is sometimes more valuable than the product. That is so as regards the
functional products of human evolution. The hand was produced out of the
animal forelimb with the primary end of grasping the things we materially
need, but as a by-product the hand has developed the function of making
and playing the piano and the violin, and that secondary functional
by-product of the hand we account, even as measured by the rough test of
money, more precious, however less materially necessary, than its primary
function. It is, however, only in rare and gifted natures that transformed
sexual energy becomes of supreme value for its own sake without ever
attaining the normal physical outlet. For the most part the by-product
accompanies the product, throughout, thus adding a secondary, yet
peculiarly sacred and specially human, object of marriage to its primary
animal object. This may be termed the spiritual object of marriage.

By the term "spiritual" we are not to understand any mysterious and
supernatural qualities. It is simply a convenient name, in distinction
from animal, to cover all those higher mental and emotional processes
which in human evolution are ever gaining greater power. It is needless to
enumerate the constituents of this spiritual end of sexual intercourse,
for everyone is entitled to enumerate them differently and in different
order. They include not only all that makes love a gracious and beautiful
erotic art, but the whole element of pleasure in so far as pleasure is
more than a mere animal gratification. Our ancient ascetic traditions
often make us blind to the meaning of pleasure. We see only its
possibilities of evil and not its mightiness for good. We forget that, as
Romain Rolland says, "Joy is as holy as Pain." No one has insisted so much
on the supreme importance of the element of pleasure in the spiritual ends
of sex as James Hinton. Rightly used, he declares, Pleasure is "the Child
of God," to be recognised as a "mighty storehouse of force," and he
pointed out the significant fact that in the course of human progress its