Our moral code is, however, much less ruled by law than by custom and the united will of the community. It is for this reason that I want to force men, and even more women, to think practically on these matters. My own opinion is firm. Apart from the fact that the disproportion in the number of the sexes in this country makes marriage impossible for all and condemns great numbers of women to sterile celibacy (a question I have dealt with elsewhere[84]), I am persuaded of the need for much wider facilities for honourable partnerships outside of permanent marriage; such unions are, I am sure, necessary in order to harmonise our sexual life and meet the desires of a large, and I believe increasing, number of women and men, whose exceptional needs our existing institutions and customs ignore or crush. Let us view these questions in the light of their results. Most of us fail to meet the facts. We never realise the evil of this hypocrisy—love everywhere carried on secretly, that is acting always as a disturbing force in our sexual life—it is a worm that gnaws unceasingly at the roots of marriage and destroys too often the most beautiful blossoms of love. One great source of difficulty arises from the want of frankness in our thoughts. Especially is this the case with women, who throughout their lives have had the great fundamental facts of life clothed in euphemisms, until it seems as if they have succeeded, by the help of many fictitious aids, in concealing the natural outward signs of the existence of sex. And largely from these concealments our every idea of sex has become tainted with sentiment and vulgarity. We can hardly speak of the subject even to our children without an apology. The actions and emotions of life undraped with lies seem to most of us anathema; we, who have so veneered our lives that we know no longer of what wood they are made; we, who for generations have been so covered with shameful concealments, deceiving even ourselves, and are impervious to the claims of that ill-bred creature—Life. And how deep we have wandered into sin in seeking to escape from it! Need we put up with this? Must we turn our eyes away for ever from things as they are—stifle our desires in fear of what we shall do?