Our minds fall very readily under the spell of such
unmitigated words as Purity and Chastity. Only death beyond decay,
absolute non-existence, can be Pure and Chaste. Life is impurity, fact
is impure. Everything has traces of alien matter; our very health is
dependent on parasitic bacteria; the purest blood in the world has a
tainted ancestor, and not a saint but has evil thoughts. It was
blindness to that which set men stoning the woman taken in adultery.
They forgot what they were made of. This stupidity, this unreasonable
idealism of the common mind, fills life to-day with cruelties and
exclusions, with partial suicides and secret shames. But we are born
impure, we die impure; it is a fable that spotless white lilies sprang
from any saint's decay, and the chastity of a monk or nun is but
introverted impurity. We have to take life valiantly on these conditions
and make such honour and beauty and sympathy out of our confusions,
gather such constructive experience, as we may.
There is a mass of real superstition upon these points, a belief in a
magic purity, in magic personalities who can say:--
My strength is as the strength of ten
Because my heart is pure,
and wonderful clairvoyant innocents like the young man in Mr.
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