Sex Sublimation Versus Sex Relations In Married Love

( Originally Published 1940 )

WHAT is meant by this word that moralists are so fond of, as though it were a magic cure for all the ills that follow on sexual abstinence? In the foregoing chapter we have seen how so many people, at the very best period of their lives, suffer from depression and dissatisfaction simply as a consequence of a too protracted sexual abstinence, and how deeply miserable and thoroughly disheartened they may be when vanquished in the conflict. But even those who issue apparently victorious from the hopeless fight against their natural passions are generally to be pitied, as something narrow and "old-maidish" persists in their character, an inevitable one-sidedness, which we shall now study a little more closely.

First of all, there comes to my mind the case of many a good spinster getting on in years, who has experienced many disappointments, and has ended by renouncing everything. Once upon a time the sexual life may have inspired her with great hopes, but in the end it has brought her only sleepless nights and bitter awakenings. Now at last she feels she has had enough of it. She cannot and will not nourish any more false hopes, everything sexual is most distasteful to her. She will be more reasonable in the future; she will seek consolation in "higher things"; she still has plenty of energy and will employ it along other lines.

She is fitted for something superior: for music, theosophy, or other forms of mysticism; she feels spiritually exalted. As time goes on, she feels great sympathy for those similarly situated, and is quite at home in their society. She pursues these new ideals with all the enthusiasm of passion; for the fire of her primitive feelings is by no means extinguished. Her passion is only sublimated; it has been directed into higher paths. If she were really dead to the world her renunciation would be of a more resigned character, something like the calm of people in advanced old age.

And so at last, renouncing everything "base," she has attained those "higher things." The fire of youth which had always stirred her so deeply, has now become completely sublimated. This may indeed prove her salvation, she feels safe and protected, and rises spiritually higher and higher, far above all earthly things and desires.

It is no doubt fortunate for her, but not quite so fortunate for science and art, and all those pursuits into which she has thrown herself with such ardour. Whatever she does in this direction will be a consolation to her soul, and she will later on recommend it to others; fresh, unspoiled healthy young persons, for whom such things may actually be dangerous. That which may be good for sick people, often makes healthy ones ill. For in this elderly woman, rescued from the shipwreck of life, the healthy mental equilibrium has been upset, and the harmony between body and soul disturbed, and this stamps all her actions, all her proposals for others.

Now we can more readily understand why there is so much morbidity in modern literature and art, so much one-sidedness in modern science. All these sexually crippled persons, whether men or women, with their devotion and their manifold talents would have produced far better and saner things, if they had been favoured with normal happy satisfaction of their natural intimate needs. How many fresh young minds and souls have been stunted and ruined through this sexual privation! And yet many are proud of this one-sidedness, as if it were really the summit of superiority.

Yet, art is so closely related to the sexual life; both are so old, even older than mankind itself, both so intuitive, so impulsive, so limited, so little subject to reason! Art and the love-life together have resisted all the assaults of Fate. In times of tyranny, both Art and Love were cunning enough to escape. Hopeless love and boundless passion have found their expression in Art; the despair of slighted love, the pangs of hopeless passion, the renunciation of earthly happiness, have all left their indelible imprint on Art.

In the old sacred writings we find the evolution of the human heart depicted true to life. In the book of Genesis, we find probably the most ancient documents of the higher life. Here everything is genuine, and the sexual life is most highly honoured as the pulse of family life; it is all spoken of with the utmost impartiality and respect, and without restraint; nothing is omitted, good and evil alike are spoken of frankly. And now let us compare this to the last link in the chain of religious dogmatism, the worship of the Virgin Mary. Here everything sexual is banned! Only the celestial expression beams from the serene countenance of the Mother of God! She is a wife, indeed even a mother; but she has no sex. Here is the celebration of mystic nuptials: it is the sublimation of earthly love. Oh! this warm volupthous glow of the Middle Ages; with which so many pious monks, their bodies wasted by long fasting and penance, implored the consoling love and pity of the Virgin. And so many pallid, anaemic, ecstatic nuns kneeling in passionate adoration of the figure on the cross; their heavenly spouse! But we must not enquire how much physical and mental anguish the poor creatures must have undergone before reaching the ecstatic state of sublimation. To attain this morbid condition, they had to sacrifice the world of beauty and pleasure to their ideal, and to deny themselves everything.

Thus the period of the Middle Ages was morbid to the core. Take the Dutch and Flemish inhabitant of the Netherlands, for instance; it was only after they had shaken off the Spanish yoke in their great fight for freedom that their painters were free to put on their canvases all the natural joy and humour of life as it really is.

Yet even today we see the same black cloud hanging over our heads. It is with a heavy heart that we observe the tendency shown by so many people, in every walk of life, to imitate these errors of a past age, and to dethrone our ideals instead of allowing them to stand in all their glory and blossom into beauty.

As it is in the realm of art, so it was in science and philosophy. Our whole outlook, like' our sexual life, is still suffering from dualism, theoretically despising the material, instead of frankly recognising it as the foundation on which all higher things must be based. Just as the sublimation of the sexual life gave birth to mysticism in the world of art, so in this case it leads to dualism, which causes the total destruction of all connection between higher and lower things. Thus the higher aspirations, torn from their foundation, must inevitably wither and die like a rose torn from the parent stem.

The primitive dualism of savage races, with their belief in dreams, their animism and their legion of evil spirits, is only childish ingenuousness and ignorance. The later dualism of the classic world had, however,, a deeper origin in the division of economic life: in the teaching of Buddha, as a protest against the voluptuousness of court life, and in the teaching of Plato, because the latter was a protagonist and philosopher of a slave-state. But it was the asceticism of the Middle Ages, with its chain of monasteries and its enforced celibacy which really turned dualism into this black and heavy shadow which still lies like a weight on the naturally joyous soul of man.