Summa, Migne's edition, vol. iii, qu. 154, art. I.
See the Study of Modesty in the first volume of these Studies.
The majority of chaste youths, remarks an acute critic of modern life (Hellpach, Nervosität und Kultur, p. 175), are merely actuated by traditional principles, or by shyness, fear of venereal infections, lack of self-confidence, want of money, very seldom by any consideration for a future wife, and that indeed would be a tragi-comic error, for a woman lays no importance on intact masculinity. Moreover, he adds, the chaste man is unable to choose a wife wisely, and it is among teachers and clergymen—the chastest class—that most unhappy marriages are made. Milton had already made this fact an argument for facility of divorce.
"In eating," said Hinton, "we have achieved the task of combining pleasure with an absence of 'lust.' The problem for man and woman is so to use and possess the sexual passion as to make it the minister to higher things, with no restraint on it but that. It is essentially connected with things of the spiritual order, and would naturally revolve round them. To think of it as merely bodily is a mistake."