to desire
coitus. Unless there was an attraction other than that of the
flesh, I should feel that I was following simply a brute
instinct, and it would jar with my higher nature and cause
revulsion. This was not the case in my earlier years to the same
extent. I have often wondered whether the sexual impulse was
strong in me or not, but if not, there is nothing in my physical
state or family history to account for it. I am fairly cognizant
with the lives of my ancestors, being descended from two old
families. The sexual instinct was certainly not weak or abnormal
in them. Personally, I am tall and healthy, well built, but
sensitive and highly strung. Smell has never played any part in
my life as a stimulant of sexual desire, and the mere thought of
body odors would have a very decided effect in the opposite
direction. Touch and sight appeal to me strongly, and of the two
the former most.

I am convinced, after many years careful thought, that sexual
vice and perversion could be greatly reduced if the young were
instructed in the elements of physiology as they bear on this
question. Personally, had I been thus enlightened much sin would
have been avoided in my schoolboy days, and a perverted view of
sexual matters would never have arisen in my mind. It took years
to overcome the feeling that all such things were unclean and
defiling. Eventually light came to me through reading a passage
in a tractate on the Creed by Rufinus. He was defending the
doctrine, of the Incarnation against the pagan objection that it
was an unclean and disgusting idea that God should enter the
world through the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and he meets
it by showing that God created the sexual organs, therefore the
objection is invalid--otherwise God would not be clean or pure,
having Himself designed them and their functions. This passage is
slight in itself, but gave birth to a line of thought which has
influenced me profoundly. I no longer regard sexual matters as
disgusting and unholy, but as intensely sacred, being the outcome
of the Divine Mind. Further, the Incarnation of the Saviour has
not only sanctioned motherhood and all that is implied by it, but
has eternally sanctified it as the means chosen for the
manifestation of God to the world. I should not obtrude my
theological conce