group together all the far-flung manifestations of the inner irresistible process of sexual activity that underlay my own conception of auto-erotism, or the spontaneous erotic impulse which arises from the organism apart from all definite external stimulation, to be manifested, or it may be transformed, in mere solitary physical sex activity, in dreams of the night, in day-dreams, in shapes of literature and art, in symptoms of nervous disorder such as some forms of hysteria, and even in the most exalted phases of mystical devotion. Since then, a more elaborate attempt to develop a similar dynamic conception of sexual activity has been made by Freud; and the psychoanalysts who have followed him, or sometimes diverged, have with endless subtlety, and courageous thoroughness, traced the long and sinuous paths of sexual energy in personality and in life, indeed in all the main manifestations of human activity.
It is important for us to note about this
restriction; as we see there is none in Nature. . . . May we not say of marriage as St. Augustine said of God: ‘Rather would I, not finding, find Thee, than finding, not find Thee’? . . . ‘Because we like’ is the sole legitimate and perfect motive of human action. . . . If this is what Nature affirms then it will be what I believe.” This dynamic conception of the sexual impulse, as a force that, under natural conditions, may be trusted to build up a new morality, obviously belongs to an indefinitely remote future. It is a force whose blade is two-edged, for while it strikes at unselfishness it also strikes at selfishness, and at present we cannot easily conceive a time when “there is no self’; we should be more disposed to regard it as a time when there is much humbug. Yet for the individual this conception of the constructive power of love retains much enlightenment and inspiration.
