[12] Loc. cit., p. 46.
II.—Marriage as a Sanitary Measure.
Having now shown that while it is natural for young men to be impelled towards women by an instinctive yearning, this is not unfrequently prematurely excited, I proceed briefly to call attention to its evil effects, in many instances, both upon the individual and upon society. I cannot do better, in commencing my remarks upon this subject, than to quote a few words from Dr. Ware. “Unhappily for the young, a just and elevated view of the relation of man to woman is forestalled by impressions of a totally different sort, early made and deeply rooted. Among the first lessons which boys learn of their fellows are impurities of language, and these are soon followed by impurities of thought. Foul words are in use among them before they can actually comprehend their origin, or attach to them any definite meaning.
“Most men who, when young, have been in the habit of unreserved communication with others of their own sex, will recognize the truth of this statement. Happy is he who can look back upon no such recollections; happy is he, the surface of whose mind does not bear upon it, through life, stains which were impressed thereon by the corrupt associations and the corrupt habits of youth; happy indeed is he if the evil have not eaten into the soul itself, and left behind it such marks of its corrosion as neither time nor even repentance can ever obliterate. When this is the training of boyhood, it is not strange that the predominating ideas among young men, in relation to the other sex, are too often those of impurity and sensuality. Nor is this evil confined to large cities, though it there manifests itself more distinctly in open and undisguised licentiousness, and in the illicit commerce of the sexes. It equally exists in the most secluded villages in the corruption of the thoughts and language, and in modes of indulgence, which, if less obvious and remarked, are not, therefore, the less dangerous to moral purity.
“We cannot be surprised, then, that the history of most young men is, that they yield to temptation in a greater or less degree and in different ways. With many, no doubt, the indulgence is transient, accidental, and does not become habitual. It does not get to be regarded as venial. It is never yielded to without remorse. The wish and the purpose is to resist, but the animal nature bears down the moral; still transgression is always followed by grief and repentance. With too many, however, it is to be feared, it is not so. The mind has become debauched by the dwelling of the imagination on licentious images, and by indulgence in licentious conversation. There is no wish to resist. They are not overtaken by temptation, for they seek it. With them the transgression becomes habitual, and the stain on the character is deep and lasting. The prevailing sentiment of the mind, the prevailing tendency of the will, is to sensual vices; and there are no vices which so deeply contaminate the soul of man, so degrade, so brutalize it, as these. The degree of debasement has in some men, even in some communities, reached so low as to suggest modes of indulging this appetite from which the common sensualist shrinks with horror, and which cannot be even named without loathing.”[13]
These statements must be acknowledged by every honest man to be true, and it is therefore needless to adduce probatory evidence. Viewing the matter, as I do, from a professional standpoint, it becomes necessary for me to discuss methods of preventing habits as shameful as they are injurious to physical and mental and moral health, and sorrows that are but too often irremediable. Foremost among these methods,—I shall speak of it more particularly as a sanitary measure,—will be found Marriage.
In thus summarily, perhaps even roughly, referring to the most important of all human relations, I shall, I doubt not, again shock certain sensitive minds. In these delicate matters, however, it is best to be frank and plain. At one time of his life or another, every man, selfish or generous-hearted as he may be, delicate or brutal his nature, looks forward to marriage: not as a spiritual blending of two souls in one merely, not as a self-sacrificing means of making some woman supremely happy, nor in fulfilment of a supposed duty to leave children behind him, the latter being very generally considered too old-fashioned doctrine for these days, but as the means of gratifying certain instinctive, and therefore natural, although so often condemned as carnal, bodily desires, and thereby, as many will not hesitate to acknowledge, was their own purpose in marrying, of keeping himself in the better physical health. I would not be thought to believe that such selfish motives, low ones they may very properly be called, actuate the majority of mankind. Many are governed by sordid considerations, others by platonic, and still others by very romance. Through almost every marriage, however, there runs this thread of instinct, more or less strongly marked, more or less distinctly recognized, at times indeed deliberately woven in, and according as one or the other of these conditions obtains, so is it generally that the after and relative life of the parties is decided.
Let us grant, to save time, what I have already assumed, that it is natural for man to long for woman, and thus yearning, to seek her; and that, constituted as they both are, the one reciprocally for the other, not for the world’s purposes of population alone, but for imparting to and receiving from each other the most exquisite of physical sensations, it was intended by the Creator that, like every other function, those pertaining to this most intimate acquaintance should also occasionally be allowed gratification. The question now confronts us, How is this possible? How can men lead manly lives, fulfilling all the purposes for which they were constructed and for which they were born, and yet avoid infringing upon the rights or the happiness of others?
To this question a variety of answers have been given. Of late years, many have advocated the so-called doctrine of Free-love, in accordance with which, by some alleged process of elective affinity, every positive would seek its negative, every male its female, and this whether or no each of the parties were already legally the property of some other person. Subversive as such views, if allowed, would prove of all domestic unions, and therefore of the peace of society, their interested advocates have found many proselytes. Many more still carry into constant practice what they would be ashamed, or would not dare openly to acknowledge.
The views now referred to are as repulsive to the best sense of mankind as are those by which Mormonism is supported. In the one instance, a man professes to satisfy himself with one mistress, though he may possibly be conducting amours, at the same time, secretly, with a dozen; in the other, he openly surrounds himself with concubines, much as in the Eastern seraglio, save that with the Latter Day Saints, the comparatively better education and intelligence of the women, however deficient these may practically be, render it advisable to invest the sealing with a semblance of religious authority, at once to prevent rapine by other men and quarrels among the women, however impossible this last may be to accomplish. In both cases, the Mormon and the amative socialist take to themselves a lion’s share; like some of the carnivora, who seem to kill for the mere pleasure of destruction, or who slake their thirst by a mere draught of their victim’s blood and then discard the disfigured carcass, so useless to them, these men play with their toys for a while and then throw them aside, heart-broken, dishonored. So nearly are the sexes balanced in number, nominally, that were it not for disturbances of the equipoise by emigration, the prevention of pregnancy, its criminal subversion and the like, by the time men and women have reached a suitable age they would stand very nearly one woman to one man. At birth, in almost every country, the males very slightly predominate, being usually some five or six in excess to each hundred children born living. There are greater dangers to the infant in male than in female births, the boy averaging a little the larger, and therefore its body, and more particularly its brain, being subjected to a greater and more prolonged pressure. Thus it is that more boys than girls are born dead, and that more boys than girls die during infancy and early childhood, their nervous system not having entirely recovered from the comparatively greater shock to which it had been exposed. If then but one woman actually belongs to each man in a properly balanced community, what right has he to a second or more?