“There might be worse lives than that.” Dr. Goodno spoke reflectively.
“For her, I presume you mean?”
“Yes. Woman’s love is less of a physical affinity and more a consciousness of spiritual attraction than man’s.”
“Teach your women that. It’s not without its merits as a working doctrine. The time a woman isn’t thinking about servants or babies she generally spends thinking about her soul. The word soul to her is as fascinating as a canary to an Angora cat. She takes so much stock in heaven only because she’s been told it isn’t material. Your material philosophies were all invented and patented by men; it’s the women who keep your spiritual religions running.”
“How would you have it?”
“Oh, it’s all right as far as heaven goes! Let them believe anything they want to. But when you bring the all-soul idea down into every-day life, it’s mawkish. When you go about preaching that love is a spiritual ‘affinity,’ for instance.”
“You may believe it, understand. But you gloss over the other side. The general opinion is that ‘bodily’ isn’t a nice word to use when we discuss love. You and I, as physicians, see every day the results of this dislike to recognize the material side in what has been called the ‘young person.’ Women are taught from childhood to regard the immensely human and emotional sensibilities as linked to sin. The sex-stirring in them, they are led to imagine evil and a wrong to possess. They are taught instinctively to condemn rather than to respect the growth and indications of their own natures. The profound attraction of one sex to the other which marks the purest and most ennobling passion—the trembling delight in the merest touch or caress—the bodily thrill at the passing presence or footfall of the one beloved—these they come to believe a shame to feel and a death to confess. It is the teaching that makes for the morbid. A great deal of mental suffering which leaves its mark upon the growing woman might be avoided if men and women were more honest with themselves. A soulless woman is just as much use in the world as a bodiless one—or a man either, for that matter.”
Dr. Goodno regarded him musingly. “Granted there is a good deal of truth in what you say,” he said. “When I spoke of woman’s love as more of a spiritual and less of a material affinity than man’s, I meant that it does not require so much from the senses to feed upon. Sex has a psychology, and it is a fact which has been universally noted that all that concerns the mental aspect of sex is exhibited in greater proportionate force by women. Does not this seem to imply that love to a woman is more of a mental element and less of a physical?”
“Nonsense! More of a mental, but only so because more of a physical, too. All love’s mental delights come originally from the physical side. How many women do you see falling in love with twisted faces and crooked joints? A hand stands for a hand-clasp; a face for a kiss! Love becomes a ‘spiritual’ passion only after it has blossomed on physical expression. Not before.”