If it was only submission. . . . YOU think
it is only submission--giving way. . . . It isn't only submission.
We'd manage sex all right, we'd be the happy swine our senses would
make us, if we didn't know all the time that there was something
else to live for, something far more important. And different.
Absolutely different and contradictory. So different that it cuts
right across all these considerations. It won't fit in. . . . I
don't know what this other thing is; it's what I want to talk about
with you. But I know that it IS, in all my bones. . . . YOU
know. . . . It demands control, it demands continence, it insists
upon disregard."
But the ideas of continence and disregard were unpleasant ideas to
Prothero that day.
"Mankind," said Benham, "is overcharged with this sex. It
suffocates us. It gives life only to consume it. We struggle out
of the urgent necessities of a mere animal existence. We are not so
much living as being married and given in marriage. All life is
swamped in the love story. . . ."
"Man is only overcharged because he is unsatisfied," said Prothero,
sticking stoutly to his own view.
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