women that we find
sex referred to as "bestial" or "the animal part of our nature."[60] But
since women are the mothers and teachers of the human race this is a piece
of ignorance and ill-breeding which cannot be too swiftly eradicated.

There are some who seem to think that they have held the balance evenly,
and finally stated the matter, if they admit that sexual love may be
either beautiful or disgusting, and that either view is equally normal and
legitimate. "Listen in turn," Tarde remarks, "to two men who, one cold,
the other ardent, one chaste, the other in love, both equally educated and
large-minded, are estimating the same thing: one judges as disgusting,
odious, revolting, and bestial what the other judges to be delicious,
exquisite, ineffable, divine. What, for one, is in Christian phraseology,
an unforgivable sin, is, for the other, the state of true grace. Acts that
for one seem a sad and occasional necessity, stains that must be carefully
effaced by long intervals of continence, are for the other the golden
nails from which all the rest of conduct and existence is suspended, the
things that alone give human life its value."[61] Yet we may well doubt
whether both these persons are "equally well-educated and broad-minded."
The savage feels that sex is perilous, and he is right. But the person who
feels that the sexual impulse is bad, or even low and vulgar, is an
absurdity in the universe, an anomaly. He is like those persons in our
insane asylums, who feel that the instinct of nutrition is evil and so
proceed to starve themselves. They are alike spiritual outcasts in the
universe whose children they are. It is another matter when a man declares
that, personally, in his own case, he cherishes an ascetic ideal which
leads him to restrain, so far as possible, either or both impulses. The
man, who is sanely ascetic seeks a discipline which aids the ideal he has
personally set before himself. He may still remain theoretically in
harmony with the universe to which he belongs. But to pour contempt on
the sexual life, to throw the veil of "impurity" over it, is, as Nietzsche
declared, the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost of Life.

There are many who seek to conciliate prejudice and reason in their
valuation of sex by drawing a sharp distinction between "lust" and "love,"
rejecting the one and accepting the other. It is quite proper to make such
a distinction, but the manner in which it is made will by no mea