In Defense of Purity

by Dietrich von Hildebrand

  Moreover, immoderate desire of such things is relatively superficial in its negative value. Excess in eating and drinking is no doubt a sin. Nevertheless, 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 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 bodily existence, he experiences these goods as his redemption from uttermost need. Then well-nigh inevitably he perceives them in their true character as gifts from God’s hand. And the intensity of his need measures his experience of deliverance. We have but to think of the Lamentations of Jeremiah1 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 latter 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 compassion, whereas greed in this department reveals at best a certain innocence 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 attraction 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 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 experiences 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 significance 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 utterance 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 others. 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 initiation 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 preeminently ashamed to unveil this secret to others. Whether a man is modest or immodest depends first and foremost on his attitude to sex.2

  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.

  * * *

  1. “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. 2:12).

  2. 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 exclusively, 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 intimacy 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 6.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Relation of Sex to the Spiritual Life

  IN VIRTUE OF its profound centrality and intimacy, as also of its mystery, sex is capable of a particular relationship with love, the most spiritual and the deepest of all experiences.

  It is quite impossible to regard the union of love and sex in marriage as due exclusively to its aim of propagation. We should not forget that the Church assigns three ends to marriage, which St. Augustine sums up by the words proles, fides, sacramentum—offspring, fidelity, the sacrament. There exists, however, a profound relation of quality between the bodily union and that psychological and spiritual factor of specifically matrimonial love formulated under the terms mutuum adjutorium (mutual assistance) and fides (fidelity) as one of these three ends. We have here to do with an organic unity, deeply rooted in the attributes of wedded love on the one hand and of sex on the other. And just because sex is so uniquely intimate and represents the secret of the person concerned, the sexual gift of one person to another signifies an incomparably close union with that other and a self-surrender to him or her. The sexual union is thus the organic expression of wedded love, which intends precisely this mutual gift of self.

  There are, to be sure, certain modern theories which exaggerate beyond all measure the part played
by sex, while nevertheless missing its deeper significance, and venture the absurd thesis that love in general, and not only the love between man and woman, is a sublimation of the sex instinct. Such a doctrine betrays, in the first place, complete failure to understand the spiritual structure of the personality and, secondly, an entire misapprehension of the nature of love, the supreme actuation of the spirit.1We can understand the nature of love without any reference to sex; indeed, it is only in that way that we can understand clearly the distinctive quality of the genuine act of love. We can understand it best in its source, the Divine Love, as it issues from the most sacred Heart of Jesus, where every thought of sex fails. It is therefore of the first importance to realize the complete independence and sovereignty with respect to sex of love generally. But the specific quality not only of love as such, but of wedded love in particular, is independent of the physical aspect of sex. What distinguishes wedded love from other kinds of love—for example, love of parents or children or the love between two friends—is the quality of the love itself, the distinctive correlation between two persons, the completion of both parties, which only this kind of love affects, and that unique splendor which invests “being in love” in the noble sense. It is impossible to reduce all this to so-called sex instinct.

  The distinction between male and female, the roots of which lie far deeper than the biological sphere, is certainly the presupposition alike of the power to complete and of the distinctive splendor of wedded love. But, on the other hand, the view that physical sex is a purely external addition to wedded love, in the sense that pride may be added to love, as, for example, to parents’ love for a child, is equally false. On the contrary, I can understand the true significance and nature of physical sex only from above, from wedded love. The moment I treat physical sex as something complete in itself and take no account of its profoundest function, namely, in wedded love, I falsify its ultimate significance and become blind to the mystery it contains. Physical sex is certainly something distinct from love, but, nevertheless, between it and wedded love there subsists a pre-established harmony. Its true significance as an experience is inseparable from its character as the expression and flower of a specific kind of love.2The man who has grasped the meaning of sex recognizes its central position—intimacy and mystery—and understands the distinctive quality of the act of marriage as uniting and amalgamating the partners, also the unique connection which subsists between physical sex and wedded love and, moreover, knows why sex alone and not any other bodily function must enter into this combination.

  The threefold purpose of marriage, proles, fides, sacramentum (offspring, fidelity, the sacrament), of which St. Thomas says: “Primus finis respondet matrimonio hominis, in quantum est animal; secundus, in quantum est homo; tertius, in quantum est fidelis” (the first end of marriage belongs to man as an animal, the second as a human being, the third as a Christian), extends also to the act of marriage. That act has not only a function, the generation of children; it also possesses a significance for man as a human being (in quantum homo)—namely, to be the expression and fulfillment of wedded love and community of life—and, moreover, it participates after a certain fashion in the sacramental meaning of matrimony.3That is to say, the significance of physical sex in relation to man in quantum homo cannot be purely utilitarian, functional in the narrowest sense, like its significance in relation to man in quantum animal, in which its function is to produce offspring. On the contrary, in this connection we should rather speak of the meaning of sex than of its function. Speaking generally, we can talk only of a purely functional relation when the content of anything is exhausted by its wholly objective finality, its actual production of a particular result. The function of the lungs is to fill the blood with oxygen, the function of the eggshell to protect the developing embryo. But in other cases the function, the finality, is not simply an objective fact; it is at the same time the conscious motive of a subject. For example, we undertake a journey with the deliberate intention of visiting a friend. The visit is not only the end of the journey, the function it actually performs; it is also the purpose that we consciously intend. The relation between physical sex and the interior purity of heart of a married pair is obviously not a functional relation in the strict sense, whether of the external objective kind or constituted by a purpose. The relationship, founded in the distinctive quality of both spheres, which enables the act of wedded communion to constitute and effect a union unique even in its psychological aspect, cannot be resolved into the far more formal and more mechanical relation of pure function; that is to say, of end and means. To regard wedded love as exclusively an objective means to the union of wedlock, and the latter in turn as a means to procreation, would be to subordinate entirely man in quantum homo to man in quantum animal—a thoroughly materialistic view.4On the other hand, to regard the marriage union as a means and wedded love as the end is equally impossible, because the marriage union already presupposes wedded love.5On the contrary, we are in presence of an entirely novel and most profound relationship which, as has been already hinted, must be conceived as a relation of significance. The act of wedded communion has indeed the object of propagation, but in addition the significance of a unique union of love. That this act, apart from the object just mentioned, is also significant for man in quantum homo, as the specific expression and fulfillment of wedded love and its longing for fuller communion, becomes particularly evident when we consider the significance which belongs to the experience of physical sex and to its distinctive quality, as perfecting or completing their subject. Compare, for example, eating. The significance of eating is exhausted by its objective end—the maintenance of life. Whether or not we are conscious of the act of eating as an experience possesses no decisive significance. If throughout my meal my attention is wholly distracted elsewhere, absorbed by thoughts of some intellectual question or other, there is nothing whatever morally reprehensible, or even merely inappropriate, in my behavior. So far as the significance of eating is concerned it is of no practical consequence whether my attention plays any part in the process or not. For the act of wedded union, on the contrary, the question whether or not my attention is focused on what I am doing is by no means unimportant. From this act the factor of experience may not be excluded. If it is, the act becomes something morally reprehensible, indeed bestial. A fully deliberate conscious attention is demanded.

  This in turn clearly proves that the act, over and above its universal function, possesses a special significance for man in quantum homo, which is not the case with eating, digestion, or breathing. Their significance is confined to man in quantum animal, and any conscious experience connected with them is merely an epiphenomenon or by-product. The pleasure which I receive from the taste of food can be safely regarded as being, so far as its intrinsic significance is concerned, simply a teleological means to the accomplishment of the objective end of nourishment. In this sphere also I can, it is true, sin by adopting a particular attitude toward this pleasure; for example, that of the glutton. And, no doubt, a general conscious intention directed to the object of eating is desirable, if for no other reason, because the ennoblement of all things by their reference to God, which is universally demanded, involves in this case a thankful consciousness of that object. But a complete unconsciousness of eating during the concrete act in any individual instance involves no essential violation of its significance, just because it possesses no special significance for man in quantum homo.

  It is therefore evident that, apart from the relation of physical sex to procreation (procreatio), there exists a relation arising out of their respective qualities between physical sex and wedded love, which constitutes the significance of the former for man in quantum homo; a relation which, as contrasted with the utilitarian relation of means and end introduced from outside and constituting a purely external link, is, we have shown, a relation of significance which effects an intrinsic union. In virtue of its quality, physical sex is the expression of wedded love, and
the specifically significant sphere of its fulfillment. And the act of wedded union is a unique expression of wedded love and its specific fulfillment, because in it both partners, according to the word of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, become one flesh; that is, they constitute a supreme unity, which wedded love seeks in a special fashion to attain. To overlook the union between physical sex and love or its significance and to recognize only the purely utilitarian bond between sex and the propagation of the race is to degrade man and to be blind to the meaning and value of this mysterious domain. Nor, so far as the essential is concerned, does this point of view become more rational if the utilitarian relation is also treated as the subjective purpose. The mere will to procreation is incapable of introducing into the act of wedded union the requisite element of conscious experience, for it neglects entirely the significance of the act for man in quantum homo—namely, fides. By itself this intention can never effect the organic bond between physical sex and the human spirit which lifts the act of wedded union out of the purely animal and biological sphere. Even if the intention to reproduce were invested with the noble purpose of giving the Church new souls, that intention by itself, to the exclusion of specific wedded love, could not organically unite physical sex with the heart and spirit, nor would it possess the power to inform from within the distinctive nature of sex, alloyed as it is by a tendency to overcome the spirit, and thus transform it into a positive good. The marriage act can only be transformed qualitatively and ennobled from within when the immensely powerful thought of the inception of a new human soul influences the physical act of sex through the medium of wedded love.