JOHN: That’s exactly what the Church says. “Society must be purified. Men and women must be taught not to sin.” But what they mean by purifying society is simply forcing it back under the old rules; what they mean by Sin is any infringement of those rules. What we say is: it’s the very narrowness of their rules that has made the mess, it’s the reverse side of their mistakenness ... “they make of their bodies a rampart for the protection of respectable families”--that’s what Balzac says of prostitutes. “Sacrifices on the altar of monogamy”--Schopenhauer. Prostitution means disease. You _can’t_ do away with these things by the old rules. The old rules are the _cause_ of them. Practice proves it: the countries with easier divorce laws don’t have more promiscuity; less. You _must_ tackle the business with new ideas--anyhow, it’s happening---- GWEN: What’s happening? JOHN: Compare the world of to-day and the Christian ideal of morality; a man must love one woman and one woman only; a woman must love one man and one man only; _there must be no sex experience of any kind before or after marriage_. That’s the ideal. And it’s tremendously important to realise it is the ideal; because either you agree with it and you’ve got to strive ruthlessly towards it, or you don’t agree with it, and you’ve got to find another. FRANKIE: Are you so certain decent people don’t live according to it? JOHN: Yes. FRANKIE: I’m not. JOHN: Take any average collection of people--take any ordinary audience at a theatre! How many men do you suppose have loved only their wives? COLIN: One or two, with luck. JOHN: How many women do you suppose have loved only their husbands? FRANKIE: All of them. There may be just one or two who haven’t. MARGARET: You’re an optimist. JOHN: Anyhow, there are more of them every day; it’s a matter of mathematics. GWEN: What _do_ you mean? JOHN: Decent men don’t pick up girls off the streets. They love decent women. But if decent men love decent women--where are the decent women? All over the place. COLIN: If you had the rearranging of the world to-morrow what would you _do_? MARGARET: I’m going home. GWEN: Not for a minute. Go on, John. What would you _do_? COLIN: A minute to recreate the world, John. Hurry up. JOHN: It comes down to a question of personal responsibility. When outside rules go, inside rules have got to take their places. GWEN: Yes. JOHN: I mean, life was probably fairly simple to the early Victorian girl. She was brought up entirely without any sex in her life, waiting for a man to marry her. Anything else was so unthinkable that she didn’t think about it. The rules of her conduct were imposed from without. She had no decisions to make. So she didn’t worry. It’s different now. GWEN: It is.