Part 63 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: INNOCENT YOUTH.]

The Dangerous Vices.

Few persons are aware of the extent to which masturbation or self-pollution is practiced by the young of both s.e.xes in civilized society.

SYMPTOMS.

The hollow, sunken eye, the blanched cheek, the withered hands, and emaciated frame, and the listless life, have other sources than the ordinary illnesses of all large communities.

When a child, after having given proofs of memory and intelligence, experiences daily more and more difficulty in retaining and understanding what is taught him, it is not only from unwillingness and idleness, as is commonly supposed, but from a disease eating out life itself, brought on by a self-abuse of the private organs.

Besides the slow and progressive derangement of his or her health, the diminished energy of application, the languid movement, the stooping gait, the desertion of social games, the solitary walk, late rising, livid and sunken eye, and many other symptoms, will fix the attention of every intelligent and competent guardian of youth that something is wrong.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GUARD WELL THE CRADLE. EDUCATION CANNOT BEGIN TOO YOUNG.]

MARRIED PEOPLE.

Nor are many persons sufficiently aware of the ruinous extent to which the amative propensity is indulged by married persons. The matrimonial ceremony does, indeed, sanctify the act of s.e.xual intercourse, but it can by no means atone for nor obviate the consequences of its abuse.

Excessive indulgence in the married relation is, perhaps, as much owing to the force of habit, as to the force of the s.e.xual appet.i.te.

EXTREME YOUTH.

More lamentable still is the effect of inordinate s.e.xual excitement of the young and unmarried. It is not very uncommon to find a confirmed onanist, or, rather, masturbator, who has not yet arrived at the period of p.u.b.erty. Many cases are related in which young boys and girls, from eight to ten years of age, were taught the method of self-pollution by their older playmates, and had made serious encroachments on the fund of const.i.tutional vitality even before any considerable degree of s.e.xual appet.i.te was developed.

FORCE OF HABIT.

Here, again, the fault was not in the power of pa.s.sion, but in the force of habit. Parents and guardians of youth can not be too mindful of the character and habits of those with whom they allow young persons and children under their charge to a.s.sociate intimately, and especially careful should they be with whom they allow them to sleep.

SIN OF IGNORANCE.

It is customary to designate self-pollution as among the ”vices.” I think misfortune is the more appropriate term. It is true, that in the physiological sense, it is one of the very worst ”transgressions of the law.” But in the moral sense it is generally the sin of ignorance in the commencement, and in the end the pa.s.sive submission to a morbid and almost resistless impulse.

QUACKS.

The time has come when the rising generation must be thoroughly instructed in this matter. That quack specific ”ignorance” has been experimented with quite too long already. The true method of insuring all persons, young or old, against the abuses of any part, organ, function, or faculty of the wondrous machinery of life, is to teach them its use. ”Train a child in the way it should go” or be sure it will, amid the ten thousand surrounding temptations, find out a way in which it should not go. Keeping a child in ignorant innocence is, I aver, no part of the ”training” which has been taught by a wiser than Solomon. Boys and girls do know, will know, and must know, that between them are important anatomical differences and interesting physiological relations. Teach them, I repeat, their use, or expect their abuse. Hardly a young person in the world would ever become addicted to self-pollution if he or she understood clearly the consequences; if he or she knew at the outset that the practice was directly destroying the bodily stamina, vitiating the moral tone, and enfeebling the intellect. No one would pursue the disgusting habit if he or she was fully aware that it was blasting all prospects of health and happiness in the approaching period of manhood and womanhood.

GENERAL SYMPTOMS OF THE SECRET HABIT.

The effects of either self-pollution or excessive s.e.xual indulgence, appear in many forms. It would seem as if G.o.d had written an instinctive law of remonstrance, in the innate moral sense, against this filthy vice.

All who give themselves up to the excesses of this debasing indulgence, carry about with them, continually, a consciousness of their defilement, and cherish a secret suspicion that others look upon them as debased beings. They feel none of that manly confidence and gallant spirit, and chaste delight in the presence of virtuous females, which stimulate young men to pursue the course of enn.o.bling refinement, and mature them for the social relations and enjoyments of life.

This shamefacedness, or unhappy quailing of the countenance, on meeting the look of others, often follows them through life, in some instances even after they have entirely abandoned the habit, and became married men and respectable members of society.