The mathematical exactness of the comparison of men on the egoistic-social level makes many a man think his erotic impulses are similarly inferior. He should ponder well upon the prodigality of nature, remembering that he, too, is part of nature. § 206 Unrestrained nature is most prodigal. The thousands of ova and millions of spermatozoa produced in every woman and man show that the analogy is false that is drawn between the human body and a mere container like a basket. Anything with life cannot be exhausted until life has gone, and yet through asceticism the secretions can be rendered great or small or almost non-existent. Men can make eunuchs of themselves by force of will, yet their egoistic-social performances are not improved but rather impoverished by the process. Men should train themselves to produce, which consists in being lavish of self in every manner. The richest are those who give most. The miser is the poorest man in the world and the most miserable. Fear of giving self is the fear of losing self. What most men fear if they love their wives too much is that they will impoverish themselves and enrich their wives, thus making their wives contemptuous of their resultant poverty. But the poorest man or woman is the one who has not begun to love, and many are such even in the married state. And they begin to enrich themselves even more than each other, when they give each to other the uttermost that is in them. Giving is the only thing that produces fertility of giving. It is tapping the inexhaustible, the only way in which to unite oneself to the infinite. Withholding is closing up the gate to universal strength and power. Control is not annihilation or denial. It is direction of an endless stream of energy. If the energy is not delivered it cannot be directed and therefore cannot be controlled. The tragedy of present-day marital life lies in the deception men practise on themselves by believing that annihilation is a kind of control. The facts of the intimate marital relations of most couples are too unlovely to be welcomed by most people, but in order to progress it is necessary to face them. In the new marriage the husband, therefore, will relinquish certain of the egoistic-social spheres of action and will confine his attention solely to those most closely associated with the erotic. He will assume the responsibility for these. § 207 Trial marriage is little more than a method of testing man’s control in the erotic sphere. It implies that if a man is found lacking in control over one woman, he may be tried with another, in the hope that with the second up to the _n_th he may find a woman whom he can control. But as stated elsewhere in this book the probability of an uncontrolled man’s acquiring control by a superficial trial and error method is almost nil.