incompatible with the health of most people, and that prolonged
continence is incompatible with anyone's health, and yet, if he
is to be honest in the use of language, it would be impossible
for him to deny the vague and abstract proposition that
"Continence is not incompatible with health." Such propositions
are therefore not only without value, but actually misleading.

It is obvious that the more extreme and unqualified opinions in
favor of sexual abstinence are based not on medical, but on what
the writers regard as moral considerations. Moreover, as the same
writers are usually equally emphatic in regard to the advantages
of sexual intercourse in marriage, it is clear that they have
committed themselves to a contradiction. The same act, as Naecke
rightly points out, cannot become good or bad according as it is
performed in or out of marriage. There is no magic efficacy in a
few words pronounced by a priest or a government official.

Remondino (loc. cit.) remarks that the authorities who have
committed themselves to declarations in favor of the
unconditional advantages of sexual abstinence tend to fall into
three errors: (1) they generalize unduly, instead of considering
each case individually, on its own merits; (2) they fail to
realize that human nature is influenced by highly mixed and
complex motives and cannot be assumed to be amenable only to
motives of abstract morality; (3) they ignore the great army of
masturbators and sexual perverts who make no complaint of sexual
suffering, but by maintaining a rigid sexual abstinence, so far
as normal relationships are concerned, gradually drift into
currents whence there is no return.

Between those who unconditionally affirm or deny the harmlessness of
sexual abstinence we find an intermediate party of authorities whose
opinions are more qualified. Many of those who occupy this more guarded
position are men whose opinions carry much weight, and it is probable that
with them rather than with the more extreme advocates on either side the
greater measure of reason lies. So complex a question as this cannot be
adequately investigated merely in the abstract, and settled by an
unqualified negative or affirmative. It is a matter in which every case
requires its own special and personal consideration.

"Where there is such a marked opposition of opinion truth is