Man is prompted by a powerful instinctive desire for the use of the sexual organs, that draws him involuntarily to the opposite sex, not for the continuance of the race, because the passion arises much oftener without the remotest thoughts of any fruitful results. I have the greatest regard for the life of the unborn child, yet I am far from agreeing with those who would stamp as libidinous every thought of the sexual instinct, that has not as its stimulus the procreation of the species. While the average man is in the flesh, he is an animal man, and there is no use of trying to make a spiritual saint out of flesh and blood, and when we do find that, we have a very exceptional and remarkable person. But what, as reasonable beings, we should do, is to bridle the animal passions with moral reins, so that we can stand up, in full-statured manhood, with the respectful approval of our own conscience, able to rise above the mere animal appetites, to the dignity of reasonable beings. This instinct, like other propensities, is excited by sensations, and these may originate either in the sexual organs themselves, or may be excited through the organs of special sense. In man the passion is most powerfully aroused by impressions conveyed through the sight or the touch. It often happens that localized sensations will excite the sexual desire of either sex, so that many cases of excessive sexual desire can be traced to some local disease of the genital apparatus: chief among the numerous causes that may be cited, is pruritus or local itch, erythema and active congestion of the womb and ovaries. “This tendency cannot be regarded,” says Dr. Carpenter, “as a simple passion or emotion, since it is the result of the combined operations of the reason, the imagination, and the moral feelings: it is in this engraftment of the physical or spiritual attachment upon the more corporeal instinct, that a difference exists between the sexual relations of man and those of the lower animals. In proportion as the human being makes the temporary gratification of the mere sexual appetites his chief object, and overlooks the happiness arising from spiritual communion, which is not only purer but more permanent, and of which a renewal may be anticipated in another world,—does he degrade himself to a level with the brutes that perish. Yet how lamentably frequent is this degradation.” This quotation gives the entire physical and spiritual aspect of the question, by one of the most eminent physiologists of our time, so that in the natural course of our investigation we are led to inquire into the currents of thought, which would tend towards developing _moral restraint_. Moral restraint means the restraint of the animal man by his spiritual or higher self; the _will_ must possess its due predominance to exercise its determining power in curbing the passions of the one, and directing the course of the thought in the other.