THE ETHICS OF SEX 189 



a woman to lust after her hath committed 

 adultery with her already in his heart," 

 expresses an even more searching standard, 

 and modern science brings home to us the 

 radical importance of our reflex thoughts and 

 deep-down impulses, which appear to bulk 

 largely in moulding our lives and the lives of 

 those who may spring from us. Even our 

 dreams betray us, though we are sometimes 

 better (as well as worse) than they. For it 

 seems well-established that a large propor- 

 tion of dreams express the wish-fulfilments of 

 repressed sexual desires. 



There is a higher argument still that man 

 is a social person. No man liveth or dieth 

 to himself, and uncontrolled sexuality cannot 

 remain a purely personal vice. Indulgence in 

 sexual gratification outside matrimony cannot 

 be abstracted off and discussed as a physio- 

 logical episode. We have to think of our 

 share in the making of the next generation, 

 and in sustaining the tradition of clean living 

 and chivalry. We have to think also of the 

 victims of selfish and cruel betrayal, and of 

 the ranks of those who earn the wages of the 

 dust. We must think also of the crime ot 

 poisoning wife and child, and of the many 

 hard and ugly things that men and women 

 do to each other (in the name of Love !) in 

 the clash of their lives together. 



It is impossible for reasonable men to regard 

 prostitution as other than intolerable to their 

 sense of honour, or to contemplate without 

 shame the persistence of " the most mournful 

 and the most awful figure in history," who, 

 in Lecky's tragic phrase, " remains, while 



