ls they may be left out of account. They are
the portion of supermen and superwomen. Ordinarily a substitute may be
found. The substitute love may never reach the intensity of the
original love, it may never give full or even half-full satisfaction;
but it will help to dull the sharp cutting edge, it will act as a
partial hemostatic to the bleeding heart, it will soothe and
anesthetize the wound even if it cannot completely heal it. And this
is a valuable aid while the sufferer is coming to himself or herself,
while the gathered fragments of a broken life are being cemented and
while the cement is hardening. Yes, the man or woman who is in inferno
on account of an unreciprocated or a betrayed love should lose no time
in searching for a substitute love. I do not believe in people losing
their health and their minds on account of suffering which does nobody
any good.

But I will go still further. Where a substitute love--great or
minor--cannot be found, then mere sex relations may help to diminish
the suffering, to quiet the turbulent heart, to relieve the aching
brain. As everything connected with sex, so our ideas about illicit
sex relations that are not connected with love, are honeycombed with
hypocrisy and false to the core. While purchasable, loveless sex
relations can, of course, not be compared to love relations, still
under our present social, economic and moral code they are the only
relations that thousands of men and women can enjoy, and they are
better than none; and in quite a considerable percentage of cases an
element of romance and greater or lesser permanency do become attached
to them, and they act as a more or less satisfactory substitute for
genuine love relations.

I am not spinning theoretical gossamer webs. I am speaking from
experience--the experience of patients and confiding friends. I could
relate many interesting cases. And I may, in a more appropriate
volume. Here one or two will have to suffice.

He was twenty-six years old and a senior student in the College of
Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York. He had been in
love with and had considered himself engaged for four or five years to
a young lady two years his junior. She was, of course, the most
wonderful young lady in the world, the whole world; in fact, there was
not another one to compare her to. She was unique; she stood all
alone. But for a year or so she was getting rather cool towards him;
which fanned his flame