01.

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chapter one

Sex Distinguished from Other

Bodily Appetites

I ⇡⌧ ⇠ ⌘ to understand the virtue of human purity without

first considering briefly the distinctive character and unique position of
sex in human nature. Among the activities and appetites of the human
body, sex occupies a unique position. When we consider eating, drink-
ing, and sleep ↵ indeed, bodily pleasure as a whole ↵ we find this entire
province of human experience characterized by a lack of depth. Delight
in a good dinner, for example, or annoyance at a bad one, belongs of its
nature to the superficial zone of human experience. The enjoyment of
sleep, or the pleasure we take in being comfortable or in a glass of wine,
is also essentially on the surface, and men who give experiences of this
kind an important place in their lives we consider superficial.
Moreover, immoderate desire of such things is relatively superficial in
its negative value. Excess in eating and drinking is no doubt a sin. Nev-
ertheless, a Sancho Panza who gives free rein to his desire for food, drink,
and sleep may be regarded as innocent by comparison with an avaricious,
hard-hearted, or revengeful character. The satisfaction of these physical
appetites acquires a somewhat deeper significance only when it is not the

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fulfillment of greedy desire, but a necessity of life in the most literal sense.
The glass of water drained by the thirsty, the meal that restores strength
to the hungry, the bed that welcomes the man exhausted by fatigue, are
no longer the objects of innocent pleasure or of greed. They belong, on
the contrary, to moments when man becomes conscious of his profound
dependence and weakness, in which, beaten back to the frontier of bod-
ily existence, he experiences these goods as his redemption from utter-
most need. Then well-nigh inevitably he perceives them in their true
character as gifts from God’s hand. And the intensity of his need meas-
ures his experience of deliverance. We have but to think of the Lamen-
tations of Jeremiah& to see displayed in a particularly clear and expressive
form the depth of which even this sphere of bodily experience can be
capable. And to the sphere of these profound bodily experiences also
belong illness, acute physical suffering, and the release from these, for
example, in convalescence.
The difference of quality within the bodily sphere between these lat-
ter experiences and the manifestations of desire, of which we first spoke,
is obvious at first sight. The craving of the thirsty man for a drink of
water has nothing of greed in it, nor yet of an innocent, good-natured
animality; it is thoroughly noble and arouses nothing but pity and com-
passion, whereas greed in this department reveals at best a certain inno-
cence and childish good nature, which evoke a smile.
Sex, on the other hand, as contrasted with the other departments of
bodily experience, is essentially deep. Every manifestation of sex produces
an effect which transcends the physical sphere and, in a fashion quite
unlike the other bodily desires, involves the soul deeply in its passion. In
its purely physiological aspect sexual experience possesses a distinctive
quality totally unlike any other bodily pleasure, and the attraction exerted
by the other appetites cannot be compared to the physiological attrac-
tion of sex. The positive and negative values attaching to sex belong to a
level far deeper than those which attach to the other bodily appetites.
Indeed, these sexual experiences are characterized by a specific character
⇥. “To their mothers they say: Where is corn and wine? When they swoon as the wounded in
the streets of the city, when their soul is passed out into their mothers’ bosom” (Lam. ⇤:⇥⇤).
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of mystery which, like the other essential elements of sexuality on which

at present we can but briefly touch, must be reserved for fuller treatment
later. In their distinctive quality there is something which penetrates to
the very root of man’s physical being, and which the other bodily experi-
ences attain only when life itself is at stake. They have in them something
extraordinary which exceeds the bounds of everyday life. They display a
depth and a gravity which removes them altogether from the province of
all other bodily experiences.
And, as a result, it is characteristic of sex that in virtue of its very sig-
nificance and nature it tends to become incorporated with experiences of
a higher order, purely psychological and spiritual. Nothing in the domain
of sex is so self-contained as the other bodily experiences, for example,
eating and drinking. The unique profundity of sex in the physical sphere
is sufficiently shown by the simple fact that a man’s attitude toward it is
of incomparably greater moral significance than his attitude to the other
bodily appetites. Surrender to sexual desire for its own sake defiles a man
in a way that gluttony, for example, can never do. It wounds him to the
core of his being, and he becomes in an absolutely different and novel
fashion guilty of sin. And even as compared with many other domains of
experience which are not physical, sex occupies a central position in the
personality. It represents a factor in human nature which essentially seeks
to play a decisive part in man’s life. Sex can indeed keep silence, but when
it speaks it is no mere obiter dictum, but a voice from the depths, the utter-
ance of something central and of the utmost significance. In and with
sex, man, in a special sense, gives himself.
This central position is determined by two factors. The first is that
here body and soul meet in a unique fashion, a point to which we must
return later. The second is the peculiar intimacy of sex. In a certain sense
sex is the secret of the individual, which he instinctively hides from oth-
ers. It is something which the person concerned feels to be altogether
private, something which belongs to his inmost being. Every disclosure
of sex is the revelation of something intimate and personal. It is the ini-
tiation of another into our secret. It is for this reason that the domain of
sex is also the sphere of shame in its most characteristic sense. We are
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preeminently ashamed to unveil this secret to others. Whether a man is

modest or immodest depends first and foremost on his attitude to sex.'
This intimate character is a further proof of the special depth of sex
as contrasted with the other bodily functions. But before everything else
it reveals the central position of sex. And because sex is the secret of the
individual, to disclose and surrender it is in a unique sense to surrender
oneself.

⇤. Our limits do not allow us to discuss the nature of modesty. We can touch only in passing
on a problem whose profundity is for the most part inadequately recognized, and remark upon the
great variety of forms into which shame can be divided. There is the shame which makes a man seek
to hide any personal ugliness or deformity; for example, a hunchback. There is the shame which tries
to conceal a fault, and so on. From shame of this more generic kind, whose characteristic expression
is the fear of appearing ludicrous, we must distinguish the incomparably deeper and thoroughly noble
shame which conceals something because it is particularly intimate; for example, when a man is
ashamed to show his most delicate and deepest feelings to outsiders. The modesty which belongs to
the domain of sex is therefore the most perfect example of shame, because in it privacy is the primary
consideration. There could be no greater mistake than to explain the tendency to conceal sex as exclu-
sively, or even primarily, an endeavor to hide something disgraceful and ugly. As compared with
shame as the attitude of being ashamed with reference to others, modesty represents a novel factor.
It is even more exclusively confined to the domain of sex. But it is grounded not only in the inti-
macy of sex, but in the intrinsic awe it inspires, awe of its extraordinary and mysterious quality, and
more particularly an instinctive dislike of the impudent, the irreverent, the defiling, and the sinister
as they are specifically bound up with its misuse. See further the discussion of purity in chapter ⌥.