We may call these the masculine and feminine elements in love; though of course both exist in all love, whether of man to woman or woman to man. Both sexes give more than they receive, and receive more than they give. In all love, from the first step beyond mere physical appetite, to the most transcendental Platonism, there are these two antagonistic elements. If the merely self-indulgent element prevails, we tend in the direction of lust, one of the most cruel diseases that plague humanity, which Milton rightly places "hard by hate." If the merely self-renouncing, we tend in the direction of monastic chastity, which though not so distinctly an evil thing, may become cruel and inhuman, and a bar to human progress. Asceticism is not, like lust, a disease, physical and spiritual, but it may lead to disease, spiritual if not physical. There is an asceticism, the Greek [Greek: aschêsis], a training of the lower faculties to act in subordination to the higher, which is the strait gate by which we enter upon the arduous ascent toward noble passion and noble action. There is another asceticism which if not truly Christian, came in the wake of Christianity, which, denying the rights of the body, was less a training than a mortification. Both unrestrained sensuality and monastic chastity, in their injustice to the body outrage the sexual principle, the former by regarding it as a toy to be polluted by base pleasure, the latter by regarding it as a thing unclean in itself to be cast out and killed, or at best tolerated and cleansed by the Church's holy water. To the present day the average man's, or at least the average Englishman's great temptation is to sin against love, through dull unimaginative lust, the average Englishwoman's through dull unimaginative chastity. Men live too much in the sensuous, and women in the supersensuous, to meet fairly. Love, the reconciler, himself is too weak fully to reconcile them and to bring them together in that perfect ecstasy, body to body, spirit to spirit, soul to soul, that "unreserve of mingled being," which Shelley, giving a voice to the desire of all ages, but especially to modern desire, sighed for. To understand Shelley's protest against marriage, we must understand his ideal of love--the unconstrained rush together of two personalities of opposite sexes, in whom the body is but the vehicle of the spirit. This love is not born merely of the flickering fire of the senses. It is a divine flame, kindled alike in body, soul, and spirit, and fusing them into unity. Of course, if this love is to be the great end of life, marriage is somewhat of an impertinence. While the divine fire burns, what need of artificial ties to keep the two lovers together? If it goes out why should they be kept together? To which the prosaic moralist replies: "Your ideal of love is very beautiful, no doubt. Get as much as you can of this divine flame into your Hymen's