“I do, for the vision of the circular rainbow on top of the cloud is something that really requires a certain fine sensitivity that is the product of civilization, and depends on the many factors of civilized life. I could not, as my remote ancestors could, carry you off your feet in a literal sense, and dominate you by sheer physical strength, which would have been the only earthbound flight possible with men of that age. Civilization has transmuted physical strength into mental, moral and spiritual strength. And just as physical strength was sensibly evident in every action and motion of the body, so now, in our present state of civilization, it is obscured or obliterated and every mental reaction to our environment is taking its place. To some women the strength of this mental reaction is invisible, and even today they can love with passion only the physically perfect man. But the majority of women now have been educated to the point of realizing that physical strength may be present in men whose mental and moral development is very small and that mental and moral strength may exist even in the men whose physique is slight and even frail.” “Do you think you’re so much stronger mentally, morally and spiritually than you were? Did you cultivate that strength consciously? Could you tell others how to do it?” “Yes, dear one, to all three questions, and so are you. The thing that finally touched off this day’s passionate union was our realization, helped by the increasing frankness forced by modern science on all vital matters, that sex life is a part of the love life, and that not only is sex not exclusively physical, but it is more mental than physical. Men as ancient as Ovid knew that love is an art, but they did not know it as well as we do today. If it is an art, it can be taught, it must be taught. The reason it has not been taught is the taboo on sex. But that is being lifted gradually and people are beginning to realize that sexless love is as impossible as birth is impossible without the fusion of male and female germ cells. The ancient love manuals were all composed by men to enable men to get greater physical pleasure out of what they called love. The modern idea is that man and woman together are each to contribute an equal and complementary part to a spiritual fusion comparable to the fusion of two human germ cells, and that as the male cell causes a reaction on the entirety of the female cell, so the female cell causes a total reaction on the entirety of the male cell. To say that either absorbs the other is quite misleading. They stand side by side and merely melt together, forming another different cell which is the combination of all the properties of the two. This idea of love implies that the two lovers be equally frank and open in every way, concealing nothing of their own feelings from each other.”