ntaneous and inner voice of sex may at any
moment suddenly make itself heard, all hygienic precautions are liable to
be flung to the winds, and even the youth or maiden most anxious to retain
the ideals of chastity can often do little but wait till the storm has
passed. It sometimes happens that a prolonged period of sexual storm and
stress occurs soon after puberty, and then dies away although there has
been little or no sexual gratification, to be succeeded by a period of
comparative calm. It must be remembered that in many, and perhaps most,
individuals, men and women, the sexual appetite, unlike hunger or thirst,
can after a prolonged struggle, be reduced to a more or less quiescent
state which, far from injuring, may even benefit the physical and psychic
vigor generally. This may happen whether or not sexual gratification has
been obtained. If there has never been any such gratification, the
struggle is less severe and sooner over, unless the individual is of
highly erotic temperament. If there has been gratification, if the mind
is filled not merely with desires but with joyous experience to which the
body also has grown accustomed, then the struggle is longer and more
painfully absorbing. The succeeding relief, however, if it comes, is
sometimes more complete and is more likely to be associated with a state
of psychic health. For the fundamental experiences of life, under normal
conditions, bring not only intellectual sanity, but emotional
pacification. A conquest of the sexual appetites which has never at any
period involved a gratification of these appetites seldom produces results
that commend themselves as rich and beautiful.

In these combats there are, however, no permanent conquests. For a very
large number of people, indeed, though there may be emotional changes and
fluctuations dependent on a variety of circumstances, there can scarcely
be said to be any conquest at all. They are either always yielding to the
impulses that assail them, or always resisting those impulses, in the
first case with remorse, in the second with dissatisfaction. In either
case much of their lives, at the time when life is most vigorous, is
wasted. With women, if they happen to be of strong passions and reckless
impulses to abandonment, the results may be highly enervating, if not
disastrous to the general psychic life. It is to this cause, indeed, that
some have been inclined to attribute the frequent mediocrity of women's
work i