secrecy. The ritual laws of the Hindoos threaten with severe punishment him who prepares fire in an incorrect manner. The fact alone that something is mysterious means the same as something done in concealment; that which must remain secret, which one may not see nor do; also something which is surrounded by severe punishment of body and soul; therefore, presumably, something forbidden which has received a license as a religious rite. After all has been said about the genesis of the preparation of fire, it is no longer difficult to guess what is the forbidden thing; it is onanism. When I stated before that it might be lack of satisfaction which breaks up the autoerotic ring of the displaced sexual activity transferred to the body itself, and thus opens wider fields of culture, I did not mention that this loosely closed ring of the displaced onanistic activity could be much more firmly closed, when man makes the other great discovery, that of true onanism.[52] With that the activity is started in the proper place, and this, under certain circumstances, may mean a satisfaction sufficient for a long time, but at the expense of cheating sexuality of its real purpose. It is a fraud upon the natural development of things, because all the dynamic forces which can and should serve the development of culture are withdrawn from it through onanism, since, instead of the displacement, a regression to the local sexual takes place, which is precisely the opposite of that which is desirable. Psychologically, however, onanism is a discovery of a significance not to be undervalued. One is protected from fate, since no sexual need then has the power to give one up to life. For with onanism one has
