f
Population_, 1798, Ch. XI), "who has once experienced the genuine delight
of virtuous love, however great his intellectual pleasures may have been,
that does not look back to the period as the sunny spot in his whole life,
where his imagination loves to bask, which he recollects and contemplates
with the fondest regrets, and which he would most wish to live over again.
The superiority of intellectual to sexual pleasures consists rather in
their filling up more time, in their having a larger range, and in their
being less liable to satiate, than in their being more real and
essential."

[67] The whole argument of the fourth volume of these _Studies_, on
"Sexual Selection in Man," points in this direction.

[68] "Perhaps most average men," Forel remarks (_Die Sexuelle Frage_, p.
307), "are but slightly receptive to the intoxication of love; they are at
most on the level of the _gourmet_, which is by no means necessarily an
immoral plane, but is certainly not that of poetry."

CHAPTER V.

THE FUNCTION OF CHASTITY.

Chastity Essential to the Dignity of Love--The Eighteenth Century Revolt
Against the Ideal of Chastity--Unnatural Forms of Chastity--The
Psychological Basis of Asceticism--Asceticism and Chastity as Savage
Virtues--The Significance of Tahiti--Chastity Among Barbarous
Peoples--Chastity Among the Early Christians--Struggles of the Saints with
the Flesh--The Romance of Christian Chastity--Its Decay in Mediaeval
Times--_Aucassin et Nicolette_ and the new Romance of Chaste Love--The
Unchastity of the Northern Barbarians--The Penitentials--Influence of the
Renaissance and the Reformation--The Revolt Against Virginity as a
Virtue--The Modern Conception of Chastity as a Virtue--The Influences That
Favor the Virtue of Chastity--Chastity as a Discipline--The Value of
Chastity for the Artist--Potency and Impotence in Popular Estimation--The
Correct Definitions of Asceticism and Chastity.

The supreme importance of chastity, and even of asceticism, has never at
any time, or in any greatly vital human society, altogether failed of
recognition. Sometimes chastity has been exalted in human estimation,
sometimes it has been debased; it has frequently changed the nature of its
manifestations; but it has always been there. It is even a part of the
beautiful vision of all Nature. "The glory of the world is seen only by a
chaste mind," said Thoreau with his fine extravagance. "To whomsoever this
fact is not an awfu