people so modest that
the simple thought of sexual matters overexcites them terribly. By
associating their own erotic feelings, of which they feel ashamed,
with sexual ideas, they invest these with terrifying attributes, and
become quite unhappy; in this way they are often led to masturbation.
They are, however, excessively frightened at this also and imagine its
effects so terrible that they think themselves lost. Their exaggerated
feelings of modesty often prevent them confiding in some charitable
person. However, they rarely find reasonable consolers; some ridicule
them, while others regard them as iniquitous, which only increases
their terror and drives them to extremes.

The sexual sentiment of modesty very often becomes unhealthy, and is
then easily combined with pathological sexual conditions.

Prudery is, so to speak, sexual modesty codified and dogmatized. It is
indeterminate, because the object of modesty is purely conventional,
and man has no valid reason to regard any part of his body as
shameful. Normal man ought only to be ashamed of bad thoughts and
actions, contrary to his moral conscience. The latter should be based
on natural human altruism only, and not artificially misled by dogma.

=The Old Bachelor.=--The importance of the psychic irradiations of
love is shown perhaps more clearly from the results of their presence
in old bachelors than from any other consideration. In our time, no
doubt, the state of the old bachelor rarely means the renunciation of
the satisfaction of sexual appetite, although it generally entails the
renunciation of love. There are, no doubt, two kinds of old bachelors,
those who are chaste and those who are not. The old bachelor no doubt
leads a less empty existence than the old maid, but the void exists
none the less. Man also needs compensation for the absence of love and
family, but his brain is more capable than that of woman of finding
this compensation in hard intellectual work or in some other
employment.

The old bachelor is generally pessimistic and morose. He easily
becomes the slave of his fads and hobbies, and the peculiarities of
his character are proverbial. His egoism knows no bounds, and his
altruistic impulses usually find too few objects or echoes.

The chastity of some old bachelors conceals sexual anomalies. But even
apart from this, the old celibate easily becomes shy, affected,
misanthropic or misogynistic, at least if some energetic friend does
not