of will and firmness of character, and it marked a rise above
primitive conditions. This purity was difficult to preserve in
those unsure days; it was rare and unusual. From this rarity rose
the superstition of supernatural power residing in the virgin.
But this has no meaning as soon as such purity becomes general
and a specially conspicuous degree of firmness of character is no
longer needed to maintain it.... Physical purity can only possess
value when it is the result of individual strength of character,
and not when it is the result of compulsory rules of morality."

Konrad Hoeller, who has given special attention to the sexual
question in schools, remarks in relation to physical exercise:
"The greatest advantage of physical exercises, however, is not
the development of the active and passive strength of the body
and its skill, but the establishment and fortification of the
authority of the will over the body and its needs, so much given
up to indolence. He who has learnt to endure and overcome, for
the sake of a definite aim, hunger and thirst and fatigue, will
be the better able to withstand sexual impulses and the
temptation to gratify them, when better insight and aesthetic
feeling have made clear to him, as one used to maintain authority
over his body, that to yield would be injurious or disgraceful"
(K. Hoeller, "Die Aufgabe der Volksschule," _Sexualpaedagogik_, p.
70). Professor Schaefenacker (id., p. 102), who also emphasizes
the importance of self-control and self-restraint, thinks a youth
must bear in mind his future mission, as citizen and father of a
family.

A subtle and penetrative thinker of to-day, Jules de Gaultier,
writing on morals without reference to this specific question,
has discussed what new internal inhibitory motives we can appeal
to in replacing the old external inhibition of authority and
belief which is now decayed. He answers that the state of feeling
on which old faiths were based still persists. "May not," he
asks, "the desire for a thing that we love and wish for
beneficently replace the belief that a thing is by divine will,
or in the nature of things? Will not the presence of a bridle on
the frenzy of instinct reveal itself as a useful attitude adopted
by instinct itself for its own conservation, as a symptom of the
force and he