I assert again there need be no fear.
It is one of the deepest and healthiest instincts of men and women that they have always fought for liberty to love, and have rebelled whenever the restrictions and conditions of society have borne too hardly upon them. There is first a period of dull acquiescence, followed certainly by a reaction towards pleasure and sin—the grabbing to take what has been withheld by any means and in any form; but afterwards comes rebellion—the true movement towards purity; the deep desire of a return to health, necessitating always the breaking through from all hindering barriers, so that the intolerable burden of sin may be cast; a glad imperative effort to gain liberty, to live rightly and joyously.
It is the young who to-day have a new consciousness of the right of freedom. They will never again accept the ancient restrictions. And it is well. We, who are older, whose steps are faltering and whose eyes grow dim with waiting for the vision we have seen, look to them to gain liberty, to re-establish the sanctity of love, which we have tried to do and failed.
But the young must shake off every symptom of the prevalent and contagious anaemia of fatalism that limits everything to the personal issues, before they can formulate and carry through any really constructive work of reform. They must learn to distinguish more clearly between cause and effect, the means and the end. At present they place the horse after the cart and mistake the power for the product. We are all apt to suppose conduct and feelings are the outcome of conditions and laws. They are not: they are the origin of them. When we have all got the desire for right and honourable conduct and honest conduct and honest feelings both about marriage and every form of sexual partnership, we shall get living and helpful laws.
What is the use of tinkering with what is moribund? A great teacher has said, “Let the dead bury their dead; come and preach the good and the new thing.”
CONCLUSION
REGENERATION
I have dared to think of a regeneration of our sexual lives through education and a fuller understanding of the meaning of love. But by education must be understood all that influences the desires and imagination, so that in every direction we shall be turned to seek health and clean living.
Our supine acceptance of so many things that are wrong ought to arouse us to shame. What are we going to do?