n but rather a removal of all tension. Hence, pleasure and sexual
tension can be only indirectly connected.

*The Role of the Sexual Substance.*--Aside from the fact that only the
discharge of the sexual substance can normally put an end to the sexual
excitement, there are other essential facts which bring the sexual
tension into relation with the sexual products. In a life of continence
the sexual activity is wont to discharge the sexual substance at night
during pleasurable dream hallucinations of a sexual act, this discharge
coming at changing but not at entirely capricious intervals; and the
following interpretation of this process--the nocturnal pollution--can
hardly be rejected, viz., that the sexual tension which brings about a
substitute for the sexual act by the short hallucinatory road is a
function of the accumulated semen in the reservoirs for the sexual
products. Experiences with the exhaustibility of the sexual mechanism
speak for the same thing. Where there is no stock of semen it is not
only impossible to accomplish the sexual act, but there is also a lack
of excitability in the erogenous zones, the suitable excitation of which
can evoke no pleasure. We thus discover incidentally that a certain
amount of sexual tension is itself necessary for the excitability of the
erogenous zones.

One would thus be forced to the assumption, which if I am not mistaken
is quite generally adopted, that the accumulation of sexual substance
produces and maintains the sexual tension. The pressure of these
products on the walls of their receptacles acts as an excitant on the
spinal center, the state of which is then perceived by the higher
centers which then produce in consciousness the familiar feeling of
tension. If the excitation of erogenous zones increases the sexual
tension, it can only be due to the fact that the erogenous zones are
connected with these centers by previously formed anatomical
connections. They increase there the tone of the excitation, and with
sufficient sexual tension they set in motion the sexual act, and with
insufficient tension they merely stimulate a production of the sexual
substance.

The weakness of the theory which one finds adopted, _e.g._, in v.
Krafft-Ebing's description of the sexual process, lies in the fact that
it has been formed for the sexual activity of the mature man and pays
too little heed to three kinds of relations which should also have been
elucidated. We refer to the re