Only in this way is it possible to explain the origin of the gigantic =literature of sexual casuistry= in theology, and especially in pastoral medicine. A comprehension of these facts has led certain writers to launch bitter invectives against the system of which the confessional formed so essential a part. This is a narrow and prejudiced view, which we mention only to condemn. There is, however, ample justification for the representations of =physicians= and =anthropologists=, who are able to observe matters in the great connexion sketched above, and who have recognized the relations between religion and the sexual life to be something common to all humanity, not the artificial products of any particular spiritual tendency. It is precisely the frequent endeavours of the Catholic Church to overcome the worst outgrowths in this direction, which teach us, notwithstanding their failure to eradicate sexual aberrations, that these relationships depend upon the very nature of religion. There is not a single sexual problem which has not been discussed in the most subtle manner by the theological casuists,[67] so that their writings offer us a most instructive picture of =imaginative activity= in the sexual sphere. The most detailed discussion, verging on the salacious, of the degree to which sexual contact is permissible, gave rise to the name “theologiens mammillaires,” because some of them--Benzi, for example, and Rousselot--sanctioned “tatti mammillari” (mammillary palpation). This doctrine was condemned by Pope Benedict XIV., which proves that the Catholic Church as such has not invariably sanctioned these things. In the “Golden Key” (“Llave de Oro”) of Antonio Maria Claret, the Archbishop of Cuba, in Debreyne’s “Moechialogie,” in the writings on moral theology of Liguori, Dens, and J. C. Saettler, in the “Diaconales,” widely diffused in France, and in many similar works, all possible sexual problems which have come before the confessional, or possibly =might= come there, have been thoroughly discussed--even the most improbable and impossible. Coitus interruptus, irrigatio vaginæ post coitum, pollutions (nocturnal seminal emissions), bestiality, necrophilia, figuræ Veneris (positions in which coitus is effected), procuration, various kinds of caresses, conjugal onanism, abortion, varieties of masturbation, pæderasty, intercourse with a statue (!), psychical onanism, pædication, etc.--all have been subjected to a subtle critical theological analysis. In a sense, these writings are really valuable mines for the study of psychopathia sexualis. Later we shall have frequently to touch on the religious etiology of the individual sexual aberrations.