otives: by the desire to please, the desire to excel, by
devotion to duty, by the love of truth, and by many other desires.
Even in gratifying the appetite most nearly on the same plane as the
sexual appetite--namely, that of hunger--he has more or less regard
for his own well-being, more or less consideration for the wishes of
others, and a constant desire to attain the standard expected of him.
Meanwhile, as regards the sexual appetite--the racial importance of
which is great; and the regulation of which is of infinite importance
for himself, for those who may otherwise become its victims, for the
wife he may one day wed, and for the children, legitimate or
illegitimate, that he may beget--his one idea is personal enjoyment.
One deplorable result of this idea will be adverted to in the next
chapter.

When boyish impurity involves a coarse way of looking at sexual
relations, as it always must when these are matters of common talk and
jest, the boy suffers a loss which prejudicially affects the whole
tone of his mind and every department of his conduct--I mean the loss
of reverence. It is those things alone which are sacred to us, those
things about which we can talk only with friends, and about which we
can jest with no one, that have inspiration in them, that can give us
power to follow our ideals and to lay a restraining hand on the brute
within us. Fortunately the self-control which manifests itself in
heroism, in good form, and in the sportsmanlike spirit is sacred to
almost all. To most, a mother's love is sacred. To many, all that is
implied in the word religion. To a few, sexual passion and the great
manifestations of human genius in poetry, music, painting, sculpture,
and architecture. Exactly in proportion as these things are profaned
by jest and mockery, is the light of the soul quenched and man
degraded to the level of the beast. Considering how large a part the
sex-passion plays in the lives of most men and women; considering how
it permeates the literature and art of the World and is--as the basis
of the home--the most potent factor in social life, its profanation is
a terrible loss, and the habit of mind which such profanation
engenders cannot fail to weaken the whole spirit of reverence. I must
confess that the man who jests over sex relations is to me
incomparably lower than the man who sustains clean but wholly
illegitimate sex relations; and while I am conscious of a strong
movement of friendship tow