Sexual morality has taken a real beating for many years. Even in the old days before the advent of the “new morality,” everybody who believed in morality believed in it because it was believed to be right, though torturously difficult to live. Discipline in regard to sex was something with which one had to struggle. It was a great inconvenience to contain oneself, but contain oneself through self-discipline one did. It was one’s duty.

The great essayist, Oliver Goldsmith, however, once revealed an interesting concept. He said: “Adventure is inconvenience rightly considered.” Now elegance is the sophisticated first cousin of adventure, and the essence of elegance is, “I will put off the gratification of my desire until I can gratify it at the very peak of my capacity to enjoy it. That leaves me free to enjoy the greatest possible anticipation all along the way and also makes me a person of great respect since my discipline puts me above the mundane world.”

Elegance hasn’t said a thing about morality, but sexual morality is possibly the greatest thing a person could be elegant about.

Look at it this way. You meet a woman and you fall in love, and then you wait until you are married to have sexual intercourse with her. You get all the anticipation along the way, you get the greatest possible enjoyment of the culmination of that anticipation, and you respect yourself for your discipline afterward. Nobody even uses the words “must” or “ought” in the aesthetic argument.

It is just the most elegant way to live. If you want to be elegant, you have to do elegant things. If you are not elegant, you are one who does not do elegant things. This is a gross oversimplification of a very complex argument, but at least the essence of it has been explained.

You wait just as long as you can before you hold her hand, and then you hold it at just the right moment. You wait just as long as you can before you kiss her, and then you lass her in just the right dramatic situation. You wait just as long as you can before you take her to bed, and the dramatic moment is after you have married her.

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