importance increases rather than diminishes.[8] While it is perfectly true
that sexual energy may be in large degree arrested, and transformed into
intellectual and moral forms, yet it is also true that pleasure itself,
and above all, sexual pleasure, wisely used and not abused, may prove the
stimulus and liberator of our finest and most exalted activities. It is
largely this remarkable function of sexual pleasure which is decisive in
settling the argument of those who claim that continence is the only
alternative to the animal end of marriage. That argument ignores the
liberating and harmonising influences, giving wholesome balance and sanity
to the whole organism, imparted by a sexual union which is the outcome of
the psychic as well as physical needs. There is, further, in the
attainment of the spiritual end of marriage, much more than the benefit of
each individual separately. There is, that is to say, the effect on the
union itself. For through harmonious sex relationships a deeper spiritual
unity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence in or out of
marriage, and the marriage association becomes an apter instrument in the
service of the world. Apart from any sexual craving, the complete
spiritual contact of two persons who love each other can only be attained
through some act of rare intimacy. No act can be quite so intimate as the
sexual embrace. In its accomplishment, for all who have reached a
reasonably human degree of development, the communion of bodies becomes
the communion of souls. The outward and visible sign has been the
consummation of an inward and spiritual grace. "I would base all my sex
teaching to children and young people on the beauty and sacredness of
sex," wrote a distinguished woman; "sex intercourse is the great sacrament
of life, he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh his
own damnation; but it may be the most beautiful sacrament between two
souls who have no thought of children."[9] To many the idea of a sacrament
seems merely ecclesiastical, but that is a misunderstanding. The word
"sacrament" is the ancient Roman name of a soldier's oath of military