Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/136

106 craving to be met than it is necessary for the normal man or woman's.

"Judging from the past, my life is likely to be a wreck if I deny this instinctive craving. In leading a life of chastity, I have endured a melancholy existence, and have often deliberated suicide. Recently I have meditated it daily. All my privileges, which one would think must make my life a happy one, have failed to make life to me worth living. You may say it is my own fault, and that I just make my own life miserable. But truly, it is a matter to me not dependent on my will power, but on physiological and psychological laws, over which the will has no more control than over the diphtheria.

"That I desire such indulgence does not spring from the fact that I have become licentious or a debauchee, placing my own selfish sensual enjoyment above everything else. I am as ardent as ever in my yearnings to alleviate human misery and to deny myself for others. But in this matter, the result of my denying myself would be almost as serious as to resolve to give up eating for the sake of saving the money for the cause of missions. There are some things which it would be fatal to us to give up, even if we did it through motives of altruism. I assure you that I have not abandoned my high aspirations and worthy aims of life.

"I assert before God that I am confident that I commit no sin in obeying this instinct. During my moments of closest communion with God, I am sensible of His smile on my conduct in this matter. In general the only legitimate relations are between a legally married pair. The