And yet not the same thing after all. For unless the mistress is of that rare and extraordinary type of Mlle. Drouet who supplied for Victor Hugo what he would have much preferred to get from his wife, had she been spiritually able to give it, there will be, for the unfortunately advised neurotic, another conflict not on an ethical but on an intellectual and spiritual plane. The advice for such people can only be to get married; or, if that is beyond the bounds of possibility, which is seldom the case, the suggestion to adopt a moderate autoerotism has been made by some physicians in good standing as an acceptable substitute at least for the neurotic of either sex. It frees them, at any rate, from the feeling that they are injuring anyone else, either directly or indirectly. An emphatic reiteration is here appropriate concerning the harmlessness of the physical forms of autoerotism as practised, at some times in their lives, by almost nine-tenths of humanity of both sexes, especially civilized humanity, where a taboo is placed on other normal heterosexual practices. The autoerotism mentioned (in sections 21-25 on mutuality) is purely a psychical intellectual or mental autoerotism entirely apart from the physical. Its results are, in the long run, far worse. (See note, p. 24.) Grete Meisel-Hess, in _The Sexual Crisis_, speaking of the men who are sexual compulsion neurotics and whom she describes as male counterparts of the _demi-vierges_, says (page 155): “They are unable to surmount the ultimate obstacle between I and Thou. They are unable to complete their work, incompetent to possess a woman utterly. The amatory intimacies are never fully consummated. They get through the preliminaries of love and the first preludes; but that which comes afterward, the most beautiful and also the most difficult part, remains unenjoyed, unmastered, unconsummated. I am not referring here to what is ordinarily termed impotence. This sentimental impotence has nothing to do with mere physical weakness, but is far more disastrous, since it forever bars those affected with it from an entry into the deepest experiences of love. It is only the strong in soul who are capable of love in its completeness.” The physical autoerotic acts, far from having the results of producing physical and mental weakness (as has been unscientifically stated and slavishly repeated for two centuries), are nature’s way of developing the reproductive apparatus for strictly human use. The injuries supposed to result are now scientifically proven to be the result caused by the fear of harm, and the shame inspired in young people by stupidly ignorant elders.