Page:Fielding - Sex and the Love Life.pdf/127

Expressing Love Deepens the Love-Feeling. Miss A. Maude Royden,^[1] former Assistant Preacher at the City Temple, London, has given utterance to the following sensible thought on the subject of the sexual relations in marriage: "I think the first instinct of most women would be to say that spiritual union should be expressed by physical union, and that unless this spiritual union exists the physical union is 'wrong.' And yet everyone who stops to think will admit that the expression of an emotion deepens it. One can 'work oneself up into a rage' by shouting and swearing. One can deepen love by expressing love. It is noticeable that the whole case for birth control has repeatedly been argued from the ground that the act of physical union not only expresses but intensifies and increases love.

"Marriage is the most difficult of human relations, because it is the most intimate, and the most permanent. To live so close to another who, in spite of all, remains another—to be brought so near, to associate so intimately with another permanently without jarring or wounding—that is hard. No wonder it is not invariably a success! But passion makes it possible to many, to whom, without this, it would not be possible. Ultimately passion should be transcended since in any case it must be left behind. Yet it has served its end, in deepening and intensifying the love of two people for one another."

These words have a significance that cannot be minimized, coming as they do from a woman who has achieved distinction in economic, social, ethical and religious movements, and finally won the admiration of great audiences in England and America by her ardent championship of a commonsense attitude on the sexual question.

The traditional tendency to dissociate all evidence of sex-