re not for those "whose sails were never
to the tempest given." The prudent lover whose love is lightly given for
as long as it lasts is as wise--and as futile.

I think, too, that those who offer this little price for so great a thing
have nothing left at last. To taste love, to _use_ the great passion of sex
is on a par with the exploitation of genius on a series of "pot-boilers."
Genius may outlast a few such meannesses, but they will murder it at last,
and the man who by pot-boiling has gained the opportunity to create a real
work of art finds there is no more art left in him. He has now the leisure,
the opportunity, the public: but not the power. So is it with those who
lightly use so great a thing as sex. Yielded to every impulse, given
to each "new-hatched, unfledged companion," it loses its capacity for
greatness, and the experience desired passes for ever from the grasp.

It is this which, to my mind, rules out the "experimental marriage."
Much may be said for it--and has been, and is being said by people whose
judgment must command respect. But love is impatient of lending. If it
is not given outright in the belief that the gift is final, can the
"experiment" be valid? Is not this very sense of finality--this desire
to give and burn one's ships--of the very essence of love? One cannot
experiment in finality.

It is true that many marriages would not have taken place, and had much
better not have taken place, if there had been greater knowledge: but we
have yet to learn what greater knowledge can do even without experiment.
Hitherto we have gone to the opposite extreme and buried all that belongs
to sex not in a fog of ignorance only, but under a mountain of hypocrisy
and lies. Let in the light, and see if we cannot do better! And though it
is true that some things cannot be known by any amount of teaching,
and wait upon experience, yet I submit that the essential experience
is realized only when it is believed to be the expression of an undying
love--a gift and not a loan.

Let me say one last word on the solution to our moral difficulties proposed
by those who affirm for every woman "the right to motherhood." This
claim is based on the belief that the creative impulse is more, or more
consciously, present in the sexual nature of a woman than of a man, and
that, in consequence, the satisfaction of that impulse is to a great extent
the satisfaction of a need which makes the disproportionate number of women
i