Part 8 (1/2)
Such wretches ought to be punished in a purgatory by themselves, made seven times hotter than for ordinary criminals. Society is full of these lecherous villains. They insinuate themselves into the drawing-rooms of the most respectable families; they are always on hand at social gatherings of every sort. They haunt the ball-room, the theater, and the church, when they can forward their infamous plans by seeming to be pious. Not infrequently they are well supplied with a stock of pious cant, which they employ on occasion to make an impression. They are the sharks of society, and often seize in their voracious maws the fairest and brightest ornaments of a community. The male flirt is a monster. Every man ought to despise him; and every woman ought to spurn him as a loathsome social leper.
Youthful Flirtations.--Flirting is not confined to young men and women.
The contagion extends to little boys and girls, whose heads ought to be as empty of all thoughts of s.e.xual relations as the vacuum of an air-pump of air. The intimate a.s.sociation of young boys and girls in our common schools, and, indeed, in the majority of educational inst.i.tutions, gives abundant opportunity for the fostering of this kind of a spirit, so prejudicial to healthful mental and moral development.
Every educator who is alive to the objects and interests of his profession knows too well the baneful influence of these premature and pernicious tendencies. Many times has the teacher watched with a sad heart the withering of all his hopes for the intellectual progress of a naturally gifted scholar by this blighting influence. The most dangerous period for boys and girls exposed to temptations of this sort is that just following p.u.b.erty, or between the ages of twelve and eighteen or twenty. This period, a prominent educator in one of our Western States once denominated, not inappropriately, ”the agonizing period of human puppyhood.” If this critical period is once safely pa.s.sed, the individual is comparatively safe; but how many fail to pa.s.s through the ordeal unseared!
The most painful phase of this subject is the tacit--even, in many cases, active--encouragement which too many parents give their children in this very direction, seemingly in utter ignorance of the enormity of the evil which they are winking at or fostering. Parents need enlightenment on this subject, and need to be aroused to the fact that it is one of the most momentous questions that can arise in the rearing and training of children.
Polygamy.--One hundred years ago the discussion of the public propriety or impropriety of a plurality of wives would have been impossible.
Polygamy had not obtained a foothold as an inst.i.tution in any civilized land. Being well known as not uncommon among certain heathenish and barbarous tribes, it was looked upon as a heathenish and debasing inst.i.tution, the outgrowth of ignorance and gross sensuality, and a relic of a sensual age. Now, this is no longer true. Even in this, the most enlightened of all lands, where there are most ample facilities for culture, for moral and mental development, polygamy holds up its hideous head in defiance of all the laws of G.o.d and man. It is true that the perpetrators of this foul crime against humanity and Heaven have been driven by the indignation of outraged decency to seek a lurking place in the far-off wilderness of the Western territories; yet the foul odors from this festering sore are daily becoming more and more putrescent, and in spite of the distance, are contaminating the already not overstrict morals of the nation.
No better evidence of the blighting, searing effect of this gross social crime could be found than the fact that not only is polygamy coming to be winked at as something not so very bad after all, but men from whom we have a right to expect something better are coming forward in its defense.
We have just been perusing a work written for the express purpose of justifying and advocating polygamy, which was written by an evangelical clergyman. He was evidently not willing to own his work, however, since his name is carefully excluded from the t.i.tle-page, and his publisher put under an oath of secrecy. The arguments which he makes in favor of polygamy are chiefly the following:--
1. That it is approved by the Bible.
2. That a robust man requires more than one woman to satisfy his s.e.xual demands.
3. That there are more women than men; and since every woman has a right to have a husband, the only way all can be supplied is to allow several women, two or more, according to the capacity of the man, or as they can agree, to form a marriage partners.h.i.+p with one man.
4. That the great men of all ages have been polygamists in fact, if not by open profession.
5. That monogamy is a relic of the paganism of the ancient Greeks and Romans, with whom it originated.
6. That it is the only proper and effective cure for the ”social evil,”
and all its attendant vices and dire diseases.
As this work has had quite a circulation, bearing the imprint of a well-known Boston publisher, and has not received any answer that we are aware of, we deem it worth while to give these arguments, which are very strongly presented, at least a brief pa.s.sing notice. We will consider them in the order in which we have stated them.
1. We deny most emphatically the a.s.sertion that polygamy is either taught or approved by the Bible. It was tolerated in a people who had long been in the darkness of Egyptian bondage, but never approved.
Indeed, the inspired writers have evidently taken pains to give numerous examples of the evils growing out of that violation of the law of G.o.d and Nature.
2. The second argument is based upon the a.s.serted fact that man naturally possesses stronger s.e.xual demands than woman; that these demands are imperative; and that it is not only impossible, but in the highest degree injurious, to restrain them.
While it is true as a fact affirmed by constant observation that men have stronger pa.s.sions than women, in general, and that many men demand of their wives a degree of s.e.xual indulgence which is the cause of serious injury to them, and even impossible for them to grant without doing themselves the greatest wrong, it is by no means proven either that these demands are imperative, that they are natural, or that they are not injurious to the man as well as the woman, much less beneficial to either. On the contrary, there is as great a weight of evidence as could be required that restraint, self-control, and moderation in the exercise of the s.e.xual instinct is in the highest degree beneficial to man, as well as to woman, and necessary for his highest development.
3. While it is true that there are a few more adult women than men, the difference is not sufficiently great to require the introduction of polygamy as a remedy for enforced celibacy. At any rate this would be unnecessary until all bachelors had been provided with wives, when there would be found no necessity for further provision, since there are large numbers of women who are utterly unfit to marry, who would be injured by so doing, and would only serve to degenerate the race, besides making themselves more wretched than they already are.
Again, it is a well-known fact that more males than females are born, the preponderance of adult females being caused by a greater mortality among male children, together with the losses from accidents and war.
By a correct observance of the laws of health, together with the abolition of wars, the disparity in relative numbers of the s.e.xes would disappear. Indeed, it might happen that men would be in the preponderance.
Still again, it is only in a few very populous and long-settled communities that there are more women than men, as in the States of Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, and a few others of the Eastern States, and a few countries of Europe. In all newly settled countries the reverse is true. The inquiry naturally arises, What shall be done under these circ.u.mstances? Shall a woman be allowed more than one husband, as is actually the case in some countries? ”Oh! no;” our polygamist replies, ”A woman is not capable of loving more than one man, and is not even able to satisfy the s.e.xual demands of a single husband; so, of course, a plurality of husbands is out of the question. A man is capable of loving any number of women, being differently const.i.tuted from a woman; and so the same rule does not apply.”
The writer evidently confounds love with l.u.s.t. He will grant unstinted reign to the l.u.s.ts of man, but requires woman to be restrained, offering as an apology for such a manifest unfair and unphilosophical discrimination that ”man is differently const.i.tuted from a woman, s.e.xually, requiring more active exercise of the s.e.xual functions,” a conclusion which could be warranted only by the selection, as a typical specimen of the male part of humanity, of a man with an abnormal development of the animal propensities.
A correct understanding and application of the laws of s.e.xual hygiene would effectually sweep away every vestige of argument based on this foundation.
4. In proof of the propriety of polygamy, as well as of its necessity, the author referred to cites the well-known fact that Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Burns, Byron, Augustus, Webster, and numerous others of the noted men of all ages have been incontinent men. The fact that these men were guilty of crime does not in the least degree detract from the enormity of the sin. It is equally true that many great men have been addicted to intemperance and other crimes.
Alexander was a Sodomite as well as a lecherous rake. Does this fact afford any proof that those crimes are virtues instead of vices? Such argument is hardly worthy of serious refutal, since it stultifies itself.
5. The fact that monogamy was practiced among the ancient Greeks and Romans is in no way derogatory of it as an inst.i.tution. Even if it could be shown that it originated with those nations, still this would in no way detract from its value or respectability. Do not we owe much to those grand old pagans who laid the foundation for nearly all the modern sciences, and established better systems of political economy, and better schools for uniform culture of the whole individual, than any the world has seen since? But monogamy did not originate with the Greeks, neither was it invented by the Romans, nor by any other nation.
It originated with the great Originator of the human race. It is an inst.i.tution which has come down to us, not from Greece or Rome, but from Paradise.