Perhaps the most luxurious fancies this patient evolved were around the theme of semen. We have seen that his emissions were his constant worry, an increase in their frequency heralded an attack and he was convinced that if he could but retain this secretion he would be permanently cured; nay more, if he could retain enough he would grow to be like the giants of old. Whenever he had an emission he felt on waking a pain in his head and could never get totally rid of the idea that this was cancer. In his attacks the cancer was the result of a homosexual assault and in his intervals he elaborated theories as to the origin of cancer; it came from friction, therefore coitus could produce it, it might be the result of adultery or cancer of the breast could come from a man rubbing his penis on the breasts of a woman; the cancer germs might come from semen if one believed in cancer and in germs. Life both as vital force and in the biological sense he identified with semen. Psychic activities too had the same origin which he explained thus: food taken into the mouth goes into the stomach and becomes chyle, chyle passes to the scrotum, thence to the spine and brain. Brain power is in direct proportion to the amount of semen retained. We see now why eunuchs had such power according to his philosophy. By childish reasoning, since they could not have emissions, their semen must be retained. He spoke of psychological influence in these terms: "It is the transformation from the moisture state of the life principle to the moist electric state of warmth and its transference from the central ducts and glands to the head and being thrown out of the head in waves from the top of the head and eyes. It redounds to the other person's good. Have an eunuch near you--it tends to make semen go to the head and gives the mental mouth something to think of. It could be used in a baleful way if one had will power over another person like hypnotism--(Svengali and Trilby)--In hypnotism the will goes on the same lines as psychological influence." The Jews, he said, lay around temples so much that their life had to go into sensuality or wisdom and it mostly went into wisdom. Continual seminal losses, he claimed, would lead to a change in personality. "Life," he said, permeated nature, it could not be lost. Wind was thus identified with it: "life" goes on a sheet (from an emission), the sheet is washed and the "life" passes to the water, then is taken up by the air and breathed. Thus he suffered both immediate and remote effects from emissions. The first result was to make him incapable of work; by breathing in the "life" later on he became a degenerate. Wind or the spiral movements of air was another origin of life. Wind is a spirit, in defence of which he quoted the Greek pneuma. The words wind and word are the same, the former being derived from the latter through wird. (Cf. "In the beginning was the word," or "The word was made flesh").