The true function is rather to ennoble the
physical desire by the just concurrence of the soul. But the
essence of the situation is co-operation and not coercion; and each
must be ready to compromise. If the physical nature will not
compromise with the reason, the disasters of unbridled passion
follow; if the reason will not co-operate with the physical
desire, the result is a sterile intellectualism, a life of starved
and timid experience. It was here, of course, that Walt Whitman's
view gave offence; he thought of civilisation as a conventional
system, cultivating a false shame and an ignoble reserve about
bodily processes. But the vital truth of his doctrine lies in the
fact that many of our saddest, because most remediable, disasters
are caused by a timid reticence about the strongest force that
animates the world, the force of reproduction. Whitman felt, and
truly felt, that reason and sentiment have outrun discretion. It
may be asked, indeed, how this terror of all outspokenness has
developed in the human race, so that parents cannot bear to speak
to their children about an experience which they will be certain to
make acquaintance with in some far more violent and base form. Does
this shrinking delicacy, this sacred reserve, mean nothing, it may
be asked? Well, it may be said, if this sensitiveness is so
valuable that it must not be required to anticipate tenderly and
faithfully what will be communicated in a grosser form, then
silence is justified, and not otherwise.
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