But _everybody is not happy_! The men are not happy; because this negativism in sex, this lack of exuberance in sex, gives them no mastery over it, and leaves them all their lives with a guilty conscience about it. (For, as pointed out earlier in the book, _certain fusions are only made possible through fire_. Fire purifies all things.) And the women are certainly not happy, particularly if they are positive; because they meet with no response, they meet with no leadership, they yield to no overwhelming impetuosity where sex is concerned—an impetuosity that carries everything before it, and which leaves them with no ungratified desire or longing, with not one of those aching, secret longings that thousands of women are too tasteful and too proud to reveal and often even too modest to entertain. Of course the negative ideal in sex was excellent from the Puritan point of view; because, as I have shown elsewhere,[41] the Puritans were concerned with rearing a race of office hermits, clerks, commercial and industrial slaves of all kinds; and to these, sexual exuberance would naturally be a most irksome, dangerous and undesirable possession. But Life is not an office or a factory, or, for that matter, a large draper’s store; and what may be eminently desirable for these horrible institutions, is simply ugly, repulsive, and nauseating out in the open, amid fields, sucking lambs and beneath a shining sun. There are few things more pathetic, more tragic, than a positive young English girl going to her coming-out dance. What could be more beautiful than to see her, figuratively speaking, extend her eager open hand to Life, with a confidence, a fullness of hope and trust, a profuseness of delicious expectations, and a bravery and singleness of purpose that is never again equalled in her life? And who can help hiding his eyes when he sees the same girl take back her hand again and again, either holding nothing at all, or filled with the merest husks, the merest scrapings of Life? Oh, the youths that go to dances!—these sacred functions where the positive girl takes her first step towards her sacred calling! One can watch with equanimity the negative young Miss of narrow hips, still narrower chest, and even still narrower outlook, succeeding in captivating her negative affinity. Such dramas leave one unmoved. But to witness exuberant Life itself, obliged to be content with creatures who are mere mementoes of Life, mere echoes of Life; to see exuberant Life itself unnoticed, unselected, feared, shunned, and shelved!—to anyone who has any feelings at all, such an experience must be too painful ever to be forgotten.