e to place the relations of love and
chastity simply on the basis of biology and reason. We are confronted at
the outset by our traditions. On the one side these traditions have
weighted the word "lust"--considered as expressing all the manifestations
of the sexual impulse which are outside marriage or which fail to have
marriage as their direct and ostentatious end--with deprecatory and
sinister meanings. And on the other side these traditions have created the
problem of "sexual abstinence," which has nothing to do with either
asceticism or chastity as these have been defined in the previous chapter,
but merely with the purely negative pressure on the sexual impulse,
exerted, independently of the individual's wishes, by his religious and
social environment.

The theological conception of "lust," or "libido," as sin, followed
logically the early Christian conception of "the flesh," and became
inevitable as soon as that conception was firmly established. Not only,
indeed, had early Christian ideals a degrading influence on the estimation
of sexual desire _per se_, but they tended to depreciate generally the
dignity of the sexual relationship. If a man made sexual advances to a
woman outside marriage, and thus brought her within the despised circle of
"lust," he was injuring her because he was impairing her religious and
moral value.[92] The only way he could repair the damage done was by
paying her money or by entering into a forced and therefore probably
unfortunate marriage with her. That is to say that sexual relationships
were, by the ecclesiastical traditions, placed on a pecuniary basis, on
the same level as prostitution. By its well-meant intentions to support
the theological morality which had developed on an ascetic basis, the
Church was thus really undermining even that form of sexual relationship
which it sanctified.

Gregory the Great ordered that the seducer of a virgin shall
marry her, or, in case of refusal, be severely punished
corporally and shut up in a monastery to perform penance.
According to other ecclesiastical rules, the seducer of a virgin,
though held to no responsibility by the civil forum, was required
to marry her, or to find a husband and furnish a dowry for her.
Such rules had their good side, and were especially equitable
when seduction had been accomplished by deceit. But they largely
tended in practice to subordinate all questions of sexual
moral