I am on the Pacific seaboard, seated in an ocean breeze; the sun,
falling delicately through a mist, makes me feel like a young god
awaiting the daughters of men. It seems as though all nature would
utter passionate yearnings upon this warm, buxom day. Yonder in clear
view are the round, beautifully curved hills, rising gently from the
soft smooth water, like breasts from a woman’s form. And the firm,
supple ship masts leap upward upon the waves.
“The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
Where is my mate? I am ready for her, and she for me. And yet we are
denied each other. By what right? By whose authority? There is evil
thought in forbidding the pure, the naturally pure, to embrace.
In front of me, built up from the shifting beach, is a huge, stolid
sea-wall, composed of a multitude of boulders, stuck together with
crude, coarse cement. I have examined these boulders somewhat carefully
with my eyes. They have each and every one of them been rolled and
washed and moulded by the sea. And yet no two are alike. Some are
beautifully shaped with radiant crystals in their make-up. Some are
jagged, rough-edged pyramids, uncut, with moss upon them. Many are flat
rocks, worn by the beatings of countless aeons of waves until they are
quite colorless. And then there is another kind which resembles these
last and yet seem different. I refer to the plain, ordinary, flat,
stupid stone, looking for all the world as if it had been created
merely to be trodden upon. But the boulders that interest and amuse
me most are those which are sheer bulks of matter or rather hulks
of space, having their own way, always getting the place they want,
boulders which are proud and satisfied with being exactly the sort
of boulders that they are. I think that they like being big boulders
chiefly because they catch the eye.
Can that coarse, man-made cement hold these elemental things together?
Yes, for a while, but not forever. This sea-wall will have to be torn
down and rebuilt again by coming nations; for that cement, Sandy, is
civilization trying to weld men together; and that sea beating with
the waves of beautiful, noble, animal passion, keeps ceaselessly,
ceaselessly saying:
“Down! Come down, I say, you can not curb me, for I am life, and the
Giver of Life, personified in motion, crucified in your sinful cement,
come down; you have not yet builded rightly!”
Then empires and republics fall; then cities sink upon sunken cities;
and the ant-hills lie waste upon an even desert. And man, poor, lonely,
bewildered, impotent man begins again to mix cement.
Troy was destroyed because of a prostitute. And why? Because there
should be no such person as a prostitute.
Sodom, Babylon and the Rome of the Caesars followed in the fated cycle
of Troy--in the perversion of love. Paris, London, Berlin and New York
will follow them, too. Nemesis takes time, plenty of time, too much
time, yet follows as surely as the stars shine out of the sky. But the
turtle doves of Solomon, without our vain intelligence, waste their
little lives in love, or rather because of love, natural, untrammelled
love, not one of them was wasted. Turtle doves do not sell their
daughters in marriage for convenience, nor in harlotry for necessity.
Marriage does not make love sacred. Love makes true marriage sacred.
But what of marriage without love, or where love is killed?
Turtle doves do not mate after they cease to love. And so their love
dies only with death, for they have no dogmas which call love a vice,
no laws which call love illegitimate. Turtle doves have no prudery,
for they are not foul-minded. Do not accept the fallacy that they
are silly, effeminate, cooing lovers. Quite the contrary, they are
the most shapely, virile and dignified of all creatures, happy in the
fulfillment of their being.
They have not the poor always with them, and so their males do not
force the young females by starving them until they yield for money.
Neither do they know of such base acts as rape, seduction and broken
vows amongst them. Jesus Christ knew all this when he told us to
have the heart right. Aye, but how can we have the heart right when
superstition makes us believe that we do wrong. Here, then, is the key,
and that old sinner, William Shakespeare, found it when he said that
there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. We think
love a sin, when it is as natural as breathing and as beautiful as the
warm birth of sunrise.
Are these statements true or not true? I appeal not to the advocates
of the so-called “free love.” They are debauchees, too low for notice.
I appeal not to religious ascetics, or bloodless beings. I appeal to
normal, healthy, passionate men and women. Is it so, or is it not so?
Ah, you scientists, you theologians, cease seeking for what is hidden
from us. Give up what is beyond us. Turn instead and tell us what of
the Geology of Passion? What of the Dogmas of the female’s right to
the male?
Come, Sandy, bring my tin spade and empty the little bucket upon the
beach. I am going to try a new cement.
X
Once again I am in the company of my royal host, His Excelsior. The
Great Axilla is showing me another section of his collection of men.
We are in a vast inclosure which resembles a city park. Crossing it
are shaded walks with benches at intervals, and at the intersection of
these various paths, that is at the centre of the park, is a fountain.
Upon the benches are seated men of different ages, some with chins
almost beardless, others in the evening of life, with the harsh furrows
of experience upon their features, and many who are worn into greyness.
“Look at these men,” said His Excelsior, “examine them with care and
tell me what you see.”