PORNOGRAPHYANDOBSCENITY
It is c lear from a letter of Apri l , written in Ma ll orca, that Lawrence had been invited to contribute an artic le to This Quarter, a new magazine soon to be launched in Paris by Edward Titus who, in the fo ll owing month, wou ld pub lish an ‘Unabridged Popu lar Edition’ of Lady Chatterley’s Lover . The Lawrences had arrived in Ma ll orca on ly on Apri l, having left Paris on the th. Lawrence himse lf was exhausted from his four-wee k stay in Paris: he had been negotiating with Titus over Lady Chatterley’s Lover , with the Crosbys over their edition of The Escaped Cock , with A lbert Boni about his American pub lications and, in addition, satisfying the diverse socia l demands placed on a ce lebrated writer in the French capita l. From Paris he and Frieda made their way to Ma ll orca via Or leans,´ Lyons, Carcassonne, Perpignan and Barce lona. So, writing to Titus on Apri l, Lawrence cou ld reasonab ly p lead that he was ‘too unsett led for the moment’ ( Letters, vii. ) but wou ld not forget Titus’s invitation. Nor did he. Ten days later he sent the manuscript of ‘Pornography and Obscenity’ to Nancy Pearn for typing. He a lso agreed to Titus’s re quest that the artic le was not to be offered for publication by ‘anybody e lse, either in Eng land or America’ (vii. ). Lawrence knew that Titus wou ld not ‘be ab le to pay much’ (vii. ) but he regarded the artic le as a friend ly gesture in return for Titus’s wi ll ingness to bring out the Paris edition of ‘Our Lady’. The artic le (of about , words) du ly appeared in This Quarter, in the issue covering July–September . Titus had not been slow to recognise Lawrence’s notoriety fo ll owing po lice action over Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Pansies typescripts, in January , and the conse quent Par liamentary debate on February about the censorship of documents regarded by officia ldom as ‘obscene’. When to these events were added the po lice raid on the Warren Ga ll ery and the confiscation of some Lawrence paintings in July, he became – from a pub lisher’s viewpoint – irresistib le as a person to give vent to his feelings on censorship. Faber & Faber seized the opportunity. In late August or ear ly September they invited Lawrence to write on the subject for their Criterion Miscellany; un known to him, they a lso invited the Late Essays and Articles Home Secretary responsible for the po lice actions in January, Joynson Hicks (now Viscount Brentford), to write on the same topic. As E. M. Forster was later to remar k: ‘It was a happy and indeed a witty thought of the pub lishers to induce the most remar kab le of our nove lists and our most notorious Home Secretary to write pamph lets on the sub- ject of indecency.’ When the Faber invitation arrived, Lawrence hesi- tated; he to ld Laurence Po ll inger at Curtis Brown’s literary agency on September:
I don’t know if I’ ll do the Faber artic le – what’s the good! I’m sic k to death of the British Public, a ll publishers, and a ll magazines – and fee l I never want to see a word of mine in pub lic print again. But I’ ll read the ‘Obscenity’ artic le [written for Titus] over, and if it interests me in itse lf, I’ ll l engthen it. Random House might publish it as a pamph let. As for Faber & Faber – I shou ld get about £ – out of them and a batch of insu lts – What’s the point! But I’ ll l et you know fina ll y about this, this wee k. (vii. –) A mere three days later he wrote again to Po ll inger:
Here is the conc lusion of the artic le on Obscenity and Pornogra phy . It now ma kes about ten thousand words. You can give it to Faber & Faber if you like, for their month ly criterion and their rather si ll y little shi ll ing books. They are a lmost sure to reject it: which wi ll be perhaps just as we ll . If they accept, they may leave out sma ll bits, if they want to, but they must te ll me first. (vii. –) Somewhat to Lawrence’s surprise, Fabers were prepared to ‘ris k the obscenity artic le’ so long as he omitted the a ll egation that ‘the boo ks of Sir James Barrie and Mr Ga lsworthy . . . are far more pornographica l than the live liest story in the Decameron: because they tic kl e and excite to private masturbation, which the who lesome Boccaccio never does’ (vii. and n. ). Lawrence agreed to the de letion as he to ld Po ll inger on September and again on October. Matters then moved swift ly. Lawrence returned the signed contract to Po ll inger on October; he had read proofs by November; and the paperback edition of Pornogra phy and Obscenity , No. of Criterion Mis- cellany, was pub lished on the th (vii. , ). Seeming ly a review had appeared by the th; it has not been identified but it was sufficient ly hostile to provo ke Lawrence’s remar k to Po ll inger: ‘I’m glad Obscenity is biting through their s kin, as I intended it shou ld. Mr Lawrence not
Nation and Athenaeum, January , x lvi. . Quoted in Draper . See : –:. (Unfortunate ly the re levant fi le at Faber & Faber has not survived.) Textua l co ll ation suggests that other changes were introduced without DHL’s know l- edge: see, for examp le, : , :, : – . Pornography and Obscenity on ly be lieves what he says, he knows it’s true’ (vii. ). Simi lar ly,whi le assuring Titus that the pamph let had not provo ked officia l displeasure in Eng land, he was obvious ly p leased to report that ‘the peop le hate it’ (vii. ). This view reappears in a letter to his e lder sister, Emi ly King, who wou ld receive a comp limentary copy – ‘Stirs them up a bit. That Jix [ Joynson Hic ks] is a mea ly-mouthed worm’ – a sentiment repeated to Po ll inger also on November: ‘what a mea ly-mouthed maggot that Jix is!’ (vii. , and n. ). The exp lanation for these outbursts against ‘ Jix’ lies in his artic le in Everyman on November, entit led ‘HOW THE CENSORSHIP WORKS’, justifying his arguments in his own Faber pamph let, Do We Need a Censor? He expressed satisfaction with the reception of the pamph let except from ‘a certain section of the community who prefer to put liberty before decency’. He went on to question what ‘the average father of a fami ly wou ld say if he found his daughter reading Mr D. H. Lawrence’s latest pamph let on pornogra- phy’; he a ll uded to ‘an exhibition of pictures . . . which it was a ll eged were indecent . . . and the exhibition was c losed’; and he reca ll ed how ‘two poems by a we ll -known man were caught in the post, quite acci- dentall y – not under the Home Secretary’s warrant, but simp ly on the haphazard opening by the Customs authorities of a parce l to see whether it contained anything contraband. It was found to contain a most perni- cious poem.’ The opening of the Home Office fi le in on Lawrence’s Pansies revea ls the extent to which Jix was economica l with the truth. Lawrence was overjoyed with the sa les of his pamph let: ‘ a wee k’, he to ld his Ita lian friend and publisher, ‘Pino’ Orio li; ‘over , – more than any of the others’, Charles Lahr was to ld on the same day, December (vii. –). And in ‘the others’ he inc luded H. G. We ll s’s Imperialism and the Open Cons piracy – No. in the Criterion Miscellany – as we ll as No. , Jix’s Do We Need a Censor? , both pub lished, along with Lawrence’s pamph let, in November . Faber & Faber issued a hardbac k edition in January ; the first American edition was pub lished by A lfred Knopf in New Yor k on February ; and the first co ll ected edition came from Faber & Faber – Pornogra phy and So On on September (a month before the essay was inc luded in Phoenix). The text in a ll these cases was expur- gated as Faber & Faber had re quested; the unexpurgated text printed here fo ll ows the manuscript of the expanded version.
See James T. Bou lton, ‘D. H. Lawrence’s Pansies and the State, ’, Journal of the D. H. Lawrence Society, ed. Bethan Jones (Eastwood, Autumn ), pp. – . PORNOGRAPHYANDOBSCENITY
What they are depends, as usua l, entire ly on the individua l. What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another. The word itse lf, we are to ld, means “pertaining to har lots”—the graph of the har lot.* But nowadays, what is a har lot? If she was a woman who took money from a man in return for going to bed with him— reall y, most wives so ld themse lves, in the past, and p lenty of har lots gave themse lves, when they fe lt like it, for nothing. If a woman hasn’t got a tiny strea k of a har lot in her, she’s a dry stic k as a ru le. And probab ly most harlots had somewhere a strea k of woman ly generosity. Why be so cut and dried? The law is a dreary thing, and its judgments have nothing to do with life. The same with the word obscene: nobody knows what it means. * Sup- pose it were derived from obscena: that which might not be represented on the stage,—how much further are you? None! What is obscene to Tom is not obscene to Lucy or Joe, and rea ll y, the meaning of a word has to wait for majorities to decide it. If a p lay shoc ks ten peop le in an audience, and doesn’t shoc k the remaining five hundred, then it is obscene to ten and innocuous to five hundred: hence, the p lay is not ob- scene, by majority. But Hamlet shocked a ll the Cromwell ian Puritans, and shocks nobody today, and some Aristophanes * shocks everybody today, and didn’t ga lvanise the later Gree ks at a ll , apparent ly. Man is a changeab le beast, and words change their meanings with him, and things are not what they seemed, and what’s what becomes what isn’t, and if we thin k we know where we are it’s on ly because we are so rapid ly being trans lated to somewhere e lse. We have to leave everything to the majority,everything to the majority,everything to the mob, the mob, the mob. They know what is obscene and what isn’t, they do. If the lower ten mi ll ion doesn’t know better than the upper ten men, then there’s something wrong with mathematics. Ta ke a vote on it! Show hands, and prove it by count! Vox popu li, vox Dei. Odi profanum vu lgum. Profanum vu lgum! profanum vu lgum.* So it comes down to this: if you are ta lk ing to the mob, the meaning of your words is the mob-meaning, decided by majority. As somebody Pornography and Obscenity wrote to me: the American law on obscenity is very p lain, and America is going to enforce the law.—Quite, my dear, quite, quite, quite! The mob knows a ll about obscenity.Mi ld little words that rhyme with spit or farce are the height of obscenity. Supposing a printer put “h” in the p lace of “p”, by mista ke, in that mere word spit? Then the great American public knows that this man has committed an obscenity, an indecency, that his act was lewd, and as a compositor he was pornographica l. You can’t tamper with the great pub lic, British or American. Vox populi, vox Dei, don’t you know. If you don’t we’ ll l et you know it.—At the same time, this vox Dei shouts with praise over movie-pictures and boo ks and newspaper accounts that seem, to a sinfu l nature like mine, comp letely disgusting and obscene. Li ke a rea l prude and Puritan, I have to loo k the other way. When obscenity becomes maw kish, which is its pa latab le form for the pub lic, and when the Vox populi, vox Dei is hoarse with sentimental indecency, then I have to steer away, like a Pharisee, afraid of being contaminated. * There is a certain kind of stic ky universa l pitch that I refuse to touch. So again, it comes down to this: you accept the majority, the mob, and its decisions, or you don’t. Youbow down before the Vox populi, vox Dei, or you p lug your ears not to hear its obscene how l. You perform your antics to p lease the vast public, Deus ex machina ,* or you refuse to perform for the pub lic at a ll , un less now and then to pu ll its elephantine and ignominious leg. When it comes to the meaning of anything, even the simp lest word, then you must pause. Because there are two great categories of mean- ing, forever separate. There is mob-meaning, and there is individua l meaning. Ta ke even the word bread. The mob-meaning is mere ly: stuff made with white flour into loaves, that you eat.—But ta ke the individua l meaning of the word bread: the white, the brown, the corn-pone, the home-made, the sme ll of bread just out of the oven, the crust, the crumb, the un leavened bread, the shew-bread, the staff of life, sour- dough bread, cottage loaves, French bread, Viennese bread, b lac k bread, a yesterday’s loaf, rye, Graham, bar ley,ro ll s, Bretze ln, Kringe ln, scones, damper, matsen— * there is no end to it a ll , and the word bread wi ll ta ke you to the ends of time and space, and far-off down avenues of memory. But this is individua l. The word bread wi ll ta ke the individua l off on his own journey, and its meaning wi ll be his own meaning, based on his own genuine imaginative reactions. And when a word comes to us in its individual character, and starts in us the individua l responses, it is a great p leasure to us. The American advertisers have discovered this, Late Essays and Articles and some of the cunningest American literature is to be found in adver- tisements of soap-suds, for examp le. These advertisements are almost prose-poems. They give the word soap-suds a bubb ly, shiny individua l meaning which is very s kilfu ll y poetic, wou ld, perhaps, be quite poetic to the mind which cou ld forget that the poetry was bait on a hoo k. Business is discovering the individua l, dynamic meaning of words, and poetry is losing it. Poetry more and more tends to far-fetch its word-meanings, and this resu lts once again in mob-meanings, which arouse on ly a mob-reaction in the individua l. For every man has a mob se lf and an individua l se lf, in varying proportions. Some men are a lmost all mob-self, incapab le of imaginative individua l responses. The worst specimensofmob-se lfareusua ll ytobefoundintheprofessions, lawyers, professors, c lergymen and so on. The business man, much ma ligned, has a tough outside mob-se lf, and a scared, floundering, yet sti ll alive individual se lf. The pub lic, which is feeb le-minded like an idiot, wi ll never be ab le to preserve its individua l reactions from the tric ks of the exploiter. The pub lic is a lways exp loited and always wi ll be exp loited. Themethodsofexp loitationmere lyvary.Todaythepub licistic kl edinto laying the go lden egg. With imaginative words and individua l meanings it is tric ked into giving the great goose-cac kl e of mob-ac quiescence. Vox popu li, vox Dei. It has a lways been so, and wi ll always be so. Why? Because the public has not enough wit to distinguish between mob- meanings and individual-meanings. The mass is forever vu lgar, because it can’t distinguish between its own origina l feelings and feelings which are diddled into existence by the exp loiter. The pub lic is a lways profane, because it is contro ll ed from the outside, by the tric kster, and never from the inside, by its own sincerity. The mob is a lways obscene, because it is a lways second-hand. Which brings us bac k to our subject of pornography and obscenity. The reaction to any word may be, in any individua l, either a mob- reactionoranindividua lreaction.Itisuptotheindividua ltoas khimself: Is my reaction individua l, or am I mere ly reacting from my mob se lf?— When it comes to the so-ca ll ed obscene words, I shou ld say that hard ly one person in a mi ll ion escapes mob-reaction. The first reaction is a l- most sure to be mob-reaction, mob-indignation, mob-condemnation. Andthemobgetsnofurther.Buttherea lindividualhassecondthoughts, andsays:AmI reallyshocked?DoI reallyfeeloutragedandindignant?— And the answer of any individua l who has ever got so far as to as k himself the question, sincere ly, is bound to be: No, I am not shoc ked, not out- raged, nor indignant. I know the word, and ta ke it for what it is, and Pornography and Obscenity I am not going to be joc keyed into ma king a mountain out of a mo lehill , not for a ll the law in the wor ld.— Now if the use of a few so-ca ll ed obscene words wi ll startle man or woman out of a mob-habit into an individua l state, we ll and good. And word-prudery is so universa l a mob-habit that it is time we were start led out of it. But still we have on ly tac kl ed obscenity, and the prob lem of pornog- raphy goes even deeper. When a man is start led into his individua l se lf, he sti ll may not be ab le to know, inside himse lf, whether Rabe lais is or is not pornographic: and over Aretino or even Boccaccio * he may perhaps puzzle in vain, torn between different emotions. One essay on Pornography,I remember, comes to the conc lusion that pornography in art is that which is ca lcu lated to arouse sexua l desire, or sexual excitement. And stress is laid on the fact, whether the author or artist intended to arouse sexua l feelings. It is the o ld vexed question of intention, become so du ll today, when we know how strong and influ- ential our unconscious intentions are. And why a man shou ld be he ld guilty of his conscious intentions, and innocent of his unconscious in- tentions, I don’t know, since every man is more made up of unconscious intentions than of conscious ones. I am what I am, not mere ly what I think I am. However—!—We ta ke it, I assume, that pornogra phy is something base, something unp leasant. In short, we don’t like it. And why don’t we like it? Because it arouses sexua l feelings? I thin k not. No matter how hard we may pretend otherwise, most of us rather like a moderate rousing of our sex. It warms us, stimu lates us like sunshine on a grey day. After a century or two of Puritanism, this is sti ll true of most peop le. On ly the mob-habit of condemning any form of sex is too strong to let us admit it natura ll y. —And there are, of course, many peop le who are genuine ly repe ll ed by the simp lest and most natura l stirring of sexua l feeling. But these peop le are perverts, who have fa ll en into hatred of their fe ll ow men: thwarted, disappointed, unfulfill ed peop le, of whom, a las, our civi lisation contains so many.And they nearly a lways enjoy some unsimp le and unnatura l form of sex excitement, secret ly. Even quite advanced art critics wou ld try to ma ke us be lieve that any picture or boo k which had “sex appea l” was ipso facto a bad boo k or picture. This is just canting hypocrisy. Ha lf the great poems, pictures, music, stories of the who le wor ld are great by virtue of the beauty of their sex appeal. Titian or Renoir, the Song of So lomon or Jane Eyre, Late Essays and Articles Mozart or Annie Laurie,* the love liness is a ll interwoven with sex appea l, sex stimulus, ca ll it what you wi ll . Even Michae l Angelo, * who rather hated sex, can’t he lp fi ll ing the Cornucopia with pha ll ic acorns. Sex is a very powerfu l, beneficia l and necessary stimulus in human life, and we are all gratefu l when we fee l its warm, natura l flow through us, like a form of sunshine. So we can dismiss the idea that sex appea l in art is pornography. It may be so to the grey Puritan, but the grey Puritan is a sic k man, soul and body sic k, so why shou ld we bother about his ha ll ucinations! Sex appeal, of course, varies enormous ly. There are end less different kinds, and end less degrees of each kind. Perhaps it may be argued that a mi ld degree of sex appea l is not pornographica l, whereas a high degree is. But this is a fa ll acy. Boccaccio at his hottest seems to me less pornographica l than Pamela or Clarissa Harlowe * or even Jane Eyre or a host of modern boo ks or fi lms which pass uncensored. At the same time Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde* seems to me very near to pornography,and so, even, do some quite popular Christian hymns. What is it, then? It isn’t a question of sex appea l, mere ly: nor even a question of de liberate intention on the part of the author or artist to arouse sexual excitement. Rabe lais sometimes had a de liberate inten- tion, so, in a different way, did Boccaccio. And I’m sure poor Charlotte Bronte, or the authoress of The Sheik * did not have any de liberate in- tention to stimu late sex fee lings in the reader. Yet I find Jane Eyre verging towards pornography and Boccaccio seems to me a lways fresh and wholesome. The British Home Secretary,* who prides himself on being a very sincere Puritan, grey, grey in every fibre, said with indignant sorrow in one of his outbursts on improper boo ks: “—and these two young people, who had been perfect ly pure up ti ll that time, after reading this book went and had sexua l intercourse together—!!!”— One up to them ! is a ll we can answer. But the grey Guardian of British Mora ls seemed to thin k that if they had murdered one another, or worn each other to rags of nervous frustration, it wou ld have been much better. The grey disease! Then what is pornography, after a ll this? It isn’t sex appea l or sex stimulus in art. It isn’t even a de liberate intention on the part of the artist to arouse or excite sexua l feelings. There’s nothing wrong with sexual feelings in themse lves, so long as they are straightforward and not sneaking or s ly.The right sort of sex stimu lus is inva luable to human daily life. Without it, the wor ld grows grey. I wou ld give everybody the Pornography and Obscenity gay Renaissance stories to read, they wou ld he lp to sha ke off a lot of grey se lf-importance, which is our modern civi lised disease. But even I wou ld censor genuine pornography, rigorous ly. It wou ld not be very difficu lt. In the first p lace, genuine pornography is a lmost always underwor ld, it doesn’t come into the open. In the second, you can recognise it by the insu lt it offers, invariab ly, to sex, and to the human spirit. Pornography is the attempt to insu lt sex, to do dirt on it. This is unpardonab le. Ta ke the very lowest instances, the picture post-cards so ld underhand, by the underwor ld, in most cities. What I have seen of them have been of an ug liness to ma ke you cry. The insu lt to the human body, the insu lt to a vita l human re lationship! Ug ly and cheap they ma ke the human nudity, ug ly and degraded they ma ke the sexua l act, trivial and cheap and nasty. It is the same with the boo ks they se ll in the underwor ld. They are either so ug ly they ma ke you i ll , or so fatuous you can’t imagine anybody but a cretin or a moron reading them, or writing them. It is the same with the dirty limericks that peop le te ll after dinner, or the dirty stories one hears commercia l trave ll ers te ll ing each other in a smoke-room. Occasiona ll y there is a rea ll y funny one, that redeems a great dea l. But usua ll y they are just ug ly,and repe ll ant, and the so-call ed “humour” is just a tric k of doing dirt on sex. Now the human nudity of a great many modern peop le is just ug ly and degraded, and the sexua l act between modern peop le is too often the same, mere ly ug ly and degrading. But this is nothing to be proud of. It is the catastrophe of our civi lisation. I am sure no other civi lisation, not even the Roman, has showed such a vast proportion of ignominious and degraded nudity, and ug ly, s qua lid, dirty sex. Because no other civi lisation has driven sex into the underwor ld, and nudity to the W. C. The intell igent young, than k Heaven, seem determined to a lter in these two respects. They are rescuing their young nudity from the stuffy, pornographica l ho le-and-corner underwor ld of their e lders, and they refuse to be snea king about the sexual re lation. This is a change the elderly grey ones of course dep lore, but it is in fact a very great change for the better, a rea l revo lution. But it is amazing how strong is the wi ll in ordinary vu lgar peop le, to do dirt on sex. It was one of my fond i ll usions, when I was young, that the ordinary hea lthy-seeming sort of men, in rai lway carriages or the smoke-room of an hote l or a pu ll man, were hea lthy in their fee lings and had a who lesome rough devi l-may-care attitude to sex. A ll wrong! All Late Essays and Articles wrong! Experience teaches that common individua ls of this sort have a disgusting attitude to sex, a disgusting contempt of it, a disgusting desire to insu lt it. If such fe ll ows have intercourse with a woman, they triumphantly fee l that they have done her dirt, and now she is lower, cheaper, more contemptib le than she was before. It is individua ls of this sort that te ll dirty stories, carry indecent picture post-cards, and know the indecent boo ks. This is the great por- nographica l class—the reall y common men-in-the-street and women- in-the-street. They have as great a hate and contempt of sex as the greyest Puritan, and when an appea l is made to them, they are a lways on the side of the ange ls. They insist that a fi lm-heroine shall be a neuter, a sex less thing of washed-out purity. They insist that rea l sex-feeling shall on ly be shown by the vi ll ain or vi ll ainess, low lust. They find a Titian nude or a Renoir rea ll y indecent, and they don’t want their wives and daughters to see it. Why? Because they have the grey disease of sex-hatred, coup led with the ye ll ow disease of dirt- lust. The sex functions and the excrementary functions in the human body wor k so c lose together, yet they are, so to speak, utter ly different in direction. Sex is a creative flow, the excre- mentary flow is towards disso lution, de-creation, if we may use such a word. In the rea ll y hea lthy human being the distinction between the two is instant, our profoundest instincts are perhaps our instincts of opposition between the two flows. But in the degraded human being the deep instincts have gone dead, and then the two flows become identica l. This is the secret of rea ll y vu lgar peop le and of pornography: the sex flow and the excrement flow is the same thing to them. It happens when the psyche deteriorates, and the profound contro ll ing instincts co ll apse. Then sex is dirt and dirt is sex, and sexual excitement becomes a p laying with dirt, and any sign of sex in a woman becomes a show of her dirt. This is the condition of the common, vu lgar human being whose name is legion, and who lifts his voice and it is the Vox populi vox Dei . And this is the source of a ll pornography. And for this reason we must admit that Jane Eyre or Wagner’s Tristan are much nearer to pornography than is Boccaccio. Wagner and Charlotte Bronte were both in the state where the strongest instincts have co ll apsed, and sex has become something slightly obscene, to be wa ll owed in, but despised. Mr. Rochester’s sex passion is not “re- spectable” ti ll Mr. Rochester is burnt, b linded, disfigured, and reduced to he lpless dependence. Then, thorough ly humb led and humi liated, it Pornography and Obscenity may be mere ly admitted. A ll the previous titill ations are s lightly inde- cent, as in Pamela or Mill on the Floss or Anna Karenin.* As soon as there is sex excitement with a desire to spite the sexua l feeling, to humi liate it and degrade it, the e lement of pornography enters. For this reason, there is an e lement of pornography in near ly a ll nineteenth-century literature and very many so-ca ll ed pure peop le have a nasty pornographica l side to them, and never was the pornographica l appetite stronger than it is today. It is a sign of a diseased condition of the body po litic. But the way to treat the disease is not Puritanism and more Puritanism. That on ly covers up the tumour and ma kes it fester worse. The on ly way is to come out into the open with sex and sex stimulus. The rea l pornographer tru ly dis likes Boccaccio, because the fresh healthy natura lness of the Ita lian story-tell er ma kes the modern pornographica l shrimp feel the dirty worm he is. Today, Boccaccio should be given to everybody young or o ld, to read if they like. On ly a natura l fresh openness about sex wi ll do us any good, now we are being swamped by secret or semi-secret pornography. And perhaps the Renaissance story-te ll ers, Boccaccio, Lasca * and the rest, are the best antidote we can find now, just as more p lasters of Puritanism are the most harmful remedy we can resort to. *The whole question of pornography seems to me a question of secrecy. Without secrecy there wou ld be no pornography. But secrecy and modesty are two utter ly different things. Secrecy has a lways an element of fear in it, amounting very often to hate. Modesty is gent le and reserved. Today, modesty is thrown to the winds even in the presence of the grey Home Secretaries. But secrecy is hugged, being a vice in itself. And the attitude of the grey ones is: Dear young ladies, you may abandon a ll modesty, so long as you hug your dirty little secret.— This “dirty little secret” has become infinite ly precious to the mob of peop le today. It is a kind of hidden sore or inflammation which, when rubbed or scratched, gives off sharp thri ll s that seem de licious. So the dirty little secret is rubbed and scratched more and more, ti ll it becomes more and more secretly inflamed, and the nervous and psychic hea lth of the individual is more and more impaired. One might easi ly say that ha lf the love nove ls and ha lf the love-fi lms today depend entire ly for their success on the secret rubbing of the dirty little secret. You can ca ll this sex-excitement if you like, but it is sex-excitement of a secretive, furtive sort, quite special. The p lain and simple sex excitement, quite open and wholesome, which you find in some Boccaccio stories is not for a minute to be confused with the furtive excitement aroused by rubbing the dirty Late Essays and Articles little secret in a ll secrecy in modern best-se ll ers. This furtive, snea king, cunning rubbing of an inflamed spot in the imagination is the very quick of modern pornography, and it is a beast ly and very dangerous thing. You can’t so easi ly expose it, because of its very furtiveness and its sneaking cunning. So the cheap and popu lar modern love-nove l and love-fi lm flourishes and is even praised by grey Home Secretaries and other moral guardians, because you get the snea king thrill fumbling under all the purity of dainty underc lothes, without one sing le gross word to let you know what is happening. Without secrecy there wou ld be no pornography.But if pornography is the resu lt of snea king secrecy,what is the resu lt of pornography? What is the effect on the individua l? The effect on the individua l is manifo ld, and a lways pernicious. But one effect is perhaps inevitab le. The pornography of today, whether it be the pornography of the rubber-goods shop or the pornography of the popular nove l, fi lm, and p lay, is an invariab le stimu lant to the vice of se lf abuse, onanism, masturbation, ca ll it what you wi ll . In young or o ld, man or woman, boy or gir l, modern pornography is a direct provocative of masturbation. It cannot be otherwise. When the grey ones wai l that the young man and the young woman went and had sexual intercourse, they are bewai ling the fact that the young man and the young woman didn’t go separate ly and masturbate. Sex must go somewhere, especia ll y in young peop le. So, in our g lorious civi lisation, it goes in masturbation. And the mass of our popu lar literature, the bu lk of our popu lar amusements just exists to provo ke masturbation. Masturbation is the one thorough ly secret act of the human being, more secret even than excrementation. It is the one functiona l result of sex-secrecy, and it is stimu lated and provo ked by our g lorious popular literature of fretty pornography, which rubs on the dirty secret without letting you know what is happening. Now I have heard men, teachers and c lergymen, commend mastur- bation as the so lution of an otherwise inso lub le sex prob lem. This at least is honest. The sex prob lem is there, and you can’t just wi ll it away. There it is, and under the ban of secrecy and taboo in mother and fa- ther, teacher, friend and foe, it has found its own so lution, the so lution of masturbation. But what about the so lution? Do we accept it? Do a ll the grey ones of this wor ld accept it? If so, they must now accept it open ly. We can none of us pretend any longer to be b lind to the fact of masturbation, in young and old, man and woman. The mora l guardians who are prepared to Pornography and Obscenity censor all open and plain portraya l of sex must now be made to give their on ly justification: We prefer that the peop le sha ll masturbate.—If this preference is open and dec lared, then the existing forms of censorship are justified. If the mora l guardians prefer that the peop le sha ll mastur- bate, then their present behaviour is correct, and popu lar amusements are as they shou ld be. If sexua l intercourse is dead ly sin, and mastur- bation is comparative ly pure and harm less, then a ll is we ll . Let things continue as they now are. Is masturbation so harm less, though? Is it even comparative ly pure and harmless? Not to my thin king. In the young, a certain amount of masturbation is inevitab le, but not therefore natura l. I thin k, there is no boy or gir l who masturbates without feeling a sense of shame, anger and futility. Fo ll owing the excitement comes the shame, anger, humi liation, and the sense of futi lity. This sense of futi lity and humiliation deepens as the years go on, into a suppressed rage, because of the impossibi lity of escape. The one thing that it seems impossib le to escape from, once the habit is formed, is masturbation. It goes on and on, on into o ld age, in spite of marriage or love affairs or anything e lse. And it a lways carries this secret feeling of futi lity and humiliation, futi lity and humiliation. And this is, perhaps, the deepest and most dangerous cancer of our civi lisation. Instead of being a comparative ly pure and harm less vice, masturba- tion is certain ly the most dangerous sexua l vice that a society can be afflicted with, in the long run. Comparative ly pure it may be—purity being what it is. But harm less!!! The great danger of masturbation lies in its mere ly exhaustive nature. In sexua l intercourse, there is a give and ta ke. A new stimu lus enters as the native stimu lus departs. Something quite new is added as the o ld surcharge is removed. And this is so in a ll sexual intercourse where two creatures are concerned, even in the homosexua l intercourse. But in masturbation there is nothing but loss. There is no reciprocity. There is mere ly the spending away of a certain force and no return. The body remains, in a sense, a corpse, after the act of se lf-abuse. There is no change, on ly deadening. There is what we ca ll dead loss. And this is not the case in any act of sexua l intercourse between two peop le. Two people may destroy one another in sex. But they cannot just produce the nu ll effect of masturbation. The on ly positive effect of masturbation is that is seems to re lease certain mental energy, in some peop le. But it is menta l energy which manifests itself a lways in the same way,in a vicious circ le of ana lysis and Late Essays and Articles impotent criticism, or e lse a vicious circ le of fa lse and easy sympathy, sentimentalism. The sentimentalism and the niggling analysis, often se lf-analysis, of most of our modern literature, is a sign of se lf-abuse. It is the manifestation of masturbation, the sort of conscious activity stimulated by masturbation, whether ma le or fema le. The outstanding feature of such consciousness is that there is no rea l object, there is on ly subject. This is just the same whether it be a nove l or a wor k of science. The author never escapes from himse lf, he pads a long within the vicious circle of himse lf. There is hard ly a writer living who gets out of the vicious circ le of himse lf—or a painter either. Hence the lac k of creation, and the stupendous amount of production. It is a masturbation result, within the vicious circ le of the se lf. It is se lf-absorption made public. And of course the process is exhaustive. The rea l masturbation of Englishmen began on ly in Victoria’s reign. * It has continued with an increasing emptying of the rea l vitality and the real being of men, ti ll now people are little more than she ll s of peop le. Most of the responses are dead, most of the awareness is dead, near ly a ll the constructive activity is dead, and all that remains is a sort of she ll , a ha lf-empty creature fata ll y se lf-pre-occupied and incapable of either giving or ta king. Incapab le either of giving or ta king, in the vita l se lf. And this is masturbation resu lt. Enclosed within the vicious circle of the se lf, with no vita l contacts outside, the se lf becomes emptier and emptier, ti ll it is a lmost a nu ll us, a nothingness. But nu ll or nothing as it may be, it sti ll hangs on to the dirty little secret, which it must sti ll secretly rub and inflame. Forever the vicious circle. And it has a weird, b lind wi ll of its own. One of my most sympathetic critics wrote: If Mr. Lawrence’s attitude to sex were adopted, then two things wou ld disappear, the love lyric and the smoking room story.— * And this, I thin k, is true. But it depends which love- lyric he means. If it is the: Who is Sy lvia, what is she? *—then it may just as we ll disappear. A ll that pure and nob le and heaven-b lessed stuff is on ly the counterpart to the smo king-room story. Du bist wie eine Blume! Jawoh l!* One can see the elderly gent leman laying his hands on the head of the pure maiden and praying God to keep her forever so pure, so c lean and beautiful. Very nice for him! Just pornography! tic kl ing the dirty little secret and ro ll ing his eyes to heaven! He knows perfect ly we ll that if God keeps the maiden so c lean and pure and beautiful—in his vu lgar sense of c lean and pure—for a few more years, then she’ ll be an unhappy o ld maid, and not pure nor beautifu l at a ll , on ly sta le or Pornography and Obscenity pathetic. Sentimenta lity is a sure sign of pornography. Why shou ld “sadness strike through the heart” of the o ld gent leman, because the maid was pure and beautiful? Anybody but a masturbator wou ld have been glad, and wou ld have thought: What a love ly bride for some luc ky man!—But no, not the se lf-enclosed, pornographic masturbator. Sad- ness has to stri ke into his beast ly heart!—Away with such love- lyrics, we’ve had too much of their pornographic poison, tic kl ing the dirty little secret and ro ll ing the eyes to heaven. But if it is a question of the sound love- lyric—“My love is like a red, red rose—!”* then we are on other ground. My love is like a red, red rose on ly when she’s not like a pure, pure lily. And nowadays the pure, pure lilies are mostly festering, * anyhow. Away with them and their lyrics. Away with the pure, pure lily lyric, a long with the smo king-room story. They are counterparts, and the one is as pornographic as the other. Du bist wie eine Blume—is reall y as pornographic as a dirty story: tic kl ing the dirty little secret and ro ll ing the eyes to heaven.—But oh, if on ly Robert Burns had been accepted for what he is, then love might sti ll have been like a red, red rose? The vicious circle, the vicious circ le! The vicious circ le of mastur- bation! The vicious circ le of se lf-consciousness that is never fully se lf- conscious, never fu ll y and open ly conscious, but a lways harping on the dirty little secret. The vicious circ le of secrecy, in parents, teachers, friends—everybody. The specia ll y vicious circ le of fami ly. The vast conspiracy of secrecy in the press, and at the same time, the end less tickl ing of the dirty little secret. The end less masturbation! and the endless purity! The vicious circle! How to get out of it? There is on ly one way: Away with the secret! No more secrecy! The on ly way to stop the terrib le menta l itch about sex is to come out quite simply and natura ll y into the open with it. It is terribly difficu lt, for the secret is cunning as a crab. Yet the thing to do is to ma ke a beginning. The man who said to his exasperating daughter: My chi ld, the on ly p leasure I ever had out of you was the p leasure I had in begetting you—has a lready done a great dea l to re lease both himself and her from the dirty little secret. How to get rid of the dirty little secret! It is, as a matter of fact, extremely difficu lt for us secretive moderns. You can’t do it by being wise and scientific about it, like Dr.Marie Stopes: * though to be wise and scientific like Dr. Marie Stopes is better than to be utter ly hypocritica l, like the grey ones. But by being wise and scientific in the serious and earnest manner you on ly tend to disinfect the dirty little secret, and Late Essays and Articles either kill sex altogether with too much seriousness and inte ll ect, or e lse leave it a miserab le disinfected secret. The unhappy “free and pure” love of so many peop le who have ta ken out the dirty little secret and thoroughly disinfected it with scientific words is apt to be more pathetic even than the common run of dirty- little-secret love. The danger is, that in kill ing the dirty little secret, you kill dynamic sex a ltogether, and leave on ly the scientific and de liberate mechanism. This is what happens to many of those who become serious ly “free” in their sex, free and pure. They have menta lised sex ti ll it is nothing at all , nothing at a ll but a menta l q uantity. And the fina l result is disaster, every time. The same is true, in an even greater proportion, of the emancipated bohemians: and very many of the young are bohemian today, whether they ever set foot in bohemia or not. But the bohemian is “sex free”. The dirty little secret is no secret either to him or her. It is, indeed, a most blatant ly open question. There is nothing they don’t say: everything that can be revea led is revea led, And they do as they wish. And then what? They have apparent ly kill ed the dirty little secret, but somehow, they have kill ed everything e lse too. Some of the dirt still sticks, perhaps; sex remains sti ll dirty. But the thri ll of secrecy is gone. Hence the terrib le dreariness and depression of modern bohemia, and the inward dreariness and emptiness of so many young peop le of today.They have kill ed, they imagine, the dirty little secret. The thri ll of secrecy is gone. Some of the dirt remains. And for the rest, depression, inertia, lac k of life. For sex is the fountain-head of our energetic life, and now the fountain ceases to flow. Why? For two reasons. The idea lists along the Marie Stopes line, and the young bohemians of today have kill ed the dirty little secret as far as their persona l se lf goes. But they are sti ll under its dominion socia ll y. In the socia l wor ld, in the press, in literature, fi lm, theatre, wire less, everywhere purity and the dirty little secret reign supreme. At home, at the dinner tab le, it is just the same. It is the same wherever you go. The young gir l, and the young woman is by tacit assumption pure, virgin, sexless. Du bist wie eine Blume. She, poor thing, knows quite we ll that flowers, even lilies, have tipp ling ye ll ow anthers and a stic ky stigma, sex, ro ll ing sex. But to the popu lar mind flowers are sex less things, and when a gir l is to ld she is like a flower, it means she is sex less and ought to be sex less. She herse lf knows quite we ll she isn’t sex less and she isn’t mere ly like a flower. But how bear up against the great socia l lie forced on her? She can’t! She succumbs, and the dirty little secret Pornography and Obscenity triumphs. She loses her interest in sex, as far as men are concerned, but the vicious circle of masturbation and se lf-consciousness encloses her even sti ll faster. This is one of the disasters of young life today.Persona ll y,and among themselves, a great many, perhaps a majority of the young peop le of today have come out into the open with sex and laid sa lt on the tai l of the dirty little secret. And this is a very good thing.—But in pub lic, in the socia l wor ld, the young are sti ll entirely under the shadow of the grey e lderly ones. The grey e lderly ones be long to the last century, the eunuch century, the century of the mea ly-mouthed lie, * the century that has tried to destroy humanity, the Nineteenth Century. A ll our grey ones are left over from this century. And they ru le us. They ru le us with the grey, mea ly-mouthed, canting lie of that great century of lies which, than k God, we are drifting away from. But they ru le us sti ll with the lie, for the lie, in the name of the lie. And they are too heavy and too numerous, the grey ones. It doesn’t matter what government it is. They are a ll grey ones, left over from the last century, the century of mealy-mouthed liars, the century of purity and the dirty little secret. So there is one cause for the depression of the young: the pub lic reign of the mea ly-mouthed lie, purity and the dirty little secret, which they themselves have private ly overthrown. Having kill ed a good dea l of the lie in their own private lives, the young are sti ll enclosed and imprisoned within the great pub lic lie of the grey ones. Hence the excess, the extravagance, the hysteria, and then the wea kness, the feeb leness, the pathetic si ll iness of the modern youth. They are a ll in a sort of prison, the prison of a great lie and a society of e lderly liars. And this is one of the reasons, perhaps the main reason why the sex-flow is dying out in the young, the rea l energy is dying away.They are enc losed within a lie, and the sex won’t flow. For the length of a comp lete lie is never more than three generations; and the young are the fourth generation of the th century lie. The second reason why the sex-flow is dying is, of course, that the young, in spite of their emancipation, are sti ll enclosed within the vicious circle of se lf-conscious masturbation. They are thrown bac k into it, when they try to escape, by the enc losure of the vast pub lic lie of purity and the dirty little secret. The most emancipated bohemians, who swan k most about sex, are still utterly se lf-conscious and enclosed within the narcissus-masturbation circ le. They have perhaps less sex even than the grey ones. The who le thing has been driven up into their heads. There isn’t even the lur king ho le of a dirty little secret. Their sex is Late Essays and Articles more mental than their arithmetic; and as vita l physica l creatures they are more non-existent than ghosts. The modern bohemian is indeed a kind of ghost, not even Narcissus, * on ly the image of Narcissus reflected on the face of the audience. The dirty little secret is most difficu lt to kill . You may put it to death public ly a thousand times, and sti ll it re-appears, like a crab, stea lthily from under the submerged rocks of the persona lity. The French, who are supposed to be so open about sex, wi ll perhaps be the last to kill the dirty little secret. Perhaps they don’t want to. Anyhow mere pub licity won’t do it. Youmay parade sex abroad, but you wi ll not kill the dirty little secret. You may read a ll the nove ls of Marce l Proust,* with everything there in a ll detail. Yet you wi ll not kill the dirty little secret. You wi ll perhaps on ly ma ke it more cunning. You may even bring about a state of utter indifference and sex-inertia, still without kill ing the dirty little secret. Or you may be the most wispy and enamoured little Don Juan of modern days, and sti ll the core of your spirit wi ll merely be the dirty little secret. That is to say, you wi ll still be in the narcissus-masturbation circ le, the vicious circle of se lf-enclosure. For wherever the dirty little secret exists, it exists as the centre of the vicious circ le of masturbation se lf- enclosure. And wherever you have the vicious circ le of masturbation se lf-enclosure, you have at the core the dirty little secret. And the most high-flown sex-emancipated young peop le today are perhaps the most fata ll y and nervous ly enc losed within the masturbation se lf-enclosure. Nor do they want to get out of it, for there wou ld be nothing left to come out. But some people sure ly do want to come out of the awfu l se lf- enclosure. Today, practica ll y everybody is se lf-conscious and impris- oned in se lf-consciousness. It is the joyfu l result of the dirty little secret. Vast numbers of peop le don’t want to come out of the prison of their se lf-consciousness: they have so little left to come out with. But some people, sure ly, want to escape this doom of se lf-enclosure which is the doom of our civi lisation. There is sure ly a proud minority that wants once and for a ll to be free of the dirty little secret. And the way to do it is, first, to fight the sentimenta l l ie of purity and the dirty little secret wherever you meet it, inside yourse lf or in the outside wor ld. Fight the great lie of the th Century, which has soaked through our sex and our bones. It means fighting with a lmost every breath, for the lie is ubi quitous. Then second ly, in his adventure of se lf-consciousness a man must come to the limits of himse lf and become aware of something beyond Pornography and Obscenity him. A man must be se lf-conscious enough to know his own limits, and to be aware of that which surpasses him. What surpasses me is the very urge of life that is within me, and this life urges me to forget myse lf and to yie ld to the stirring ha lf-born impu lse to smash up the vast lie of the wor ld, and ma ke a new wor ld. If my life is mere ly to go on in a vicious circ le of se lf-enclosure, masturbating se lf-consciousness, it is worth nothing to me. If my individua l l ife is to be enc losed within the huge corrupt lie of society today, purity and the dirty little secret, then it is worth not much to me. Freedom is a very great rea lity. But it means, above a ll things, freedom from lies. It is first, freedom from myse lf, from the lie of myse lf, from the lie of my a ll -importance, even to myse lf; it is freedom from the se lf-conscious masturbating thing I am, se lf-enclosed. And second, freedom from the vast lie of the socia l wor ld, the lie of purity and the dirty little secret. A ll the other monstrous lies lur k under the cloa k of this one primary lie. The monstrous lie of money lur ks under the c loa k of purity. Ki ll the purity-lie, and the money- lie wi ll be defense less. We have to be sufficient ly conscious, and se lf-conscious, to know our own limits and to be aware of the greater urge within us and beyond us. Then we cease to be primari ly interested in ourse lves. Then we learn to leave ourse lves a lone, in a ll the affective centres: not to force our feelings in any way, and never to force our sex. Then we ma ke the great ons laught on to the outside lie, the inside lie being sett led. And that is freedom and the fight for freedom. The greatest of a ll l ies in the modern wor ld is the lie of purity and the dirty little secret. The grey ones left over from the Nineteenth Century are the embodiment of this lie. They dominate in society, in the press, in literature, everywhere. And, natura ll y, they lead the vast mob of the general public a long with them. Which means, of course, perpetua l censorship of anything that wou ld mi litate against the lie of purity and the dirty little secret, and perpetua l encouragement of what may be ca ll ed permissib le pornography, pure, but tic kl ing the dirty little secret under the de licate underc lothing. The grey ones wi ll pass and wi ll commend floods of evasive pornography, and wi ll suppress every outspo ken word. The law is a mere figment. In his artic le on the ‘ censorship’ of Books, in the Nineteenth Century, the new Viscount Brentford, late Home Secre- tary,says: “Let it be remembered that the pub lishing of an obscene boo k, the issue of an obscene post-card or pornographic photograph—are a ll offences against the law of the land, and the Secretary of State who is the general authority for the maintenance of law and order most c learly Late Essays and Articles and definitely cannot discriminate between one offence and another in discharge of his duty.” So he winds up, ex cathedra and infall ib le. But on ly ten lines above he has written: “I agree, that if the law were pushed to its logical conc lusion, the printing and publication of such boo ks as The Decameron , Benvenuto Cell ini’s Life, and Burton’s Arabian Nights* might form the subject of proceedings. But the u ltimate sanction of a ll l aw is pub lic opinion, and I do not be lieve for one moment that prosecution in respect of boo ks that have been in circu lation for many centuries wou ld command pub lic support.”* Ooraythenforpub licopinion!Iton lyneedsthatafewmoreyearssha ll ro ll .—But now we see that the Secretary of State most c learly and defi- nitely does discriminate between one offence and another in discharge of his duty. He discriminates for Benvenuto, and he discriminates against The Well of Loneliness.* Simple and admitted discrimination on his part! How do we know, at this moment, that pub lic opinion wou ld rea ll y sup- port the suppression of The Well of Loneliness? Was pub lic opinion ever reall y as ked? Was it consu lted? Or did the Secretary of State and a few of his grey ones decide for a moment that they were public opinion in pro pria persona ?* And at this moment, are they rea ll y pub lic opinion in all owing the Decameron to be pub lic ly so ld? If the pub lic were forced to read the Well of Loneliness and the Decameron, and then a vote were ta ken, I’m afraid there wou ld be ten votes for the suppression of the Decameron to one for suppression of the Well of Loneliness? What is this public opinion? Just more lies on the part of the grey ones. They wou ld suppress Benvenuto tomorrow, if they dared. But they wou ld ma ke laughing-stocks of themse lves, because tradition backs up Benvenuto. It isn’t pub lic opinion at a ll . It is the grey ones afraid of ma king still bigger foo ls of themse lves. But the case is simp le. If the grey ones are going to be bac ked by a genera l public, then every new boo k that wou ld smash the mea ly- mouthed lie of the th century wi ll be suppressed as it appears. Yet let the grey ones beware. The genera l public is nowadays a very unstab le affair, and no longer loves its grey ones so dear ly, with their o ld lie. And there is another pub lic, the sma ll public of the minority, which hates the lie and the grey ones that perpetuate the lie, and which has its own dynamic ideas about pornography and obscenity. You can’t foo l all the people a ll the time,* even with purity and a dirty little secret. And this minority public knows we ll that the boo ks of Sir James Barrie and Mr. Ga lsworthy, not to mention the mass of * lesser fry, are far more Pornography and Obscenity pornographica l than the live liest story in the Decameron: because they tickl e the dirty little secret and excite to private masturbation, which the wholesome Boccaccio never does. And the minority pub lic knows fu ll we ll that the most obscene painting on a Gree k vase—Thou still unravished bride of quietness*—is not as pornographica l as the c lose-up kisses on the fi lm, which excite men and women to secret and separate masturbation. And perhaps one day even the genera l public wi ll desire to loo k the thing in the face, and see for itse lf the difference between the snea king masturbation-pornography of the press, the fi lm, and present-day pop- ular literature, and then the creative portraya ls of the sexua l impulse that we have in Boccaccio or the Gree k vase-paintings or some Pompeian art, and which are necessary for the fu lfilment of our consciousness. As it is, the pub lic mind is today bewi ldered, on this point, bewi ldered almost to idiocy. When the po lice raided my picture show, * they did not in the least know what to ta ke. So they too k every picture where the small est bit of the sex organs of either man or woman showed. Quite regard less of subject or meaning or anything e lse: they wou ld a ll ow anything, these dainty po licemen in a picture show, except the actua l sight of a fragment of the human pudenda. This was the po lice test. The dabbing on of a postage stamp—especia ll y a green one that cou ld be ca ll ed a leaf—wou ld in most cases have been quite sufficient to satisfy this “public opinion”. It is, we can on ly repeat, a condition of idiocy.And if the purity-with- a-dirty-little-secret lie is kept up much longer, the mass of society wi ll reall y be an idiot, and a dangerous idiot at that. For the pub lic is made up of individua ls. And each individua l, even grey Home Secretaries, * has sex, and is pivoted on sex. And if, with purity and a dirty little secret you drive every individua l into the masturbation se lf-enclosure, and keep him there, then you wi ll produce a state of genera l idiocy. For the masturbation se lf-enclosure produces idiots. Perhaps, if we are a ll idiots, we shan’t know it. But God preserve us!