Making The Sexual Life A Thing Of Beauty

( Originally Published 1940 )

IN THE last six chapters we have discussed the ways in which the love-life may be overcast. Although the delicate morning-mist of modesty may sometimes enhance the brightness of love, the fog of ignorance, and the black thunderclouds of immorality and lust may unfortunately totally eclipse the light of day, and fill our hearts with trouble and anxiety.

Yet, although the sun may be obscured by clouds, we cannot deny that it is still there, and for this reason I do not wish to close these pages with the melancholy subjects that have filled the last chapters, but rather to cast a farewell glance over the whole panorama that shows us the sexual life as the focus of psychic life and the summit of the curve of our life itself.

Within us we have always felt this, every time that the sexual urge has stirred us deeply; but we scarcely dared to admit it. Modesty was the cause of this. And then our whole academic education forced us into the path of a prejudiced intellectualism, and we felt that to be very cold, for our reason affords us light, but light with-out warmth. And old honourable traditions were there to punish us, as though a longing for sexual affection were something sinful, and sexual passion a temptation of Satan.

Throughout the whole of this work, however, the beauty of the sexual life has been clearly emphasised, as we have always felt it, whenever our hearts have beat joyfully from the charm of love. Now we are more content with ourselves, and we shall no longer nourish the wish to stifle our sexual life, but shall devote every effort to render it a thing of beauty. Now when the flowers bloom and the birds sing, we join in with them and feel the same intoxicating joy of living, and our life is a life of sunshine at last.

Written words are too feeble to express the enthusiasm of love. Even the poet is scarcely equal to it. The nearest approach to an expression of this wonderful feeling and joyous enthusiasm, is through the most spiritual of the arts, that of music; from the mysterious intoxication of the oriental Gamelan, to the most charming of our sentimental songs.

And thus there comes to my mind the wonderful Ninth Symphony of -Beethoven, with the Ode to the Ecstasy of Love at the finish.

Joy, beauteous spark of the gods!