Whosoever has the welfare of humanity at heart, and takes the trouble to reflect on the ravages caused by alcohol in human society, should have the courage to make a slight effort and renounce all alcoholic drink--say for six months at first, as an experiment--in order to combat the social alcoholic misery by force of example, instead of empty phrases. He will then discover, like all abstainers, that the usage of alcohol (including wine, cider and beer) however small the quantity consumed, only serves to maintain a habit which is vicious and disastrous to society, by giving the contagious example of so-called moderation, to which a great number of persons cannot restrict themselves. He will then abstain for the rest of his days, and it will become more and more incomprehensible to him how humanity has been led, first by the spirit of imitation, later by the conservation of prejudices, to develop, maintain and defend such a social abuse by the aid of a legion of sophisms. SEXUAL ANOMALIES AND PERVERSIONS BY SUGGESTION AND AUTO-SUGGESTION The role of the phenomena of suggestion in sexual life is much greater than is generally supposed. I shall return to this subject in a special chapter, but I may state here that there is a category of sexual perversions and anomalies of all kinds which are not hereditary but acquired, and which Krafft-Ebing, although he cites striking examples, wrongly attributes to the effect of sexual excess and depravity, or which he compares to ordinary psychopathia, while in reality they are only the direct effect of strong suggestion or auto-suggestion. I place in this category the cases where a man, whose sexuality has hitherto been normal, suddenly becomes pathological as the result of some circumstance which produces on him a profound impression. For instance, the sexual appetite of an individual may be strongly excited, in a brothel or elsewhere, by an erotic woman whose feet or shoes are especially elegant. The sight of this well-fitted foot exalts his sexual desire to a high degree. From this moment feminine shoes, by subjective association, exercise on him an irresistible erotic power, which dominates everything else and transforms him into a fetichist; the female body no longer elicits his appetite, the latter having become the slave of the image of shoes only. (Shoe fetichism.) Sexual inversion may also be acquired by suggestion, when a normal man becomes excited by acts of masturbation or pederasty, or simply by some psychic image with a strongly suggestive action. He may thus lose his normal sexual appetite for women and become homosexual.