While from the point of view of society, as from that of Nature, the end and object of the sexual impulse is procreation, and nothing beyond procreation, that is by no means true for the individual, whose main object it must be to fulfil himself harmoniously with that due regard for others which the art of living demands.  Even if sexual relationships had no connection with procreation whatever—­as some Central Australian tribes believe—­they would still be justifiable, and are, indeed, an indispensable aid to the best moral development of the individual, for it is only in so intimate a relationship as that of sex that the finest graces and aptitudes of life have full scope.  Even the saints cannot forego the sexual side of life.  The best and most accomplished saints from Jerome to Tolstoy—­even the exquisite Francis of Assisi—­had stored up in their past all the experiences that go to the complete realization of life, and if it were not so they would have been the less saints.

The element of positive virtue thus only enters when the control of the sexual impulse has passed beyond the stage of rigid and sterile abstinence and has become not merely a deliberate refusal of what is evil in sex, but a deliberate acceptance of what is good.  It is only at that moment that such control becomes a real part of the great art of living.  For the art of living, like any other art, is not compatible with rigidity, but lies in the weaving of a perpetual harmony between refusing and accepting, between giving and taking.[106]

The future, it is clear, belongs ultimately to those who are slowly building up sounder traditions into the structure of life.  The “problem of sexual abstinence” will more and more sink into insignificance.  There remain the great solid fact of love, the great solid fact of chastity.  Those are eternal.  Between them there is nothing but harmony.  The development of one involves the development of the other.

It has been necessary to treat seriously this problem of “sexual abstinence” because we have behind us the traditions of two thousand years based on certain ideals of sexual law and sexual license, together with the long effort to build up practices more or less conditioned by those ideals.  We cannot immediately escape from these traditions even when we question their validity for ourselves.  We have not only to recognize their existence, but also to accept the fact that for some time to come they must still to a considerable extent control the thoughts and even in some degree the actions of existing communities.

It is undoubtedly deplorable.  It involves the introduction of an artificiality into a real natural order.  Love is real and positive; chastity is real and positive.  But sexual abstinence is unreal and negative, in the strict sense perhaps impossible.  The underlying feelings of all those who have emphasized its importance is that a physiological process can be good or bad according as it is or is not carried