Men, Women, and God | Page 3

kept in complete ignorance of the truth
about their sexual natures until they marry, and that then they should be left to learn all
that they need to know from Mother Nature direct. That at least would seem to be a fair
inference from the fact of the conspiracy of silence in which ninety per cent of parents
have engaged towards the beings they love best.
Unfortunately in order to carry out the policy thus implied it would be necessary to keep
children from associating with other children, to forbid them to read the Bible, the great
classics of literature, and the daily papers--to keep them from the theatre, and from the
study of nature--in fact to bring them up in a world which does not exist. For in all the
ways I have suggested do boys and girls now collect garbled, half-true, and distorted
notions about sexual life. And even if it were possible to carry out the policy it would still
not be desirable. Marriage is not the simple and easy thing which the policy would imply.
Mother Nature does not teach young couples all that they need to know. Often they make
serious mistakes in the first few days. Often they mishandle and spoil the beautiful
relationship on which they have entered to their own disgust and disappointment.
Uncounted couples to-day have reason for the bitterness with which they complain that
nobody ever taught or helped them. In fact the policy of silence is as cruel as its
assumptions are untrue. Ignorance is an impossibility for the young. Our choice lies
between garbled, distorted, and defiled knowledge and a knowledge that shall be clean,
innocent, and helpful. It has often happened that men and women brought up on the
policy of silence have first learnt the facts about life through some contact with vice or
sin, and those who know what horrible sufferings sudden discoveries of that sort may
mean for sensitive natures cannot possibly have any doubts remaining on this point.
There are few more cruel things possible than to bring a girl up in the ignorance which is
mistaken for innocence and then to allow her to go out into the world to learn the truth by
chance, or through some unclean mind.
That is why I gladly address myself to the task of this book, in which at least some of the
truth is told.
Of course the real issue that stands in the background here is the one which concerns the
nature of true spirituality. We are all agreed that the essential greatness of man lies in the
fact that in him spirit may rule everything else. And until spirit does thus rule he has not
reached his true life, But the question of the place of the body in the full life of man still

remains to be faced and thought out.
The hermits of the desert assumed that the way of true life lay in the repression of all
bodily desire and as much negation of the body as is consistent with mere existence. But
in fact they often succeeded in making life disgusting, and generally in making it useless.
It may be doubted whether they contributed anything to the real problem of civilization.
Yet their mistake is still repeated in part by many good people. Many still think that the
way of the higher life consists in forgetting the body as much as possible in order that the
soul may live in freedom. They admit the body's needs with reluctance, and treat it as
something with no essential relation to their spiritual activities. Often they willfully
neglect the duty of health. Still more often they believe they ought to regard with
disapproval the clamant desires and cravings of our bodily natures. But in so doing they
miss the real significance of the Incarnation. Our life here is an embodied life, and it
cannot be fine unless the body is finely tempered. That body is designed as the instrument
through which the spirit may find expression. The first essential no doubt is to submit it
to discipline and so reduce it to the place of a servant. At all costs it must be brought
under control. It must be understood, and kept in good health. And if these things be
neglected the life of the spirit is hampered and depressed. But still spirit must express
itself through body, and all the wealth of powers with which body is endowed has
significance and worth.
For this reason the attempt to keep spiritual and bodily activities separate always
revenges itself upon its authors. On the one hand it leads to an impoverishment of the
spiritual life, for on these terms the spirit is left with no fine instrument through which to
express itself in