The basic principle of sex values is that sex is immoral so far as the physical side outweighs in proportion the emotional and mental--so far indeed, as the act becomes the motive and not the incident. Sex may be dedicated only to love; divorced from love, it is an abuse. There can be no exceptions to this rule, and we can only clarify our ideas as to what is and what is not love. Perhaps this maxim, which we learn by gradual experience, will help us. Sex passion quickly burns itself out. The pleasures derived from passion will be of a purely temporary nature, without the satisfaction which alone comes from permanence. All physical things are less permanent than the mental. There is no joy, no divine nature in sex, save where from the ashes of passion rises the phoenix of the "sexual" but the super-passionate attachment. And this permanent possession can only come, whether in marriage or outside, where the mind, healthily developed and exercised, is taking its true place in the expression of pure love. _Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._ Footnotes: [1] _The Origin of Sexual Modesty_, by Edward Westermarck. [2] _Vide_ R. V. Jellyman (1838) 8 C and P, 604. [3] Until recently incest was not a civil offence. [4] The second object of marriage is declared to be "a remedy against sin...; that such persons as have not the gift of continency marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body." [5] 1 Cor. vii. 8, 9. "Burn" means sex-obsession as mentioned on page 38. [6] "Where the decree Tametsi of the Council of Trent has not been proclaimed, marriage is constituted by mere consent freely exchanged between persons who are by natural and canonical law competent and able to intermarry."--Geary's _Marriage and Family Relations_. (Now altered by _Ne temere_-decree, but the principle remains.) [7] We have already commented on the strange inconsistency of regarding the sex-act as evil _per se_ outside marriage, and as a virtue in marriage. [8] I am using "celibacy" to imply complete physical chastity. [9] With the curious inconsistency, already referred to, that in marriage non-celibacy is a virtue. [10] Except by Act of Parliament. [11] The Majority Report of the Divorce Commission is a good instance of the unnecessary hardship which results from half-hearted proposals of this kind. Divorce is to be allowed, for example, after desertion for three years; why not for two? Or again, the wife of an incurable drunkard is to be free to obtain divorce, while the unhappy wife of a man who suffers from violent fits of intermittent drunkenness is to be denied this relief. [12] I refrain from adding "economic" reasons, for I believe that the State should remove, as far as possible, all such obstacles against healthy parents begetting children. [13] Procuration for the purpose of prostitution is of course an entirely different matter.