‘As in the case of other sensations, the sexual, when moderately excited, may give rise to ideas, emotions, and desires of which the brain is the seat, and these may react on the muscular system through the intelligence and Will. But when inordinately excited, or when not kept in restraint by the Will, they will at once call into play respondent movements, which are then to be regarded as purely automatic. This is the case in some forms of disease in the human subject, and is probably also the ordinary mode of operation in some of the lower animals.... In cases, however, in which this sensation is excited in unusual strength, it may completely over-master all motives to the repression of the propensity, and may even entirely remove the actions from volitional control. A state of a very similar kind exists in many idiots, in whom the sexual propensity exerts a dominant power, not because it is in itself peculiarly strong, but because the intelligence being undeveloped it acts without restraint or direction from the Will.’[18] The mental power exercised by the Will over the body is strikingly shown in the control exerted by human beings over the strongest of all individual cravings--the craving of hunger. The exigencies of human society have caused this tremendous power of hunger to be kept so completely in check, that the gratification of it, except in accordance with the established laws (of property, etc.), is considered as a crime. In spite of the terrible temptation which the sight of food offers to a starving man, society punishes him if he yield to it. Still stronger than the established laws are those unwritten laws which are enforced by ‘public opinion,’ in obedience to which, countless people in all civilized countries suffer constant deprivation--even starving more or less slowly to death--rather than transgress universally accepted principles, and subject themselves to social condemnation by taking the food which does not belong to them. Another curious and important illustration of mental action is shown in the accumulating instances of self-deception, of contagious hallucination, and of emotional influence acting upon the physical and mental organizations, so strikingly depicted by Hammond and other writers in the accounts of pretended miracles, ecstasies, visions, etc.