LOVE
The crowning fact about sex is that it makes possible the experience of
being in love. 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 women, which is closely linked with the creative instinct, 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 fulfillment. If we know the truth about this matter we
shall with comparative ease answer most of the questions which arise in
connection with sex.
By what divine and mysterious instinct it is that love is awakened I do
not know. A man may know and appreciate a score of women, and yet
remain in the depths of him essentially unmoved; and then some one
woman with no conscious purpose will release some secret spring of life
in the depths of his personality, whereby she becomes for him hence
forth the center of the world. It may happen that this love comes on
the heels of knowledge and grows out of friendship. I believe they are
fortunate persons to whom things happen in this way. But it may also be
that the mysterious instinct will do its work at a first meeting. Love
at first sight may be quite incomprehensible and unreasonable, but it
is a fact none the less. One meeting may fix the destiny of a man or a
woman, even though the second may not occur for months or even years.
The days that immediately follow this experience may not be happy days.
Many a man has to serve and wait ere he can awaken love in her who is
to him the one woman in the world. Many a woman has to wait and wonder
and face distress. Then, too, till the stage of mutual acknowledgment
is reached love makes men and women awkward. They do uncouth, crude,
and clumsy things. They get into muddles. They make mistakes. It would
seem that some delicate process of mutual adjustment is often necessary
before two souls can really find each other, and while the stumbling
preliminary days last, love is often a torture as well as a delight.
Nor are the best lovers the most successful at first. A superficial
emotion may be easily handled, but a deep one will upset a man and make
him strange to himself. And so two people will maneuver and wander and
baffle each other. They will often be sure and then uncertain by turns,
and will wonder whether love does not chiefly mean hopeless
complications.
But when two souls do really discover each other, then at once a new
life begins, so radiant, beautiful, stimulating, and mysterious, that
even the poets have failed to find sufficient words for it. 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 existence. I think they
generally know that they have been ushered into a house of life of
which they are quite unworthy, and that they take their first steps
therein in reverence and in awe.
Let me simply enumerate some of the manifest consequences of this love.
1. From the very first love expresses itself as a reaching after
intimacy. For many days two lovers are busy telling each other all
about themselves, about their past experiences, their hopes and
aspirations, their doubts and fears, their relations to other people,
and their various circumstances. They want to know and be known. They
want to share everything. Towards mere friends we do well to practice
some reserve. By talking about ourselves we may be apt to bore them.
But lovers want to know everything, and are wise if they have no
reserves.
2. Then, secondly, love obviously increases the vitality and so adds to
the physical beauty of both men and women. Indeed it increases vigor of
all kinds, producing new powers of sheer physical and nervous
endurance. What will a man who is truly in love not do for love's sake,
and that without thinking of fatigue! What untold things women have
accomplished under the spur of the same inspiration.
3. Thirdly, it awakens the latent idealism of both, It is not by
accident that men in love are found trying to write poetry, though it
may be a bad accident if other people have to try to read it. Of course
we laugh at this naïve habit, because poetry seems a thing incongruous
with the ordinary prosaic man, with his baggy trousers and clumsy ways.
But for my part I rather incline to thank God that such an impulse
should ever disturb the average man. What could be better than that at
one stage of his life at least he should try to reach the stars. And if
from the works of real poets we were to banish all the love-inspired
poetry, how paltry would the remainder seem.
4. Still further, love awakens the soul. Our spiritual capacities share
in the general stimulus which it brings. It is not by chance that
courting couples go to church. They do _not_ go simply to whisper in
the gallery, and if they do hold hands during the sermon I do not think
that God is ill pleased. They go because the inspiration of love
inclines them to long after God. Of course it does. All love is of God,
and this special kind bears openly upon it the marks of its divine
origin. And while on the one hand it is true that love leads towards
religion, it is equally true that without a sense of things spiritual
love cannot be its perfect self. Perhaps the commonest cause of the
failure of love lies in some arrest of spiritual development. For when
the soul is asleep, what is left of love is a poor thing.
5. And then, fifthly, at some point in its growth love summons passion
into life. What has been hitherto an emotion of the heart becomes also
a tumultuous activity of the whole being, 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 God. No doubt it is just
here that the compulsions of civilized society set a serious problem
for ardent lovers. Primitive men probably knew nothing of a period of
engagement, and lovers would proceed to become wholly wedded just as
soon as nature laid her compelling hand upon them. But it is our glory
that we are not simply the tools of natural forces. We belong to the
directorate in this life, and even on the force of love we can impose
times and seasons. But when the right time does come, then lovers who
have already been attaining to union of heart and mind express their
passion also in the union of their bodies, and this wonderful
experience, when it does so enter life, is realized as something
sacramental. It is literally and exactly an expression in the terms of
the body of something which is already a spiritual fact. Nothing
satisfies real love except this complete mingling of two personalities.
It is not satisfied without physical intimacy, and yet physical
intimacy alone is not enough. That which is satisfied by mere physical
intimacy is not love. 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 powers. 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 thing. It
is felt to be something with large spiritual consequences. In some
mysterious way it really does bind souls together. Each knows that
henceforth he or she is bound to the other for life, 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 country.
Considered apart from love, such an experience may seem to be gross,
because apart from love it is gross. But as an incident in the
communion of two loyal hearts it is realized as a pure and natural
thing. Through it the flesh is caught up into harmony with the spirit
and is thereby redeemed. A certain new balance and repose of being is
attained whereby a whole personality will experience a wonderful sense
of liberation. [Footnote: I do not think the creative instinct often
enters into consciousness at this point. It does so with some women,
but with very few men. As a rule the real content of the experience is
just an ardent desire in each for utter nearness to the other. It is
the expression of their love that they desire. It is each other that
they love--not as yet any third person.]
6. And then, sixthly, from love that has thus run its natural and
ordained course a new life results. Even human love has creative value,
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 infant,
thrill together over its untold charms, and find that little hands are
clutching at their hearts with amazing and mystic power. And not until
that point is reached is love made perfect. Mere lover's love is a
selfish thing. I do not say it in criticism, for I believe lovers have
an inalienable right to live for a while simply for each other. But
from the point when they bend together over a baby's cradle they take a
step up in life, and their love becomes a call to service, whereby its
selfishness is purged away. Parentage is usually thought of as
supremely the crown of a woman's life. So it is, though it is not its
only possible crown. But I believe that it is equally the crown of a
man's life. It is perhaps true that the production of true fathers
belongs to a later stage of human evolution than the production of
mothers, for fathers are not so obviously essential to young children.
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 fatherhood, and take a larger part in the rearing of
children. And I believe men will find, as I have said, that parentage
is for them also the crown of life. With many men the emotions that
come with fatherhood are the deepest of which they are capable, and
they are also the finest. 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 children. And with normal men their
fatherhood comes to dominate life.
Its most obvious result is that it compels a man to work, and to work
hard. We are mostly born slackers. We should like to take many
holidays, and if we were left alone we would do it. But parentage binds
us to the wheel. We discover that we have got to face the grind,
because the plain alternative is that the bairns would starve. And so
we do it. Of course at times we rebel. You may hear men every now and
then complaining half cynically and half humorously that, having once
been indiscreet enough to fall in love, 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 bills. But
there are few men who do not know in their hearts that the toils have
been the making of them. If love led only to delights, it would ruin
us. It is because it leads also to heavy labor that it makes us. 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 work.
[Footnote: No doubt in our disordered social life it often means far
too much work. No doubt thousands of mothers are simply crushed by it.
But it is not a good thing when mothers can evade even reasonably hard
work.] The great discoveries of the moral and spiritual worlds are only
made in and through work--yes, and sometimes through work that is sheer
grind. There is no other road to moral or spiritual maturity either for
man or woman. I have this deeply rooted objection to inherited wealth--
that it makes possible an escape from this redeeming discipline, and by
removing one of the normal consequences of love often leads to the
spoiling of love.
Let us, however, be clear about this further fact--love does not merely
lead to enforced labor, it also redeems that labor. Not merely does a
man face up to his job because it is in a sense done for love's sake,
but love itself supplies the necessary respite and counterbalance to
the burden of toil. We all need recreations. The tightly drawn string
must be relaxed. Moods come when normal and quite Christian men say,
"Oh, I can't stick it any longer; I want to enjoy myself." We naturally
demand that there should be an element of delight somewhere in life.
Notoriously it is rather hard to come by. City crowds at night present
the spectacle of people making huge and fevered efforts to run delight
to earth and often achieving only pitiful failure. 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 society, enriched by the
society of their children. 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-rooms. There lies to hand for them that which
will day after day refresh and delight them, and make them ready for
to-morrow's toil.
I am not forgetting that at this point modern voices will want to break
in on me with appropriate quotations from Bernard Shaw and others, and
try to silence me by pointing out what a mean, petty, dull, sickly, and
stodgy thing mere domesticity can be. Yes! it can be all that for
people who let it be all that. Even love that once was passionate
cannot redeem the life of two people unless there is something there to
redeem. Two lifeless and stupid people living together _can_ make of
life something duller than either could make alone. If it be part of
general wisdom to try to live widely and fully, and to use as much of
our natures as is possible, that is surely as true for two people
together as it could be for them apart. 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 interests. No sane
persons imagine that mere marriage excuses people from the necessity
for handling this big, mysterious, and difficult thing which we call
human life with vigilance and determination. But life on any terms for
the great majority of people must have monotonous and trying periods in
it. It almost always has heavy sorrows and not a few bitter
disappointments. And it is in view of these things that married love is
found to have redeeming power. It is one of the lies of the cynic that
love must needs burn itself out somewhere about the forties. Thousands
of people have found at forty that the best was yet to be. 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 life, and remaining still passionate will put golden
content into the passing hours.
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
life. We do not understand love till we have thus looked on towards
the end. When it is allowed to run its true course it does in this way
redeem life.
If I am told that I have drawn a hopelessly idealized picture of
married love, I can only reply by a blunt denial. Twenty-five years of
intimate contact with ordinary people have taught me these things. The
kind of life I have pictured is going on in uncounted small and unknown
homes all over the country. It is going on with commonplace people who
are neither very interesting nor very clever, but who are wise enough
to be simple and human. The real wonder of love is just that it can
lift two commonplace people into a life that is not commonplace. And
that is just how most of us get our chance in life. The people who are
going through these experiences are for the most part quiet people. We
do not hear about them. They do not have novels written about them, and
they supply no copy for the society newspapers. It is the other people
who advertise their woes. It is the unhappily married who make a noise.
Only the very greatest novelists can make a good novel out of the story
of a successful marriage. 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 wrecked. It is sheer untruth to say that most
marriages are failures. In most indeed there are ups and downs. The
most affectionate couples make mistakes and quarrel over trifles. Love
does not make all tempers smooth in a hurry. But love does teach people
how to get past such troubles. It does bring balance and repose into
life for both husband and wife. It does tend to produce efficiency and
health in those who handle it truly. It does make for normal and happy
development.
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 book. If we are going to inquire as to the sanctions of the
received moral standards, 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 life, and find any light on the question of birth
control, it can only be in relation to the positive truth about love
and its manifold reactions on human beings. 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 means. To a number of these further questions I
shall pass on in the succeeding chapters.
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 outlined, and that whatever spoils such
experience beforehand, or renders it impossible, is really an enemy
both to our well-being and our happiness. If
"Life, with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear...
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love
How love might be, hath been indeed and is,"
then the key to all morality and all sound practical wisdom is just to
conserve at all costs our chance of knowing love--love pure,
passionate, fruitful, and holy.
_Unreturned Love_
I ask myself whether I can say anything of use to those who love deeply
and truly, but find their love unreturned. 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 life, but that for
them love has meant only a great longing and a great pain. They could
give generously and nobly. They have in them a great wealth of love
which they long to spend lavishly; but because he or she remains
indifferent they find themselves tormented by that which is best in
them. There is something here harder to face than even the sorrow of
widows or widowers. To have loved and lost might be said to be a
tolerable situation compared with the feeling that one's love has not
been wanted.
Those who have never known such a situation may speak lightly of it.
Those who have will always want to deal gently and reverently with it.
Plainly it has great dangers attached to it. It is easy for those who
are facing it to allow themselves to become bitter and cynical. It must
be hard for them not to feel that many who do enjoy the privilege of
mutual love are shamefully ungrateful. And it must be harder still to
escape pangs of jealousy at times when they see the light of joy in
the eyes of lovers, or the pangs of something finer than jealousy when
they feel the charm of little children.
I know of only one perfect resource for men or women in this situation.
It lies in God. Other people always seem dull and uninteresting to
those who want supremely one special person. But God is not
uninteresting. He has to be sought. He is not found by the careless or
the cowardly. But those who seek Him earnestly do find Him, and as
a sense of His love and His reality steals into the heart healing
begins at once. He restores the soul. He fills the hungry. He is
sufficient. And when that has happened other people begin to seem
lovable too, and the human love that seemed at one point not to be
needed finds numbers of objects. No one who can love is an unimportant
person in a world that is starving for more love of divine quality.
And this at least I can report for those whom it may interest--that I
have known some very strong and gentle men, and some very brave,
gracious and understanding women whose lives are very rich in blessing
to other people, who know how to help the weak and comfort the sad, and
in whose faces there shines the light of a great and patient faith.
Having wondered for a time whence came these great endowments, 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 anger, and then to use their power of
love in self-forgetfulness for other troubled souls.
Yes, 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 true.