Psychopathia Sexualis

The propagation of the human species is not committed to accident or to the caprice of the individual, but made secure in a natural instinct, which, with all-conquering force and might, demands fulfillment. In the gratification of this natural impulse are found not only sensual pleasure and sources of physical well-being, but also higher feelings of satisfaction in perpetuating the single, perishable existence, by the transmission of mental and physical attributes to a new being. In coarse, sensual love, in the lustful impulse to satisfy this natural instinct, man stands on a level with the animal; but it is given to him to raise himself to a height where this natural instinct no longer makes him a slave: higher, nobler feelings are awakened, which, notwithstanding their sensual origin, expand into a world of beauty, sublimity, and morality.

On this height man overcomes his natural instinct, and from an inexhaustible spring draws material and inspiration for higher enjoyment, for more earnest work, and the attainment of the ideal. Maudsley (Deutsche Klinik, 1873, 2, 3) rightly calls the sexual feeling the foundation for the development of the social feeling. “Were man to be robbed of the instinct of procreation and all that arises from it mentally, nearly all poetry and, perhaps, the entire moral sense as well, would be torn from his life.”