PREFACE.
While I was composing in Latin the Original of this small Production, I was sensible of its defects, and, in the Preface to it, made my apology for them. But, after the Performance appeared in print, they struck me much more forcibly; and when I came to examine the French translation of it, which I had been desired to revise, I judged them intolerable.
Besides a number of new observations necessarily to be added, there were faults to be remedied, in the method, and some articles which, being no more than the first outline, insufficient to convey what I had to say, required a fuller extent to be given them.
So many corrections rendered the Work almost a new one, and made it considerably longer. The difficulty of carrying on this undertaking in a living language, and all the disagreeable circumstances that must cleave to it, did not escape me. Nothing could have determined me to engage in it, but the prospect of the utility to mankind of such an undertaking well executed, which is, however, what I dare not boast of. It is only my intention that I can warrant. The crimes of one’s fellow creatures afford but a melancholic object to concern one’s self with: the consideration of them can only afflict and mortify one: a sentiment ballanced by no pleasure but that of hoping to contribute to the diminution of their frequency, and to alleviate the sufferings which are the consequences of them.
But what has given me much more trouble, in this Work, than if I had written it in Latin, is the embarrassment of expressing images, of which the terms and descriptions are declared indecent by use. A dispensation, however, from a due attention to these scruples would have been very disagreeable to my own disposition, with which I could never have reconciled any labor at the expence of what I pride myself on, a due regard for the laws of decency. Yet to this duty it is that are owing the great difficulties that stopped me at every step. I dare aver, then, that I have neglected no precaution for giving to this Work all the modesty in the expressions that the subject would admit. There are, indeed, certain objectionable images inseparable from this matter; but how could I avoid them? Was it fit for me, on such important objects, to keep silence? Doubtless not. The sacred Authors, the Fathers of the Church, who almost all wrote in living languages; the Theological Writers, have not thought themselves obliged to pass over in silence the crimes of obscenity, because they could not be pointed out without naming them, without words, in short. I judged myself authorised to follow their example, and I dare say, with St. Augustin, “If what I have written scandalizes any vitious persons, let them rather blame their own turpitude than the words which I have been obliged to make use of, for explaining my thoughts on the act of generation in mankind. I hope that the truly modest and virtuous reader will easily forgive the expressions which I have been forced to employ.” I will add to what this great Divine says, that I hope to merit the grateful acknowledgment and approbation of the moral and the sensible, who know the general proneness of the world to wicked practices, and who will approve, if not my success, at least the intention of my undertaking.
I have not in this, no more than in my first edition, touched upon the moral part, and that for Horace’s reason,
——Quod medicorum est
Promittunt Medici——
I have proposed to myself to write on the diseases produced by self-pollution, and not on the crime of self-pollution, considered as a crime; is it not proof enough of its being one, the demonstrating that it is an act of self-murther? Whoever knows mankind, will not be difficultly persuaded, that it is easier to give them an aversion against a vice, by the fear of a present evil, than by reasons founded on principles, of which there is not care enough taken to inculcate to them all the truth and solidity. I have applied to myself what an author, whose name will pass to the remotest posterity, as an honor to the age in which he lived, makes a Clergyman say: “We are put upon undertaking to prove the utility of prayer, to a man who does not believe there is a God; and the necessity of fasting, to one who has, all his life, denied the immortality of the soul: such an attempt is rather difficult, and the laugh is not on our side[1].” Marphurius doubted of every thing till Sganarelle broke his bones; and then Marphurius believed.