Part 59 (1/2)

The drain is universal, but the more sensitive organs and tissues suffer most. So the nervous system gives way and continues the princ.i.p.al sufferer throughout. A large part of the premature loss of sight and hearing, dizziness, numbness and p.r.i.c.king in the hands and feet, and other kindred developments, are justly chargeable to unbridled venery. Not unfrequently you see men whose head or back or nerve testifies of such reckless expenditure.”

11. NON-COMPLETED INTERCOURSE.--Withdrawal before the emission occurs is injurious to both parties. The soiling of the conjugal bed by the shameful manoeuvres is to be deplored.

12. THE EXTENT OF THE PRACTICE.--One cannot tell to what extent this vice is practiced, except by observing its consequences, even among people who fear to commit the slightest sin, to such a degree is the public conscience perverted upon this point. Still, many husbands know that nature often renders nugatory the most subtle calculations, and reconquers the rights which they have striven to frustrate. No matter; they persevere none the less, and by the force of habit they poison the most blissful moments of life, with no surety of averting the result that they fear. So who knows if the too often feeble and weakened infants are not the fruit of these in themselves incomplete procreations, and disturbed by preoccupations foreign to the natural act.

13. HEALTH OF WOMEN.--Furthermore, the moral relations existing between the married couple undergo unfortunate changes; this affection, founded upon reciprocal esteem, is little by little effaced by the repet.i.tion of an act which pollutes the marriage bed. If the good harmony of families and the reciprocal relations are seriously menaced by the invasion of these detestable practices, the health of women, as we have already intimated, is fearfully injured.

14. CROWNING SIN OF THE AGE.--Then there is the crime of abortion which is so prevalent in these days. It is the crowning sin of the age, though in a broader sense it includes all those sins that are committed to limit the size of the family. ”It lies at the root of our spiritual life,” says Rev. B.D. Sinclair, ”and though secret in its nature, paralyzes Christian life and neutralizes every effort for righteousness which the church puts forth.”

15. s.e.xUAL EXHAUSTION.--Every s.e.xual excitement is exhaustive in proportion to its intensity and continuance. If a man sits by the side of a woman, fondles and kisses her three or four hours, and allows his imagination to run riot with s.e.xual visions, he will be five times as much exhausted as he would by the act culminating in emission. It is the s.e.xual excitement more than the emission which exhausts. As shown in another part of this work, thoughts of s.e.xual intimacies, long continued, lead to the worst effects. To a man, whose imagination is filled with erotic fancies the emission comes as a merciful interruption to the burning, hara.s.sing and wearing excitement which so constantly goads him.

16. THE DESIRE OF GOOD.--The desire of good for its own sake--this is Love. The desire of good for bodily pleasure--this is l.u.s.t. Man is a moral being, and as such should always act in the animal sphere according to the spiritual law. Hence, to break the law of the highest creative action for the mere gratification of animal instinct is to perform the act of sin and to produce the corruption of nature.

17. CAUSE OF PROSt.i.tUTION.--Dr. Dio Lewis says: ”Occasionally we meet a diseased female with excessive animal pa.s.sion, but such a case is very rare. The average woman has so little s.e.xual desire that if licentiousness depended upon her, uninfluenced by her desire to please man or secure his support, there would be very little s.e.xual excess.

Man is strong he has all the money and all the facilities for business and pleasure; and woman is not long in learning the road to his favor.

Many prost.i.tutes who take no pleasure in their unclean intimacies not only endure a disgusting life for the favor and means thus gained, but affect intense pa.s.sion in their s.e.xual contacts because they have learned that such exhibitions gratify men.”

18. HUSBAND'S BRUTALITY.--Husbands! It is your licentiousness that drives your wives to a deed so abhorrent to their every wifely, womanly and maternal instinct a deed which ruins the health of their bodies, prost.i.tutes their souls, and makes marriage, maternity and womanhood itself degrading and loathsome. No terms can sufficiently characterize the cruelty, meanness and disgusting selfishness of your conduct when you impose on them a maternity so detested as to drive them to the desperation of killing their unborn children and often themselves.

19. WHAT DRUNKARDS BEQUEATH TO THEIR OFFSPRING.--Organic imperfections unfit the brain for sane action, and habit confirms the insane condition; the man's brain has become unsound. Then comes in the law of hereditary descent, by which the brain of a man's children is fas.h.i.+oned after his own not as it was originally, but as it has become, in consequence of frequent functional disturbance. Hence, of all appet.i.tes, the inherited appet.i.te for drunkenness is the most direful. Natural laws contemplate no exceptions, and sins against them are never pardoned.

20. THE REPORTS OF HOSPITALS.--The reports of hospitals for lunatics almost universally a.s.sign intemperance as one of the causes which predispose a man's offspring to insanity. This is even more strikingly manifested in the case of congenital idiocy. They come generally from a cla.s.s of families which seem to have degenerated physically to a low degree. They are puny and sickly.

21. SECRET DISEASES.--See the weakly, sickly and diseased children who are born only to suffer and die, all because of the private disease of the father before his marriage. Oh, let the truth be told that the young men of our land may learn the lessons of purity of life. Let them learn that in morality there is perfect protection and happiness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GETTING A DIVORCE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DEGENERATE TURK.]

PHYSICAL AND MORAL DEGENERACY.

1. MORAL PRINCIPLE.--”Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Byron, and Robert Burns,”

says Dr. Geo. F. Hall, ”were men of marvelous strength intellectually.

But measured by the true rule of high moral principle, they were very weak. Superior endowment in a single direction--physical, mental, or spiritual--is not of itself sufficient to make one strong in all that that heroic word means.

2. INSANE ASYLUM.--many a good man spiritually has gone to an untimely grave because of impaired physical powers. Many a good man spiritually has gone to the insane asylum because of bodily and mental weaknesses.

Many a good man spiritually has fallen from virtue in an evil moment because of a weakened will, or a too demanding fleshly pa.s.sion, or, worse than either, too lax views on the subject of personal chast.i.ty.”

3. BOYS LEARNING VICES.--some ignorant and timid people argue that boys and young men in reading a work of this character will learn vices concerning which they had never so much as dreamed of before.

This is, however, certain, that vices cannot be condemned unless they are mentioned; and if the condemnation is strong enough it surely will be a source of strength and of security. If light and education, on these important subjects, does injury, then all knowledge likewise must do more wrong than good. Knowledge is power, and the only hope of the race is enlightenment on all subjects pertaining to their being.

4. MORAL MANHOOD.--it is clearly visible that the American manhood is rotting down--decaying at the center. The present generation shows many men of a small body and weak principles, and men and women of this kind are becoming more and more prevalent. Dissipation and indiscretions of all kind are working ruin. Purity of life and temperate habits are being too generally disregarded.

5. YOUNG WOMEN.--the vast majority of graduates from the schools and colleges of our land to-day, and two-thirds of the members.h.i.+p of our churches, and three-fourths of the charitable workers, are females.