For true
marriage _must_ involve a clean and happy acceptance of the sexual
facts. A man must bring a clean mind to the whole of his common life
with the woman he loves, and self-abuse is ultimately a serious evil
just because it defiles the mind.
Then, secondly, why are wild oats evil things to sow? Why should we not
endorse the shrug of the shoulders with which society treats them? I
notice that even women lightly forgive them, and I believe they make a
mistake. Forgiveness is indeed always a divine operation, but light
forgiveness implies that nothing serious has happened. What then is so
serious about licentiousness?
I must of necessity discriminate at this point. By wildness men often
mean occasional intimacies into which they do not pretend to be led by
love. About such experiences I suppose men would say that they amount
merely to the satisfaction of a physical appetite, and that after they
are over a man may go his way as little affected as is a man who has
satisfied his thirst.
But that is not the truth about them.
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