In the second place, the only love which can transform sex is essentially a love solemnly sanctioned by the person himself. It cannot just exist. The free spiritual core of our personality must expressly approve it, must, so to speak, declare its full assent, must explicitly cooperate in its unitive tendency. The intentio unitiva must thus become a serious choice of the will to belong perpetually to the other. It must express itself in the social act of self-delivery to the other for the whole of life, and be permanently embodied in the objective bond which that act creates. And this surrender, this solemn binding of oneself to another for life, must take place in the sight of God (in conspectu Dei). God must, so to speak, be the owner of the bond.
Only wedded love in this, its most perfect form, as a special kind of love and as love in wedlock, is able to transform the act of wedded union from within and make it truly pure. How then is this transformation effected, and why is this love alone capable of accomplishing it? Love alone, as the most fruitful and most intense act, the act which brings the entire spirit into operation, possesses the requisite power to transform thoroughly the entire qualitative texture of an experience. The will, the informing power in the sphere of conduct, can, as it were, grasp our emotional experiences only from the outside. It can—indeed for this its assent is sufficient—liberate the person from an experience; can, for instance, render his envy up to a certain point harmless, can “behead” it, or immure it within the person; but it cannot destroy it, as love destroys it. By his will the person can, so to speak, overleap his emotional life with a magnificent gesture, but he cannot change its quality. Hence the will by itself can never effect an organic union between sex on the one hand and the heart and mind on the other. Whatever the aim the will sets before itself, so long as the act of marriage is motived by the will alone, it remains a foreign body within the life of the spirit, and though possibly free from sin, it remains, nevertheless, something without organic connection with the life of the person, its brutal aggressor, something which simply coexists with the heart and the mind and therefore retains a certain animality. As we have already seen, the mere relation to an end can never impart an inner significance to the act of marriage as an experience, still less ennoble it. Love, on the other hand, can wholly dissolve any experience and transform the quality of its texture; in more technical language, can strip its matter of the old form and invest it with a new. Here, however, it has to deal with a domain which is especially coordinated with it as wedded love.
As we have seen, the significance of sex consists in its being the specific sphere in which wedded love finds expression and fulfillment. Love alone is therefore in a position to unite sex organically with the heart and mind. Wedded love alone holds, so to speak, the key which by realizing it can unlock the significance of sex as an experience and reveal to the person its true positive aspect. In contrast with the bare will it can inwardly link the act of wedded union with the person, since that act represents its specific expression and fulfillment. Inasmuch as it is wedded love it can incorporate organically the act of married union into the life of the person. Inasmuch as it is love it can specifically ennoble it. And inasmuch as it is both it can fully counterbalance the double danger of “swamping” described above. This is, on the contrary, quite beyond the power of the bare will.
We will first consider the danger of foundering in the vital-corporeal, of “drowning.” As always, the person’s good intention suffices to save him from guilt. The good intention, not to be “swamped,” or swallowed up, is thus by itself able to exclude all moral fault when the act of wedded union is a duty. But it is not capable by itself of preventing the actual drowning, so that a submersion is changed into a seizure. Love alone, as the most intense, most central act of the spirit, is capable of this. Love alone represents an activity, an actualization, of the spiritual person so central and intensely conscious through and through that it keeps up with the supreme activity or actuation of the body in the act of wedlock. Hence, love alone can even at this moment maintain the sovereignty of the spirit over the body. It owes this power primarily to the fact that in its specific character as wedded love it can enter into an inner and organic relation with sex. It does not therefore act as a force which remains outside the physical event and conquers it from without, as when, for instance, a man remains spiritually untouched by severe bodily pain, but makes the physical event an expression of itself. And this it is able to do partly in virtue of the intrinsic correspondence between them, because the physical act possesses the capacity to become the expression of love, but still more in virtue of its intrinsic strength, as the most intense, profound and all-embracing activity or actuation of the spirit, in which the spirit realizes most triumphantly its sovereignty over the entire vital-corporeal domain.
Wedded love, however, can perform this function only when it is consciously and deliberately anchored in God—is a love in God. Only when the spirit cleaves to God by an express act can it keep its head above the waves of animal life which at this moment break violently upon it. This factor—conscious anchorage in God—is precisely that which turns the scale in favor of the spirit so that the danger is fully outweighed. And with this anchorage is bound up the conviction that only with God’s express sanction may sex be brought into act. Only when the person, knowing that God expressly sanctions its exercise, yields himself to his partner in the most active and self-conscious wedded love, and, moreover, by a special act deliberately attaches himself to God, is he able to transform the act which represents the supreme activity or actuation of the body in its entire texture as an experience; that is to say, to invest its matter with a new form, render it subservient to the spirit, deprive it of its independence and remain throughout its accomplishment unalterably in the Divine Presence.
The same is true of the second kind of “drowning”—the abandonment of the possession of self, the casting oneself away. The bare will is indeed able to prevent this element of the sexual act, the casting away of self which it always involves, from invading the spiritual and moral attitude, and it can exercise this power even in the absence of wedded love; for example, when a husband gives himself up to his wife because he feels it his duty as a husband to do so. Indeed, a solemn decision of the will anchored in God can even invest with its sanction this casting away of self inherent in the sexual act and give it the objective significance of a surrender. But no actual transformation is thereby effected to turn the casting away of self by a change of quality into an actual self-surrender, and really transform sex as an experience, for it is this aspect which in this connection is of decisive importance. Here, too, it is only from outside that the will can impress its stamp. Here, too, it is love alone which can really inform the matter of sex—that is, the specific wedded love for which the act of married union is the appointed expression. By its operation the factor of complete self-abandonment objectively contained in the orgasm is totally changed; remolded, so to speak, from a casting away of self into a self-surrender whereby the sexual act really becomes throughout a fulfillment of wedded love’s intentio unitiva. That love becomes its soul, so that everything about it is now its expression and fulfillment, and the factor of self-abandonment is transformed into a unique self-surrender whose sanction issues from the profoundest depths of the person—so that in every respect the marriage act is an adequate and intrinsically significant expression, in which the person does not lose himself, does not, on the strength of a passing impulse, wantonly fling himself away as a whole, but makes a solemn donation of himself to his partner once for all and for life.
But, as wedded love cannot by itself counterbalance the danger of “swamping,” so by itself it is insufficient to preserve the inner order during the act of sex and maintain the possession of self. Only when the person remains in God, affirming his adherence to God by an explicit act, does the supreme surrender to a creature not involve “letting oneself go.” For a genuine self-possession subsists only so long as a man remains in God. Wedded love itself ma
y become a casting away of self of a far deeper nature, if God be forgotten for the beloved—as soon, indeed, as an act of unreserved surrender to the beloved is accomplished outside Him. It is to God alone that we may, in the full sense, surrender ourselves without reserve, or can do so without losing ourselves. Then, indeed, then only, it is true that “whosoever loseth his soul shall find it.” In God, however, man may surrender himself even to a fellow creature. But this surrender must be really incorporated into the surrender to God and must in turn be intrinsically “formed” by the latter. Thus and thus alone do we get rid of all caprice and levity, all staking everything on the moment, every breach of the objective order of values, and interior disorder. For only while man abides in God does he leave everything in its right place. The moment we are no longer first and foremost servants of God, and do not, at least habitually, choose Him above all things, the inner order is already destroyed, and even instinctively we shun His presence. This is true in a very special sense of the marriage act, with its strong emotional convulsion, tensest drama, and supreme surrender. It is now that anchorage in God must be realized effectively, if the disorder above described is not to supervene and make it impossible to remain before His face. For this new “forming,” this “reformation” of the marriage act, already in some measure effected when it is made the expression of wedded love and union, this actual adherence to God, is produced precisely by the consciousness that it is only with God’s express sanction we are entering the sexual domain, by a special glance directed to Him, and by a reverent awe of sex which never permits love’s unreserved surrender to the other to become an unrestrained self-indulgence, but imparts to it for the first time the character of a union of love issuing organically from the inmost center of the person and invested with his formal assent.
It is also, as we have already remarked, only wedded love that can remove completely, for experience at least, the ugly aspect attaching to certain constituents of the marriage act. Love alone enables us so to view everything from within and so to dominate the situation that this aspect is no longer experienced. Love alone possesses the power to regard everything in its highest significance, and to see everything belonging to the other person ensouled by the charm of his or her nature and spirit, so that the factor of brutal vitality is buried, not only for thought, but for experience. And in this case also it is the reverent knowledge that it is by God’s express permission that we have crossed the frontiers of sex, which gives the soul that humble freedom, that conscious emancipation, by which we accept the fact of sex as it is, and ennoble it by the penetrating vision of love, undisturbed by the fact that here too the results of the Fall make themselves felt. In relation to these results of the Fall we may apply, mutatis mutandis, to the wedded love that is anchored fast in God what was written of supernatural love in relation to sin generally: “Love covereth a multitude of sins.”
CHAPTER NINE
Recapitulation: The Ideal of Wedded Purity
AS WE HAVE pointed out already, the specific positive value for whose realization sex in its ultimate significance is ordained is not purity, but the love which gives and sacrifices self in the most profound and mysterious union. If, however, we would remain completely and perfectly pure in the exercise of sex, we must realize in our use of it just these values of self-devoting love and mysterious union. Only so does the act of marriage really become something wholly pure; indeed, a special occasion of exercising the virtue of purity. How then must the truly pure man experience sex, so that he need not depart an instant from the Divine Presence, but may continue to shine with undimmed radiance before God? In asking the question we are primarily enquiring how the nature of wedded purity positively displays itself, and shall study in detail the qualities it manifests. The standpoint which has governed our treatment hitherto—the question, namely, what specific factors are required to compensate for the dangers inherent in the act of marriage—is relegated to the background.
In this connection we must distinguish different degrees of purity. There are men who possess a deep-rooted will to purity but are by nature impure. Not only do they suffer from individual temptations, which, so to speak, assail them from without: the entire bent of their nature is toward sex, the charm of sex isolated as its own end. Nevertheless, their will can firmly choose purity, and they can avoid every deliberate surrender to impurity. But the will has not yet attained that organic supremacy within the entire person which effects a remolding of the nature as a whole. Such a man has not reached the point when his heart is emancipated from the sphere of evil lust, and is, on the contrary, distressed and depressed by anything impure, and when his thoughts dwell in a region remote from the domain of sexual charm loved for its own sake. He has attained only the first degree of purity. His actions are pure and his will is pure, but his nature is not yet pure. The virtue of purity in the strict sense does not yet belong to it. An incomparably higher degree of purity is represented by the man in whose nature the will to purity has become organic. His thoughts and desires are not occupied with the attractions of sex as an independent sphere, neither with the quality of evil lust nor with the specific fascination of sex. In situations which present any danger of this kind he shuns it from the outset; he never seeks it nor rejoices at its presence. To be sure, on occasion he may feel the force of temptation, may, no doubt, be naturally susceptible to the siren melody of isolated sex. But the profound rejection of everything impure has become so much a part of his psychological organization that not only his conduct and his will, but his entire emotional life has become pure. Apart from isolated temptations which are of an exceptional character, his nature has become such that impurity, wherever he meets it—that is to say, sex in isolation—inspires him with disgust and sorrow, that he avoids everything which emits the oppressive intoxicating breath of fleshly lust, and his thoughts do not normally turn in that direction. Such an attitude displays the perfect virtue of purity, even if sensibility to isolated sex is not wholly absent.
There is finally a type of purity which is crowned with a peculiar aureole.1 There are men on whom God has bestowed this special grace: although in the highest degree sensitive to the positive aspect of sex, they are insensitive to its isolated fascination and still more to evil lust. God has bound so closely their sensibility to sex with the capacity of love that it is only in the service of a perfect wedded love that sex possesses any appeal and is aroused in them. Beyond all others, persons of this kind walk unspotted in the midst of a sinful world. The breath of impurity can never be even a source of temptation. But this is not in the least a matter of temperament. The sensibility of such men to sex is no doubt temperamental. But that sex can speak to them only when accompanied by an entire and profound love and the knowledge of God’s approval, so that temptations are thus excluded altogether, is no quality of temperament, but a grace—though certainly a grace which requires the cooperation of free will. Only if the person deliberately wills what is pure and rejects everything impure, clearly understanding its negative character, can he preserve this grace. Should he relax this cooperation, and turn away from God, the sphere of self-contained sexual fascination will soon begin to speak to him, if not also that of evil lust. For the law of the flesh dwells in every man, and if he is not temperamentally insensitive to sex, this purity can be preserved only by a will that with unrelenting fidelity follows in the footsteps of grace.2 It is upon this last and supreme type that we shall base our account of the ideal of wedded purity.
When we try to determine the attitude in wedlock of a man of this type we find that its primary and most distinctive characteristic is the fact that in his marriage relationship sex appeals to him only by its tender intimacy, its touching surrender, its mysterious power to unite and fuse, that, though a source of profound joy, it is not in the narrower sense sensually attractive, and has none of the oppressive fumes of evil lust. This does not exclude the presence of a purely physical inclination and attraction to sex, but the physical aspect of sex can on
ly affect the soul as the subject of the qualities just mentioned. The profound reverence of the pure, his shrinking from all direct contemplation of sex, and his deep understanding of its function, as the means through which wedded love finds its fulfillment, never allow him to make the physical pleasure as such his object. The pure man therefore experiences, as no other, the depth, the seriousness, the power to unite fundamentally, and the extraordinary character of the marriage act. For him it is no mere accessory of marriage, but something invested with profound significance and the source of profound happiness. This, of course, supposes an ideal marriage, in which both partners love each other from the depths of their being, are kept in mental contact by a complete understanding, and see each other, so to speak, by a mutual indwelling of their souls. When the physical expression is no longer fundamentally adequate, because the spiritual unity is no longer absolute, it loses more and more its power to give joy, until in the unhappy marriage it has become a burdensome duty.
To understand, however, the ennoblement of sex for the pure we must briefly examine the part played by tenderness. It is a factor of no slight importance. For that specific wedded love which, as we have seen, must pervade the entire sexual relationship is avowedly tender.
The better to understand the ennobling operation of the spirit of tenderness in the domain of sex, that is to say, in relation to the marriage act, we must consider shortly its nature.3 Tenderness by no means coincides with sex, but occupies a distinct domain of its own. In the first place, as contrasted with sexuality, it organically attaches to every form of love which attains a certain quality. It has no independent existence, but is essentially a consequence and special expression of love. It is distinguished by a freedom from constraint, a kindheartedness, a gentleness. It is a special form of love’s free outflowing which reaches the other. It is a softness of love’s melting, but serene, bright, and free as love itself.
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