As menstruation in the female is the means adopted by our organization for securing both the permanent integrity of the various essential generative structures and their relief from any excess of vitality, so sperm-emission is the natural relief and independent outlet of that steady action of the generative organs in the male, which secures through adult life the constant aptitude for reproduction distinctive of the human race. The parallel in the two sexes is exact. Menstruation and sperm-emission are the natural healthy actions of self-balance, established by the economy for preserving the mastership of each individual over her or his own nature. At the same time the integrity of the structure is maintained by the steady action of these two functions of ovulation and spermation. These natural functions only degenerate into states of disease through ignorance of physiological law and faulty hygienic conditions on the one hand, or through impure thoughts and bad habits acting through the nervous system on the other. When these natural functions are either injured or unduly stimulated through the brain and nervous system, then only do they become diseased, producing menorrhœa or leucorrhœa in the female, and spermatorrhœa in the male.
It is impossible to overrate the wide importance of this law of self-adjustment, under which human function is carried on. The abuses of sex and the misunderstanding of actual facts, which have led to widespread error on this subject, will be dwelt on later. Every parent, however, who has been able to fulfil the true parental relationship to the child will realize the beneficence of this law. The obligatory and premature marriage of daughters, so largely the custom abroad, is one result of error on this subject. A still more dangerous error is the cruel advice sometimes given to a young man to degrade a woman, and sin against his own higher nature by taking a mistress or resorting to harlots.
I have often been consulted by anxious mothers who have observed or been told by their boys of fourteen or fifteen that an unusual discharge had taken place. It is of vital importance to the parent to know that such action is as natural and healthy in the growing lad as in the growing girl, but that in both it is a time requiring guidance, both moral and physical. Respectful, earnest words of hygienic counsel, including mind and body, are indispensable at this critical time of youth. Parents, particularly mothers, live too often in fatal ignorance of the conditions of sexual health and disease in their children. My advice is constantly asked in such cases as the following: A careful mother, who had brought up her son, a strong and healthy young man, to the age of twenty, learned from him of this natural sign of vitality, which both supposed to indicate disease! It was with pain and dismay that she replied to his confidence, ‘Alas! then, my son, I fear you must consult a doctor.’ The joyful light of gratitude and renewed hope with which she learned the truth on this important subject—viz., that the occasional spontaneous action of the organs (not voluntarily forced by corrupt thought and action) is natural and beneficial—will not be easily forgotten. It was like the gleam of transcendent joy which I have seen illuminate the face of a young mother at the shrill cry of her first-born infant.
The measureless evil caused, not only by their ignorance, but by the false information given to mothers, is illustrated by the inquiry made of a friend of mine, a clergyman, by an intelligent French mother about to move to Paris with her son. This lady, sensible and even pious, wrote to the clergyman to inquire ‘if providing a mistress for her son would be very costly in Paris.’ She had accepted as a fact what she had been taught, viz., that no young man who could not marry early could remain healthy without resorting to vice.
From lack of true knowledge of the natural facts of their own physical organization, young men are often terrified into a resort to quacks, who impose on their ignorance. The young also of both sexes may be tempted into bad habits of self-abuse at the outset of this new life, from being unacquainted with the evils and dangers of vicious indulgence.
It is the grave parental duty of both father and mother to be able to direct a child at its first entrance into adult life. At an age varying with climate, race, and temperament, the young man as well as the young woman will experience the healthy discharge, which is a sign that the gradual development of the reproductive organs has attained its final stage. In both its sudden appearance often produces fright; in both it may appear once, with long intervals of recurrence. In the girl it tends gradually (for important natural reasons) to the establishment of a frequent and regularly returning function. In the young man and in the continent unmarried adult, the natural action of these organs is of far less frequent recurrence; it may be of slow and uncertain return, dependent greatly upon the occupation of the mind and general physical state of the individual. In the natural healthy young man, the occasional return of this function, even with a certain degree of periodicity, is a valuable aid to adult self-government.
It is impossible to reprobate too strongly the false views of physiology held by those who make no distinction between the natural healthy growth of these functions and their abuse. No Christian physiologist whose observation of facts is enlightened by a knowledge of the possibility of moral growth can commit so fatal an error. It is an insult to the male nature to infer that it is inferior to the female nature because it does not fully possess the power of individual self-balance. The assertion that one human being is dependent on the degradation of another human being for the maintenance of personal health is contradicted by physiological facts as well as social experience.
The greater complication and elaboration of sexual structure and function belonging to the female nature is due to the more important share given to woman in the work of parentage. The constant production in the female of living germs (ova), which require only a passing act of stimulation by the male to enter into a state of active and astonishingly rapid growth; the unique change of the small uterus into an enormous and powerful structure, capable of containing a perfect child, and sending it forth by tremendous efforts into the outer world; the changes in all the surrounding organs and tissues necessitated by the accomplishment of such a remarkable work in the short space of nine months; and the subjection of this great physical work to the law of individual freedom and perfection, are facts which show the superior complication and importance of the female sexual organization. The more elaborate processes of menstruation, as compared with the lesser work of sperm-emission, show the greater complication of the organs to be kept in good working order in the female than in the male.
So extensive and important are the physical structures that must be kept in readiness for use in the mothers of the race, that their action is more withdrawn from the dominion of the will than is the case with men. In relation to the male, it is well known that the secretion of semen is very much controlled by the mental condition of the individual. Thus many a young man during keen nervous excitement (or during the strain of examinations) becomes alarmed by the appearance of unusual action never before noticed.
It is a fact to be carefully noted that sufficient healthy action to insure reproductive aptitude is always maintained in the secreting organs throughout adult life, quite independently of the will. Nature never allows the male, any more than the female, to become impotent through abeyance of function. No such fear need ever disturb the mind. The utmost devotion to intellectual life, to lofty thought, to beneficent action, never injures the procreative power, which always remains intact, capable of its special faculty throughout the virile age. But the active exercise of the intellectual and moral faculties has remarkable power of diminishing the formation of semen, and limiting the necessity of its natural removal, the demand for such relief becoming rarer under ennobling and healthy influences. As Dr. Acton remarks, ‘sexual distress affects particularly the semi-continent—those who indeed see the better course and approve of it, but follow the worse; who, without the recklessness of the hardened or the strength of the pure, endure at once the sufferings of self-denial and the remorse of self-indulgence.’[2]