] The majority of chaste youths, remarks an acute critic of modern life
(Hellpach, _Nervositaet und Kultur_, p. 175), are merely actuated by
traditional principles, or by shyness, fear of venereal infections, lack
of self-confidence, want of money, very seldom by any consideration for a
future wife, and that indeed would be a tragi-comic error, for a woman
lays no importance on intact masculinity. Moreover, he adds, the chaste
man is unable to choose a wife wisely, and it is among teachers and
clergymen--the chastest class--that most unhappy marriages are made.
Milton had already made this fact an argument for facility of divorce.

[85] "In eating," said Hinton, "we have achieved the task of combining
pleasure with an absence of 'lust.' The problem for man and woman is so to
use and possess the sexual passion as to make it the minister to higher
things, with no restraint on it but that. It is essentially connected with
things of the spiritual order, and would naturally revolve round them. To
think of it as merely bodily is a mistake."

[86] See "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," and Appendix, "The Sexual
Instinct in Savages," in vol. iii of these _Studies_.

[87] I have elsewhere discussed more at length the need in modern
civilized life of a natural and sincere asceticism (see _Affirmations_,
1898) "St. Francis and Others."

[88] _Der Wille zur Macht_, p. 392.

[89] At the age of twenty-five, when he had already produced much fine
work, Mozart wrote in his letters that he had never touched a woman,
though he longed for love and marriage. He could not afford to marry, he
would not seduce an innocent girl, a venial relation was repulsive to him.

[90] Reibmayr, _Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genies._, Bd.
i, p. 437.

[91] We may exclude altogether, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, the
quality of virginity--that is to say, the possession of an intact
hymen--since this is a merely physical quality with no necessary ethical
relationships. The demand for virginity in women is, for the most part,
either the demand for a better marketable article, or for a more powerful
stimulant to masculine desire. Virginity involves no moral qualities in
its possessor. Chastity and asceticism, on the other hand, are meaningless
terms, except as demands made by the spirit on itself or on the body it
controls.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL ABSTINENCE.

The Influence of Tradition--The Theological Concepti