But they do a deadly work none the less. They cling about the mind with
fatal tenacity. They surround the subject of sex with unclean
associations. They defile the inner house of life. And it is in that
inner house of thought and imagination that the real battle of
purity is fought.

Our real task in this part of life is to see sex as a clean and
beautiful thing, to be treated with reverence. Thousands of people
never achieve this, even though they live respectable and decent lives.
And the reason lies in the fact that in their early days vile stories
and jokes defiled the whole subject for them.

A similar thing is true of pictures. Some day we shall as a race
recover the sense that the form of a woman is one of the most beautiful
things in all God's earth. We shall look at the great statues and
pictures which do justice to that beauty with no other feelings than
thankfulness and joy. But there are very few men who can do that today.
What has made it impossible is the existence of pictures of a
suggestive kind, which are handed round in furtive ways, and are
literally drenched with unclean associations. For which reason it is a
real point in connection with a man's struggle that he should have
nothing to do with suggestive pictures. Many years ago I had a friend
with great intellectual power. He held a position of great
responsibility and was widely respected. He also had conspicuous
literary gifts, and knew how to work hard and well. But he brought to
me the greatest shock I have ever had in my life. When he was well on
in the forties he suddenly fell with a crash, and had to fly the
country. He was never able to show his face in England again, and died
a diseased exile in a foreign land. And all because he had been
overtaken by sexual sin of an indescribably shameful kind. The shock he