[20]. See letter of the Committee of the Typographical Society to Robert Dale Owen, published in the Commercial Advertiser of the 29th of September, and copied into the Free Enquirer of the 9th of October, 1830.
For a statement of the circumstances connected with that letter, and which induced me, at this time, to write and publish the present treatise, see Preface.
[21]. I should like to hear these gentlemen explain, according to what principle they imagine the chastity of their wives to grow out of a fear of offspring; so that, if released from such fear, prostitution would follow. I can readily comprehend that the unmarried may be supposed careful to avoid that situation to which no legal cause can be assigned; but a wife must be especially dull, if she cannot assign, in all cases, a legal cause; and a husband must be especially sagacious, if he can tell whether the true cause be assigned or not. This safeguard to married chastity, therefore, to which the gentlemen of the Typographical Committee seem to look with so implicit a confidence, is a mere broken reed; and has been so, ever since the days of Bethsheba.
Yet conjugal chastity is that which is especially valued. The inconstancy of a wife commonly cuts much deeper than the dishonor of a sister. In that case, then, which the world usually considers of the highest importance, the fear of offspring imposes no check whatever. It cannot make one iota of difference whether a married woman be knowing in physiology or not; except perhaps, indeed, to the husband’s advantage; in cases where the wife’s conscience induces her at least to guard against the possibility of burthening her legal lord with the care and support of children that are not his. Constancy, where it actually exists, is the offspring of something more efficacious than ignorance. And if in the wife’s case, men must and do trust to something else, why not in all other cases, where restraint may be considered desirable? Shall men trust in the greater, and fear to trust in the less? Whatever any one may choose to assert regarding his relatives’ secret inclinations to profligacy, these arguments may convince him that if he has any safeguard at present, a perusal of Moral Physiology will not destroy it.
’Tis strange that men, by way of suborning an argument, should be willing thus to vilify their relatives’ character and motives, without first carefully examining whether any thing was gained to their cause, after all, by the vilification.
[22]. Instances innumerable might be adduced. Not one young person, for example, in twenty, is ever told, that sexual intercourse during the period of a woman’s courses is not unfrequently productive, to the woman of a species of fluor albus, and sometimes (as a consequent) to the man of symptoms very similar to those of urethritis or gonorrhœa, but more easily removed. Yet what fact more important to be communicated! And how ridiculous the mischievously prudish refinement that conceals from human beings what it most deeply concerns them to know? The following case is related by Dr. Dewees in his work on Diseases of Females: “We have known a complaint communicated to the male by intercourse with a woman labouring under Pruritis. It was very similar to that which affected the female in its general character. When this occurs with the married man, much disturbance is sometimes created from a supposition that the wife has been unfaithful, and the contrary. Indeed it has occurred in more instances than one, within our own knowledge, where the woman has thought herself the injured party; and in one case, the recrimination was mutual. In this instance, the friends of the parties assembled to determine on the terms of separation, when it was suggested, by one of those who happened to be more rational than the rest, that before they proceeded to such an extremity, their family physician should be consulted. We were accordingly sent for. After an attentive hearing of both parties, and an examination of the parts, we were satisfied that there was not the slightest ground for either to be charged with want of fidelity, and we assured the parties that this was the case, and were fortunate enough to cause all further proceedings to be suspended.”
[23]. Le premier serment que se firent deux êtres de chair, ce fut au pied d’un rocher, qui tombait en poussière; ils attestèrent de leur constance un ciel qui n’est pas un instant le même: tout passait en eux, et autour d’eux; et ils croyaient leurs cœurs affranchis de vicissitudes. O enfans! toujours enfans!
Diderot; Jacques et son maitre.
[24]. Some German poet, whose name has escaped me says,
“Tapfer ist der Lowensieger,