,,men1 ,,women1 ,,and ,,god ,a ,,discussion ,,of ,,sex ,,questions ,,from ,,the ,,christian ,,point ,,of ,,view ,,by ,,the ,,rev4 ,a4 ,,herbert ,,gray1 ,d4 ,d4 ,,author ,,of ,,the ,,christian ,,adventure1 ,,as ,,tommy ,,sees ,,us1 ,,etc4 ,,to ,,my ,,wife ,,who ,,for ,,twenty-,,five ,,years ,,has ,,been ,,my ,,chief ,,teacher ,,and ,,has ,,interpreted ,,life ,,and ,,god ,,to ,,me ,,through ,,the ,,contents ,,of ,,the ,,daily ,,round ,,preface ,this book has been written at the request of the ,student ,christian ,movement1 and is addressed in the first place to men and women of the student age4 ,i have undertaken the task with great gladness because my long and happy contact with men and women through the ,student ,movement has taught me how great is the need for a fuller understanding of the problems of sex1 and how possible it is that men and women should find help through the timely suggestion of right and wholesome thoughts4 ,my brother1 ,dr4 ,charles ,gray of ,london1 has contributed a very valuable appendix dealing with certain facts in a way which is only possible to a medical man1 and ,i am very greatly indebted to him for thus enriching this volume4 ,it will be apparent to all who read it that ,i also owe a great deal to many who have shared with me their knowledge and experience4 ,in particular ,i owe much gratitude to a number of generous-hearted women who have enabled me to write the chapters which are more especially addressed to their sex4 ,i have deliberately omitted from these pages any reference to disease4 ,i do that not because ,i am not impressed by the terrible penalties with which nature visits certain sins1 but because ,i do not believe in the power of fear to deliver us4 ,though there were no such thing as venereal disease1 immorality would still be a way of death1 and morality would still be the way of life and joy4 ,till we perceive that we are not on the path of progress4 ,books of this sort have generally been addressed specially either to men or to women4 ,i write to both alike because ,i am quite sure that until men and women understand and help each other1 there is going to be no happy solution to the problems of sex4 ,when they do so learn to co-operate ,i believe we shall as a race find our way out into that larger and happier life which can only be ours when we have accepted the facts of sex and learnt to use them to the enrichment of human life and the glory of ,god4 ,a4 ,,herbert ,,gray4 ,glasgow1 #aibb4 ,,contents ,,preface ,,introduction ,i4 ,,knowing ,,the ,,facts ,,ii4 ,,comradeship ,,iii4 ,,love ,,iv4 ,,falling ,,in ,,love ,,and ,,getting ,,engaged ,v4 ,,our ,,moral ,,standards ,,vi4 ,a ,,man',s ,,struggle ,,vii4 ,,prostitution--,a ,,chapter ,,for ,,men ,,viii4 ,a ,,girl',s ,,early ,,days ,,ix4 ,,involuntary ,,celibacy ,x4 ,,the ,,art ,,of ,,being ,,married ,,xi4 ,,unhappy ,,marriages ,,xii4 ,,the ,,influence ,,of ,,social ,,conditions ,,xiii4 ,,forgetting ,,the ,,things ,,which ,,are ,,behind ,,appendix--,,some ,,of ,,the ,,physiological ,,facts4 ,,by ,a4 ,,charles ,e4 ,,gray1 ,m4,d4 ,,introduction ,in the following pages ,i propose to write simply and plainly about the social1 personal1 and bodily relations of men and women1 and about the ways in which their common life may attain to happiness1 harmony1 and efficiency4 ,i shall deal with matters often handled only with much diffidence1 and thought of with uncomfortable reserve4 ,and ,i address myself to men and women alike4 ,i do it all on the basis of one assumption1 namely1 that a ,god of love in designing our human nature cannot have put into it anything which is incapable of a pure and happy exercise2 and in particular that in making the sex interest so central1 permanent1 and powerful in human beings ,he must have had some great and beautiful purpose4 ,i start1 in fact1 with the faith that the sexual elements in our humanity1 once rightly understood and finely handled1 make for the enrichment of human life1 for the increase of our health and efficiency1 and the heightening of our joy4 ,i believe that nothing is more necessary for the world to-day than that we should trace out the ways in which this tremendous life force that is implanted in us all may be used to forward the higher aims of our common life1 and to help the race on its upward march4 ,and yet even as ,i write the word sexual ,i cannot but remember that the mere word will for many good people produce a sensation of distaste4 ,partly because they have a sincere passion for purity1 and partly because this whole subject has been defiled for them by the excesses and indecencies of mankind1 they doubt whether it can be right or useful to think about it at all4 ,they regard the facts of sex with a mixture of fear1 perplexity1 and shame1 and take themselves to task if still some curiosity about them lingers in their minds4 ,therefore before ,i go any further ,i would like to ask such people to realize that they are denying my initial assumption4 ,they have not yet come to believe that there is any divine and holy purpose enshrined in the sexual side of life1 although ,god is responsible for its place in our humanity2 and ,i would beg them forthwith to think this matter out4 ,sex is no accident in our humanity4 ,the function of the sexual elements in our physical frame is so central that unless they be truly managed health and strength are impossible4 ,their relation is no less vital to our mental and aesthetic life1 and they appear to control almost absolutely our nervous stability4 ,no man or woman attains to fullness and harmony of life if the sexual nature be either neglected or mismanaged4 ,no society is strong and happy unless this part of life is truly adjusted4 ,it may even be said that the evils that come through the mismanagement of sex relations have beaten every civilization up to the present4 ,and no doubt it is natural enough to shudder over the abominations of prostitution and sex vice in general1 and so to turn our minds away from the whole matter4 ,but for all that our emotional energies would be better employed in trying to understand this titanic force1 and in learning how it may be utilized for our upward progress4 ,mere prohibitions have so utterly and entirely failed us that we ought now to realize that there is no hope in them alone4 ,what we need is a positive constructive ideal for this part of life which will indicate the real value of the sexual forces in us1 and not leave young men and women partly perplexed1 partly ashamed1 and partly annoyed because they are as the ,creator made them4 ,and so ,i repeat we must begin with the assumption that1 though we have not yet spelt it out1 ,god must have had some great purpose of love when ,he created men and women with a clamant sex instinct at the center of their personalities4 ,hebrew instinct declared that ,god saw everything that ,he had made1 and behold it was very good4 ,christian instinct must repeat the verdict with vastly increased conviction1 for our humanity is such that the ,son of ,god could wear it4 ,he was not ashamed to call us brethren1 and to be tempted like as we are4 ,to suggest that in passion and in its exercise at the bidding of love there need be anything that is not holy1 is to arraign the ,creator4 ,sex love abused and misunderstood has indeed strewn the world with tragedies and disease4 ,but sex love is going to remain4 ,not until we have learnt to make it an instrument for the perfection of life and the heightening of vitality can we hope to reach the life which the love of ,god designed for us2 and to that we shall not attain until we have dared to acquire knowledge and through knowledge to attain to wisdom4 ,the ideal which still lingers in many minds1 though it is seldom openly confessed1 is that boys and girls1 young men and women1 should be kept in complete ignorance of the truth about their sexual natures until they marry1 and that then they should be left to learn all that they need to know from ,mother ,nature direct4 ,that at least would seem to be a fair inference from the fact of the conspiracy of silence in which ninety per cent of parents have engaged towards the beings they love best4 ,unfortunately in order to carry out the policy thus implied it would be necessary to keep children from associating with other children1 to forbid them to read the ,bible1 the great classics of literature1 and the daily papers--to keep them from the theatre1 and from the study of nature--in fact to bring them up in a world which does not exist4 ,for in all the ways ,i have suggested do boys and girls now collect garbled1 half-true1 and distorted notions about sexual life4 ,and even if it were possible to carry out the policy it would still not be desirable4 ,marriage is not the simple and easy thing which the policy would imply4 ,mother ,nature does not teach young couples all that they need to know4 ,often they make serious mistakes in the first few days4 ,often they mishandle and spoil the beautiful relationship on which they have entered to their own disgust and disappointment4 ,uncounted couples to-day have reason for the bitterness with which they complain that nobody ever taught or helped them4 ,in fact the policy of silence is as cruel as its assumptions are untrue4 ,ignorance is an impossibility for the young4 ,our choice lies between garbled1 distorted1 and defiled knowledge and a knowledge that shall be clean1 innocent1 and helpful4 ,it has often happened that men and women brought up on the policy of silence have first learnt the facts about life through some contact with vice or sin1 and those who know what horrible sufferings sudden discoveries of that sort may mean for sensitive natures cannot possibly have any doubts remaining on this point4 ,there are few more cruel things possible than to bring a girl up in the ignorance which is mistaken for innocence and then to allow her to go out into the world to learn the truth by chance1 or through some unclean mind4 ,that is why ,i gladly address myself to the task of this book1 in which at least some of the truth is told4 ,of course the real issue that stands in the background here is the one which concerns the nature of true spirituality4 ,we are all agreed that the essential greatness of man lies in the fact that in him spirit may rule everything else4 ,and until spirit does thus rule he has not reached his true life1 ,but the question of the place of the body in the full life of man still remains to be faced and thought out4 ,the hermits of the desert assumed that the way of true life lay in the repression of all bodily desire and as much negation of the body as is consistent with mere existence4 ,but in fact they often succeeded in making life disgusting1 and generally in making it useless4 ,it may be doubted whether they contributed anything to the real problem of civilization4 ,yet their mistake is still repeated in part by many good people4 ,many still think that the way of the higher life consists in forgetting the body as much as possible in order that the soul may live in freedom4 ,they admit the body's needs with reluctance1 and treat it as something with no essential relation to their spiritual activities4 ,often they willfully neglect the duty of health4 ,still more often they believe they ought to regard with disapproval the clamant desires and cravings of our bodily natures4 ,but in so doing they miss the real significance of the ,incarnation4 ,our life here is an embodied life1 and it cannot be fine unless the body is finely tempered4 ,that body is designed as the instrument through which the spirit may find expression4 ,the first essential no doubt is to submit it to discipline and so reduce it to the place of a servant4 ,at all costs it must be brought under control4 ,it must be understood1 and kept in good health4 ,and if these things be neglected the life of the spirit is hampered and depressed4 ,but still spirit must express itself through body1 and all the wealth of powers with which body is endowed has significance and worth4 ,for this reason the attempt to keep spiritual and bodily activities separate always revenges itself upon its authors4 ,on the one hand it leads to an impoverishment of the spiritual life1 for on these terms the spirit is left with no fine instrument through which to express itself in the real world4 ,and on the other hand1 bodily activities divorced from the control of the spirit tend to become mere animal things and so to produce disgust and degeneration4 ,but indeed the body cannot without disaster be simply ignored4 ,the attempt merely to repress its manifold urgencies leads to a state in which these forces seek out for themselves abnormal channels of activity1 so destroying the harmony and balance of life4 ,the essential glory of human beings lies in the fact that in them body and spirit may be so wedded that their activities are woven into one harmonious whole4 ,it was in a moment of real insight that ,robert ,browning cried-- ,let us not always say1 ',spite of this flesh to-day1 ,i strove1 made head1 gained ground upon the whole4' ,as the bird wings and sings1 ,let us cry1 ',all good things ,are ours1 nor soul helps flesh more now1 than flesh helps soul4' ,now all this is supremely true of the sexual part of life4 ,if mere lust is the vilest thing on earth1 pure love is the most beautiful4 ,and when pure love dominates a life all the sexual activities of the body may be transmuted and redeemed until a complete life is attained in which all the primal forces of our beings find a happy exercise under the control of a passion that is at once physical1 mental1 and spiritual4 ,but the body is not in this process denied4 ,it is accepted1 understood1 and made to play its true part4 ,if passion be truly handled it provides the driving force for a life that is effective1 courageous1 and joyous4 ,he is most truly living a spiritual life who has learnt to use all the powers of his incarnate nature in a life of strenuous activity and loyal love4 ,i do not mean of course that there is no place in the highest type of life for renunciation4 ,nor do ,i mean for a moment that only in marriage can greatness and fullness of life be attained4 ,it is hard to use words correctly at a time when special meanings have come to be attached to such words as repression and suppression4 ,what the psychologists have discovered is that unconscious1 or incomplete1 or unaccepted repression of bodily instincts leads to a dangerous condition4 ,he who has not really surrendered desire1 but simply tried to drive it underground1 may indeed reap troubles enough and to spare4 ,but it needs no psychological training to know that deliberate1 sincere1 and courageous renunciation of this or that bodily desire for the sake of some compelling ideal may lead to the very finest kind of life4 ,only in this process the body is not ignored4 ,it is taken into account4 ,nor are its forces neglected4 ,through the process technically described as sublimation1 a way is to be found whereby life force restrained in one direction finds other and most valuable ways of expression4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i write this book as one who has learnt to thank ,god for all the elements in our normal humanity1 and ,i send it out with the prayer in my heart that through it some may be helped to a truer understanding of themselves which will ease their way to success and joy and to that fullness of human life which is the divine intention for us4 ,,chapter ,i ,,knowing ,,the ,,facts ,the first essential equipment for a right journey through the country of sexual experience is that we should know the truth about our bodies --those temples of the ,holy ,ghost--and should understand the meaning of the emotions and desires which connect themselves with our physical constitution4 ,further1 because the problem of sex can only be solved by the cooperation of the sexes working together in mutual understanding it is right that men should know a good deal about women's bodies and vice versa4 ,such knowledge almost always begets sympathy and a certain intelligent tenderness4 ,the lack of it has often led to unconscious cruelties1 to misunderstandings1 and even to serious mistakes4 ,to mention one instance only1 how can men be expected to treat the other sex with true consideration if they do not know that once a month for a period women ought to be saved from fatigue and strain8 ,and yet there are many adult men in that position of ignorance4 ,but though the detailed facts are all clean1 and really easy to be understood1 the manner in which they are conveyed into our minds is of vital importance4 ,i do not think they can be fully conveyed through any printed page4 ,they are too delicate for such handling4 ,they are not truly conveyed unless behind the mere words which express them there is a reverent soul that can impart the right tone and emphasis to them4 ,i would quite gladly attempt to put them all down here could ,i only be assured that my words would only be read by men or women when alone and in a reverent mood4 ,that being impossible ,i can only begin by insisting that they ought to be known4 ,and this ,i can also do--,i can assure all young people who read these pages that there is nothing whatever in the facts of the case to be afraid of--nothing that they cannot know with perfectly clean minds4 ,there are no terrible mysteries in the matter4 ,there are no horrors in normal sex life4 ,the truth even about the ultimate intimacies of body between men and women is that when truly achieved they are beautiful1 and holy1 and happy4 ,but how are young people to get the right knowledge8 ,the worst possible way in which to get it is to pick it up bit by bit in connection with evil stories1 the reports of divorce cases1 and the hints of vice which lurk in life's shadowy corners4 ,yet that has been the most common way in the past4 ,quite little boys have passed on mysterious stories from mouth to mouth defiling the whole matter4 ,many girls have first begun to wonder and to ask questions when they first heard of an illegitimate child4 ,words in the ,bible1 such as lasciviousness and so on1 have started mere school children asking questions to which probably they only got distorted answers from other school children4 ,just because their parents did not tell them anything1 they have assumed that there must be something to be ashamed of in the truth4 ,and so ninety per cent of boys1 and ,i know not what proportion of girls1 have the subject of sex spoiled for them even before adolescence4 ,sex1 sexual experience1 passion1 and so on are things they think half unclean and yet annoyingly interesting4 ,they are half ashamed1 and yet remain curious4 ,some are half afraid4 ,some rather more than half disgusted4 ,some indeed try to banish the whole subject from their minds4 ,this may seem to be a refined thing to do2 but1 as we know with a new definiteness since the psychologists have explored the matter1 it is really a disastrous thing to do4 ,for to adapt ourselves to sex is one of the problems that cannot be escaped4 ,in this world we cannot live the disembodied life4 ,what we may do is to live a clean and happy bodily life1 but only if we build our house of life on knowledge4 ,wherefore to all young men and women ,i would say--,get to know the real truth from someone you can trust4 ,go to some older man or woman with a clean mind and a large heart1 and learn about yourself4 ,of course the best people in the world to go to are your own parents2 but if for any reason that resource is not open to you1 go to a doctor or a minister or some senior friend4 ,it is worth while to take a lot of trouble to find the right person1 and it is still more worth while to take trouble to avoid the wrong person4 ,find someone who has seen the hand of ,god in the facts of sex and who can therefore talk about them without embarrassment4 ,and do not let yourself be deterred by the fact that you may have made mistakes already of which you are ashamed4 ,most of us made mistakes in our early years just because of the same ignorance which has been your fate4 ,and therefore we are not shocked4 ,we are just sorry1 and would like to help4 ,it is not true that mistakes inevitably spoil the future4 ,forgiveness1 recovery1 and new life are possibilities for us all4 ,and if you have already made mistakes through ignorance1 that is but one reason more why you should know the truth without delay4 ,when you are told the truth you will be learning something about ,god as well as about yourself1 for ,he made you4 ,nor is it only for your own sake that you ought to know4 ,if you want to achieve helpful relations to men or women1 and ultimately to achieve a right relation to husband or wife1 you need to know the plain facts about our incarnate life4 ,men and women often make the right way of life more difficult for each other by mere ignorance4 ,you need to know if you are to be really kind4 ,i cannot forget that when young men and women of sensitive and refined natures come to this knowledge all at once1 when already adults1 it may at first create a sense of repulsion4 ,it does not do so for those who have learnt the facts bit by bit as they were ready for them4 ,in that case they are accepted easily and naturally4 ,but with the others it may well be that just because they have clean and delicate minds1 they may at first experience some real distaste when they come to understand the creative processes through which they were born4 ,but to any such ,i would say that against that possibility they may be forearmed1 if they will but believe that when love takes two people into its charge the physical consequences all come to seem natural and right and sacred4 ,you need never know anything of these matters at first hand except when real love for some man or woman has mastered you1 and then the experiences to which that love will lead you will be found to be pure1 and simple1 and happy4 ,if you approach this part of life with reluctance or in fear1 or with some mistaken sense of shame1 you may spoil it1 and spoil somebody else's life in addition4 ,but if you will believe this plain witness1 which thousands would unite in offering you1 you may be greatly helped4 ,ultimately your way to success in this part of life lies in accepting your nature with its sexual elements-- not in trying to be a sexless person4 ,that is not the way of purity4 ,it is the way of folly4 ,therefore again ,i say--,do not be afraid of the facts4 ,those who have traveled that country report to you ,there is nothing here to be afraid of--at least there used to be nothing4 ,and now in case these pages are read by some young married persons who still have before them the chance to serve their own children in this matter1 may ,i insist that a solemn obligation rests on them to see that their children learn the truth in a simple and natural way from the lips of their fathers and mothers8 ,the ideal way in this connection is that children should learn about their own bodies from the same people who first tell them about ,god and goodness4 ,when that happens there is no danger that they will slip into an unclean attitude towards sex1 for children nearly always accept the things their parents tell them as natural and right things4 ,perhaps the first step in the way is to decide never to tell children anything that is not strictly true4 ,when your little girls or boys ask how babies come1 tell them that they could not understand1 but that you will tell them as soon as they are old enough4 ,and then very early tell them at least that babies come from the bodies of their mothers4 ,the first wrong turn that the thoughts of many of us took in connection with sex was when some older person was made embarrassed or angry by our natural questions4 ,we made a note then and there that there must be something queer and wrong about the way babies come1 and the impression sank down into the unconscious part of us to bring forth mischief for years to come4 ,but if a parent's own attitude to sex is clean and true he or she will find it quite possible to tell the plain truth to innocent little minds4 ,the first bit of knowledge imparted1 namely that babies come from the bodies of their mothers1 will often beget a new attitude of regard and chivalry in children towards their own mothers4 ,i can say with certainty that it is very good for a boy to know that for his sake his own mother once went through both pain and risk4 ,and then let the rest all come naturally4 ,it is better to tell your children in almost any way than not to tell them at all1 but the best way is not to make a solemn occasion of the telling1 but to let the knowledge pass from you to them as incidents and occasions suggest4 ,if you have contact with nature in common with your children the occasions will be many for telling them about flower and animal life4 ,and this will naturally lead on to instruction about human beings4 ,even if such contact with nature should be impossible1 life in any place and in any guise will assuredly present you with opportunities for your teaching4 ,and in any case try to get in first4 ,before the slime of schoolboy talk or the follies of schoolgirl talk have defiled the subject tell your children about it1 as about something sacred and beautiful--much too sacred and beautiful for the chatter of idle hours in playgrounds1 etc4 ,you will be surprised1 if you have forgotten your own childhood1 how early it is necessary to do all this if you are to get in first4 ,no general rules about the right age can be laid down4 ,children differ enormously in regard to the ages at which they pass from stage to stage in their development4 ,you will need to watch and to understand4 ,above all do not let your telling take the form of mere prohibitions4 ,do not let it stand related in the first case to warnings against sins4 ,you do not want to associate the idea of sin in the first case with this subject at all4 ,what you can do is to implant a certain reverence in a child's mind in relation to the whole matter1 and if you succeed in that you will have forearmed your child against sin4 ,i long to know that children are learning about sex not in association with scoldings1 reproofs1 and warnings1 but rather as part of the splendid truth of ,god4 ,it is the association of the facts of sex with the sins of men and women that has spoilt this part of life for most minds4 ,of course it is only kind to tell boys and girls where it is that they may go wrong--it is necessary to put them on their guard4 ,but that should be a secondary matter--a mere addition to your teaching4 ,my own experience as a minister has brought to my knowledge several very pathetic instances of how young girls get into very serious trouble just through lack of the knowledge their mothers ought to have given them4 ,it seems possible still for a girl even of seventeen or eighteen1 or even much older1 to be almost incredibly ignorant1 and no words are too strong to describe the cruelty of allowing them to face life in that condition4 ,in any case let your teaching be1 in general terms at least1 complete before adolescence4 ,if you wait till adolescence has begun1 the telling may cause undue excitement4 ,if you finish your general teaching before that stage it will save your child from much unwholesome curiosity4 ,and here1 though the subject must necessarily be distasteful to many1 as it is to myself1 ,i must put in a word about self-abuse4 ,footnote3 ,knowing from experience that a good many parents do not even know what self-abuse means1 let me simply say that it consists in such handling of the genital organs as creates emotional and physical sexual excitement of a kind that is obviously unnatural4 ,in recent years a large number of men have given me their confidence1 so that ,i am not speaking from hearsay when ,i state that a percentage of men which probably approximates to seventy-five are1 at least for a time1 victims of this habit4 ,i know that it is easy to exaggerate the physical and mental evil effects of it4 ,but what is beyond all question is that it produces bad psychic consequences1 and does so leave men out of conceit with themselves that when they realize that they have become victims to the habit their mental sufferings are often pitifully acute4 ,indeed1 it is because my pity and sympathy have been so drawn out to many men ,i know that ,i cannot forbear to speak on behalf of those who may yet be saved from it4 ,the facts about it are that the habit is often begun at an almost inconceivably early age4 ,it is very often begun without any sense that it is wrong1 and certainly without any knowledge of how evil it is4 ,and once it has been begun1 it is horribly hard to abandon4 ,uncounted good men have to confess to-day that in their younger days they never did achieve liberation in spite of constant efforts4 ,uncounted men have brought about in this way a certain perversion of their natures with regard to their sexual functions which clouded their lives for many years4 ,and yet the cure for this situation is very simple and almost easy4 ,the men who have completely escaped practically all testify that they owe their immunity to the kindly and timely advice of some wise senior4 ,the habit is not natural1 and therefore it is not hard never to begin it4 ,if it has not been begun in boyhood a very little determination will keep an adult man from falling into it4 ,and this means that in this case parents can1 if they will1 save the rising generation4 ,perhaps it is mothers chiefly who will have to render this service just because the habit is begun so very early1 while boys are still in very close association with their mothers4 ,i may seem to be contradicting what ,i have just said about mere warnings1 but ,i would certainly say that any sort of arresting warning is better than inaction in the matter4 ,yet even in this matter any kind of harsh warning is not the best way4 ,a boy can be taught that there is a certain sanctity about certain parts of his body4 ,he can be taught to treat them scrupulously and hardily4 ,he can be given positive ideas which will save him1 though ,i also believe that he ought to be told with definiteness to avoid this particular snare4 ,i know of no other case in which a little wise love and timely vigilance may have such tremendous results in saving a child from future suffering and mistake4 ,does anything more need to be said to mothers who really love their sons6 ,i have written these things about boys and men because it is in that connection that ,i can speak from first-hand knowledge4 ,but several women doctors have told me of late that there is a very real need that girls also should be helped in view of the similar danger which lies in their path4 ,with them the habit is no doubt much less common4 ,but it is common enough1 and has serious enough consequences1 to constitute a call to parents in their case also4 ,most of those who read these pages will themselves be young4 ,if they have troubled to read the paragraphs ,i have just written a number of them will1 ,i know1 be moved to say to themselves1 ,we would give anything if our parents had done these things for us4 ,yes6 it is a great pity they did not4 ,but do not be hard upon your parents4 ,they were the victims of a wrong tradition4 ,the conspiracy of silence had in their day been given almost religious sanctions4 ,some of them were themselves embarrassed by the whole subject just because no clean persuasions about it were current in their youth4 ,that was their calamity1 as it has in part been yours4 ,but no such calamity need overtake your children4 ,if you can and will cleanse your minds now--if you will take this whole subject out into the cleansing light of ,god1 and look at it there till you have seen the divine truth about sex--if you can escape embarrassment and attain to thankfulness1 then you will be able to keep this whole matter clean for your children4 ,your generation has suffered much4 ,the next need not4 ,and remember that whatever doctors1 teachers1 and ministers may do for the nation1 it must be parents who will save us in the long run4 ,you at least can get ready4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,comradeship ,the first outstanding social consequence of sex is the mutual attraction of young men and women in general4 ,with apologies in the meantime to the girls who have no use for men and to the queer men who don't like girls1 ,i propose to speak to the great majority4 ,to many a healthy and normal man there is nothing so wonderful or beautiful in all ,god's earth as a woman4 ,and the converse is often true4 ,the most interesting thing about the world for many of each sex is that the other sex is in it also4 ,those who share the assumption on which this book is written will agree that an influence so strong1 so profound1 and so universal must have some fine significance in the divine scheme of things4 ,it is an element in humanity which must affect the whole of life4 ,to handle it rightly must be necessary if life as a whole is to succeed4 ,and the first step towards a right handling of it is to accept the fact of it gladly and openly4 ,the convention lingers that it is a little weak in a man to admit that he needs and craves woman's society1 and that for a girl to admit the converse is not quite modest4 ,and thus there is often a certain furtive element in the relations of the sexes between fifteen and twenty-five which is all of it a great pity4 ,it is here that ,mrs4 ,grundy has done us real injury4 ,the poor old dear has been so fussy and nervous about it all4 ,she has often tried to close the doors upon free and wholesome fellowship1 and so has driven the young to find out other ways of meeting4 ,but even she has not been able to keep the sexes apart4 ,the truth is that the mutual relations of men and women in the realm of comradeship1 and quite apart from marriage1 may be so happy and enriching--so exhilarating and so bracing--that one may reverently say the whole arrangement of having divided mankind into two such groups1 is one of the most splendid of the divine thoughts4 ,for many a man the joy and worth of life depend largely upon women4 ,the things he gets on his journey from his mother1 his sisters1 and his girl friends --from his wife1 his daughters1 and the women friends of later days are the golden things in life4 ,and ,i know that many a woman would say a corresponding thing about the life career of a woman4 ,that is ,god's plan--to make us dependent on one another for the stimuli1 the inspirations1 and the joys which prevent life from becoming drab and monotonous4 ,in the beginning ,god made them male and female1 because ,he loved them4 ,he made them gloriously different that they might enjoy and help each other4 ,it is one of the mysteries of history that for uncounted centuries man imagined that he only needed woman in her capacity as a wife and potential mother--that for long ages woman had no place in society except as wife or mother4 ,why it was so long before the spirit of ,god moved women to shatter that conception1 ,i do not understand4 ,but with its shattering there appeared for a time a tendency to imagine that men and women are in most things practically the same1 and that the difference of sex is a very little thing4 ,many people seemed inclined to believe that a woman is just the same sort of being as a man1 except for one special function--that of motherhood--which can only be exercised occasionally1 and need not be exercised at all4 ,that ,i am sure was a mistake with the possibility of disaster in it4 ,no doubt there are men with many feminine characteristics1 and women with many masculine ones4 ,but woman is not only physically different from man4 ,she is different mentally1 emotionally1 and spiritually4 ,and that is just why we need her so much in all life's departments4 ,we need woman in politics1 for instance1 just because she is different from man4 ,if the extension of the franchise to some millions of women had meant merely that the number of people had been increased who would think and vote simply as men had previously thought and voted1 it would have been no great event4 ,if women members of ,parliament are going to be mere replicas of the old type of ,m4 ,p41 then they might as well save themselves the bondage of ,westminster1 for their presence there will make no valuable difference4 ,but we do need them in the constituencies and in the ,house exactly because they bring new and different vital forces to bear on the conduct of affairs4 ,experience is already teaching us that men and women think more truly together than they do apart4 ,there is something about the sweep and range of man's thought which is peculiarly stimulating to woman's mind1 and there are aspects of truth to which men remain blind until women point them out4 ,for this reason very often mixed committees act more wisely than committees of only one sex4 ,i suspect that the same thing holds in relation to art1 and even to scientific work4 ,it certainly holds in connection with social work1 and church work4 ,in fact in all life's departments1 with a few obvious exceptions1 men and women supplement and stimulate one another1 and by comradeship make a bigger and better thing of life than would be possible otherwise4 ,i am not assuming that a fine comradeship is necessarily an easy thing to achieve4 ,i should be surprised if it were1 for ,i know of no fine things that can be attained easily4 ,comradeship between the sexes is rapidly spoilt by silliness4 ,it has to be based upon a considerable amount of restraint4 ,it can be and it ought to be jolly1 but it becomes a poor thing at once when either man or woman forgets dignity4 ,we are still at the experimental stage in traveling through this new country that has opened up to us within the last twenty years2 and if that is a reason for being very charitable about mistakes1 it is also a reason for being alert to find the right paths4 ,i am very much impressed by the opportunity that lies before students as a class in this matter4 ,in most of our universities and colleges men and women meet in the freest way1 and they only and for themselves can discover how this new kind of life is best conducted4 ,college rules and regulations are not going to do it for them4 ,indeed the older generation is not going to do it for them4 ,but if they will find out the right way and establish for themselves the right standards and conventions1 they may do an immense service for the rest of the nation4 ,and ,i believe they are already in large measure doing this4 ,my experience has on the whole made me entirely hopeful1 and has deepened my faith in the fitness of men and women for freedom4 ,none the less and although ,i belong to the older generation1 ,i propose to offer some suggestions for this part of life4 ,i cannot make much use of the word flirting4 ,it has nearly as many different meanings as ,bolshevism4 ,by some people it is applied to any high-spirited and happy intercourse between men and women1 in which case it signifies only a right and good thing4 ,some people mean by it playing at being in love1 in which case it is a silly and unworthy occupation which saps the real love power in men and women4 ,others again mean by it the whole bundle of silly and sentimental manners which some men and some women assume when in the presence of the other sex1 and in that sense of the word flirting means just exactly the foolish thing that common sense would declare it to be4 ,what ,i am quite sure of is that success in this comradeship between the sexes depends upon the discovery of a right way which lies between the coldness which is the negation of good fellowship1 and the undue familiarity which is both dangerous and undignified4 ,we men have in the past been accustomed to boast that we will go just as far towards familiarity as women will allow1 and have declared that this whole matter is one which women must regulate4 ,male opinion on the whole used to regard a man as something less than a sport who would not take liberties wherever he saw they would not be resented4 ,to use any sort of compulsion was indeed held to be ungentlemanly1 but short of that men have recognized no compulsion of honor bidding them refrain from familiarities4 ,that's the girl's affair1 they have often said4 ,but this is really a flagrant case of the way in which we men deceive ourselves and assume positions that are both dishonest and cruel4 ,i call this particular one dishonest because it is absurd for us to pretend that our expectations and desires have no influence on girls1 and that therefore we have no responsibility for events4 ,of course girls will tend to give what men in general persist in asking4 ,they are just as human as we are4 ,our conventional assumption that they are always mistresses of the situation--models of perfect self-mastery and understanding--is ridiculous and unkind4 ,it is the age-long injustice which men have practiced towards women to pretend that they are creatures without passion and by nature always in control of their emotions4 ,we know it is not true1 and yet we act on the pretence that it is4 ,and ,i call this position of ours cruel because there is no reason whatever why we should try to lay on women the whole burden of refining and controlling our mutual relations4 ,why should we not take our share of the task8 ,since history began we have asked many things of women1 and then kept our real respect for those who refused them--a mean and cowardly attitude4 ,women are not angels and it is mere sentimental nonsense to pretend that they are4 ,but they can be splendid companions when men help them towards the attaining of that relationship4 ,often we have seemed to want of them only sentimental dalliance1 with the result that they often grant it4 ,but many women would rather pass men by altogether than meet them in that way1 although most really long for some relationship that will call into exercise the mental1 aesthetic1 and spiritual powers of both men and women4 ,indeed there is ground for this charge against both men and women1 that often in social intercourse with one another they suspend the exercise of the finer parts of their natures4 ,we have all known men of great intellectual gifts and wide experience who when the ladies appear promptly put on the garb of mere triflers4 ,and we have also known women with very real literary1 or artistic1 or intellectual gifts who treat men primarily as beings to be played with4 ,and so do many people miss the enriching joys of companionship1 and make social intercourse petty and wearisome4 ,i believe most women want to know whatever is big and strong and efficient in men and not merely to find out whether they are good at badinage4 ,and though many men think they are afraid of serious and clever women1 they really in their hearts want to discover the responsible and sincere qualities in the personalities of girls and not merely the surface ones4 ,god forbid that we should banish chaff and jest from our common life1 or pretend to be old while still we are young6 ,god forbid that we should be prim and ,puritan when the sun shines and life calls6 ,there are no sillier things in life than the mere affectations of intellectuality4 ,mere solemnity is both an ugly and a futile thing1 and nothing is duller than a constant enforced earnestness4 ,i remember a dear old celibate professor of mine who1 having met a number of self-consciously intellectual women1 became so annoyed that at last when asked whether he did not rejoice in the higher education of women he broke out with the sentence1 ,no6 ,i don't like clever women--,i like silly girls4 ,the story may be apocryphal4 ,the man at least was human enough to have said it4 ,all that ,i am pleading for is that men and women should cease to hide from one another the deeper interests and concerns that really are present in their lives--that they should not merely play together but should also think together4 ,as to the detailed manners and customs which should control comradeship ,i claim no authority to speak dogmatically1 and1 as ,i have said1 ,i am sure the rising generation will have to settle these things for itself4 ,i am at least sure that both the stately coldness of ,lady ,vere de ,vere and the familiarity in which dignity is forgotten are fatal4 ,i confess to the hope that the linking of arms and the slapping of one another on the shoulder are not going to be characteristics of social intercourse in the future4 ,and as to kissing ,i confess myself unblushingly conservative--,victorian if you will4 ,nine times out of ten it may not be a thing worth making any fuss about4 ,but it is a mistake4 ,partly1 to put it bluntly1 because kissing sometimes arouses desires which kissing cannot satisfy2 and partly because it is1 ,i believe1 a fine instinct which suggests to both men and women that they should keep their kisses for the one person who will or may some day have love's right to them4 ,and here ,i think ,i ought to put down for the sake of girls a fact of which they are often ignorant4 ,when you allow men to embrace and kiss you--even when you allow them lesser familiarities--you may go your way thinking no more about it and undisturbed4 ,the whole thing may not really have stirred you4 ,but with men it is not so4 ,often by such things tumults are raised in them whereby the way of self-control and chastity is made cruelly difficult4 ,only some of you do it1 and you have done it generally in ignorance4 ,when you realize the truth you will see that it is unkind--possibly you may even realize that it is dangerous4 ,and yet ,i do not want to overstate even this point4 ,i heard lately of a girl who1 having been told the truth1 became so nervous that she was afraid to sit within five feet of a man and found general social intercourse spoilt for her4 ,there are no dangers for men1 but on the contrary there is very great help for men1 in the society of girls who will meet them in a spontaneous1 natural1 and friendly way4 ,it is when the girls who should be their natural companions are found to be prudish and stiff that men are all too apt to look for other girls who will at least be friendly and often much more than friendly4 ,all that ,i want girls to know is that there are dangers on the horizon of this part of life1 and to ask them to use their wisdom and their common sense4 ,what ,i ask of men is that they should cease meanly trying to avoid responsibility in this connection1 and should face their half of the problem4 ,for the problem is worth solving4 ,happy1 free1 wholesome companionship between men and women is a bracing and splendid thing4 ,we cannot possibly solve the whole problem of human life till we have attained to it4 ,and now a last word to the people to whom at the beginning ,i offered an apology--to the exceptional young people who take no interest in the other sex4 ,i do not commend your attitude4 ,it is not wise4 ,if it is in your case instinctive and spontaneous you need not worry1 for nature will soon cure it4 ,but if you have consciously adopted it1 or are deliberately retaining it1 you are making a serious mistake4 ,you are not sexless beings1 and by adopting this attitude you are repressing certain parts of your natures which will one day make their presence felt whether you like it or no1 and possibly in unhappy and unnatural ways4 ,girl friendships cannot fully and finally satisfy any girl4 ,companionships with other men are insufficient for any man4 ,instincts in your beings which may not be denied demand something else4 ,if you have decided that there is nothing worth while in the fellowships that may exist between men and women1 surely it is plain that you must be wrong1 for the verdict of nine-tenths of mankind is against you4 ,if you have in you any positive antagonism to the other sex1 that is in itself a manifestation of your sexual nature1 and a bad one4 ,there is a fine1 breezy1 sunny world full of beauty1 interest1 and deep satisfaction for our humanity1 the doors of which you are closing on yourselves4 ,if some people have traveled there unwisely or have lost their way in it1 that is only a coward's reason for staying outside4 ,things may seem to be going very well with you in spite of your attitude while you are still in the early twenties--you may say that you are getting from life all that you want4 ,but as you approach the thirties you will infallibly discover your mistake4 ,nature will then assert herself4 ,a certain mysterious loneliness will overtake you1 and life will lose its flavor4 ,in all modern life there is no harder problem than the one which arises for those who without any will of their own have to face that situation4 ,to court it is mere folly4 ,as a matter of fact behind your attitude there lies concealed the attempt to deny your sex1 and that is the one impossible thing to do4 ,you may control it1 discipline it1 or sublimate it2 but you will do nothing but make trouble for yourself till you have accepted it4 ,if it annoys you to find that you are not sufficient in yourself for yourself--if in particular you resent the mere suggestion that the other sex should in any way be necessary to your completeness and happiness1 you are really quarrelling with the established nature of things4 ,you may do that if you like1 but there is always only one end to the quarrel4 ,it is we who get broken1 not the eternal order4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,love ,the crowning fact about sex is that it makes possible the experience of being in love4 ,i am sure that all possibility of a right handling of sex problems depends upon a true understanding and valuation of love-- that beautiful and imperious emotion which masters and transforms both men and women1 which is closely linked with the creative instinct1 and which at a certain stage in its growth calls into being the whole group of tumultuous sensations and demands known as passion that it may achieve its own fulfillment4 ,if we know the truth about this matter we shall with comparative ease answer most of the questions which arise in connection with sex4 ,by what divine and mysterious instinct it is that love is awakened ,i do not know4 ,a man may know and appreciate a score of women1 and yet remain in the depths of him essentially unmoved2 and then some one woman with no conscious purpose will release some secret spring of life in the depths of his personality1 whereby she becomes for him hence forth the center of the world4 ,it may happen that this love comes on the heels of knowledge and grows out of friendship4 ,i believe they are fortunate persons to whom things happen in this way4 ,but it may also be that the mysterious instinct will do its work at a first meeting4 ,love at first sight may be quite incomprehensible and unreasonable1 but it is a fact none the less4 ,one meeting may fix the destiny of a man or a woman1 even though the second may not occur for months or even years4 ,the days that immediately follow this experience may not be happy days4 ,many a man has to serve and wait ere he can awaken love in her who is to him the one woman in the world4 ,many a woman has to wait and wonder and face distress4 ,then1 too1 till the stage of mutual acknowledgment is reached love makes men and women awkward4 ,they do uncouth1 crude1 and clumsy things4 ,they get into muddles4 ,they make mistakes4 ,it would seem that some delicate process of mutual adjustment is often necessary before two souls can really find each other1 and while the stumbling preliminary days last1 love is often a torture as well as a delight4 ,nor are the best lovers the most successful at first4 ,a superficial emotion may be easily handled1 but a deep one will upset a man and make him strange to himself4 ,and so two people will maneuver and wander and baffle each other4 ,they will often be sure and then uncertain by turns1 and will wonder whether love does not chiefly mean hopeless complications4 ,but when two souls do really discover each other1 then at once a new life begins1 so radiant1 beautiful1 stimulating1 and mysterious1 that even the poets have failed to find sufficient words for it4 ,in their hearts two lovers always know that this is what they were made for-- that this is the very core and essence of human existence4 ,i think they generally know that they have been ushered into a house of life of which they are quite unworthy1 and that they take their first steps therein in reverence and in awe4 ,let me simply enumerate some of the manifest consequences of this love4 #a4 ,from the very first love expresses itself as a reaching after intimacy4 ,for many days two lovers are busy telling each other all about themselves1 about their past experiences1 their hopes and aspirations1 their doubts and fears1 their relations to other people1 and their various circumstances4 ,they want to know and be known4 ,they want to share everything4 ,towards mere friends we do well to practice some reserve4 ,by talking about ourselves we may be apt to bore them4 ,but lovers want to know everything1 and are wise if they have no reserves4 #b4 ,then1 secondly1 love obviously increases the vitality and so adds to the physical beauty of both men and women4 ,indeed it increases vigor of all kinds1 producing new powers of sheer physical and nervous endurance4 ,what will a man who is truly in love not do for love's sake1 and that without thinking of fatigue6 ,what untold things women have accomplished under the spur of the same inspiration4 #c4 ,thirdly1 it awakens the latent idealism of both1 ,it is not by accident that men in love are found trying to write poetry1 though it may be a bad accident if other people have to try to read it4 ,of course we laugh at this nave habit1 because poetry seems a thing incongruous with the ordinary prosaic man1 with his baggy trousers and clumsy ways4 ,but for my part ,i rather incline to thank ,god that such an impulse should ever disturb the average man4 ,what could be better than that at one stage of his life at least he should try to reach the stars4 ,and if from the works of real poets we were to banish all the love-inspired poetry1 how paltry would the remainder seem4 #d4 ,still further1 love awakens the soul4 ,our spiritual capacities share in the general stimulus which it brings4 ,it is not by chance that courting couples go to church4 ,they do not go simply to whisper in the gallery1 and if they do hold hands during the sermon ,i do not think that ,god is ill pleased4 ,they go because the inspiration of love inclines them to long after ,god4 ,of course it does4 ,all love is of ,god1 and this special kind bears openly upon it the marks of its divine origin4 ,and while on the one hand it is true that love leads towards religion1 it is equally true that without a sense of things spiritual love cannot be its perfect self4 ,perhaps the commonest cause of the failure of love lies in some arrest of spiritual development4 ,for when the soul is asleep1 what is left of love is a poor thing4 #e4 ,and then1 fifthly1 at some point in its growth love summons passion into life4 ,what has been hitherto an emotion of the heart becomes also a tumultuous activity of the whole being1 and love having mastered the whole incarnate nature of each in turn drives the two together in that oneness of the flesh which is the decree of ,god4 ,no doubt it is just here that the compulsions of civilized society set a serious problem for ardent lovers4 ,primitive men probably knew nothing of a period of engagement1 and lovers would proceed to become wholly wedded just as soon as nature laid her compelling hand upon them4 ,but it is our glory that we are not simply the tools of natural forces4 ,we belong to the directorate in this life1 and even on the force of love we can impose times and seasons4 ,but when the right time does come1 then lovers who have already been attaining to union of heart and mind express their passion also in the union of their bodies1 and this wonderful experience1 when it does so enter life1 is realized as something sacramental4 ,it is literally and exactly an expression in the terms of the body of something which is already a spiritual fact4 ,nothing satisfies real love except this complete mingling of two personalities4 ,it is not satisfied without physical intimacy1 and yet physical intimacy alone is not enough4 ,that which is satisfied by mere physical intimacy is not love4 ,the full human passion which alone deserves that name calls also for intimacies of mind and spirit--for the interplay of two personalities through the whole stretch of their powers4 ,but it cannot be too strongly said that on the terms ,i have indicated the ultimate bodily union of two lovers is a beautiful and happy thing4 ,it is felt to be something with large spiritual consequences4 ,in some mysterious way it really does bind souls together4 ,each knows that henceforth he or she is bound to the other for life1 and a man is usually moved by a glowing sense of reverent gratitude to the woman who has thus trod with him the strange paths of that new country4 ,considered apart from love1 such an experience may seem to be gross1 because apart from love it is gross4 ,but as an incident in the communion of two loyal hearts it is realized as a pure and natural thing4 ,through it the flesh is caught up into harmony with the spirit and is thereby redeemed4 ,a certain new balance and repose of being is attained whereby a whole personality will experience a wonderful sense of liberation4 ,footnote3 ,i do not think the creative instinct often enters into consciousness at this point4 ,it does so with some women1 but with very few men4 ,as a rule the real content of the experience is just an ardent desire in each for utter nearness to the other4 ,it is the expression of their love that they desire4 ,it is each other that they love--not as yet any third person4 #f4 ,and then1 sixthly1 from love that has thus run its natural and ordained course a new life results4 ,even human love has creative value1 and by it the doors are opened into that most sacred world in which a man and a woman succumb together to the power and beauty of an infant1 thrill together over its untold charms1 and find that little hands are clutching at their hearts with amazing and mystic power4 ,and not until that point is reached is love made perfect4 ,mere lover's love is a selfish thing4 ,i do not say it in criticism1 for ,i believe lovers have an inalienable right to live for a while simply for each other4 ,but from the point when they bend together over a baby's cradle they take a step up in life1 and their love becomes a call to service1 whereby its selfishness is purged away4 ,parentage is usually thought of as supremely the crown of a woman's life4 ,so it is1 though it is not its only possible crown4 ,but ,i believe that it is equally the crown of a man's life4 ,it is perhaps true that the production of true fathers belongs to a later stage of human evolution than the production of mothers1 for fathers are not so obviously essential to young children4 ,but ,i hazard the suggestion that one of the prime needs of the stage at which we have now arrived is just that men should learn the arts and powers of fatherhood1 and take a larger part in the rearing of children4 ,and ,i believe men will find1 as ,i have said1 that parentage is for them also the crown of life4 ,with many men the emotions that come with fatherhood are the deepest of which they are capable1 and they are also the finest4 ,even men who seem to me pretty low in the scale of humanity often recover some of their lost manhood when under the power of their own little children4 ,and with normal men their fatherhood comes to dominate life4 ,its most obvious result is that it compels a man to work1 and to work hard4 ,we are mostly born slackers4 ,we should like to take many holidays1 and if we were left alone we would do it4 ,but parentage binds us to the wheel4 ,we discover that we have got to face the grind1 because the plain alternative is that the bairns would starve4 ,and so we do it4 ,of course at times we rebel4 ,you may hear men every now and then complaining half cynically and half humorously that1 having once been indiscreet enough to fall in love1 they were thenceforth swept along by rapids till at last they found themselves involved in all the paraphernalia of family life from perambulators to doctor's bills4 ,but there are few men who do not know in their hearts that the toils have been the making of them4 ,if love led only to delights1 it would ruin us4 ,it is because it leads also to heavy labor that it makes us4 ,it is because ,i see this so clearly that ,i am not so much distressed as some people are over the fact that motherhood also means very hard work4 ,footnote3 ,no doubt in our disordered social life it often means far too much work4 ,no doubt thousands of mothers are simply crushed by it4 ,but it is not a good thing when mothers can evade even reasonably hard work4 ,the great discoveries of the moral and spiritual worlds are only made in and through work--yes1 and sometimes through work that is sheer grind4 ,there is no other road to moral or spiritual maturity either for man or woman4 ,i have this deeply rooted objection to inherited wealth-- that it makes possible an escape from this redeeming discipline1 and by removing one of the normal consequences of love often leads to the spoiling of love4 ,let us1 however1 be clear about this further fact--love does not merely lead to enforced labor1 it also redeems that labor4 ,not merely does a man face up to his job because it is in a sense done for love's sake1 but love itself supplies the necessary respite and counterbalance to the burden of toil4 ,we all need recreations4 ,the tightly drawn string must be relaxed4 ,moods come when normal and quite ,christian men say1 ,oh1 ,i can't stick it any longer2 ,i want to enjoy myself4 ,we naturally demand that there should be an element of delight somewhere in life4 ,notoriously it is rather hard to come by4 ,city crowds at night present the spectacle of people making huge and fevered efforts to run delight to earth and often achieving only pitiful failure4 ,i believe the normal way in which delight ought to enter the lives of married people is just through their satisfaction in each other's society1 enriched by the society of their children4 ,when a man and a woman have made the right sort of home they escape finally from all fevered cravings after picture-houses and ball-rooms4 ,there lies to hand for them that which will day after day refresh and delight them1 and make them ready for to-morrow's toil4 ,i am not forgetting that at this point modern voices will want to break in on me with appropriate quotations from ,bernard ,shaw and others1 and try to silence me by pointing out what a mean1 petty1 dull1 sickly1 and stodgy thing mere domesticity can be4 ,yes6 it can be all that for people who let it be all that4 ,even love that once was passionate cannot redeem the life of two people unless there is something there to redeem4 ,two lifeless and stupid people living together can make of life something duller than either could make alone4 ,if it be part of general wisdom to try to live widely and fully1 and to use as much of our natures as is possible1 that is surely as true for two people together as it could be for them apart4 ,and to make a marriage into a great thing both parties to it must work to make it wide in its horizons and worthy because of the multitude of its interests4 ,no sane persons imagine that mere marriage excuses people from the necessity for handling this big1 mysterious1 and difficult thing which we call human life with vigilance and determination4 ,but life on any terms for the great majority of people must have monotonous and trying periods in it4 ,it almost always has heavy sorrows and not a few bitter disappointments4 ,and it is in view of these things that married love is found to have redeeming power4 ,it is one of the lies of the cynic that love must needs burn itself out somewhere about the forties4 ,thousands of people have found at forty that the best was yet to be4 ,for the fact is that all through the afternoon of life and even when the shadows lengthen towards the end love will still send beams of beauty and romance into daily life1 and remaining still passionate will put golden content into the passing hours4 ,it is life stories of this sort which alone reveal the meaning and purpose of ,god in making the sex interest so almighty and central in life4 ,we do not understand love till we have thus looked on towards the end4 ,when it is allowed to run its true course it does in this way redeem life4 ,if ,i am told that ,i have drawn a hopelessly idealized picture of married love1 ,i can only reply by a blunt denial4 ,twenty-five years of intimate contact with ordinary people have taught me these things4 ,the kind of life ,i have pictured is going on in uncounted small and unknown homes all over the country4 ,it is going on with commonplace people who are neither very interesting nor very clever1 but who are wise enough to be simple and human4 ,the real wonder of love is just that it can lift two commonplace people into a life that is not commonplace4 ,and that is just how most of us get our chance in life4 ,the people who are going through these experiences are for the most part quiet people4 ,we do not hear about them4 ,they do not have novels written about them1 and they supply no copy for the society newspapers4 ,it is the other people who advertise their woes4 ,it is the unhappily married who make a noise4 ,only the very greatest novelists can make a good novel out of the story of a successful marriage4 ,but apparently almost anyone can produce stories that people will read if only he or she puts in enough highly colored material about the aberrations of lovers and the possible ways in which marriage can be wrecked4 ,it is sheer untruth to say that most marriages are failures4 ,in most indeed there are ups and downs4 ,the most affectionate couples make mistakes and quarrel over trifles4 ,love does not make all tempers smooth in a hurry4 ,but love does teach people how to get past such troubles4 ,it does bring balance and repose into life for both husband and wife4 ,it does tend to produce efficiency and health in those who handle it truly4 ,it does make for normal and happy development4 ,it is only with this background of positive truth about normal love that ,i can approach the other questions which must be dealt with in this book4 ,if we are going to inquire as to the sanctions of the received moral standards1 and the reasons which make the moral struggle worth while--if we are going to find the truth about the way in which to conduct married life1 and find any light on the question of birth control1 it can only be in relation to the positive truth about love and its manifold reactions on human beings4 ,we shall never learn to manage the emotions and desires which arise from our sexual natures until we have first understood what it is that nature is trying to achieve through these means4 ,to a number of these further questions ,i shall pass on in the succeeding chapters4 ,i hope ,i may do so now on the assumption that anything is worth while if only we can conserve for ourselves the possibility of such a career of experience as ,i have outlined1 and that whatever spoils such experience beforehand1 or renders it impossible1 is really an enemy both to our well-being and our happiness4 ,if ,life1 with all it yields of joy and woe ,and hope and fear444 ,is just our chance o' the prize of learning love ,how love might be1 hath been indeed and is1 then the key to all morality and all sound practical wisdom is just to conserve at all costs our chance of knowing love--love pure1 passionate1 fruitful1 and holy4 ,unreturned ,love ,i ask myself whether ,i can say anything of use to those who love deeply and truly1 but find their love unreturned4 ,many who read these pages may say to themselves that they can fully believe that mutual love is the way into a wonderful country of new and full life1 but that for them love has meant only a great longing and a great pain4 ,they could give generously and nobly4 ,they have in them a great wealth of love which they long to spend lavishly2 but because he or she remains indifferent they find themselves tormented by that which is best in them4 ,there is something here harder to face than even the sorrow of widows or widowers4 ,to have loved and lost might be said to be a tolerable situation compared with the feeling that one's love has not been wanted4 ,those who have never known such a situation may speak lightly of it4 ,those who have will always want to deal gently and reverently with it4 ,plainly it has great dangers attached to it4 ,it is easy for those who are facing it to allow themselves to become bitter and cynical4 ,it must be hard for them not to feel that many who do enjoy the privilege of mutual love are shamefully ungrateful4 ,and it must be harder still to escape pangs of jealousy at times when they see the light of joy in the eyes of lovers1 or the pangs of something finer than jealousy when they feel the charm of little children4 ,i know of only one perfect resource for men or women in this situation4 ,it lies in ,god4 ,other people always seem dull and uninteresting to those who want supremely one special person4 ,but ,god is not uninteresting4 ,he has to be sought4 ,he is not found by the careless or the cowardly4 ,but those who seek ,him earnestly do find ,him1 and as a sense of ,his love and ,his reality steals into the heart healing begins at once4 ,he restores the soul4 ,he fills the hungry4 ,he is sufficient4 ,and when that has happened other people begin to seem lovable too1 and the human love that seemed at one point not to be needed finds numbers of objects4 ,no one who can love is an unimportant person in a world that is starving for more love of divine quality4 ,and this at least ,i can report for those whom it may interest--that ,i have known some very strong and gentle men1 and some very brave1 gracious and understanding women whose lives are very rich in blessing to other people1 who know how to help the weak and comfort the sad1 and in whose faces there shines the light of a great and patient faith4 ,having wondered for a time whence came these great endowments1 ,i have learnt at last that they were prizes won in a great contest wherein having had to face the trial of love unreturned they learnt at last to accept their own sorrow without anger1 and then to use their power of love in self-forgetfulness for other troubled souls4 ,yes1 there is that to be said--to be said with great respect and tenderness because love unreturned involves a very fiery trial--but to be said with conviction because it is most blessedly true4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,falling ,,in ,,love ,,and ,,getting ,,engaged ,this will be a very short chapter1 for there is only one thing which ,i feel moved to say on this subject1 and yet it is so important that ,i put it in a chapter by itself4 ,put in a sentence it is this3 ,only real love offers a basis for a happy marriage1 and real love is something more than physical attraction4 ,if all young men and women knew that and would be strong enough to act upon it1 there would be very few calamitous marriages in the future4 ,but let us face the facts4 ,mere physical attraction can be tremendously strong4 ,it springs into existence sometimes between two people who hardly know each other4 ,the explanation of it must lie in mysterious facts about our incarnate life which ,i certainly cannot analyze4 ,once it is there it is felt as an imperious summons to marriage4 ,to each the other seems for the time being a wonderful person1 to be desired beyond all others4 ,often the critical faculty in us is entirely suspended by this attraction2 and her words seem wise1 though in fact they are silly1 and he seems noble1 though in fact he is only an averagely decent man4 ,two such persons long ardently to be together1 though they do not nearly always want to talk to each other4 ,they are held by something they do not understand1 but which moves them profoundly4 ,now by some mysterious and kindly providence ,i believe it usually happens that this mutual attraction declares itself between two people who as they do get to know each other find that they are also attracted mentally and spiritually4 ,usually from this beginning a real fellowship between the two persons will grow up which involves nearly their whole personalities4 ,many people who fell in love at first sight have made splendid marriages4 ,but it does not always happen so4 ,sometimes this physical attraction remains the only bond between two people4 ,sometimes in the other departments of life they actually fret and annoy one another4 ,sometimes a friendship refuses to grow up4 ,sometimes even while the attraction still exists contempt lurks behind it4 ,and that means that it is entirely unsafe to get engaged on the basis of a mere physical attraction4 ,there is really something impersonal about mere physical attraction4 ,the individual as such is hardly an active agent in it4 ,he or she is the victim of some great life force that seems to want to throw men and women together regardless of their mental and spiritual qualities4 ,behind a mutual physical attraction there must be some strange harmony between the two physical natures concerned4 ,but that may be the whole truth of the situation4 ,and to become engaged or married on that basis alone is just another instance of acting as if we were merely bodies1 when we are not4 ,it constitutes another attempt to forget mind1 heart1 and soul1 and is therefore disastrous4 ,and that1 of course1 means that a man and a woman1 if they want to find their true life1 must take care to get to know each other before they commit themselves1 even though they are attracted4 ,maggie in ,what ,every ,woman ,knows showed herself extraordinarily astute when she packed off her husband1 who was the victim of an intense physical attraction for another woman1 into a lonely place in the country where he would have to spend all day and every day with the lady whom he held to be his heart's delight4 ,the result was that in four or five days he was bored almost beyond endurance4 ,he had an acute mind and a very definite type of character1 and no happy life was possible for him merely on the basis of a physical passion4 ,therefore it is not enough that merely to look at her makes your blood run fast and your nerves tingle4 ,it is not enough that the very sight of him should give you acute pleasure4 ,before a man and a woman get engaged they would do well to have some long talks together1 and so to find out what their real interests are1 and whether their general views and purposes in life are such as can possibly be harmonized4 ,marriage lasts for a long time1 and is a poor affair when a husband is bored by his wife's conversation1 or when a wife is repelled by her husband's views4 ,even to such there may come recurrent hours of ardent love1 but both will want more than that4 ,we must take our whole selves into marriage1 and to have experienced a mere physical attraction is no proof that we shall be able to do it4 ,i remember one very distressed young wife who once asked me for help4 ,she had been carried away by the attraction of a masterful man1 and had lived through her engagement and the early days of marriage in a whirl of excitement in which she never stopped to consider what sort of a man he truly was4 ,a month or two after marriage she inevitably began to find out1 and was both shocked and repelled4 ,she was longing to have a friend in her husband2 but they both felt that a friendship between them was impossible4 ,i am sure it must mean one of the hardest tasks which life ever sets any of us to keep one's head when under the influence of such an attraction1 and perhaps to have to decide not to act at all in consequence of it4 ,to stifle an incipient passion in that way may be a terrific business for some people4 ,but we are queer complex creatures1 and we needs must take account of the whole of ourselves if we are to find life4 ,i repeat1 physical attraction is often the beginning of everything else4 ,but it is not always so1 and for that reason we must needs beware4 ,of course the converse of all this is also true4 ,a man and a woman may attain to a fine fellowship of mind and find co-operation in many ways congenial1 and yet may experience no mutual physical attraction4 ,and if they begin to think of marriage they have indeed a delicate problem before them4 ,generally1 ,i believe1 the further intimacies which come with marriage will awaken physical instinct in both1 and when nature has had her way with them a really complete marriage will be attained4 ,but it is not always so4 ,neither may have the power fully to awaken the other4 ,in some marriages that are fine friendships either the man or the woman is half-conscious of deep-seated longings that have never been satisfied4 ,and if by chance a third person appears with the power fully to awaken the physical nature of either the husband or the wife1 a very difficult situation arises4 ,i do not say it is a situation which cannot be handled successfully4 ,i do not believe we need be the victims of passion4 ,but only a fool would deliberately court the possibility of having to face the situation ,i have described4 ,wherefore ,i say again we need to take account of the whole of ourselves if we are to find life4 ,,chapter ,v ,,our ,,moral ,,standards ,there are at least three moral standards in existence in the ,english world4 ,there is first the ,christian standard1 for which men and women are equal1 which recognizes the sacredness of personality in every case1 and which calls for absolute continence and chastity before marriage and absolute fidelity after it4 ,this is the standard ,i am concerned to understand and defend4 ,there is1 secondly1 the legal standard1 for which men and women have not equal rights1 but which1 in the marriage and divorce laws1 accords to woman an inferior position--which takes no cognizance of immorality between unmarried persons unless children result and which1 in ,england as distinguished from ,scotland1 attaches no penalties to infidelity on the part of a husband4 ,and then1 thirdly1 there is the working moral standard of society4 ,i cannot describe it because it differs so greatly in different sections of society4 ,in general it has to be said that it treats lack of chastity among unmarried men as a very venial offence and punishes the same offence in women with very severe social penalties2 and it may certainly be said that it has not yet demanded a full recognition by the law of the equality of the sexes in the matter of moral and married rights4 ,now the question of the relation of our legal standards to the ,christian standard is an exceedingly difficult and yet vitally important one4 ,the hope of enforcing the ,christian standard by law has tempted many minds4 ,in our own day many try to make the law of the land enforce the ,christian position about divorce4 ,but there are grave difficulties in connection with this course4 ,the ,christian attitude and spirit cannot be produced by law4 ,the scope of mere law must always be much more restricted than the scope of the mind of ,christ4 ,the ,christian mind is not primarily concerned with penalties and does not desire to see penalties attached to the failure to reach the ,christian standard in all things4 ,to attach a criminal stigma to all lapses from the ,christian way in morals would be disastrous4 ,what might be expected from the law of the land is1 ,i think1 that it should recognize the fundamental equality of men and women1 and that1 while demanding less1 it should at least point towards the ,christian standard 7see note at end of chapter74 ,for the rest1 the adjustment of legal enactments to the ,christian ideal must always be a matter for delicate and vigilant handling4 ,with regard to the working moral standard of society there is just this to be said1 that if the ,christian standard be the true one then our aim must be nothing less than a condition in which public opinion shall in all things endorse the latter4 ,to-day the social standard is lax when the ,christian one is strict1 and cruel when the ,christian is generous and forgiving4 ,in saying this ,i am of course thinking of the true ,christian standard4 ,there is a conventional ,christian standard which is more cruel and unforgiving than society's standard4 ,but it is really definitely unchristian4 ,further1 society is radically insincere1 forgiving what can be kept secret1 condoning on account of moral skepticism much general laxity1 and yet breaking out into a mock moral indignation before discovered vice4 ,we are all in great danger in this connection on account of the mysterious force of the herd instinct4 ,we tend to accept what others think just because they think it4 ,we live under the power of convention often without realizing how insincere and hollow convention may be4 ,wherefore if we are ever to make progress it becomes nothing less than a duty to scrutinize current standards4 ,they may be less than ,christian1 and if we are ever to make progress it can only come through an honest process of inquiry and revision4 ,the ,reasons for the ,christian ,standard ,to-day the spirit of inquiry and challenge is definitely demanding the reasons for the ,christian standard itself4 ,but ,i have no complaint to offer on that account4 ,i believe only good can come from it in the end4 ,i believe the stored wisdom of the ages is embodied in that ,christian standard1 and that the more we know about sex the more clearly do we perceive that that standard points the way1 and the only way1 to real happiness for men and women in social relations1 and to the attainment of our highest life4 ,but ,i freely acknowledge the right of the rising generation to demand the reasons for this standard4 ,i propose1 therefore1 to try to state those reasons on the assumption that ,i am addressing honest and sincere minds who only want to know the truth4 ,i can only work out the answer bit by bit4 ,to begin with1 ,why is self-abuse wrong8 ,it comes under the head of incontinence1 which the ,bible and all serious moral teachers so firmly condemn4 ,but why8 ,doctors are beginning to say that unless it is excessive it does no particular harm either to the brain or the body4 ,its victims worry about it--,but need they8 ,here at least the answer is easily found because it is supplied by those1 and by all of those1 who indulge in the practice4 ,i have never met a man who did not despise himself for it4 ,it invariably leaves a man out of conceit with himself4 ,i have heard men stoutly defending irregular relations with women1 but ,i have never heard this practice defended1 even though it is exceedingly common4 ,robust male sentiment is all against it4 ,and the reason is that1 because it is an attempt to satisfy sexual craving in an abnormal way1 it always leaves psychic disturbance behind it4 ,it may relieve a physical tension1 but it does nothing to satisfy the whole man4 ,it leaves a bad taste in the mind4 ,both mind and spirit as well as the body enter into true sexual experience4 ,they have no place in this1 and by reason of it the inner harmonies of a man's nature are inevitably jangled4 ,i have noticed1 too1 a further and very serious consequence of this habit4 ,it plants deep in many men's minds1 and especially in the minds of sensitive and intellectual men1 an abhorrence for the sexual side of themselves4 ,just because they have never achieved freedom from them1 they hate and despise the passions that overcome them4 ,this often leads to very serious consequences when love enters into their lives4 ,they want then to dissociate love from all its physical concomitants4 ,they regard all things sexual as impure4 ,it may even come to them as a shock to find out that the women they love are capable of passion1 and they resent any bodily effects of their own love4 ,and this may almost spell calamity unless psychological adjustment is achieved in time4 ,for true marriage must involve a clean and happy acceptance of the sexual facts4 ,a man must bring a clean mind to the whole of his common life with the woman he loves1 and self-abuse is ultimately a serious evil just because it defiles the mind4 ,then1 secondly1 why are wild oats evil things to sow8 ,why should we not endorse the shrug of the shoulders with which society treats them8 ,i notice that even women lightly forgive them1 and ,i believe they make a mistake4 ,forgiveness is indeed always a divine operation1 but light forgiveness implies that nothing serious has happened4 ,what then is so serious about licentiousness8 ,i must of necessity discriminate at this point4 ,by wildness men often mean occasional intimacies into which they do not pretend to be led by love4 ,about such experiences ,i suppose men would say that they amount merely to the satisfaction of a physical appetite1 and that after they are over a man may go his way as little affected as is a man who has satisfied his thirst4 ,but that is not the truth about them4 ,the man in such cases suffers damage4 ,he suffers it because he has attempted an impossibility4 ,he has tried to separate the various parts of his being1 and to satisfy his animal nature without any consideration for his mind and heart4 ,but sexual experience itself proves that that cannot be done4 ,the sexual instinct is intimately related to our whole beings1 but especially to our affections4 ,at the moment of sexual intimacy a man at least pretends for the moment that he loves1 and when he offers that pretence to someone whom in reality he despises and means to leave in an hour1 he does violence to his whole nature4 ,the soul of him insists all the time that this is a low business4 ,his outraged mind and heart protest and produce an evil after-taste4 ,no man likes to remember such events4 ,the best of him could not enter into them4 ,he is left jangled and upset4 ,all that makes such doings seem right at any time is that when it has reached a certain degree of intensity passion seems to justify its own demands4 ,that is the age-long illusion whereby evil deceives and betrays us4 ,but till we have learnt to repudiate that suggestion we are not even on the way to succeed in this part of life4 ,often the men who defend such indulgences admit that they are gross1 and then fall back upon the contention that a man must be gross at times--that his nature demands it4 ,it is a fairly serious slander to offer to our sex4 ,fortunately there exist thousands of incarnate proofs that it is only a slander4 ,we all know that his sexual nature sets the ordinary healthy man a very serious problem1 and about that ,i have tried to speak with sympathy and charity in a later chapter4 ,but the assertion that a man must be gross is hard to hear with patience4 ,it is one of the lies that savor of cowardice4 ,by wildness1 however1 men sometimes mean temporary intimate relations between men and women to which they are led by love1 and such relationships are at least very different in moral quality from the gross ones ,i have spoken of4 ,why must they be condemned8 ,my whole contention is that love and love alone makes physical intimacy pure and right4 ,why then cannot love sanctify passionate relationships outside marriage8 ,why should the union of true lovers be held to be impure before marriage and pure after it8 ,let me answer the last query first4 ,i do not think the union of true lovers apart from marriage is impure4 ,i believe that such lovers make a very serious mistake--a mistake that may turn out to have been cruel4 ,i believe that society is utterly right in condemning such unions1 and that those who really understand will always refuse to enter on them4 ,but impure is not the word to apply to them4 ,they are clean and beautiful compared to the bodily intimacies of those who marry without love4 ,and yet ,i do not think that even emotionally they can ever be perfect4 ,sexual intimacy is not the perfect and sacramental thing which it is meant to be unless both parties come to it with free and untroubled minds1 feeling that what they do is a right and happy thing4 ,but in the unions of unmarried persons there generally lurks some half-hidden sense of shame4 ,some part of the being of one or the other really endorses society's standards1 and even love cannot dispel the shadows thus created4 ,and yet still that does not meet the challenge to show the reason for society's standard4 ,the reasons are really many4 ,in the first place1 if unmarried lovers take steps to prevent their intimacy from having its due fruit in a child1 they are robbing their experience of its fine spontaneity1 and introducing an element of calculation and caution into what should be a thing unbound4 ,while1 on the other hand1 if they do not prevent the coming of a child they are1 in the present state of society1 doing a definite and cruel wrong to their own offspring4 ,to love a child dearly and to know that by your own act you have handicapped it in life from the first must be a bitter experience indeed4 ,i am well aware that law in regard to illegitimate children is unchristian4 ,even more is the attitude of society to them unchristian4 ,but so long as things remain as they are1 the parents of an illegitimate child do it a wrong4 ,further1 even though law and custom should alter1 it would still be true that a child without both its own parents is seriously handicapped in life4 ,which leads on to my next point2 for1 secondly1 if two lovers really love1 they want to give their whole selves to one another1 including their whole futures4 ,no man truly and loyally loves a woman who wants to keep open a loophole of escape from her4 ,it would be well if women would always apply this test to the passionate protestations of men4 ,real love is love without reserve4 ,true sexual intimacy in itself means taking each other for better or for worse1 and when lovers unite themselves though still unwilling for such permanent unions1 their love is not perfect4 ,they are not really united by love4 ,they are letting mere present desire carry them away4 ,i hear of many men1 and even of some women1 who ask why they should not have many lovers if they have many friends4 ,the answer is that no man gives his whole self to a friend1 but that love1 when it is real1 does mean the giving of your whole self4 ,and that1 plainly1 a man can only do to one woman and a woman to one man4 ,it is generally in defense of temporary unions that people question the necessity for marriage vows4 ,but temporary unions cannot be ended happily4 ,if they were entered on without love1 they are gross things1 as ,i have already said2 and if they were the creation of real love1 there is no happy way out of them4 ,the two have been too close to one another to part without tearing apart--leaving ragged and it may be bleeding edges on their personalities4 ,then again1 as ,i have tried to show already1 love is only made perfect when it is allowed to issue in responsibilities and labors4 ,divorced from them it is a selfish thing4 ,there is a wild and lawless element in passion1 which is part of its glory4 ,but that glory is only sweetened and justified for those who let their passion carry them through the whole career of experience to which it summons them4 ,all this may be accepted as establishing a case for permanent unions as the only legitimate things1 but inasmuch as it claims that the demand for permanence lies in the very heart of love itself it may still be asked with some urgency1 ,why introduce a marriage ceremony with public vows8 ,and here ,i must follow a somewhat different line of thought which may at first sight seem contradictory4 ,in spite of all that ,i have said1 ,i believe that even ardent lovers are all the better for being bound1 because of the wayward element of inconstancy in human nature4 ,thousands of married persons have never once been conscious of their vows4 ,they have never come near thinking1 ,we must hold together because we promised1 or ,we must make the best of things because we are tied together4 ,thousands have never for a moment wanted to change their condition4 ,but with others it is not so4 ,no men or women are always at their best4 ,though they may have had moments on the heights when they gladly took each other for better or for worse1 there will come other moods when the finer notes of love will not sound in their ears4 ,there will come to all but a few couples hours when they will be irritated and annoyed with one another4 ,and if they were free to do so1 they might fling away from each other and so miss after all the best that was to be4 ,for the best is not to be found in those early days when passion flames and dominates1 but rather in those later days when two personalities have at last become really fitted to each other and when the daily round of labor is illumined by the lamp of love4 ,and therefore1 being what we are1 it is a good thing for our own sakes that we should be bound4 ,even though the bonds should actually mean pain1 it is still good that they should be allowed to bind1 though it be only for the sake of the children4 ,passionate lovers do not think of children1 but society must needs put their claims before all others4 ,probably the historical reason why society came to insist on monogamy and to condemn all irregular unions lay in the fact that it is the inalienable right of a child to be brought up by a father and a mother1 and that no society can be strong and finely ordered unless its foundations are laid in family life1 wherein men and women co-operate to give the rising generation every possible chance4 ,i assume that ,i am addressing honest minds that wish to handle the issues of life sincerely and wisely1 and to them ,i am sure it must be worth pointing out that it can never be right for individuals to order their lives on principles which could not be given a universal application4 ,i can well understand a passionate couple being quite sure that they will hold to one another throughout life1 though they be in no way legally tied4 ,i can imagine that many such couples would resent as a profanity the mere suggestion that they could ever want to part4 ,but imagine what society would become if legal ties were abolished4 ,you and your man or woman may be quite sure that you would never part1 but you know that thousands would4 ,couples would set out on the joint life with little thought1 and allow the first painful misunderstanding to part them4 ,many men would shake off their obligations almost as soon as they found they were becoming heavy4 ,both men and women would pass from one temporary union to another1 mutilating their better natures in the process4 ,thousands of women would be left in helpless loneliness4 ,tens of thousands of children would go uncared for and neglected4 ,the picture becomes more horrible the more carefully you look into its details4 ,and as you look you begin to see the real value of our moral standard4 ,it is not an instance of the fussiness of ,mrs4 ,grundy4 ,it is not an instance of slave morality imposed upon free people4 ,it is not one of the arbitrary dicta of a tyrannical ,church4 ,it is rather the embodiment of the wisdom learnt through ages of varied and often tragic experience4 ,it is an attempt to conserve for each rising generation the possibility of the best in the field of sexual experience4 ,it does point out the way of happy1 healthy1 and complete life4 ,i have left to the end a thought about the marriage ceremony which will only appeal to some1 but which ,i feel ought to have a place in this chapter4 ,many fine and sensitive lovers shrink from the publicity of ordinary weddings4 ,their love is to them so sacred and so personal a thing that they do not want to make any parade of themselves before a great gathering of relations and friends4 ,well6 ,i know of no binding reason why such sensitive couples should call in the relations and friends4 ,those relations and friends like to rejoice with those who rejoice1 because of a very human and kindly interest4 ,and many couples1 and especially many brides1 greatly enjoy their friends on their marriage day4 ,if1 however1 a couple prefer a private wedding that is their affair4 ,but about the place and value of a religious ceremony ,i do want to add a word4 ,if a man and a woman realize that their love is a sacred thing1 ,i believe they will find they actually want to make the great step into final intimacy in the presence of ,god1 and to stop for a moment ere they go up into that mysterious country to ask ,his blessing and guidance4 ,i have said that at a certain point love itself demands intimacy1 and that it is an entirely natural thing for us to desire it4 ,but none the less it is a momentous hour in the life of any couple when they pass behind the last barriers and enter on a sacramental oneness of body4 ,it is a wonderful hour--the hour of all others when the romance of life is most splendid4 ,but just because it is that1 and because the issues of that hour are so far-reaching1 what could be more seemly than that they should pause for a moment on the threshold and ask the ,giver of all love to bless and guide them6 ,to kneel first together before ,him1 and then to pass on--to acknowledge ,his goodness as the author of love1 and then to go up on to love's high places1 what could be more just to the real facts6 ,i know not with what solemnities those who do not believe in ,god are going to dignify that hour in life1 but to all young men and women who do believe in ,god1 ,i would like to say with all possible urgency3 ,be sure you do not take that great step until you can ask ,god's blessing on the taking of it4 ,be sure you pause a while to be quiet before ,him ere you allow your love to have its final sway over you4 ,,note4--,it will be said at once at this point by some1 ,that means the law is wrong in allowing the remarriage of divorced persons1 because in that case there is a definite contradiction between the legal and the ,christian standards4 ,i have deliberately excluded a discussion of the problem of divorce from this book because ,i am concerned with the unalterable truths about sex rather than with the social question of how best unhappy situations arising from sin can be remedied4 ,but at this point ,i must say a word4 ,i conceive the ,christian position to be ,marriage cannot be broken without sin4 ,and that position the law endorses4 ,it requires proof that in fact a marriage has been broken by sin1 before it will sever the legal bonds4 ,i cannot1 however1 believe it to be a ,christian interest to maintain the mock appearance of a marriage when 7if ever7 all moral content has disappeared from it4 ,christianity calls for an unlimited forgiveness4 ,but when forgiveness and patience have failed and either husband or wife has found another connection or has even ceased to have any vital relation to his or her partner in marriage1 then ,i feel that that marriage is morally dead4 ,and dead things should be buried if possible4 ,there remains the question of remarriage4 ,if the law allows this and if ,christianity says ,there is a higher way to which ,god calls you1 ,i do not think there is here an indefensible contradiction4 ,it is a case of a higher and a lower way4 ,the law says ,i will not compel you to remain unmarried4 ,christianity says ,i will not compel you at all1 but ,i call you in love's name4 ,that is exactly the situation we must accept in connection with many of ,christ's precepts4 ,giving alms4 ,loving enemies4 ,refusing to judge4 ,refusing to swear1 etc41 etc4 ,these are all clear ,christian duties4 ,but law cannot deal with them4 ,all this seems to me quite plain4 ,in common honesty1 however1 ,i must confess that it is not clear to me that the spirit of ,christ does forbid the remarriage of a divorced person in all cases4 ,christian marriage always has love in it4 ,it is not always there in actual marriage4 ,we must think the whole matter out afresh in terms of love before we can understand the ,christian way4 ,some things the world calls marriages are not really marriages at all to the ,christian mind4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,a ,,man',s ,,struggle ,a great many men are secretly ashamed of the very fact that they have to struggle with temptation in the matter of purity4 ,in an inner chamber of their lives they contend with impure thoughts and impure suggestions1 but they try to keep the doors of that chamber shut1 and would blush if others knew what goes on there4 ,yet all healthy and normal men are so tempted4 ,those who seem to have escaped have generally taken the course of repressing the whole sexual side of their natures1 and of shutting their eyes to the sexual facts of life1 which is not a wise course4 ,and so1 firstly1 in view of the task of facing temptation it would be well for us all to realize that temptation itself is not sin4 ,we may expose ourselves to quite unnecessary temptation4 ,we may play with fire4 ,we may be fools1 if we will4 ,but some element of temptation is part of our normal lot in life1 and we need not blush about it4 ,to the average young man it can truly be said1 ,there hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man4 ,in this respect we are all brothers in arms1 and ,i believe the first step towards victory lies in an honest facing of the fact4 ,let us admit that we are tempted and get openly to the business of understanding how temptation can be conquered4 ,let me attempt first of all to clear away certain mischievous delusions about the subject4 ,it is actually believed in many quarters1 and half believed in many more1 that continence is bad for a man4 ,it is only natural1 men often say1 for an adult man to satisfy his desires1 and if he does not he suffers in health4 ,it is a point on which we must let the doctors speak1 even although plenty of individual men could testify from experience that the idea is nonsense4 ,and what do the doctors say6 ,sir ,dyce ,ductworth1 ,sir ,james ,paget1 ,sir ,andrew ,clark1 ,sir ,clifford ,allbutt1 and scores of others have all expressed themselves with the clearest emphasis4 ,sir ,james ,paget1 for instance1 says1 ,chastity or purity of life does no harm to mind or body4 ,its discipline is excellent4 ,marriage can safely be waited for4 ,further1 in the noble little book on ,sex by ,thomson and ,geddes1 ,i find this sentence3 ,fr1 a leading authority on sex pathology and hygiene1 denies categorically that a man is ever hurt by continence1 and affirms that he is always the stronger4 ,what probably is true is that if a man lives in thought an impure life1 and submits himself to exciting suggestions and imaginations1 the secretions of his body will be increased1 so that he may become subject to very severe strain4 ,and that1 if continued1 may work nervous damage4 ,but this only means that a continent life requires thought and proper direction4 ,there need be no evil effects from continence4 ,we must be quite clear about this point1 for so long as we toy in mind with the suggestion that there is any natural necessity for incontinence1 we are fatally weakened for our struggle4 ,it is a man's glory to be master of himself1 and to maintain his virginity through the years before marriage4 ,and he may quite well achieve it1 if he will but go the right way about it4 ,no doubt the struggle is much harder for some than for others4 ,no doubt there are reasons in plenty for charity to those who fail4 ,but there is no real reason why any man should not hope and expect to succeed1 and a right expectation is the very foundation of success4 ,then1 secondly1 a man would do well to realize one simple physiological truth about his body4 ,that body naturally and regularly secretes semen4 ,but it is not necessary that that semen should be discharged by sexual activity4 ,on the contrary1 a large part of it can be reabsorbed by the body and used up in mental and physical activities to the great benefit of the body and the enrichment of life4 ,that is why the ancients taught that ,diana is the natural born enemy of ,venus4 ,the man who takes plenty of regular exercise employs his vital forces in a way that lessens the strain of his moral conflict4 ,and though it is true that this re-absorption of semen does not completely remove it1 ,nature has her own method during sleep of readjusting things in a quite harmless way4 ,from this it follows of course that the real secret of a successful struggle for purity lies in living a life full of wholesome and varied activities4 ,our artistic sensibilities are intimately related to our sexual natures1 and by some self-expression through art1 or by the sympathetic appreciation of the art of others1 we provide an enriching outlet for our natural energies4 ,social activities and wholesome social intercourse1 too1 are of the very greatest importance4 ,the sedentary and lonely life is often found quite fatal1 and a life in which only male companionships are available is very undesirable4 ,indeed it may truly be said that the best way of avoiding undesirable relations with women lies in the cultivation of right and happy relations with them4 ,i suppose more men have been brought through this difficult period owing to the fact that association with women of refined natures made the thought of sexual irregularity seem repulsive1 than by any other single force4 ,but at all costs let us be sure that we live full lives4 ,i heard lately of a man who was so constantly assailed by sexual cravings1 and so convinced that in him they were abnormally strong1 that he went to consult a psychotherapist4 ,when he had been fully examined it was found that in him sexual cravings were really rather weaker than in the average man1 but that in the house of his life they had no rivals1 so that he imagined them to be almost all-powerful4 ,it is when a man allows himself to sit in idleness and indoors that the fumes of lust are apt to rise up and make the windows dim1 till in that stuffy air he lives evilly at least in thought1 and is weakened for the problem of defense4 ,but the man who will get out into the bracing open air of life will find his noxious fancies blown away and his mind restored to health4 ,then1 thirdly1 there are certain fairly obvious points in relation to the right management of the body about which doctors are agreed4 ,they really amount in general to the suggestion that we should live a simple and bracing life1 and keep brother body in his proper place of subjection all round4 ,keep your body clean1 and do not funk your cold bath in the morning4 ,avoid luxurious foods1 and overeating of any sort4 ,get up when you wake up in the morning1 and avoid lying in bed half awake4 ,take plenty of fresh air and exercise every day4 ,and finally1 and at all costs1 keep absolutely sober4 ,probably the last of these pieces of advice is by far the most important4 ,it is the unvarnished truth that the vast majority of men who have gone wrong did so for the first time1 not when they were drunk1 but when liquor had made them reckless and forgetful4 ,the plain truth about alcohol is that it has a twofold effect upon the human constitution4 ,on the one hand it heightens desire1 and on the other it lowers self-control4 ,it is that fatal combination that has been the undoing of many a man4 ,on one night of folly men have thrown away that which they may have guarded jealously for years1 and not because they were vicious or gross in nature1 but only because they allowed the edge to go off their sobriety4 ,often by the next night they would have given almost anything to be able to live that bit of life over again and live it differently4 ,but it was too late4 ,i know of no argument for temperance that has anything like the weight of this one4 ,then1 too1 a word must be said about the broad jest and the undesirable story4 ,many a broad jest is excused because it has in it some savor of real humor2 but it would be well for us to ask ourselves deliberately what things we are going to allow ourselves to laugh at4 ,we all laugh at some of the ways of lovers and no doubt we always will4 ,they have beautiful ways1 but beyond question some of them are amusing4 ,there is no possible reaction to a girl's persuasion that her boy is pure hero and saint except a smile2 and love itself will blend with such smiles4 ,but it is quite a different thing to bring laughter to bear on love itself1 or on marriage1 or on the sacramental intimacies that express love4 ,i believe it is a profane thing to do4 ,our best instincts call on us to treat these things as sacred4 ,and sacred things are easily spoiled by careless speech4 ,no vulgarities are quite so vulgar as those which1 in printed rags and ragged talk1 are clustered round marriage4 ,in the name of all that is beautiful and holy let us be done with them4 ,further still1 a great many broad stories have in them a minimum of humor and a maximum of dirt4 ,by a strange perversity men who are scrupulously clean in body and who have both intellectual and artistic capacities will stoop to defile their tongues with such things4 ,there are few colleges or offices where public opinion entirely forbids them4 ,but they do a deadly work none the less4 ,they cling about the mind with fatal tenacity4 ,they surround the subject of sex with unclean associations4 ,they defile the inner house of life4 ,and it is in that inner house of thought and imagination that the real battle of purity is fought4 ,our real task in this part of life is to see sex as a clean and beautiful thing1 to be treated with reverence4 ,thousands of people never achieve this1 even though they live respectable and decent lives4 ,and the reason lies in the fact that in their early days vile stories and jokes defiled the whole subject for them4 ,a similar thing is true of pictures4 ,some day we shall as a race recover the sense that the form of a woman is one of the most beautiful things in all ,god's earth4 ,we shall look at the great statues and pictures which do justice to that beauty with no other feelings than thankfulness and joy4 ,but there are very few men who can do that today4 ,what has made it impossible is the existence of pictures of a suggestive kind1 which are handed round in furtive ways1 and are literally drenched with unclean associations4 ,for which reason it is a real point in connection with a man's struggle that he should have nothing to do with suggestive pictures4 ,many years ago ,i had a friend with great intellectual power4 ,he held a position of great responsibility and was widely respected4 ,he also had conspicuous literary gifts1 and knew how to work hard and well4 ,but he brought to me the greatest shock ,i have ever had in my life4 ,when he was well on in the forties he suddenly fell with a crash1 and had to fly the country4 ,he was never able to show his face in ,england again1 and died a diseased exile in a foreign land4 ,and all because he had been overtaken by sexual sin of an indescribably shameful kind4 ,the shock he gave me was one of sorrow1 for he had been a friend4 ,but it was still more one of amazement that such a thing could have happened to such a man4 ,later ,i came to understand4 ,when his effects were being sold there was found in his study cupboard a great pile of indecent ,french plays and novels4 ,that was what did it4 ,in secret he had for years debauched his mind1 and inevitably in the end his thoughts brought forth fruit4 ,that experience taught me once for all how certain it is that the inner world of thoughts is the real place where a man attains or misses purity4 ,there is something grim and stern about this business4 ,i confess to a certain wholesome fear in connection with it which ,i hope never to lose2 though fear will never do as our predominating emotion in this respect4 ,but ,i keep a place for fear--enough of it to drive me to my knees4 ,i have seen boys go wrong at fifteen1 and ,i have seen old men go wrong at sixty4 ,i believe that no man is safe until he is dead4 ,he was no coward1 nor had he a licentious past behind him1 who confessed that late on in life he had to beat his body and bring it into subjection lest having preached to others he should be a castaway4 ,he knew2 and was honest and wise enough to keep up precautions to the end4 ,there is simply no way through this part of life for the man with slack habits and a self-indulgent attitude of spirit4 ,the man who will not stand up and brace himself1 who is not game for a fight1 and will not endure hardness is never going to make anything fine out of the splendid but difficult enterprise we call human life4 ,and all the time he will need to have his sentinels out4 ,all the time he will need to make sure that he is master in his own house of life1 and allows no interloping thoughts or imaginations to run riot there4 ,but what about religion6 ,the conventional way in which to end a plain talk about any sort of temptation is to say that ,god can and will help a man in those straits where his own will is too weak1 and that through prayer there is a way of escape for us all4 ,i believe all that absolutely4 ,with great gratitude ,i may say that ,i know it4 ,indeed ,i cannot understand how any man who has been saved from overthrow can fail to see as he looks back on his life that it was just the goodness of ,god that upheld him4 ,but ,i have learnt to beware how ,i tell men and women that by prayer they can get through1 though all other means fail4 ,men who were having to face a severe strain of temptation have come back to me and told me that they had tried the way of prayer and that it had not availed them4 ,the fact is that something far greater than a mere attempt to use prayer as a special device for this special need is required4 ,we are so made that religion is a divine possibility for all of us4 ,indeed it is more than a possibility3 it is a necessity if life is ever to seem complete4 ,without it all other things fail in the end to hold off attacks of disappointment and ennui4 ,because we were made with the capacity for it1 we cannot be content without it4 ,it may take many years for a man to discover that without religion life is going to be a failure2 and it is that discovery that constitutes for many the tragedy of middle life4 ,in early days the varied interests of life carry many through in some sort of satisfaction4 ,and yet even with the young the life that is without religion is of necessity an unbalanced life4 ,parts of the man or woman concerned are inactive1 and the other parts occupy too much of the stage4 ,till an interest in ,god--that greatest of all interests--has entered a man's life attention is too much concerned with other things4 ,till the spirit is awake the body obtrudes itself too much on consciousness4 ,and thus a man fights the battle of purity on wrong terms4 ,there is no interest so cleansing as an interest in ,god4 ,nothing so takes a man out of himself as the attempt to face ,his demands4 ,nothing is so certain to counterbalance all unruly thoughts as to know and worship ,him4 ,no discipline is so bracing and purifying as the discipline of seeking ,him4 ,but this seeking of ,god means something much greater than the mere attempt to use prayer for a special purpose4 ,it means getting our whole life rightly related to ,him4 ,it means subordinating our desires to ,his will1 and seeing our whole life as something to be used for ,his glory4 ,religion cannot be made a mere appendage to life4 ,it cannot be kept in an outhouse like a motor bike1 to be used when occasion calls4 ,when ,god comes into a life ,he comes to rule--and to rule everything4 ,no doubt we are all tempted to resent the surrender of self which is thus asked of us4 ,instinctively we cry out for our own way4 ,we want to manage our own lives and to plan out our futures in such ways as will please us4 ,because religion involves discipline and obedience1 we are all apt to turn away from it4 ,we may have liked some of the emotions which are associated with worship1 and inspired by religious thoughts4 ,but we want to call no one ,master--not even ,god4 ,so long as that state lasts no one will find religion a help in the battle with temptation4 ,if we faced the truth about ourselves many of us would find that what we really want is to be allowed to live rather worldly and selfish lives and then to be able to bring ,god in on occasion to save us from certain particular sins which we loathe4 ,but that cannot be4 ,in other words1 the way of escape is to get one's whole life and one's whole nature rightly related to ,god4 ,that means the profoundest of all possible readjustments1 because it means that instead of putting himself in the center of every picture1 a man puts ,god there4 ,and when that readjustment has been completed the power of temptation is gone4 ,i would not now say to a man merely that if he will pray he will get the help he needs4 ,i would say that if he is willing for a real spiritual experience he may pass into a new state of being1 in which he will fight with success where he used to fail4 ,religion will do all things for you if you give your whole self to it1 but it will not fit into life as an occasional resource4 ,let no one suppose1 however1 that consciousness of ,god has no relation to the sexual side of life4 ,far from it4 ,what the man who submits to ,god will find is1 firstly1 that he is helped to clean and reverent living1 and to mastery over his body4 ,but he will also find that when at last real love calls him up into complete companionship of body and soul with a woman he loves1 ,god ,himself will enter into that life and become associated with all the emotions and activities which spring from the sex element in our beings4 ,such men will come to thank ,god that ,he made them with sexual powers in their natures4 ,they will thank ,him that passion is a fact4 ,they will say with utter conviction that love with all it means both for the bodily and the spiritual life is the greatest of all ,god's gifts to man4 ,only to have experience of that quality a man must come to marriage undefiled4 ,that is the fact that makes the struggle worth while4 ,that is what ,browning meant when he said it was worth ,that a man should strive and agonize ,and taste a veriest hell on earth ,for the hope of such a prize4 ,god does not call us men to a meaningless struggle4 ,the fierceness of temptation is not mere cruelty4 ,the prizes in this part of life are great beyond all telling4 ,if any man who reads these pages will but brace himself for the struggle and put forth all his manhood in order to win through1 the day will come when he and a woman who is dear to him will thank ,god that he did fight1 and will understand that it was abundantly worth while4 ,she is waiting for you out there in the future4 ,she hopes and prays that when you do find her1 you will be such a man as can be honored and truly loved4 ,she probably keeps herself for you1 even though you have not yet met her1 with some delicate and shy reserve4 ,you will never really be worthy of all that she will give you1 but you may at least prepare for her and yourself a great and holy experience4 ,to know the full beauty of the thing that married life may be is nearly if not quite the greatest of human attainments4 ,to spoil it beforehand is the most pitiful of all pities4 ,wherefore get up and fight6 ,,addendum1 ,,especially ,,for ,,young ,,men ,,struggling ,,with ,,self-,,abuse ,it is in this form that sexual temptation comes into the lives of a very great many men1 including many able1 high-minded men4 ,all the general things already said in this chapter are relevant to your case1 but ,i wish to add some direct words to you because ,i have acute sympathy with you in your trial4 ,you ought1 of course1 to have been warned when you were very young1 and then you might have escaped the danger4 ,possibly you slipped into the habit without at first realizing that it was wrong2 and probably now you hate the habit1 and even sometimes hate yourselves because of it4 ,it is quite likely1 too1 that false and exaggerated things have been said to you about it and made you miserably afraid4 ,now it is a bad habit4 ,it is bad because you feel it to be unworthy and rather unclean1 and it creates unhappy associations in your mind in connection with sex1 which is a very unfortunate thing for you4 ,and it is a perversion4 ,it is an unnatural way of satisfying sexual craving1 and1 as you know1 it leaves psychic disturbance behind it4 ,the one perfect way of satisfying sexual desire is complete union with a woman you truly and honorably love4 ,that leaves behind it a feeling of complete satisfaction and rest4 ,all other ways leave psychic disturbance4 ,further1 this habit often leads to active homosexuality4 ,i hear of men who talk as if homosexuality was quite a normal and right thing with men of a certain type4 ,it is1 in fact1 always a regression 7see quotation from ,dr4 ,crichton ,miller in chapter for girls1 p4 #ajg74 ,do get that fixed in your mind4 ,it is an abnormal1 unnatural thing which has definite and evil nervous results4 ,but let me get back to the problem of self-abuse4 ,the ,student ,christian ,movement lately collected from a number of doctors1 psychologists1 and other experienced people1 a body of valuable truths and suggestions about this matter1 and ,i cannot do better than pass them on to you4 ,firstly1 what are the facts about its consequences8 ,these have been exaggerated4 ,its effects are chiefly psychical4 ,it does not affect the intelligence or weaken mental power4 ,it takes long to weaken the body1 and it is rarely1 if ever1 a cause of insanity4 ,on the other hand1 it does destroy self-respect2 it does leave men psychically disturbed1 and for that reason it affects consciousness of the presence of ,god disproportionately quickly as compared with other sins1 and produces the feeling of loss of spiritual power4 ,there are1 in fact1 abundant reasons for desiring deliverance1 though there is no reason for panic4 ,as has been said again and again in this book1 our sexual nature is a gift from ,god1 with glorious possibilities in it of enriching experience4 ,that is why it is so very important not to misuse it4 ,now if you really want deliverance1 you have first to realize that the seat of the trouble and of the cure is in the mind4 7,occasionally there is a slight abnormality that requires surgical treatment1 but that is exceptional47 ,the content of the mind in ordinary times is even more important than at the crisis4 ,it may be too late then4 ,you must prepare the ground by resting on ,god even when you do not feel the need of ,him4 ,fill your mind with clean1 healthy things1 and expel lustful thoughts1 even though they may seem to have no special physical effects4 ,give full play to your affections--love of family1 of friends1 of men and women1 and children4 ,devote your bodily strength1 and the life force that is in you1 to great positive ends--the service of ,god and man4 ,keep healthy4 ,here are wise practical details4 ,take plenty of exercise1 but not too much4 ,men often fail when tired out4 ,avoid heavy meals-- especially late at night4 ,take cold baths daily4 ,do not lie in bed after waking4 ,avoid quacks like the plague4 ,beware of the reactions that follow emotional excitement4 ,work off your emotions in positive ways4 ,emotionalism has danger in it4 ,learn to pray for the right thing1 not for deliverance1 but for strength for victory4 ,learn to trust ,god in all things--in this among others4 ,if you want to prevent the thing from obsessing you1 you must not let your failures obsess you4 ,turn your back on them4 ,the only way to drive out one thought is to put another in4 ,an attempt merely to shut down is doomed to failure4 ,concentrate on active life and service4 ,the truth is1 you cannot have the help of ,christ just for the cure of this evil4 ,give yourself wholly to ,him1 and you will find ,he has set you free4 ,you cannot bring religion in just for a part of life4 ,if your whole life is in ,god's hands this trouble will disappear4 ,lastly1 a word to the man who is down and out4 ,god is strong enough and near enough for this never to happen again if you will let ,him have the whole of you--not body only1 but mind and heart and life4 ,but if you do fail again1 do not despair1 do not blame ,god1 and do not say or think that ,he has finished with you4 ,god's love is such that ,he will never turn from you if you turn to ,him4 ,god is no farther from the failures than from the successful4 ,he cares as much for those who fail4 ,the real and ultimate danger of this thing is not danger to your mind and body1 but the danger that it may come between you and ,god4 ,wherefore come back to ,god every time4 ,remember1 whatever the past has held1 there are still great possibilities of happiness and victory before you through the power of ,god4 ,others are in as great difficulties1 and others who were in them have won through to victory4 ,there is reason for hope4 ,we are not meant always to stand alone4 ,two are more than twice as strong as one4 ,perhaps you should share your difficulty4 ,only do not make it an excuse for getting mawkish sympathy4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,prostitution 7,a chapter for men7 ,there are some things so unthinkable that they only continue because people refuse to think of them4 ,sweating and slums are two such things1 but the supreme example in the modern world is prostitution4 ,it is not the prostitute who is unthinkable4 ,she is only the tragic figure in the center of a devil's drama4 ,it is society's attitude to her that is unthinkable4 ,by men she is used for their pleasure and then despised and scorned4 ,by women she is held an outcast1 and yet she is the main buttress of the immunity of ordinary women from danger and temptation4 ,she is the creation of men who traffic in lust and yet is held shameless by her patrons4 ,she is the product of the social sins for which we are all responsible1 and yet is considered the most sinful of us all4 ,often she was beguiled into her first mistake by the pretence of love1 and because to that pretence she made a natural and sincere response4 ,sometimes she was cajoled into her mistake by older fiends in the shape of women4 ,sometimes she suffered physical violence at the hands of male fiends4 ,often she plunged into sin in desperation because in the modern world she could not get a living wage in return for honest work4 ,sometimes she made a wild1 reckless dash towards excitement because she could no longer endure the stifling1 drab1 and hideous monotony coupled with privation which we allow to become the lot of millions4 ,to her men show only their worst side1 and women generally their hardest4 ,if she often regards both alike as devils1 who shall blame her6 ,those who share her sin leave her to face alone the suffering that follows4 ,for them society has a place even when their habits are known4 ,for her it has no place except a shameful one4 ,of real love1 of motherhood1 or of family life she may know nothing4 ,even of normal human relations she remains often ignorant4 ,he in whom we profess to have seen ,god was ready to forgive and willing to love such women4 ,we hold it wrong to forgive and impossible to love4 ,for a few short years in early youth she may have money in plenty1 and then slowly she begins to sink4 ,her health becomes sapped4 ,often loathsome disease makes her a victim4 ,as the shadows begin to gather she will often turn to drink that for an hour she may recover the delusion of well-being4 ,slowly but certainly the morass drags her down4 ,often she does not reach thirty4 ,if she lives it is to face a state in which1 toothless1 wrinkled1 and obscene1 she is seen only by those who visit the murkiest parts of our cities4 ,she dies unmoored and unloved1 and is hurried into an unknown grave4 ,and she exists because men say they must indulge their passions and women believe it4 ,she is the incarnation not of her own but of society's shame4 ,she is the scapegoat for thousands who live on in careless comfort4 ,every man who touches her pushes her farther down1 and our hollow pretence of social morality is built upon her quivering body4 ,will you men who read this please think about her6 ,think till you are horrified1 disgusted1 and ashamed4 ,think till you realize this unthinkable thing4 ,and then remember that she exists only because of us4 ,we as a sex have created this infamy4 ,we as a sex still continue to condone it4 ,and there is only one cure for it4 ,it is that we should stop uttering or believing the lie that we must indulge our passions and should act upon the truth that continence outside marriage is perfectly possible1 and that we owe it to women1 to ourselves1 and to ,god to achieve it4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,a ,,girl',s ,,early ,,days ,by early days ,i mean the years between sixteen and twenty-one or thereabouts1 and ,i am sure there ought to be a chapter in this book on this subject1 though ,i am not at all sure that ,i can write it4 ,i only make the attempt because ,i have been urged to try1 and because a book that did not recognize how distressing the emotional muddles of this period often are1 would be a very unsympathetic production4 ,most men very quickly become clearly conscious of desires springing from their sexual natures1 but most girls only do so very slowly4 ,what a girl is conscious of at this period is a new stress of emotion4 ,she finds herself easily elated and easily depressed4 ,she has moods she cannot understand or manage1 and vague yearnings after she knows not what4 ,sometimes she will give way to outbreaks of temper1 and afterwards feel acutely ashamed4 ,other people say of her that she is difficult or wayward1 or trying2 and she knows it herself better than any of them4 ,sometimes she is irritable4 ,sometimes she will hear herself saying things she never meant to say1 and will wonder afterwards why she did it4 ,in society she often feels shy1 awkward1 and self-conscious1 and then will hate herself for being like that4 ,she may try an assumed boldness of manner to hide her shyness1 and yet that plan is not a great success4 ,she has longings for the society of others1 and then having found social intercourse difficult1 is tempted to withdraw into herself4 ,she is very easily wounded in her affections1 and often suffers from the effect of little slights of which the authors are quite unconscious4 ,on some days she will feel that the world is a wonderful and splendid place1 and life a glorious delight4 ,and then on others life will seem mysterious and puzzling1 and the world cruel and hard4 ,she understands with painful clearness what ,robert ,louis ,stevenson meant when he talked about the coiled perplexities of youth4 ,it is during these years that girls wake up to the attraction of men1 and yet they find that relations with men are difficult things to manage4 ,the conventions of society often seem quite senseless1 and yet the policy of defying them does not turn out well4 ,and so1 as ,i have said1 this is a difficult period for many girls4 ,it is true that many get through it very happily4 ,they may have good health1 happy homes1 plenty of good friends1 and many interests4 ,for them it is a time of adventure1 romance1 and vivid joy4 ,they correspond to the common conception of the fresh1 happy1 charming girl4 ,but many others do not get through happily at all1 and it is because their case is common that this chapter is called for4 ,i have already said as strongly as ,i can that it is of enormous importance for girls to know the facts of life1 and to get to know them from some clean and natural source4 ,by the beginning of this period they ought to have been told about the wonderful and beautiful ways in which ,god has ordained that new human lives should be produced1 and therefore they ought to be in a position to understand themselves4 ,and if girls are not possessed of this knowledge ,i can only say that the sooner they take steps to acquire it in a wholesome way the better for themselves4 ,only take care to whom you turn4 ,let it be a woman of a reverent and wise mind with a large and wholesome nature4 ,there are others4 ,those who do come to understand themselves in this way will realize that the cause of their emotional complications is partly physical and partly psychological4 ,both body and mind are awakening1 with the inevitable result that new instincts1 emotions1 and desires have to be reckoned with4 ,that is a universal experience for all of both sexes1 and is just the price of entering on a larger world4 ,life is much more complex and mysterious than we at first imagined4 ,it may be much more varied and splendid than we at first supposed4 ,and therefore inevitably it is also more difficult and more confusing4 ,but it does really help us to realize that our early complex troubles have a natural and normal cause and that they are related to great possible gains4 ,at this point in life1 further1 the instinct for independence becomes often exceedingly strong4 ,all the conventions of society and the received rules for conduct are apt to appear mere tyrannous annoyances1 cramping the free expression of personality4 ,society itself seems rather like a monster threatening to absorb and confine us4 ,to be compelled to consider others1 and even to bow to authority1 is to many very bitter4 ,i will at all costs be myself is the natural cry of a human being at this stage1 and because the world makes it difficult to carry out that resolve life has a strain in it4 ,yet here also there is something good4 ,if each generation in turn did not thus demand freedom and self-expression the world would drift into senile decay4 ,we cannot be independent of society4 ,we cannot have an untrammeled freedom4 ,and we all learn that sooner or later4 ,but because the urge towards newness of life does reappear with every generation we do move on1 though slowly4 ,and if the price of this pulse of life in adolescents is restlessness1 irritation1 and even occasional depression the gain is worth the price4 ,for girls the process is often specially difficult4 ,the task that confronts a girl at this stage is the task of accepting herself as a woman4 ,i know it is not an easy task or so many girls would not be heard saying that they would rather have been boys4 ,no doubt one reason why girls feel this is that often their parents1 and especially their mothers1 have shown a preference for the boys in the family and have accorded to them a favored position4 ,the psychologists report that an inferiority complex has thus been formed in many a girl's mind4 ,and thus a very real wrong is done to them4 ,and yet this is not the whole explanation of the matter4 ,in many girls there is a rebellion against their sex4 ,many hate the physical signs of their developing natures4 ,it seems to them they are being called to a part in life which they have no wish to play4 ,and if particular emotional stresses accompany that development1 that may seem to them only one further reason for being annoyed at the nature of things4 ,i am sure too that the conventional notions of what a woman should be must often prove very annoying1 if not enraging4 ,many men still cherish the idea of woman as a sort of household ornament--gentle and sweet4 ,many have not accommodated themselves to the notion that a woman should know the blunt facts about this hard life and this disordered world4 ,society often seems to expect of a woman that she should be submissive1 patient1 and merely gentle4 ,and of course nature has ordained that many women should be strong1 stimulating1 and militant in spirit4 ,of a really great woman it was said to me the other day that she is really more like a flame than a cow4 ,but the cow idea holds the field in many places4 ,well6 happy those who have a sense of humor and can laugh when society is very foolish4 ,i dare not enter farther on a discussion of what it means for a girl to accept herself as a woman4 ,in that matter men seem always to flounder into folly4 ,even women are not yet agreed about it4 ,perhaps it is one of the things that is only gradually being discovered at this particular stage of human experience4 ,i am indeed sure that we do not yet know all that women are meant to be and are capable of doing for the world4 ,and that being so ,i can see that the difficulties which lie about the path of life for women to-day are peculiarly trying4 ,it may be a real privilege to be a woman during this particular period of discovery and experiment4 ,but it cannot but be also rather a strain4 ,the one thing that ,i can with certainty say is that a woman is called to be like ,christ--like ,him in ,his meekness which was the outcome of perfect selflessness and self-mastery--in ,his gentleness which was the product of sensitive love--but like ,him also in ,his strength1 ,his boldness1 ,his resolute refusal to bend before evil1 ,his positive activities in the name of love4 ,one particular feature in a woman's impulse towards independence ,i cannot pass by without a special word4 ,the very suggestion annoys some women that they are not complete in themselves without any relation to the other sex4 ,being without any conscious desire for the companionship of man1 and without any definite sex consciousness1 they resent the idea that woman is not complete in herself4 ,to those who insist that the sexes vitally need each other such women would reply that they are altogether exaggerating and over-emphasizing the sex element in life4 ,well1 about the fact that man is not complete without woman ,i have no doubt whatever4 ,and ,i have no reluctance whatever about admitting it4 ,perhaps that fact gives me no right to dogmatize about the other sex1 but a considerable experience has left me in no doubt about the matter4 ,i do not mean for a moment that a great and useful career is not possible to women quite apart from marriage4 ,i do not forget that many women have great powers of intellect in the exercise of which they are living in a world apart from sex difference4 ,but ,i believe it to be a serious mistake for either man or woman to imagine that they have no clamant sex instinct hidden within the depths of their personalities4 ,and if the instinct is there it can only be folly to try to obscure the fact4 ,it has to be reckoned with if life is to succeed4 ,in many women it only awakens after early youth is past4 ,the exceptions in whom it never awakens must be very few indeed4 ,if the attempt has been made to ignore it the subsequent troubles are apt to be only the more intense4 ,in this matter we are confronted with an unalterable decree of nature4 ,to rebel against it is only to be broken in the long run4 ,in various and great ways the instinct may be turned to splendid uses other than the usual ones of marriage and motherhood4 ,but the instinct is there1 and if wisdom means understanding ourselves and handling ourselves bravely1 then it must be reckoned with4 ,to quarrel with the nature of things is mere folly4 ,another special feature of the period in a girl's life ,i am thinking of is a tendency to intense and passionate affections for other women--a tendency to idealize some other woman till she seems the center of life and adorable beyond words4 ,a very real danger lurks here1 and yet ,i would like to speak with great care about the matter1 because a true friendship is always one of the finest and most enriching things in life1 while a grande passion for another member of one's own sex is a different thing with an undesirable element in it4 ,in girls about thirteen or thereabouts grandes passions for other girls or for school-mistresses are very common1 and so far from being harmful they may serve a very useful purpose4 ,they generally pass away pretty quickly1 and unless the older woman has been unwise they leave no bad effects behind them4 ,but among older girls they are a very different thing and often lead to serious trouble and unhappiness4 ,what has happened in such cases is that an instinct which is designed to produce love for one of the opposite sex has been perverted to add an element of passion to what should have been merely a healthy friendship for another woman4 ,and the result is an unhealthy type of relationship4 ,it is unhealthy because1 to begin with1 in this way girls let themselves go and allow their emotions to run away with them2 and that just at a time when it is most important that they should have themselves in firm control4 ,and further1 when members of the same sex employ lovers' language1 and indulge in the imitation of lovers' endearments1 there is something sickly about the whole business which healthy instinct condemns4 ,i do not mean1 of course1 that when girls link arms or even embrace each other in moments of excitement there is anything mistaken4 ,to some people such expressions of emotion are as natural as breathing4 ,but grandes passions lead to much more than that sort of thing1 and so become a serious evil4 ,it is in connection with this problem that psychologists have brought into use the rather ugly word homosexuality1 though it means nothing more dreadful than this tendency to put a member of one's own sex into the place that should be occupied by a member of the other sex4 ,but ,i find a certain amount of talk going on which assumes that some people are of the homosexual type1 and that it is natural and right for them to express themselves in this way4 ,as a matter of fact homosexuality is always a sexual perversion and is fraught with great danger of nervous disorder4 ,dr4 ,crichton ,miller says in ,the ,new ,psychology and the ,teacher3 ,from the point of view of psychological development homosexuality in the adult is a regression4444 ,clinical experience confirms the view that in the long run the man or the woman of the intermediate type is bound to pay the price of regression in one way or another 7p4 #abj74 ,of course the essential defect of these passionate attachments between two women is that they can never fully satisfy4 ,they cannot give a woman children1 and they leave the mother heart in her starved4 ,for this reason it is a primary obligation on each of the two to resolve that so soon as a man enters the life of the other she will at all costs make room for him1 ,the cost of this may be very great1 but love that is at all worthy of the name will not another from a path that might lead to marriage has misunderstood the very meaning of love4 ,women have repeatedly told me that the passionate relationships ,i am speaking of lead to grave unhappiness4 ,they almost never last1 and the one who breaks away may cause acute suffering to the other2 while an attempt to continue them after the life has gone out of them results in a very poor and pitiful relationship4 ,and yet all this leaves still open the question of how they are to be dealt with in actual life4 ,one thing worth saying is--,be warned in time1 and do not let them grow4 ,when they threaten they can be turned into true friendships by girls who understand1 and true friendship is always a bracing and strengthening thing4 ,but ,i would not for a moment suggest that a ,g4 ,p4 should be ruthlessly broken4 ,that would often be a cruel thing to do which might cause great and even permanent damage to a sensitive nature4 ,but if both who are involved in the matter will face the truth about it1 they may succeed in passing on into a natural and healthy friendship which may be invaluable to both and a gain to society4 ,if it be asked wherein lies the essential difference between a ,g4 ,p4 and a friendship ,i think answer has been given in the words3 ,friendship is an other-regarding emotion and proves itself to be an uplifting force1 while a ,g4 ,p4 is self-regarding1 and consequently generally is socially exclusive and therefore harmful4 ,a ,g4 ,p4 generally involves a desire to have somebody else all to yourself4 ,that is the sign of the unnatural sex element in it4 ,but a friendship leads to happy co- operation between two people in the work and recreation of the world4 ,one of the tests of universal application in this realm of life lies in the fact that real love always wants to give1 and that the attitude of wanting greedily to get is not true love4 ,many and many an unhappy girl who frets and torments herself because she does not get all she wants from some other woman would find the world and life transformed if she would but wake up to the fact that in her bit of the world there are other people who need the love she might give them4 ,she would thus find a noble outlet for her emotions1 become a boon to other people1 and in the process discover her own happiness--possibly to her own surprise4 ,i know very well what is likely to happen to some girls who read these words and who are involved in a passionately affectionate attachment4 ,i can almost hear one such saying1 ,of course ,i see that these things ought to be said1 and that some girls are very silly about their friendships1 and it only makes me the more thankful that in my case everything is so natural1 and right1 and good4 ,we are all like that6 ,we are extraordinarily slow to recognize in our own lives the evils and dangers which we can see so clearly in the lives of others4 ,and so ,i would like to make a direct appeal to all girls1 and to all men too1 who are involved in these relationships4 ,do face the facts openly6 ,do look ahead6 ,do ask yourselves what you are going to do about these affairs as time goes on6 ,you must know they cannot last in their present form4 ,you would be right if you even said that they to last4 ,you may drift along1 always postponing any definite action1 and just enjoying the present while it lasts4 ,but that is exactly the way in which calamity is allowed to enter people's lives4 ,and you and she1 or you and he1 might forthwith face the unalterable facts ,i have been referring to1 and take all danger by the throat and throttle it4 ,you might do that now4 ,that is to say1 you and your dear friend might agree that you will at once get the passionate element out of your relationship1 and forego the pleasure you have in that respect4 ,you might begin now to learn true friendship1 and get rid of what is really a sickly thing4 ,it might hurt--it probably would at first4 ,but none of us human beings need be the mere creatures of our feelings4 ,our true and lasting happiness always depends upon refusing any such slavery4 ,if you do achieve a wholesome and true friendship it may enrich your whole future life4 ,if you let things go on as they are you will have a very unpleasant memory to humiliate you4 ,i feel sure that certain general counsels apply with special force to this part of life1 and in particular the one which bids us all live busy and positive lives4 ,brooding is not a wholesome occupation for anybody at any time1 but1 on the other hand1 through hours of active effort emotion finds an outlet and our natures are restored to peace4 ,introspection is to many people an actual luxury1 but like other luxuries it enervates4 ,reveling in their own emotions is a favorite hobby with quite a lot of people1 but for all that it is a very bad one4 ,there really should be no time for it4 ,our emotions are all needed as driving forces for the times of action4 ,in particular the cultivation of a sense of beauty in art is one of the normal outlets for emotion1 and even for sex emotion4 ,some happy people can themselves make music1 and so express themselves4 ,most of us find that common kindness suggests that we should restrict our efforts in that direction to times when we are alone4 ,but if we cannot play we can at least learn the art of good listening4 ,and if we are not musical at all we can perhaps appreciate true painting1 or great poetry1 or fine literature4 ,it all helps4 ,may ,i say a plain word or two about the shyness and self-consciousness in society which so torment young girls8 ,the first thing ,i would say is that they will almost certainly pass away before long1 and that therefore they need not be bothered about4 ,lots of the most effective and socially successful men and women in the world went through a painful period of shyness in early youth1 and now only smile at the memory of those days4 ,in so far as that self-consciousness is produced by society of any sort1 it is based upon the delusion that other people look at us and think about us a great deal more than they do4 ,it is also due to a habit of minding what other people think and say a great deal more than the facts warrant4 ,we are not so important as to attract much general notice1 and other people are not so important that on account of their prejudices and conventions we should distress ourselves4 ,but in so far as discomfort in society is due to the presence there of members of the opposite sex1 there is something different to be said4 ,the whole contention of this book is that the attraction which exists between the sexes is a right and wholesome thing1 and that the way of wisdom is to accept the fact of it quite simply4 ,when that is done it is found possible to let that mutual attraction issue in friendship and camaraderie of a kind that enriches and dignifies life4 ,of course all this is much easier for girls who have been brought up with boys4 ,they learn to be at home with the other sex1 not to be fussy and foolish1 and not to trade upon their sex4 ,but that sort of relationship to men is also quite possible even for those who were not brought up with boys1 and in the attaining to it girls find their real peace of mind4 ,i would also like to put down here some thoughts about beautiful girls4 ,a beautiful girl always makes me want to do two things4 ,one is to thank ,god for making so lovely a thing1 and the other is to say a prayer that she may have special help given her for her specially difficult lot4 ,for beauty is both a very great gift and a very hard thing to handle4 ,some of you must know that you are beautiful1 and you are sure to find the fact exciting1 delightful1 and yet embarrassing4 ,you have great powers--powers over other women and over children in part--and very great powers over men4 ,you can1 if you will1 use that power to induce men to make fools of themselves4 ,you can let yourselves slip into the habit of living on admiration and feeding on the pleasure it gives you4 ,you can exploit your beauty to win through it things you do not really deserve4 ,people will forgive much to a beautiful woman1 and you can trade on that fact4 ,you can get a great deal of your own way if you master the art of being charming as well as beautiful2 and you can in that way use your beauty to your own undoing1 and make it partly a curse to others4 ,in fact you are certain to have to face many temptations which the majority of women escape4 ,that is the hard part of your lot4 ,all who understand know quite well that life cannot but be more complicated for you than for most1 and you have a very great claim on their sympathy4 ,but the way to avoid your dangers is not to pretend to yourself that you are not beautiful4 ,pretence never helps us4 ,the way is to face the fact of your beauty1 realize that you did not create it1 and therefore need not be vain about it1 and then go on to decide what use you are going to make of the power it gives you4 ,it can be used for ,god--otherwise ,he would not have given it4 ,it can be turned into influence of a very wonderful kind4 ,if you can induce men to make fools of themselves1 you can also draw out all that is best in them1 and inspire them for fine living4 ,in plain ,english1 when a beautiful woman is also a good woman she is one of the greatest boons to mankind4 ,she can give great pleasure to others--but she can do more1 she can stir the latent idealism in men and women in wonderful ways4 ,she can move through the world as a source of gracious1 kindly1 and bracing influence4 ,of course1 once again1 the essential secret is to think of giving and not of getting1 to get self into the background and live for love and service--to employ your great gift for the sake of the giver of it4 ,i suspect that it must need a great deal of self-discipline-- perhaps more than a man can understand4 ,i am sure it must need a great deal of prayer4 ,but it has been done1 and can be done again4 ,and that leads me naturally to the last thing ,i want to say in this chapter4 ,i have already said in the chapter specially addressed to men that the great help for the difficult early days of life is to be found in religion4 ,footnote3 ,cp4 p4 #hj;ff4 ,and of course that is equally true for girls4 ,religion means having a great and worthy interest at the center of our lives1 which gives meaning to the whole of them4 ,being religious means that the essential and eternal part of us is coming into life1 and it almost necessarily follows then that the other parts of our personalities slip into their proper places4 ,it means having an object for our affections more than worthy of all our deepest emotions1 and more than able to fill our empty hearts4 ,religion in the early days of life is generally very emotional4 ,i believe that that is perfectly right and natural1 provided we also make efforts to be sincere and to love the truth4 ,because it is emotional1 its value as an outlet for feeling is very great4 ,it does not remain at its first emotional level4 ,later on there comes an inevitable change when many think1 quite wrongly1 that they are losing their religion4 ,but at the stage ,i am thinking of religion naturally and normally expresses itself in intense feeling4 ,we are all hero worshippers at that stage of life4 ,hero worshipping1 however1 is apt to get us into trouble1 for our heroes fail us in time4 ,the one perfect hero who never fails us is ,christ4 ,he alone never disappoints1 and to love ,him is to have all the nobler chords in our beings set in motion4 ,we are sure to despair of ever becoming worthy of ,him4 ,but no leader of men was ever so willing to take us as we are and make the best of us4 ,to be near ,him may mean being made to feel deeply ashamed4 ,in ,his presence we are sure to feel small and mean4 ,but that also is a good thing1 and in spite of it ,he loves us4 ,in other directions we seek with longing to find love1 and often fail4 ,with ,him we may be quite sure of finding love4 ,and ,he goes on loving to the end4 ,being loved by ,him does at last draw out the best in us4 ,inevitably we begin to want to be more worthy--to serve and love others for ,his sake--to know and love the truth--to find and worship beauty4 ,and that means having a life full of splendid and worthy interests4 ,emotional muddles may in fact be the lot of most of us for a while4 ,but if at the center of them all there is an honest love for ,christ1 they cannot overwhelm us2 and in the long run we are sure to emerge into the life that has both peace and power in it4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,involuntary ,,celibacy ,modern ,england has for many generations been a place so unhealthy for the young that a vast problem has grown up in our midst which seriously disturbs the normal adjustment of sex relationships4 ,it would seem to have been ,nature's intention that there should be slightly more men than women in the world1 for boy babies outnumber girl babies ,footnote3 ,the actual figures are #ajeb boy babies to #ajjj girl babies4 ,what it would mean if there were more adult men than women in the world it is hard to imagine4 ,it would at once have enormous social consequences4 ,no woman would remain a celibate except by her own choice4 ,men would have to behave themselves in order to win wives1 and would cease to occupy the demoralizing position of being able to get wives whenever they want them4 ,it would in fact mean a new world in many ways4 ,as things are1 however1 the unhealthy conditions of modern life produce a greater mortality among boy babies than among girl babies1 and males come to be in a minority4 ,this state of affairs has been greatly aggravated by the war1 but it was serious even before #aiad4 ,it was then the case that the women outnumbered the men by about a million4 ,the number must be nearer a million and a half to-day4 ,the result is that over a million women have to face the prospect of a life in which their most deeply implanted instincts--the instincts for wifehood and motherhood--cannot find their normal satisfaction1 and the problem thus created is one of the most difficult in the whole of life4 ,it is1 of course1 nothing less than insulting nonsense to talk about these women as superfluous women4 ,behind the very phrase there lurks the old delusion that women are only needed in the world as wives and mothers4 ,as a matter of fact a great deal of the work that is most needed in our civilization--work in education1 art1 literature1 nursing1 social service1 and other departments of life--is being done by these women4 ,but while that is true it is also true that the personal life of the unmarried woman presents acute problems of a most intricate kind4 ,probably only a woman can truly understand those problems or justly estimate their urgency1 but no man with any insight or sympathy can fail to know that the lot of the unmarried woman involves secret stresses1 unsatisfied yearnings1 and sometimes hours of dark depression4 ,she may be unmarried because she has persistently refused to try to be satisfied with any second best4 ,as a witty woman friend of mine once put it1 she may be unmarried because the attainable was not desirable and the desirable was not attainable4 ,she may be unmarried because a very true lover of early days went on before1 and she has never felt able to put anyone else in his place4 ,or she may have loved truly some man who loved another4 ,or nothing may ever have happened to awaken conscious love in her1 in which case it is still possible that her nature may cry out at times for the satisfaction of its primary needs4 ,and while all this is true1 she is conventionally supposed never to show by any sign that she would have liked to be married4 ,however much she may suffer it is held unseemly for her to show that she suffers1 or to ask for sympathy4 ,she is often1 and ,i think quite indefensibly1 denied by social convention the stimulus of any really intimate friendships with men4 ,she is made the subject of uncounted third-rate jokes4 ,and if1 as life goes on1 she develops peculiarities of manner or asperities of temper--if she begins to lose vitality and grace1 these things are noted with contempt by people who little imagine how much real heroism may lie concealed in the object of their scorn4 ,i believe1 however1 that ,i speak for a very large number of men when ,i confess that nothing kindles in me quite the same flame of resentment at things as they are1 as just this fact that so many gracious and kindly women1 plainly made for motherhood and fitted for a fine part in life1 should find themselves held in the clutches of this insistent problem4 ,it may well help all such to realize the fact stated above1 namely1 that the problem is no part of the eternal and designed order of things1 but one of the results of our social misbehavior4 ,in a very real sense the women who suffer in this matter suffer vicariously for the sins of all society4 ,it is not they who are guilty1 but all mankind4 ,for all who mean resolutely to face the problem and to win through to victory1 it is first of all essential that they should realize the fact that their acute depressions and their restlessness of mind have really a quite well-defined physical and psychological cause4 ,somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five these depressions often become very acute1 so that the whole horizon of life is darkened4 ,sensitive women often torment themselves by wondering what they have done that is wrong1 for of course all depression is apt to take the form of a sense of wrongdoing4 ,further1 at this period the religious sensibilities of many seem to suffer eclipse4 ,they can no longer respond in feeling to any of the sublime religious truths4 ,they find they cannot pray4 ,nothing seems to matter4 ,the memory of earlier days when life seemed bright and religious faith was confident seems only to mock them4 ,many are beset by definite intellectual difficulties and so are tempted to a general cynicism4 ,envy of others will suggest itself1 and though it be sternly repressed1 it still adds to the general strain1 while good advice from others will seem just the last straw which cannot be borne4 ,but one half of this problem has disappeared at once for many from the day when they faced the plain truth that the cause of trouble is physical4 ,physiological processes with certain inevitable psychological accompaniments are at the bottom of it4 ,because their natures have not received their natural fulfillment a complicated situation has arisen which cannot be easily lived through1 though it may be in the end triumphantly controlled4 ,and if it helps ordinary people to learn that sometimes when they seem to be suffering from a sense of sin they are really only being plagued by indigestion1 it may very much more help women in this difficult period to know that they are only going through an inevitable physical readjustment4 ,what is happening is that sexual desire--it may be in vague1 unconscious1 and very general forms--is asserting itself4 ,nothing could be more absurd than to suggest that there is anything wrong or immodest in that fact4 ,it is quite inevitable4 ,indeed1 the first step out of the trouble lies in accepting the fact and then in considering how it is to be dealt with4 ,what is the way out of this difficult bit of life8 ,all said that can be said about the physical and psychological causes1 a very real problem remains4 ,there must be a way of meeting it which ends in complete victory1 for women who have come through it victoriously are to be found on all hands4 ,what has been the secret of their victory8 ,i prefer to let a woman begin the answer4 ,i think1 writes one1 that the only possible thing for such women to do is to have their eyes fixed on ,god1 and to know that in some mysterious and wonderful way ,he understands and meets all our needs4 ,i think it needs a definite act--of our wills1 our intellects1 and our emotions--an act of consecration and self-offering to ,god1 and until that is done there will be no peace4 ,and then1 after expressing her conviction as to the insufficiency of the policy of mere sublimation she continues1 ,i really believe that for women a real act of surrender--a joyful offering to ,god--is the only way4 ,i am sure the ultimate wisdom about this whole matter is contained in those sentences1 and ,i am sure because there are numerous other departments of life in which similar problems assail both men and women1 and in relation to which the way of self-surrender is the only possible way to life4 ,after all1 it is not only unmarried women who have to face the experience of wanting passionately something which they cannot have4 ,in various forms that challenge comes to most men and women whether married or not4 ,our desires demand one thing1 and life with its imperious authority offers something different2 and it is perhaps in that way that most of us come to the crisis of our lives4 ,it is easy to break oneself against a situation of that sort4 ,it is easy to spoil life completely by an obstinate concentration on the object that is being withheld--to lose life by insisting on finding it in one's own chosen way4 ,men and women alike make shipwreck of their lives in that way every year4 ,but there is another way4 ,our real life is life in ,god1 and the way into it is always the way of surrender4 ,to say with utter sincerity and absence of self-will1 ,lord1 what wilt ,thou have me to do8 is to begin to find deliverance at once4 ,we could not and should not surrender thus to anybody else4 ,he alone perfectly understands4 ,but when we have put ourselves into ,his hands without reserve1 immediately life begins to arrange itself4 ,with such surrender there comes a peace which nothing else can bring4 ,i say it with acute sympathy for all strong-willed1 high-spirited people1 for whom surrender is very difficult4 ,but ,i say it with an assurance that is based upon the unanimous verdict of the souls of all history who have found life4 ,i have learned1 said one much harassed and persecuted man1 in whatsoever state ,i am therein to be content4 ,he was content because in whatsoever state he might be he was always in the fellowship of ,god1 and therefore in enjoyment of his essential life4 ,he knew himself secure whatever life might bring1 and even though life itself should end4 ,he was inwardly in a state of profound peace and spiritual freedom1 and that is why all the gracious powers of his humanity were able to find free and beautiful expression4 ,so it must be with all of us4 ,we find our real life1 and we become masters or mistresses in life only when we have given in and allowed the love of ,god to direct and sustain us4 ,for the particular problem dealt with in this chapter and for all other painful and pressing problems of life1 the way of victory is to seek and find the life that is hid with ,christ in ,god4 99 99 99 99 99 ,no doubt at this point two questions will arise in the minds of some4 ,firstly1 some will want to say1 ,all that is very well for those who are religious1 but how about the people who are not religious8 ,i have no answer to that question1 because ,i believe there is none4 ,religion is not a sort of hobby that just seems to suit certain peculiar people4 ,it is a prime necessity for all of us4 ,in a great many other connections it becomes increasingly plain to all who have eyes to see that there is no solution for the problem of life except the one which ,god ,himself offers to all seeking souls4 ,we may refuse to seek ,him1 but in so doing we close the prison doors against ourselves4 ,i am not surprised that in studying the problems of sex ,i find no answer to the most acute of them apart from religion4 ,that is what ,i should expect4 ,is it likely that men and women who were made for ,god should ever find any lasting satisfaction or any way to victory in life apart from ,him8 ,and indeed1 in the particular connection ,i am now writing about1 it is the fact that not a few women have lived to be almost thankful for the problem of involuntary celibacy that once confronted them in so menacing a way4 ,it threw them back on ,god1 and their experience of ,him has been so rich that they are thankful for the compulsion that drove them into ,his fellowship4 ,there is no mysterious hunger in the inner life of any woman--no restless longing ever torments her--no painful stresses ever make her life seem difficult--no weary loneliness ever makes the world seem desolate1 but ,he understands--perfectly and utterly4 ,and if it be love that a woman longs for1 there is no love like unto ,his love--perfect in tenderness1 in understanding and in power4 ,yes1 ,god ,himself is the final answer to the problem of all lives that here seem to be unfulfilled1 whether they be lives of men or women4 ,the other question that will be raised will be put in these words3 ,you have said that in the dark hours that come to so many women religious feeling seems to be suspended1 and yet you go on to say that the way of escape lies in religion1 ,i know that what ,i have written may seem for this reason utterly tantalizing to some4 ,i know that in general it is in times when we most need religion that it is apt to seem most remote from us4 ,most of us have been in that dilemma4 ,but there is a way out4 ,it consists partly in remembering that religion is not only a matter of feeling1 and that when feeling fails us the mind and will remain4 ,but it consists still more in remembering that religion is not so much our affair as ,god's4 ,god does not only answer the prayers of people who are feeling religious4 ,if religion be what the experience of thousands declares it is1 then we have reason to expect that our seeking of ,god will have results even when our emotions seem dead4 ,we can at least direct our thought life4 ,we can set ourselves towards ,him by the deliberate direction of attention4 ,we can think the true and right thoughts4 ,and in that way a religion begins to come into life that is tenfold more abiding and sustaining than any religion that is a mere matter of feeling4 ,it may need rigid self-discipline and really hard work thus to direct attention and attain to a regulated thought life4 ,but then1 ,i am not suggesting that there is an easy way through this problem4 ,there is a way1 and a way that leads to real victory2 but it is no more easy than any other path that leads to a great goal4 ,i should like further to draw on the experience of women themselves to add some additional suggestions born of common sense and experiment4 ,a very wise woman once supplied through me some hints to one who was going through this difficult period1 and ,i am sure her hints are worth passing on to others4 ,she insisted that no woman at this stage should attempt to live alone4 ,healthy friendship with other women is one of the greatest possible helps to success4 ,as ,i have noted in a previous chapter1 there is a danger that lurks not far away in this connection4 ,but too much cannot be said of the helpful and bracing influence of friendships that are kept really healthy4 ,then1 it is a mistake for women to live in institutions when that can be avoided4 ,it really helps to have some room or rooms in the care of which the home-making instinct can find expression1 and which may thus become a means to self-expression4 ,more important still1 my friend insisted that it is better at this period to work with people than with things4 ,other people always tend to draw us out of ourselves1 if we will allow that to happen4 ,they make demands on our affections4 ,they keep us in touch with real life and its vast variety of emotions and interests4 ,they make self-forgetfulness possible4 ,further1 it is important for such women--as important as for all other people--to learn the truth that the way to win love is to give it4 ,when people suffer tortures of loneliness it is essentially loneliness of heart4 ,like all other normal persons they long to be loved4 ,but nothing is more futile in such a situation than simply to sit down and wait for someone to come along and love us4 ,that way lies despair4 ,what we can do is to awaken to the fact that all around us are people who also long to be loved1 and that we have love to give them if we will but be generous4 ,they may not seem very attractive people1 but in that case they only need our love the more4 ,is it not being loved that makes people lovely6 ,and when women rouse themselves to use their own love generously for others1 they begin--always--to find the doors of deliverance opening4 ,a further very great step will have been taken when it is realized that the life force which is not going to have its normal and natural outlet need not on that account be wasted4 ,it can be directed to other ends with enormous benefit to the world4 ,i cannot hope to say anything on this point one-half so adequate or so helpful as the chapter ,miss ,royden has already written in ,sex and ,common ,sense4 ,out of the fullness of knowledge she has gained by an amazingly sensitive sympathy she has there written the best account ,i have ever seen of how thwarted sex emotion can be sublimated to other ends1 and made an immensely effective force for the progress of the race4 ,in both men and women sexuality is just life force4 ,if the natural method of expression be denied to it1 it will still seek out ways in which to express itself4 ,if it has been merely repressed unwillingly and incompletely the results1 as the psychologists are telling us1 are apt to be disastrous4 ,but if the situation is openly faced1 and honestly accepted--if a conscious surrender of the normal sex career be achieved--then it is possible to utilize the life force that springs from our sex natures for great physical1 mental1 or emotional activities1 and that without any of the evil results that follow from mere repression4 ,in fact by living an abundant life in natural1 useful1 and absorbing ways the problem becomes capable of a truly happy solution4 ,i have written the word happy deliberately4 ,but ,i am not sure that at first this way out will seem happy4 ,useful it certainly will be1 but all said and done ,i fancy that some residue of regret will be apt to remain1 and that because of it women will be tempted to indulge in self-pity4 ,and self-pity both for men and women is the most enervating of all emotional luxuries4 ,therefore1 ,i wish to insert here a word of grateful testimony4 ,if the sublimation of sex instinct seems to some women a poor and pale substitute for the normal career of marriage and motherhood1 ,i am at least sure that for society at large it is a very blessed substitute4 ,my chief experience of life has been in those places called slums1 where life is always seen in its most drab and pitiful guise1 and ,i can speak with certainty about this problem in relation to them4 ,in the districts in which ,i have worked there have always been at least a few unmarried women who were spending with lavish generosity their whole life force in practical service and sympathy for needy children1 harassed mothers1 wayward men1 and the sufferers of the district in general4 ,no members of the human race are living anywhere with greater effect4 ,no other women are called blessed with greater sincerity4 ,half a dozen in particular ,i can think of who in this way have done more for the redemption of society in such places than a score of happily married mothers could have accomplished4 ,i do not know whether they feel that the sublimation of their instincts has been a complete success1 but ,i do know that hundreds of grateful people have no doubt about it whatever4 ,the whole world in its modern guise is crying out for such services as women alone can render1 and if1 on the one hand1 women are the chief sufferers through the confusions of human affairs1 they have at least a wonderful chance of finding and applying the remedy4 ,the world can never make good to them the wrong it has done them2 yet they may1 if they will1 put the world inexpressibly in their debt4 ,no doubt mankind does not deserve it1 but the one perfect lover in history was willing to die for an undeserving world4 ,it can never be other than a great calling to follow where ,he leads the way4 ,a woman of great experience tells me that here ,i ought to suggest that in that minority of cases where it is possible1 an unmarried woman may with great advantage adopt a child4 ,there are many children in the world to-day without parents1 and these children have a greatly lessened chance of life4 ,but when one of these children is adopted in the way suggested a great benefit is brought firstly to the child1 secondly to society1 and thirdly to the woman herself1 who thus acquires a worthy object for all the passionate devotion she possesses4 ,having known this plan adopted in several instances1 ,i have wondered why it is not more common1 at least when financial considerations make it a possibility4 ,no doubt to take this course or any of the other courses here suggested will need courage4 ,but all successful ways of life need courage4 ,life itself is a challenging summons to courage4 ,there is no happy way through for those who sit down in fear or who give in to their own distresses4 ,fate is a tyrant only to those who will not face him with spirit4 ,a full and satisfying life has to be snatched from under the enemy's guns1 but it can be so snatched4 ,neither men nor women need give in though often defeated4 ,unconquering but unconquered may be the best motto that we can hope to deserve1 but for all those who inscribe it on their banners a strange happiness does creep into the soul4 ,,chapter ,x ,,the ,,art ,,of ,,being ,,married ,i ,,household ,,harmony ,i have the greatest sympathy with married couples who never read any books or pamphlets containing advice to married people1 and are determined that they never will4 ,once a man and a woman have left their respective homes and set up in one of their own their common life is so entirely their own affair1 and they have such a clear right to resent all intrusions into it1 that the policy of rejecting all advice beforehand has clearly something to be said for it4 ,and yet1 because no one need read this chapter unless he or she likes1 ,i put it in2 and if any wife or husband does read it1 ,i hope that in that case both husband and wife will do so4 ,i really write it not so much for those who are already married1 as for those still unmarried4 ,it matters so much--so very very much--with what preconceptions and assumptions we approach wedded life4 ,of course ,mother ,nature teaches the great art of living in the married state to thousands4 ,two sensible people endowed with some patience1 some common sense1 and a great deal of affection have every right to expect that without much difficulty they will find for themselves the right way in marriage4 ,uncounted couples who read no books and never heard of psychology have made a lifelong success of it simply by being natural1 brave1 unselfish1 and really loving4 ,many such simply wonder when they hear others talk about the difficulties1 dangers1 and painful experiences connected with marriage4 ,they never found these things in their marriages4 ,the last thing ,i would like to suggest to the young is that they need be afraid4 ,personally ,i agree with the man who said that on his wedding day he had entered a new and splendid country for which he felt quite unworthy and that he had never since ceased to wonder and thank ,god for its beauties1 its interests1 and its delights4 ,yet there are other couples--couples who have made mistakes1 and now talk rather bitterly about marriage2 and it is because ,i believe that even a little more knowledge and a little more patience might have prevented those mistakes that ,i offer the following pages with my congratulations and good wishes to all who are about to marry4 ,there are no absolute rules for the conduct of married life4 ,there are only truths to be recognized4 ,we are all apt at times to wish for absolute rules4 ,we think they would make life easier4 ,we even wish sometimes that ,jesus had given us absolute rules and not simply principles4 ,but in fact rules always turn out to be galling things4 ,they are not for free personalities who differ enormously in constitution and temperament4 ,the right way for ,a and ,b might prove to be just the wrong way for ,c and ,d4 ,the problem is one which has to be worked out by each couple afresh4 ,it is a problem of mutual accommodation between two persons each of whom is an original creation of ,god4 ,it is the problem of taking two different life themes and working them into one harmony4 ,nor do ,i think that we achieve much by thinking or speaking of rights in this connection--about his right to rule here1 and her right to be considered there4 ,no doubt husbands and wives have rights-- inalienable and august rights4 ,but married life is part of love's domain1 and in that region the language of the law courts is out of place4 ,when either of the two begins to think about enforcing or claiming rights something has already gone wrong4 ,and this ,i think is chiefly a point for men to consider4 ,the conception of a husband as a sort of ,czar within his own home still lingers1 though it may not be openly proclaimed4 ,men still grow up with the idea that a wife should be a sort of submissive and very charming slave1 honored by occasional demonstrations of affection1 and that the whole household should be ordered to suit his lordship's convenience4 ,such men will protect their wives1 give them money1 make love to them1 humor them1 and honor them in public2 and in return will expect something little short of sheer submission4 ,behind all this lurks the half-conscious idea that woman is man's inferior1 and that idea really does remain hidden even in the minds of some who would repudiate it4 ,the fact is that the ultimate value of marriage--the thing that makes it good fun1 as well as a noble thing--lies in the fact that men and women are so different2 that they have not the same powers1 and can alternately take the lead in their common life4 ,it is comradeship1 and not mere occasional love-making1 that they must achieve in order to be permanently happy1 and comradeship is a relation in which each must be free to be his or her natural self4 ,marriage can be made a cramping thing1 and then in time it becomes almost an insufferable thing4 ,but if each will give the other room to grow it can be an enlarging experience4 ,it may contain the sum of the interests of two different people4 ,if mutual learning is brought into it1 it dignifies the lives of both4 ,i believe in obedient wives4 ,but then ,i also believe in obedient husbands4 ,if ,i did not follow my wife's lead in some departments of life1 ,i should be neither more nor less than a fool4 ,and ,i believe that she is quite wise to follow my lead in some other connections4 ,what all this really points to is that the element of liberty is worth conserving within marriage with very great care4 ,when a wife has no private means it is an essential thing for the husband to give her regularly a stated allowance and to ask no questions as to how it is spent4 ,it is a good thing--a very good thing--to make certain that1 if possible1 a wife has a holiday now and then from the heavy bondage of housekeeping4 ,it is even a good thing that she should have a holiday now and then from the charms and joys of family life4 ,for we men are very like children in the way we come to depend on our wives4 ,all our little woes must be brought to them--from buttonless shirts to the pitiful tale of our last defeat at golf4 ,the children consult them daily about a hundred things as of right1 and their husbands must often seem to them the biggest bairns of the lot4 ,i quite see why women like it4 ,but it must get very wearing at times4 ,it surely is a good thing that now and then a wife should turn her back on it all1 meet old friends1 have days in which to enjoy herself without any bothers1 and even for a few hours forget her exacting if charming dependents4 ,it is equally important not to forget a husband's liberty4 ,no doubt a great deal of cruelty lies to the charge of husbands who are out night after night1 leaving their wives--already weary after a day's heavy work--to sit bored and alone1 while they enjoy the company of their male friends1 or hunt after their favorite pleasures4 ,it is quite right that wives should refuse to tolerate such treatment4 ,but the entire reversal of that policy is apt to work badly also4 ,a husband should not drop all the masculine interests of his life1 nor give up his old friends1 nor resign from all the responsibilities that will take him sometimes out at nights4 ,and a wise wife will not allow him to do it4 ,somewhere between the two extremes ,i have indicated lies the wise path in this connection4 ,then is it not time that somebody boldly said that husbands ought to do some of the housework8 ,i have no time to discuss the ethical problem raised by the households where paid servants do it all4 ,they are a very small minority of modern households1 and in all the rest the wives do a great deal of the housework--generally all of it4 ,some of it is heavy muscular work1 such as carrying coals or moving furniture4 ,the rest makes up an employment which is more constant1 needs more brains1 and calls for more administrative capacity than any man can imagine till he has tried to do it4 ,of course men say they cannot do such work4 ,which is plain rubbish4 ,it only means that they do not like doing it4 ,neither do many women4 ,and men can do most of it perfectly well if they will only take the trouble to learn how it is done4 ,i do not mean that ,i propose for men such jobs as matching wools1 or making babies' clothes1 or arranging the drawing-room4 ,there are limits to our powers4 ,but ,i do seriously mean that setting fires1 cleaning grates1 carrying coals1 making beds1 washing dishes1 cooking1 scrubbing floors1 cleaning brass and silver1 etc41 etc4 are things which the average man can do quite as well as the average woman4 ,why then should they all be piled upon the weary back of the woman8 ,because1 you probably say1 the man must hurry off to business in the morning1 and comes home too tired at night4 ,yes6 most of us really believed all that before the war1 and then we began to make discoveries4 ,one was that there can be a lot of time before a man goes off to business1 and another was that the man is not more tired by #f4cj p4m4 than the woman1 and can do a lot of useful things if he has the will4 ,and ,i urge this point not only because it is in the clearest sense only fair1 but because until a man does in this way take his share of the home burden he cannot understand his wife's life1 and cannot give her intelligent sympathy4 ,the instinctive male attitude to household details is often expressed in the phrase that they are bally nonsense1 or something else equally picturesque4 ,but when a little experience has taught a man how very uncomfortable he would be if the details were not right1 he is forthwith able to be a much more intelligent friend to his wife4 ,i do not think fathers ever really know their little children till they have helped in looking after them at bedtime1 in the early morning1 and at meals4 ,and ,i am sure that no man ever knows what a crowded and terrific thing life can be till he has been left at home alone for a whole evening to look after two or three4 ,when he has undergone that searching experience he will forthwith respect his wife with a new sincerity4 ,it is extraordinary too what a jolly business housework can be when two people go at it together and get all the possible fun out of it4 ,on the other hand1 when it is all done by lonely people it can be vilely tedious4 ,thousands of husbands have no idea of this4 ,if they searched their own minds they would find that their idea of their own homes is that they are places to be kept clean and comfortable for them1 and their idea of their own wives is that they are women whose first duty is to minister to their comfort4 ,any suggestion that this may mean a very dull life for wives is met by a snort1 and some muttered murmur about poisonous modern nonsense4 ,but in spite of that or any other more brilliant adjectives that may be employed the suggestion is unalterably true1 and if1 having made life as dull as that for their wives1 such men find that marriage itself is not turning out well1 it is high time they should wake up to the fact that they themselves are to blame4 ,and yet may some kindly ,providence save us all from the women who never forget the house--whose domestic possessions seem to constitute mere extensions of their nervous systems1 so that if you kick the fender you give them the jumps--who cannot sit still once they have seen a speck of dust1 and cannot turn with free minds to any wider interest4 ,they help to fill clubs and pubs4 ,but they ruin homes4 ,i want husbands to share the housework chiefly because in that way it will get done the sooner1 and give both husband and wife some free time4 ,if they want really to live they must take care to get away at times from all such merely domestic concerns4 ,if need be let the supper dishes lie dirty1 but out of sight1 until to-morrow--if need be1 let your husband wear a sock with a hole in it--put off cutting out baby's trousers1 and even let your new blouse go without that alteration in the meantime1 but on most evenings at all costs get some time to read1 or enjoy music1 or go out1 or talk1 or dream1 or do nothing4 ,the problem of civilization is unsolved for those who let the house tyrannize over them1 and the problem of marriage also4 ,all of which may seem rather trivial and unimportant to some men1 but in my belief it is connected in a strangely intimate way with the success of life4 ,of course the converse to all this is that wives do well to enter into their husbands' interests4 ,it is often done with amazing success4 ,i can think at the moment of doctors1 lawyers1 engineers1 shopkeepers1 scholars1 writers1 financiers1 teachers1 and ministers whose wives have entered keenly and with intelligence into all their cares1 plans1 and labors4 ,and in every such case the friendship between man and wife has been very close1 and the marriage truly happy4 ,when this is not done1 ,i often wonder why4 ,i suppose some wives do not understand their husbands' affairs at first1 and cannot be bothered trying to understand4 ,i suppose that some husbands are too impatient to explain1 and that others really cannot4 ,if so it is a pity4 ,possibly some would rather not explain4 ,i have often wondered what the wives of many modern business men think of modern business methods2 and ,i suspect that generally they simply do not know the truth4 ,but ,i repeat it is a very great pity when a wife has no relation to her husband's business4 ,it means that he has a life quite apart from her4 ,and if it be said that many a man wants to forget his business and all its worries as soon as he gets inside his own front door1 it is equally true that often such men have worries they cannot forget1 and that they would be stronger and happier men if they only knew what a woman's sympathy is4 ,all of which seems to me so very important--so inevitably important-- that ,i cannot but think it should be remembered when young men and women are deciding about their marriages4 ,have you noticed the lines on the face of that greatest of men--,abraham ,lincoln8 ,they were there in large measure because he married a woman who could not or would not share his real life4 ,,ii ,,physical ,,harmony ,it is beyond all question that in many cases where marriage is not turning out happily the real cause lies in some failure to achieve real and true adjustment of the sexual relationship which marriage involves4 ,here again there are no absolute rules4 ,miss ,royden1 for instance1 has written a most notable chapter called ,the ,sin of the ,bridegroom in which with fine candor she points out how cruel it may be for a husband to suppose that on the first night of his marriage1 and after a day of great fatigue1 his wife will necessarily be emotionally attuned for her first experience of intimacy1 and how fatal the results may be if he imposes himself upon her in an unresponsive hour4 ,i am sure that every word in that chapter is true and important4 ,i agree with the suggestion that every man should read it before he marries4 ,but it is also true that many couples who did then experience intimacy can look back upon the first night of marriage as on a sacred occasion which they recall with wonder4 ,yes1 there are no absolute rules4 ,but there are unalterable facts4 ,and the supremely important one here is that sexual intimacy is only a perfect experience when it is a mutual experience4 ,i think the delusion is nearly dead that woman is a passionless creature1 who will never actively desire her husband but who ought to be willing to receive him whenever he desires4 ,happy marriages can only be built upon the grave of that misconception4 ,it was held to be a view honoring to women4 ,as a matter of fact it led to a great deal of cruelty4 ,no doubt women differ greatly1 but in every woman who truly loves there lies dormant the capacity to become vibrantly alive in response to her lover1 and to meet him as a willing and active participant in the sacrament of marriage4 ,and till that dormant capacity has been stirred into life sexual intimacy may be actually repulsive1 with the result that children may be born who are not in the full sense the product of creative love1 and that the relations of husband and wife may remain difficult and unsatisfying to both4 ,this is not what ,god ordained4 ,there is an art of wooing which ,nature teaches to many men1 and would1 ,i think1 teach to all men if they were patient and willing to learn4 ,it consists in a love-making that appeals to the mind1 the heart1 and ultimately the body1 and through it alone can a woman be attuned for her natural part in marriage4 ,it is her inalienable right thus to be wooed before sexual intimacy is asked for1 and husbands who are too impatient to offer such wooing do her a real wrong4 ,there are times when a woman cannot respond1 and a true husband must learn to recognize such times4 ,some of them are perfectly obvious4 ,when a woman is not well1 or is fatigued--when pregnancy has advanced beyond its early stages--when full health has not been recovered after childbirth--at these and at other times the conditions are not present for a true sexual experience1 and in the name of his love a man must learn not to ask for what cannot be freely given4 ,none the less it is not always and only the husbands who make mistakes in this part of life4 ,a woman must be at least willing to be awakened and made responsive1 and many women have a strange power of controlling themselves in this matter4 ,they can repress their natures even when desire has begun to stir4 ,they can remain cold at will4 ,and they do it for many and varied reasons4 ,sometimes their reasons are purely selfish--they cannot or will not be bothered4 ,sometimes they allow a sense of pique over some trifling grievance to inhibit their natural instincts4 ,sometimes because they shrink from the labors of motherhood they acquire a distaste for this whole side of married life4 ,and meantime their husbands are men in whom ardent love naturally1 inevitably1 and rightly produces a desire for intimacy4 ,they may be willing to be patient4 ,they may study their wives' moods1 and try to learn to be chivalrous lovers4 ,but if day after day they meet with no response--if on the contrary they find their wives deliberately checking all response1 is it not clear that a situation is created that cannot but threaten married happiness8 ,is it not inevitable that husbands so treated should begin to wonder whether their wives really love them8 ,for love makes people unselfish1 and equally it makes them understanding4 ,on the other hand1 when wives do understand1 and learn in this respect to be generous1 they bind their husbands to them in new chains of affection4 ,in some husbands almost the strongest emotion they have towards their wives is a sense of profound gratitude for a generosity that made those wives willing to meet them again and again in love's high places1 and allow them that ultimate expression of their passion through which nature is restored to balance and peace4 ,and surely it might help wives to attain to that generosity if they would but remember that it is love for them that kindles passion1 and that it is an ever-renewed sense of their lovableness that keeps their husbands so eager4 ,but there is another strange reason that keeps some wives physically unresponsive1 and so prevents any perfect sexual experience4 ,it is a reason that only operates with refined and spiritually minded women1 and though its results may be very serious it seems to them a right reason4 ,what ,i am thinking of is a sense that it is not quite right or quite seemly or quite refined to allow the primitive instincts of the body to awaken4 ,in other words1 such women are afraid of passion in themselves1 and suspect that it is not quite consistent with their moral and religious ideals to allow it to have sway4 ,and so they never frankly and openly accept their own sexuality4 ,it may be natural enough in view of the terrible ways in which men and women have misused and degraded passion4 ,it is almost inevitable when women have been brought up to believe that morality consists chiefly in self-suppression4 ,none the less it is a mistaken1 and ultimately an irreverent as well as a fatal misconception4 ,it was ,jesus who said1 ,he which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said1 ,for this cause shall a man leave father and mother1 and shall cleave to his wife3 and they twain shall be one flesh4 ,there is a place in the holy life for the free1 happy1 and full expression of the instincts and desires that are rooted in our sex natures4 ,the assumed inevitable opposition between bodily and spiritual functions has no real existence4 ,we cannot spiritualize the body away4 ,to neglect or simply to repress it is a course that comes to no good4 ,what we can do is to accept1 understand1 and then use it rightly4 ,and when we do so it turns out that the free and happy exercise of bodily function will harmonize with all the rest of our life till body1 soul1 and spirit attain to harmony and unity4 ,i think this reluctance to accept our real natures is wrong and unreasonable1 but my chief feeling about it is a sense of pity that women for reasons which seem to them good should none the less miss the joy and exaltation which might be theirs1 and should compel their husbands to suffer also4 ,it is strange but it is true that the two commonest reasons for the failure of marriage in this aspect of it are a lustful view of it and a mistakenly spiritual view of it4 ,a lustful view of it will lead people to be content with merely physical unity1 though they are attaining to no union of their mental and spiritual lives4 ,and that means that marriage is a very poor affair4 ,but on the other hand this falsely spiritual view will lead to an attempt to leave the body out4 ,and that is a course of folly for incarnate spirits4 ,the real end of marriage is a unity in which body1 soul1 and spirit will all play a part1 and nothing else really satisfies4 ,it has been wisely said that there are liberating and harmonizing influences which are imparted by sexual union and which give wholesome balance and sanity to the whole organism provided that union is the outcome of psychic as well as physical needs4 4 4 4 ,through harmonious sex relationships a deeper spiritual unity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence either in or out of marriage4 ,the waiting-rooms of specialists in nervous disease are crowded by men and women suffering from nerve trouble through failure to attain harmonious sexual relations in married life4 ,but many of them might have escaped that fate had they only been able to take the simple ,christian view of themselves and their natural functions4 ,it was a ,god of love who made us as we are1 and we only interfere with ,his plans for us when we try on this earth to live as if we were out of it1 or call that unclean which in ,his wisdom ,he has set in the center of our life4 ,,iii ,,birth ,,control ,not only because the subject of ,birth ,control occupies a very great place in the public attention just now1 but also because it does raise very important and real questions for married persons ,i wish to speak shortly of it here4 ,some day1 perhaps1 the medical profession will do the public the great service of issuing some authoritative statement about the physical aspects of the matter1 for there are issues with which only medical men can deal wisely4 ,and yet it is far from being only or even mainly a medical question4 ,the moral and social issues involved in it are of great importance4 ,it is now a matter of common knowledge that it is possible for two persons to live together in sexual intimacy and yet avoid having children4 ,and this has created new problems for the married and new dangers for the unmarried4 ,probably it has had a great deal to do with the recent increase of irregular sexual relationships outside marriage4 ,the women whose sole motive for chastity was the fear of having children and so of being openly disgraced are now set free to sin against the truth without fear of that particular penalty4 ,i am not1 however1 in the meantime concerned with them4 ,it is the problem raised for married persons that concerns me4 ,about two main points ,i am quite clear4 ,in the first place1 for two healthy young persons to marry with the definite intention of having no children is1 ,i believe1 an unchristian thing4 ,if they cannot afford to have children they cannot afford to marry4 ,if at the beginning they interfere with nature they spoil their first experiences of sexual intimacy1 which should be spontaneous and untrammelled4 ,i even believe that artificial attempts to postpone the arrival of a first child are a deplorable mistake4 ,the first consummation of love should be closely followed by parentage4 ,some couples having followed the plan of postponing parentage have1 when it was too late1 found that by this course they had forfeited the possibility of that great privilege4 ,of course children mean very hard work4 ,of course they restrict the freedom of parents to pursue their own pleasure1 and use up a large proportion of the family income4 ,but these things are a blessing in disguise4 ,comparative poverty for young couples is a bracing and a useful discipline4 ,probably the cream of the nation consists of men and women reared in families of four or five1 where the parents gave much individual attention to each child1 and by self-denial helped them to a good start in life4 ,when birth control is resorted to in order to avoid the labors of family life it is a purely selfish and quite indefensible thing4 ,i am thinking of course of healthy parents4 ,unhealthy parents probably ought not to have children at all4 ,the second point ,i am clear about is that for most couples to have as many children as is possible is equally indefensible4 ,most healthy couples could have far more children than they can do justice to4 ,in fact the plan of unrestricted families results in a threefold wrong4 ,it is nothing less than cruel to women4 ,the overburdened mothers who were confined once a year or once in eighteen months1 never allowed to regain full strength between confinements1 and made prematurely old1 are1 ,i hope1 a thing of the past4 ,marriage on those terms did mean servitude4 ,further1 the plan is cruel to children4 ,they cannot on these terms receive sufficient attention4 ,they are not given a fair start in life1 and in many cases do not even receive sufficient healthy nourishment4 ,these things are of course in part due to the artificial conditions of modern life4 ,but the conditions are there and cannot be ignored4 ,and thirdly1 the plan involves a wrong to society4 ,we have great need of healthy well-trained children1 but society as a whole suffers when children are brought into the world who cannot be properly cared for4 ,about this point ,i conceive there really cannot be any doubt whatever4 ,and thus the problem of birth control forces itself upon our attention4 ,it is a duty to women1 to children1 and to the state4 ,the really difficult question is1 ,how is it to be achieved8 ,one great ,church in ,christendom replies1 ,by continence1 and by no other method4 ,and there are many who arrive at the same position because they hold that sexual intimacy is only justified1 and is only holy1 when the deliberate purpose of producing children enters into it4 ,as ,i see the matter we come here to the central ethical issue of this whole matter4 ,is it true that sexual intimacy is only right and beautiful when it is entered upon with a creative purpose1 or is it also right and sacramental as an expression of mutual affection8 ,or put differently--granting that two persons have allowed their love to lead to parentage1 and have loyally accepted the burdens of family life1 may they rightly continue to live in intimacy after the point has been reached at which they know they ought not to have any more children8 ,it is at this point that people of unquestionable moral earnestness differ acutely1 ,i am compelled to take my stand with those who believe that sexual intimacy is right and good in itself as an expression of affection4 ,it has1 as a matter of fact1 a good many other consequences than the production of children4 ,it constitutes a bond of very great worth between two persons4 ,it is in many interesting ways beneficial to a woman's physical system2 and it brings to men a general balance and repose of being which is of enormous value4 ,i believe1 in fact1 that in actual experience it does justify itself as a method of expressing affection4 ,the alternative for thousands of couples is not merely the cessation of sexual intimacy1 but also abstinence from all the endearing intimacies which are natural and spontaneous in married life4 ,they must not only sleep apart1 but in many ways live apart4 ,and this not only means pain of heart such as would take a very great deal to justify it1 but also often leads to serious nervous trouble because of the strain which it involves4 ,i have insisted again and again in these pages that continence is perfectly possible for unmarried men4 ,but continence for a man living in the same house with a woman whom he loves1 and with whom he has had experience of sexual intimacy1 is a very different thing4 ,it is possible for some--perhaps for many1 and without serious loss4 ,but for many others it is not possible except on terms which lead to serious nervous trouble4 ,and for such persons1 and on the terms ,i have indicated1 ,i believe conception control to be the better way4 ,as to how that control should be achieved ,i have no special fitness to speak4 ,i would advise any couple1 faced by the problem1 to consult some doctor of repute till they understand the matter1 and then to find out for themselves what is for them the right course to adopt4 ,i know that for some people what is called the sublimation of sexual desire provides a successful way of dealing with the situation4 ,they find themselves able without any emotional loss to divert to other directions and uses the energy of their sex natures4 ,but it is a mistake to imagine that what is possible for one couple is necessarily possible for all4 ,attempts at sublimation often result in mere repression1 and on the heels of that come serious troubles4 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,unhappy ,,marriages ,a good deal has already been said in these pages about the causes of failure in marriage1 but ,i feel that a more definite dealing with the problem of unhappy marriages is called for4 ,i do not recognize any problem in those cases where marriage has not been based upon love4 ,when a man or a woman marries for financial reasons1 or out of a desire for a certain place in society1 or because of a mere desire to settle down in life1 then he or she runs an enormous risk1 and there is nothing to be surprised at if trouble follows4 ,so close an intimacy as marriage involves is really only tolerable when love constantly supplies reasons for patience1 generosity and forgiveness4 ,in fact by marrying for any other reason than love men and women only make the permanent and inevitable problems of life a great deal harder to solve4 ,and a human life does always involve a problem either in or out of marriage4 ,life is a complex and perplexing business4 ,but if it be true that many marriages begin with intense love and yet after some time turn out unhappily1 then a very real problem is presented to our minds1 and probably what ,i have already said about the wonder of sex love1 and its harmonizing influence on personalities1 has accentuated that problem for some of my readers4 ,there are many wives who once loved their husbands intensely1 but who are now laboriously learning to endure them4 ,there are many husbands who felt that they had attained to all that they longed for when they married1 but who now are almost giving up in despair the task of living even peaceably with their wives4 ,many such people are heard declaring that love is the arch deceiver of the world1 and that its power only lasts during a few short hours in the morning of life4 ,for many the early and wonderful days of marriage remain only as a tormenting memory1 so entirely has the color faded out of their lives4 ,and ,i know that the pain of such situations is so intense that ,i would fain speak of them only with consideration and sympathy4 ,but none the less the broad fact has to be stated that in such cases it is not marriage that has failed but the people involved in marriage4 ,there is nothing in the whole of life so beautiful or so holy but that it can be spoilt when mishandled1 and love is no exception to this4 ,i believe love is always felt as a call to unselfishness1 but it is a call that can be resisted4 ,and when it is resisted and two selfish people find themselves tied together for life1 all the conditions of misery are present4 ,selfish people are nearly always unhappy people1 and two unhappy people certainly cannot make a happy marriage4 ,and yet these generalities do not carry us very far4 ,unless we can discover in further detail why marriages fail1 these things were better left unsaid4 ,i believe1 however1 we can discover many of the reasons4 ,to begin with1 a good many unhappy husbands are idle men4 ,having no hard work to which they must give themselves daily1 they have to try to find interest in life in some other way4 ,and because there is no other way they inevitably find themselves threatened with boredom4 ,while their love was new it seemed to them that it would fill life for ever with romance and joy1 but so soon as the first early stages of marriage were past they found it failing them4 ,such men almost always become moody or restless or irritable1 and if they are much at home their wives have to try to humor them through their troubles4 ,it is more than any woman ought to be asked to do1 and more than any woman can continuously accomplish4 ,if such men came home in the evening honestly tired through trying to do something worth doing they would find their homes a delightful solace4 ,but life's problem cannot be solved by an idle man1 whether he be married or unmarried4 ,and the same is true for idle wives1 though there are not so many of them4 ,when a woman has turned over to her servants all household cares and even the care of her children that she may run after pleasure she has chosen to live on terms which never yet made anybody lastingly happy4 ,we are by nature too big for that way of life1 and sooner or later it fails to make us even content4 ,love will light up with a wonderful color lives that are given to honest work1 but even love cannot make idleness other than a wearisome career4 ,then there are couples who have refused to have children4 ,if the reason be that some possibility of disease has made it seem wrong to have children1 it may be that both will learn to adapt themselves to this limitation and to achieve happiness in spite of it4 ,thousands of couples who are childless against their own wills have learnt none the less to live together in lasting happiness4 ,but when childlessness is the result of a mere selfish policy1 it often revenges itself upon the couple concerned4 ,they have deliberately refused satisfaction to one of the deepest instincts within them1 and though they may not realize it1 those suppressed instincts destroy their harmony of being4 ,they do not face the fact that they have such instincts1 because they could not meet them with any adequate reason for suppressing them4 ,they try to deceive themselves into believing that the instincts are not there1 or they repress them from selfish causes1 and life does not let them off4 ,love remains unsatisfied4 ,its august claims have been refused4 ,and therefore it does not and cannot continue to bring them joy4 ,another reason for unhappy marriages ,i have already spoken of in a previous chapter4 ,sometimes they were marriages of passion and not of love4 ,sometimes men and women allow themselves to be hurried into union by the driving force of an almost impersonal thing that is purely physical in nature1 and though they think they are acting out of love1 they are leaving out the larger part of their natures4 ,mind and spirit may have had no part at all in the transaction4 ,and after such a step there is bound to come a painful awakening4 ,after a while he or she will find that in the most intimate part of married life only the body is acting1 and then two people who have got very close to one another in one respect may yet find that they are still in many ways strangers to each other4 ,that must always be a most critical situation4 ,i believe that a successful way out of it might almost always be found1 if only the two concerned would use much patience and would learn mutual accommodation4 ,but patience is not a universal possession either among men or women1 and often rash and foolish things are said or done at such times which seem to break hopelessly the house of dreams which up till then had seemed so beautiful and so permanent4 ,if only men and women could learn that the love which makes happy marriages is not mere passion1 though it involves passion1 a world of troubles might be avoided4 ,the plain though unpalatable truth about a great many marriages is that1 though there was love in them at the beginning1 there was not enough of it4 ,often there was enough to make the man eager and delighted to enjoy his wife when she was happy1 but not enough of it to make him able and willing to help her when she was depressed4 ,there was enough to make each able to take delight in the charms of the other1 but not enough to make either willing to forgive the faults in the other1 and help him or her to conquer them4 ,there was enough for sunny days but not enough for foggy ones--enough to produce laughter but not enough to beget patience--enough for admiration but not enough for understanding--enough for joy in the other's successes but not enough for helpfulness after the other had failed4 ,perhaps a woman will always seem in some ways a queer creature to a man4 ,it is certain that no man has always understood any woman4 ,and ,i suppose a man always seems at times a strange1 childish1 and primitive being to a woman1 so that she also fails to achieve understanding4 ,but when understanding has failed love is put to one great test4 ,nothing can get a couple through times when understanding has failed1 except love4 ,but love can do it when there is enough of it4 ,nor is that the hardest thing love has to do4 ,there come times when1 because nobody is always good1 and most of us are often bad1 love has to face the plain fact of sin in the loved object4 ,at such times to approve is impossible1 and would be a real disloyalty4 ,to break out into mere reproaches is futile and irritating4 ,to do nothing is to let a seed of separation sink into the common life4 ,yet the situation can be met4 ,it can be met by real love1 because love can forgive4 ,forgiveness does not mean condoning wrong4 ,it does not mean blindness1 which is never a helpful thing4 ,it means loving the person who has stumbled in spite of the fact1 and even perhaps just because of it4 ,it is at such times that one who has failed most needs love1 and when therefore love gets a supreme chance4 ,but if a husband or a wife has not enough love to take that chance1 then marriage may fail4 ,and here ,i am not talking about exceptional cases4 ,whoever you are1 if you marry you are going to marry a sinner--a man or a woman who will some day fall below his best self or her best self4 ,and just because you love it will bring you acute pain4 ,you would do well to ask yourself beforehand what you are going to do about it4 ,and if you cannot feel that you could forgive and go on loving all the same1 you would do well to think again4 ,the whole story of some unhappy marriages is told in one sentence4 ,there was love in them1 but not enough to produce forgiveness4 ,yet the ultimate proof that true love is divine in origin lies just in the fact that true love can forgive4 ,all of which leads me on to the real reason why ,i write this chapter4 ,marriages often fail because people often fail1 and people fail ultimately for one central reason--that they have not ,god in their lives4 ,i have read as much modern fiction as most people4 ,and while ,i have plodded through elaborately told tales of the sufferings of married people1 my amazement has grown that these tales are almost without exception the stories of people who had no conscious relation to ,god4 ,their authors seem to think it a most interesting thing that such lives should go wrong1 and they base upon that fact the suggestion that life is essentially a tragic and rather disappointing matter4 ,to me nothing seems more inevitable and more entirely explicable than that on such terms life should fail1 and should fail alike for the married and the unmarried4 ,what could be more simple6 ,the essential greatness of man lies in the fact that he is capable of fellowship with ,god4 ,it is in realizing that fellowship that he truly comes to himself4 ,in nothing less than that can he ultimately find satisfaction4 ,the reason why all lesser experiences fail him is just that he was made for something greater still4 ,these lesser experiences will carry him through the morning of life and past the usual time for marriage4 ,but later on the unalterable facts about his nature begin to assert themselves4 ,though he does not always know it--often indeed does not know it--he begins to need his ,god4 ,and till he finds ,god he is wrongly related to the whole universe4 ,though he will generally fight against it a certain sadness threatens to settle on his spirit4 ,he will try all the old joys2 and though he may pronounce them still good1 a quiet voice within will pronounce them not good enough4 ,he cannot live even on human love1 and a disturbing force will begin to trouble him even when he is with the wife he has loved so well4 ,and so marriage begins to fail4 ,i find the psychologists saying this with their peculiar vocabulary4 ,they tell us that the individual has to achieve certain adaptations if he is to find his harmonious and balanced life4 ,one of these is the adaptation to society2 another is the adaptation to sex1 and a third is the adaptation to the infinite4 ,if for adaptation to the infinite we put the time-honored phrase reconciliation with ,god1 then psychologists and religious teachers will be found saying identically the same thing4 ,and all three adaptations are necessary4 ,adaptation to sex alone is not enough4 ,for those who do know ,god it turns out that their human fellowship based on love becomes so entirely at one with the divine fellowship1 that the two almost cease to be felt as two and certainly the human fellowship is enormously enriched4 ,but where the divine fellowship is a thing unknown a certain deep-seated weariness and loneliness will possess the man1 let his human love be never so wonderful4 ,what thousands of people are demanding of the universe is that there should be some way of solving life's problems without religion4 ,and life in every century has gone on demonstrating that there is no way of solving them except through religion4 ,i am using religion in the largest sense1 which is also the truest sense4 ,i am not here concerned with the dogmas of any particular church1 nor with the question of the ways in which religion shall express itself4 ,the truth ,i am emphasizing is that without some conscious relation to his ,god man remains a stranger in the world and an exile from his spiritual peace2 and that such men cannot be happy or satisfying husbands4 ,and of course all that ,i have written as if thinking only of husbands is equally true for wives4 ,i have been the perplexed and sympathetic confidant of a number of people who with dismay and sorrow were finding out that marriage was failing them4 ,in almost all these cases religion had been simply passed by as a thing hardly relevant to real life1 and it has been plain beyond all question that the trouble in the sphere of marriage could not be mended till something had happened to the persons concerned--in other words1 till they had learnt to seek and use the help of ,god4 ,and often they know it for themselves4 ,i think what ,i really need is ,god1 said one very troubled wife to me a few years ago4 ,but she had begun with a long and moving story about her marriage4 ,she indeed went on to ask how ,god can be found1 and it may be that some of my readers will at once want to ask that question1 ,i cannot attempt to deal with it here and now4 ,the first great step towards finding ,him is to realize that we need ,him1 and so to begin to seek ,him4 ,and for the rest ,i can only add that thousands upon thousands have proved in life the truth of what ,jesus claimed when ,he announced ,i am the ,way4 ,i have written this book largely because ,i have with reason and out of experience so great a faith in the possibilities of the love that is consummated in marriage that ,i would fain testify to others concerning it4 ,but ,i would none the less like to warn any man or any woman lest he or she should imagine that by human love alone life's problem can be solved4 ,without ,god we fail in life1 and the bitterest part of the failure for many is that even that beautiful and delicate thing marriage fails with the rest4 ,we are restless till we rest in ,thee1 and two restless hearts cannot be happy hearts even though they be joined together in the bonds of love4 ,,chapter ,,xii ,,the ,,influence ,,of ,,social ,,conditions ,let me begin this chapter with a query4 ,is not all the trouble in the modern world over the sexual element in life the evidence of something abnormal and distorted in the very constitution of modern society8 ,or put differently1 would it not turn out that if only men and women were set in just and healthy conditions1 given real education and sufficient means of self-expression1 the sexual problem would be found very largely to have solved itself8 ,i cannot offer any dogmatic answer to that query1 though ,i have my own conviction that history will one day answer it with an unmistakable affirmative4 ,what we can do even now is to notice that every maladjustment in our present social life tends to increase the amount of failure in true sex morality4 ,all our callousness about social evils revenges itself upon us by confronting us with an increasingly menacing problem in this connection1 and all honest service devoted to the increase of social health of any sort is also helping our moral progress4 ,and ,i wish to amplify this point because ,i hope some at least of the readers of this book will find themselves asking eagerly what can be done in view of the seriousness of sexual evil4 ,if those who go wrong in sex matters are spoiling their lives at the core1 which of us would not like to do something to guard the young from wandering1 and to help to clean the modern world6 ,therefore it is a real satisfaction to be able to reply1 as ,i do with complete conviction1 ,anything you do to help to bring social justice and general health any nearer is also helping towards the solution of this one problem4 ,let us consider some of the outstanding social evils from this point of view4 ,i turn first to the matter of education because it is the primary issue in every connection4 ,now education that stops at fourteen is hardly worthy to be called education at all4 ,it is after that age that those interests awaken which provide absorbing life for boys and girls1 and ensure them against the pains and dangers of empty-mindedness4 ,it is also after that age that most young folks learn the ways and means of self-expression4 ,probably also1 at least in the case of boys1 the years between fourteen and sixteen are just the years when the discipline of school life is most valuable1 and it is certain that during that period healthy games1 played under the discipline of sternly enforced rules1 do most to put boys into possession of themselves1 and to provide a wise outlet for their abundant energies4 ,consider then what happens so long as we continue to send boys out of school at the age of fourteen4 ,they go with minds unawakened and therefore empty4 ,they face adolescence in almost complete freedom from control4 ,they very often have far too little opportunity for invigorating games1 and they do not know how to express themselves1 though vital energies are vibrant within them4 ,it is only natural that they should find orderly ways of life very dull1 and that in pursuit of excitement they should take to hooliganism4 ,not having learnt to appreciate either literature or art1 they either read nothing or read stories that are neither true nor decent4 ,they respond only to what is highly spiced and have nothing in their minds to counter balance the meretricious attractions of suggestive stories and undesirable films4 ,the truth about the people who are fond of blue stories is often 7though not always7 that those stories accurately indicate their intellectual level4 ,and the uneducated modern boy is often at that level through no fault of his own4 ,it actually is hard for men to whom the wonder and the splendor of life have been revealed to find room in their mental life for indecent trash4 ,but till we really educate our boys we are sending them out into life unarmed against some of its worst features4 ,and if the general failure of education has this deplorable effect1 what shall we say of the complete lack of any special education relating to sex in at least a majority of modern schools8 ,i know that that is a very difficult matter4 ,i know that disaster may follow from any attempt to do it in a general way through class teaching4 ,i know too that it ought to be done by parents4 ,but it is not done1 and both boys and girls go out to face the dangers of life in town and country without the knowledge of physical facts which might guide them into safety4 ,actual immorality is indeed uncommon between the ages of fourteen and seventeen1 but those years are often spent in a way that is the worst possible preparation for the struggle that is to come4 ,i have put my main stress on the fact that education stops at fourteen1 because to my mind that is the outstanding defect of our system4 ,but even the education we do give is ill fitted to attain its true end4 ,it is not the fault of the teachers4 ,many of them do wonderful work1 and long to be allowed to do better work4 ,but with classes of from fifty to seventy the most heaven-born teacher in the world cannot achieve his purposes4 ,it is certain that lovers of purity who really understand human nature cannot be among the panic-stricken economists who want to starve education4 ,housing ,housing evils are mainly of two kinds4 ,houses are often dark1 damp1 and evil-smelling1 which means ill-health4 ,and houses are often too small1 which means that human beings are packed so closely that privacy is impossible4 ,both results affect morality4 ,a man below par in general health is far more susceptible to the lure of evil than a really healthy one4 ,and the same is true of girls4 ,there are to be found in some corners of our towns lewd and unwholesome-looking youths whose talk and whose actions are unclean and sordid4 ,we perhaps shudder as we pass by and sense what is their moral condition1 but if we knew the houses from which they come we might hardly wonder4 ,then plainly it is hostile to wholesome living when husband and wife cannot have a sleeping-place separate from the rest of the family1 and when growing boys and girls share the same room1 so that natural modesty is confronted with constant obstacles to its normal development4 ,when ,i wrote some pages back about the disciplinary value of the daily cold bath1 ,i could hardly forbear stopping at that point to comment on the fact that that primary condition for bodily and moral health is beyond the reach of millions4 ,our housing has not yet reached the bathroom standard for the majority of our people4 ,all these considerations are perfectly obvious and have often been urged before4 ,but though ,i have known of many cases where moral evil has followed from bad housing conditions1 ,i have known so many instances where in spite of bad housing conditions morality has been perfectly preserved1 that ,i do not make so much of this point as some4 ,i have yet to learn that morality is made safe by the most elaborate and healthy housing conditions4 ,it is true that the level of morality is very low indeed in really overcrowded slums1 but it also is true that the section of the population among which real purity is most common is the artisan section1 and many of them have to contend with very poor housing conditions4 ,the ,royal ,commission on ,venereal ,disease reported that while the class of casual laborers is the worst in the country1 the next in the scale is the one described as middle and upper classes4 ,traveling west in our cities does not mean traveling towards morality4 ,sweating ,there are three main directions in which sweating tends to increase immorality4 ,in the first place low wages paid to men make marriage very difficult1 and sometimes impossible4 ,and nothing could be worse for any community than that healthy and robust men should be debarred from marriage after twenty-one by purely material considerations4 ,it is not impossible for a man to remain chaste through a lifetime of celibacy1 but for all that a society that enforces celibacy on men against their will is making immorality a practical certainty4 ,a particularly mean form of this evil occurs in connection with the living-in system which is imposed by a good many big shops on their employees4 ,i used to know a number of young men of marriageable age who were housed in a great and bare sort of barracks and given in addition a wage that was only enough to provide dress and necessary etceteras4 ,if1 desiring to marry1 they said that they wished to live out and to receive the equivalent of their board and lodging in money1 they got in those pre-war days #ah a year extra4 ,is it to be wondered at that in that section of society it was a common saying that only fools get married8 ,but it was not a chaste section of the community4 ,men are very seldom chaste when they live in exclusively male communities4 ,then1 secondly1 sweating makes for immorality because it means that girls are paid wages which are quite insufficient to support life4 ,some of them live at home with their parents and so get through1 but those who have to support themselves become subjected to a terribly severe temptation to add to their starvation wages by the sale of themselves4 ,it is still in this way that a considerable percentage of the prostitutes of the country is created1 and the number of girls who1 though not known as prostitutes1 have sacrificed their purity because of financial pressure must be very great4 ,the word sweating also covers cases where workers are subjected to overwork1 and unduly long hours2 and therefore under this head ,i mention the influence of the strain of long shop hours4 ,the improvement has been great of late in this respect1 but still there are restaurants and special shops where the strain on girls is very heavy4 ,and the result is that after work is over they are fit for nothing but walking about the streets in search of diversion4 ,many indeed who live in hostels have almost no choice between walking in the streets or going to bed4 ,there is no need to say more4 ,first girls are rendered nervously weary and yet eager for fresh air and movement1 and then they have to face all that street life may mean4 ,the recreations offered them in cinemas and music-halls are often calculated to give them just the wrong sort of excitement4 ,and so first they are bored by monotony and long hours1 and then played upon by rather low forms of suggestive art4 ,it is here that girls' clubs and troops of girl guides meet the real needs of girls2 and they probably constitute the finest influence of the right sort which modern life offers them4 ,luxury ,one of the most serious evils in the modern world is that a great many men and women have far more money than is good for them1 and that of these a considerable number are not under any necessity to work4 ,nothing in all the wide world is worse for a man than to have lots of money and nothing to do4 ,it is among these men that the patrons of expensive vice are to be found4 ,of necessity such men are bored by ordinary life4 ,for life without work in it is always boring4 ,it follows that they must seek excitement1 and a very short time suffices for them to get all the excitement possible out of innocent recreations4 ,wherefore in pursuit of something to stir them they take to the diversions that are not innocent1 and often try to exploit their own passions to give color to life4 ,their expensive and luxurious ways of life constitute one of the worst moral forces in the community4 ,they keep in existence to pander to their desires large numbers of subordinates whose lives are also worthless and without any productive value4 ,it is because of them that the life of a courtesan seems to offer golden prizes to some1 and the hope of reaping such prizes deludes many4 ,because this is a materialistic age their money gives them powers to which they have no moral right1 and no more wholesome thing could happen to the whole community than that the necessary changes should be worked out which would make such noxious drones impossible in the future4 ,it is for these people that sweated workers drudge and sweat4 ,and then1 under our curious and indefensible laws of inheritance1 it is possible for wealth thus created to be passed on from generation to generation1 creating for each in turn the worst possible conditions for true life4 ,it is utterly unreasonable to hope that we shall ever as a nation attain to moral health until this evil has been dealt with4 ,it seems to matter little whether such people are married or unmarried2 in both conditions they make havoc of sexual life1 and poison society4 ,drink ,i have kept to the last the social evil which more than all the others put together tends to produce sexual immorality4 ,as ,i have already said1 it is a comparatively rare thing for a man to go wrong for the first time when he is entirely sober4 ,it is ,bacchus that conducts men into the courts of ,venus4 ,mr4 ,flexner1 who for scientific reasons made a comprehensive study of ,prostitution in ,europe1 reports that in every country the whole traffic is soaked in drink4 ,there are inhibitions in our humanity which make sexual vice repulsive to our taste1 and there are few who can get past these inhibitions until alcohol has deadened their better feelings4 ,man after man has told me that it was after some festive night when he had taken more wine than ever before that he first fell4 ,unmarried mothers have told me that what happened on the night that was fatal to them was that they were cajoled into taking champagne or whisky1 and after that could not well remember what took place4 ,it is not too much to say that until we have grappled with the drink evil in our midst we cannot possibly hope to master this greater evil which follows on the heels of intemperance4 ,this one consideration alone would make me an enthusiastic prohibitionist4 ,we have tried life on the present terms and it has beaten us4 ,we have allowed the common sale of a drug that is the proved enemy of our best life4 ,it has damaged us physically1 industrially1 and financially4 ,but its most deadly damage has been done in connection with our sexual life4 ,it not only misleads the unmarried1 but in many homes it is daily destroying all possibility of married happiness4 ,no doubt the difficulties of temperance reform are very great4 ,but the real cause of the delay of effective reform is want of will in the community as a whole4 ,i cannot but think that if the deadly and intimate connection between drink and sexual vice were realized1 the will to effective reform might appear among us4 ,when ,i consider all the forces which ,i have thus briefly reviewed1 and remember that behind them there is the power of a central and universal human instinct1 ,i no longer wonder that sexual follies abound in our country1 and that we have not yet solved the problem of purity4 ,what ,i do wonder at is that there are hundreds of thousands of young men and women who1 in spite of all these facts1 insist on living clean and pure lives4 ,there is something in human nature that fights very hard for the true way of life4 ,boys and girls with bad hereditary influences to hamper them1 and brought up in very unfavorable surroundings1 do yet constantly refuse to succumb4 ,even those who have made mistakes constantly refuse to be beaten1 and hold on tenaciously to the narrow way4 ,though the modern world has been deluged with novels written to display sexual irregularities in a romantic light1 and to express contempt for ,christian moral standards1 and though no doubt thousands have been misled1 it remains true that surprisingly large numbers refuse to be befooled in such ways4 ,i believe the reason is that1 strong as mere physical desire may be1 love is a stronger thing still4 ,and it is the power of love that keeps many right4 ,in many men it is love for an ideal woman that does it4 ,they keep themselves from evil because1 though they may never have met her1 they believe one day they will1 and they want to bring her their best selves without any spot of defilement4 ,in many girls love works in the same redemptive way4 ,and perhaps in both what is really working is a mystic longing after the best that life can hold1 and a half-conscious understanding that that best is only for those who preserve unity between body and spirit1 and keep the body in bonds until the pure command of love itself summons it to freedom4 ,and yet it is infamous that the struggle should be so hard for so many4 ,all of us who are ignorant or complacent or skeptical about the social evils of our time are sharers in the iniquity of those who fall4 ,many of us live in mean satisfaction1 just because we ourselves have found comfort and security2 that is how these evil forces are able to go on year after year leading thousands to their undoing4 ,if the test of a real passion for purity lies in caring about the forces that make for impurity and caring to the point of suffering for those who fall1 then ,i fear few of us have that passion in any really effective and holy form4 ,and it will need passion to compete with the forces that lie behind evil social conditions4 ,they are entrenched behind the power of money1 and ,i know of only one passion that is stronger than money4 ,when will all who really love take up the challenge of this disordered modern world8 ,we talk4 ,we confer4 ,we discuss social reform4 ,but we do not love4 ,and that is why ,mammon is able to laugh at us1 and go on dragging our boys and girls down into the mire4 ,,chapter ,,xiii ,,forgetting ,,the ,,things ,,which ,,are ,,behind ,i have implied in this book that the very best in sexual experience is only for those who keep themselves unspotted in early life1 and who come to the sacrament of marriage with no previous and lower experience of sex intimacy4 ,i am even sure that the very best is spoilt a little by all previous unworthy thinking1 and by all perverse practices4 ,i know that that will sound a hard saying to very many1 for there are few who have fulfilled these conditions for knowing the best4 ,it must seem to them that ,i am practically saying to them1 ,you can never now enter into the holy of holies4 ,yet ,i cannot alter what ,i have said1 however acute may be my sympathy with those who have stumbled4 ,i believe it is true1 and no good ever came of hiding the truth4 ,it is because it is true that ,i have such confident hope for mankind4 ,men and women do in their hearts want the very best1 and when they come to know what are the only terms on which that very best can be had they will1 ,i believe1 accept those terms4 ,but this would be a cruel book1 and a false book too1 were ,i to imply that there is no way in which the past can be forgotten and forgiven1 and no way into purity and joy even for those who have wandered4 ,were that so ,i could not write at all about this subject1 for it would then be too tragic4 ,perhaps the worst consequence of aberrations in thought and conduct is that they make it very very hard to be perfectly happy and unashamed when at last love calls them to enter into the inner chambers of marriage and romance4 ,the shadows that rest at times on that part of marriage even for some very happy lovers are due to the fact that the man 7or sometimes the woman7 was once involved in something else before that was a little like it1 and yet was haunted then by a sense of wrong-doing and so could not have a perfect experience4 ,it is only to the pure that all things are pure4 ,but it is not true that the past need dog and spoil the future4 ,it is not true that sin is irremediable1 nor that its stains remain for ever4 ,the essential and central thing in ,christianity is the assertion that there is a remedy for the situation that sin creates4 ,i do not think there is any remedy to be found in simply trying to ignore the past--or in saying that our aberrations were only those of ninety per cent4 of mankind1 and were so natural as to be not worth bothering about4 ,in such ways we may push the past out of sight1 but we do not deal with it4 ,it remains there though out of sight4 ,for the fact is that such sayings do not quite convince us1 and therefore they cannot kill the past4 ,nor is there any remedy to be found merely in the forgiveness of man or of woman4 ,women are proverbially1 and perhaps divinely1 willing to forgive4 ,but a woman's forgiveness does not necessarily make a man able to forgive himself4 ,nor does it always cleanse an unclean inner life4 ,to many a man it has been just the fact that his fiance or wife was so sublimely willing and able to forgive that has revealed to him his own unworthiness and made it sting the more4 ,no6 there has got to be something much more drastic in our lives if we are to get free from shame and remorse4 ,we have got to go down into that stony valley of humiliation where men and women face the naked facts before their ,god1 and stop all attempt to hide or to deceive4 ,we have got to stop the sophistries which are so dear to us1 and through which we try to put the blame on others1 or on circumstance1 or on fate4 ,we have got to face the fact that the evil things--whatever they were1 either small or great--happened because we were weak--because we put pleasure before duty--because we gave in to lust1 or evil suggestion1 or a craven longing to please the flesh4 ,yes6 ,they happened because we were weak1 and that is a horrible thing to have to admit4 ,yet admitting it is the only way to regain contact with the truth4 ,and what next8 ,the next thing is that in that extremity we find ,god4 ,it might seem that ,he would probably be the last one to be found through humiliation and the open admission of being impure4 ,but in actual experience that is how ,he is found4 ,that is ,his way--to meet the man who has discovered his own insufficiency--to intervene at the desperate minute--to reveal to incarnate weakness ,his eternal strength--to give a strange assurance that ,he ,himself is about to enfold the man or woman in ,his power1 and tale charge of the future4 ,and when that has happened a man knows what to do with his past4 ,he can leave it with ,god1 and then it loses at once all power to haunt him or put him to shame4 ,it was unclean1 but the cleansing fires of the divine love have taken it in charge1 and its power is broken4 ,that is something very different from trying to hide it or trample upon it4 ,that is really killing it1 and after that a man both may and can forget4 ,if any man be in ,christ he is a new creature4 ,that is literally true even in this connection4 ,spiritually a man ceases to be the same person as the one who was once so weak and unclean4 ,he has entered a new spiritual country4 ,experience has proved all this over and over again4 ,men who in early youth were wild have by the grace of ,god become so essentially pure as to become capable of true and blessed experiences of love and all that love leads to with a fine woman4 ,but it does need the grace of ,god4 ,those who attempt simply to forget and make light of their early follies do not escape from them4 ,and why should ,i not boldly say the same thing--exactly the same thing-- about a woman8 ,it is certainly true4 ,no one seriously believes that the redeeming grace of ,god1 which is sufficient for all other sins1 fails before this one4 ,no one who has understood ,christ doubts that ,he can make a new woman1 and a pure and noble woman1 out of one who has stumbled4 ,and yet curiously society has never learnt to forgive women4 ,a man is allowed to forget the things which are behind4 ,generally a woman is compelled to remember them till the very end4 ,i shall never forget being once at a meeting of men in ,new ,york where a very great ,american woman spoke to us all on this subject4 ,she pointed out to us that society had never learnt to control the evils of this part of life because it had never learnt to adopt the method of ,jesus1 which was frank and full forgiveness4 ,we have been afraid4 ,we have thought it would be socially disastrous4 ,but ,jesus had no hesitation in ,his voice when ,he said to a penitent ,magdalene1 ,neither do ,i condemn thee1 go and sin no more4 ,of course she sinned no more4 ,there is in all the universe no constraining force like that combination of forgiveness and trust4 ,i am sure we cannot make our standard too high4 ,i am sure we need to guard against all compromise in thought with its august demands4 ,but ,i am equally sure we need to learn to forgive generously if we are ever to help those who have stumbled4 ,forgiving sinners does not mean condoning sin1 else could there never be any divine forgiveness4 ,what it does mean is loving the persons concerned4 ,till we learn to exercise that divine art1 we do but shut the doors of hope against sinners and push them farther down4 ,of course this means that for a pagan society there is no choice between a sternly cold and cruel morality on the one hand1 and license on the other4 ,for pagans cannot forgive4 ,they alternate between a moral indifference in which there is no hope for anybody1 and a cold and callous condemnation of sinners which is both hypocritical and cruel4 ,we have all seen both policies in action and know how hopeless they both are4 ,but in exact proportion as we learn to think and feel with ,christ we shall learn to forgive1 and so doing shall begin to have mastery over the evils in sex life that spring from ignorance1 waywardness1 want of discipline1 and the misunderstanding of love4 ,history is one long record of how by the force of law and by alternate severity and carelessness the human race has tried to find for itself the right path through this special country4 ,but the record is largely one of failure4 ,there is no way of success for a society that depends upon such forces4 ,here as in a dozen other connections the only way to life is that ,christian way which the world has so largely repudiated4 ,mankind want to make a success of their life in this world--want to make the most possible of it--but they want it apart from the leadership of ,christ1 and so they miss it4 ,he can show us the way of life if we will but listen1 but no other can4 ,and ,his way is always and altogether the way of love--love that can tame the brute in us and make it a servant--love that can transform passion into a holy fire--love that makes men patient and women generous--that takes the common things of life and makes them sacred-- and above all love that can hate sin with fierce sincerity1 and yet love and forgive sinners4 ,it is after this fashion that ,god loves us4 ,we must so love one another if we are to make human life great4 ,there is another and a larger sense in which there is need that we should forget the things which are behind4 ,we need as a race to escape from an evil past4 ,our greatest danger in this whole connection is the danger of moral skepticism4 ,sex vice has always been common1 men say with truth2 and then with fatal unreason they add1 and always will be4 ,that way lies sheer disaster4 ,the whole situation calls for faith in man's future--faith in his capacity for purity--faith in love4 ,and that faith is really but a part of any true faith in ,god4 ,in the past even ,christian people have tried to evade the problem of sex4 ,the truth about it has not been openly sought4 ,its challenge has not been bravely met4 ,its possibilities have not been realized4 ,and therefore fears1 sufferings1 excesses1 cruelties1 and injustice to women have degraded our common life4 ,the whole matter is central for our civilization4 ,while we think and work for reconstruction we would do well to remember that there can be no happy and harmonious life for us till this whole problem has been solved--till we have learnt to enthrone pure love in our midst and by its passionate and cleansing power to subdue the brute and exercise our complete humanity to the glory of ,god4 ,love never faileth4 ,it purifies passion and dominates the flesh4 ,if we believe in ,god we needs must believe in the triumph of love2 and that means a divine consummation at last to all our wanderings and struggles in connection with ,sex4 ,,appendix ,a ,,brief ,,sketch ,,of ,,some ,,of ,,the ,,physiological ,,facts ,,by ,a4 ,,charles ,e4 ,,gray1 ,m4,d4 7,,ed47 ,,appendix ,,some ,,of ,,the ,,physiological ,,facts ,of all the vital forces with which living things are endowed1 the two most potent are the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct for race-preservation4 ,this latter gives rise to the reproductive urge4 ,so deep-seated is this instinctive force1 that in many instances in the vegetable world1 the threat of individual death results in a special effort of reproduction and the individual dies to live in the next generation4 ,a force which is thus so insistent in the whole animal and vegetable world is naturally not absent in the human being1 and it is well we should definitely recognize the fundamental power of this1 in every normal man and woman4 ,not seldom the reproductive instinct is spoken of as a thing which can be put on one side and ignored4 ,all experience and history prove that this is impossible1 and that the attempt to do so ends in failure and disaster4 ,but in civilized communities it is equally impossible to allow such a force to range unrestrained1 hence the laws and customs of modern peoples4 ,but mere assent to external authority can never achieve more than partial success4 ,what is needed is whole-hearted agreement with an ideal which can only be attained by education of every individual in a real understanding of themselves and their responsibilities in sex matters4 ,it is due to the fault of parents and teachers1 rather than their own1 that many men and women are to-day paying the penalty of having misused or abused this divinely implanted instinct4 ,the ,law of ,bi-sexual ,reproduction ,it is one of ,nature's plans that in the genesis of a new individual two individuals should take a share4 ,this holds good throughout the whole range of living things except the lower forms of plant and animal life1 such as fungi and animalcule4 ,but1 with one or two individual exceptions1 as plants and animals evolve1 the union of two elements1 male and female1 is needed to start the amazingly complex process of building a new individual4 ,thus in flowers the stamens1 the pollen bearers1 provide the male element which1 through the intermediary of the pistils1 fertilizes the egg in the vesicle4 ,in the higher animals the egg or ovum is produced by the female1 and is fertilized by the sperm-cell produced by the male4 ,the necessary union between these two essential elements is attained in various ways4 ,thus the female salmon deposits her eggs on a convenient spot in the bed of a stream and the attendant male salmon then projects over them the spermatozoa4 ,in the higher animals there is a further development1 and special organs are evolved to ensure the conjunction of the two elements4 ,i have not space to describe in detail the effect of this union of the two cells1 generally spoken of as fertilization4 ,it may be found fully recorded step by step in any biological manual4 ,very briefly1 the sperm-cells1 which are active1 freely moving units1 swarm round the egg-cell and one of them eventually enters it4 ,the essential part of the cells1 namely the nuclei1 coalesce into one nucleus1 and an active process of cell division and multiplication is at once started4 ,the single cell divides into two daughter cells1 then again into four1 and so on4 ,very early in development1 the cells1 which at first appear similar1 become differentiated into different types1 but the whole ordered sequence of the development of an embryo is achieved by this cell division and multiplication4 ,each original cell contains a substance which1 on account of its being easily colorable with artificial stains1 is called chromatin1 and this chromatin is believed to be the bearer of the hereditary qualities4 ,the cell division is so arranged that each new cell receives an equal share of the male and female chromatin1 and this process is continued in every case of cell division1 so that eventually1 in every part of our bodies1 the dual inheritance remains complete4 ,but though both parents have thus an equal share in the cellular elements of the new life1 it is the female whose reproductive organs provide for its nourishment and protection until birth takes place4 ,the ,human ,sex ,organs ,in the female these consist of the womb or uterus1 the ovaries1 and a canal called the vagina which leads from the lower end of the uterus to an external opening1 the vulva4 ,the ovaries1 two in number1 are situated one on each side of the uterus4 ,the uterus1 which is pear-shaped1 with the apex downwards1 has three openings1 one at the apex and one at each side at the upper part4 ,these two upper openings are provided with a tubule extension1 the ,fallopian tubes1 whose outer ends are fringed and lie in close relation to the ovaries4 ,the ova or egg-cells are developed in the ovaries1 and through a complex and elaborate process a single cell comes to maturity from time to time4 ,it is then discharged into the open end of the ,fallopian tube1 reaches thereby the uterus1 and if not fertilized is discharged through the lower opening of the uterus into the vagina4 ,it is not known exactly when this discharge of ova takes place1 but it is believed to coincide more or less with the monthly period4 ,if1 however1 fertilization of the ovum takes place1 it is not discharged1 but remains in the uterus4 ,the lining membrane of the uterus grows round and envelops it1 and the wonderful process of cell division and multiplication proceeds which results in the growth and development of a child4 ,these various organs are situated in the lower part of the abdomen1 within the protection of the bony pelvis or basin4 ,this pelvis is1 compared with the male pelvis1 broad and shallow1 to provide for the passage of the fully developed child at birth4 ,the vagina is the passage by which1 during the birth process1 the child reaches the outer world1 and it is also the sex organ by which1 in the female1 the union of the male and female elements1 of which we have spoken1 takes place in the sex act4 ,the male sex organs consist of the testicles1 in which the sperm-cells or spermatozoa are evolved1 of a coiled duct leading there from1 and of the distinctive male sex organ1 the penis4 ,this last serves the double purpose of providing an exit for the contents of the bladder and for that emission of the spermatozoa which occurs in the sex act4 ,there are also certain glands situated in close relation to this duct which provide a fluid which is emitted at the same time as the spermatozoa1 the whole being termed the seminal fluid4 ,it is thus clear that in both sexes there are essential reproductive organs1 the ovaries in the one case1 the testicles in the other1 providing respectively ova and sperm-cells1 and there are also organs for the purpose of securing the union of these two elements1 namely the vagina in the female and the penis in the male4 ,these two sets of organs form the primary sex characteristics or actual sex organs4 ,the ,sex ,act ,the special process which secures this union of the male and female elements is termed copulation or coitus4 ,it takes place in all warm-blooded animals1 as well as many others1 but in man1 with his highly developed mental and psychical qualities1 it is a truly complex experience in which body1 mind and soul all take their part4 ,physically its central fact is the ejaculation of the seminal fluid by the male and its reception by the female1 and this culmination with its psychical concomitants is spoken of as the orgasm4 ,before coitus is feasible1 the organs designed for the purpose have to be brought into an appropriate state for its consummation4 ,the penis and the vulva are alike furnished with erectile tissue4 ,the penis has to be erected in order to penetrate into the vagina1 while the female organs add their share in facilitating the act both by the erection of the tissue round the vulva and by the outpouring of a lubricating secretion which bathes all the parts4 ,the mechanism of this is a nervous one1 and its originating cause while partly physical is chiefly mental1 due to the emotions aroused by love and courtship1 and thus in every act of coitus properly realized1 an essential preliminary is an abbreviated courtship4 ,this initial stage has been described as the stage of tumescence1 and is succeeded by the introduction of the male organ into the vagina4 ,a motor nerve discharge follows which produces ejaculation of the seminal fluid and is for the male the climax of the orgasm4 ,the female is1 however1 by no means passive2 motor nerve discharges take place leading to rhythmic contraction of the vagina1 and she experiences1 or should experience1 a similar orgasm to the male4 ,the climax is followed in both by a feeling of satisfaction and repose which generally issues in refreshing sleep4 ,it is to be noted1 however1 that in the female the whole process is apt to be slower than in the male4 ,her orgasm frequently coincides with the male1 but often it comes later4 ,if this is not realized by her partner1 and inconsiderate haste be practiced1 then1 in place of satisfaction1 a state of nervous tension may remain1 which is not only psychically deleterious1 but1 if repeated1 may lead to actual illness4 ,i have spoken of the sex act as it should be1 a fine and lofty emotional experience of two people between whom is the bond of love4 ,it is true that in the female an entirely passive part is physiologically possible1 and it is also true that in the male1 who is biologically the hunting and pursuing animal1 spontaneous desires arise from time to time which are too often accorded a bodily and disharmonious satisfaction4 ,disharmonious because it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the completely satisfactory realization of the sex act involves the participation of every side of human nature1 spiritual and physical1 and is the outcome of an intense desire for perfect unity with the beloved4 ,hence mere bodily satisfaction of sensuous desire must have a disharmonious and deteriorating effect1 because it ignores a basal fact of man1 namely spirit1 and leaves that side of him starved and unsatisfied4 ,and the same is true of all sexual aberrations and perversions4 ,though they may seem at the moment to be unimportant1 the fact remains that they are sins against both the spirit and the flesh1 and are followed inexorably by their own punishment4 ,it is argued by some that the sexual act should be restricted to occasions1 when there is a definite intention of begetting children4 ,this does not seem either reasonable or desirable4 ,nature's plans were certainly1 in the case of human beings1 not constructed on that basis4 ,it would introduce an element of calculation and deliberation into what is naturally a finely spontaneous thing1 and it would put a quite unnecessary1 and in some cases1 at least1 a harmful1 strain upon two people4 ,as ,havelock ,ellis has put it3 ,even if sexual relationships had no connection with procreation whatever1 they would still be justifiable1 and are1 indeed1 an indispensable aid to the best moral development of the individual2 for it is only in so intimate a relationship as that of sex that the finest graces and aptitudes of life have full scope4 ,this does not imply that married life does not call for the exercise of self-restraint and continence1 in this as in other respects4 ,those who regard marital relations as an opportunity for unbridled sexual indulgence are not likely to win success in an adventure of considerable difficulty in which all that is fine in man or woman will find full scope for development4 ,but it does mean that sexual intimacy has a value in itself as an expression in the terms of the body of the love which unites husband and wife1 and that1 when duly controlled1 it leads to health and general harmony4