occurred in men and women whose work in literature and art cannot be described as premature and false.  K.P.  Moritz, in early adult life, gave himself up to excess in masturbation, and up to the age of thirty had no relations with women.  Lenau is said—­though the statement is sometimes denied—­to have been a masturbator from early life, the habit profoundly effecting his life and work.  Rousseau, in his Confessions, admirably describes how his own solitary, timid, and imaginative life found its chief sexual satisfaction in masturbation.[342] Gogol, the great Russian novelist, masturbated to excess, and it has been suggested that the dreamy melancholy thus induced was a factor in his success as a novelist.  Goethe, it has been asserted, at one time masturbated to excess; I am not certain on what authority the statement is made, probably on a passage in the seventh book of Dichtung und Wahrheit, in which, describing his student-life at Leipzig, and his loss of Aennchen owing to his neglect of her, he tells how he revenged that neglect on his own physical nature by foolish practices from which he thinks he suffered for a considerable period.[343] The great Scandinavian philosopher, Soeren Kierkegaard, suffered severely, according to Rasmussen, from excessive masturbation.  That, at the present day, eminence in art, literature, and other fields may be combined with the excessive practice of masturbation is a fact of which I have unquestionable evidence.

I have the detailed history of a man of 30, of high ability in a scientific direction, who, except during periods of mental strain, has practiced masturbation nightly (though seldom more than once a night) from early childhood, without any traceable evil results, so far as his general health and energy are concerned.  In another case, a schoolteacher, age 30, a hard worker and accomplished musician, has masturbated every night, sometimes more than once a night, ever since he was at school, without, so far as he knows, any bad results; he has never had connection with a woman, and seldom touches wine or tobacco.  Curschmann knew a young and able author who, from the age of 11 had masturbated excessively, but who retained physical and mental freshness.  It would be very easy to refer to other examples, and I may remark that, as regards the histories recorded in various volumes of these Studies, a notable proportion of those in which excessive masturbation is admitted, are of persons of eminent and recognized ability.

It is often possible to trace the precise mechanism of the relationship between auto-erotic excitement and intellectual activity.  Brown-Sequard, in old age, considered that to induce a certain amount of sexual excitement, not proceeding to emission, was an aid to mental work.  Raymond and Janet knew a man considering himself a poet, who, in order to attain the excitation necessary to compose his ideal verses, would write with one hand while with