t he takes the honorable precaution of begetting no
children, unless his partner is entirely willing to become a
mother, and he is prepared to accept all the responsibilities of
fatherhood." In an article of later date ("Die Einwirkung der
Sexuellen Abstinenz auf die Gesundheit," _Sexual-Probleme_, July,
1908) Nystroem vigorously sums up his views. He includes among the
results of sexual abstinence orchitis, frequent involuntary
seminal emissions, impotence, neurasthenia, depression, and a
great variety of nervous disturbances of vaguer character,
involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life,
sleeplessness, nervousness, and pre-occupation with sexual
desires and imaginations. More especially there is heightened
sexual irritability with erections, or even seminal emissions on
the slightest occasion, as on gazing at an attractive woman or in
social intercourse with her, or in the presence of works of art
representing naked figures. Nystroem has had the opportunity of
investigating and recording ninety cases of persons who have
presented these and similar symptoms as the result, he believes,
of sexual abstinence. He has published some of these cases
(_Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft_, Oct., 1908), but it may be
added that Rohleder ("Die Abstinentia Sexualis," ib., Nov., 1908)
has criticized these cases, and doubts whether any of them are
conclusive. Rohleder believes that the bad results of sexual
abstinence are never permanent, and also that no anatomically
pathological states (such as orchitis) can be thereby produced.
But he considers, nevertheless, that even incomplete and
temporary sexual abstinence may produce fairly serious results,
and especially neurasthenic disturbances of various kinds, such
as nervous irritability, anxiety, depression, disinclination for
work; also diurnal emissions, premature ejaculations, and even a
state approaching satyriasis; and in women hysteria,
hystero-epilepsy, and nymphomaniacal manifestations; all these
symptoms may, however, he believes, be cured when the abstinence
ceases.

Many advocates of sexual abstinence have attached importance to
the fact that men of great genius have apparently been completely
continent throughout life. This is certainly true (see _ante_, p.
173). But this fact can scarcely be invoked as a