But for the existence of the relation of a higher type of erotism to health of body and mind physiological science is piling up proof every year. There is a positive relation, a direct connection, of cause and effect. Only the fullest use of all the faculties makes the fullest and therefore the happiest life. Response as an actual manifestation on the wife’s part may be absent while there is a repressed response present. In other words the desire and gratification of it may both occur in her, but below the level of consciousness. A previous attraction which drew her toward her husband when he was her lover may have been repressed by some gauche behaviour of his. Desire, even after conscious passion has cooled, may nevertheless remain in the unconscious. If consciously accepted, desire is accompanied by a perceptible physical condition of tumescence. If not consciously accepted, either the tumescence does not enter consciousness or it is not in the same organs it would be in if one were consciously entertaining desire. In the absence of the proper or suitable substitute gratification, the increase of blood supply to specific organs gradually diminishes and the desire gradually subsides; but there is still left a nerve tension that is closely bound up with various ideas, images and other predominantly mental states. Sex desires may be aroused and even if not appropriately gratified, will subside of themselves. An automatic relaxation of all tensions regularly takes place in children, who also are much more facile than adults in the acceptance of substitute gratifications. § 91 But after the sexual synthesis of puberty the desires are not only much more insistent but much more definite and specific. Still they can be and are repeatedly repressed by many men and most women. That they can be so repressed is the reason why asceticism has been so emphasized by many religions. The religious views of many people render uncomfortable the actual emergence, into consciousness, of any sexual desires whatever. If the training of the individual has not been such as to render conscious the manifestation of the sex desire, it then does not appear as a tumescence in the genital region, in many cases, but as a swelling or a pain, or a hardness somewhere else, or as an emotion of disappointment, disgust or hate. Some deeply religious people seem to prefer these emotions, in spite of their destructive nature, to the constructive emotions of truly erotic love. And we are impressed with the irony of fate which condemns innocent people to accept an unwholesome in place of a wholesome emotion, and makes some people think they are justified in telling others what emotions they shall have. § 92