What a Young Husband Ought to Know

by Sylvanus Stall

In harmony with what we have been considering in this chapter, it is eminently proper to discuss briefly the reciprocal sexual tempers and tendencies of married men and women. While the discussion of the various modifications of these differences does not belong to this chapter, yet the recognition of the fact itself and a noting of the beneficial, reactionary and reciprocal effects are pre-eminently in place just at this point.

The active nature of the sperm of the male and the passivity which distinguishes the ovum of the female characterize the two sexes from the beginning to the end of their existence. The greater activity of the sperm, the quickened pulse of the male child at birth, the more restless nature of the boy-baby, his running, climbing, active life throughout childhood and adolescence—these traits characterize not only his boyhood, his days of developing manhood, but his marital relations as well.

With rare exceptions, both of person and of instances, in married life all the sexual aggressiveness is with the male. Wives seldom seek the closer embraces of their husbands. They are generally indifferent; often absolutely averse. With the husband, while in perfect health, the conditions are quite the opposite; and the wisdom of the Creator is manifest in the fact that were the wife equally quickened by the same amative tendencies, the male nature would be called into such frequent and continuous exercise that the power of reproduction would be either totally destroyed or so impaired that the race would degenerate into moral, intellectual and physical pigmies. God has made the passivity of the wife the protection of her husband and a source of manifold blessing to their children.

Upon the other hand, her uninterrupted and entire neglect of the sexual relation is wisely overcome, to the advantage of the wife, by her husband's greater sexual activity, while at the same time her restraining passiveness is made his safeguard and security. Each brings into the married relation inclinations and propensities which are to modify the other, to the mutual benefit of both.

If husbands and wives only knew and adequately realized these facts, and harmonized their thought and conduct toward each other accordingly, much of the discord, estrangement and consequent unhappiness in married life would be eliminated and disappear. When both alike recognize these differences and the Wisdom which has made them to differ, and when each is willing to accept the modifying influence of the other in the manner in which God has intended, the discord and misery which blight thousands of lives and destroy such multitudes of homes will give place to a benediction and blessing which will restore to earth a larger measure of the happiness of Eden.

But before closing this chapter upon the complemental differences between the two sexes, it will be interesting to observe some remarkable similarities in the reproductive organs themselves, and to note how, in that infinite wisdom which is marvelous in our eyes, God has so modified their form and office that the external organs of reproduction in man become the internal and seemingly different organs of reproduction in woman.

To understand the full significance of what we have briefly to say upon this subject it will be well to recall the fact that in man and animals even those physical characteristics which may be regarded as strictly feminine are present in a rudimentary form in the male, and vice versa. Let a single instance suffice. The paps and breasts of the male are but the diminutive and dormant breasts and nipples of the female; and this is true not only with man, but with the lower animals.

The male not only simulates but really possesses in rudimentary form all the parts and powers which characterize the fuller development in the opposite sex.

That this is true is demonstrated by the cases of abnormal sexual development which at long intervals are born in different lands, and by the occasional instances in heathen countries where old men, after prolonged stimulation of the breasts, are made effectively to serve as nurses for infants.

As the pelvic bone in man and woman is modified by the various changes of form which adapt it to the different necessities of each sex, so in a large measure are the reproductive organs, primarily, the same in men and women.