THE FUNCTION OF CHASTITY.
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Ellis, Havelock
"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."
[86]
See "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," and Appendix, "The Sexual Instinct in Savages," in vol. iii of these Studies.
[87]
I have elsewhere discussed more at length the need in modern civilized life of a natural and sincere asceticism (see Affirmations, 1898) "St. Francis and Others."
[88]
Der Wille zur Macht, p. 392.
[89]
At the age of twenty-five, when he had already produced much fine work, Mozart wrote in his letters that he had never touched a woman, though he longed for love and marriage. He could not afford to marry, he would not seduce an innocent girl, a venial relation was repulsive to him.
[90]
Reibmayr, Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genies., Bd. i, p. 437.
[91]
We may exclude altogether, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, the quality of virginity—that is to say, the possession of an intact hymen—since this is a merely physical quality with no necessary ethical relationships. The demand for virginity in women is, for the most part, either the demand for a better marketable article, or for a more powerful stimulant to masculine desire. Virginity involves no moral qualities in its possessor. Chastity and asceticism, on the other hand, are meaningless terms, except as demands made by the spirit on itself or on the body it controls.