sons who achieve it, as the result of congenitally feeble
sexual aptitudes, merely (as Gyurkovechky, Fuerbringer, and Loewenfeld have
all alike remarked) made a virtue of their weakness. Many others, whose
instincts were less weak, when they disdainfully put to flight the desires
of sex in early life, have found that in later life that foe returns in
tenfold force and perhaps in unnatural shapes.[104]

The conception of "sexual abstinence" is, we see, an entirely false and
artificial conception. It is not only ill-adjusted to the hygienic facts
of the case but it fails even to invoke any genuinely moral motive, for it
is exclusively self-regarding and self-centred. It only becomes genuinely
moral, and truly inspiring, when we transform it into the altruistic
virtue of self-sacrifice. When we have done so we see that the element of
abstinence in it ceases to be essential, "Self-sacrifice," writes the
author of a thoughtful book on the sexual life, "is acknowledged to be the
basis of virtue; the noblest instances of self-sacrifice are those
dictated by sexual affection. Sympathy is the secret of altruism; nowhere
is sympathy more real and complete than in love. Courage, both moral and
physical, the love of truth and honor, the spirit of enterprise, and the
admiration of moral worth, are all inspired by love as by nothing else in
human nature. Celibacy denies itself that inspiration or restricts its
influence, according to the measure of its denial of sexual intimacy. Thus
the deliberate adoption of a consistently celibate life implies the
narrowing down of emotional and moral experience to a degree which is,
from the broad scientific standpoint, unjustified by any of the advantages
piously supposed to accrue from it."[105]

In a sane natural order all the impulses are centred in the fulfilment of
needs and not in their denial. Moreover, in this special matter of sex, it
is inevitable that the needs of others, and not merely the needs of the
individual himself, should determine action. It is more especially the
needs of the female which are the determining factor; for those needs are
more various, complex and elusive, and in his attentiveness to their
gratification the male finds a source of endless erotic satisfaction. It
might be thought that the introduction of an altruistic motive here is
merely the claim of theoretical morality insisting that there shall be a
firm curb on animal instinct. But, as we have again and agai