That there is a connecting link between the intellectual and the sexual there can be no doubt, and that for the sexual to be appreciated, without the assistance of the intellectual, would be only animal and should not be considered advisable for human beings, but that the intellectual should not only predominate, but preside over, all sexual conditions.
Thomas would have us believe that the cerebellum is the seat of amative desire, and that that organ presides over the sexual function. Again, an opposite claim has attempted to overthrow such doctrines, by experiments to prove that the cerebellum presides over coôrdination of muscular movements.
I am not prepared to accept the doctrine of either as true, but only can see evidence that both may be disturbed or lost for a time by pressure upon, or section of, a part of the cerebellum, and that this organ perhaps tends to effect an equilibrium of the nervous forces between the cerebrum and cord, and also as a generator of nerve-force. We do know that coôrdination of muscular movements is interfered with by any structural changes in this organ; but it would seem that, if the sexual was so much depending upon the cerebellum for force, or there was such an intimate relation between these organs, muscular movement would be oftener impaired or disturbed by reflex irritation, owing to the frequency of impotence and other genital diseases, through the close relations supposed to exist between the genitalia and cerebellum. The coôrdination of muscles is seldom interfered with by sexual diseases directly, but only as a secondary issue, by first producing chronic impairment of the nutritive forces, and thereby effecting the changes in nerve-cells.
The sensitive nervous organizations are of themselves predisposed to morbid changes, from too often repeated shocks of pleasure or grief; such persons are first to suffer mentally through shame, from having indulged in such vices, and secondly, from actual structural changes that have occurred.
The vice, commenced at puberty or before, interferes greatly with the development of the brain, and only a feeble intellect is possible as a product of such feeble brain-structure. The mental powers often yield, as it were, when the genital organs possess the power to copulate _ad libitum_. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Lunatics frequently possess such genital vigor, when their lunacy has been produced by masturbation and other sexual debauch.