y to be expected that he
should control them. But yet, if a man does not marry, or if there are more
men than women in a certain country--as, for instance, in Australia, or
Western Canada to-day--nobody speaks of those men as though they were
"superfluous," as though they had ceased to have any real object for
existence. People will realize that it is a hardship--a very great
hardship--in their lives; they will be apt to excuse them for taking what
they can get if they cannot get everything; but no human being talks of the
"superfluous men" in any of our great Dominions. People always realize that
a man has a _human_ value, and that, however great the urgency of the
sex side of him, he still is a human being, he still has his value in the
world, even supposing that he should live and die celibate. If you will try
to put your mind into that attitude towards women, you will, I think, see
that it is not a paradox to say that a woman may and does suffer if she
does not fulfil the whole of her nature, and yet that it is a monstrous
fallacy to affirm that, because of that, she ceases to have any reason for
existence; that she is a futile life, a person who does not really "count."
Sex is a great and a mighty power, but it is something more than the mere
satisfaction of a physical need. It is part of the great rhythm of life,
running through all the higher creation; it is the instinct to create,
going forth in the power of love, proving to us day by day that only love
can create, bringing us nearer to the Divine Power, Who is Love, and Who
created the heaven and the earth. In spite of our horrible thoughts about
sex, our hideous sins against it, I do not think that in anything God has
made man more "in His image and likeness" than when He gave him the power,
through love, to create life. That is a power that makes us akin to God
Himself, and the instinct of sex is not a grimy secret between two rather
shamed human beings, but a great impulse of life and love--yes, even, at
the height of it, an instinct to sacrifice in order that life may come
into the world; it is a great bond of union between human beings; it is the
secret of existence, the secret of the meaning of life; that which is to
the nature of man like the sense of music to the musician, of beauty to the
artist, of insight to the poet. A man may have no ear for music, and yet be
a good and noble man; but who will deny that he lacks something because he
has it not? A man