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.