[36] See also a very interesting account of schools in Thackeray’s Irish Sketch-Book.
[37] I can speak from personal observation of these upright communities, where the health of the men was far better than that of the women; the former leading an outdoor, the latter an indoor life.
[38] Numerous instances of wise maternal influence over sons have come under my own observation, where in mature life they have thanked these true friends, their mothers, for the wise counsels given at the right time.
[39] See Appendix I., [p. 306].
[40] In earnest conversation with a gentleman of wide connections, resident in Vienna, he stated that he did not know a single young man who led a virtuous life. So completely was the idea of sexual control lost, that he said frankly he should consider any man a hypocrite who pretended to be virtuous. A Protestant pastor in a small University town in the South of France told me that the public sentiment of both men and women in that town was so false that a man who had no inclination to vice would be ashamed to acknowledge a virtuous life.
[41] See Appendix II., [p. 308].
[42] See a valuable article in the Westminster Review, July, 1879, ‘An Unrecognised Element in our Educational Systems.’
[43] Sir James Paget, Clinical Lectures and Essays, second edition, p. 293.
[44] There is a class of persons, the illogical, whose conscience will not allow them to counsel vice, who state that it is a habit that can be avoided as the use of opium can be avoided, but who in the same breath declare prostitution to be a necessity, and that the greater part of young men away from home will resort to it. Now, if prostitution be a necessity, it must be because fornication is a necessity. What is a necessity? It is something inevitable, because it is rooted in the constitution; it is an unavoidable development of human nature itself. If so, fornication is not a habit like opium-eating, but the form in which human nature is shaped—God’s work. In that case fornication would not be wrong; it should not be condemned, and neither the man nor the woman who practises it should be blamed. There is no avoiding this direct conclusion, and everyone who asserts that prostitution is a necessity must be prepared to accept it. This grave error and the confusion of thought and practice which arises from it proceed from a wrong use of the word ‘Necessity.’ It is the existence of the sexual passion which is a necessary part of nature, not prostitution. This necessary passion may either be controlled or it may be satisfied in two ways—by marriage, or by fornication. It is only the passion which is a necessity, not the way in which it is gratified. It is thus a positive falsehood to state that prostitution is a necessity, and, considered in all its bearings, a most dangerous falsehood.
[45] Whilst travelling in Italy I met a very intelligent Austrian gentleman, who, as a citizen of the United States, had brought up his family in New York. Conversing on the various customs of society, he said to me: ‘I have always endeavoured to respect women, and to live an upright, moral life, but I have never met with any appreciation of this fact by the families of my acquaintance. On the contrary, no mother that I have known has banished a man of position from her society, no matter how notoriously immoral his life may be. I have known respectable mothers, moving in what is called the best society, allowing a man of wealth to continue visiting the family after gross impropriety of behaviour to a daughter. My own little Rosa there (and he pointed to a charming little creature of sixteen who was travelling with the party) will not give the slightest discouragement to a clever or amusing man, although I may warn her against the notorious character of the man. I go to Paris, and observe the night assemblies after the theatres close. I find brilliant salons filled with young girls as lovely as my own daughter, often gentle in manner, elegant in dress, refined, accomplished; I should not know from observation merely that they were fallen women. “What does it all mean?” I ask myself again and again. Surely women in society have much to do in this matter.’