ent, even if
it is only the desire for the physical presence of the beloved one. We
all want sometimes to see and to touch our friends. But in sex-love that
physical element becomes a desire for perfect union, expressing a spiritual
harmony. Can one take such a gift lightly, and pass from one relationship
to another with a readiness which would seem contemptible in a friend?

It is this holding of human personality cheap that is really immoral,
really dishonest: for it is not cheap. It is this which makes prostitution
a horror, and prostitutes the Ishmaels of their race. They "sell cheap what
is most dear," and, knowing this, rage against their buyers. The hideously
demoralizing effect of a life of prostitution on the soul is a commonplace.
"These women," it has been said, "sink so low that they cease to know what
love is, they cease to be able to give. They can only cheat and steal and
sell." It is true. Whatever virtues of kindliness and pity the prostitute
may (and often does) have for other unfortunates and outcasts, her attitude
in general does become that of the parasite, the swindler, the vampire.
Why? Because on her the deepest outrage against human personality is
committed. Without a shadow of claim, without a pretence of offering its
equivalent, that, in her, is bought and sold which is beyond price. Why
should she not cheat and thieve? Take all she can, she cannot get the true
value of what has been bought from her. Does she reason all that out? More
often than we think. But whether she reasons consciously or not, she knows
she has been defrauded: and she defrauds.

But it is the buying and selling, I shall be told, that makes her so vile:
between such a sale and the free gift of lovers lies the whole difference
between morality and immorality. I do not think so. It is the contemptuous
use of another which is immoral, and though actually to buy and sell the
person is the lowest depth of immorality, because it is the lowest and
most brutal expression of such contempt, any lightness or irreverence
is "immoral" in its degree; so therefore is conduct which makes love an
evanescent thing, or the giving of personality which love involves, a
passing emotion.

If we feel this to be so in friendship, surely it is more and not less
true of a union so complete on every plane as that of sex. Can you take
that--and give it--and pass on, as though it were a light thing?

The desire for permanence, for stability, for trus