Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
* * * * *
MARRIED LOVE
Books by the same Author
SCIENTIFIC.
"The Cretaceous Flora, Part I." Illustrated. Published by the
Trustees of the British Museum. 12s. net.
"The Cretaceous Flora, Part II." Illustrated. Published by the
Trustees of the British Museum. £1 1s. net.
"Ancient Plants." Illustrated. Published by Blackie. 4s. 6d. net.
"The Study of Plant Life." Illustrated. Published by Blackie. 3s.
6d. net.
"Wise Parenthood." Published by Fifield. 2s. 6d. net.
TRAVEL.
"A Journal from Japan." Published by Blackie. 7s. 6d. net.
LITERARY.
"Man, Other Poems, and a Preface." Published by Heinemann. 3s. 6d.
net.
"Conquest," a Three-Act Play. Published by French. 1s. net.
"Gold in the Wood" and "The Race." Two Plays. Published by Fifield.
2s. net.
With Prof. J. Sakurai, "Plays of Old Japan, The Nö." Published
by Heinemann. 5s. net.
_The author's vivid and imaginative sympathy has really enabled her
in some degree to communicate the incommunicable._
ATHENÆUM.
MARRIED LOVE
A New Contribution to the
Solution of Sex Difficulties
BY
MARIE CARMICHAEL STOPES
_Doctor of Science, London; Doctor of Philosophy, Munich; Fellow
of University College, London; Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature, and the Linnean Society, London_
_With a Preface by Dr. JESSIE MURRAY
and LETTERS from PROFESSOR E. H. STARLING, F.R.S.,
and FATHER STANISLAUS ST. JOHN, S.J._
_Sixth and enlarged Edition_
London: A. C. Fifield
13, Clifford's Inn, E.C.4
1919
_Dedicated to young husbands and all those who are betrothed in love_
_First published March 26, 1918_
_Second Edition printed May 17, 1918_
_Third Edition printed June 25, 1918_
_Fourth Edition printed August 2, 1918_
_Fifth Edition printed September 19, 1918_
_Sixth Edition printed February 3, 1919_
_Printed by the Pelican Press, London._
_Copyright; translation and all other rights reserved
by the Author_
_Copyright in U.S.A._
Contents
PAGE.
Preface by Dr. Jessie Murray vii
Letter from Professor Starling, F.R.S., &c. x
Author's Preface xi
Letter from Father St. John and Reply xiv
Chapter I. The Heart's Desire 1
Chapter II. The Broken Joy 7
Chapter III. Woman's "Contrariness" 14
Chapter IV. The Fundamental Pulse 26
Chapter V. Mutual Adjustment 38
Chapter VI. Sleep 55
Chapter VII. Modesty and Romance 66
Chapter VIII. Abstinence 72
Chapter IX. Children 77
Chapter X. Society 92
Chapter XI. The Glorious Unfolding 107
Additions to Sixth Edition 114
Appendix 123
Charts to face 32 and 33
Preface
BY
Miss JESSIE MURRAY, M.B., B.S.
In this little book Dr. Marie Stopes deals with subjects which are
generally regarded as too sacred for an entirely frank treatment.
Some earnest and delicate minds may feel apprehensive that such
frankness in details is "dangerous," because the effect on prurient
minds might be to give them food for their morbid fancies. It is
just such a fear which has been largely responsible for the silence
and mystery which have for so long been wrapped round the sacred
rites of mating.
The question now is, Has this reticence been carried too far? Has
it been carried so far that it now tends to defeat its purpose of
safeguarding public morals? There are many who unhesitatingly answer
such questions in the affirmative. Their intimate knowledge of human
lives compels them to recognise that at least as much harm is done
by silence as by speaking out. Everything depends on how the matter
is presented.
Those who are shocked at the publication of such a book as this on
the ground that it gives material for impure minds to sport with,
need only reflect that such material is already amply provided in
certain comic papers, in hosts of inferior novels, too often on the
stage and film, and presented thus in coarse and demoralising guise.
It can do nothing but good to such minds to meet the facts they are
already so familiar with in a totally new light.
On the other hand, there are all the earnest and noble young minds
who seek to know what responsibilities they are taking on themselves
when they marry, and how they may best meet these responsibilities.
How few of them have more than the vaguest ideas on the subject! How
few of them know how or where to obtain the help they desire!
They recoil from the coarse and impure sources of information which
are so accessible, and they hesitate to approach those they have
learned to regard as virtuous and modest, realising that from such
they will receive so little actual information, and that so veiled
as to be almost useless.
Dr. Stopes has attempted to meet the need of such seekers, and her
book will certainly be warmly welcomed by them. It is calculated
to prevent many of those mistakes which wreck the happiness of
countless lovers as soon as they are actually married. If it did no
more than this it would be valuable indeed!
But there is an even more important aspect to be considered--the
effect on the child. In all civilised lands there is a growing sense
of responsibility towards the young.
The problems of their physical and mental nurture attract more and
more attention day by day. Eugenists, educationists, physicians,
politicians, philanthropists, and even ordinary parents discuss and
ponder, ponder and discuss, matters both great and small which have
a bearing on the development of the child. By common consent the
first seven years of life are regarded as the most critical. It is
during these years that the foundations of the personality-to-be
are laid--"well and truly" or otherwise. It is during these years
that the deepest and most ineradicable impressions are made in the
plastic constitution of the child, arresting or developing this or
the other instinctive trend and fixing it, often for life.
And it is during these years above all that the parents play the
most important role in the inner history of the child's life, not so
much by anything they directly teach through verbal exhortations,
warnings, or commands, as by those subtler influences which are
conveyed in gesture, tone, and facial expression. The younger the
child, the more is it influenced through these more primitive modes
of expression, and quite as much when they are not directed towards
itself but are employed by the parents in their intimate relations
with one another in the presence of their apparently unobserving
child--the infant in its cot, the toddling baby by the hearth, the
little child to all appearance absorbed in its picture book or toy.
Is it not of the utmost importance that these earliest impressions
should be of the finest nature? And should we not therefore welcome
all that may help--as this book can--to make the living cradle of
the next generation as full of beauty and harmony as love and mutual
understanding can?
The age-long conflict between the "lower" and the "higher" impulses,
between the primitive animal nature and the specifically human
developments of an altruistic and ethical order, are fought afresh
in each soul and in every marriage.
We need to realise more clearly that the lower is never--ought
never to be--_eliminated_ but rather _subsumed by the higher_. No
true harmony can be hoped for so long as one factor or the other is
ignored or repressed.
Dr. Stopes makes some very important biological suggestions which
should not be lightly dismissed. Further observation is required
to establish or disprove her theory of the normal sexual cycle in
women, but my own observation certainly tends to confirm it.
J. M. MURRAY.
_Letter from_ Professor E. H. STARLING, M.D., B.S., F.R.S.,
_Professor of Physiology_, _University of London_.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE,
GOWER STREET, LONDON, W.C.,
November 23, 1917.
DEAR DR. STOPES,--
The need of such guidance as you give is very evident. After all,
instinct in man is all insufficient to determine social behaviour,
and there is need of instruction in the highest of physiological
functions, that of reproduction, as there is in the lower functions
of eating and drinking--the only difference being that in the former
instruction can be deferred to a later age. And there is no doubt
that in this case it is better to acquire knowledge by instruction
than by a type of experience which is nearly always sordid and may
be fraught with danger to the health of the individual and of the
family.
At the present time it is of vital importance to the State that its
marriages should be fruitful--in children, happiness, and efficiency
(and all three are closely connected).
If your book helps in securing this object, your trouble will not
have been in vain.
Believe me,
Yours very truly,
ERNEST H. STARLING.
Author's Preface
More than ever to-day are happy homes needed. It is my hope that
this book may serve the State by adding to their numbers. Its object
is to increase the joys of marriage, and to show how much sorrow may
be avoided.
The only secure basis for a present-day State is the welding of
its units in marriage; but there is rottenness and danger at the
foundations of the State if many of the marriages are unhappy.
To-day, particularly in the middle classes in this country, marriage
is far less really happy than its surface appears. Too many who
marry expecting joy are bitterly disappointed; and the demand for
"freedom" grows; while those who cry aloud are generally unaware
that it is more likely to have been their own ignorance than the
"marriage-bond" which was the origin of their unhappiness.
It is never _easy_ to make marriage a lovely thing; and it is an
achievement beyond the powers of the selfish, or the mentally
cowardly. Knowledge is needed and, as things are at present,
knowledge is almost unobtainable by those who are most in want of it.
The problems of the sex-life are infinitely complex, and for their
solution urgently demand both sympathy and scientific research.
I have some things to say about sex, which, so far as I am aware,
have not yet been said, things which seem to be of profound
importance to men and women who hope to make their marriages
beautiful.
This little book is less a record of a research than an attempt to
present in easily understandable form the clarified and crystallised
results of long and complex investigations. Its simple statements
are based on a very large number of first-hand observations, on
confidences from men and women of all classes and types, and on
facts gleaned from wide reading.
My original contributions to the age-long problems of marriage
will principally be found in Chapters IV., V., and VIII. The other
chapters fill in what I hope is an undistorted picture of the
potential beauties and realities of marriage.
The whole is written simply, and for the ordinary untrained reader,
though it embodies some observations which will be new even to those
who have made scientific researches on the subjects of sex and human
physiology. These observations I intend to supplement and publish at
greater length and in more scientific language in another place.
I do not now touch upon the many human variations and abnormalities
which bulk so largely in most books on sex, nor do I deal with the
many problems raised by incurably unhappy marriages.
In the following pages I speak to those--and in spite of all our
neurotic literature and plays they are in the great majority--who
are nearly normal, and who are married or about to be married, and
hope, but do not know how, to make their marriages beautiful and
happy.
To the reticent, as to the conventional, it may seem a presumption
or a superfluity to speak of the details of the most complex of all
our functions. They ask: Is not instinct enough? The answer is No.
Instinct is _not_ enough. In every other human activity it has been
realised that training, the handing on of tradition are essential.
As Dr. Saleeby once wisely pointed out: A cat knows how to manage
her new-born kittens, how to bring them up and teach them; a human
mother does not know how to manage her baby unless she is trained,
either directly or by her own quick observation of other mothers. A
cat performs her simple duties by instinct; a human mother has to be
trained to fulfil her very complex ones.
The same is true in the subtle realm of sex. In this country, in
modern times, the old traditions, the profound primitive knowledge
of the needs of both sexes, have been lost, and nothing but
a muffled confusion of individual gossip disturbs a silence,
shamefaced or foul. Here and there, in a family of fine tradition,
a youth or maiden may learn some of the mysteries of marriage, but
the great majority of people in our country have no glimmering of
the supreme human art, the art of love; while in books on advanced
Physiology and Medicine the gaps, the omissions, and even the
misstatements of bare fact are amazing.
In my first marriage I paid such a terrible price for sex-ignorance
that I feel that knowledge gained at such a cost should be placed
at the service of humanity. In this little book average, healthy,
mating creatures will find the key to the happiness which should
be the portion of each. It has already guided some to happiness,
and I hope it may save some others years of heartache and blind
questioning in the dark.
MARIE CARMICHAEL STOPES.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION.
I so much regret that many people have had to wait for the book, or
been unable to get it. The paper restrictions and difficulties of
printing and binding have been great. At first the publisher started
with a modest edition of 2,000, not knowing what sort of reception
the book would have. Now that we know that people not only need the
book but really _want_ it we hope to be able to keep it in print,
instead of perforce having it so often "reprinting," as it has been
in the first few months of its existence.
MARIE CARMICHAEL STOPES.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO FIFTH EDITION.
To mention some of those whose appreciation and encouragement have
so much helped the progress of this book would be invidious, and to
record them all would fill pages with mere names; but there is one
toward whom I have often desired to record in print my gratitude,
and that is Humphrey Verdon Roe. These thanks are rendered to him
not in his private capacity of adored and adoring husband, but in
his more public office of sympathetic friend. Though he did not
meet me early enough to contribute to the text of the book itself
his interest has nevertheless been invaluable in creating a helpful
atmosphere for the ever-increasing work the book brings.
MARIE CARMICHAEL STOPES.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO SIXTH EDITION.
The difficulty and cost of printing still renders it inadvisable
to incorporate throughout this edition the number of small notes I
should like to add, and the further points about which my various
correspondents have asked advice.
Among the subjects of inquiry, two are particularly prominent in
the many letters which readers send me. The most frequent questions
concern the practical extension so many desire to Chapter 9. This
I have already dealt with separately in the short companion volume
called "Wise Parenthood." The other subject deals with the reverse
state of affairs and is also an extension of Chapter 9. This, for
the present, I am placing at the end of the volume, Addition 4, page
119. Other points are dealt with on pages 114, _et seq._
Readers who have kindly contributed information, or have made
requests for more light in a new edition, will, I hope, be satisfied
now before too long a time has elapsed.
MARIE CARMICHAEL STOPES
_Letter from_ Father STANISLAUS ST. JOHN, F.C., S.J.
114, MOUNT STREET,
LONDON, W. I,
December 11, 1917.
DEAR DR. STOPES,
I have read "Married Love" with deep interest. As a piece of
thoughtful, scientific writing I find it admirable throughout,
and it seems to me that your theme could not have been treated in
more beautiful or more delicate language, or with a truer ring of
sympathy for those who, through ignorance or want of thought, make
shipwreck of their married happiness.
Your clear exposition of the rhythmic curve of sex-feeling and of
the misinterpretation on the part of so many husbands of what they
call their wives' contrariness, arising from their ignorance of its
existence, should bring happiness to many married couples whose
lives are drifting apart through want of knowledge. In the exercise
of my ministry I have repeatedly traced the beginnings of the rift
to this want of knowledge and consequently of sympathy.
So far we are in complete agreement, but our ways part when you
treat of birth control.
You write primarily as a scientist (though a very human scientist),
and so you are naturally mainly occupied with the facts and
conditions of what I may call our earth-life. I, on the other
hand, writing as a Catholic, regard our earth-life as essentially
and inseparably connected with an eternal existence which reaches
out beyond the grave. I look on this life as utterly meaningless
in itself, as a period which is simply and solely a means to an
end--Eternity--a period of which all the circumstances of pleasure
and pain can only be explained and rightly used in their relation to
this Eternity.
Let me take in illustration of my meaning the case you give of the
worn-out mother of twelve. The Catholic belief is that the loss
of health on her part for a few years of life and the diminished
vitality on the part of her later children would be a very small
price indeed to pay for an endless happiness on the part of all.
In our belief, then, the destruction of one spermatazoon is not
the question, but the deliberate prevention of an eternally
happy existence which, in the supposition, might arise from its
preservation. Holding, as we do, that the marriage-act is the
divinely ordained means by which man offers to God the opportunity
of creating an immortal being, we do not believe that he may make
use of this means and deliberately frustrate it of its end without
doing grave wrong.
You do me the honour of suggesting that I should write a foreword
to your book, but any foreword from me could obviously only derive
value from my position as a Catholic priest, and that position is in
opposition to this part of your work.
I cannot end without thanking you very sincerely for allowing me to
read your book. Apart from what, as a Catholic, I object to in it,
it contains so much most helpful matter that I feel sure it will
bring to many a happiness in married life now wanting through the
ignorance and the consequent want of sympathy which you so rightly
deplore.
Believe me, dear Dr. Stopes,
Yours very sincerely,
S. ST. JOHN, S.J., C.F.
I publish this letter with sincere thanks to Father St. John for his
permission to use it.--M. C. S.
Reply to Father St. John, S.J.
LEATHERHEAD, December 12, 1917.
DEAR FATHER ST. JOHN,--
Your letter wins my heart entirely by its appreciation and kindness.
It is a great help and encouragement to find that we are so far in
essential agreement, and that you are so well disposed toward even
part of my effort.
But--and I wish I could say it in burning words--it is not because
I am chiefly concerned with Time that I wrote Chapter IX., but just
because I am so acutely and so persistently conscious that I am
dealing with factors of Eternity. _To me to-day is essentially a
part of my Life Everlasting._
I cannot separate time and eternity, this world and the next, as
religious people often seem able to do; to me this body is a tool
in the service of (though not completely in the control of) my
immortal soul. Now it seems to me that religious people--and even
in your letter I fancy I detect the same tendency (forgive me if
I am wrong)--are too ready to separate this world and the next,
to act unreasonably or cruelly here and to trust to Eternity, or
the Hereafter, to put all right. I do not think that is the way
God wills us to work out His plans now that He is giving us the
knowledge to do better.
Could there be anything more unreasonable or cruel than to bring
into life half a dozen children _doomed from birth_ to ill-health,
poverty, and almost inevitable crime?
Christ forgave the thief upon the Cross, but He said, "Woe unto him
through whom offences come. It were better for him that a millstone
were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea." Would Christ
approve of deliberately creating a thief by bringing forth a child
who was one inevitably through predictable weakness of physique
and mentality and an environment of poverty? ("Thief" stands for
criminals in general.)
But more, what about others, born dead, born imbecile, thwarted of
life by miscarriage, which tear and rend the overburdened mother so
that she is forced to neglect the children she has, and her neglect
turns them into thieves? The poor, uneducated mother commits this
crime through ignorance: it is _we who know_ and allow her to remain
in ignorance who are really responsible. Is not our withholding
God-given knowledge the greatest stumbling-block of offence to these
little ones, and shall we not deserve the millstone round our necks?
Were everyone to have all the children physiologically possible
(now that infant mortality is so much reduced by science) in a few
centuries there would not be standing room on the earth, and nowhere
for a blade of grass or an ear of corn to grow between the crowding
feet. Is then a Roman Catholic mother, the increases to whose large
family get punier and punier, to be privileged to go deliberately
with that host of puny children _at the expense of others_, not only
through that part of Eternity called Time, but through all Eternity?
But, dear Father St. John, it is not my place to preach or to argue
with you, especially after your generous kindness and appreciation.
And, alas! I fully realise that even were I granted the tongues of
men and of angels, and I converted you to my thought in this matter,
you as a Roman Catholic priest could not uphold a position in
opposition to your Church.
Oh, that the Churches would look to Christ's own words instead of to
the official Church interpretation of them!
I thank you very sincerely for your kindness to a stranger, and
remain, always yours respectfully,
MARIE CARMICHAEL STOPES.
Chapter I.
The Heart's Desire
She gave him comprehension of the meaning of love: a word in
many mouths, not often explained. With her, wound in his idea of
her, he perceived it to signify a new start in our existence, a
finer shoot of the tree stoutly planted in good gross earth; the
senses running their live sap, and the minds companioned, and
the spirits made one by the whole-natured conjunction. In sooth,
a happy prospect for the sons and daughters of Earth, divinely
indicating more than happiness: the speeding of us, compact
of what we are, between the ascetic rocks and the sensual
whirlpools, to the creation of certain nobler races, now very
dimly imagined.--George Meredith's "Diana of the Crossways,"
chap. 37.
Every heart desires a mate. For some reason beyond our
comprehension, nature has so created us that we are incomplete in
ourselves; neither man nor woman singly can know the joy of the
performance of all the human functions; neither man nor woman singly
can create another human being. This fact, which is expressed in our
outward divergencies of form, influences and colours the whole of
our lives; and there is nothing for which the inner-most spirit of
one and all so yearns as for a sense of union with another soul, and
the perfecting of oneself which such union brings.
In all young people, unless they have inherited depraved or diseased
faculties, the old desire of our race springs up afresh in its
pristine beauty.
With the dreams and bodily changes of adolescence, come to the youth
and maiden the strange and powerful impulses of the racial instinct.
The bodily differences of the two, now accentuated, become mystical,
alluring, enchanting in their promise. Their differences unite and
hold together the man and the woman so that their bodily union
is the solid nucleus of an immense fabric of interwoven strands
reaching to the uttermost ends of the earth; some lighter than the
filmiest cobweb, or than the softest wave of music, iridescent
with the colours, not only of the visible rainbow, but of all the
invisible glories of the wave-lengths of the soul.
However much he may conceal it under assumed cynicism, worldliness,
or self-seeking, the heart of every young man yearns with a great
longing for the fulfilment of the beautiful dream of a life-long
union with a mate. Each heart knows instinctively that it is only a
mate who can give full comprehension of all the potential greatness
in the soul, and have tender laughter for all the child-like wonder
that lingers so enchantingly even in the white-haired.
The search for a mate is a quest for an understanding heart clothed
in a body beautiful, but unlike our own.
In the modern world, those who set out on high endeavours or
who consciously separate themselves from the ordinary course of
social life, are comparatively few, and it is not to them that
I am speaking. The great majority of our citizens--both men and
women--after a time of waiting, or of exploring, or of oscillating
from one attraction to another, "settle down" and marry.
Very few are actually so cynical as to marry without the hope of
happiness; while most young people, however their words may deny it
and however they may conceal their tender hopes by an assumption of
cynicism, reveal that they are conscious of entering on a new and
glorious state by their radiant looks and the joyous buoyancy of
their actions. In the kisses and the hand touch of the betrothed
are a zest and exhilaration which stir the blood like wine. The
two read poetry, listen entranced to music which echoes the songs
of their pulses, and see reflected in each other's eyes the beauty
of the world. In the midst of this celestial intoxication they
naturally assume that, as they are on the threshold of their lives,
so too they are in but the ante-chamber of their experience of
spiritual unity.
The more sensitive, the more romantic, and the more idealistic is
the young person of either sex, the more his or her soul craves for
some kindred soul with whom the whole being can unite. But all have
some measure of this desire, even the most prosaic, and we know from
innumerable stories of real life that the sternest man of affairs,
he who may have worldly success of every sort, may yet, through the
lack of a real mate, live with a sense almost as though the limbs of
his soul had been amputated. Edward Carpenter has beautifully voiced
this longing:--
That there should exist one other person in the world towards
whom all openness of interchange should establish itself, from
whom there should be no concealment; whose body should be as
dear to one, in every part, as one's own; with whom there should
be no sense of Mine or Thine, in property or possession; into
whose mind one's thoughts should naturally flow, as it were to
know themselves and to receive a new illumination; and between
whom and oneself there should be a spontaneous rebound of
sympathy in all the joys and sorrows and experiences of life;
such is perhaps one of the dearest wishes of the soul.--"Love's
Coming of Age."
It may chance that someone into whose hands this book falls may
protest that he or she has never felt the fundamental yearning to
form a part of that trinity which alone is the perfect expression
of humanity. If that is so, it is possible that all unconsciously
he may be suffering from a real malady--sex anæsthesia. This is the
name given to an inherent coldness, which, while it lacks the usual
human impulse of tenderness, is generally quite unconscious of its
lack. It may even be that the reader's departure from the ordinary
ranks of mankind is still more fundamental, in which case, instead
of sitting in judgment on the majority, he will do well to read
some such book as "The Sexual Question" (English translation 1908)
by the famous Professor August Forel, in order that his own nature
may be made known to him. He may then discover to which type of our
widely various humanity he belongs. He need not read my book, for
it is written about, and it is written for, ordinary men and women
who, feeling themselves incomplete, yearn for a union that will have
power not only to make a fuller and richer thing of their own lives,
but which will place them in a position to use their sacred trust as
creators of lives to come.
It has happened many times in human history that individuals have
not only been able to conquer this natural craving for a mate,
but have set up celibacy as a higher ideal. In its most beautiful
expression and sublimest manifestations, the celibate ideal has
proclaimed a world-wide love, in place of the narrower human love of
home and children. Many saints and sages, reformers and dogmatists
have modelled their lives on this ideal. But such individuals cannot
be taken as the standard of the _race_, for they are out of its main
current: they are branches which may flower, but never fruit in a
bodily form.
In this world our spirits not only permeate matter but find their
only expression through its medium. So long as we are human we must
have bodies, and bodies obey chemical and physiological, as well as
spiritual laws.
If our race as a whole set out to pursue an ideal which must
ultimately eliminate bodies altogether, it is clear that very soon
we should find the conditions of our environment so altered that we
could no longer speak of the human race.
In the meantime, we _are_ human. We each and all live our lives
according to laws, some of which we have begun to understand, many
of which are completely hidden from us. The most complete human
being is he or she who consciously or unconsciously obeys the
profound physical laws of our being in such a way that the spirit
receives as much help and as little hindrance from the body as
possible. A mind and spirit finds its fullest expression thwarted by
the misuse, neglect or gross abuse of the body in which it dwells.
By the ignorant or self-indulgent breaking of fundamental laws
endless harmonies are dislocated. The modern, small-minded ascetic
endeavours to grow spiritually by destroying his physical instincts
instead of by using them. But I would proclaim that we are set in
the world so to mould matter that it may express our spirits; that
it is presumption to profess to fight the immemorial laws of our
physical being, and that he who does so loses unconsciously the
finest flux in which wondrous new creations take their rise.
To use a homely simile--one might compare two human beings to two
bodies charged with electricity of different potentials. Isolated
from each other the electric forces within them are invisible, but
if they come into the right juxtaposition the force is transmuted,
and a spark, a glow of burning light arises between them. Such is
love.
From the body of the loved one's simple, sweetly coloured flesh,
which our immemorial creature instincts urge us to desire, there
springs not only the wonder of a new bodily life, but also the
enlargement of the horizon of human sympathy and the glow of
spiritual understanding which a solitary soul could never have
attained alone.
Many reading this may feel conscious that they have had physical
union without such spiritual results, perhaps even without an
accession of ordinary happiness. If that is so, it can only be
because, consciously or unconsciously, they have broken some of
the profound laws which govern the love of man and woman. Only by
learning to hold a bow correctly can one draw music from a violin:
only by obedience to the laws of the lower plane can one step up to
the plane above.