What is, however, the inevitable consequence of this continual battle with the sexual impulse? Weininger expressed the opinion (“Sex and Character,” p. 469, second edition; Vienna, 1904): “The renunciation of sexuality =kills= only the =physical= man, and kills him only in order, for the first time, to ensure the complete existence of the spiritual man”; but this is =entirely false=, and proceeds from an extremely deficient knowledge of human nature. For the “renunciation of sexuality” is, in truth, the most unsuitable way of securing a complete existence for the spiritual man. Just as little will it annihilate the physical man. For he who wishes to overcome and cast out the sexual impulse (powerful in every normal man, and at times overwhelming in its strength) =must keep the subject constantly before his eyes, for ever in his thoughts=. Thus it came to pass that the ascetic was actually more occupied with the subject of the sexual impulse than is the case with the normal man. This was favoured all the more by the ascetic’s voluntary =flight from the world=, by his continuous life in solitude--a life favourable to the production of hallucinations and visions, and one which becomes tolerable only by a sort of natural reaction in the form of a luxuriance of imaginative sensuality. For “Nous naissons, nous vivons pour la société: A nous-mêmes livrés dans une solitude, Notre bonheur bientôt fait notre inquiétude.” (Boileau, Satire X.) [“We are born, we live for society: Given up to ourselves in solitude, Our happiness is speedily replaced by restlessness.”] This “inquiétude,” this intensification of the nervous life in all relations, was especially noticeable in the sexual sphere. Visions of a sexual character, erotic temptations, mortifications of the flesh in the form of self-flagellation, self-emasculation and mutilations of the genital organs, are characteristic =ascetic= phenomena. On the other hand, the excessive valuation and glorification of the pure spiritual led not only to the view that matter was something in its nature sinful and base, =but also led directly to sexual excesses=, for many ascetic sects declared that what happened to the already sinful body was a matter of indifference, that every contamination of the body was permissible. Hence is to be explained the remarkable fact of the occurrence of =natural and unnatural unchastity in numerous ascetic sects=. Sexual mortification and sexual excesses--these are the two poles between which the life of the ascetic oscillates, so that we see in each case a marked sexual intermixture. Asceticism is, therefore, often merely the means by which sexual enjoyment is obtained in another form and in a more intense degree.