Axiom 2.
‘The sexual organs are not essential to individual life, although they are essential to the continuance of the race. Neither is their full exercise by sexual congress indispensable to individual health.’
The blind obstinacy with which these scientific facts are ignored in education, in social sentiment, and in Government organizations, is a potent cause of national degeneracy, of impaired procreative power, and enfeebled offspring.
Hunger is the primary instinct and indispensable condition of human life. It is that which insures the continuance of the individual. The sexual instinct, with all its grand power to perpetuate the race, is only a later development, growing with the unfolding of the intellectual and moral nature. It is shared equally under varying aspects by each of the two necessary factors in procreation, woman as well as man.
This fact of the powerful sexual attraction necessarily existent and dominating in woman, as mother of the race, seems to be quite overlooked. In any true meaning of the word ‘strength,’ this potent social force in women demands far more serious study than it has yet received, although it may exhibit itself in less spasmodic form than in men.[9]
There are two branches of the medical art which urgently require fuller consideration. These are:
1st. The physiological life of the organs of generation in both men and women.
2nd. The immense influence which the mind can exercise over the body in controlling disease.
The susceptibility of our sexual nature to mental control and direction to noble ends is a great and encouraging scientific truth.
From these data of true physiology the possibility of continence is evident. With further physiological study, its great advantage, up to the full consolidated adult age, can be proved. By scientific study of the biological facts that underlie these data, it can be shown from positive medical experience that promiscuous intercourse between the sexes, or the resort of many men to the same woman, cannot be made physically safe. The gradual elimination of this destructive practice is essential to the progress of the race.