fallacy to affirm that, because of that, she ceases to have any reason for
existence; that she is a futile life, a person who does not really "count."
Sex is a great and a mighty power, but it is something more than the mere
satisfaction of a physical need. It is part of the great rhythm of life,
running through all the higher creation; it is the instinct to create,
going forth in the power of love, proving to us day by day that only love
can create, bringing us nearer to the Divine Power, Who is Love, and Who
created the heaven and the earth. In spite of our horrible thoughts about
sex, our hideous sins against it, I do not think that in anything God has
made man more "in His image and likeness" than when He gave him the power,
through love, to create life. That is a power that makes us akin to God
Himself, and the instinct of sex is not a grimy secret between two rather
shamed human beings, but a great impulse of life and love--yes, even, at
the height of it, an instinct to sacrifice in order that life may come
into the world; it is a great bond of union between human beings; it is the
secret of existence, the secret of the meaning of life; that which is to
the nature of man like the sense of music to the musician, of beauty to the
artist, of insight to the poet. A man may have no ear for music, and yet be
a good and noble man; but who will deny that he lacks something because he
has it not? A man may have no sense of beauty, but he is not, therefore, a
depraved, immoral person; yet does he not stand outside some of the great
secrets of life? So, when this still deeper instinct of creative love is
not yours, do not congratulate yourselves, or pride yourselves that you
have never felt it. For it means that you stand outside the great communion
of the life of the world; it means that for you some of the music of the
universe is dumb, and some of the beauty of the universe dark.

Yet how long have women been taught that this divine impulse of creation
is something base! Base even in a man, belonging to his lower nature; still
more deplorable in a woman, a thing to be ashamed of, a thing to crush down