Nothing we have said or quoted, however, can alter the fact that virginity has been and will always be a certain asset in civilised or semi-civilised communities. There is a romance attached to the term which neither cynicism nor materialism can kill. Incidentally, there is a strong business side to the question. Who, as we said before, wants to feel that his dearest possession has been shared by others? Who, in more modern parlance, wants damaged goods?
While life lasts, the virgin maid will lure the normal lover, common sense and cold facts notwithstanding. What the poet sang and the amorous swain coveted in those by-gone times of pomp and paganism, in the days of chivalry, and even in that dreary early Victorian era, will be sung and coveted centuries hence. Since, new discoveries, new theories, new ideals, new conditions, cannot oust human nature, our undeniable birthright. The sanctity and value of virginity are traditions; and, as Havelock Ellis says, in that singularly beautiful postscript to his Studies, "there can be no world without traditions; neither can there be any life without movement. As Heracleitus knew at the outset of modern philosophy, we cannot bathe twice in the same stream, though, as we know today, the stream still flows in an unending circle. There is never a moment when the new dawn is not breaking over the earth, and never a moment when the sunset ceases to die. It is well to greet serenely even the first glimmer of the dawn when we see it, not hastening toward it with undue speed, nor leaving the sunset without gratitude for the dying light that once was dawn.
"In the moral world we are ourselves the
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