as the natural satisfaction of his
craving is denied, fancy works with still more lively efforts, conjuring
up those seductive pictures which he would fain expel from his
imagination. The more energetic is the youth who has to fight this
inner battle, the more seriously must his whole nervous system suffer
from it. It is this forcible suppression of an instinct so deeply rooted
in our nature, it is this, in my humble opinion, which first originates
the morbid symptoms, that may often be observed in Urnings. But such
consequences have nothing in themselves to do with the sexual inversion
proper to the Urning.

"Well then; some persons prolong this never-ending inner conflict, and
ruin their constitutions in course of time; others arrive eventually at
the conviction that an inborn impulse, which exists in them so
powerfully, cannot possibly be sinful--so they abandon the impossible
task of suppressing it. But just at this point begins in real earnest
the Iliad of their sufferings and constant nervous excitations. The
normal man, if he looks for means to satisfy his sexual inclinations,
knows always where to find that without trouble. Not so the Urning. He
sees the men who attract him; he dares not utter, nay, dares not even
let it be perceived, what stirs him. He imagines that he alone of all
the people in the world is the subject of emotions so eccentric.
Naturally, he cultivates the society of young men, but does not venture
to confide in them. So at last he is driven to seek some relief in
himself, some makeshift for the satisfaction he cannot obtain. This
results in masturbation, probably excessive, with its usual pernicious
consequences to health. When, after the lapse of a certain time, his
nervous system is gravely compromised, this morbid phenomenon ought not
to be ascribed to sexual inversion in itself; far rather we have to
regard it as the logical issue of the Urning's position, driven as he is
by dominant opinion to forego the gratification which _for him_ is
natural and normal, and to betake himself to onanism.

"But let us now suppose that the Urning has enjoyed the exceptional
good-fortune of finding upon his path in life a soul who feels the same
as he does, or else that he has been early introduced by some initiated
friend into the circles of the Urning-world. In this case, it is
possible that he will have escaped many painful conflicts; yet a long
series of exciting cares and anxieties attend on every s