E.—REFORM.
Before we can hope to abate the prevalence of genetic abuses we must promote a more general recognition of the truth that the organism of the human body is subject to the same laws that govern the organic functions of our fellow-creatures; and that health does not dispense its blessings as a reward of prayer and theological conformity, but of conformity to the promptings of our sanitary intuitions. We must dispel the delusion which hopes to conciliate the favor of a miracle-working deity by sacrificing the physical interests of our species to the interests of a clerical dogma.
Like the seductions of Intemperance, the temptations of precocious Incontinence may be counteracted [[55]]by more abundant opportunities of diverting pastimes. According to the significant allegory of a Grecian myth, Diana, the goddess of hunters and forest-dwellers, was the adversary of Venus, and outdoor exercise is, indeed, the best preventive of sexual aberrations. Athletes are instinctively continent. Sensuality seems incompatible with a hardy, active mode of life, as that of hunters, trappers, and backwoodsmen. The stigma of public opinion alone would, however, suffice to reduce the frequency of premature marriages; for, in the island of Corsica, where the recognition of their baneful tendency is based on purely economical considerations (the perils of over-population), the dread of social ostracism has proved more deterrent than the fear of poverty and starvation.
In a community of Reformants (as the German philosopher Schelling proposed to call the friends of reform) twenty-five and thirty years should be accepted as the lawful minima of a marriage age, and the teachers of Secularism should lose no opportunity to plead the cause of Nature against the usurpations of priestcraft and conventionalism. Public opinion should be trained to the recognition of the truth that the sacrifice of love to lucre, caste-prejudice, and bigotry is a crime against the genius of mankind, and that a marriage, vetoed by the verdict of Nature, cannot be hallowed by the mumbling of a priest. [[56]]