Sex and Religion | Page 4

not as sacred.
Nothing will rectify this profound racial rror, nothing will put an end to
this hocking irreverence, but a vocabulary.
We must have words to use which enable those who consider sex a
sacred, or at any rate serious, beautiful and dignified thing, to express
their meaning. The old question, 'What's in a name? A rose by any
other name would smell as sweet,' is in this respect to be answered
most emphatically 'Everything is in a name.'
The word sex and most of its derivatives have become contaminated in

the minds of a large proportion of people. The result of this is that
whenever one who has something to say uses the word (as of necessity
it must be used in dealing with the subject) deep inhibitions, reactions,
obsessions and antagonisms are roused in some or many of those who
hear the word, and the result is a condition of mental conflict in which
the new and sweet ideas suffer as do small boats tossed in a tempest.
I am convinced that the majority of decent people to-day are not
inherently opposed to the ideas which those who would reform sex
matters in our midst are desirous of placing before the public. Yet as
the ancient word 'sex' has not the conveyance of a single or simple
concept but is an omnibus packed with ill-assorted, conflicting ideas,
some of them foul and obscene, the whole 'bus load seems to be indited
by their presence.
Let us think what the word sex denotes to the average mind a swift,
hazy, kaleidoscopic series of half-blurred pictures of the worse than
bestiality in dens and haunts of degraded mankind; of the barbarities of
the male savage towards his female; of the refined horror of modern
prostitution; of the purely physical relation of the mating animals. Try
as he will the modern man cannot free his own mental concept of sex
from some fringe, some hazy aura of all these things because the word
sex is applied to them all and they, therefore, fantastically appear to be
aspects of the same thing which he and his noble and beautiful beloved
are living together. The life that he and his beloved are living together
is, however, not comparable nor is it soiled by the attributes of these
other phenomena. It is, in my opinion, a freshly evolved, nobler, subtler,
immensely richer and more beautiful thing than the primitive dr the
aberrant forms which it has passed and outwinged on its way upwards.
For the modern relation between man and woman mated or living in the
innumerable interdependencies, the mutual obeisances, the mutual
respects which are not paralleled at all in the sex relation of the
primitive peoples or in the debased lives of the violently depraved, a
clean, fresh, subtle word is wanted, and instead of the soiled and
degraded word 'sexual' life, for this new and elevated interplay between
man and woman I propose the word 'erogamic' life.

Erogamic is a new word coined here and to-day for the purpose of
crystallising a vital idea that is in our midst though barely recognised. It
is derived from the Greek: eros love, zndgamos marriage or mating. I
mint it with the intention that it shall designate that noble flower of the
duality of human life, the mating and relation together of man and
woman in all three planes physical, mental and spiritual.
Erogamic life, and not sexual life, is that which we who would reform
the relation between man and woman hold up as a standard. I desire to
set this idea free in all its potential power and beauty to do good in the
world. The physiological aspects of normal sex we all have as a
physical basis in our lives; for the evolved interplay of man and woman
we can speak of erogamic life and leave the word 'sexual' to those who
still roll in the filth and who delight in the unclean echoes of the
centuries.
For dictionary purposes the new word erogamic may be defined as: All
that relation, in cultivated communities, between man and woman as
mated pair which involves their mutual interplay and interdependencies
in physical, mental and spiritual life.
I trust that the fresh word for the fresh and beautiful concept
(essentially characteristic of this century) of nobly and completely
mated man and woman may replace the soiled and bedraggled
collection of ideas and themes at present lumped together under the
words 'sex' and 'sexual.' Indeed I feel acutely that the world has rightly
sickened of 'talk of things sexual.' The word is itself sickening, but that
nobler thing which has grown in our midst is a great and beautiful Fact
which we can sense better when it is defined and described in a word
giving a