The effects of a mother’s anger.—While preparing this book for the printers, I am in a Missouri city, where I have become personally acquainted with the following incidents: A wife, thinking she had passed the “change of life,” was much surprised and greatly disappointed when she found she was again to become a mother. Her love for her husband turned to hate. The period of gestation was one of regret, unpleasantness and anger. From birth her child was uncontrollable. Teachers could not manage him. He was a source of danger on the playground. Neighbors would not allow their children to visit him. When he was fourteen he tried to kill his mother with a butcher knife. A year later he assaulted a visiting pastor. When he was angry he would froth at the mouth and scream as a madman.
A born criminal.—At the close of a lecture on heredity, a reliable and aged doctor told me the following incident: “When I was a young doctor, a father came for me to call to see a sick member of his family. His little girl met us at the front gate, threw her arms about her father’s legs and looked wistfully into his face. He picked her up in his arms, carried her into the room and while I looked after the patient she caressed and kissed her papa. The brother, some two years older, had found his sister’s paper dolls and was tearing off their heads with a vengeance. Looking up, he noticed the pet cat entering the room. Leaving the mutilated and scattered dolls and seizing a long splinter from the wood box, he caught the cat, and holding it to the floor with his left hand, he tried to cut the cat’s head off with the splinter. Soon the dog entered; releasing the cat, he stood by the side of the cringing dog and was trying to cut his head off. When my services were finished, the father followed me out to the front gate and asked me whether I had noticed the difference in the children. I told him I had. Then he explained that the little girl was wanted in the home and the boy was not. I lived to see that boy sentenced for a term of years in the penitentiary for a crime he had committed.” Many suicidal and homicidal tendencies are received in this way.
Lasciviousness transmissible.—No morbid conditions are so fully and generally transmitted as are the results of uncontrolled sexual desire among married people. Most children are the result of uncontrolled desire and their prenatal rights are not respected. This explains much of precocious sex awakening in childhood, the stormy period of adolescence and the fearful wreckage of virtue in youth and middle life. We have inherited from our ancestors and are transmitting sensual tendencies to our children. We can never solve the problems of social vice until the initial of childhood is intelligently planned for, prenatal rights are respected and the child given proper sex instruction.
We are slow to learn.—“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Even the wisest and best of the human family are slow to learn this truth, and were it not for the consequences of long practiced errors, we should perhaps never learn some truths. We are learning slowly that sexually exhausted fathers and mothers do not parent superior children. This is causing thousands of thinking people and conscientious parents to inquire for the truth that will bring freedom from sensual slavery.
Sexuality and sensuality.—Sexuality, or the sexual instinct, is one thing, and sensuality, or sexual perversion, is another. One is God-given and God-honored; the other is a human product resulting from bad heredity, a false education and a misuse of the sexual function. The first is to be appreciated, the second to be suppressed, and, as far as possible, eradicated.
Vitality determines results.—Man has a three-fold nature; physical, mental and moral. In this life these natures are related and dependent. The sexual instinct has its seat in the physical nature, but in its functions it is closely related to the mental and moral. Whenever the sexual life is misdirected the mental and moral natures suffer. The sexual nature produces life—physical, mental and moral. It is by restraining this life force, this psychic force, this vital energy, within the body, and learning to direct it properly, that physical health and strength are attained and maintained; that intellectual vigor and brilliancy are realized; and that our emotional nature is developed in its expressions of tender feelings, purest love, truest sympathy, and passionate interest in the welfare of our fellow men. No one can have intellectual and moral development or enjoy a high degree of intellectual and spiritual life, if the sex function is abused. Parents with strong, healthy sexual natures parent the most perfect children.
Young married people should understand sexology.—Thousands of young married people have never received any instruction from books, parents or doctors regarding correct sexual relations in the married life. Many of these have learned from sad experience that marriage does not mean unrestricted sexual liberty. Many who have sought the needed information from friends and books have been confused by conflicting opinions.
The husband and wife who desire to be anything, physically, mentally or morally, must retain in their bodies as much as possible their sexual energy. In this is found the elasticity and strength of the muscles, versatility of the mind, strength and vigor of the constitution, which lend an indefinable charm to the masculine and feminine graces.
All sorts of drugs and contrivances have been used by many married people to dodge the natural consequences of the sexual relations. Every attempt of this kind has resulted in some form of physical, mental or moral injury to those who have tried it, and it has strewn their pathway with a horde of physical weaklings and moral degenerates. All preventive and abortive methods, drugs and contrivances cannot be too severely condemned. Legitimate indulgence in the marital relation is allowable only when the act can be made a complete one; when, should conception occur, it would be a welcome result. An occasional union between husband and wife, if prompted by pure love, is not necessarily injurious or morally wrong. But when indulged in, it creates an unnatural desire and substitutes lust for love.
G. Campbell Morgan says, “Animalism has been for ages the curse of the marriage relation.” Seventy-five physicians of New York City signed the following statement: “In view of the widespread suffering from physical diseases and moral deterioration inseparable from unchaste living, the undersigned members of New York and vicinity unite in declaring it as our opinion that chastity, a pure and continent life for both sexes, is consistent with the best conditions of mental, physical and moral health.”