ny competent observers have noted, the young men of to-day show a new
attitude towards women and towards marriage, an attitude of simplicity and
frankness, a desire for mutual confidence, a readiness to discuss
difficulties, an appeal to understand and to be understood. Such an
attitude, which had hitherto been hard to attain, at once creates the
atmosphere in which alone the free spontaneous erotic activities of women
can breathe and live.

This consummation, we have seen, may be regarded as the attainment of
certain rights, the corollary of other rights in the social field which
women are slowly achieving as human beings on the same human level as men.
It opens to women, on whom is always laid the chief burden of sex, the
right to the joy and exaltation of sex, to the uplifting of the soul
which, when the right conditions are fulfilled, is the outcome of the
intimate approach and union of two human beings. Yet while we may find
convenient so to formulate it, we need to remember that that is only a
fashion of speech, for there are no rights in Nature. If we take a broader
sweep, what we may choose to call an erotic right is simply the perfect
poise of the conflicting forces of life, the rhythmic harmony in which
generation is achieved with the highest degree of perfection compatible
with the make of the world. It is our part to transform Nature's large
conception into our own smaller organic mould, not otherwise than the
plants, to whom we are far back akin, who dig their flexible roots deep
into the moist and fruitful earth, and so are able to lift up glorious
heads toward the sky.

CHAPTER VI

THE PLAY-FUNCTION OF SEX

When we hear the sexual functions spoken of we commonly understand the
performance of an act which normally tends to the propagation of the race.
When we see the question of sexual abstinence discussed, when the
desirability of sexual gratification is asserted or denied, when the idea
arises of the erotic rights and needs of woman, it is always the same act
with its physical results that is chiefly in mind. Such a conception is
quite adequate for practical working purposes in the social world. It
enables us to deal with all our established human institutions in the
sphere of sex, as the arbitrary assumptions of Euclid enable us to
traverse the field of elementary geometry. But beyond these useful
purposes it is inadequate and even inexact. The functions of sex on the
psychic and erotic side