the woman’s part just begins and is continued through nine months of pregnancy and about a year of nursing of the new being. Dr. M. Glasgow, as a woman perfectly competent to judge, says (Review of Reviews, 1912, p. 319): “The strong sexuality displayed by a sex whose contribution to the germ of the race is discharged in a brief moment of enjoyment must be greatly less than exhibited by the other party, whose contribution is made through long months of patient endurance.” The prominent part woman takes in the propagation of the race forces to the logical conclusion that her erotic needs are of necessity stronger, although, as Ellen Key puts it, they may be calmer than that of man’s. Woman is able in a quite extraordinary way to produce the impression that she herself is really non-sexual and that her sexuality is only a concession to man. But the seeming reluctance of the female is intended to increase the sexual activity in both mates. The passivity of the female throughout nature is only apparent, it is the passivity of the magnet. As a matter of fact, women experience during the orgasm an ecstasy of feeling greater than in men, involving the whole system in an ecstatic nervous erethism. Still the normal woman can stand absolute continued continence without any injury to her body and mind (e. g. nuns). Hence there is no reason why the human male, if left to himself, and nothing comes to disturb the natural course of his sexual development, should be harmed by abstinence. Until the impulse of permanent mating enters into play, and this comes relatively late in life, abstinence will harm neither men nor women, if they live in an atmosphere free from the influence of artificial stimulation. If the animal kingdom could be taken as proof for or against total abstinence in man, we find that pet animals, as canary birds or dogs, who rarely have the opportunity to exercise their sexual powers, are generally as healthy and live as long as those living in freedom. Hence the claim that abstinence is the cause of impotence has absolutely no ground to stand upon. If the young man kept his thoughts pure and avoided exciting amusements which create emotional disturbances, impotence would be an unusual occurrence. If the young woman would avoid puttering over her genitalia, pelvic obsession with its accompanied hysterical conditions of hyperesthetic or paresthetic erethism would be rarely met with. The only cause for impotence remains sexual excesses. They are very seldom the immediate cause of the impotence. But they leave such weakness in the genital organs and in the nervous system that it requires only the least disturbance to provoke total impotence. Such disturbances, as remorse over the formerly committed irregularities, or distrust in one’s powers, or the mental attitude of the woman to whom sexual approaches are a matter of real or assumed indifference, are sufficient to render the weakened neurotic man total impotent.