... Hunger and fear and this that you make so much of, this sex,
are but the elementals of life out of which we have arisen. All these
elementals, I grant you, have to be provided for, dealt with, satisfied,
but all these things have to be left behind.'
'But Love,' said Kahn.
'I speak of sexual love and the love of intimate persons. And that is
what you mean, Kahn.'
Karenin shook his head. 'You cannot stay at the roots and climb the
tree,' he said....
'No,' he said after a pause, 'this sexual excitement, this love story,
is just a part of growing up and we grow out of it. So far literature
and art and sentiment and all our emotional forms have been almost
altogether adolescent, plays and stories, delights and hopes, they have
all turned on that marvellous discovery of the love interest, but life
lengthens out now and the mind of adult humanity detaches itself. Poets
who used to die at thirty live now to eighty-five. You, too, Kahn! There
are endless years yet for you--and all full of learning.... We carry an
excessive burden of sex and sexual tradition still, and we have to free
ourselves from it. We do free ourselves from it. We have learnt in a
thousand different ways to hold back death, and this sex, which in the
old barbaric days was just sufficient to balance our dying, is now like
a hammer that has lost its anvil, it plunges through human life.
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