the passion, which quickly becomes normal and intermittent when it spends itself upon one object, is apt to become an abnormal and almost continuous craving when it is solicited by a succession of novel and piquant attractions.  The advocates of free love assert that it is unnatural repression that creates an undue and morbid longing; that freedom to satisfy the instinct would tend to keep it in its properly subordinate place.  But the contrary is, in reality, true.  More usually, as Rabelais has it, “the appetite comes during the eating.”  The absence of temptation will leave an instinct dormant which free opportunity to indulge will develop into a dominant appetite.  And nothing more quickly drafts strength or ambition than absorption in sex pleasures; we need to put our energies into something that instead of being inimical is forwarding to the rest of our interests.

(6) Sexual intemperance coarsens, blunts delight in the less violent and more delicate emotions.  The pleasures of sex, though of the keenest, are not lasting, like those of the intellect, of religion, art, and manly achievement.  But if recklessly indulged in, they inevitably sap our interest in these other ideals.  Except where they spring from and reinforce true affection, they are an opiate, taking us into a dream world that makes actual life stale and tasteless.  “Hold off from sensuality,” says Cicero; “for if you give yourself up to it, you will be unable to think of anything else.”  There is so much else that is worthwhile, life has so many possible values, that for our own final happiness, we cannot afford to let this instinct usurp too great a place.  The vision of God is worth many hours of transient and shallow excitement; and that vision comes only to the pure in heart.

(7) But even for the greatest pleasure in sex itself, incontinence is a blunder.  The one telling argument for free love is the sweetness of the delights that the chaste must miss; the bodily intimacy that soothes the lonely heart, the adventurous excitement of breaking down barriers, of dominance and surrender, with its quickened breathing and heightened sense of living.  But the plea comes usually from the inexperienced; it is the yearning of youth toward the lure of the untried ways, of the untasted joys.  Actually, where passion is unbridled, the halo and the vision quickly vanish; the sated impulse becomes a restless craving for more violent stimulation, a thirst that no mere physical intimacy can ever assuage; or it leaves the heart cloyed and despondent and resourceless.  This is the natural history of undisciplined passion; it cheapens love, it robs it quickly of its exquisiteness and charm.  The faithful lover, on the other hand, by checking premature intimacies, and keeping true to the one woman who calls or will some day call out all his love, knows a steady joy that bulks in the end far greater than the flaring and fitful and quickly disillusioned passions of unearned love.  Where