Chastity of the mind, Lucien Price believed, works by a self-imposed rule:
There is a chastity of the mind, just as there is a chastity of the body. There are certain creative processes which a sincere thinker would no more reveal to casual eyes than he would strip in a public place. A rule of mental chastity: Do not hold promiscuous mental intercourse. The shallow would intrude into these austere places like picnickers in a sanctuary, littering it with their luncheon refuse.
Quoted from page 156 of The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture, by Douglass Shand-Tucci; St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004. This book tells more about the life of Lucien Price than any other book we know of.
For a brief biography of Lucien Price, click here. Henry David Thoreau’s ideas on the chastity of the mind predated and (we are guessing) influenced Price's. To read Thoreau’s, click here.
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