e act of generation, and
that is its most decisive expression." In accord therewith says
Mainlaender: "The center of gravity of human life lies in the sexual
instinct: it alone secures life to the individual, which is that which
above all else it wants.... To nothing else does man devote greater
earnestness than to the work of procreation, and for the care of none
other does he compress and concentrate the intensity of his will so
demonstratively as for the act of procreation." Finally, and before all
of these, Buddha said: "The sexual instinct is sharper than the hook
wild elephants are tamed with; it is hotter than flames; it is like an
arrow, shot into the spirit of man."[58]

Such being the intensity of the sexual impulse, it is no wonder that
sexual abstinence at the age of maturity affects the nervous system and
the whole organism of man, with one sex as well as the other, in such a
manner that it often leads to serious disturbances and manias; under
certain conditions even to insanity and death. True enough, the sexual
instinct does not assert itself with equal violence in all natures, and
much can be done towards curbing it by education and self-control,
especially by avoiding the excitation resulting upon certain
conversations and reading. It is thought that, in general, the impulse
manifests itself lighter with women than with men, and that the
irritation is less potent with the former. It is even claimed that, with
woman, there is a certain repugnance for the sexual act. The minority is
small of those with whom physiologic and psychologic dispositions and
conditions engender such a difference. "The union of the sexes is one of
the great laws of living Nature; man and woman are subject to it the
same as all other creatures, and can not transgress it, especially at a
ripe age, without their organism suffering more or less in
consequence."[59] Debay quotes among the diseases, caused by the
inactivity of the sexual organs, satyriasis, nymphomania and hysteria;
and he adds that celibacy exercises upon the intellectual powers,
especially with woman, a highly injurious effect. On the subject of the
harmfulness of sexual abstinence by woman, Busch says:[60] "Abstinence
has in all ages been considered particularly harmful to woman; indeed it
is a fact that excess, as well as abstinence, affects the female
organism equally harmfully, and the effects show themselves more
pronouncedly and intensively than with the male o