No wonder a cold shiver of exquisite and mysterious pleasure courses down our backs whenever we are in the presence of a masterful example of Man’s order! What triumphs of the past that cold shiver remembers, which we are at a loss to recall, but which we still unconsciously applaud every time the regular movements of a multitude, the measured strains of a rich melody, or the swing and stride of a _corps de ballet_ appear before our eyes! For these are but the outward, visible, tangible and most obvious examples of Man’s social instinct working for order! Powerful as the sexual passion is in Man, small though intense as is his share in the joys of reproduction, only think what a powerful force was required to meet this sexual passion, with any hope of success, in order to discipline and control it! It had to be a force as great if not greater than the reproductive instinct itself. And what force is it in us that gives us a mysterious thrill, so different from, and yet so subtly akin in bodily strength to the sexual thrill? I have spoken of this thrill already; it is the cold shiver mentioned in the preceding paragraph—the cold shiver of the social instinct gratified. This, then, was the only power in man, that he himself could rally against his fierce and ungovernable sexual desire; it was the only power that held anything like a corresponding hold over his body; and he turned it so successfully against his reproductive instinct, that he taught the latter its limits, and forced it to accept the responsibilities its tempestuous ardour involved.[30] This is the only form of “self-control” that arises from the strength and not from the weakness of a man.[31] To return, however, to the question of his attitude to the sexual act, it is clear that man, once he has risen from the couch, after gratifying one of his fitful longings, has for the time being _done_ with sex. This is most important. After having rejoined the stream of Life to pay it tribute, he becomes once more the amputation from Life, and can turn away from its sexual thraldom until another of his fitful longings overtakes him.[32] As a well-known French painter once said to me at a moment when his house was in a turmoil over his wife’s presenting him with his first child: “_J’y suis pour si peu de chose là dedans!_”