ACTON'S WISDOM
221
infinitely rich in substance, all men are limidess1y endowed with that
universal fluid currency which can be spent without loss. Just as in
the myth Zeus descends upon Danae in a shower of gold, so in
pornography the world is bathed, floated, flooded, inundated in this
magical produce of the body. No one need ever worry again about
husbanding nature's riches from expense.
Behind these images we can make out two further ideas. One is a
universal personal and cultural experience of poverty-and fear of it.
The other is that the human body is a machine, and that sexual
functions are essentially mechanical. Acton regards sexuality and sexual
disorders as stricdy physiological functions-there is no such thing
yet as psychology, and the world he describes is pre-psychological
in nature, as is the world of pornography. At this moment in history,
then, scientific thinking about sex had attained the same level of
intellectual development as pornography. And just as the advent of
a genuine modem psychology was to spell an end to the kind of
thinking represented in Acton's work, so we shall see psychology is
the one mortal enemy of pornography. Yet we should also observe
that~cton's
physiology is itself a fantasy; it
is
a fantasy physiology,
and the fantasy expresses to the full the unconscious psychology which
created it. It is a classic example of what Freud called "the return
of the repressed."
What then is the prevention, cure, or solution for all these
dangers? Acton's one recommendation is continence, which consists
not only in sexual abstinence "but in controlling all sexual excitement."
True continence, he writes, "is complete control over the passions,
exercised by one who knows their power, and who, but for his steady
will, not only could, but would indulge them." And he is under no
illusion that such a practice will not be a trial, a sore and bitter trial,
as he says. Continence in other words is a variant form of that essential
nineteenth century idea, Duty; and Acton gives to the word its full
weight of difficulty, conflict, pain, and necessity. (Duty, or continence,
may have been as George Eliot said "peremptory and absolute"; it
never was, or is, easy.) The first requisite of continence is "that power
of the mind over outer circumstances which we call 'a strong will.' "
This sovereignty of the will, of man over himself, is of course "a
matter of
habit.
Every victory strengthens the victor.... The whole
