With regard to the former point, it would be the greatest good fortune for every man if he could remain sexually abstinent until the complete maturity of body and mind—that is, until the age of twenty-five.[690] But this is in most cases an impossibility. Yet it is possible for every healthy man—and it is an imperative demand of individual and social hygiene—to abstain completely from sexual intercourse at least until the age of twenty. That is possible without any harm resulting, and it is carried out by innumerable persons of both sexes. It is, indeed, a fact that in civilized countries the physical and mental maturity of girls and boys by no means coincides with their sexual maturity, but, on the contrary, occurs from three to five years later. First between the ages of twenty and twenty-two does man attain complete development.[691] If the sexual impulse is not artificially awakened and stimulated during these years of adolescence, it may remain very moderate, without masturbation and without pollutions, and can be easily controlled. Relations with the other sex have not yet become necessary for the development of the individual personality. The human being has still enough to do in isolation. First with the commencement of the third decade of life do the conditions alter, and sexual tension becomes so great as to demand the adequate and natural discharge given by the normal sexual act. If this is impossible, pollutions form the natural, or masturbation forms the unnatural, outlet; and when abstinence is continued for a long time after attaining this age, the vital freshness and the spiritual and emotional condition are more or less impaired. To have emphasized this fact, in opposition to those authors[692] who declared that total sexual abstinence is absolutely harmless to mature men, was the great service of Wilhelm Erb,[693] the celebrated, widely experienced Heidelberg neurologist.
“It is a well-known fact,” he writes, “that healthy young men with a powerful sexual impulse suffer not a little from abstinence, that from time to time they are ‘as if possessed’ by the impulse, that erotic ideas press in upon them from all sides, disturb their work and their nocturnal repose, and imperiously demand relief. I always remember the remark of a friend of my youth, a young artist, who, when speaking of these things, was accustomed to say with intense meaning: ‘Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte in seinem Bette weinend sass....’ And the same man could not sufficiently extol the relaxing, disburdening, and positively refreshing influence of an occasional gratification; and the same thing has been said to me innumerable times by earnest and thoroughly moderate men.”
Women also gave him similar assurances.[694] In numerous cases Erb observed physical and mental harm to result from abstinence—sometimes in healthy individuals, but more especially in the neuropathic.
Important also are the investigations of L. Löwenfeld[695] regarding the influence of abstinence. He found that in men under the age of twenty-four any troubles worth mentioning as a result of sexual abstinence were comparatively rare, as compared with the case of men between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-six years, the years of complete manly power and sexual capacity; and he found that whereas in healthy persons these disturbances were indeed of a trifling character (general excitability, sexual hyperæsthesia, hypochondriacal ideas, disinclination for work, slight attacks of giddiness), in neuropathic persons, on the contrary, there would occur coercive ideas, melancholy, feelings of anxiety, and even hallucinations. Females, according to Löwenfeld, bear abstinence—even absolute abstinence—much better than men, but in them also hysterical and neurasthenic conditions may develop as a result of sexual abstinence.
All these harmful consequences of abstinence are, however, neither in man nor in woman, of such a nature that, where an opportunity for sexual intercourse at once hygienic and free from ethical objections is wanting, the gratification of the sexual impulse need be advised by the physician as a “therapeutic measure.” No; Erb himself insists that, on the contrary, the dangers threatened by venereal diseases altogether outweigh the comparatively rare and trifling injuries to health resulting from abstinence. “Extra-conjugal” sexual intercourse involves the dangers of syphilitic or gonorrhœal infection, or of illegitimate pregnancy, which latter to-day must, unfortunately, be regarded as a kind of severe disease. In contrast with these evils, any harmful consequences of abstinence fade away to nothing.
Later in life, when the possibility of a permanent pure love exists, the value of temporary abstinence is to be found especially in the spiritual sphere. Precisely for the “erotocrat,” as Georg Hirth terms one endowed with a powerful and healthy sexual impulse, is this temporary abstinence of a certain importance, because the stored-up quantum of sexual tension re-enforces the inward spiritual productivity. A number of men, at once endowed with strong sexual needs and with a noble mental capacity, have assured me that, in consequence of abstinence, they have temporarily experienced a peculiar deepening and concentration of their mental capacity, by means of which they were undeniably enabled to increase their mental output. This point in the hygiene of intellectual activity, which seems not to have been unknown to Goethe, has been as yet too little studied.
In any case, it is definitely established that from the standpoint of civilization the idea of sexual abstinence is justified, if for this reason alone: because in it we find a great means for increasing and strengthening of the will; but, in the second place, because in it we have a valuable protection against the dangers of wild love; and, finally, because sexual abstinence emphasizes the fact that life contains other things worth striving for besides matters of sex, that the content of life is far from being exhausted by the sexual, even though the sexual impulse, in addition to the impulse of self-preservation, will always remain the most powerful of all vital activities.
[687] “Vera” is the heroine of a novel (“Eine für Viele: Aus dem Tagebuche eines Mädchens”) which attracted considerable attention in Germany. She demanded from men entering on marriage the same virgin intactitude which men are accustomed to expect in their wives. English readers will be reminded of Evadne, in Sarah Grand’s “The Heavenly Twins.” Evadne, it will be remembered, left her husband at the church door, owing to information she received regarding his preconjugal career. In England we might speak of “Evadne” enthusiasts, instead of “Vera” enthusiasts.—Translator.
[688] P. Näcke also (“A Contribution to the Woman’s Question and to the Question of Sexual Abstinence,” op. cit., p. 49) strongly condemns this duplex morality, which he regards as “obviously unjust.” Cf. also Max Thal, “Sexual Morality: an Attempt to solve the Problem of Sexual, and more Particularly of the so-called Duplex Morality” (Breslau, 1904).