It is this difference between new English and old English ethics in the
matter of verbal delicacy of which I wish to speak here. The subject
is difficult, it is even emotional and painful; and I think it will
do no harm to begin with some of the general human principles of the
problem, even if they are as old and obvious as the alphabet.
There is not really much difference of opinion among normal men about
the first principles of decency in expression. All healthy men,
ancient and modern, Western and Eastern, hold that there is in sex a
fury that we cannot afford to inflame; and that a certain mystery
must attach to the instinct if it is to continue delicate and sane.
There are people, indeed, who maintain that they would talk of this topic
as coldly or openly as of any other; there are people who maintain that
they would walk naked down the street. But these people are not only
insane people, they are in the most emphatic sense of the word stupid
people. They do not think; they only point (as children do) and say
“Why?” Even children only do it when they are tired; but exactly this
tired quality is most of what passes in our time not only for thought
but for bold and disturbing thought. To ask, “Why cannot we discuss
sex coolly and rationally anywhere?” is a tired and unintelligent
question. It is like asking, “Why does not a man walk on his hands as
well as on his feet?” It is silly. If a man walked systematically on
his hands, they would not be hands, but feet. And if love or lust were
things that we could all discuss without any possible emotion they would
not be love or lust, they would be something else — some mechanical
function or abstract natural duty which may or may not exist in animals
or in angels, but which has nothing at all to do with the sexuality we
are talking about. All the ideas of grasp or gesture, which to us make
up the meaning of the word “hand”, depend upon the fact that hands
are loose extremities used not for walking on but for waving about. And
all that we mean when we speak of “sex” is involved in the fact that
it is not an unconscious or innocent thing, but a special and violent
emotional stimulation at once spiritual and physical. A man who asks
us to have no emotion in sex is asking us to have no emotion in emotion.
He has forgotten the subject-matter with which he deals. He has lost the
topic of the conversation. It may be said of him, in the strict meaning
of the words, that he does not know what he is talking about.