We cannot strictly coordinate the impulse of reproduction with the impulse of nutrition.  There are very important differences between them, more especially the fundamental difference that while the satisfaction of the one impulse is absolutely necessary both to the life of the individual and of the race, the satisfaction of the other is absolutely necessary only to the life of the race.  But when we reduce this question to one of “sexual abstinence” we are obviously placing it on the same basis as that of abstinence from food, that is to say at the very opposite pole to which we place it when (as in the previous chapter) we consider it from the point of view of asceticism and chastity.  It thus comes about that on this negative basis there really is an interesting analogy between nutritive abstinence, though necessarily only maintained incompletely and for a short time, and sexual abstinence, maintained more completely and for a longer time.  A patient of Janet’s seems to bring out clearly this resemblance.  Nadia, whom Janet was able to study during five years, was a young woman of twenty-seven, healthy and intelligent, not suffering from hysteria nor from anorexia, for she had a normal appetite.  But she had an idea; she was anxious to be slim and to attain this end she cut down her meals to the smallest size, merely a little soup and a few eggs.  She suffered much from the abstinence she thus imposed on herself, and was always hungry, though sometimes her hunger was masked by the inevitable stomach trouble caused by so long a persistence in this regime.  At times, indeed, she had been so hungry that she had devoured greedily whatever she could lay her hands on, and not infrequently she could not resist the temptation to eat a few biscuits in secret.  Such actions caused her horrible remorse, but, all the same, she would be guilty of them again.  She realized the great efforts demanded by her way of life, and indeed looked upon herself as a heroine for resisting so long.  “Sometimes,” she told Janet, “I passed whole hours in thinking about food, I was so hungry.  I swallowed my saliva, I bit my handkerchief, I rolled on the ground, I wanted to eat so badly.  I searched books for descriptions of meals and feasts, I tried to deceive my hunger by imagining that I too was enjoying all these good things.  I was really famished, and in spite of a few weaknesses for biscuits I know that I showed much courage."[96] Nadia’s motive idea, that she wished to be slim, corresponds to the abstinent man’s idea that he wishes to be “moral,” and only differs from it by having the advantage of being somewhat more positive and personal, for the idea of the person who wishes to avoid sexual indulgence because it is “not right” is often not merely negative but impersonal and imposed by the social and religious environment.  Nadia’s occasional outbursts of reckless greediness correspond to the sudden impulses to resort to prostitution, and her secret weaknesses