Married Love

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l and spiritual! And what a loss on the merest grounds of prudence and the economy of pleasure is its unbridled waste along physical channels! So nothing

and in the slow and often backsliding evolution of the higher love, there is no doubt that humanity owes much to the ascetic. But this debt is in the past. We are now gaining control of the lower forces, we are winning knowledge of the complex meanings and the s

products of marriage. It not infrequently happens that after a love-marriage and some years of what is considered happiness, the man or woman may withdraw from the sex life, often looking down

e of human physiology, and it seems to me that, with all their fine and religious fervour, they often lack the mysticism necessary for the full realisation of the meaning and potentialities of the new creation resulting from man

see that there was also a romantic asceticism which, while revolting from the sensuality of the pagan contemporaries, did not entirely prohibit the charms and pleasures of mutual companionship. Thus, in a

surprise you at first. But when I give you the proofs you will agree that it is so." The absence of restraint to desire in marriage, he continues, often leads to speedy disgust, and even apart from this, sexual intercourse, pregnancy, delivery, lactation, the bringing up of children, and all the pains and anxieties that accompany these things, soon destroy youth and dull the point of pleasure. The virgin is free from these burdens. She retains her vigour and her youthfulness, and even at the age of forty may rival the young nubile girl. "A double ardour thus burns in the heart of him who lives with her, and the gratification of desire never extinguishes the bright flame which ever continues to increase in strength." Chrysostom describes minutely al

ious if we draw any conclusions; while Cyprian (Epistola, 86) is unable to approve of those men he hears of, one a deacon, who live in f

re, he is often weakened rather than strengthened by his determination to flout nature. Save only in the truly great, there is a warping and narrowing w

says ("Love a

ven when such control becomes merely obstructive to life, are like the physician who tried only

cludes most of the female ascetics-hates Cupid because he has never shown to them any favour. The

ess directly caused by abstinence both in men and in women. These diseases range from neuralgia and "nerves" to (in women) fibroid growths. And it is wel

t of disease. There is, however, no disease I know of which is caused by the normal and mutually ha

is truth should never be lost sight of in marriage; where between the times of natural, happy, and also stimulating exercise of the s