Offences Against One's Self
Edited by Louis Crompton
First published in the 1978 summer and fall issues of Journal
of Homosexuality, v.3:4(1978), p.389-405; continued in
v.4:1(1978)
Editor's Abstract: This is the first publication
of Jeremy Bentham's essay on "Paederasty," written about 1785. The
essay which runs to over 60 manuscript pages, is the first known
argument for homosexual law reform in England. Bentham advocates
the decriminalization of' sodomy, which in his day was punished
by hanging. He argues that homosexual acts do not "weaken" men,
or threaten population or marriage, and documents their prevalence
in ancient Greece and Rome. Bentham opposes punishment on utilitarian
grounds and attacks ascetic sexual morality. In the preceding article
(Journal of Homosexuality, 3(4), 1978, p. 383-387) the editor's
introduction discussed the essay in the light of 18th-century legal
opinion and quoted Bentham's manuscript notes that reveal his anxieties
about expressing his views.
About this document...
OFFENCES AGAINST ONE'S SELF [UNPUBLISHED]
Jeremy Bentham
Contents
OFFENCES AGAINST ONE'S SELF: PAEDERASTY
To what class of offences shall we refer these
irregularities of the venereal appetite which are stiled unnatural?
When hidden from the public eye there could be no colour for placing
them any where else: could they find a place any where it would
be here. I have been tormenting myself for years to find if possible
a sufficient ground for treating them with the severity with which
they are treated at this time of day by all European nations: but
upon the principle utility I can find none.
Offences of impurity--their varietys
The abominations that come under this heading have this property
in common, in this respect, that they consist in procuring certain
sensations by means of an improper object. The impropriety then
may consist either in making use of an object
- Of the proper species but at an improper time: for instance,
after death.
- Of an object of the proper species and sex, and at a proper
time, but in an improper part.
- Of an object of the proper species but the wrong sex. This is
distinguished from the rest by the name of paederasty.
- Of a wrong species.
- In procuring this sensation by one's self without the help of
any other sensitive object.
Paederasty makes the greatest figure
The third being that which makes the most figure in the world it
will be proper to give that the principal share of our attention.
In settling the nature and tendency of this offence we shall for
the most part have settled the nature and tendency of all the other
offences that come under this disgusting catalogue.
Whether they produce any primary mischief
- As to any primary mischief, it is evident that it produces no
pain in anyone. On the contrary it produces pleasure, and that
a pleasure which, by their perverted taste, is by this supposition
preferred to that pleasure which is in general reputed the greatest.
The partners are both willing. If either of them be unwilling,
the act is not that which we have here in view: it is an offence
totally different in its nature of effects: it is a personal injury;
it is a kind of rape.
As a secondary mischief whether they produce any alarm in the
community
- As to any secondary mischief, it produces not any pain of apprehension.
For what is there in it for any body to be afraid of? By the supposition,
those only are the objects of it who choose to be so, who find
a pleasure, for so it seems they do, in being so.
Whether any danger
- As to any danger exclusive of pain, the danger, if any, must
consist in the tendency of the example. But what is the tendency
of this example? To dispose others to engage in the same practises:
but this practise for anything that has yet appeared produces
not pain of any kind to any one.
Reasons that have commonly been assigned
Hitherto we have found no reason for punishing it at all: much
less for punishing it with the degree of severity with which it
has been commonly punished. Let us see what force there is in the
reasons that have been commonly assigned for punishing it. The whole tribe of writers on English law, who none of them knows
any more what they mean by the word "peace" than they do by many
other of the expressions that are most familiar to them, reckon
this among offences against the peace. It is accordingly treated
in all respects as an offence against the peace. They likewise reckon
forgery, coining, and all sorts of frauds among offences against
the peace. According to the same writers it is doubted whether adultery
be not a breach of the peace. It is certain however that whenever
a gallant accepts an invitation of another man's wife he does it
with force and arms. This needs no comment.
Whether against the security of the individual
Sir W. Blackstone is more particular. According to him it is not
only an offence against the peace, but it is of that division of
offences against the peace which are offences against security.
According to the same writer, if a man is guilty of this kind of
filthiness, for instance, with a cow, as some men have been known
to be, it is an offence against somebody's security. He does not
say whose security, for the law makes no distinction in its ordinances,
so neither does this lawyer or any other English lawyer in his comments
make any distinction between this kind of filthiness when committed
with the consent of the patient and the same kind of filthiness
when committed against his consent and by violence. It is just as
if a man were to make no distinction between concubinage and rape.
Whether it debilitates--Montesquieu
The reason that Montesquieu gives for reprobating it is the weakness
which he seems to suppose it to have a tendency to bring upon those
who practice it. (Esp. des Loix, L. 12, ch. 6. "11 faudroit le proscrire
quand il ne feroit que donner a un sexe les faiblesses de l'autre
et preparer a une vieillesse infame par une jeunesse honteuse." "It ought to be proscribed were it only for its giving to the
one sex the weaknesses of the other and paving the way by a scandalous
youth for an infamous old age." J.B.) This, if it be true in fact,
is a reason of a very different complexion from any of the preceding
and it is on the ground of this reason as being the most plausible
one that I have ranked the offence under its present head. As far
as it is true in fact, the act ought to be regarded in the first
place as coming within the list of offences against one's self,
of offences of imprudence: in the next place, as an offence against
the state, an offence the tendency of which is to diminish the public
force.
If however it tends to weaken a man it is not any single act that
can in any sensible degree have that effect. It can only be the
habit: the act thus
will become obnoxious as evidencing the existence, in probability,
of the habit. This enervating tendency, be it what it may, if it
is to be taken as a ground for treating the / [192] practise in
question with a degree of severity which is not bestowed upon the
regular way of gratifying the venereal appetite, must be greater
in the former case than in the latter. Is it so? If the affirmative
can be shewn it must be either by arguments a priori drawn from
considerations of the nature of the human frame or from experience.
Are there any such arguments from physiology? I have never heard
of any: I can think of none.
What says history?
What says historical experience? The result of this can be measured
only upon a large scale or upon a very general survey. Among the
modern nations it is comparatively but rare. In modern Rome it is
perhaps not very uncommon; in Paris probably not quite so common;
in London still less frequent; in Edinburgh or Amsterdam you scarce
hear of it two or three times in a century. In Athens and in antient
Rome in the most flourishing periods of the history of those capitals,
regular intercourse between the sexes was scarcely much more common.
It was upon the same footing throughout Greece: everybody practised
it; nobody was ashamed of it. They might be ashamed of what they
looked upon as an excess in it, or they might be ashamed of it as
a weakness, as a propensity that had a tendency to distract men
from more worthy and important occupations, just as a man with
us might be ashamed of excess or weakness in his love for women.
In itself one may be sure they were not ashamed of it. Agesilaus,
upon somebody's taking notice of the care he took to avoid taking
any familiarities with a youth who passed for being handsome acknowledges
it, indeed, but upon what ground? Not on account of the turpitude
but the danger. Xenophon in his retreat of the ten thousand gives
an anecdote of himself in which he mentions himself as particularly
addicted to this practise without seeming to entertain the least
suspicion that any apology was necessary. In his account of Socrates's
conversation he introduces that philosopher censuring or rather
making merry with a young man for his attachment to the same practise.
But in what light does he consider it? As a weakness unbecoming
to a philosopher, not as a turpitude or a crime unbecoming to a
man. It is not because an object of the one sex more than one of
the other is improper game: but on account of the time that must
be spent and the humiliation submitted to in the pursuit.
What is remarkable is that there is scarce a striking character
in antiquity, nor one that in other respects men are in use to cite
as virtuous, of whom it does not appear by one circumstance or another,
that he was infected with this inconceivable propensity. It makes
a conspicuous figure in the very opening of Thucydides's history,
and by an odd accident
it was to the spirit of two young men kindled and supported by this
passion that Athens according to that historian stood indebted on
a trying occasion for the recovery of its liberty. The firmness
and spirit of the Theban band--the band of lovers as it was called--is
famous in history; and the principle by which the union among the
members of it was commonly supposed to be cemented is well known.
(Plutarch, in vita Pelopidae. Esp. des Loix, L. 4, ch. 8. J.B.)
Many moderns, and among others Mr. Voltaire, dispute the fact, but
that intelligent philosopher sufficiently intimates the ground of
his incredulity--if he does not believe it, it is because he likes
not to believe it. What the antients called love in such a case
was what we call Platonic, that is, was not love but friendship.
But the Greeks knew the difference between love and friendship as
well as we--they had distinct terms to signify them by: it seems
reasonable therefore to suppose that when they say love they mean
love, and that when they say friendship only they mean friendship
only. And with regard to Xenophon and his master, Socrates, and
his fellow-scholar Plato, it seems more reasonable to believe them
to have been addicted to this taste when they or any of them tell
us so in express terms than to trust to the interpretations, however
ingenious and however well-intended, of any men who write at this
time of day, when they tell us it was no such thing. Not to insist
upon Agesilaus and Xenophon, it appears by one circumstance or another
that Themistocles, Aristides, Epaminondus, Alcibiades, Alexander
and perhaps the greatest number of the heroes of Greece were infected
with this taste. Not that the historians are at the pains of informing
us so expressly, for it was not extraordinary enough to make it
worth their while, but it comes out collaterally in the course of
the transactions they have occasion to relate.
It were hardly worth while after this to take up much time in proving
the same thing with regard to the Romans, in naming distinguished
persons of consequence whom history has mentioned as partakers in
this abomination, or in bringing passages to shew that the same
depraved taste prevailed generally among the people. Not to mention
notorious profligates such as the Antonies, the Clodius's, the Pisos,
the Gabinius's of the age, Cicero, if we may believe either his
enemy Sallust or his admirer Pliny neither avoided this propensity
nor thought proper to dissemble it. That austere philosopher, afler
writing books to prove that pleasure was no good and that pain was
no evil and that virtue could make a man happy upon the rack, that
affectionate husband, in the midst of all his tenderness for his
wife Terentia, could play at blind man' sbuff with his secretary
(i.e. Marcus Tullius Tiro. Pliny, Letters, VII, 4. Ed.) for pipes
and make verses upon this notable exploit of gallantry. / [193]
With regard to the people in general it may be presumed that if
the Gods amused themselves in this way--if Apollo loved Hyacinthus,
if Hercules could be in a frenzy for the loss of Hylas, and the
father of
Gods and men could solace himself with Ganymede, it was neither
an odious nor an unfrequent thing for mortal men to do so. The Gods
we make, it has been well and often said, we make always after our
own image. In times much anterior to those of Cicero and in which
according to the common prejudice the morals of the people are supposed
to have been proportionately more pure, when certain festivals were
suppressed on account of their furnishing opportunities for debauchery,
irregularities of this kind were observed according to Livy to be
more abundant than ordinary intrigues. This circumstance would scarcely
perhaps have been thought worth mentioning, had not the idea of
excess in this, as it is apt to do on all occasions, struck the
imagination of the historian as well as of the magistrate whose
administration he is recording.
This much will probably be thought enough: if more proofs were
necessary, it were easy to collect materials enough to fill a huge,
a tedious and a very disgusting volume.
It appears then that this propensity was universally predominant
among the antient Greeks and Romans, among the military as much
as any. The antient Greeks and Romans, however, are commonly reputed
as a much stouter as well as a much braver people than the stoutest
and bravest of any of the modern nations of Europe. They appear
to have been stouter at least in a very considerable degree than
the French in whom this propensity is not very common and still
more than the Scotch in whom it is still less common, and this although
the climate even of Greece was a great deal warmer and in that respect
more enervating than that of modern Scotland.
If then this practise was in those antient warm countries attended
with any enervating effects, they were much more than counteracted
by the superiority of [illegible] in the exertions which were then
required by the military education over and above those which are
now called forth by ordinary labour. But if there be any ground
derived from history for attributing to it any such enervating effects
it is more than I can find.
Whether it enervates the patient more than the agent
Montesquieu however seems to make a distinction--he seems to suppose
these enervating effects to be exerted principally upon the person
who is the patient in such a business. This distinction does not seem
very satisfactory in any point of view. Is there any reason for supposing
it to be a fixed one? Between persons of the same age actuated by
the same incomprehensible desires would not the parts they took in
the business be convertible? Would not the patient be the agent
in his turn? If it were not so, the person on whom he supposes these
effects to be the greatest is precisely the person with regard to
whom it is most difficult to conceive
whence those consequences should result. In the one case there is
exhaustion which when carried to excess may be followed by debility:
in the other case there is no such thing.
What says history?
In regard to this point too in particular, what says history? As
the two parts that a man may take in this business are so naturally
convertible however frequently he may have taken a passive part,
it will not ordinarily appear. According to the notions of the antients
there was something degrading in the passive part which was not
in the active. It was ministring to the pleasure, for so we are
obliged to call it, of another without participation, it was making
one's self the property of another man, it was playing the woman's
part: it was therefore unmanly. (Paedicabo vos et irrumabo, Antoni
[sic] pathice et cinaede Furi. [Carm. 16] Catullus. J.B.) On the
other hand, to take the active part was to make use of another for
one's pleasure, it was making another man one's property, it was
preserving the manly, the commanding character. Accordingly, Solon
in his laws prohibits slaves from bearing an active part where the
passive is borne by a freeman. In the few instances in which we
happen to hear of a person's taking the passive part there is nothing
to favour the above-mentioned hypothesis. T he beautiful Alcibiades,
who in his youth, says Cornelius Nepos, after the manner of the
Greeks, was beloved by many, was not remarkable either for weakness
or for cowardice: at least, [blank] did not find it so. The Clodius
whom Cicero scoffs at for his servile obsequiousness to the appetite
of Curio was one of the most daring and turbulent spirits in all
Rome. Julius Caesar was looked upon as a man of tolerable courage
in his day, notwithstanding the complaisance he showed in his youth
to the King of Bithynia, Nicomedes. Aristotle, the inquisitive and
observing Aristotle, whose physiological disquisitions are looked
upon as some of the best of his works--Aristotle, who if there had
been anything in this notion had every opportunity and inducement
to notice and confirm it--gives no intimation of any such thing.
On the contrary he sits down very soberly to distribute the male
half of the species under two classes: one class having a natural
propensity, he says, to bear a passive part in such a business,
as the other have to take an active part. (Probl. Sect. 4 art. 27:
The former of these propensities he attributes to a peculiarity
of organization, analogous to that of women. The whole passage is
abundantly obscure and shows in how imperfect a state of anatomical
knowledge was his time. J.B.) This observation it must be confessed
is not much more satisfactory than that other of the same philosopher
when he speaks of two sorts of men--the one born to be masters,
the other to be slaves. If however there had appeared any reason
for supposing this practise, either with regard to the passive or
the active part of it, to have
had any remarkable effects in the way of debilitation upon those
who were addicted to it, he would have hardly said so much / [194]
upon the subject without taking notice of that circumstance.
Whether it hurts population?
A notion more obvious, but perhaps not much better founded than
the former is that of its being prejudicial to population. Mr. Voltaire
appears inclined in one part of his works to give some countenance
to this opinion. He speaks of it as a vice which would be destructive
to the human race if it were general. "How did it come about that
a vice which would destroy mankind if it were general, that an infamous
outrage against nature...?" (Questions sur l'Encyclop. "Amour Socratique."
J.B.)
A little further on, speaking of Sextus Empiricus who would have
us believe that this practise was ''recommended'' in Persia by the
laws, he insists that the effect of such a law would be to annihilate
the human race if it were literally observed. "No", says he, "it
is not in human nature to make a law that contradicts and outrages
nature, a law that would annihilate mankind if it were observed
to the letter." This consequence however is far enough from being
a necessary one. For a law of the purport he represents to be observed,
it is sufficient that this unprolific kind of venery be practised;
it is not necessary that it should be practised to the exclusion
of that which is prolific. Now that there should ever be wanting
such a measure of the regular and ordinary inclination of desire
for the proper object I as is necessary for keeping up the numbers
of mankind upon their present footing is a notion that stands warranted
by nothing that I can find in history. To consider the matter a
priori [?], if we consult Mr. Hume and Dr. Smith, we shall find
that it is not the strength of the inclination of the one sex for
the other that is the measure of the numbers of mankind, but the
quantity of subsistence which they can find or raise upon a given
spot. With regard to the mere object of population, if we consider
the time of gestation in the female sex we shall find that much
less than a hundredth part of the activity a man is capable of exerting
in this way is sufficient to produce all the effect that can be
produced by ever so much more. Population therefore cannot suffer
till the inclination of the male sex for the female be considerably
less than a hundredth part as strong as for their own. Is there
the least probability that [this] should ever be the case? I must
confess I see not any thing that should lead us to suppose it. Before
this can happen the nature of the human composition must receive
a total change and that propensity which is commonly regarded as
the only one of the two that is natural must have become altogether
an unnatural one.
I have already observed that I can find nothing in history to countenance
the notion I am examining. On the contrary the country in which
the prevalence of this practise I is most conspicuous happens to
have
been remarkable for its populousness. The bent of popular prejudice
has been to exaggerate this populousness: but after all deductions
[are] made, still it will appear to have been remarkable. It was
such as, notwithstanding the drain of continual wars in a country
parcelled out into paltry states as to be all of it frontier, gave
occasion to the continued necessity of emigration.
This reason however well grounded soever it were in itself could
not with any degree of consistency be urged in a country where celibacy
was permitted, much less where it was encouraged. The proposition
which (as will be shewn more fully by and by) is not at all true
with respect to paederasty, I mean that were it to prevail universally
it would put an end to the human race, is most evidently and strictly
true with regard to celibacy. If then merely out of regard to population
it were right that paederasts should be burnt alive monks ought
to be roasted alive by a slow fire. If a paederast, according to
the monkish canonist Bermondus, destroys the whole human race Bermondus
destroyed it I don't know how many thousand times over. The crime
of Bermondus is I don't know how many times worse than paederasty.
That there should be the least colour for supposing of this practise
that in any situation of things whatever it could have the least
possible tendency to favour population is what nobody I suppose
would easily have suspected. Since, however, we are embarked on
this discussion, it is fit that everything that can contribute to
our forming a right judgment on the question should be mentioned.
Women who submit to promiscuous embraces are almost universally
unprolific. In all great towns a great multitude of women will always
be in this case. In Paris, for instance, the number of these women
has been computed to amount to at least 10,000. These women, were
no more than a certain quantity of prolific vigour to be applied
to them, might all of them stand in as good a way of being prolific
as other women: they would have indeed rather a better chance since
the women who came to be reduced to the necessity of embracing this
profession are always those who by their beauty are more apt than
an equal number of women taken at random to engage the attention
of the other sex. If then all the vigour that is over and above
this quantity were to be diverted into another channel, it is evident
that in the case above supposed the state would be a gainer to the
amount of all the population that could be expected from 40,000
women, and in proportion as any woman was less prolific by the diverting
of any part of this superfluous / [195] vigour, in the same proportion
would population be promoted.
No one I hope will take occasion to suppose that from any thing
here said I mean to infer the propriety of affording any encouragement
to this miserable taste for the sake of population. Such an inference
would be as ill founded as it would be cruel. (I leave anyone to
imagine what such a writer as Swift, for instance, might make upon
this theme, "A
project for promoting population by the encouragement of paederasty."
J.B.) The truth is, the sovereign, if he will but conduct himself
with tolerable attention with respect to the happiness of his subjects
need never be in any pain about the number of them. He has no need
to be ever at the expense of any efforts levelled in a direct line
at the purpose of increasing it. Nature will do her own work fast
enough without his assistance if he will but refrain from giving
her disturbance. Such infamous expedients would be improper as any
coercive ones are unnecessary. Even monks in the countries that
are most infested with them are not near so pernicious by the deductions
they make from the sum of population, as by the miseries which they
produce and suffer, and by the prejudices of all kinds of which
they are the perpetrators and the dupes.
Whether it robs women
A more serious imputation for punishing this practise [is] that
the effect of it is to produce in the male sex an indifference to
the female, and thereby defraud the latter of their rights. This,
as far as it holds good in point of fact, is in truth a serious
imputation. The interest of the female part of the species claim
just as much attention, and not a whit more, on the part of the
legislator, as those of the male. A complaint of this sort, it is
true, would not come with a very good grace from a modest woman;
but should the women be estopped from making complaint in such a
case it is the business of the men to make it for them. This then
as far as it holds good in point of fact is in truth a very serious
imputation: how far it does it will be proper to enquire.
In the first place the female sex is always able and commonly disposed
to receive a greater quantity of venereal tribute than the male
sex is able to bestow. If then the state of manners be such in any
country as left the exertion of this faculty entirely unrestrained,
it is evident that (except in particular cases when no object of
the female sex happened to be within reach) any effort of this kind
that was exerted by a male upon a male would be so much lost to
the community of females. Upon this footing the business of venereal
enjoyment seems actually to stand in some few parts of the world,
for instance at Otaheite. It seems therefore that at Otaheite
paederasty could hardly have footing, but the female part of that
community must in proportion be defrauded of their rights. If then
paederasty were to be justified in Otaheite it could only be upon
this absurd and improbable supposition-that the male sex were gainers
by such a perversion to a greater amount than the female sex were
losers.
But in all European countries and such others on which we bestow
the title of civilized, the case is widely different. In these countries
this propensity, which in the male sex is under a considerable degree
of restraint, is under an incomparably greater restraint in the
female. While each is alike prohibited from partaking of these enjoyments
but on the
terms of marriage by the fluctuating and inefficacious influence
of religion, the censure of the world denies it [to] the female
part of the species under the severest penalties while the male
sex is left free. (In speaking on this occasion of the precepts
of religion I consider not what they are in themselves but what
they may happen to be in the opinion and discourse [?] of those
whose office it is to interpret them. J.B.) No sooner is a woman
known to have infringed this prohibition than either she is secluded
from all means of repeating the offence, or upon her escaping from
that vigilance she throws herself into that degraded class whom
the want of company of their own sex render unhappy, and the abundance
of it on the part of the male sex unprolific. This being the case,
it appears the contribution which the male part of the species
are willing as well as able to bestow is beyond all comparison greater
than what the female part are permitted to receive. If a woman has
a husband she is permitted to receive it only from her husband:
if she has no husband she is not permitted to receive it from any
man without being degraded into the class of prostitutes. When she
is in that unhappy class she has not indeed less than she would
wish, but what is often as bad to her--she has more.
It appears then that if the female sex are losers by the prevalence
of this practise it can only be on this supposition--that the force
with which it tends to divert men from entering into connection
with the other sex is greater than the force with which the censure
of the world tends to prevent those connections by its operation
on the women. / [196]
In countries where, as in Otaheite, no restraint is laid on the
gratification of the amorous appetite, whatever part of the activity
of that appetite in the male sex were exercised upon the same sex
would be so much loss in point of enjoyment to the female. But in
countries where it is kept under restraint, as in Europe, for example,
this is not by any means the case. As long as things are upon that
footing there are many cases in which the women can be no sufferers
for the want of sollicitation on the part of the men. If the institution
of the marriage contract be a beneficial one, and if it be expedient
that the observance of it should be maintained inviolate, we must
in the first place deduct from the number of the women who would
be sufferers by the prevalence of this taste all married women whose
husbands were not infected with it. In the next place, upon the
supposition that a state of prostitution is not a happier state
than a state of virginity, we must deduct all those women who by
means of this prevalence would have escaped being debauched. The
women who would be sufferers by it ab initio are those only who,
were it not for the prevalence of it, would have got husbands. (I
say ab initio for when a woman has been once reduced to take up
the trade of prostitution, she also would be of the number of those
who are sufferers by the prevalence of this taste, in case the effect
of it were to deprive her of any quantity of this I commerce beyond
that which she would rather be
without. It is not in this business as in most other businesses,
where the quantity of the object in demand is in proportion to the
demand. The occupations with respect to which that rule holds good
are those only which are engaged in through character, reflection,
and upon choice. But in this profession scarce any woman engages
for the[se] purposes. The motive that induces a woman to engage
in it is not any such circumstance as the consideration of the probability
of getting custom. She has no intention of engaging in it when she
takes the step that eventually proves a means of her engaging in
it. The immediate cause of her engaging in it is the accident of
a discovery which deprives her of every other source of livelihood.
Upon the supposition then that a given number have been debauched
there would be the same number ready to comply with sollicitation
whenever so little was offered as whenever so much was offered.
It is a conceivable case therefore that upon the increased prevalence
of this taste there might be the same numbers of women debauched
as at present, and yet all the prostitutes in the place might be
starving for want of customers. J.B.)
The question then is reduced to this. What are the number of women
who by the prevalence of this taste would, it is probable, be prevented
from getting husbands? These and these only are they who would be
sufferers by it. Upon the following considerations it does not seem
likely that the prejudice sustained by the sex in this way could
ever rise to any considerable amount. Were the prevalence of this
taste to rise to ever so great a height the most considerable part
of the motives to marriage would remain entire. In the first place,
the desire of having children, in the next place the desire of forming
alliances between families, thirdly the convenience of having a
domestic companion whose company will continue to be I agreeable
throughout life, fourthly the convenience of gratifying the appetite
in question at any time when the want occurs and without the expense
and trouble of concealing it or the danger of a discovery.
Were a man's taste even so far corrupted as to make him prefer
the embraces of a person of his own sex to those of a female, a
connection of that preposterous kind would therefore be far enough
from answering to him the purposes of a marriage. A connection with
a woman may by accident be followed with disgust, but a connection
of the other kind, a man must know, will for certain come in time
to be followed by disgust. All the documents we have from the antients
relative to this matter, and we have a great abundance, agree in
this, that it is only for a very few years of his life that a male
continues an object of desire even to those in whom the infection
of this taste is at the strongest. The very name it went by among
the Greeks may stand instead of all other proofs, of which the works
of Lucian and Martial alone will furnish any abundance that can
be required. Among the Greeks it was called Paederastia, the love
of boys,
not Andrerastia, the love of men. Among the Romans the act was called
Paedicare because the object of it was a boy. There was a particular
name for those who had past the short period beyond which no man
hoped to be an object of desire to his own sex. They were called
exoleti. No male therefore who was passed this short period of life
could expect to find in this way any reciprocity of affection; he
must be as odious to the boy from the beginning as in a short time
the boy would be to him. The objects of this kind of sensuality
would therefore come only in the place of common prostitutes; they
could never even to a person of this depraved taste answer the
purposes of a virtuous woman.
What says history?
Upon this footing stands the question when considered a priori:
the evidence of facts seems to be still more conclusive on the same
side. There seems no reason to doubt, as I have already observed
but that population went on altogether as fast and that the men
were altogether as well inclined to marriage among the GreciansOA
in whom this vitious propensity was most prevalent as in any modern
people in whom it is least prevalent. In Rome, indeed, about the
time of the extinction of liberty we find great complaints of the
decline of population: but the state of it does not appear to have
been at all dependent on or at all influenced by the measures that
were taken from time to time to restrain the love of boys: it was
with the Romans, as with us, what kept a man from marriage was not
the preferring boys to women but the preferring the convenience
of a transient connection to the expense and hazard of a lasting
one. (See Pilati, Traite des Loix Civiles, ch. du marriage. J.B.)
How is it at Otaheite?
To judge how far the regular intercourse between the sexes is probably
affected by this contraband intercourse in countries where, as in
Europe, the gratification of the venereal appetite is kept upon
a footing of restraint, it may help us a good deal if we observe
in what degree it is affected by the latter in countries where the
gratification of that appetite is under no restraint. If in those
countries paederasty prevailed to so considerable a degree as to
occasion a visible diminution of the regard that was shewn to women,
this phaenomenon, unless it / [197] could be accounted for from
other causes, would afford a strong argument to prove that prevalence
of it might have the effect of diminishing the regard that might
otherwise be paid to them in other countries and that the prevalence
of it in those countries was owing not to the comparative difficulty
of getting women but to a comparative indifference, such as might
turn to the prejudice of the women in any state of things: and in
short that what was transferred to boys was so much clear loss to
women. But the fact is that in Otaheite it does not appear that
this propensity is at all prevalent.
If it were more frequent than the regular connection in what
sense could it be termed unnatural?
The nature of the question admits of great latitude of opinion:
for my own part I must confess I can not bring myself to entertain
so high a notion of the alluringness of this preposterous propensity
as some men appear to entertain. I can not suppose it to [be] possible
it should ever get to such a heighth as that the interests of the
female part of the species should be materially affected by it:
or that it could ever happen that were they to contend upon equal
ground the eccentric and unnatural propensity should ever get the
better of the regular and natural one. Could we for a moment suppose
this to be the case, I would wish it to be considered what meaning
a man would have to annex to the expression, when he bestows on
the propensity under consideration the epithet of unnatural. If
contrary to all appearance the case really were that if all men
were left perfectly free to choose, as many men would make choice
of their own sex as of the opposite one, I see not what reason there
would be for applying the word natural to the one rather than to
the other. All the difference would be that the one was both natural
and necessary whereas the other was natural but not necessary. If
the mere circumstance of its not being necessary were sufficient
to warrant the terming it unnatural it might as well be said that
the taste a man has for music is unnatural.
My wonder is how any man who is at all acquainted with the most
amiable part of the species should ever entertain any serious apprehensions
of their yielding the ascendant to such unworthy rivals.
Among the antients--whether it excluded not the regular taste
A circumstance that contributes considerably to the alarms entertained
by some people on this score is the common prejudice which supposes
that the one propensity is exclusive of the other. This notion is
for the most part founded on prejudice as may be seen in the works
of a multitude of antient authors in which we continually see the
same person at one time stepping aside in pursuit of this eccentric
kind of pleasure but at other times diverting his inclination to
the proper object. Horace, in speaking of the means of satisfying
the venereal appetite, proposes to himself as a matter of indifference
a prostitute of either sex: and the same poet, who forgetting himself
now and then says a little here and there about boys, says a great
deal everywhere about women. The same observation will hold good
with respect to every other personage of
antiquity who either by his own account or that of another is represented
to us as being infected with this taste. It is so in all the poets
who in any of their works have occasion to say anything about themselves.
Some few appear to have had no appetite for boys, as is the case
for instance with Ovid, who takes express notice of it and gives
a reason for it. But it is a neverfailing rule wherever you see
any thing about boys, you see a great deal more about women. Virgil
has one Alexis, but he has Galateas [blank] in abundance. Let us
be unjust to no man: not even to a paederast. In all antiquity there
is not a single instance of an author nor scarce an explicit account
of any other man who was addicted exclusively to this taste. Even
in modern times the real womenhaters are to be found not so much
among paederasts, as among monks and catholic priests, such of them,
be they more or fewer, who think and act in consistency with their
profession.
Reason why it might he expected so to do
I say even in modern times; for there is one circumstance which
should make this taste where it does prevail much more likely to
be exclusive at present than it was formerly. I mean the severity
with which it is now treated by the laws and the contempt and abhorrence
with which it is regarded by the generality of the people. If
we may so call it, the persecution they meet with from all quarters,
whether deservedly or not, has the effect in this instance which
persecution has and must have more or less in all instances, the
effect of rendering those persons who are the objects of it more
attached than they would otherwise be to the practise it proscribes.
It renders them the more attached to one another, sympathy of itself
having a powerful tendency, independent of all other motives, to
attach a man to his own companions in misfortune. This sympathy
has at the same time a powerful tendency to beget a proportionable
antipathy even towards all such persons as appear to be involuntary,
much more to such as appear to be the voluntary, authors of such
misfortune. When a man is made to suffer it is enough on all other
occasions to beget in him a prejudice against those by whose means
or even for whose sake he is made to suffer. When the hand of every
man is against a person, his hand, or his heart at least, will naturally
be against every man. It would therefore be rather singular if under
the present system of manners these outcasts of society should be
altogether so well disposed towards women as in antient times when
they were left unmolested. The Helotes had no great regard, as we
may suppose, for the Lacedaemonians; Negroes, we may suppose, have
not now any violent affection for Negro-drivers; the Russian boors
for the Boyards that are their masters; native Peruvians / [198a
is blank] / [I98b follows] for Spaniards; Hallashores [?] for Bramins,
Bice and Chehterees; thieves for justices and hangmen; nor insolvent
debtors for bum-bailiffs. It would not be wonderful if a
miserable paederast of modern times should look upon every woman
as a merciless creditor at whose suit he is in continual danger
of being consigned not to a prison only but either to the gallows
or to the flames. The reason which there may be in point of utility
or on any other account for treating these people with such severity
makes no difference in the sentiments which such severity is calculated
to inspire; for whatever reason there may be, they, one may be certain,
do not see it. Spite of such powerful incentives it does not appear
that the effect of this propensity is in general even under the
present system to inspire in those who are infected with it an aversion
or even an indifference to the other sex: a proof how powerful the
force of nature is and how little reason the sex whose dominion
is supported by the influence of pleasure have for being apprehensive
of any permanent alienation in the affections of those fugitive
vassals, were no harsh measure taken to drive them into rebellion.
The notion that it does has sometimes operated by accident
in favor of persons under prosecution
The popular notion that all paederasts are in proportion women
haters is the ground of a medium of exculpation which we see commonly
adopted in the few instances that occur in England of a man's being
prosecuted for this offence. It is common in any such case for those
who are concerned in behalf of the defendant to produce as many
presumptions as they can collect of his propensity to women. Such
evidence may have some weight with those who are under the influence
of this prejudice, although the many instances in which it has been
opposed by the clearest positive evidence of the fact are sufficient
of themselves to shew the weakness of it. It may be of use to mention
this to the end that, if it should be thought expedient to punish
this offence, those who are to judge it may be put on their guard
against a medium of exculpation which appears to be fallacious.
As it excludes not the regular taste, it is liable to disturb
marriage
This circumstance, however, which in one set of circumstances tends
to the exculpation of the practise in question, in another situation
of things, and, in another point of view, operates to the commination
of it. I have already given the considerations which seem to render
it probable that this propensity does not in any considerable degree
stand in the way of marriage: on that occasion we took it for granted
for the time that if it did not hinder a man from engaging in matrimonial
connection, it was of no prejudice to the I other sex at all. When
a man was once lodged within the pale of matrimony, we took no notice
of any danger there might be of his deviating afterwards into such
extravagances. This how
ever is an event which, from the two propensities not appearing
to be exclusive of one another, we have reason a priori to suppose
not to be in itself absolutely improbable, and which from occasional
observation, but particularly from antient history, we find not
to be uncommon. The wretches who are prosecuted for this offence
often turn out to be married men. The poet Martial, we find, has
a wife with whom he is every now and then jarring on the score of
the complaints she makes of his being unfaithful to her in this
way. It is to be considered however that it is [not] to the amount
of the whole sum of the infidelities the husband is guilty of in
this way that a wife is a sufferer by this propensity but only to
the surplus, whatever it may be, over and above what, were it not
for this propensity, the same man would be guilty of in the natural
way. A woman would not be a sufferer by this propensity any further
than as it betrays her husband into an act of infidelity to which
he would not have been betrayed by the allurements of any female
rival. Supposing the degree of infidelity in both cases to be equal,
there seems reason to think that a woman would not be so much hurt
by an infidelity of this sort as by an infidelity into [199] which
her husband had been betrayed by a person of her own sex. An attachment
of the former kind could not be lasting, that is confined for any
length of time to the same individual; of the other she might not
be satisfied but that it might be lasting. It is for the same reason
that a woman's affection would not be so much wounded, however her
pride might, by her husband's intriguing with a servant wench or
other woman of a condition very much her inferior as by his intriguing
with a woman of a condition near about the level of her own. It
is indeed a general observation that in all cases of rivalry the
jealousy is the greater the nearer in all respects the condition
of the rival is to your own. It is on the same principle that in
matters of religion Jansenists and Molinists are often apt to be
more averse to one another than either are to Protestants; Methodists
and regular Church of England men than either are to Presbyterians;
Protestants and Catholics than either are to Jews; and in general
Schismatics in any church than either are to Heretics or to persons
of a different religion.
This at least would seem likely to have been the case in times
in which the propensity was not held in the abhorrence in which
it is held at present, and where consequently the wife would [not]
have as at present to add to her other motives of concern the infamy
with which under the present system it is one effect of such behavior
to cast upon any man who is guilty of it.
Causes of this taste
I have already intimated how little reason there seems to be to
apprehend that the preference of the improper to the proper object
should ever be constant or general. A very extraordinary circumstance
it undoubtedly is that it should ever have arrived at the heighth
at which we find it to have arrived. The circumstance is already
an extraordinary one as it is: it would be much more so if it were
common under equal importunities for the improper object to meet
with a decided preference. But such an incident there is every reason,
as I have already observ[ed], for not looking upon as likely to
become otherwise than rare. Its prevalence, wherever it prevails
to a considerable degree, seems always to be owing to some circumstance
relative to the education of youth. It is the constraint in which
the venereal appetite is kept under the system of manners established
in all civilized nations that seems to be the principal
cause of its deviating every now and then into these improper channels.
When the desire is importunate and no proper object is at hand it
will sometimes unavoidably seek relief in an improper way. In the
antient as well as the modern plans of education young persons of
the male sex are kept as much as possible together: they are kept
as much at a distance as possible from the female. They are in a
way to use all sorts of familiarities with each other: they are
I kept as much as possible from using any sorts of familiarities
with females. Among the antients they used to be brought together
in circumstances favourable to the giving birth to such desires
by the custom of exercising themselves naked. (See Esp. des Loix,
L. 8, ch. ii. Plut. Morals. J.B.) On the present plan they are often
forced together under circumstances still more favourable to it
by the custom of lying naked together in feather beds, implements
of indulgence and incentives to the venereal appetite with which
the antients were unacquainted. When a propensity of this sort is
once acquired it is easier to conceive how it should continue than
how it should be at first acquired. It is no great wonder if the
sensation be regarded as if it were naturally connected with the
object, whatever it be, by means of which it came to be first experienced.
That this practise is the result not of indifference to the proper
object but of the difficulty of coming at the proper object, the
offspring not of wantonness but of necessity, the consequence I
of the want of opportunity with the proper object, and the abundance
of opportunity with such as are improper is a notion that seems
warranted by the joint opinions of Montesquieu and Voltaire. ''The
crime against nature,'' says the former, ''will never make any great
progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular
custom, as among the Greeks, where the youths of that country performed
all their exercises naked; as amongst us, where domestic education
is disused; as amongst the Asiatics, where particular persons have
a great number of women whom they despise, while others can have
none at all." (Esp. des Loix, L. 12, ch. 6. J.B.)
"When the young males of our species," says Voltaire, "brought
up together, feel the force which nature begins to. unfold in them,
and fail to find the natural object of their instinct, they fall
back on what resembles it. Often, for two or three years, a young
man resembles a beautiful girl, with the freshness of his complexion,
the brilliance of his coloring, and the sweetness of his eyes; if
he is loved, it's because nature makes a mistake; homage is paid
to the fair sex by attachment to one who owns its beauties, and
when the years have made this resemblance disappear, the mistake
ends.
And this is the way:
Pluck the brief Spring, the first flowers of youth.
[Ovid, Metamorphoses, X, 84-85. Ed]
"It is well known that this mistake of nature is much more common
in mild climates than in the icy north, because the blood is more
inflamed there and opportunity more also, what seems only a weakness
in young Alcibiades is a disgusting abomination in a Dutch sailor
or a Muscovite subtler." [Philosophical Dictionary. Ed.]
"Pederasty," says Beccaria, "so severely punished by law and so
freely subjected to tortures which triumph over innocence, is based
less on man's needs when he lives in freedom and on his own, than
on his passions when he lives with others in slavery. It draws its
strength, not so much from a surfeit of every other pleasure, as
from that education which begins by making men useless to themselves
in order to make them useful to others. In those institutions packed
with hot-blooded ( youth natural vigour, as it develops, is faced
with insurmountable obstacles to every other kind of relationship
and wears itself out in an activity useless to humanity, and which
brings on premature old age." [Of Crimes and Punishments, ch. 36.
Ed.]
Whether, if it robbed women, it ought at all events to be punished?
The result of the whole is that there appears not any great reason
to conclude that, by the utmost increase of which this vice is susceptible,
the female part of the species could be sufferers to any very material
amount. If however there was any danger of their being sufferers
to any amount at all this would of itself be ample reason for wishing
to restrain the practise. It would not however follow absolutely
that it were right to make use of punishment for that purpose, much
less that it were right to employ any of those very severe punishments
which are commonly in use. It will not be right to employ any punishment,
1. if the mischief resulting from the punishment be equal or superior
to the mischief of the offence, nor 2. if there be any means of
compassing the same end without the expense of punishment. Punishment,
says M. Beccaria, is never just so long as any means remain untried
by which the end of punishment may be accomplished at a cheaper
rate. / [200c and 200d are blank] / [201]
Inducements for punishing it not justfied on the ground of
mischievousness
When the punishment [is] so severe, while the mischief of the offence
is so remote and even so problematical, one cannot but suspect that
the inducements which govern are not the same with those which are
avowed. When the idea of the mischievousness of an offence is the
ground of punishing it, those of which the mischief is most immediate
and obvious are punished first: afterwards little by little the
legislator becomes sensible of the necessity of punishing those
of which the mis-
chief is less and less obvious. But in England this offence was
punished with death before ever the malicious destruction or fraudulent
obtainment or embezzlement of property was punished at all, unless
the obligation of making pecuniary amends is to be called a punishment;
before even the mutilation of' or the perpetual disablement of a
man was made punishable otherwise than by simple imprisonment and
fine. (It was the custom to punish it with death so early as the
reign of' Ed. 1st. See Miroir des Justices, ch. 4, 14. Fleta. J.B.)
But on the ground of antipathy
In this case, in short, as in so many other cases the disposition
to punish seems to have had no other ground than the antipathy with
which persons who had punishment at their disposal regarded the
offender. The circumstances from which this antipathy may have
taken its rise may be worth enquiring to. 1. One is the physical
antipathy to the offence. This circumstance indeed, were we to think
and act consistently, would of itself' be nothing to the purpose.
The act is to the highest degree odious and disgusting, that is,
not to the man who does it, for he does it only because it gives
him pleasure, but to one who thinks [?] of it. Be it so, but what
is that to him? He has the same reason for doing it that I have
for avoiding it. A man loves carrion--this is very extraordinary--much
good may it do him. But what is this to me so long as I can indulge
myself with fresh meat? But such reasoning, however just, few persons
have calmness to attend to. This propensity is much stronger than
it is to be wished it were to confound physical impurity with moral.
(I pass without examination from the literal use of the word impunity
[to] the figurative. J.B.) From a man's possessing a thorough aversion
to a practice himself', the transition is but too natural to his
wishing to see all others punished who give into it. Any pretence,
however slight, which promises to warrant him in giving way to this
intolerant propensity is eagerly embraced. Look the world over,
we shall find that differences in point of taste and opinion are
grounds of animosity as frequent and as violent as any opposition
in point of interest. To disagree with our taste [and] to oppose
our opinions is to wound our sympathetic feelings and to affront
our pride. James the 1st of England, a man [more] remarkable for
weakness than for cruelty, conceived a violent antipathy against
certain persons who were called Anabaptists on account of their
differing from him in regard to certain speculative points of religion.
As the circumstances of the times were favourable to [the] gratification
of antipathy arising from such causes, he found means to give himself
the satisfaction of committing one of them to the flames. The same
king happened to have, an antipathy to the use of tobacco. But as
the circumstances of the times did not afford the same pretences
nor the same facility for burning tobacco-
smokers as for burning Anabaptists, he was forced to content himself
with writing a flaming book against it. The same king, if he be
the author of that first article of the works which bear his name,
and which indeed were owned by him, reckons this practise among
the few offences which no Sovereign ever ought to pardon. This must
needs seem rather extraordinary to those who have a notion that
a pardon in this case is what he himself, had he been a subject,
might have stood in need of.
Philosophical pride
This transition from the idea of physical to that of moral antipathy
is the more ready when the idea of pleasure, especially of intense
pleasure, is connected with that of the act by which the antipathy
is excited. Philosophical pride, to say nothing at present of superstition,
has hitherto employed itself with effect in setting people a-quarrelling
with whatever is pleasurable even to themselves, and envy will always
be disposing them to quarrel with what appears to be pleasurable
to others. In the notions of a certain class of moralists we ought,
not for any reason they are disposed to give for it, but merely
because we ought, to set ourselves against every thing that recommends
itself to us under the form of pleasure. Objects, it is true, the
nature of which it is to afford us the highest pleasures we are
susceptible of are apt in certain circumstances to occasion us
still greater pains. But that is not the grievance: for if it were,
the censure which is bestowed on the use of any such object would
be proportioned to the probability that could be shewn in each case
of its producing such greater pains. But that is not the case: it
is not the pain that angers them but the pleasure.
Religion
We need not consider at any length [the length] to which the rigour
of such philosophy may be carried when reinforced by notions of
religion. Such as we are ourselves, such and in many respects worse
it is common for us to make God to be: for fear blackens every object
that it looks upon. It is almost as common for men to conceive of
God as a being of worse than human malevolence in their hearts,
as to stile [?] him a being of infinite benevolence with their lips.
This act is one amongst others which some men and luckily not we
ourselves have a strong propensity to commit. In some persons it
produces it seems, for there is no disputing a pleasure: there needs
no more to prove that it is God's pleasure they should abstain from
it. For it is God's pleasure that in the present life we should
give up all manner of pleasure, whether it stands in the way of
another's happiness or not, which is the sure sign and earnest of
the pleasure he will take in bestowing on us all imaginable happiness
hereafter
; that is, in a life of the futurity of which he has given us no
other proofs than these. / [202]
This is so true that, according to the notions of these moralists
and these religionists, that is, of the bulk of moralists and religionists
who write, pleasures that are allowed of, are never allowed of for
their own sake but for the sake of something else which though termed
an advantage or a good presents not to any one so obviously and
to them perhaps not at all, the idea of pleasure. When the advantage
ceases the pleasure is condemned. Eating and drinking by good luck
are necessary for the preservation of the individual: therefore
eating and drinking are tolerated, and so is the pleasure that attends
the course of these functions in so far as it is necessary to that
end; but if you eat or if you drink otherwise than or beyond what
is thus necessary, if you eat or drink for the sake of pleasure,
says the philosopher, "It is shameful"; says the religionist, "It
is sinful." The gratification of the venereal appetite is also by
good luck necessary to the preservation of the species: therefore
it is tolerated in as far as it is necessary to that end, not otherwise.
Accordingly it has been a question seriously debated whether a man
ought to permit himself the partaking of this enjoyment with his
wife when from age or any other circumstance there is no hope of
children: and it has often been decided in the negative. For the
same reason or some other which is not apparent, for a man to enjoy
his wife at unseasonable times in certain systems of laws has been
made a capital offence. Under the above restriction however it
has been tolerated. It has been tolerated, but as the pleasure appeared
great, with great reluctance and at any rate not encouraged; it
has been permitted not as a good but as a lesser evil. It has indeed
been discouraged and great rewards offered in a future life for
those who will forego it in the present.
It may be asked indeed, if pleasure is not a good, what is life
good for, and what is the purpose of preserving it? But the most
obvious and immediate consequences of a proposition may become invisible
when a screen has been set before by the prejudices of false philosophy
or the terrors of a false religion.
Hatred of pleasure
Nero I think it was, or some other of the Roman tyrants, who is
said to have offered a reward to any one who should discover a new
pleasure. That is, in fact, no more than what is done by those who
offer rewards for new poems, for new mechanical contrivances, for
improvements in agriculture and in the arts; which are all but so
many means of producing new pleasures, or what comes to the same
thing, of producing a greater quantity of the old ones. The object
however that in these cases is advertised for is not advertised
for under the name of pleasure, so that the ears of these moralists
are not offended with that detested sound. In
the case abovementioned, from the character of the person who offered
the reward it is natural enough to presume that the sort of pleasure
he had in view in offering it was sensual and probably venereal,
in which way no new discoveries would be endured. It is an observation
of Helvetius and, I believe, of Mr. Voltaire's, that if a person
were born with a particular source of enjoyment, in addition to
the 5 or 6 senses we have at present, he would be hunted out of
the world as a monster not fit to live. Accordingly nothing is more
frequent than for those who could bear with tolerable composure
the acts of tyranny by which all Rome was filled with terror and
desolation to lose all patience when they come to the account of
those miserable devices of lasciviousness which had no other effect
than that of giving surfeit and disgust to the contemptible inventor.
How far the antipathy is a just ground
Meanwhile the antipathy, whatever it may arise from, produces in
persons how many soever they be in whom it manifests itself, a particular
kind of pain as often as the object by which the antipathy is excited
presents itself to their thoughts. This pain, whenever it appears,
is unquestionably to be placed to the account of the mischief of
the offence, and this is one reason for the punishing of it. More
than this--upon the view of any pain which these obnoxious persons
are made to suffer, a pleasure results to those by whom the antipathy
is entertained, and this pleasure affords an additional reason for
the punishing of it. There remain however two reasons against punishing
it. The antipathy in question (and the appetite of malevolence
that results from it) as far as it is not warranted by the essential
mischieviousness of the offence is grounded only in prejudice. It
may therefore be assuaged and reduced to such a measure as to be
no longer painful only in bringing to view the considerations which
shew it to be ill-grounded. The case is that of the accidental existence
of an antipathy which [would have] no foundation [if] the principle
of utility were to be admitted as a sufficient reason for gratifying
it by the punishment of the object; in a word, if the propensity
to punish were admitted in this or any case as a sufficient ground
for punishing, one should never know where to stop. Upon monarchical
principles, the Sovereign would be in the right to punish any man
he did not like; upon popular principles, every man, or at least
the majority of each community, would be in the right to punish
every man upon no better reason.
If it were, so would heresy
If this were admitted we should be forced to admit the propriety
of applying punishment, and that to any amount, to any offence for
instance which the government should find a pleasure in comprising
under the name of heresy. I see not, I must confess, how a Protestant,
or any person who should be for looking upon this ground as a sufficient
ground for / [203] burning paederasts, could with consistency condemn
the Spaniards for burning Moors or the Portuguese for burning Jews:
for no paederast can be more odious to a person of unpolluted taste
than a Moor is to a Spaniard or a Jew to an orthodox Portuguese.
The antipathy itself a punishment
Besides this, the antipathy in question, so long as it subsists,
draws with it in course, and without having recourse to the political
magistrate, a very galling punishment, and this punishment is the
heavier the greater the number of persons is by whom the antipathy
is entertained and the more intense it is in each person: it increases
therefore in proportion to the demand there is for punishment on
this ground. Although the punishing it by the hands of the magistrate
were not productive of the ill consequences just stated, it would
seem hard to punish it in this way upon the ground of that circumstance
which necessarily occasions it to be punished another way; its being
already punished beyond what is enough is but an indifferent reason
to give for punishing it more.
Punishment however not an incentive
Some writers have mentioned as an objection to the punishing of
practises of the obscene kind, that the punishment is a means of
putting men in mind to make experiment of the practise: the investigation
of the offence and the publicity of the punishment being the means
of conveying the practise to the notice of a multitude of persons
who otherwise would never have thought of any such thing. From the
circumstance of its being punished they learn of its being practised,
from the circumstance of its being practised they conclude that
there is a pleasure in it; from the circumstance of its being punished
so severely they conclude that the pleasure is a great one, since
it overcomes the dread of so great a punishment. That this must
often happen is not to be denied, and in so far as it does happen
and occasions the offence to be repeated it weighs against the benefit
of the punishment. This is indeed the most popular argument of any
that can be urged against the punishment of such practises; but
it does not appear to be well-grounded. It proves nothing unless
the punishment tends as strongly in the one way to spread the practise
as it does in the other to repress it. This, however, does not appear
to be the case. We should not suppose it a priori for at the same
time that it brings to view the idea of the offence it brings to
view in connection with that idea the idea not only of punishment
but of infamy;
not only of the punishment which should prevent men's committing
it in the face of the public, but of the infamy which should prevent
their discovering any inclination to commit it to the nearest and
most trusty of their friends. It does not appear to be the case
in point of experience. In former times, when it was not punished,
it prevailed to a very great degree; in modern times in the very
same countries since it has been punished it has prevailed in a
much less degree. Besides this, the mischief produced by the punishment
in this way may be lessened in a considerable degree by making the
trial and all the other proceedings private, which may be done without
any danger of abuse by means of the expedient suggested in the book
relative to procedure.
Danger of false prosecutions greater in this case than others
A very serious objection, however, to the punishment of this offence
is the opening it makes for false and malicious prosecutions. This
danger in every case weighs something against the reasons for applying
punishment, but in this case it weighs much more considerably than
perhaps in any other. Almost every other offence affords some particular
tests of guilt, the absence of' which constitutes so in any criterions
of innocence. The evidence of persons will be in some way or other
confirmed by the evidence of things: in the ordinary offences against
property the circumstance of the articles being missing or seen
in undue place, in offences against persons the marks of violence
upon the person. In these and, in short, in all other or almost
all other cases where the offence has really been committed, some
circumstances will take place relative to the appearance of things,
and will therefore be expected to be proved. In any offences which
have hatred for their motive the progress of the quarrel will afford
a number of characteristic circumstances to fix the imputation upon
the person who is guilty. In the case of rape, for t instance, where
committed on a virgin, particular characteristic appearances will
not fail to have been produced, and even where the object has been
a married woman or a person of' the same sex marks of violence
will have been produced by the resistance. But when a filthiness
of this sort is committed between two persons, both willing, no
such circumstances need have been exhibited; no proof therefore
of such circumstances will be required. Wherever, therefore, two
men are together, a third person may alledge himself' to have seen
them thus employing themselves without fear of having the truth
of his story disproved. With regard to a bare proposal of this sort
the danger is still greater: one man may charge it upon any other
man without the least danger of being detected. For a man to bring
a charge of this sort against any other man without the possibility
of its being disproved there needs no more than for them to have
been alone together for a few moments.
Used as an instrument of extortion
This mischief is often very severely felt. In England the severity
of the punishment and what is supported by it, the moral antipathy
to the offence, is frequently made use of as a means of extorting
money. It is the most terrible weapon that a robber can take in
hand; and a number of robberies that one hears of, which probably
are much fewer than the ones which one does not hear of, are committed
by this means. If a man has resolution and the incidental circumstances
are favourable, he may stand the brunt and meet his accuser in the
face of justice; but the danger to his reputation will at any rate
be considerable. Men of timid natures have often been almost ruined
in their fortunes ere they can summon up resolution to commit their
reputations to the hazard of a trial. A man's innocence can never
be his security; knowing this it must be an undaunted man to whom
it can give confidence; a well-seasoned perjurer will have finally
the advantage over him. Whether a man be thought to have actually
been guilty of this practise or only to be disposed to it, his reputation
suffers equal ruin. / [204]
After so much has been said on the abomination of paederasty, little
need be said of the other irregularities of the venereal appetite.
If it be problematical whether it be expedient upon the whole to
punish the former, it seems next to certain that there can be no
use in punishing any of the latter.
Between women
Where women contrive to procure themselves the sensation by means
of women, the ordinary course of nature is as much departed from
as when the like abomination is practised by men with men. The former
offence however is not as generally punished as the latter. It appears
to have been punished in France but the law knows nothing of it
in England. (Code penal, Tit. 35, p 238. J.B.)
Whether worse between men and women than between men
It seems to be more common for men to apply themselves to a wrong
part in women and in this case grave authors have found more enormity
than when the sex as well as the part of the object is mistaken.
Those who go after the principle of the affront, which they say
in affairs of any such sort is to God Almighty, assure us that the
former contrivance is a more insolent affront than the latter. (See
Fort. Rep. qua supra. J.B. [i.e., 187b, in "Notes." Ed.]) The affront
should be the same if from necessity or caprice a person of the
female sex should make use of a wrong part in one of the male. If
there be one idea more ridiculous than another, it is that of a
legislator who, when a man and a woman are agreed about a business
of this sort, thrusts himself in between them, examining situa-
tions, regulating times and prescribing modes and postures. The
grave physician who, as soon as he saw Governor Sancho take a fancy
to a dish, ordered it away is the model, though but an imperfect
one, of such a legislator.
Thus far his business goes on smoothly: he may hang or burn the
parties according as he fancies without difficulty. But he will
probably be a little at a loss when he comes to enquire with the
Jesuit Sanchez (De Matrimonio) how the case stands when the man
for example, having to do with a woman, begins in one part and consummates
in another; thinks of one person or of one part while he is employing
himself with another; begins with a woman and leaves her in the
lurch. Without calling in the principle of utility such questions
may be multiplied and remain undecided for evermore; consult the
principle of utility, and such questions never will be started.
Bestiality
An abomination which meets with as little quarter as any of the
preceding is that where a human creature makes use in this way of
a beast or other sensitive creature of a different species. A legislator
who should take Sanchez for his guide might here repeat the same
string of distinctions about the vas proprium and improprium, the
imaginations and the simultaneity and so forth. Accidents of this
sort will sometimes happen; for distress will force a man upon strange
expedients. But one might venture to affirm that if all the sovereigns
in Europe were to join in issuing proclamations inviting their subjects
to this exercise in the warmest terms, it would never get to such
a heighth as to be productive of the smallest degree of political
mischief. The more of these sorts of prosecutions are permitted
the more scope there is given for malice or extortion to make use
of them to effect its purpose upon the innocent, and the more public
they are the more of that mischief is incurred which consists in
shocking the imaginations of persons of delicacy with a very painful
sentiment.
Burning the animal
Some persons have been for burning the poor animal with great ceremony
under the notion of burning the remembrance of the affair. (See
Puffendorf, Bks. 2, Ch. 3, 5. 3. Bacon's Abridg. Title Sodomy. J.B.)
A more simple and as it should seem a more effectual course to take
would be not to meddle or make smoke [?] about the matter.
Masturbation
Of all irregularities of the venereal appetite, that which is the
most incontestably pernicious is one which no legislator seems ever
to have
made an attempt to punish. I mean the sort of impurity which a person
of either sex may be guilty of by themselves. This is often of the
most serious consequence to the health and lasting happiness of
those who are led to practise it. Its enervating influence is
much greater than that of any other exertion of the venereal faculty,
and that on three different accounts: 1) Any single act of this
kind is beyond comparison more enervating than any single act of
any of those other kinds. The reason of this is not clear; but the
fact is certain. Physicians are all agreed about it. 2) Persons
[are] in a way to give into this practise at an earlier age than
that in which they are in a way to give in to any of those other
practises, that is, at an age when the influence of any enervating
cause is greater. As the violence to modesty is rather less in this
case than in any of these others, a person will with less difficulty
yield to the impulse whether of nature or example. 3) In all those
other cases the propensity may be kept within bounds by the want
of opportunities; in this case there can scarce ever be any want
of opportunities.
Physicians are also agreed that this is not an infrequent cause
of indifference in each of the sexes to the other, and in the male
sex it often ends in impotence.
It is not only more mischievous to each person than any of those
other impurities, but it appears everywhere to be much more frequent.
In popular estimation however the guilt of it is looked upon as
much less than that of any of them; and yet the real mischief we
see is incomparably greater, and yet it has never been punished
by any law. Would it then be right to appoint / [205] punishment
for it? By no means; and for this plain reason, because no punishment
could ever have any effect. It can always be committed without any
danger or at least without any apparent danger of a discovery.
Domestic discipline the proper remedy against impurities
With regard to all the abuses of the venereal appetite while the
party is under age, they seem to be the proper objects of domestic
discipline; after he is come to be out of that jurisdiction, or
even while he is yet under it, these or any other indecencies committed
in the face of the public will be proper objects of the coercion
of the laws; while they are covered with the veil of secrecy the
less that is said about them and particularly by the law the better.
NOTES RELATIVE TO BENTHAM'S ESSAY ON PAEDERASTY
[The following notes were written by Bentham immediately before
the above essay, but their substance, though closely related to
the essay, was not incorporated into it except for the first three
sentences. Ed.]
[187]
Distinction between physical impurity and moral
The propensity is stronger than there is reason to wish it should
be, to confound moral impurity and turpitude with physical impurity
and turpitude; from observing the latter in any case, especially
when combined with pleasure, to impute the [former]. From a man's
being thoroughly averse to a practise himself the transition is
but too natural to his wishing to see all others punished who give
in to it. Any pretense, however slight, which promises to warrant
him in giving way to this propensity is eagerly embraced. It is
this cause which more perhaps than any other, more even than pecuniary
interest, has contributed to produce the persecutions that hath
been raised upon the ground of heresy.
Different men will have different opinions but, for my own part,
I must confess I can not bring myself to entertain so mean an opinion
of the charms of the better part of the species or of the taste
of the other as to suppose it can ever be necessary to send a man
to make love with a halter about his neck.
Antipathy no sufficient warrant
Non amo te, Sabidi & c. [Martial, I, 32, Ed.] may be quite
enough when all the question only is whether one shall see Sabidius
or not see him: but when the question is whether Sabidius shall
be buries alive or let alone the reasons which a man should give
for burning him alive may be expected to be of a cast somewhat more
substantial.
Whether it is an affront to God?
According to some there are two sorts of High Treason, High Treason
against God, the Heavenly King, and High treason against the earthly
king: and this is High Treason against God. (See a book of old English
Law entitled Miroir des Justices, Ch. 1, Sect. 4; Ch. 4, Sect. 13;
Ch. 2, Sect. 11.J.B.) According to this account of the matter it
is an offence scarce distinguishable from that which the Titans
were guilty of when they revolted against Jupiter. Judge Fortescue,
an Earl of Macclesfield, Chancellor of England, and other sages
of the English law seem to have given into this idea. (Fortescue's
Reports for the case of the King against Wiseman. J.B.). His Lordship
shews how it comes to be High Treason against the King of Heaven.
It is of the nature of a challenge of which that Sovereign is the
object--"a direct affront to the Author of Nature and insolent expression
of contempt of his wisdom, condemning the provision made by him
and defying both it and him." According to this account of the matter,
the offence should fall indifferently either within our first class,
under the title, offences against the persons of individuals (reckoning
God as an individual), or within the fourth class under the title
of High Treason. But this account of the matter however ingenious
seems hardly to be just.
Whether it hurts population--Bermondus
Bermondus, a canonist cited with approbation by the two great English
lawyers above mentioned says that in this point of view it is worse
than murder. For a murderer destroys but one man whereas a Sodomite
puts to death "every man that lives." "Apud Deum tale peccatum reputatur
gravius homicidio, eo quia unum homicida unum hominem tantum, Sodomita
autem totum genus humanum delere videtur." This, he assures us,
is God's way of taking the account. If this be the case it must
be confessed that God's arithmetic is a little different from man's
arithmetic.
The author of the article Sodomy in the law abridgement that goes
by the name of Bacon's is more moderate. "If any crime," says he,
"deserve to be punished in a more exemplary manner this does. Other
crimes are prejudicial to society, but this strikes at the being
thereof; for it is seldom known that a person who has been once
guilty of so unnatural an abuse of his generative faculties has
afterwards a proper regard for women."
God's burning Sodom--whether a sufficient warrant?
It has been observed with regard to this offence that God himself
punished it with fire; and this has been given as a reason, not
only for its being punished but for its being punished with fire.
- If God according to supposition has punished any practise, it
was either on account of the mischievousness of the practise to
society or on some other account. If the practise be of the number
of those which are prejudicial to society, it will already be
punished on that ground; there is no occasion to mention any other.
If it be not prejudicial for society, there can be no other reason
for society to meddle with it.
- If it be for any other reason than being prejudicial to society
that God has punished the act in question, this can be no reason
at all for man's punishing it. For there can be no reason but
this to man. If then God punished it, it was for a reason which
men can not know.
- When it is clear that in any individual instance God has punished
an act, in that individual instance the very circumstance of its
being he who punished it ought with us to be a sufficient reason
for his having done so.
But when we can find no / [188] other reason, if, in any other
individual instance of the same sort of act, God does not punish
it, there is no reason at all for punishing it. The circumstance
of his not punishing it in the latter instance proves as much that
it ought not to be punished in that case as the circumstance of
his having punished it in the former case proves that it was right
to punish it in that former case.
For these or other reasons it is an opinion that seems to spread
more and more among divines of all persuasions, that the miraculous
and occasional dispensations of an extraordinary providence afford
no fit rule to govern the ordinary and settled institutions of human
legislators. If they were, simple fornication, sparing enemies taken
in battle (the offence of Korah, Dathan and Abiram and their partizans,
for which 15,000 of the people suffered death. Numbers ch. 16. J.B.),
murmuring against authority, and making mock at old age (the offence
for which two and forty children were torn to pieces by bears, at
the intercession of Elijah. 2 Kings ch. 2. J.B.), to mention those
cases only among a vast number, had need to be made capital offences.
If any man, under the notion of its being agreeable to God, would
do any act that is prejudicial to society, he should produce a particular
commission from God given him in that individual instance. If a
man without a special commission from God is to be justified in
doing any violent act that has ever been done by a special commission
from God, a man might as well kill his son because God commissioned
Abraham to kill Isaac.
- With regard to the offence in question if it had been God's
pleasure that it should be punished throughout the earth with
the punishment of fire, it seems reasonable to conclude that he
would at least have provided for its being punished in that manner
among his own people, the Jews. But in the Jewish laws it is only
provided that such offenders shall be "put to death" generally,
just as several kinds of incest and the offence of performing
conjugal duty at an unseasonable conjuncture are to be punished.
As a proof that burning was not particularly intended, but rather
was meant to be excluded, in the next verse a particular kind
of incest is mentioned, that of him who has knowledge of a mother
and her daughter: and for this the punishment of burning to death
is specially appointed (Levit. ch. 20.J.B.) [The punishment in
the Talmud is stoning. Ed.].
- Even with regard to the cities in question, it is not said that
this was the only one nor even the greatest of the offences for
which those cities were destroy'd. The offences imputed to them
are in the English translation termed by the general names of
"wickedness" (Genesis, ch. 18.J.B.), and "iniquity" (Ibid., ch.
19, v. 15, J.B.), and their conduct opposed to "righteousness."
In this particular respect the Canaanites in question could not
be more culpable than the antient Greeks in that which is deemed
the most virtuous period of their history. Yet it appears not
that this punishment was ever inflicted by heaven for such a cause
upon the antient Greeks.
- True it is that the only offence which is mentioned as having
been committed by them on any individual occasion is an offence
of a sort which appears to have originated in the depraved appetite
in question. It is not, however, the same offence precisely
which in
England is punished with simple death, and in France with burning,
but one of a very different complexion and of a much deeper die.
The offence attempted by the profligate Canaanites carried with
it two enormous aggravations: 1. Personal violence, by which circumstance
alone it stands raised as much above the level of the offence
which under the name in question men ordinarily have in view as
rape does above that of simple fornication. 2. A violation of
hospitality, an aggravation of much greater odium and indeed of
much greater mischief in a rude than in a civilized state of society.
Zeal shewn against it in the English Marine Law
In the Articles of War established for the government of the English
Navy, in Art. 32, after providing with respect to this offence and
other species of impurity that they "shall be punished with death"
it is added without mercy. (By Stat. 13. Car. 2. Stat. 1. Ch. 9.
J.B.) Of all the offences of which a man in the maritime service
can be guilty, burning a fleet, betraying it to the enemy and so
forth, this is the only one which it was thought proper to exclude
from mercy. The safety of' the fleet and of the Empire were in the
eyes of the legislator objects of inferior account in comparison
with the preservation of a sailor's chastity. [188d follows; see
my introduction. Ed.] / [189]
Horror of singularity
In persons of weak minds, anything which is unusual and at the
same time physically disgustful is apt to excite the passion of
hate. Hatred when once excited naturally seeks its gratification
in the tormenting or destruction of the object that excited it.
Many are the innocent animals who are punished in this way for the
crime of being ugly. To this head we may refer the propensity persons
of weak and irritable temperament, particularly women, have to the
killing of toads and spiders. The offspring of a woman when it has
had any singularity whereby it has been distinguished in a remarkable
degree from the ordinary race of human beings under the name of
monster has often met with the same treatment--hermaphrodites [for
example] who, not knowing what sex they were, have performed the
functions of both. Envy has here joined with antipathy in letting
loose against these unfortunate people the fury of the dissocial
appetite.
Any desire to hurt any sensitive object which in any way has happened
to become a cause of pain to us, nay even insensitive objects, is
the natural instantaneous consequence of such pain and it always
breaks out into evil, unless where reason and reflection interfere
and check it. But in these cases, reason, far from checking has
appeared from some cause or other to dictate such behaviour.
Mischief to population reparable by fine
If population were the only object, the mischief that a rich batchelor
did by giving him[self] up to improlific venery might be amply repaired
by obliging him to give a marriage portion to two or three couples
who wish for nothing but a in order to engage in marriage.
Athenians wanted but permission to marry two wives
When among the Athenians the number of the people had received
a dangerous reduction by an unsuccessful war, what was the step
taken to repair it? All that was done was to permit to every man
that chose it to take two wives. This shews that it was plain enough
at that time of day there was no want of inclination on the part
of the male sex toward [women] and that there wanted nothing but
permission to dispose a man to extend his connections with the other
sex. And yet at no time and among no people was the irregular appetite
in question more predominant.
How came scratching not to be held abominable?
It is wonderful that nobody has ever yet fancied it to be sinful
to scratch where it itches, and that it has never been determined
that the only natural way of scratching is with such or such a finger
and that it is unnatural to scratch with any other. (As in Russia
the only way of making the sign of the cross is with two fingers
and it is heterodox to make it with three. J.B.) in antient Persia
it was infamous to have a cold and to take those measures which
nature dictates for relieving oneself from the inconvenience of
such an indisposition. (Xenophon, cyropaedia. J.B.)
Happily for the Persians under the clear and steady atmosphere
of that country colds were not altogether so endemical as under
the humid and changeable atmosphere of England. But in all countries
it is a practise that more or less has always been too frequent
to confound misfortune with criminality.
Punishment not necessary for the sake of women
By the mild ordinances of nature the fair sex enjoy already a monopoly
as perfect as other monopolies are, and more perfect than they ought
to be, of the affections of the other and this monopoly is too well
secured by the means that established it to need the support of
the harsh constitutions of penal laws. A ribbon or ringlet is a
much more suitable and not less powerful tie to bind a lover than
the hangman's rope of the executioner. The man may be their friend,
but it should seem not a very judicious friend, who would advise
them to conciliate affection by horror and by force.
|