Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given."

Shelley: "Adonais."


Let us now move away from that aspect of the moral problem which
has concerned us hitherto--that of the difficulties created by the
disproportion of the sexes at this time and in this country--and consider
the problem as it presents itself under more normal conditions. For even
in ages and in countries where there are an equal number of men and women
there are difficulties in their relations with one another, and a "moral
problem."

People ask, for example, whether sex-relationships should be governed by
law at all; whether they should continue in any given case when passion has
died, or when love (which is more than passion) has gone. Should love ever
be other than perfectly free, and is not the attempt to bind it essentially
"immoral"? Should it ever be exclusive or proprietary? Is not the "moral
problem" really created, not by human nature, but by the attempt to bind
what cannot be bound and to coerce what should be free?

The answer given to such questions is often to-day on the side of what is
called, mistakenly, I think, "free love." And in considering this answer,
I want to remind you that it is often given by people who are most sincere,
most idealistic, in their own lives and in their own love. Indeed it has
often been pointed out that it is at times of great spiritual exaltation
and fervour that the cult of "free love" is most likely to find adherents.
The great principle that "love is the fulfilling of the law" is held with
a fervour which makes any question as to what love is, and how much it