From Chapter Four, Eros.
We must not be totally serious about Venus. Indeed we can't be totally serious without doing violence to our humanity. It is not for nothing that every language and literature in the world is full of jokes about sex. Many of them are dull and disgusting and nearly all of them are old. But we must insist that they embody an attitude to Venus which in the long run endangers the Christian life far less than a reverential gravity. [...]
Venus herself will have a terrible revenge if we take her (occasional) seriousness at its face value. [...] She herself is a mocking, mischievous spirit, far more elf than deity, and makes game of us. When all external circumstances are fittest for her service she will leave one or both the lovers totally indisposed for it. When every overt act is impossible and even glances cannot be exchanged -- in trains, in shops, and at interminable parties -- she will assail them with all her force. An hour later, when time and place agree, she will have mysteriously have withdrawn; perhaps from only one of them. What a pother this must raise -- what resentments, self-pities, suspicions, wounded vanities and all the current chatter about "frustration" -- in those who have deified her! But sensible lovers laugh. It is all part of the game; a game of catch-as-catch-can, and the escapes and tumbles and head-on collisions are to be treated as a romp.
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