CORRUPTIO OPTIMI PESSIMA 153 



The " anxiety-neuroses " may be the results 

 of sexual repression, or of some sudden con- 

 fronting with the facts of sex (a strong argu- 

 ment for some common-sense awareness of 

 what the continuance of life implies), or of 

 impotent husbands, or of frigid wives, or of 

 diminishing potency associated with increas- 

 ing lust, and so on. A dammed up libido, 

 as Dr. Hitschmann says, hunts out for a weak 

 place and breaks through, expressing itself 

 in neurotic "substitute gratification." But 

 again, Freud ends with the hopeful note of 

 all those who have worked towards an in- 

 creased control of life, maintaining that 

 degeneration and nervousness are not in any 

 way inevitable results of cultural progress, 

 but excrescences which are to be avoided. 



Medical experts sometimes point out that 

 the hysterical neurosis of the unmarried may 

 be due not so much to unsatisfied sexual 

 desire, as to the absence of aims and interests 

 sufficiently real to take their attention off 

 themselves. According to Fere, sexual pre- 

 occupation in both sexes is not necessarily 

 an evidence of particularly strong sexual 

 needs ; it may be the expression of degeneracy. 

 What is blamed as a cause is thus sometimes 

 only a symptom. For what cause of degen- 

 eracy equals that of unemployment ? and this 

 for rich and poor alike, albeit operating in 

 slightly different ways. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. Anticipating 

 somewhat, we may suggest some general 

 considerations which should be borne in mind 

 when we stand aghast at the prevalence of 

 sexual vice. After the worst has been seen, 



