a river no one who would escape drowning may afford to ignore.
Moreover, it is the very axis and creator of our world valley, the
source of all our power in life, and the irrigator of all things. In
the microcosm of each individual, as in the microcosm of the race, this
flood is a cardinal problem.

And from its very nature this is a discussion of especial difficulty,
because it touches all of us--except for a few peculiar souls--so
intimately and so disturbingly. I had purposed to call this paper "Sex
and the Imagination," and then I had a sudden vision of the thing that
happens. The vision presented a casual reader seated in a library,
turning over books and magazines and casting much excellent wisdom
aside, and then suddenly, as it were, waking up at that title,
arrested, displaying a furtive alertness, reading, flushed and eager,
nosing through the article. That in a vignette is the trouble in all
this discussion. Were we angels--! But we are not angels; we are all
involved. If we are young we are deep in it, whether we would have it
so or not; if we are old, even if we are quite old, our memories still
stretch out, living sensitive threads from our tender vanity to the
great trouble. Detachment is impossible. The nearest we can get to
detachment is to recognize that.

About this question the tragi-comic web of human absurdity thickens to
its closest. When has there ever been a lucid view or ever will be of
this great business? Here is the common madness of our species, here is
all a tissue of fine unreasonableness--to which, no doubt, we are in
the present paper infinitesimally adding. One has a vision of
preposterous proceedings; great, fat, wheezing, strigilated Roman
emperors, neat Parisian gentlemen of the latest cult, the good Saint
Anthony rolling on his thorns, and the piously obscene Durtal