Freudians always instance hunger as an example of a persistent desire. You want your dinner, they say, and you go to the theatre instead of dining. You forget all about food, but you still continue to crave it; and when the show is over you discover that you are starving. Incidentally, this desire persists even if not driven into the unconscious by shame beyond hope of easy recall--which somewhat enlarges the hypothesis. A further enlargement is made with the admission that the hunger here is not a desire for turkey, or for chicken, but merely for food. Now it must be admitted that the Freudian supposition so understood has the superficial appearance of truth. In a case of this sort it does look as if only a limited transference were possible. One dish may be served in place of another, but unless we eat we continue to be hungry. But do we? Had Freud known anything about fasting, had he been a good Jew and kept the Passover, he would have learned that the symptoms soon cease. The sensation of hunger is produced by certain tensions in the stomach. The glands containing the digestive fluids are distended. The forces designed to attack the food are mobilized, and where the food should be yawns only emptiness. But soon the digestive fluids dissipate themselves; in the course of a few hours the last feeling of appetite is gone. One does not have to be a Dr. Tanner to be aware of this. Many people have gone without food for long periods, and with little or no suffering or ill effects. It is not pretended that we can go without food forever. The body cannot be altogether ignored--not by the majority of us; and one must remember the farmer’s horse, who, taught to live upon one straw a day, was so inconsiderate as then to die. But even with this, the most fundamental and imperative of all the desires, discipline may operate to a great extent. Gluttony is not a _sine qua non_ of health. Indeed, if no discipline be exercised there is likely to ensue--if not psycho-neurosis at least another and most distressing symptom, known as gout. And how is it with sex-hunger? This not being actually necessary to the preservation of the earthly life of the individual, is even more amenable to the curb, and may be divorced altogether from its carnal object. We are certain of this because it has been done and is being done in innumerable instances. I am not claiming that sex should be suppressed by cold negation, any more than I hold that one ceases to be hungry if one has nothing to do but think about dinner. But there is such a thing as sublimation, which may be defined as a transference of libido upon such a broad and magnificent scale that we may say not only that one object is substituted for another but that one desire is substituted for another. Thus lust--and I use the word without implications of the unnatural--may be overwhelmed by love, and a lower love by a higher.