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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: sex, or interest which is the food of the mind. All these
are craved; all these should be craved; to none of these in
itself does the soul demur; where there comes an undeniable
want, we recognise a demand of nature. Yet we know that
these natural demands may be superseded; for the demands
which are common to mankind make but a shadowy consideration
in comparison to the demands of the individual soul. Food is
almost the first prerequisite; and yet a high character will
go without food to the ruin and death of the body rather than
gain it in a manner which the spirit disavows. Pascal laid
aside mathematics; Origen doctored his body with a knife;
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