Nevertheless, I must repeat here what I have already said concerning the way in which novelists present us with the extreme passions of ill-balanced people and describe them as types, the normal man being too prosaic to attract their readers. Rotten as it is with neurotic degenerates, our modern society is certainly not wanting in pathological models for the novelists, but it is nevertheless false to always put these into prominence. The cultured man of well-balanced mind, adapts himself to marriage on the whole very well, and is not always so difficult to please. However, it must be recognized that marriage becomes less easy if a too high ideal is expected from it. With characteristic prudence, Westermark does not answer the question whether marriage will progressively diminish in the future. =The Cult of Virgins. Sanctity of the Celibate.=--Among many savages the singular idea obtains that there is something impure in sexual intercourse. The celibacy ordained by several religions originates from ideas of this kind. Many nations have worshiped virgins, for instance the vestal virgins of the Romans. The mother of Buddha was declared to be holy and pure, Buddha having been conceived supernaturally, according to the legend. A Buddhist monk is forbidden to have sexual intercourse, even with animals! Celibacy among certain priests exists also in China. Among the Hebrews, the idea of the impurity of marriage had got a footing, and this no doubt powerfully influenced Christianity. St. Paul thus places celibacy higher than marriage, and this is how the idea became established among the fathers of the Church that the repression of all sensuality was a cardinal virtue, and that God had contemplated in paradise an asexual reproduction of the human species, which was annulled by the fall of Adam. Men who remained pure were to be immortal. "The earth is filled with marriage and the heavens with virginity," says Jeremiah. Such are the ideas which have given rise to the obligation of celibacy for priests. Westermark thinks that the idea of impurity attached to sexual intercourse is possibly derived from the instinctive repugnance experienced by members of the same family to have sexual intercourse between themselves. Banished from the family circle this intercourse was tainted with a stigma which offended modesty, and by the association of ideas so common in man, this stigma was extended to legal marriage outside the family. Moreover, religious celibacy is complicated by ascetic conceptions, and the idea of the impurity of sexual intercourse is by no means general.