Insofar as it is a physical appetite, sexual desire develops spontaneously with the maturation of the body. It is experienced intensely, but if one remains exclusively at the physical level there is a more or less definite limit beyond which the appetite won't grow any further. In ways that will be explained in later chapters, physical sex can take on a personal meaning. Insofar as it does so, it becomes subject to that process of indefinite learning and growth that characterizes personal appetites. For this reason, the physical sexual drive presents a task for human persons. Given the intensity of physical sexual desire and the fact that it arises without the need for learning, it is easy to remain on that physical level rather than to undertake the sometimes difficult task of proceeding to a personal level.
On the physical level the standard for measuring
behaviour is maximization of physical pleasure. Hugh Hefner's "Playboy Philosophy" attempts to give a respectable title to what is in fact a fixation at that level. Ironically, even its promise of pleasure is illusory; physical sex, lacking the potentiality for indefinite growth, becomes repetitive and ultimately boring, in spite of the efforts of some to give it variety or to make of it an art while undermining any personal quality it might embody. Sex as a personal appetite, however, is open to indefinite growth and enrichment.
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