Why do you speak of my desire for mortification?
My parents believe that, but it is absurd.

It would be a mortification if it brought any suffering, but I enjoy this suffering, it gives me back my mind; it prevents my thoughts from stopping: what would one not do to attain such happiness ?" (P.Janet, "The Pathogenesis of Some Impulsions," _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, April, 1906.) If we understand this psychological process we may realize how it is that even in the higher religions, however else they may differ, the practical value of asceticism and mortification as the necessary door to the most exalted religious state is almost universally recognized, and with complete cheerfulness.

"Asceticism and ecstacy are inseparable," as Probst-Biraben remarks at the outset of an interesting paper on Mahommedan mysticism ("L'Extase dans le Mysticisme Musulman," _Revue Philosophique_, Nov., 1906).
Asceticism is the necessary ante-chamber to spiritual perfection.
It thus happens that savage peoples largely base their often admirable enforcement of asceticism not on the practical grounds that would justify it, but on religious grounds that with the growth of intelligence fall into discredit.[71] Even, however, when the scrupulous observances of savages, whether in sexual or in non-sexual matters, are without any obviously sound basis it cannot be said that they are entirely useless if they tend to encourage self-control and the sense of reverence.[72] The would-be intelligent and practical peoples who cast aside primitive observances because they seem baseless or even ridiculous, need a still finer practical sense and still greater intelligence in order to realize that, though the reasons for the observances have been wrong, yet the observances themselves may have been necessary methods of attaining personal and social efficiency.

It constantly happens in the course of civilization that we have to revive old observances and furnish them with new reasons.
In considering the moral quality of chastity among savages, we must carefully separate that chastity which among semi-primitive peoples is exclusively imposed upon women.

This has no moral quality whatever, for it is not exercised as a useful discipline, but merely enforced in order to heighten the economic and erotic value of the women.