The healthy limitation of sexual secretion in men sets free a vast store of nervous force for employment in intellectual and active practical pursuits. The amount of nervous energy expended by the male in the temporary act of sexual congress is very great, out of all apparent proportion to its physical results, and is an act not to be too often repeated. In the fully matured and strong adult the nature is adapted to such occasional expenditure, but it is a serious evil to the growing or unconsolidated nature. Even in strong adult life there is a great loss of social power through the squandering of adult energy, which results from any unnatural stimulus given to the appetite of sex in the male. The barbarous custom of polygamy, the degrading habit of promiscuous intercourse, selfish license in marriage, and all artificial excitements which give undue stimulus to the passion of sex, divert an immeasurable amount of mental and moral force from the great work of human advancement.
The control possessed so largely by the male over the physical function of sperm-formation is not possessed by the female over the corresponding function of ovulation. In the female, Nature apparently cannot venture to subordinate the simple physical functions of sex to the will, to as great an extent as in the male. A more unyielding rule is needed in these physical activities, because the work to be accomplished for the race by the female is so much more elaborate and long continued. A greater amount of varied action in the complicated organs is necessitated in order to maintain their adult aptitude. The function of ovulation (formation of ova) is not increased or diminished by the will, or by the dwelling of the mind upon sexual objects, at all to the same extent that spermation (formation of sperm) may be affected by the same mental action. Ovulation, and its natural accompaniment, menstruation, is much more of a necessary fixed quantity than spermation and its natural accompaniment, sperm-emission.[3]
It is thus seen that the laws guiding the human sexual functions as established by Creative Power are as conducive to health, and as consistent with the freedom and perfection of human growth, in one sex as in the other. Each sex, obeying the Governing Law, is created to help, not destroy the other. The general outline of arrangement is the same in each, viz., power of mental and physical self-balance, strictly guarded potency, and a certain degree of periodicity.
I repeat that parents, and especially mothers, should be acquainted with the truths of physiology. There is in the pure sentiment of maternity a special Divine gift of unselfishness and profound devotion to the well-being of husband and children. This God-given power enables a wife and mother to comprehend and apply this knowledge with the impersonality of wisdom. The awful aberrations of our sexual nature excite a deep pity which inevitably seeks for a remedy. When this special aptitude given to women by the power of maternity is fully realized, the enlarged intelligence of mothers will be welcomed as the brightest harbinger of sexual regeneration.
CHAPTER III
On the Abuses of Sex—I. Masturbation
Of the various forms of abuse which spring from ignorance or corruption in the exercise of the most important of our human faculties, two only will be dwelt on—viz., masturbation and fornication. These are the two radical vices from which all forms of unnatural vice spring. The first is the especial temptation of the child, the last the temptation or corruption of the adult. It will be seen how the one prepares for the other, and how both, unchecked and unguided into rightful channels by judicious sexual education, lead inevitably to those horrors of unnatural vice which belong to disease, not nature. Abnormal vice abounds on the Continent, where the virtue of Christianity has fallen into contempt. But although it is increasing amongst ourselves as we blindly follow in the path of foreign error, yet, happily for parental guidance of childhood and youth, the darkest phases of human corruption need not be exhibited here.
Of Self-abuse (called also Masturbation, Onanism, etc.) it is necessary to speak fully. This vice may infect the nursery as well as the school, and in innumerable cases it induces precocity of physical sensation, and prepares the way for every variety of sexual evil.
That much contradiction of thought exists on this subject even in the medical profession, the following facts will show. One of the most distinguished members of the profession, a man noted for sound judgment and large experience, made the following noteworthy statement to me in speaking of ‘The Moral Education of the Young in Relation to Sex.’ He said: ‘You are all wrong in what you say about masturbation. Medically speaking, it is of no consequence whatever. Mind, I say medically, not morally speaking. I know a man, the father of a family, who was taught by his nurse to masturbate at three years old, and it has done him no harm whatever.’
On the other hand, distinguished physicians, as Tissot and others, have drawn frightful pictures of the mental and physical ruin which always result from habits of self-abuse, and they refer to the records of insane asylums to confirm these statements.
There is error and confusion of thought in both these extreme views.