ovoked in quite young children. In Italy, the
Italian stimulates adult sex-consciousness and sex-sympathy in his
child, almost deliberately. But with us, it is usually spiritual
sympathy and spiritual criticism. The adult experiences are provoked,
the adult devotional sympathies are linked up, prematurely, as far as
the child is concerned. We have the heart-wringing spectacle of
intense parent-child love, a love intense as the love of man and
woman, but not sexual; or else the great brother-sister devotion. And
thus, the great love-experience which should lie in the future is
forestalled. Within the family, the love-bond forms quickly, without
the shocks and ruptures inevitable between strangers. And so, it is
easiest, intensest--and seems the best. It seems the highest. You will
not easily get a man to believe that his carnal love for the woman he
has made his wife is as high a love as that he felt for his mother or
sister.

The cream is licked off from life before the boy or the girl is
twenty. Afterwards--repetition, disillusion, and barrenness.

And the cause?--always the same. That parents will not make the great
resolution to come to rest within themselves, to possess their own
souls in quiet and fullness. The man has not the courage to withdraw
at last into his own soul's stillness and aloneness, and _then_,
passionately and faithfully, to strive for the living future. The
woman has not the courage to give up her hopeless insistence on love
and her endless demand for love, demand of being loved. She has not
the greatness of soul to relinquish her own self-assertion, and
believe in the man who believes in himself and in his own soul's
efforts:--if there _are_ any such men nowadays, which is very
doubtful.

Alas, alas, the future! Your son, who has tasted the real beauty of
wife-response in his mother or sister. Your daughter, who adores her
brother, and who marries some woman's son. They are so charming to
look at, such a lovely couple. And at first it is all such a good
game, such good sport. Then each one begins to fret for the beauty of
the lost, non-sexual, partial relationship. The sexual part of
marriage has proved so--so empty. While that other loveliest
thing--the poignant touch of devotion felt for mother or father or
brother--why, this is missing altogether. The best is missing. The
rest isn't worth much. Ah well, such is life. Settle down to it, and
bring up the children carefully to more of the sam