceived the scientific error if they had had any love for the sacrificial victims. ”

“ They should be taught that to bring another human being into the world is a very serious matter, only to be undertaken when the child will have a reasonable prospect of health, good surroundings, and parental care. But they should also be. taught methods of birth-control, so as to insure that children shall only come when they are wanted. Finally, they should be taught the dangers of venereal disease, and the methods of prevention and cure. The increase of human happiness to be expected from sex-ducation on these lines is immeasurable. ”

“ To please these moralists, a life of torture is inflicted upon millions of human beings who ought never to have existed, merely because it is supposed that sexual intercourse is wicked unless accompanied by desire for offspring, but not wicked when this desire is present, even though the offspring is humanly certain to be wretched. ”

“ If they had even the smallest spark of love or pity for children they could not adhere to a moral code involving this fiendish cruelty.
At birth, and in early infancy, the average child suffers more from economic causes than from superstition. When well-to-do women have children, they have the best doctors, the best nurses, the best diet, the best rest, and the best exercise. Working-class women do not enjoy these advantages, and frequently their children die for lack of them. ”

“ I cannot praise such men when prudence led them to spare their victims’ lives with a view to further sufferings another day. Nevertheless, other things being equal, prudence is a part of the good life. ”

“ In all stages of education the influence of superstition is disastrous. A certain percentage of children have the habit of thinking; one of the aims of education is to cure them of this habit. Inconvenient questions are met with "hush, hush" or with punishment. Collective emotion is used to instil certain kinds of belief, more particularly nationalistic kinds. Capitalists, militarists, and ecclesiastics co-operate in education, because all depend for their power upon the prevalence of emotionalism and the rarity of critical judgment. ”

“ He will inquire whether it does any harm, or whether, on the contrary, the belief that it is sinful does harm. And he will find that, especially in what concerns sex, our current morality contains a very great deal of which the origin is purely superstitious. He will find also that this superstition, like that of the Aztecs, involves needless cruelty, and would be swept away if people were actuated by kindly feelings towards their neighbours. But the defenders of traditional morality are seldom people with warm hearts, as may be seen from the love of militarism displayed by Church dignitaries. ”

“ To be killed suddenly and then eaten, which was the fate of the Aztecs’ victims, is a far less degree of suffering than is inflicted upon a child born in miserable surroundings and tainted with venereal disease. ”

“ At a moment when the supply of milk to nursing mothers is being cut down to save expense, public authorities will spend vast sums on paving rich residential districts where there is little traffic. They must know that in taking this decision they are condemning a certain number of working-class children to death for the crime of poverty. Yet the ruling party are supported by the immense majority of ministers of religion, who, with the Pope at their head, have pledged the vast forces of superstition throughout the world to the support of social injustice. ”

“ Certain forms of sex which do not lead to children are at present punished by the criminal law: this is purely superstitious, since the matter is one which affects no one except the parties directly concerned. Where there are children, it is a mistake to suppose that it is necessarily to their interest to make divorce very difficult. Habitual drunkenness, cruelty, insanity are grounds upon which divorce is necessary for the children's sake quite as much as for the sake of the wife or husband. ”

“ Even more harmful than theological superstition is the superstition of _ nationalism, of duty to one’s own State and to no other. But I do not propose on this occasion to discuss this matter, beyond pointing out that limitation to one’s compatriots is contrary to the principle of love which we recognized as constituting the good life. It is also, of course, contrary to enlightened self-interest, since an exclusive nationalism does not pay even the victorious nations. ”

“ Of course the prevention of crime and the punishment of crime are two different questions; the object of causing pain to the criminal is presumably deterrent. If prisons were so humanized that a prisoner got a good education for nothing, people might commit crimes in order to qualify for entrance. No doubt prison must be less pleasant than freedom ”

“ The practical need of morals arises from the conflict of desires, whether of different people or of the same person at different times or even at one time. A man desires to drink, and also to be fit for his work next morning. We think him immoral if he adopts the course which gives him the smaller total satisfaction of desire. We think ill of people who are extravagant or reckless, even if they injure no one but themselves. ”

“ With the aid of human nature, education succeeds in increasing and intensifying these propensities of the average man.
Another way in which superstition damages education is through its influence on the choice of teachers. For economic reasons, a woman-teacher must not be married ”

“ At middle-and upper-class schools the matter is even worse. There are chapel services, and the care of morals is in the hands of clergymen. Clergymen, almost necessarily, fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm, and | they condone acts which do great harm. They all condemn sexual relations between unmarried people who are fond of each other but not yet sure that they wish to live together all their lives. ”

“ This part of morals plays a great part in the training of young children, who have little inclination to think of the future. If it were more practised in later life, the world would quickly become a paradise, since it would be quite sufficient to prevent wars, which are acts of passion, not of reason. Nevertheless, in spite of the importance of prudence, it is not the most interesting part of morals. ”

“ If either of the parents has venereal disease, the child is likely to inherit it. If they already have too many children for the family income, there will be poverty, underfeeding, overcrowding, very likely incest. ”

“ Bentham supposed that the whole of morality could be derived from "enlightened self-interest," and that a person who always acted with a view to his own maximum satisfaction in the long run would always act rightly. ”

“ And yet everybody who has taken the trouble to study morbid psychology knows that prolonged virginity is, as a rule, extraordinarily harmful to women, so harmful that, in a sane society, it would be severely discouraged in teachers. ”

“ It is evident that a.. man with scientific outlook outlook on life cannot ‘let himself be intimidated by texts of Scripture or by the teaching of the Church. He will not be content to say "such-and-such an act is sinful, and that ends the matter." ”

“ But there is another method, more fundamental, and far more satisfactory when it succeeds. This is to alter men’s characters and desires in such a way as to minimize occasions of conflict by making the success of one man’s desires as far as possible consistent with that of another’s. ”

“ If this is not done, many people who are acting in a way not contrary to the public interest are faced with the undeserved alternative of hypocrisy or obloquy. The Church does not mind hypocrisy, which is a flattering tribute to its power ”

“ Most of them condemn birth-control. None of them condemn the brutality of a husband who causes his _ wife to die of too frequent pregnancies. I knew a fashionable clergyman whose wife had nine children in nine years. ”