and justice as firmly as our bishops, and more effectively than most of our clergy. It is not morality that stands at the bar. The real question is whether any sound moral principle implies that marriage alone sanctions sex-union: whether social good or social evil would result from an alteration of our standards.
This is a quite natural and legitimate question, and any healthy-minded person ought to be able to discuss it without hysteria or vituperation. Christian moralists have made some very grave mistakes during the last thousand years. Humility and disdain of the flesh were for centuries extolled by them as the supreme virtues: cruelty was classified as a venial offence. Already the bulk of our divines reject the virtue of asceticism, and they forbear to press on the modern world the kind of humility which turns the other cheek, or the other pocket, to the hooligan. They discover that social justice has been singularly neglected by their predecessors, and they begin to suspect that war or sweating may be worse than unbelief or Sabbath-breaking. It is not at all unnatural to inquire whether there may not also be some element of error in their sex-ethic.
We do not go far in such an inquiry before our suspicion is confirmed. The evolution of the virtue of chastity may some day be traced by a cold scientific investigator, and in its earlier stages it will prove extremely interesting. It is primarily connected with an ancient superstition or “tabu”
