"I have traced serious affections and very great suffering to this cause. The cases may occur at any period of life. We meet with them frequently among such as are usually called, or think themselves, continent young men. There are large classes of persons who seem to think that they may, without moral guilt, excite their own feelings or those of others by loose or libidinous conversation in society, provided such impure thoughts or acts are not followed by masturbation or fornication. I have almost daily to tell such persons that physically, and in a sanitary point of view, they are ruining their constitutions. There are young men who almost pass their lives in making carnal acquaintances in the street, but just stop short of seducing girls; there are others who haunt the lower classes of places of public amusement for the purpose of sexual excitement, and live, in fact, a thoroughly immoral life in all respects except actually going home with prostitutes. When these men come to me, laboring under the various forms of impotence, they are surprised at my suggesting to them the possibility of the impairment of their powers being dependent upon these previous vicious habits."[4] [Footnote 4: Acton.] "Those lascivious _day-dreams_ and amorous reveries, in which young people--and especially the idle and the voluptuous, and the sedentary and the nervous--are exceedingly apt to indulge, are often the sources of general debility, effeminacy, disordered functions, premature disease, and even premature death, without the actual exercise of the genital organs! Indeed, this unchastity of thought--this adultery of the mind--is the beginning of immeasurable evil to the human family."[5] [Footnote 5: Graham.] Amativeness.--Certain phrenologists contend that the controlling center of the sexual passion is the cerebellum, or little brain, which is situated at the lower and back part of the head. They apparently love to dwell upon the theme, and ride their hobby upon all possible occasions, often in the most disgusting manner, and always leaving the impression that they must be themselves suffering from perversion of the very function of which they speak. There may be some doubt whether the function called amativeness is located in the cerebellum at all; at least, it is perfectly certain that amativeness is not the exclusive function of the cerebellum. Says Carpenter, the learned physiologist, "The seat of the sexual sensation is no longer supposed to be in the cerebellum generally; but probably in its central portion, or some part of the medulla oblongata." The cerebellum is intimately connected with the principal vital organs; hence, if it is largely developed, the individual will possess a well-developed physical organism and a good degree of constitutional vigor. He will have vigorous health, and probably strong sexual powers; not, however, as a special function, but for the same reason that he will have a good digestion.