In the previous statements, which were based on the Pramantha of the Agni sacrifice, we have concerned ourselves only with one significance of the word manthâmi or mathnâmi, that is to say, with that which expresses the movement of rubbing. As Kuhn shows, however, this word also possesses the meaning of tearing off, taking away by violence, robbing.[333] As Kuhn points out, this significance is already extant in the Vedic text. The legend of its discovery always expresses the production of fire as a robbery. (In this far it belongs to the motive widely spread over the earth of the treasure difficult to attain.) The fact that in many places and not alone in India the preparation of fire is represented as having its origin in robbery, seems to point to a widely spread thought, according to which the preparation of fire was something forbidden, something usurped or criminal, which could be obtained only through stratagem or deeds of violence (mostly through stratagem).[334] When onanism confronts the physician as a symptom it does so frequently under the symbol of secret pilfering, or crafty imposition, which always signifies the concealed fulfilment of a forbidden wish.[335] Historically, this train of thought probably implies that the ritual preparation of fire was employed with a magic purpose, and, therefore, was pursued by official religions; then it became a ritual mystery,[336] guarded by the priests and surrounded with secrecy. The ritual laws of the Hindoos threaten with severe punishment him who prepares fire in an incorrect manner. The fact alone that something is mysterious means the same as something done in concealment; that which must remain secret, which one may not see nor do; also something which is surrounded by severe punishment of body and soul; therefore, presumably, _something forbidden_ which has received a license as a religious rite. After all has been said about the genesis of the preparation of fire, it is no longer difficult to guess what is the forbidden thing; _it is onanism_. When I stated before that it might be lack of satisfaction which breaks up the autoerotic ring of the displaced sexual activity transferred to the body itself, and thus opens wider fields of culture, I did not mention that this loosely closed ring of the displaced onanistic activity could be much more firmly closed, when man makes the other great discovery, that of true onanism.[337] With that the activity is started in the proper place, and this, under certain circumstances, may mean a satisfaction sufficient for a long time, but at the expense of cheating sexuality of its real purpose. It is a fraud upon the natural development of things, because all the dynamic forces which can and should serve the development of culture are withdrawn from it through onanism, since, instead of the displacement, a regression to the local sexual takes place, which is precisely the opposite of that which is desirable. Psychologically, however, onanism