He had no patience with the secrecy, the ignorance, the emotion that surrounded these questions.  We didn’t worship our ancestors when it came to building bridges or working metals or curing disease or studying our indigestion, and why should we become breathless or wordless with awe and terror when it came to this fundamental affair?  Why here in particular should we give way to Holy Fear and stifled submission to traditional suppressions and the wisdom of the ages?  “What is the wisdom of the ages?” said Prothero.  “Think of the corners where that wisdom was born. . . .  Flea-bitten sages in stone-age hovels. . . .  Wandering wise man with a rolling eye, a fakir under a tree, a Jewish sheik, an Arab epileptic. . . .”

“Would you sweep away the experience of mankind?” protested Benham.

The experience of mankind in these matters had always been bitter experience.  Most of it was better forgotten.  It didn’t convince.  It had never worked things out.  In this matter just as in every other matter that really signified things had still to be worked out.  Nothing had been worked out hitherto.  The wisdom of the ages was a Cant.  People had been too busy quarrelling, fighting and running away.  There wasn’t any digested experience of the ages at all.  Only the mis-remembered hankey-pankey of the Dead Old Man.

“Is this love-making a physical necessity for most men and women or isn’t it?” Prothero demanded.  “There’s a simple question enough, and is there anything whatever in your confounded wisdom of the ages to tell me yes or no?  Can an ordinary celibate be as healthy and vigorous as a mated man?  Is a spinster of thirty-eight a healthy human being?  Can she be?  I don’t believe so.  Then why in thunder do we let her be?  Here am I at a centre of learning and wisdom and I don’t believe so; and there is nothing in all our colleges, libraries and roomsfull of wiseacres here, to settle that plain question for me, plainly and finally.  My life is a grubby torment of cravings because it isn’t settled.  If sexual activity is a part of the balance of life, if it is a necessity, well let’s set about making it accessible and harmless and have done with it.  Swedish exercises.  That sort of thing.  If it isn’t, if it can be reduced and done without, then let us set about teaching people how to control themselves and reduce and get rid of this vehement passion.  But all this muffled mystery, this pompous sneak’s way we take with it!”

“But, Billy!  How can one settle these things?  It’s a matter of idiosyncrasy.  What is true for one man isn’t true for another.  There’s infinite difference of temperaments!”