Sex and Common-Sense | Page 9

human soul was made for God, and that no part or section of
society, no race, no class, and no sex, was made for the convenience of
another.
I want then to combat with all my power this ancient but un-Christlike
belief that women miss their object in life if they are not wives and
mothers. It may seem something of a contradiction that I should in a
previous chapter so have emphasized the need of women for the
satisfaction of their sexual nature, and now be arguing that we must not
assume that they have no right to exist if they do not meet this
particular satisfaction; but I think you will realize that it is not a
paradox when I ask you to consider for a moment what your attitude to
men on this subject is. Many people hold that a man's passions are a
tremendous factor in his existence, so strong that he must always be
forgiven if he cannot control them; so strong that, on the whole, it is
hardly to be expected that he should control them. But yet, if a man
does not marry, or if there are more men than women in a certain

country--as, for instance, in Australia, or Western Canada
to-day--nobody speaks of those men as though they were
"superfluous," as though they had ceased to have any real object for
existence. People will realize that it is a hardship--a very great
hardship--in their lives; they will be apt to excuse them for taking what
they can get if they cannot get everything; but no human being talks of
the "superfluous men" in any of our great Dominions. People always
realize that a man has a human value, and that, however great the
urgency of the sex side of him, he still is a human being, he still has his
value in the world, even supposing that he should live and die celibate.
If you will try to put your mind into that attitude towards women, you
will, I think, see that it is not a paradox to say that a woman may and
does suffer if she does not fulfil the whole of her nature, and yet that it
is a monstrous fallacy to affirm that, because of that, she ceases to have
any reason for existence; that she is a futile life, a person who does not
really "count." Sex is a great and a mighty power, but it is something
more than the mere satisfaction of a physical need. It is part of the great
rhythm of life, running through all the higher creation; it is the instinct
to create, going forth in the power of love, proving to us day by day
that only love can create, bringing us nearer to the Divine Power, Who
is Love, and Who created the heaven and the earth. In spite of our
horrible thoughts about sex, our hideous sins against it, I do not think
that in anything God has made man more "in His image and likeness"
than when He gave him the power, through love, to create life. That is a
power that makes us akin to God Himself, and the instinct of sex is not
a grimy secret between two rather shamed human beings, but a great
impulse of life and love--yes, even, at the height of it, an instinct to
sacrifice in order that life may come into the world; it is a great bond of
union between human beings; it is the secret of existence, the secret of
the meaning of life; that which is to the nature of man like the sense of
music to the musician, of beauty to the artist, of insight to the poet. A
man may have no ear for music, and yet be a good and noble man; but
who will deny that he lacks something because he has it not? A man
may have no sense of beauty, but he is not, therefore, a depraved,
immoral person; yet does he not stand outside some of the great secrets
of life? So, when this still deeper instinct of creative love is not yours,
do not congratulate yourselves, or pride yourselves that you have never

felt it. For it means that you stand outside the great communion of the
life of the world; it means that for you some of the music of the
universe is dumb, and some of the beauty of the universe dark.
Yet how long have women been taught that this divine impulse of
creation is something base! Base even in a man, belonging to his lower
nature; still more deplorable in a woman, a thing to be ashamed of, a
thing to crush down and suppress, a thing you would not confess to
your nearest friends, or