ntify "chaste" with "sexually abstinent." He adds that we are
not justified in describing all extra-marital sexual intercourse
as unchaste, for, if we do so, we shall be compelled to regard
nearly all men, and some very estimable women, as unchaste. He
rightly insists that in this matter we must apply the same rule
to women as to men, and he points out that even when it involves
what may be technically adultery sexual intercourse is not
necessarily unchaste. He takes the case of a girl who, at
eighteen, when still mentally immature, is married to a man with
whom she finds it impossible to live and a separation
consequently occurs, although a divorce may be impossible to
obtain. If she now falls passionately in love with a man her love
may be entirely chaste, though it involves what is technically
adultery.

In thus understanding asceticism and chastity, and their beneficial
functions in life, we see that they occupy a place midway between the
artificially exaggerated position they once held and that to which they
were degraded by the inevitable reaction of total indifference or actual
hostility which followed. Asceticism and chastity are not rigid
categorical imperatives; they are useful means to desirable ends; they are
wise and beautiful arts. They demand our estimation, but not our
over-estimation. For in over-estimating them, it is too often forgotten,
we over-estimate the sexual instinct. The instinct of sex is indeed
extremely important. Yet it has not that all-embracing and supereminent
importance which some, even of those who fight against it, are accustomed
to believe. That artificially magnified conception of the sexual impulse
is fortified by the artificial emphasis placed upon asceticism. We may
learn the real place of the sexual impulse in learning how we may
reasonably and naturally view the restraints on that impulse.

FOOTNOTES:

[69] For Blake and for Shelley, as well as, it may be added, for Hinton,
chastity, as Todhunter remarks in his _Study of Shelley_, is "a type of
submission to the actual, a renunciation of the infinite, and is therefore
hated by them. The chaste man, i.e., the man of prudence and self-control,
is the man who has lost the nakedness of his primitive innocence."

[70] For evidence of the practices of savages in this matter, see Appendix
_A_ to the third volume of these _Studies_, "The Sexual Instinct in
Savages." Cf. also Ch