And the new paganism, with its creed of self-development, is just as emphatic: we see its first fruits in Anatole France and Verlaine, in La Garconne of Marguerite, in the Ulysses of James Joyce, and in this Life of mine.
There are other signs of the great awakening that the Sinclairs and Levys know nothing about. In the summer of 1921 in Berlin, I was invited by a society to come to one of their meetings in which men, women and children bathed naked and afterwards sat and talked and even lunched in the open air, clad only in their skins. Of course I went and found two hundred and fifty persons of all ages enjoying themselves naturally. The professor who invited me and his wife beside him and two daughters, one of fifteen and the other of eighteen; we bathed and lunched together, and round us were two hundred others, young and old of both sexes, naked and unashamed. There are, I was assured, over a hundred of these societies in Berlin alone, numbering over one hundred thousand adherents.
As I sat there I became curiously conscious of the fact that the first reformation in religion came from the Germans, and Luther in the sixteenth century was hardly so far in advance of his time as Goethe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Perhaps these Germans, I said to myself, are again leading the world to a new paganism. One thing is certain. Doctors not only in Germany but all over Europe are preaching sun baths and the immense benefit to be derived from sitting naked for some hours a day in hot sunshine.
Of course, England and America will stick to Puritanism and prudery long after they have abandoned all belief in Christ and his commandment.
My professor and his pretty daughters seemed in no doubt as to the future.
One and all declared that the sun bath not only abolished colds and coughs but all sorts of rheumatic aches and pains; the professor declared: 'I have never been so well in my life as since I began toasting myself every day in the sun.'
But American and English people would naturally ask another question: admitting all the doctors say about the benefit of sun baths, why not take them in private? It does not appear to affect it. The eldest daughter of my professor was engaged to a young chemist, and towards the end of luncheon he joined us and sat with his betrothed, as Adam might have sat with Eve.
Even Germans, well read as they are, do not appear sufficiently to appreciate that in all this they are going back to the old traditions of their race. The chastity of German women surprised the Romans: Tacitus speaks of the German children who ran about the houses naked as when they were born (nudo et sordido), and of the girls as well (eadem juventa); and a century and a half before Tacitus, Caesar in his Sixth Book describes the primitive custom still more startlingly. 'They make no secret of the differences of sex'; he writes, 'both sexes bathe together in the rivers, and under their fur wraps and little coverings of skin they are completely naked.'
The mere fact ought to reassure the prudish majority who seem to think that nudity and shamelessness are intimately connected. Of course I shan't convince the Levys; they are beyond reason and beneath humanity; but I may give pause and thought to some who wish to see things as they are. For plainly we are at the parting of the ways. The World War has taught us many things-taught us, as the great American orator put it, to take new mental bearings and so ascertain when and how far we have gone astray.
I am afraid of repeating myself; but I must confess frankly that my use of complete freedom has not helped me in painting women: reticence in sexual matters has become second nature with them; till some woman breaks through the convention there is little to be done; but surely no unprejudiced person will deny that in painting men, freedom of speech is absolutely essential. Let any one try to paint a Maupassant in conventional terms and he must soon see that he can make nothing of him but a conventional lay figure with the soul of him unexpressed. And, as Anatole France says, 'All great artists and writers are sensualists, and sensual in proportion to their genius.'
Is it possible to say something new on this question, something that will strike people who wish to think fairly?
The other day in my reading I came across this verse of Heine:
Doch die Kastraten klagten
Als ich meine Stimm' erhob;
Sie klagten, und sie sagten:
Ich sange viel zu grob. (Ever the eunuchs whimpered When I sang out with force, They whimpered and they simpered:
My singing was much too coarse), and his wit inspired me to try once more to explain from a new angle why freedom of speech should be conceded to the literary artist as it is given to the painter or sculptor, whose revelations are surely more exciting than words can be.
There are two essential desires in man: the one is for food, the other for reproduction. While both are imperious, the one is absolutely necessary, the other, to some extent, adventitious. But while the desire for food is necessary and dominant, it has very little to do with the higher nature, with the mind or soul; whereas the sex-urge is connected with everything sweet and noble in the personality. It is in itself the source of all art; it is so intimately one with the love of the beautiful that it cannot be separated from it. It is the origin of all our affections. It redeems marriage, ennobles fatherhood and motherhood, and is in very truth the root of the soul itself and all its aspirations.
Now if religion had set itself to restrain eating and drinking, and to render immoral all descriptions of feasting or of every possible pleasure of the palate, it would have been, it seems to me, within its right. Doctors tell us that men commonly dig their graves with their teeth. The sad results of too much eating and drinking are seen on all sides: women and men at forty or forty516 five go about carrying twenty-five or even fifty or seventy pounds of disgusting fat with them that destroys their health and shortens their lives.
Moreover, no one gets anything from eating and drinking but the mere sensuous gratification; they are not connected with any of the higher instincts of our nature. Religion could have condemned indulgence here, it seems to me, in the most stringent way, and been more or less justified.
But instead of that, Christianity, mainly because of Paul and the fact that he was impotent, has attacked the sexual desire and has tried to condemn it root and branch. It doesn't preach moderation here as it should, but total abstinence; and condemns every sexual provocation and all sensuous desires as if they were contrary to human nature, instead of being the very flower of the soul.
If Paul had been a dispeptic or even of weak digestion, instead of being impotent, there is small doubt that he would have condemned any immoderation in eating and drinking, instead of sexual indulgence. And what a difference this would have made in all our lives, and how much more rational ordinary Christian teaching would have been.
Self-indulgence in eating and drinking is simply loathsome and disgusting to all higher natures, and yet it is persisted in by the majority of mankind without let or hindrance. What preacher ever dares to hold the fat members of his congregation up to ridicule, or dreams of telling them that they are not only disgusting, but stupidly immoral and bent on suicide? Indulgence in sex pleasure is much less dangerous to the individual. It is indeed only when indulgence is carried to excess that sexual pleasure can be harmful.
And what I want to know is, why shouldn't one speak just as openly and freely of the pleasures and pains of sexual indulgence as of the pleasures and pains of eating and drinking? Religion, it seems to me, or our duty to our neighbor, has little to do with either of these dominant desires of humanity. In each of them, religion should preach moderation and due regard for the welfare of our neighbor, and nothing more. For the temptation to excess in any sexual desire is only a sign of natural vigor and is therefore closely allied to virtue: as the Bible says, 'Out of strength comes forth sweetness.'
Our ordinary convention of speech is simply stupid. I am allowed to talk in any company of the pleasure of eating young partridge, or well-kept pheasant, or high grouse, but I am forbidden to talk in the same way of the pleasures of sexual intercourse. One cannot contrast the thrills of the novice with the delights of the experienced without incurring the condemnation of all and sundry. I can study indigestion and talk of its causes and consequences; I can push my investigations to apoplexy and death; but I must not talk of diseases brought on from sexual promiscuity, nor warn against them. For fifty years now the whole of the prohibitions of society and religion, in this respect, have seemed to me perfectly idiotic. I blame every father and mother for letting boys and girls go into life unschooled and unwarned.
And when in the story of My Life I began to treat sex matters freely and honestly, I was overwhelmed by the preposterous condemnation of the English-speaking peoples. Still, behind the storm of cowardly calumny and silly slander on the part of the self-styled critics, I have been encouraged by the testimony of hundreds of men and
