What is it that everybody knows, and is talking about, and still
remains a secret? You don’t know! Well, let me put the question
differently. What is it that you discuss with your friend, with your
husband, your husband with his friends; girls among themselves, boys
among themselves; a respectable man never with a lady; a mother will
keep it a secret from her daughter, a father from his son, a teacher
from a pupil; something that everybody possesses, yet it is a secret?
Well, I will tell you.
It is sex!
Anything pertaining to sex is talked of in whispers in society (for
fear the guardian of morality might overhear). It is too vile a subject
to be discussed. It is called immoral by church and state, and for that
reason you can discuss it with your friends of the same sex behind
closed doors, but not of the opposite sex under any condition if you
wish to be classed among the respectable. We discussed it at the
academy where I was sequestered. We locked the doors and talked about
it. Yes, and we did more than that; we--no, I don’t believe I will,
until I consult the postmaster-general.
A friend of mine, a little Jew, was telling some stories of the Talmud,
among them the ritual of sex. I tolerated it, there being others
present. After they had left I told him that if he wanted to tell
immoral stories, not to tell them in my house. My friends have told me
the same things in a more forceful manner, and I did not think them
immoral. The story in itself was not immoral; the immorality consists
in that it was told by a person of the opposite sex. The wise by
their continuous slander have created a feeling that sex and all its
relationship is vile, and is to be dreaded, and is only tolerated as a
matter that cannot be helped. How very much nicer, cleaner, and holier
it would be if babes could be gotten from the church or government
warehouses! How much cleaner and holier we would be were we sexless
beings. Some of the wise are even looking for a time when we will
evolve to a sexless state. O what a picnic! What a fool God must have
been not to know in the first place that he had to wait for some people
he made to get wise so they would be able to tell him how to work the
game of evolution. But I think that he will not even consider that
sexless-state proposition which is being agitated by the wise men. I
think that now, like always, he agrees with Rosey, who declares that
sex and the use of it is most divine. If there is anything that should
be reverenced more than any other thing in the world it is sex. I do
not mean motherhood--even the wise have no objection to that. I do not
mean womanhood--I mean the organ of sex. The whole universal scheme is
sex--it is the holiest of holies.
The use of sex is evolution beginning with protoplasm and on and on
until we reach man. Nothing is great that does not contain sex. There
is no greatness in art unless sex be there. A painting is not great
without it. It is the harmony of music, and poems would be dull without
love of some kind. The plumage of the bird and its songs are all for
the pleasing of sex. It is the cause of the struggle and happiness of
the world.
The miner who spends his life in the mines does so to please a wife, a
sweetheart, or his progeny.
The man who goes to war, the man who toils in the shop, he who works
on the farm--all are moved by sex. It is divine and holy. Sex is the
motive power, from the tiniest amœba to the most complicated organism.
The urim and thummim was considered holy. With bare feet and bowed head
the high priest approached it. With fear, reverence, and a trembling
heart he consulted it, because through it God spake. Words or language
that would be adequate for expression there are none; it is only when
words fail us, it is only when language would blaspheme, and retard to
silence--it is then, and then only, that we can worship the most holy
of sanctuaries--sex. Through it God reveals himself.
The earth that possessed us before we were, and whither we shall all of
us in due time return, what is it unless it be the sex of the universe.
Mother earth we call her, on account of her birth-giving nature.
Minus everything attributed to womanhood, she does not nurse us nor
possess the breasts of a mother; she is like a mother only in sex. The
reception of the seed, the care of it, and the birth of an object is
what you see in the earth.
Look everywhere! What do you see? The planting of an acorn and
the birth of an oak; the planting of corn seed and the birth of a
corn-field. The whole operation is birth and getting ready for birth,
and seeing all of this, I feel that there is nothing diviner or more
miraculous than sex and the operation of sex. Think of it! A seed
planted and when rotten it takes root, and then the birth of a God!
The redemption of the world will be only when sex will be reverenced
and honored, and when men and women cease to make traffic of
themselves. Then we will not try to put asunder by intellectual rules
that which life has joined together by Love.