Acts that for one seem a sad and occasional necessity, stains that must be carefully effaced by long intervals of continence, are for the other the golden nails from which all the rest of conduct and existence is suspended, the things that alone give human life its value."[61] Yet we may well doubt whether both these persons are "equally well-educated and broad-minded." The savage feels that sex is perilous, and he is right.

But the person who feels that the sexual impulse is bad, or even low and vulgar, is an absurdity in the universe, an anomaly.

He is like those persons in our insane asylums, who feel that the instinct of nutrition is evil and so proceed to starve themselves.

They are alike spiritual outcasts in the universe whose children they are.

It is another matter when a man declares that, personally, in his own case, he cherishes an ascetic ideal which leads him to restrain, so far as possible, either or both impulses.