There is an immediate return to normal sexual intercourse as soon as obstacles to it are removed. Very frequently the cause of such temporary aberration is masturbation and its results in youthful individuals. Nothing is so prone to contaminate—under certain circumstances, even to exhaust—the source of all noble and ideal sentiments, which arise of themselves from a normally developing sexual instinct, as the practice of masturbation in early years. It despoils the unfolding bud of perfume and beauty, and leaves behind only the coarse, animal desire for sexual satisfaction. If an individual, spoiled in this manner, reaches an age of maturity, there is wanting in him that æsthetic, ideal, pure, and free impulse which draws one toward the opposite sex. Thus the glow of sensual sensibility wanes, and the inclination toward the opposite sex becomes weakened. This defect influences the morals, character, fancy, feeling, and instinct of the youthful masturbator, male or female, in an unfavorable way, and, under certain circumstances, allows the desire for the opposite sex to sink to _nil_; so that masturbation is preferred to the natural mode of satisfaction. Sometimes the development of higher sexual feelings toward the opposite sex suffers, on account of hypochondriacal fear of infection in sexual intercourse; or on account of an actual infection; or they suffer as a result of a faulty education which points out such dangers and exaggerates them. Again (especially in females), fear of the result of coitus (pregnancy), or abhorrence of men, by reason of mental or moral weakness, may direct into perverse channels an instinct that makes itself felt with abnormal intensity. But too early and perverse sexual satisfaction injures not merely the mind, but also the body; inasmuch as it induces neuroses of the sexual apparatus (irritable weakness of the centres governing erection and ejaculation; defective pleasurable feeling in coitus), while, at the same time, it maintains the imagination and libido in continuous excitement.