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sexual relation, as such, is not elevated into a goal, nor
made an arena of human significance, but plays its part
in the great drama of life. Sex never demands the lime¬
light in the good life. A good actor subordinates his
part and his personality to the play, to the players, and to
the audience. Similarly, sex and the sex life are satisfying
only in the degree to which they are related to all other
human activities. Sex is the instrument of the deepest
and most vital social communion and the means of the
establishment of the family which gives the individual
his only true taste of immortality, and often, in the circle
of his family, his sole means of finding a social group to
which his work and his effort have meaning and value.
Happiness cannot accrue, therefore, in any great
measure or in any adequate duration to the men and
women who make sex a special arena, and degrade the
members of the opposite sex to the rdle of wild beasts in
a gladiatorial combat. The odds are too great against
one's sexual partner, the sense of fair play too far
outraged when such a campaign is waged. Too many
human horizons are excluded, too much human nature
is exploited and perverted. It is not necessary to have-
proof of one's virility every night of one’s adult life to be
virile. A good job well done, a friend helped in need,
a game well played, a child encouraged, a house kept in
order—these also are evidences of virility in the best sense
of the word. And, as in the world of business, one cannot
be happy being a fighter only—one must learn early to
make the best use of one’s victories. The sexual game, the
interchange of aggression and submission which make up
the approach to mature sexual relations, are part of life,
not the end of life itself. One must live well to love well,
one must love well to live wisely.
If you find yourself approaching the problems of life
with any of the false strategies we have outlined above,
you need not think that the battle is lost. No one solves
all his problems perfectly. Every man and woman
encounters more or less similar difficulties. If you have a
poor strategy, a faulty plan of campaign, it does not in