hy, natural and wholesome relation to sex.

[Sidenote: "Sex" and "love."]

It is absurd to suppose that the free, dignified, and scientific use of
the word "sex" is going to make people more sensual, more uncontrolled,
and more immoral. There is much more reason for fearing the free use of
the word "love," which has both psychical and physical meanings so
confused that often only the context of sentences enables one to
determine which meaning is intended. In fact, many writers and speakers
seek to avoid all possible misunderstanding by using the word
"affection" for psychical love. Now, in spite of such confusion, and
the fact that to many people the word "love" in connection with sex
suggests only gross sensuality, we continue to use it freely and it is
one of the first words taught to children. Why then do we not hear
protests against using the word "love"? Simply because we have been
from childhood accustomed to the word, first in its psychical sense,
and it is only later that most of us have learned that it has a sensual
meaning to some people. In short, familiarity with the word "love" in
its psychical sense has bred in us a contempt for those who mistake the
physical basis of love for love in its combined physical and psychical
completeness.

[Sidenote: Meaning of sex.]

To many it is surprising to find that the word "sex" has never been
used in such degraded connections as has the word "love," and that it
has not been half so much misunderstood. There is no obvious vulgarity
in the lexicographer's definitions of the word "sex." It simply means,
as the science of biology points out so clearly, that the perpetuation
of human life, and of most other species of life, has been intrusted to
pairs of individuals which are of the two kinds commonly called the
sexes, male and female. Why nature determined that each new life in the
vast majority of species should develop from two other lives has long
been a biological puzzle, and most satisfactory of the answers given is
that bi-parental origin of new individuals allows for new combinations
of heritable qualities from two lines of descent. However, such a
biological explanation of the relation of the two sexes to double
parentage is of relatively little practical significance in present-day
human life when compared with the fact that out of the necessity for
life's perpetuation by two cooperating individuals there has grown
psychical or spiritual love with all its sple