Religion and Lust / or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire

The author argues from a physio-psychical perspective that religious emotion grows out of sensory engagement with natural phenomena and is psychically correlated with sexual desire. He surveys historical forms of worship including phallic rites, traces psychological mechanisms linking erotic impulses and devotional states, and presents case studies and essays on related topics such as virginity, effeminacy, marginal belief systems, creative genius and degeneration, and the social implications of expanding female suffrage. The work combines theoretical argument, anthropological examples, and a bibliography to support its deductions.