[EI] The prevalence of syphilis is estimated at 18 per cent. of the adult population. Ruggles found in New York City, in the better class of families, one-third of the sons of adult age to be infected with syphilis. Syphilis causes about forty per cent. of all miscarriages. The mortality of syphilitic children is about sixty per cent. Syphilis is the only disease transmitted to the offspring in full virulence. Sixty to eighty per cent. of all infected children die before they are born, or come into the world with the mark of death upon them. The mortality of the children who have inherited syphilis from the father is about twenty-eight per cent., of those who have inherited it from the mother is over sixty per cent. A large number of those who survive childhood dies from hereditary syphilis between the ages of ten and twenty. [EJ] Let several men in the club or at the saloon-bar touch in their conversation the topic of sex, and they will poke fun at the man who never had a venereal disease. [EK] Among the European working-classes and peasants, according to Ellen Key, the free union of love has long been the custom. This premature sexual life contributes to hinder the full bodily and mental development of the lower classes. [EL] All ethical possessions in the inner man, his modesty, morality, his divine adoration, his aesthetic and his social service are all due to the repression of sexuality. [EM] Pflüger (In Jacobsohn’s Article, St. Petersburg Med. Wochenschr., 1907, p. 97) says: If all the authorities of the world should proclaim the innocuousness of continence, it would have no influence upon youth, for forces are here active which will break every obstacle. Thus even Pflüger admits that continence is compatible with perfect health and only thinks that the force of sensuality would sweep aside all recommendations of abstinence. Now, about the possibility of total abstinence, there may be a great difference of opinion. But granted absolute abstinence is only an ideal, no ideal can be realized, otherwise it would not be an ideal. We can only approach an ideal, and this would be a great gain in regard to sexual continence. Näcke says that absolute sexual abstinence is an utopia just as the total abolition of prostitution, public and clandestine, or the absolute abstinence from alcohol. Man’s impulses are too powerful, but they may be restrained and kept in proper bounds.