LOVE AND MARRIAGE.
The attraction of the sexes for each other, though based upon the dual principle of generation which pervades the living world and which has its analogies in the attractive forces of matter, yet pervades the whole being.
LOVE IS NOT MERELY
the instinctive desire of physical union, which has for its object the continuation of the species—it belongs to the mind as well as to the body. It warms, invigorates, and elevates every sentiment, every feeling; and in its highest, purest, most diffusive form unites us to God and all creatures in Him.
ALL LOVE IS
essentially the same, but modified according to its objects and by the character of the one who loves. The love of children for their parents, of parents for offspring, brotherly and sisterly love, the love of friendship, of charity, and the fervor of religious love, are modifications of the same sentiment—the attraction that draws us to our kindred, our kind; that binds together all races and humanity itself, resting on the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. It is but natural that this love should vary in degrees. Attractions are proportional to proximity. Family is nearer than country; we prefer our own nation to the rest of the race.
Each individual has, also, his own special attractions and repulsions. There is love at first sight and friendship at first sight. We feel some persons pleasant to us; to be near them is a delight. Generally such feelings are mutual—like flows to like, or as often, perhaps, differences fit into each other. We seek sympathy with our own tastes and habits, or we find in others what we lack. Thus the weak rest upon the strong, the timid are fond of the courageous, the reckless seek guidance of the prudent, and so on. The sentiment of
LOVE FOR THE OPPOSITE SEX
—tender, romantic, passionate—begins very early in life. Fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, have a special fondness for each other, as, also, have brothers and sisters; but the boy soon comes to admire someone, generally older than himself, who is not a relation. Very little girls find a hero in some friend of an elder brother.
FONDNESS FOR COUSINS
generally comes more from opportunity than natural attraction, though a cousin may have very little appearance of family relation. The law appears to be that free choice seeks the diverse and distant. A stranger has always a better chance with the young ladies of any district than the young men with whom they have always been acquainted. Savages seek their wives out of their own tribe.
It is my belief that naturally (I mean in a state of pure and unperverted nature, but developed cultivated, and refined by education) every man loves womanhood itself, and all women so far as they approximate to his ideal; and that in the same way every woman loves manhood, and is attracted and charmed by all its gentle, noble, and heroic manifestations. By such a man, every woman he meets is reverenced as a mother, sister, daughter, or, it may be, cherished in a more tender relation, which should be at first, and may always remain, free from any sensual desire. Such love may have many objects, each attracting the kind and degree of affection which it is able to inspire. Such love of men for women, and women for men, may be free and will be free just in the degree in which it is freed from the bondage of sensual passion.
SUCH LOVE HAS A DIRECT TENDENCY
to raise men above the control of their senses. The more of such love one has and the more it is diffused, the less the liability to sink into the lower and disorderly loves of the sensual life.
The idea that every attraction, every attachment, every love between the sexes must lead to marriage—that no love can be tolerated but with that end in view—is a very false and mischievous one. It deprives men and women of the strength and happiness they might have in pure friendships and pure loves, and it leads to a multitude of false and bad marriages. Two persons are drawn together by strong attractions and tender sentiments for each other who have no more right to be married than if they were brother and sister, but who have the same right to love each other. But their true sentiments for each other, and consequent relation to each other, are not understood by those around them and perhaps not by themselves. They are urged by the misapprehension of others, by their expectation, by ignorant gossip, by the prejudice of society, based upon low and sensual estimates of life, to marry; they find that they must either marry or lose the happiness they have in each other's society, and they make the irrevocable mistake.
When it is understood that there are
OTHER LOVES
than that of marriage; when the special attraction that justifies union for life, and the begetting of offspring, is discriminated from all the other attractions that may bring two souls into very near and tender relations to each other, there will be more happiness in the world and fewer incomplete, imperfect, and, therefore, more or less unhappy, marriages. Nothing can be more detestable than that playing with fire which goes by the name of
FLIRTATION;
but there are men and women who have the happiness of living and of being tenderly and devotedly loved by persons of the opposite sex—loved purely, nobly, happily—without injury and with great good. When such loves are accompanied by perfect trust in the goodness, purity, truth, and honor of the beloved, there can be no jealousy, no desire for selfish absorption, no fear of deprivation of any right. There is no reason why a husband or a wife should limit the range of pure and spiritual affection to near relatives.
THE MAN WHO CAN LOVE
a sister as sisters are often loved, may love in the same way, or as purely, any woman who might be his sister. As men and women learn to purify their lives, the world will grow more tolerant and love will become more universal. The tender and fervent exhortations to mutual love to be found in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament are now almost without a meaning. But they had a meaning to those to whom they were addressed, and when we are better Christians, and bring our lives to the purity of Christian morality, they will have a meaning to us and we shall learn that, in a sense we have not dreamed of, God is Love.
IN THE HUMAN RACE ALL CIRCUMSTANCES POINT TO MONOGAMY
as the lawful or natural condition. Males and females are born in almost equal numbers. If there are two or three per cent. more of males than females, the risks of life with males soon make the number even. Therefore, as a rule, no man can have more than one wife without robbing his neighbor.
Polygamy is therefore a manifest injustice, and may become the most grievous of all monopolies.
Children are the most helpless of all young creatures and require the care of parents for the longest period. The care of a husband for his wife, and of a father for his child, is an evident necessity. The proper care and education of a single child should extend over at least fifteen years, and that of a family may reach to thirty years, or throughout the greatest part of an ordinary life. During all periods of pregnancy, childbearing, nursing, and the education and care of a family, every woman has a right to the sympathy, sustaining love, and constant aid of her husband. No man has a right to desert or leave helpless, or even dependent upon others, except in extraordinary cases, the mother of his children.
Marriage, like celibacy, should be a matter of vocation.
THE SPECIAL OBJECT OF MARRIAGE
is to have children; the co-operating motive is that two persons drawn to each other by a mutual affection may live helpfully and happily together. A selfish marriage, for its merely animal gratifications—a marriage in which strength, health, usefulness, often life itself, are sacrificed to sensuality and lust—is a desecration of a holy institution, and somewhat worse in its consequences than promiscuous profligacy, for the consequences of that may not fall upon one's children and posterity.
There are many persons who have no right to marry. There should be a kind and amount of love that will justify and sanctify such a relation. There should be a pure motive and the fixed intention of making the relation what it ought to be to husband, wife, and children. There should be a reasonable assurance of the power to provide for a family. There should be that amount of health, that freedom from bodily and mental disease, that physical and moral constitution which will give a reasonable prospect of children whose lives will be a blessing to themselves and to society.
When there is deformity of body, or an unhappy peculiarity of temper or mind liable to be inherited, people should not marry, or if they live together, should resign the uses of marriage. People should conscientiously refrain from propagating hereditary diseases. Persons near of kin are wisely forbidden to marry, for there is in such cases the liability of imperfect generation—the production of blind, deaf, idiotic or insane offspring.
SHOULD MARRIAGE BE FOR LIFE?
As a rule, undoubtedly. Every real, proper, true marriage must be. It takes a lifetime for a husband and wife to make a home and rear and educate and provide for a family of children. But what if people make mistakes and find that they are not suitably married? These are mistakes very difficult to remedy. If a man, after deliberately making his choice of a woman, ceases to love her, how can he honorably withdraw from his relation to her, and enter upon another,
WHEN SHE STILL LOVES HIM,
and is ready to fulfill her part of the contract? Laws cannot very well provide for mistakes. If the distaste for each other be mutual, and both parties desire to separate, a separation may of course be permitted; but it is a serious question whether two such persons can go into the world and find new partners, with justice to the rest. The law which permits of no divorce certainly bears hard upon individual cases; but if it leads to greater seriousness and care in forming such relations, it may be, on the whole, the best thing for society that it should be strictly observed.
CHAPTER V.
WHEN TO MARRY—HOW TO SELECT A PARTNER
ON RIGHT PRINCIPLES.
The proper age to marry is a somewhat vexed question, but needlessly so, because that age varies much, according to temperament and other circumstances relating to the individual. Although after puberty the sexual organs are capable of reproduction, yet it by no means follows that they should be used for that purpose. Their early activity is intended for the perfection of the body and mind, and not for the continuation of the species.
VERY EARLY MARRIAGE,
therefore, should be avoided, because the nervous force expended in amative indulgence is imperatively required in both sexes for developing the physical and mental faculties. The zoösperms produced by the male in the first years of puberty are inferior in power and less capable of producing healthy offspring than those of mature years. The early germs, also, of the female are less fitted for fecundation than those that appear later in life; nature evidently intending these early efforts to be used on the individuals themselves in building up their bodies, strengthening their minds, and preparing them to reproduce their species in maturer years. There is a serious day of reckoning for early indulgence; for precocious persons (unless their constitutions are as powerful as their desires) who give way to their passions at their first exactions, barter their youth for their enjoyment, and are old and weary of the world at an age when people of more moderate habits are only in the meridian of pleasure and existence.
GENERALLY THE BEST AGE TO MARRY,
where the health is perfect, is from twenty-one to twenty-five in the male and from eighteen to twenty-one in the female. As a general rule, marriages earlier than this are injurious and detrimental to health. Men who marry too young, unless they are of cold and phlegmatic constitution, and thus moderate in their conduct, become partially bald, dim of sight, and lose all elasticity of limb in a few years; while women in a like position rarely have any bloom on their cheek or fire in their eye by the time they are twenty-five. And all profound physiologists agree that from the same cause the mental faculties suffer in the same ratio.
A medium, however, is to be observed. It is not well to defer till middle age the period of connubial intercourse; for too tedious spinsterhood is as much calculated to hasten the decay of beauty as too early a marriage. Hence, there is rarely any freshness to be seen in a maiden of thirty; while the matron of that age, if her life has been a happy one, and her hymeneal condition of not more than ten years' standing, is scarcely in the heyday of her charm's. And the same rule will apply with equal force to the other sex; for, after the first prime of life, bachelors decay and grow old much faster than married men.
The rich are qualified for marriage before the poor. This is owing to the superiority of their aliment; for very nutritious food, and the constant use of wines, coffee, etc., greatly assists in developing the organs of reproduction; whereas the food generally made use of among the peasantry of most countries—as vegetables, corn, milk, etc.—retards their growth. Owing to this difference of diet, the daughter of a man of wealth, who keeps a good table, will be as adequate to certain duties of married life at eighteen as the daughter of a humble peasant at twenty-one. Singular as it may seem, it is none the less true, that love novels, amorous conversations, playing parlor games for kisses, voluptuous pictures, waltzing, and, in fact, all things having a tendency to create desire, assist in promoting puberty and preparing young persons for early marriage. Those who reach this estate, however, by artificial means and much before the natural period will have to suffer for it in after life.
The female who marries before the completion of her womanhood—that is, before her puberty is established—will cease to grow and probably become pale and delicate, the more especially if she become pregnant soon after marriage. A person who is thus circumstanced will also be liable to abortions and painful deliveries.
MARRIAGE, UNLESS
under very peculiar circumstances, should not take place until two or three years after the age of puberty. Many instances could be cited of the injurious effects resulting from not observing this rule. The case of the son of Napoleon I. is a notable instance, who, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, began his career of sexual indulgence, which ended his life at the early age of twenty-one years. He was an amiable, inoffensive, and studious youth, beloved by his grandfather and the whole Austrian court; and though the son of the most energetic man that modern times has produced, yet, from his effeminate life, he scarcely attracted the least public attention.
Let me, therefore, advise the male reader to keep his desires in leading-strings until he is at least twenty-one, and the female not to enter the pale of wedlock until she is past her eighteenth year; but after these periods marriage is their proper sphere of action, and one in which they must play a part or suffer actual pain as well as the loss of one of the greatest of earthly pleasures.
MARRIAGES ARE MOST HAPPY
and most productive of handsome and healthy offspring when the husband and wife differ, not only in mental conformation, but in bodily construction. A melancholy man should mate himself with a sprightly woman, and vice versa; for otherwise they will soon grow weary of the monotony of each other's company. By the same rule should the choleric and the patient be united, and the ambitious and the humble; for the opposites of their natures not only produce pleasurable excitement, but each keeps the other in a wholesome check. In the size and form of the parties the same principles hold good. Tall women are not the ideals of beauty to tall men; and if they marry such, they will soon begin to imagine greater perfections in other forms than in those of their own wives. And this is well ordered by nature to prevent the disagreeable results which are almost certain to grow out of unions where the parties have a strong resemblance.
For instance, tall parents will probably have children taller than either, and mental imbecility is the usual attendant of extreme size. The union of persons prone to corpulency, of dwarfs, etc., would have parallel results; and so, likewise, of weakly and attenuated couples. The tall should marry the short, the corpulent the lean, the choleric the gentle, and so on, and the tendency to extremes in the parents will be corrected in the offspring.
Apart from these considerations, there are reasons why persons of the same disposition should not be united and wedlock. An amiable wife to a choleric man is like oil to troubled waters; an ill-tempered one will make his life a misery and his home a hell. The man of studious habits should marry a woman of sense and spirit rather than of erudition, or the union will increase the monotony of his existence, which it would be well for his health and spirits to correct by a little conjugal excitement; and the man of gloomy temperament will find the greatest relief from the dark forebodings of his mind in the society of a gentle, but lively and smiling partner.
However, in some particulars the dispositions and constructions of
MARRIED PEOPLE MUST ASSIMILATE
or they will have but few enjoyments in common. The man of full habits and warm nature had better remain single than unite his destinies with a woman whose heart repulses the soft advancements of love; and the sanguine female in whose soul love is the dominant principle should avoid marriage with a very phlegmatic person, or her caresses, instead of being returned in kind, will rather excite feelings of disgust. Thus the discriminations to be made in the choice of a partner are extremely nice.
Nature generally assists art in the choice of partners. We instinctively seek in the object of our desires the qualities which we do not possess ourselves. This is a most admirable arrangement of Providence, as it establishes an equilibrium and prevents people from tending to extremes; for it is known that unions of dwarfs are fruitful of dwarfs, that giants proceed from the embrace of giants, and that offspring of parents alike irritable, alike passive, alike bashful, etc., inherit the prominent qualities of both to such a degree as to seriously interfere with their prospects in the world.
It has another advantage. Through its means “Every eye forms its own beauty”; hence, what one person rejects is the beau ideal of another's conceptions, and thus we are all provided for.
In fine, with man as with animals, the best way to improve the breed is to cross it, for the intermarriage of like with like and relative with relative not only causes man to degenerate, but if the system became universal would in time bring the human race to a termination altogether.
A male or female with a very low forehead should carefully avoid marriage with a person of like conformation, or their offspring will, in all probability, be weak-minded or victims to partial idiocy.
The system of crossing is so perfect that marriages between persons of different countries are likely to be pleasant and fruitful. Speaking on this subject, an English writer says: “The Persians have been so improved by introducing foreigners that they have completely succeeded in washing out their Mongolian origin.” And the same author adds to the effect that in those parts of Persia where there is no foreign intercourse the inhabitants are sickly and stunted, while in those that are frequented by strangers they are large and healthy.
To make what is called
“A HANDSOME COUPLE,”
the female should be about three inches less than the male, and the parties should be proportionately developed throughout their system.
“A WELL-FORMED WOMAN,”
says a modern physiologist, “should have her head, shoulders, and chest small and compact; arms and limbs relatively short; her haunches apart; her hips elevated; her abdomen large and her thighs voluminous. Hence, she should taper from the center, up and down. Whereas, in a well-formed man the shoulders are more prominent than the hips. Great hollowness of the back, the pressing of the thigh against each other in walking, and the elevation of one hip above the other, are indications of the malformation of the pelvis.”
From the same writer I take the following, which is applicable here. It is very correct in its estimates of beauty in both sexes:—
“The length of the neck should be proportionately less in the male than in the female, because the dependence of the mental system on the vital one is naturally connected with the shorter courses of the vessels of the neck.
“The neck should form a gradual transition between the body and head—its fullness concealing all prominences of the throat.
“The shoulders should slope from the lower part of the neck, because the reverse shows that the upper part of the chest owes its width to the bones and muscles of the shoulders.
“The upper part of the chest should be relatively short and wide, independent of the size of the shoulders, for this shows the vital organs which it contains are sufficiently developed.
“The waist should taper a little farther than the middle of the trunk, and be marked, especially in the back and loins, by the approximation of the hips.
“The waist should be narrower than the upper part of the trunk and its muscles, because the reverse indicates the expansion of the stomach, liver, and great intestine, resulting from their excessive use.
“The back of woman should be more hollow than that of man; for otherwise the pelvis is not of sufficient depth for parturition.
“Women should have more extended loins than men, at the expense of the superior and inferior parts, for this conformation is essential to gestation.
“The abdomen should be larger in woman than in man, for the same reason.
“Over all these parts the cellular tissue, and the plumpness connected with it, should obliterate all distinct projection of muscles.
“The surface of the whole female form should be characterized by its softness, elasticity, smoothness, delicacy, and polish, and by the gradual and easy transition between the parts.
“The moderate plumpness already described should bestow on the organs of woman great suppleness. Plumpness is essential to beauty, especially in mothers, because in them the abdomen necessarily expands, and would afterwards collapse and become wrinkled.
“An excess of plumpness, however, is to be guarded against. Young women who are very fat are cold and prone to barrenness.
“In no case should plumpness be so predominant as to destroy the distinctness of parts.”
A male and female formed on the above models would be well matched and have fine children.
CHAPTER VI.
SEXUAL INTERCOURSE—ITS LAWS AND CONDITIONS—ITS
USE AND ABUSE.
There is an increasing and alarming prevalence of nervous ailments and complicated disorders that could be traced to have their sole origin from this source. Hypochondria, in its various phases, results from the premature and unnatural waste of the seminal fluid. Then speedily ensues a lack of natural heat, a deficiency of vital power, and consequently indigestion, melancholy, languor, and dejection ensue; the victim becomes enervated and spiritless, loses the very attributes of man, and premature old age soon follows.
IT IS A PREVALENT ERROR
that it is necessary for the semen to be ejected at certain times from the body; that its retention is incompatible with sound health and vigor of body and mind. This is a very fallacious idea. The seminal fluid is too precious—nature bestows too much care in its elaboration for it to be wasted in this unproductive manner. It is intended, when not used for the purpose of procreation, to be reabsorbed again into the system, giving vigor of body, elasticity and strength to the mind, making the individual strong, active, and self-reliant. When kept as nature intended, it is a perpetual fountain of life and energy—a vital force which acts in every direction, a motive power which infuses manhood into every organ of the brain and every fiber of the body.
THE LAW OF SEXUAL MORALITY
for childhood is one of utter negation of sex. Every child should be kept pure and free from amative excitement and the least amative indulgence, which is unnatural and doubly hurtful. No language is strong enough to express the evils of amative excitement and unnatural indulgence before the age of puberty; and the dangers are so great that I see no way so safe as
THOROUGH INSTRUCTION
regarding them at the earliest age. A child may be taught, simply as a matter of science, as one learns botany, all that is needful to know, and such knowledge may protect it from the most terrible evils.
The law for childhood is perfect purity, which cannot be too carefully guarded and protected by parents, teachers, and all caretakers. The law for youth is perfect continence—a pure vestalate alike in both sexes. No indulgence is required by one more than the other—for both nature has made the same provision. The natures of both are alike, and any—the least—exercise of the amative function is an injury to one as to the other.
MEN EXPECT
that women shall come to them in marriage chaste and pure from the least defilement. Women have a right to expect the same of their husbands. Here the sexes are upon a perfect equality.
On this subject, Dr. Carpenter (physiological works) has written like a man of true science, and, therefore, of true morality. He lays it down as an axiom that the development of the individual and the reproduction of the species stand in an inverse ratio to each other. He says: “The augmented development of the generative organs at puberty can only be rightly regarded as preparatory to the exercise of the organs. The development of the individual must be completed before the procreative power can properly be exercised for the continuance of the race.” And in the following extract from his “Principles of Human Physiology,” he confirms my statement respecting the unscientific and libertine advice of too many physicians: “The author would say to those of his younger readers who urge the wants of nature as an excuse for the illicit gratification of the sexual passions, 'try the effects of close mental application to some of those ennobling pursuits to which your profession introduces you, in combination with vigorous bodily exercise, before you assert that appetite is unrestrainable and act upon that assertion.' Nothing tends so much to increase the desire as the continual direction of the mind toward the objects of its gratification, whilst nothing so effectually represses it as a determined exercise of the mental faculties upon other objects and the expenditure of nervous energy in other channels. Some works which have issued from the medical press contain much that is calculated to excite, rather than to repress, the propensity; and the advice sometimes given by practitioners to their patients is immoral as well as unscientific.”
EVERY MAN AND EVERY WOMAN,
living simply, purely, and temperately—respecting the laws of health in regard to air, food, dress, exercise, and habits of life—not only can live in the continence of a pure virgin life when single, and in the chastity which should be observed by all married partners, but be stronger, happier, and in every way better by so living.
Chastity is the conservation of life, and the consecration of its forces to the highest use. Sensuality is the waste of life, and the degradation of its forces to pleasure divorced from use. Chastity is life; sensuality is death.
FROM THE AGE OF PUBERTY TO MARRIAGE
the law, is the same for both sexes—full employment of mind and body, temperance, purity, and perfect chastity in thought, word, and deed. The law is one of perfect equality. There is no license for the male which is not equally the right of the female. There is no physiological ground for any indulgence in one case more than in the other. No man has any more right to require or expect purity in the woman who is to be his wife than the woman has to require and expect purity in her husband. It is a simple matter of justice and right. No man can enter upon an amative relation with a woman, except in marriage, without manifest injustice to his future wife, unless he allow her the same liberty; and also without a great wrong to the woman, and to her possible husband.
It is contended that the sins of men against chastity are more venial than those of women, because of the liability of women to have children. But men are also liable to be the fathers of children, who are deeply wronged by the absence of paternal care. The child has its rights, and every child has the right to be born in honest, respectable wedlock, of parents able to give it a sound constitution and the nurture and education it requires. The child who lacks these conditions is grievously wronged by both father and mother.
THE LAW OF MARRIAGE
is, that a mature man and woman, with sound health, pure lives, and a reasonable prospect of comfortably educating a family, when drawn to each other by the attraction of mutual love, should chastely and temperately unite for offspring. The sexual relation has this chief and controlling purpose. The law of nature is intercourse for reproduction. Under the Christian law, marriage is the symbol of the union of Christ with the Church; husband and wife are one in the Lord; they are to live in marriage chastity, not in lust and uncleanness; and there cannot be a more hideous violation of Christian morals than for a husband to vent his sensuality upon a feeble wife; against her wishes and when she has no desire for offspring and no power to give them the healthy constitutions and maternal care which is their right.
The law of Christian morality is very clear. It is the sexual union first and chiefly for its principal object. It is for the husband to refrain from it whenever it is not desired; whenever it would be hurtful to either; whenever it would be a waste of life; whenever it would injure mother or child, as during pregnancy and lactation.
A MAN WHO TRULY LOVES A WOMAN
must respect and reverence her, and cannot make her the victim of his inordinate and unbridled, selfish and sensual nature. He will be ever, from the first moment of joyful possession to the last of his life, tender, delicate, considerate, deferent, yielding to her slightest wishes in the domain of love, and never encroaching, never trespassing upon, never victimizing the wife of his bosom and the mother of his babes. We have romance before marriage, we want more chivalry in marriage.
This is not the world's morality, yet it seems to one the world must respect it. This, high and pure Christian morality is not always enforced by Christian ministers, some of whom yield too much to human sensuality and depravity, instead of maintaining the higher law of Christian purity, which is but nature restored or freed from its stains of sin. The world requires that unmarried women should be chaste, while it gives almost unbridled license to men. A girl detected in amours is disgraced and often made an outcast. In young men such irregularities are freely tolerated. They are “a little wild”; they “sow their wild oats”; but open profligacy, the seduction of innocence, the ruin of poor girls, adultery, harlotry and its diseases do not hinder men from marrying, nor from requiring that those they marry should have spotless reputations. It is not for a moment permitted that women in these matters should behave like men, and a pure girl is given to the arms of a wasted debauchee, and her babes are perhaps born dead, or suffer through life with syphilitic diseases, while she endures a long martyrdom from disordered, diseased, and unrestrained sensuality. For the unmarried, young men, soldiers, sailors, and all who do not choose to bear the burdens of a family, society has its armies of prostitutes—women like others, and more than others, or in less reputable fashion, the victims of the unbridled lust of men. They are everywhere tolerated as
“NECESSARY EVILS,”
and, in some places, protected or regulated; and, from economical or philanthropic considerations, or both, combined efforts are made to free them from the contagious diseases which for some centuries have been a curse attending this form of the violation of the laws of nature—one of the consequences of lust which is the divorce of the sexual instinct from its natural use and purpose.
The Christian
LAW OF MARRIAGE,
as set down in the Holy Scriptures, and defined by the best writers on moral theology, is in harmony with nature, in consonance with the higher nature of man. “God hath set the earth in families.” Adultery is a sin, because it disorders that divine arrangement. Fornication is a sin, because it prevents pure marriages. Prostitution is a sin, because it is a sacrifice of women, who might be wives and mothers, to the selfish lusts of men. All useless indulgence is a waste of life, and a kind of suicide. In a pure marriage union, men and women unite themselves with God in acts of creative power. The progress of humanity depends upon individual development and the conditions at generation and gestation. With culture and a harmonized development, we acquire a higher and more integral life. When two parents are in their highest condition and in
A TRUE UNION
with each other, the child combines the best qualities of both parents. When parents are not in the unity of a mutual love, the child may be inferior to either parent. The intensity of mutual love tends to the reproduction of the best faculties of both parents in the child. When men or women are exhausted or diseased the race deteriorates. Health is therefore one of the conditions of progress.
“It is all very fine,” I shall be told, “to talk of purity and chastity; but we must take men as they are. How are you going to make men pure and chaste, and respectful of the purity of women? How can you get men with strong amative propensities to live like anchorites?”
How can you get men to do anything right, or refrain from any wrong thing? There are three motives—fear of punishment, hope of reward, and sense of right or the principle of duty. The first of these is the lowest, but often the most effectual; the second is higher, and appeals to hope and the love of happiness; the third, the highest of all motives, pure and unselfish as the love of truth, as in mathematics, acts on noble minds with great power. Men of real conscientiousness love the right for its own sake. They are just from love of justice; pure from a sense and love of purity. They love good, and God as the source of all good; and do right, not from fear or hope, but from pure love.
We must appeal to all motives. Men refrain from theft and other dishonest conduct from the dread of disgrace and punishment, because they see that “honesty is the best policy,” and from a sense of justice and regard to the rights of property, or a sense of honor which makes a mean action impossible. By similar motives great numbers are restrained from drunkenness and other vices. Children are to be restrained from impurity by the fear of the terrible consequences of unnatural indulgence in causing disease and pain, by the hope of a pure, healthy and happy life of love in manhood and womanhood, and by a sense of the beauty and holiness of chastity and the sacredness of the functions by which the race is recreated and preserved. The religious feelings that our bodies are to be kept pure, healthy, and holy in every way as the temples of the Holy Ghost cannot be too early instilled into the infant mind, which is open to the highest sentiments of veneration, devotion, and heroic religion. In youth there are the same motives. Indulgence in solitary vice is self-destructive of all that youth most values—a profanation of his own body.
SEDUCTION
is a desecration of what he should hold in the most tender reverence. To the young man, womanhood should be sacred, and every woman, mother, sister, beloved of the present or the future, should never be wronged by one thought of impurity. In this matter instinct goes with right. The inward voice supports the outer law of morality. Before men can become bad, their instinctive modesty must be broken down. Unless very badly born, with disordered amativeness, hereditary from a diseased and lustful parentage, they must be perverted and corrupted before they can act immodestly and impurely.
WOMEN ARE PROTECTED
by a strong public sentiment around them. They have the dread of disgrace. For them to yield to their own affectionate desires, or the solicitations of a lover, is a fall, is ruin. They have the hope of a loving husband, a happy home, and the respect of society. And in woman passion has commonly less force, and the sentiment of modesty and purity more power. Women are weak in yielding to solicitation, giving
EVERYTHING FOR LOVE;
but we see how protective of female virtue are these motives to vast numbers.
Men can perfectly restrain the sensual part of their natures whenever they have a strong motive to do so. A child would be simply mad who was not controlled by the presence of father, mother, and persons he respected or feared. Young men have no difficulty when they are in the company of pure women. They are in no trouble when their lives are full of mental and muscular activity, and particularly if their habits of eating simply and temperately, of refraining from heating and exciting stimulants, and sleeping in cold beds and fresh air, are such as health requires. There needs but the strong will to live purely in any one, and at any age, the will that comes from the high motives of conscience and religion, or all motives combined. A strong sense of what is just and right controls even the motions of our bodies and actions which seem to be involuntary. A man who has a vivid sense of the right and duty of refraining from sensuality, and preserving his own purity of mind and body and the chastity of all women, will do so even in his dreams. When the will is right, all things are soon brought into its subjection. The mind controls the organization, and the life forces are directed into other channels. A strong man, full of
LIFE AND LOVE,
can safely hold a virgin in his arms, and respect her virginity, if he have but the motives and the will to do so. If he be pure in his will, how can he commit impurity? If a woman be sacred in his eyes, how can he profane her? It is not that men have not the power of restraint, the power to do right; it is that they lack the motive. They have lost the sense of right; they are even impelled to do wrong by the pressure of opinion around them. Boys and young men are driven into libertinage by the ridicule of their companions. Vice is considered manly. They seek sensuality in an evil emulation, as they learn to smoke, or gamble, or drink; and, later on, vanity has often more to do with excess than the force of lust. Young men seduce girls that they may boast of it. They keep mistresses because it is the fashion. They exhaust themselves because they wish to give a high idea of their manly powers. Even in marriage, women are injured and have their health destroyed by yielding weakly, or from
A FALSE SENSE OF DUTY,
to a husband whose own motive is the desire to acquit himself manfully in what he considers his marital duties. Men and women are, in thousands of cases, wretched victims to what they imagine to be the wants or expectations of each other. A man, ignorant of the nature of women and the laws of the generative function, goes on in a process of miserable exhaustion, to please his wife. She submits, sometimes in pain, often in disgust, weariness, and weakness, to what she dare not, from
LOVE OR FEAR,
refuse. Men have to know what is right and to will to be right. This will is omnipotent. God helps those who have the will, who have even the desire, to do right.
If the presence of those we fear or reverence, respect or love, restrain us from sin and stimulate us to right action, faith in the existence and presence of God and angels, and the spirits of the departed, must have a more powerful and pervading influence. No one who really believes in the existence of a Supreme Being, no one who is strongly impressed with the reality of a spiritual life, can go on doing what he knows to be wrong. A religious faith is therefore the most powerful of all restraints from evil and incitement to good.