Page:Whymenfightameth00russuoft.djvu/243

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RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES
231

pulse to life. Men desire sexual intercourse, but they do not as a rule desire children strongly or often. Yet without the hope of children and its occasional realization, sexual intercourse remains for most people an isolated and separate pleasure, not uniting their personal life with the life of mankind, not continuous with the central purposes by which they live, and not capable of bringing that profound sense of fulfilment which comes from completion by children. Most men, unless the impulse is atrophied through disuse, feel a desire to create something, great or small according to their capacities. Some few are able to satisfy this desire: some happy men can create an Empire, a science, a poem, or a picture. The men of science, who have less difficulty than any others in finding an outlet for creativeness, are the happiest of intelligent men in the modern world, since their creative activity affords full satisfaction to mind and spirit as well as to the instinct of creation.[1] In them a beginning is to be seen of the new way of life which is to be sought; in their happiness we may perhaps find

  1. I should add artists but for the fact that most modern artists seem to find much greater difficulty in creation than men of science usually find.