It is not because sexual union is voluptuous, not because it is the typical example of all the pleasures of the lower life, that it is immoral. Asceticism, which would regard pleasure in itself as immoral, is itself immoral, inasmuch it attributes immorality to an action because of the external consequences of it, not because of immorality in the thing itself; it is the imposition of an alien, not an inherent law. A man may seek pleasure, he may strive to make his life easier and more pleasant; but he must not sacrifice a moral law. Asceticism attempts to make man moral by self-repression and will give him credit and praise for morality simply because he has denied himself certain things. Asceticism must be rejected from the point of view of ethics and of psychology inasmuch as it makes virtue the effect of a cause, and not the thing itself. Asceticism is a dangerous although attractive guide; since pleasure is one of the chief things that beguile men from the higher path, it is easy to suppose that its mere abandonment is meritorious. In itself, however, pleasure is neither moral nor immoral. It is only when the desire for pleasure conquers the desire for worthiness that a human being has fallen. Coitus is immoral because there is no man who does not use woman at such times as a means to an end; for whom pleasure does not, in his own as well as her being, during that time represent the value of mankind. During coitus a man forgets all about everything, he forgets the woman; she has no longer a psychic but only a physical existence for him. He either desires a child by her or the satisfaction of his own passion; in neither case does he use her as an end in herself, but for an outside cause. This and this alone makes coitus immoral. There is no doubt that woman is the missionary of sexual union, and that she looks upon herself, as on everything else, merely as a means to its ends. She wants a man to satisfy her passion or to obtain children; she is willing to be used by man as a tool, as a thing, as an object, to be treated as his property, to be changed and modelled according to his good pleasure. But we should not allow ourselves to be used by others as means to an end. Kundry appealed often to Parsifal’s compassion for her yearnings: but here we see the weakness of sympathetic morality, which attempts to grant every desire of those around, however wrong such wishes may be. Ethics and morality based on sympathy are equally absurd, since they make the “ought” dependent on the “will,” (whether it be the will of oneself, or of others, or of society, it is all the same,) instead of making the “will” dependent on the “ought”; they take as a standard of morality concrete cases of human history, concrete cases of human happiness, concrete moments in life instead of the idea. But the question is: how ought man to treat woman? As she herself desires to be treated or as the moral idea would dictate?