on of Lust--Tendency
of These Influences to Degrade Sexual Morality--Their Result in Creating
the Problem of Sexual Abstinence--The Protests Against Sexual
Abstinence--Sexual Abstinence and Genius--Sexual Abstinence in Women--The
Advocates of Sexual Abstinence--Intermediate Attitude--Unsatisfactory
Nature of the Whole Discussion--Criticism of the Conception of Sexual
Abstinence--Sexual Abstinence as Compared to Abstinence from Food--No
Complete Analogy--The Morality of Sexual Abstinence Entirely Negative--Is
It the Physician's Duty to Advise Extra-Conjugal Sexual
Intercourse?--Opinions of Those Who Affirm or Deny This Duty--The
Conclusion Against Such Advice--The Physician Bound by the Social and
Moral Ideas of His Age--The Physician as Reformer--Sexual Abstinence and
Sexual Hygiene--Alcohol--The Influence of Physical and Mental
Exercise--The Inadequacy of Sexual Hygiene in This Field--The Unreal
Nature of the Conception of Sexual Abstinence--The Necessity of Replacing
It by a More Positive Ideal.

When we look at the matter from a purely abstract or even purely
biological point of view, it might seem that in deciding that asceticism
and chastity are of high value for the personal life we have said all that
is necessary to say. That, however, is very far from being the case. We
soon realize here, as at every point in the practical application of
sexual psychology, that it is not sufficient to determine the abstractly
right course along biological lines. We have to harmonize our biological
demands with social demands. We are ruled not only by natural instincts
but by inherited traditions, that in the far past were solidly based on
intelligible grounds, and that even still, by the mere fact of their
existence, exert a force which we cannot and ought not to ignore.

In discussing the valuation of the sexual impulse we found that we had
good ground for making a very high estimate of love. In discussing
chastity and asceticism we found that they also are highly to be valued.
And we found that, so far from any contradiction being here involved,
love and chastity are intertwined in all their finest developments, and
that there is thus a perfect harmony in apparent opposition. But when we
come to consider the matter in detail, in its particular personal
applications, we find that a new factor asserts itself. We find that our
inherited social and religious traditions exert a pressure, all on one
side, which makes it impossibl