The study of the witch-trials of the middle ages and of recent times--for it is well known that in the seventies of the nineteenth century (!) such trials still occurred[65]--would without doubt afford valuable contributions to the doctrine of psychopathia sexualis, and at the same time would throw a remarkable light upon the origin of sexual aberrations. What a large amount of sexual abnormality arises even to-day from this common, human, obscure, superstitious impulse dependent upon the intermixture of religious mysticism and sexual desire, and which in the medieval belief in witches attained such astonishing development! As Michelet proved in his great work on “Sorcery,” it was =the religious imagination straying into sexual by-paths=, which for the most part animated the belief in witchcraft, and thus led to the most horrible aberrations, principally of a sadistic nature. Like superstition, so also the sexual-religious obsession of the middle ages, still persists in many persons, =even at the present day=, and gives rise to sexual anomalies. Apart from asceticism and the belief in witchcraft, theological literature offers numerous instances of the relationship between religion and sexuality. In an essay published six years ago,[66] I showed the important part which sexual questions have played in the so-called =pastoral medicine=--that is to say, in those theological writings in which the individual facts and problems of medicine are studied from the theological standpoint, and their relation to dogma is determined. We find here theological casuistry carried to its extreme limits, in relation to all possible problems of the _vita sexualis_. The experiences of the confessional are employed in a remarkable manner, the religious imagination wandering, in a peculiar combination of scholasticism and sensuality, in the obscure fields of human aberration. The =ostensible= inducement to the theological consideration of sexual problems is in part offered by the statements of perverse individuals in the confessional, and in part by public scandals. In both cases casuistry endeavours, from the religious standpoint, to formulate certain normal rules for the judgment of the various matters relating to the sexual life. This would, however, have been impossible, had there not existed an intimate connexion between sexuality and religion.