Especially does the principle, “prevention is the best cure,” hold

good in the anomalies of anaesthesia. In almost ninety-nine cases out

of a hundred these anomalies are contracted through the patient’s own

recklessness and fault. If the patient could be guarded against sexual

excesses, the main cause of impotence in all its ramifications would be

removed. But the necessity of avoiding certain things requires a proper

insight into the nature of these things. To be good requires a proper

knowledge of the evil. “We cannot,” says Hain Friswell (Essays on

English writers), “be good by pretending not to know evil. When women

go mad, the most innocent, the youngest, the most purely educated often

utter the most horrid and obscene language; a proof that to them evil

has been known; how acquired, how taught, it is vain to ask. What the

teacher ought to seek is, not to blot out and veil iniquity, since that

will always be visible, but to make the heart strong enough to cast out

the evil.”

To accomplish this end proper instruction in matters of sex is a

condition sine qua non. The instruction should begin before the sexual

idea has an emotional garb. When the habit of masturbation has once

been contracted, it is very hard to break it; when promiscuous life

has been tasted, all knowledge of its dangers will seldom protect the

individual from continuing such a life.[BJ]

The missionary work must, therefore, begin in the nursery. The drunkard

is not expected to embrace temperance by acquiring the knowledge of

the injurious effects of excesses in alcohol upon soul and body.

His impaired will cannot resist temptation. He must be taught to be

temperate before he becomes a drunkard. The same is the case with

the boy who has once tasted illicit venery. All the preaching will

generally be for naught. Knowledge at this time comes too late. The

young man who has gone through all the suffering of gonorrhea and

syphilis, as soon as he is cured, and sometimes even before a perfect

cure has been reached, forgets everything, under passion to resistless

impulse, and associates again with meretricious women. His practical

experience, just as the theoretical knowledge of the medical student,

is not powerful enough to keep away a man from illicit indulgence,

once he has made its acquaintance. But if the dangers are known to the

individual before he has tasted from the forbidden tree of knowledge,

he will, in most cases, avoid tasting the fruit which may contain one

of the deadliest poisons.

Hence the lessons in sex-matters must be given quite early. It is

very unfortunate that even the cultured public has not learned yet

that the young child, even the infant, shows some sex manifestation.

The general public is unwilling to be enlightened about the genetic

functions of the child. There is no need to go as far as Freud’s school

and reduce the most innocent infantile natural activities to the

emotions of sex; still it is agreed among the keenest observers that,

if infants and small children are not carefully watched and protected

against themselves, lewd servants, and ignorant mothers, autoeroticism

may be established at such an early period that the first lesson in

sex instruction will come too late. For masturbation, once it has

become a habit, will seldom be relinquished until normal sex relations

take its place, instruction or no instruction.[BK] The child must be

brought up in such a way that it will reach puberty without any kind of

contamination, either by masturbation or by prostitution.

Only upon such pure and chaste children will lectures on the dangers

of sex irregularities have any influence. The reason why the medical

student with all his supposed knowledge of sex is not different from

any other young man, is that he acquired his knowledge too late to be

of any value. If he had begun his studies on the pathology of syphilis

and gonorrhoea and had known the dangers of the venereal scourge before

he ever had a taste of sex, it is very likely that with the knowledge

of the danger lurking, not only to himself but also to those dearest

to a man’s heart, his future wife and children, he would abstain from

the association with meretricious venery. But when the medical student

began to gain the knowledge of sex,[BL] it was too late for him to

resist. Like the habitual drunkard, he had lost the power of resistance.

_Education of infants._—The teaching of matters sexual must hence begin

very early in life. Cases are known where masturbation was started

before the first year of the child’s life had passed. The child has the

impulse to touch and pull everything within its reach. Hence the infant

will also try to play with its genitals. A phimosis or an inflammation

of the prepuce, in the boy, and in the girl uncleanliness in the vulva

or pin-worms in the rectum, may cause itching in the genital parts and

induce the child to touching and rubbing these parts. The manipulations

may cause an agreeable tickling sensation and may awaken a feeling of

lust. The feeling operates then in the memory and excites to a taste

of sexual activity before sexual consciousness has had time to be

naturally awakened through the growth of the sex-centres.

Sometimes servants, either to quiet the child or out of lust and

ignorance, tickle the child’s genital organs or gently slap the gluteal

region and thus awaken a lustful feeling.

The natural curiosity of children often leads them to an examination

and finally to a titillation of their genital organs, even without the

aid of any vicious instruction.

It is, therefore, the duty of parents to prevent their infants from

becoming masturbators. They must see to it that the child does not

manipulate with its genitals. The little hand ought not to touch any

part below the waist-line.

It should be the nursery-rule not to touch the child’s genital organs

and not to handle the buttocks in any unnecessary way. Children should

not be allowed to sleep in the same room with their nurses or in the

same bed with other children. The child should acquire the habit of

sleeping on the side, not on the back. The bed should be firm, not soft

and yielding. The covers must be light.

The health of the genital organs must be cared for, and in case of

deviation from the normal, medical aid must be summoned. A long, tight

prepuce, eczema of the genitals, accumulations of filth and sebaceous

matter around the glans of the penis or of the clitoris, retention of

urine beyond the proper time, pin-worms in the rectum, hemorrhoids,

fissures of the anus, all lead to rubbing, pressing and handling of the

genitals.

When the children are old enough to understand, they must be taught

never to handle their genitals, the same as they are warned not to poke

the fingers into their noses, ears, or eyes. The child must be taught

to lie straight in bed, with the hands never under the cover, must be

taught to rise, urinate and dress soon after awakening.

The child must be accustomed to the sight of the nude, in art and

nature. It will thus become immune against prurient impressions in the

presence of the nude later in life.[BM]

_Children from four to seven years._—At the period of four to seven

years of age, the child’s curiosity about the origin of man is

awakened. When he approaches his parents with the question, “Whence do

babies come from?” he must not be put off with stork-stories and false

ideas, or met with evasive answers. The mother should explain to the

child that the baby grows from a seed implanted in the mother’s body,

just as the flower grows from a seed sown in the mother Earth.

After the child has been told of his origin he should be admonished not

to talk of these intimate subjects with others. He should be warned

against allowing any one, little friends or adults, nurse or teacher,

to touch or play with any part of his body. If an attempt be made by

any one, no matter who it is, be it a little friend, brother, sister,

etc., to touch his body, the child must be taught to report the fact

immediately to his parents.

_Children from seven to ten years._—At the period of seven to ten

years of age, the child ought to receive its first real sex-lesson

by teaching him the anatomy of the sexual organs of the plant. The

child is told about the cell being the basis of all organic life. The

different modes of reproduction is explained to him. Then we go over

to the study of phanerogamous plants and show him that the flower,

the most beautiful part of the plant, is nothing else but the genitals

of the plant. We then analyze every part of the flower, the male and

the female principles. In this way the child will become accustomed to

hear, without apprehension or any thought of impropriety, terms like

male and female germ-cells, ovum, ovary, etc., terms which are now

considered to be unspeakable, save behind closed doors and then only

with low breath.

_Children from ten to thirteen years._—At the next period from ten to

thirteen years of age, we may begin to explain the sex-phenomena in the

animal kingdom. It is best to follow the pedigree of the living beings

from the lowest, the unicellular animals, to the highest, the mammals.

The teacher could even describe to the children the complicated

indirect cell division, called “Mitosis,” in order to impress upon

their minds the great importance which the creative power of the

universe attributes to the correct halving of the nuclear substance of

the cell.

The child should then get better acquainted with the different modes

of reproduction, the binary fission, the budding, the sporulation,

the conjugation and the different kinds of the latter. The child may

now learn to know the difference between the hermaphroditic animals

and sex-animals, between sperm-cells and egg-cells. It may learn what

is meant by metamorphosis, by external and internal fertilization, by

ovulation and impregnation.

_Period of puberty._—When the child has reached the period of

puberty, it should learn something about the wonderful phenomenon of

menstruation, which by nature is sure to come to every normal female,

so that the young girl should not be surprised and frightened by its

onset and the boy should not make jokes over it.[BN]

The young girl must be told that nature has reserved this catamenial

week for the process of ovulation and for the development and

perfection of the reproductive system. All the pelvic organs are in a

condition of increased nervous irritability and in a natural healthy

state of congestion. The attention of the girl must be called upon the

participation of the breasts in the genital congestion. They become

extended and more sensitive.

With the irritability of the genital nerves the entire nervous

system becomes impressionate. Especially at puberty, when the first

menstruations set in, the nervous susceptibility is increased to the

highest degree. The child enters the period of storm and stress.

During puberty, says Kiernan, there is normally a struggle between the

cerebral and the reproductive systems. The latter tends to obtrude

subconscious states upon consciousness. Quite a few of the young boys

and girls harbor in their hearts the so-called “Weltschmerz,” which

may be defined as the subconscious conviction of the emptiness and

worthlessness of existence.

Hence the functions of menstruation should be very carefully and

minutely explained to the girl and the responsibility of the womanly

organism impressed upon her mind, as soon as the mental symptoms herald

the approaching change from child to maidenhood. Indefinable yearnings

and moods, wishes and fears, the emotions of shame and guilt, of faith

and hope, of love and hate, of vanity and repentance, of sensitiveness

and ambition, assume a certain domination over the growing child.

Sweet inexpressible emotions disturb the thoughts and actions of the

awakening consciousness. Mysterious sensations and impulses fill the

heart of the ripening individual. The bodings of desires and cravings

take possession of the individual’s thoughts and fancy.

Other symptoms which appear at the time of the onset of the catamenial

period are headaches, restlessness, excitability, irritability of

temper and a general hysterical condition. The girl is carried away

more easily than at any other time. She often cries without any cause.

A certain lassitude seizes her. She has pain and feels heat in the back

and breasts, loins and in the internal organs. The appetite is often

diminished and capricious, at this period, just as it is not seldom

observed at the beginning of pregnancy. The girl is not seldom attacked

by sickness and giddiness. If she then goes to bed and remains in a

recumbent position, the blood accumulates in the vagina and coagulates

there before it leaves the system. This coagula frightens the child.

Hence at the approach of menstruation it is the duty of parents and

teachers to assist the girl with their advice. The regular regimen at

the time of menstruation must be, first of all, more rest and little

physical exercise. Standing too much, dancing, swimming, horseback

riding, cycling, out-door games, must all be forbidden. The girl needs

more sleep at that time. She must avoid excitement. She must guard

herself against the exposure to draughts, chills or to getting wet

feet. Cold baths must be omitted, but she ought to take regularly her

warm baths. Especially should the genital organs be frequently washed

with warm water. Tight clothing is particularly injurious at that time.

_Pollutions._—The boy needs a different lesson at this period. He

has to be told that, at the time of maturity, the testicles begin to

produce or secrete spermatozoa which fill the seminal vesicles about

once or twice a month. Here the sperm is, as a rule, reabsorbed when

no external pressure, such as from the filled bladder or rectum, is

exerted upon the vesicles. In the daytime the bladder and rectum are

regularly emptied, and the pressure from this side is at a minimum.

During the secretion of the spermatozoa the nerve apparatus of

the genital system is charged with vital energy. When the tension

becomes very high, which coincides with the filling of the vesicles

with sperma, the nervous tension and the physical pressure are both

eager to discharge, respectively, to evacuate. When the bladder and

rectum are filled during the night, their pressure upon the seminal

vesicles becomes so great that the latter evacuate and thus cause an

ejaculation and a change both in blood and nerve-supply. This relief

from the physiological congestion and nervous tension gives a feeling

of satisfaction and pleasure. The boy is awakened and is conscious of

what has happened.[BO]

Boys, therefore, must be taught that these pollutions, if they happen

only once to three times a month, are entirely normal and have

absolutely no pathological significance whatsoever. The appearance

of nocturnal emissions is merely a proof that the boy is approaching

manhood. Hence there is no necessity for him to resort to prostitution

to get rid of the nocturnal losses, or the so-called wet dreams, as

many a boy has done, sometimes even upon the advice of his parent or of

some medical authority.

_Prevention of masturbation._—At this period, the children of both

sexes have to be warned against the habit of masturbation. There are

three periods in the child’s life when the danger of masturbation

is especially imminent. There is, in the first place, the period of

infancy and early age when the child is usually seduced to masturbation

either by vicious servants or ignorant mothers, uncleanliness or

improper diet. At this time careful watching of servants, cleanliness

of the genitals, details of diet, as light suppers, non-spicy food,

non-alcoholic drinks, the right way of sleeping, as hard mattresses,

the proper dressing, as light trousers, etc., will prevent early

self-abuse.

At the second period when the child enters school the danger of

seduction to self-abuse is again very great. Masturbation is widely

spread in schools. No institution is free from it. In some schools the

evil reaches a wide extension. Particularly dangerous, as hatcheries

and divulgers of the evil, are those institutions in which numerous

pupils are present who have passed the normal age by several years.

At this time any moral indignation or long-winded sermons or, what is

still worse, punishment, will be of no avail and will have just the

opposite effect. Long talks and repeated turnings to the same subject

will be of great harm and will only call the child’s attention upon

the evil. Here only a deeply implanted disgust of the child against

children with nasty habits will prevent the child’s seduction by such

masturbators. This feeling can not be implanted in a day. One lesson

will not accomplish anything, if the parents have not interposed a

remark at every opportune moment during all the years between infancy

and school days.

The third period favorable for acquiring the habit of masturbation

is the time of puberty. At this period systematic action is of great

necessity. All causes of the material genital congestion, as remaining

long in a sitting position, sitting with crossed legs, riding on

chairs, the movements of the sewing machine, climbing with the legs

on poles, retention of urine and stool, erotic literature, obscene

pictures and vulgar plays, all of which often tend to evoke sexual

desire or excite the genital organs, must be removed.

_Means against the acquired habit._—When we observe a child becoming

listless, absorbed in thoughts, startled when suddenly addressed,

obstinate, peevish, irritable, morose, taciturn, when we find its

emotions becoming slow and heavy, that it seeks solitude and shuns

play, when we see it becoming pale, with eyes sunken and surrounded by

dark rings, when the lips become faded and the muscles soft and flabby,

we are justified in the diagnosis masturbation. Sometimes the children

are masturbating themselves in the presence of their elders, and the

latter are not able to interpret the suspicious movements. Any kind of

movements, with the boy’s hands in his trousers, or with the girls legs

crossed, are suspicious and must be interrupted. Near the orgasm such

movements change their character and rhythm, the eyes become sparkling,

the face shows an excited lascivious expression and respiration becomes

rapid. Such phenomena must be recognized, and the child must be

interrupted in its favorite exercise.

The child having already acquired the habit, we will have to see that

no opportunity is left to him to exercise the same. Masturbation once

learned, it is impossible to stop it before adult life is reached.

In the meantime, the child must be kept busy and must be taught

self-control. The child must never remain in bed when not asleep,

never sleep lying on its back and never remain too long in the toilet

or in the bathroom. Two children must never sleep in the same bed or

enter together the same toilet. Stimulating foods and drinks, such

as pork, gravies, pastry with lard, salt-meat, mustard, pepper, rich

pies, spices, candies, pickles, tea, coffee, must be eliminated from

the masturbating child’s diet. Exciting entertainments, lewd pictures,

suggestive reading, all of which tend to increase the child’s sexual

passion, must be withheld from such a child. In addition to these

precautions, we will repeatedly warn the child against the dangers of

excesses of masturbation.

The children are now old enough to understand. Although the harmfulness

of masturbation has been greatly exaggerated, still it is more

injurious than the natural act. Among other injurious effects, the

masturbator uses strong psychical and physical stimulants, and the harm

to health is in proportion to the height of excitement. Especially

injurious to the brain is mental masturbation. The voluptuous

day-dreamers are often unable to free their thoughts from fancies and

pictures of lustful circumstances when they are alone.

Teachers especially should be alive to the excessive danger of the

so-called platonic attachments among their pupils. The sentimental

fancy taken by an older boy to a younger boy in boys’ schools, or by

an older girl to a younger girl, in girls' schools, between whom, in

the regular course in the school, there ought to be very little natural

companionship, is always suspicious. The teacher or guardian must know

that such attachments, which appear so touching and romantic, have a

most dangerous resemblance to abnormal passion.

The sequelae of immoderate masturbation are often quite disastrous.

There is, in the first place, general neurasthenia, with all its

accompanying symptoms, as photopsias, glistening and dazzling

before the eyes, photophobias, dry conjunctivitis (particularly

found among masturbating young girls and old maids), and functional

sexual disturbances, as diurnal pollutions and spermatorrhoea. Other

symptoms are indolence, lack of energy, shyness in demeanor, want of

self-reliance, disinclination to study, incapacity for serious work,

shortness of memory, absent-mindedness, unsteadiness of character,

hypochondria and melancholia.

The children become peevish and irritable, they are reserved in

conversation, apathetic in manner, hesitating in actions, slovenly

in dress, and contradictory. Cerebral anemia is of common occurrence

among those addicted to excesses in masturbation. Hence vertigo is a

common symptom and fainting spells occur often. (Girls especially are

liable to be affected by syncope.) Perspiration breaks forth on the

slightest exertion, and the slightest exercise occasions much shortness

of breath. Neuralgia of the testicles, ovaries and the bladder is also

frequently caused by excess. The neuralgia of the neck of the bladder

is particularly distressing. The patient is frequently seized with a

desire to pass water, and the evacuation of the bladder is attended

with pain. The frequent calls to urinate occur oftener during the day

than during the night. Particular danger of long-continued masturbation

lies in the development of impotency in men and frigidity in women.

Besides the nervous phenomena, there are often found real anatomical

alterations. As the habit is more frequently indulged in, the

prolonged congestion produces a catarrhal process in the urethra,

prostatic gland, seminal vesicles and varicocele[BP] in the male; and

in the female, catarrh of the ovaries, tubes, uterus and especially

of the endometrium. These conditions give rise to uncomfortable and

distressing sensations which demand relief and are gotten rid of only

by a continuation of the habit. Thus a vicious circle is continually

at work. The results are stricture of the urethra, spermatorrhoea,

disturbances of the intestinal tract, as dyspepsia, flatulence and

constipation, and palpitation of the heart.

The congested genital glands, furthermore, excrete and secrete

excessively. In this way the elements of the internal secretion are

either in a state of atrophy or otherwise disturbed. The organism is

thus deprived of these important elements and suffers accordingly.

_Period between sixteen and eighteen years._—When the boy or girl, at

the age of sixteen to eighteen, are about to leave their families,

they will have to be warned against yielding to the frequent sexual

temptations. At this time the boy, and to a certain extent in our

modern industrial world also the girl, leaves the family to go out

into the world to commence the struggle for existence. There, in the

office or in the factory, the boy and the girl will be surrounded

by many temptations. Innumerable chances will be offered to them to

surrender their chastity. It must, therefore, be impressed upon them

how necessary and important it is for them to be careful and not to

allow the hot temper of youth for the woman, respectively for the man,

to get the better of their prudence.

They have to be warned of the dangers of venereal diseases and have

to be shown the fearful results of promiscuous intercourse.[BQ] We

will speak to them openly about the dangers of venereal diseases.

The diseases of society just as those of the body, says Stuart Mills,

can not be prevented without speaking openly about them. The social

diseases must be spoken in the open and not with bated breath, and must

be spoken to the woman no less than to the man.

The social diseases have been declared shameful and no one is allowed

to know or to mention them. Many excellent people look upon venereal

diseases as a merited punishment for the sins of immorality. In the

popular conception, venereal diseases are diseases of debauchery

only. There is, on the part of the public, an indifference, even an

active opposition, to sex-enlightenment, due to the erroneous idea

that venereal diseases are the exclusive appanage of vice. The people

are ignorant of the fact that millions of guiltless persons contract

these diseases through common utensils and particularly in marriage.

These dreadful diseases embrace among their victims a vast number of

virtuous wives and innocent children. The number of virtuous wives

suffering from venereal diseases is much larger than the entire number

of prostitutes in our country. The wife and unborn child are surely

innocent in every sense of the word. They are incapable of foreseeing

and powerless to prevent the threatening injury.

Syphilis, especially, is not purely a sexual disease. It is often

acquired in the most innocent manner. An almost inperceptible lesion

in the mouth or throat of the syphilitic exudes a virus which may

be conveyed to another person, by a pen, pencil, drinking-glass, by

surgical and dental instruments and by kissing.

Some years ago the author treated a pure, innocent, seventeen-year-old

nurse-girl for syphilis of the pharynx who contracted the disease from

the syphilitic infant she was taking care of. Both the host of the

infection and the victim were thus perfectly innocent.

Such innocent people surely do not deserve punishment and ought to be

protected. The traditional shameful character with which the venereal

diseases have been invested by popular prejudice is surely absent in

this class of cases. The only practical protection is the removal

of the mist of ignorance.[BR] Ignorance of the results of venereal

diseases is often ruinous.

Especially is ignorance, prevailing about gonorrhoea, often very

disastrous. Gonorrhoea is commonly considered a benign local disease.

Young men think it a joke to have gonorrhoeal infection several

times in their lives. They have imbibed false views in regard to the

trivial character of this venereal infection. They think gonorrhoea is

not more serious than a bad cold. The young man who happens to have

escaped gonorrhoeal infection is the target of his friends’ jests. Yet

gonorrhoeal infection may make a tragedy of marriage by destroying the

woman’s conceptional capacity and rendering her irrevocably sterile,

in this way producing childlessness, and by sending thousands of women

to the operating table to be condemned to the mutilation of their

generative organs to save their lives.

If the proper knowledge of all these dangers would be imparted to her,

it is inconceivable that any woman, with a fair amount of judgment,

would permit the approach of a possibly tainted man. Every girl, who

knew all the dangers of contracting such a disease, would be more

capable of understanding the seriousness of her taking a false step and

would guard herself against it. If the girl knew of the prevalence of

venereal diseases among men, and her great danger from this source, she

would not so easily debase herself and sully her vestal purity. Only

full knowledge can adequately assist her. Experience has shown again

and again that thousands suffer physical and moral wreckage by trusting

the blind instinct as the sole and sufficient guide for its regulation.

The girl ought to know that the sexual instinct is imperious in its

demands. If she yields to an ardent lover she runs danger to contract a

serious disease.

The ignorance prevailing about the dangers of venereal diseases is

also responsible for the levity with which marriages with profligates

are contracted. By a strange irony of fate, the diseases of vice,

transplanted to the bed of virtue, often become intensified in

virulence. Still with many girls the man who has most promiscuously

and profusely scattered his “wild oats” has been looked upon as the

most favored one among possible husbands. How there can be anything

alluring to marry a man with a past, when there is the great peril that

the young bride may get up on the morning after the wedding-day an

invalid for life, can only be explained by the lack of knowledge of the

gravity of venereal diseases. If the mother knew that a man who has

led an unclean life is not a safe husband for her daughter, if she were

aware of the fact that dissipated men do not make desirable husbands,

she would look more for virtue than money in the future son-in-law.

If the girl knew the host of indeterminable lesions which may follow

in the wake of various venereal diseases, if she knew all the dangers

lurking for her and her offspring, she would never condone moral

depravity in her husband and the father of her children. Her whole

nature would revolt against the wedlock with a man whose body is a sink

of corruption. It will be she who will have to suffer most. It is upon

the woman that the burden of shame and suffering, of disease and death,

is chiefly laid.

The danger of sexual exploitation of young girls by certain men is much

greater, the less the girls are instructed about the social dangers and

the physiological consequences of a chance acquaintance. The girl ought

to be taught that one mistake blasts a young girl’s life. Let a young

woman stray but once from the path of virtue, or let there be even one

breath of suspicion against her virtue, whether well founded or not,

and there is no forgiveness to her in this world. She has suffered an

irretrievable loss. Her greatest enemy in such a case is woman herself.

Society admits the acknowledged libertine to its most exclusive

circles, but forever ostracises the woman whose one false step has been

found out. The man may emerge from the mire of dissipation without a

spot or blemish upon his character, for the woman, there is no return.

Shame and degradation follow her even to the grave.

If the girl further knew the physiological consequences of her

transgression, if she knew that she may become gravid, and thus publish

to the world her folly, such cases as are often seen in maternity

hospitals of girls between the ages of twelve to fifteen years being

already pregnant, without knowing the sex relation, would never be met

with.[BS] Many of these girls have no adequate idea of the result of

congressus, because no one has told them.

The prophylactic value of education, which has been applied to the

prevention of almost all communicable diseases, would surely also

be seen in this dreadful disease, this cancer of the body politic,

meretricious venery, this plague of prostitution which poisons the

very sources of the family and of the state. But for the prevailing

ignorance of the girls, regarding the dangers and pitfalls that beset

their lives’ pathway, one million girls would not have been led into a

life of shame in this country.[BT] These unfortunate girls do not all

come from the slums of the great cities, as the economic determinists

would like to make us believe, but many come from refined country

homes.[BU] Most of these devotees of meretricious venery have become so

through the fundamental vice of laziness and defective mentality. It is

sentimentality pure and simple always to speak of betrayed innocence

or dire poverty.[BV] A vicious disposition, love of pleasure, and the

gratification of the erotic desires,[BW] are, as a rule, responsible

for the majority of girls embracing the profession of prostitution. But

the most serious among the factors which work together to bring many

a girl to ruin, is ignorance and the lack of proper instruction. If

the girl knew that the career of the venal woman lasts scarcely five

to ten years,[BX] and that it is a large sewer, a garbage dump and a

crematory, she would surely not be so easily led to embrace this vile

profession. If the girl knew these facts, it is inconceivable that even

the mentally defective girl would prefer this short life of silks and

satins and then annihilation to a respectable life, even of poverty.

The girl, therefore, must be warned against the allurements of

meretricious venery. She must be told that the average duration of

the career of the venal woman is very short, and that embracing this

profession is almost tantamount to committing suicide. Before the girl

has made the fatal step, she has to be shown the great slavery and

misery prostitution brings upon those who embrace it as a profession,

and that the career of the prostitute lasts no longer than five to ten

years in the average. Then come ruin and the morgue.

But the young girls are started in life entirely ignorant of all the

dangers about them, and the result is the vast army of unfortunates. In

this way venereal diseases persist, sexual crimes abound, degeneracy

remains and countless victims, year after year, pay the penalty of

ignorance.

The best prophylaxis of impurity is the avoidance of intoxicating

beverages, chance acquaintances, vanity and pleasure-seeking. The

girl’s attention has to be called to the danger lying in the habit

of drinking intoxicating liquors. A girl has only to taste a drop of

liquor in a strange man’s company, and her chastity is in the greatest

danger to desert her for good. It will not take very long before this

girl will indulge in the excessive use of alcohol, which dulls the

moral sense of men and women.[BY]

The girl has further to beware of the danger of chance acquaintances.

Young men of such acquaintances, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,

will do all in their power to induce a girl to drink intoxicating

liquors, and, when she has become excited by the unaccustomed beverage,

they will ruin her chastity.

The girl must particularly be warned of the great danger lying in

vanity of personal appearance. Many a girl has sold her virtue for fine

clothes and outside finery, many a girl has sold her health, morality

and even her soul for a few showy bawbles.

Last but not least, there is danger in pleasure-seeking and in an

absorbing love of gaiety.[BZ] The seducer, says Block (Zeitschr. f.

Bekämpf. d. Geschtskr., Vol. X, p. 75), is really not the particular

man but the big city. The luxurious hotels, restaurants, music-halls,

theatres, etc., and the elegant clothes of the rich allure the poor

shop-girls, milliners, dressmakers and servant girls to the career of

the mistress in such big numbers that a pure girl over twenty-five

years of age is rarely found in this class in the big cities in Europe.

Alcohol, vanity and pleasure-seeking thus lead to the evil of impurity

and to a life of ruin, desolation, sickness and degradation. A girl

must, therefore, be made acquainted with all these pitfalls, in the

outside world, before she leaves her mother’s protecting presence.

She has to learn above all the high and holy function of her genital

apparatus and of the sickness, shame and sorrow which are sure to

follow any profanation of these functions. The subject of venereal

prophylaxis has been altogether too largely taboo among us, hence

the venereal diseases continue to rot the core of society, leaving

blindness, deformity, invalidism and death in their train disseminate.

Even the girl who is sent to college has to know all the dangers and

pitfalls in the outside world. In addition she has to be warned against

the sex-overvaluation by the unhealthy sensualists of indulgence, found

in the modern literature of the so-called feminists. All those novels,

that are written by the modern woman, says Howard, show an itching of

the sexual centre. The passion is there, but perverted, unsatisfied,

masturbatic. They wish to make man the weak slave of his or her erotic

excitement. They call it in German “Sich ausleben,” “to live out your

life.”

The girl who has chosen an intellectual pursuit has to be taught before

leaving home that the real ethics is the defense of all external

sex-values. Man is more than a mere sex-being. The spiritual kind

of virginity consists in the sensual affairs not being dominating,

exacting or filling the inner life. The Jewish philosopher, Philo

of Alexandria in Egypt, says: “The virgin, by her company with man,

becomes a woman, by the soul’s association with God, the woman becomes

again a virgin.” Such are the lessons the young girl should take

along, when she leaves home, so that she may be protected against the

doctrines of sensual hyperaestheticism of the modern writers.

The necessity of self-control and chastity must be impressed upon the

mind not only of the young woman but also of the young man. There is

not the slightest support in physiology for the double standard of

morality of the two sexes. Either men and women should be allowed to

lead a promiscuous sex-life,[CA] or what is by custom forbidden to the

woman should not be allowed to the man either.

But such lessons will have very little effect upon boys who have

passed childhood and puberty before they have had the opportunity of

receiving proper sex-instruction. Such boys need altogether another

kind of instruction, namely, lessons in personal prophylaxis. The

objection that to teach personal prophylaxis against venereal infection

would remove the most effective obstacle to sexual indulgence, i. e.,

the fear of infection, simply shows the ignorance of the elementary

force which indulgence in venery, once tasted, drives the boy into

the arms of prostitution, fear or no fear.[CB] The young man himself,

once defloured of his virginity, is of no concern any longer. All the

lessons in personal prophylaxis will not have the least influence upon

his conduct in life one way or another. But personal prophylaxis may

save his wife and children from a life of invalidism and even death.

The same procedure will be necessary in dealing with the young man

who is a congenital weakling and has to associate with meretricibus.

He should at least take care not to contract any venereal disease,

which may wreck the lives of his future wife and children. He should

immediately after coition, first wash with a cotton-sponge the

penis—head, shank and under-frenum—with a solution of sublimate 1:5000;

secondly pass water and make a urethral injection with a solution

of 2% protargol, and thirdly rub a 50% calomel ointment well into

the fore-skin, head and shank of the penis, particularly about the

frenum.[CC]

The best prophylaxis against masturbation, and in a certain degree

also against inchastity, is the coëducation of the sexes. The familiar

intercourse of boys and girls in the kindly presence of their teachers

prevents and appeases the morbid craving of the sex-appetite, provided

the pupils have not been morally tainted before they entered the

coëducational school.

But the comingling of the sexes must not degenerate in tactile

eroticism, as may be observed, on any summer night, in city parks,

on excursion boats, or on hotel verandas at most of our summer

resorts. Of all the five senses, touch is the strongest sense, it is a

sense-world in itself. Touch is the only sense that has an organ which

can be doubled upon itself. The eye cannot see itself, the ear cannot

hear itself, the tongue cannot taste itself, nor the nose smell itself.

But the hand can pass over the body surface and both feel and be felt.

It can perform the feat of being at the same time both subject and

object.

For this reason the sense of touch is especially adapted to be at the

service of the sex-sense. The sense of sex seems to have made the

sense of touch a part of its being. The sense of touch forms one of

the component impulses of the sex-instinct, namely, the impulse of

contrectation. Hence dalliance and caresses form a substantial part of

the sex-act and are unhygienic, if not soon followed by ejaculation and

orgasm. When the act has once begun, and the often observed caresses

do represent the beginning, it is unhygienic and very harmful not to

terminate the same. The often repeated interruption will lead to all

kinds of sexual neuroses, particularly to psychic and more often to

atonic impotence in men and frigidity in women.

CHAPTER XX

RULES OF EUGENICS

The best prophylaxis against inchastity and its sequels, the

contraction of venereal diseases, is the extirpation of prostitution.

If the supply of the means of inchastity could be cut off, there would

be no demand.[CD] A considerable part of meretricious venery could be

eliminated by lifting the mist of ignorance.[CE] Armed with the proper

knowledge a certain percentage of the girls who are now swelling the

ranks of prostitution would surely shun this profession. But there

will still remain the greater part of venal women, who, according to

the best authorities, belong to the high-grade imbeciles and hence

cannot be reached by instruction.[CF] This class of women who form

the main part of prostitution will have to be eliminated by following

strictly the rules of Eugenics. Only in this, though tedious but sure,

way could defective mentality be exterminated, and prostitution thus

banished from our planet within a few generations.[CG]

The aim of eugenics is the production of a better humanity, especially

by the elimination of bodily and mentally feeble stocks. With the

discovery of the Mendelian law, eugenics was placed upon a scientific

basis. The world knew by experience that desirable as well as

undesirable traits are transmitted by heredity, but it thought that

heredity could be controlled by environment. It believed in economic

determinism. Mendel’s law revealed the inexorableness of the law of

heredity.

The science of eugenics teaches that nature is stronger than nurture.

The characters of any living being are determined by two factors,

heredity and environment, or nature and nurture, but inheritance is

more vital than environment. Heredity and education supply a potential

figure, both multiplied give something, if one is nothing the result

is nothing. But heredity is the weightier factor.[CH] When nature and

nurture compete for supremacy on equal terms, says Galton, the former

proves the stronger. Neither is self-sufficient; the highest natural

endowments may be starved by defective nurture, while no carefulness

of nurture can overcome the evil tendencies of an intrinsically bad

physique, weak brain or brutal disposition.

No degenerate or feeble stock can ever be converted into a healthy and

sound stock by environment, such as sanitary surroundings, good laws,

education, wealth, etc., as the radical doctrinaires would like to

make us believe. Such means may render individual members of the stock

passable or even strong members of society, but the same process will

have to be gone through again and again with their offspring. Improved

conditions of life mean better health for the existing population,

greater educational facilities mean greater capacity for using existing

ability. But lasting improvement can only be secured by breeding from

good stock. The development of the future generations will be little

influenced by environmental improvements, if the conditions of the

blood have been neglected. Nothing can be brought out from a child by

euthenics which is not within him.

The elimination of the feeble stock, met with not only in the slums but

also in the quarters of wealth, which weighs down the body politic,

can only be effected by the prevention of the propagation of those

afflicted with undesirable characters.

There are three methods to effect the elimination of the

undesirables—segregation, sterilization and castration. In the early

history of the human race artificial devices were unnecessary. Natural

selection, or the survival of the fittest, was the most potent factor

of the elimination of the weak. Later on, in the periods of the Greek

and Roman civilizations, the exposure of sickly children, famines,

epidemics and the lack of hygiene served as the best means of weeding

out the feeble and the weak in mind and body. But as civilization

advances a higher ethical level is reached. The diseased, the weak

and feeble are allowed to survive. Especially since the appearance of

Christianity, which originated among the poor and lowly, charity to the

sick, poor, weak and afflicted has become to be considered the first

duty of human society. The greatest part of all our charities is in

the service of the defectives and the degenerates. The ever-broadening

sympathy and altruism of civilized humanity makes it possible for the

dependent and delinquent classes to survive. We make the fostering of

the unfit and of the cripple our highest duty. Especially in modern

times, the great strides made in hygiene and in the other medical

sciences operate to prolong the existence of the unfit till the period

of propagation. War on infant mortality and surgical aid have enabled

defectives to become parents. We are trying to make environment safer

for the feebler in mind and body. Manifold facilities are offered for

the survival of the unfit. A social contra-selection has thus set in.

All our sentimental activities in the interest of charity, praiseworthy

as they are, are in the last analysis anti-social.

Our anti-social perverted sentimentality shows itself particularly

in the stand we are taking towards marriage. Marriage and racial

anti-suicide are preached in and out of season. Almost anybody, the

criminal in the Tombs and the deaf-mute in the asylum, is considered

good enough to marry and to propagate. The result of this preaching

is that the improvident, incontinent, selfish and foolish follow the

advice and marry. The less individualized, the lower the types, the

more nearly animal, the earlier they marry and the more they are

fertile. On the other hand, the superior men and women either do not

marry at all (e. g., Catholic priests, nuns, teachers, nurses, etc.),

or marry very late and practise the voluntary elimination of the

family in the bargain. For the prevention of conception is an accepted

principle among the better classes of every civilized country.[CI]

Hence the fall of the birth-rate among the most desirable classes,

such as the professional people, best artisans, skilled mechanics,

etc. This falling birth-rate in itself is not at all a great calamity

to humanity, as some reformers and politicians try to make us believe.

It may be dangerous to a smaller State when threatened by a more

populated one, or to an aristocracy when threatened to be ousted from

its privileged position by the common people. Otherwise the fall of

the birth-rate brings rather benefit than damage to the family and

to society. The deplorable thing is that only the superior classes

practise the limitation of the family; the inferior classes multiply

like rabbits. In this way society is overburdened with the listless and

the incapable. Our reformatories, prisons, asylums and homes for the

defective are overcrowded.

The endeavor of eugenics is to restore the former selection of the

fit in place of the present disastrous selection of the unfit. This

eugenics wishes to be effected not by following the brutal philosophy

of a Nietzsche, or by abolishing all charities, or by exposing weak

children, as practised by the ancient Spartans. The moral law and human

sympathy dictate that the children, once born, should be preserved

by all known means. But in the interest of the race, such children

should be prevented from being born. This need not be accomplished by

abolishing the absolute freedom of selection of marriage-mates, as

advocated by some pseudo-sociologists in Europe. There is no need for

the overthrowing of all human institutions and for the imitation of the

method of the stud-farm, as advocated by the modern race-culturists.

The freedom to contract even of an unsuitable marriage is always

preferable to the tyranny of the state directing the personal affairs

of its citizens.[CJ] The first essential for human development is

liberty. Liberty is the atmosphere in which character is formed. No one

has a right to exclude two free-born individuals from marriage. This

right is inalienable. To exclude such a man and woman from marriage

relations would be assaulting the inalienable rights of man which no

legislature or even constitution may do, except by brutal force.

But man has no right to injure his own children. The careless or wilful

procreation of a vicious progeny is not only a crime against humanity

but a wrong to the children who ought to have remained unborn. Hence

it is the solemn duty of any couple, if there be a taint in their

ancestry, voluntarily to exclude themselves from parenthood. If their

mentality does not enable them to exercise such control, society has

a right, nay the duty to effect the exclusion in its own interest as

well as in the interest of the offspring, who would become a burden to

themselves.

This exclusion cannot be realized by laws against marriage of

individuals, physically or morally inferior. Such laws are entirely

futile in relation to propagation. Only hypocrites or perfect fools do

not see it. The sex-urge plays a particular rôle in degenerates. They

suffer from a diseased exaggeration of the sex impulse. No laws, except

it be segregation, can prevent the seduction of the feeble-minded woman

or the rape by the criminal man, and a new generation of deteriorants

would arise, marriage or no marriage. The baneful sentimentality or

sordid economy which allows moral weaklings to roam at large on parole

or suspended sentence can only lead to the breeding of mental and

moral cripples. If the number of the undesirable and unfit should be

decreased, not the marriage but the breeding of the defectives should

be prevented.

Among the means of prevention of propagation, the segregation of the

defectives in different homes (such as asylums for epileptics, for

feeble-minded or for deaf-mutes) would be the most humane method, but

also the most unsafe (temporary escape is never impossible), and the

most burdensome for society. To segregate people who are still able

to support themselves and deprive society of their earning capacity

represents a great economic loss to the body politic.

The other quite humane method of prevention of propagation is simple

sterilization. The slight operation of vasectomy, respectively

salpingectomy, does not give the least inconvenience nor does it alter

in the least the mental or bodily character of the operated individual.

This small operation has no more effect upon the person, in regard to

his potency, than an obliteration of the vas deferens in the male or

of the Fallopian tube in the female; and these obliterations cause so

little inconvenience that they remain, as a rule, unknown to the man or

woman. They are only accidentally discovered when the patients apply

for the treatment of their sterility.

Hence all intelligent people who have some hereditary taint should be

taught to renounce propagation by this method. Those with a neuropathic

diathesis or with an alcoholic diathesis, or who show an inability

to learn in school, or those in whose families are found cases of

dementia praecox, maniac-depressive insanity, or those suffering from

incurable inheritable diseases, such as tuberculosis, cancer, syphilis,

hemophilia, color blindness, albinism, in short of such diseases

that do not impair their judgment, ought to preclude themselves from

parenthood by voluntarily submitting to this mild operation before

marriage.

Those, whose judgment is materially impaired to realize the

seriousness of their propagation, such as the incurable insane,

inherent epileptics, the born deaf-mutes, the idiots, imbeciles, and

feeble-minded, should forcibly undergo this operation. Even the dull

and idle should be deprived of the chance of propagating their kind by

means of sterilization. These incompetents and degenerates furnish the

material from which the ranks of the habitual criminals and prostitutes

are recruited. Since we have learned that the great horde of defectives

is due to unfit matings and that indolent strains arise by the mating

of indolent persons, society has a right and even a duty to weed out

these delinquent, defective and dependent classes by the prevention of

the procreation of the various defective offspring.

The third method of preventing propagation is castration. Sterilization

does not deprive the individual of his desire for congressus nor of

the ability to perform the same, nor of the faculty of experiencing

libido. Hence the murderous and erotically degenerated criminal classes

will remain a menace to society until they are deprived not only of

the potency of procreation but also of the potency concarnationis and

of experiencing libido. The method of castration, therefore, should be

reserved as a penalty for the outspoken habitual brutal criminal, the

rapist, the confirmed inebriate, the incorrigible burglar or gunman,

the gibbering idiot, or imbecile cretin with the inherited tendency

to crime, and the unstable erotopath. The offspring of this class

are predestined to be degenerates, and one of the two operations is

imperatively indicated. It is preferable that the testicles or ovaries

should perish in such individuals than that their morbidity should

be propagated. In the interest of the patients themselves the more

radical operation is to be recommended. Spayed animals are always

easier controlled. Just as gelding of the bull and stallion changes

the vigorous, powerful, spirited animals into the comparatively quiet,

docile ox and horse, so may the unsexing or castration of the unfit

have a beneficial quieting effect upon the ferocious, currish, stupid

human semi-animal.[CK]

The defectives, when at large, will always find mating facilities

even with the healthy, and thereby drag fresh blood into the vortex

of disease. The progeny of defective parentage are always defective.

Two imbecile parents will never produce a perfectly normal child. A

superior mated with an inferior may sometimes reproduce the normal,

but, as a rule, the progeny of this crossing will also be defective.

The eradication of every kind of degeneracy is hence the solemn duty of

society to relieve the burden of the community, and by the reduction

of the lower types in each successive generation, degeneracy could be

weeded out of human society.

The other method of the realization of a superior humanity is

the positive breeding of superior offspring. But this method of

the stock-farm is so antagonistic to our conception of personal

liberty that any liberty-loving nation will prefer panmixia or

blood-chaos, with the freedom to choose their mates by means of love

or even infatuation, to the patriarchic slavery of being mated like

race-horses.[CL]

There is no need for a revolutionary change of the marriage relations

as proposed by the different brands of race-culture. The ultimate

apotheosis of the world will never be reached by the superman on the

terms of Nietzsche. The novel and revolutionary doctrine as to choice

of parents has sprung in essentially unbalanced minds. If only those

undesirables who become a public charge, either in prisons or in

asylums—and sooner or later they all land there—are one way or another

prevented from the propagation of their kind, the anti-selection, now

at work, would cease. The degeneration of the human race could be

stopped, even under the present conditions of human cultivation.

CHAPTER XXI

SEX-HYGIENE FOR ADULTS

_Engagement._—The boy and girl who, by the proper and circumspect

management of home and school, have succeeded to remain pure and chaste

until their marriageable age need certain lessons in sexual hygiene to

secure the desired happiness in their future married life.

In the first place they ought to know that true marriage must be

founded upon true love, not upon sensuality. Marriage founded upon

blind passion, aroused by external qualities, is not capable of

enhancing the spiritual and corporal resources of man and will never

bring true happiness of any considerable duration. Real happiness

does not lie in the realization of the desires. Only true love, not

sensuality, can give life or enrich the life of the married couple.

The essential for a happy union is that the contracting parties should

be more or less each other’s equal. The “law of parity” is especially

true in marriage. Like selects like. The young people should be of the

same social position and, if possible, of equal education. Love is the

union of sentiment, and lasting happiness in marriage is only possible

where there is perfect understanding between husband and wife.

The young people should further be in full sympathy with each other’s

views of life. The reason why so many marriages of to-day prove

failures is that this rule is disregarded. Modern men are drunk with

sensual pleasure and lay an exaggerated emphasis on physical qualities.

They do not look for responsiveness and sympathy in their future

partners but for vulgar eroticism. Animal sensuality in all its organic

spontaneity control their choosing of a wife. Hence she is often taken

from such walks of life where pleasure is the chief aim of existence.

No wonder that such actually bought happiness soon languishes, and

the man finds that the woman he has chosen as his life-partner has

nothing in common with him except the mania for pleasure. The craze for

luxuries of home and dress and the extravagance of the entire mode of

living has taken such a hold upon modern women that most of them sell

themselves into matrimony to the first man whom they consider able to

provide them with luxuries, without regard to the manly qualities such

as courage, intelligence, education, culture, generosity and chivalry,

qualities which in former times made men attractive to women.

The parties contracting marriage should be of suitable age. A

difference in age from seven to fifteen years will bring the happiest

results. In our climate a woman’s sexual life ceases about the age of

forty-five, and man’s about sixty. Hence there is a difference of about

fifteen years in favor of the man.[CM] In our climate the best age for

women to become wives and mothers is from twenty-four to twenty-eight

years.[CN] If the man is then about ten years older, the couple is

physically well mated.

The time between engagement and marriage should be neither too short

nor too long. A period not shorter than three months and no longer than

a year should elapse between the engagement and the marriage. It is

an absurdity to expect real love from a young man and a young woman,

who have seen each other only a few times, because of the legality

of the act. Especially does it require a certain length of time and

considerable skill and delicacy to overcome the tendency of shyness,

which is a part of a woman’s nature, and of prudishness, which is

instilled in the girl from the very moment she is capable of thinking.

This questionable virtue is taught at home and at school, and becomes a

part of her very being. It follows her as she grows up, clings to her,

influences her and molds her. Hence, if the husband does not wish to

begin married life with rape, he will have to associate with her long

enough, till she becomes aware that the wife has no need of maidenly

coyness and may indulge in the luxury of bestowing gallant attention

without appearing indelicate and bold. The girl also needs enough

time to study the man, his mode of life, his habits, his degree of

honesty and purity, and what is the principal thing, his health. Love

will surely desert the home where the young bride has left her bridal

chamber afflicted with gonorrhoea or syphilis, and happiness will

scarcely attend the wife and the husband who has spent the strength

of his youth on venal creatures and now looks for a cure and for

restoration by the impotent soiling of a chaste virgin.

Enough time, therefore, should be given both parties for mutual study.

On the other hand, too lengthy engagements keep the affections and the

passions in an excited and unnatural condition, which after a time

tends to weaken the nervous system and thus undermines health.

The following case is very instructive. Mr. L., twenty-seven years of

age, an assistant professor in a well-known college, and his bride,

a teacher, thought that their economic conditions did not allow them

the luxury of an increase in the family. So they agreed to a total

abstinence of marital relations in the first year of their married

life, but fully indulged in frustrate erotism, such as caressing, etc.

The result is that L. has now to be treated for atonic impotence,

manifested by premature ejaculation.

_Wedding._—The wedding-day should be selected to take place about ten

to fifteen days after the end of the menstruation. It is most desirable

that the first sexual relations should be fruitless. Hence the wedding

should be selected during the period when conception is least likely

to occur. The time immediately before the period, and still more,

immediately after following it is the most favorable to conception. In

the first place, ovulation and menstruation are generally synchronous.

Then during the intermenstrual period the plug of the clear viscid

mucus which is secreted by the cervical glands blocks up the passage

and interferes with the entrance of the spermatozoa into the uterine

cavity, unless removed by female ejaculation which does not always

occur at the right moment. This obstruction is washed away each month

by the menstrual discharge. Impregnation is, therefore, most likely

just after the menstrual epoch, while the middle of the intermenstrual

period is the time of comparative sterility.

The next important question is the selection of the room and bed for

the married couple. In the aristocratic European families husband and

wife occupy different bed-rooms. Throughout Germany, even among the

poorer classes, husband and wife, although occupying the same room,

have at least different beds. Here in our country it is the custom,

even among the well-to-do, to sleep in one bed. This unhappy custom,

apart from its unaesthetic aspect at the time of menstruation, leads

easily to excesses, and many a young couple has ruined its life by

excessive sexual indulgence. There should be chastity even in the

marriage relations. It is hence to the best interest of husband

and wife that they should at least occupy separate beds, if the

circumstances do not allow the luxury of separate bed-rooms. The most

refreshing sleep can only be attained by occupying the bed alone.

_Concarnationis posituræ._—Complexus venerei positurae numero sex sunt

aliis temporibus apud alias gentes usitatæ. Vir supra, vir infra,

stando, sedendo, a latere and praepostero (more bestiarum).

Normalis atque naturalis mulieri positura est resupina, viro inter

femora mulieris extensa et abducta jacente.

“Qua facie praesignis erit resupino jaceto,” sings Ovid in his

Ars Amandi. In this position the vagina et virile mentulatum

easdem directiones habent, et frictiones inter glandes clitoridis

penisque, which are the most sensitive organs for inducing libido,

are facilitated. The supine position is hence mechanically the most

favorable for the frictions of the most sensitive parts.

The position a posteriori (more pecudum) is not so favorable for the

frictions of the clitoris. The female orgasm will hence, at best, be

retarded. The prone position is, therefore, not the hygienic ideal,

at least so far as the female is concerned. The popular belief that

this position is more exciting for male and female is based upon the

assumption that the intensity of the libido is proportional to the

depth insertionis in vaginam fascini. This belief is erroneous. The

radix of the penis, as well as the fornices of the vagina, are, as a

rule, the points of the least value for inducing orgasm, and these are

the very points most affected by the frictions in the prone position.

The portio vaginalis and the os externum which are sexually very

excitable are, in the prone position, not easier reached by a normal

fascinum than in the supine position. In normal cases,[CO] therefore,

the prone position of the female is anti-hygienic.

In women with orgasmus retardus of moderate degree, positura viri infra

may be of some benefit. This position damps somewhat the male ardor,

et impeditæ sunt motiones, dum mulier moveat cito aut lente so as to

produce the best effects upon her own orgasm.[CP]

_Frequentatio concubitus._—Congressus frequentatio varies with

different individuals, but with the majority, under thirty years of

age, three times a week should be considered sufficiently frequent,

between thirty and forty twice a week, and less frequently as age

advances.[CQ] When concarnatio is followed by a sense of relief and

comfort it is beneficial, and to be thus guided is the most rational

practice. The criterion of marital hygiene, as far as frequency is

concerned, is hence the state of the feelings of the couple. The

day post initum both mates must feel refreshed in body and spirit,

otherwise the act was unhygienic.

If one of the mates has greater sexual desires than the other is

able[CR] or willing to gratify, he or she has to suppress the erotic

excitement by the exertion of will-power or by cold sponging, cold

baths and when necessary even by bromides. For while chastity does very

little harm to the individual, excesses in venere destroy in time both

body and mind.[CS]

The frequent exercise actionis conjungendi leads directly to anaemia,

malnutrition, asthenia of the muscles and nerves, and mental

exhaustion. Immoderate persons are pale and have long, flabby and

sometimes tense features. They are melancholic and not fit for any

difficult and continued bodily or mental work. They possess very little

power of resistance. The patients suffer from aboulia or inability

to concentrate their minds upon any subject. There is a certain

dysaesthesia or hyperaesthesia of the senses, especially against noise

and light. Insomnia is very frequently complained of. Cephalalgia

and vertigo is a frequent occurrence. The patients have a feeling

of anxiety in stomach and in heart-regions. Anorexia, or loss of

appetite, is often met with. Besides, the patient suffers from nervous

dyspepsia and constipation which not seldom alternates with diarrhoea.

There is often found tachycardia and an arythmic or intermittent

pulse. Sometimes asthma and coughing are complained of. The patients

feel fatigued at the least exertion. The most annoying symptom

is pollakiuria and cystic tenesmus. In men pains in the back are

radiating to the legs and to the inguinal and spermatic-cord regions;

in women coccygodynia is often encountered. These effects frequentis

commixtionis are often seen in men and women after a certain period of

married life has elapsed.

Apart from the bad effects upon the general health of the man and

woman, excesses in venere cause various local disturbances. Too

frequent sexual excitement retards the orgasm or makes it impossible.

The detumescence that normally occurs after ejaculation does not take

place. The genital organs remain thus in a certain state of congestion

which causes chronic inflammations, such as prostatitis, vesiculitis,

orchitis or urethritis in men, and vulvitis, vaginitis, endometritis,

metritis, salpingitis, ovaritis or peri- and parametritis in women.

The habitual congestion of the uterus causes the tissues to become

succulent, and the vessels enlarged. It shows, then, all the symptoms

of subinvolution, such as menorrhagia, exhaustion and sexual apathy.

Sexual excess, as everything else abused, produces satiety and finally

indifference. Emptiness in life is then the individual’s lot, and

it falls into a state of moral apathy which is characterized by the

suspension or complete loss of every sentiment.[CT]

Young and healthy people are able to induce orgasm several times

daily. With them orgasm is possible after many excesses. But even in

youth frequent practice congressus ruins the individual’s health. The

frequent inducement of the orgasm weakens the nerves of the sexual

sphere. At the time of the orgasm peristaltic movements of the vas

deferens in its entire length and of the ejaculatory ducts in men

and of the tubes and uterus in women take place. If these delicate

movements are too frequently repeated they cause diseases of the

genital nervous system. The frequent irritation of the frictions

furthermore causes a complete transformation of the covering of the

glans penis and of the vulva and of the vaginal mucous membrane. It

becomes a veritable skin, a shriveled parchment, which the sebaceous

secretions no longer soften. This transformation affects profoundly

the genital sensibilities, and if it does not completely destroy the

amatory pleasure it at least weakens it considerably.

The urethra is also affected by excesses in venere. In women the meatus

externus is more or less open. This dilatation may often be continued

the entire length of the urethra and even affect the sphincter of

the bladder. Hence the incontinentia urinae that is often found in

masturbating little girls and in newly-married young women.

In the beginning of married life the principle commended to the

husband should be that an alarmed and reluctant bride should be

patiently wooed and never ravished.[CU] The delicacy of caution and

restraint is of great importance, especially at this juncture which

marks the outset of connubial relations. The entire change of life

at this period exerts a strong influence upon the physical condition

of the young bride. She needs time and rest to get used to the new

condition of things and to reconcile it to her ethical views. If these

matters are not respected by the husband, the death-blow to the young

love is already dealt in the first days of married life.

There is, furthermore, always more or less suffering on the part of the

bride in primo concubitu, partly due to the rupture of the hymen and

partly to the forcible dilatation of the vagina. These pains are not

confined only to the time of the act, but continue day and night, and

represent a really diseased condition. Hence sufficient time should be

allowed after defloration for nature to repair these injuries. Frequent

indulgence at this period of married life is a prolific source of

inflammatory diseases and occasions ill health.

One period in the woman’s life in which it is extremely dangerous to

practice congressio is the time of menstruation. Yet immoderate women

are prone just at that time delicias compressionis cupere, because the

cycles of sexual excitement coincide with the menstrual period. The

normal and primitive characteristic of the menstrual state is the more

predominant presence of sexual excitement.

One of the author’s patients, a young woman of twenty-two, mother

of one child, was sexually so excited during menstruation that her

husband asked for a remedy to appease his wife’s excitement quæ

menstruata poscebat concubitus frequentes. Initus during this period

had an unaesthetic effect upon the highly cultured husband.

The increase of the sexual impulse usually begins a few days before

menstruation sets in and lasts a few days after its cessation. Yet,

although there is an extreme enhancement of concupiscence during the

catamenial period, the aversion to initus during this time by men and

women is, generally, real. It is due not to lack of sexual desire, but

to inhibitory action of powerful extraneous causes that are largely

psychological in character. There is the aesthetic repugnance to union,

when such a condition obtains, then there are the inhibitory effects

derived from the educational suggestions, inculcated in females as well

as in males from the time of puberty.[CV]

Common experience has also shown since time immemorial that concarnatio

during this period is fraught with many dangers. Prominent among them

is the possibility of rupturing the impaired vessels and of causing

haematometra. The marital relations should, therefore, be suspended

during the menstrual period.

_Pregnancy._—In the higher animals the female does not admit the male

after impregnation has taken place. In man it is different. The act is

here a relation of love, mutually demanded and enjoyed by both sexes.

It serves other purposes besides that of procreation. Hence initus does

take place during pregnancy. Although the woman’s sexual appetence is

somewhat lessened during that time, yet the libidinous cycles generally

continue far into the later months of pregnancy. In some cases an

increased sexual desire has been observed.

One of the author’s patients, a lady of twenty-two years of age, was

sexually so excited during her first pregnancy that ter quaterque quot

noctibus congressus petebat, and but for the refusal of her husband,

she would have indulged in more frequent gratification.

Another woman was known to the author who became sexually so excited

during her pregnancy that for the gratification of her increased

sexual desires meretricium faciebat for the entire period.

There is, therefore, no natural cessation of the sexual desires even in

a woman. Yet at that time, concarnatio should very rarely be indulged

in. If it is practised too frequently it leads to considerable

disturbances of circulation, and the result may be a miscarriage.

Another danger lurking from initus at the time of pregnancy, is the

infection of the woman. If it is admitted that the finger of the

obstetrician may be the agent of infection, we can hardly deny that the

penis may exert the same influence. The husband should hence abstain

from sexual relations with his wife during the latter days of gestation.

_Confinement._—Concarnatio immediately after confinement is as

dangerous as during menstruation. It will be productive of even greater

dangers than in ordinary menstruation.[CW] It is, therefore, an old

rule that after a confinement a respite of at least six weeks should

be had. In the first weeks after confinement, concarnatio leads to

congestion of the muliebria and hence to inflammations. The organs must

have time to return from their congested to the normal state. For this

involution they need about two months, and during this time initus

should be avoided.

_Lactation._—During lactation the woman’s nerves are weaker than usual,

and for that reason, concarnatio should be rarely indulged in.[CX]

If concarnatio is too often practised during lactation, menstruation

may return too early, prevent the secretion of the milk, and cause

subinvolution of the uterus. Then there is always the danger of a new

pregnancy, which will interfere with the process of lactation.

In nervous and excitable people very frequent concarnatio should

be avoided at all times. The frequent genital irritation causes an

increase of sexual excitability which is detrimental to their health.

Such people should avoid everything that tends to increase sexual

excitability, as, e. g., the immoderate use of alcohol and meat, very

rich and highly seasoned food and carbonated waters. The best criterion

for them whether they are indulging too much in sex-activity is their

own state of health. If initus is succeeded by languor, depression or

weakness, it has been indulged in too frequently.

_Spatium temporis concarnationis._—The normal duration or length of

time necessary to remain in initu before the orgasm is reached is

different in different individuals but is somewhat in control of the

individual. It must not be too rapid nor should it require too long a

time. If both parties tend to come to the climax at the same time, it

is best to follow the rule not to hinder the natural succession of the

act. It is best to go with the current without trying to resist it. It

is not hygienic to prolong the session beyond measure by artificial

delays and by alternative entering and withdrawing. The subtleties

may increase the libido of both mates at the time being, but they are

fraught with peril.

As a rule the climax does not come at the same time in both mates. In

the woman the orgasm is, generally, induced a moment later than in the

man. The woman, therefore, must first be prepared initu. Non est marito

cœundum priusquam conjugæ voluptas est illecta et vulva vaginaque

humescunt secretionibus voluptificis. Præparatio partium consistit in

osculis, contrectationibus et permulsionibus. Such dalliance has been

decried by some ascetics as obscene and beneath a man’s dignity. But

nothing is low if born of love. Qua re permulsio muliebrium a marito,

contrectatio mammarum et ludus cum mamillis voluptificissimum erit et

illicient conjugam.[CY]

In partial frigidity, the male must, apart from the preceding

manipulations, have special regard to the expiration of the female

excitation, even after congressus has begun.

Cum muliebria humescent, fascinum inserendum est as far as possible and

the motion following be exceedingly slight, hardly more than a tremor,

while the root of the mentulæ compressa est contra clitoridem. Deinde

actio propria incipiat. Cum climax propinquet fascinum extrahendum

et, si necessitas, abstergendum est. Tum actio resumenda est. This

procedure may be repeated again and again until the female approaches

her orgasm so closely that she will not permit detractionem any more.

The climax will then be simultaneous in both mates.

The hygienic rule in regard to duration is hence briefly this: The man

must adjust himself to the condition of the woman, so that both may

reach the culmination at the same time.

_Offspring._—The hygiene of the vita sexualis in relation to the

offspring is of the greatest personal as well as social importance.

The most favorable time for child-bearing is between the twenty-fourth

and the fortieth year of the woman’s life. Before and after this time

child-bearing is of disadvantage for the mother as well as for the

child.

The interval between two confinements should be no less than two and

a half years. Twelve months for lactation, nine months for reparation

from the nervous strain of lactation, and nine months for the next

pregnancy. The maximum number of children compatible with health should

thus not exceed seven. The moderate bearing of children, despite its

physiological expense, is conducive to health.

The middle part of the intermenstrual period is, as a rule, the most

sterile. If the couple is anxious to have a child, the best time for

concarnatio is from the third to the eighth day after the flow has

ceased. The time from the fifth to the second day before menstruation

is not so favorable as the days after the period. The greater part of

conception follows concubitus practised in the eight days following

menstruation.[CZ]

Hence a couple desiring a child should be advised that the eight days

following menstruation, while not absolutely dependable, yet present

the most favorable time for conception.

The time of the day most favorable for the congressio depends upon the

purpose of the act, whether it is practised for the sake of procreation

or for pleasure only. The horizontal position post initum favors the

retention of the semen within the vagina, the erect position its

expulsion. The motionless reclining position of the woman after the

generative act is, hence, favorable to conception. The act, therefore,

should not be practiced immediately before arising.[DA]

The season is also claimed to have some influence upon the

offspring.[DB]

Dispareunia of the two mates is often of great importance for the

offspring. Orgasmus retardatus in the male does not cause dispareunia.

In such a case concarnatio may be protracted for hours without

interference by the muliebria. But when the male tends to reach the

orgasm too quickly for his particular mate and the erection ceases,

then the female orgasm does not take place at all, and we have a case

of dispareunia.

Now, at the moment of the female orgasm the uterine suction takes

place, by which sperma is drawn into the uterine cavity. Hence if

the male orgasm occurs too soon and the woman does not reach this

stage at all, female ejaculation and uterine suction fail to appear.

This circumstance may seriously interfere with the entrance of the

spermatozoa into the uterus and thus prevent conception.[DC]

The male, therefore, has to be taught to prevent his premature orgasm

by an effort of the will or by so varying the motions as to delay the

climax. He has to retard his orgasm so that both mates may reach the

culmination at the same time.

Sometimes the entrance of the spermatozoa is prevented by a diseased

or narrow cervical canal. In this case the repeated application of the

constant electric current, after Apostoli, with the kathode in the

uterus, will cause a cure of the catarrh and a more lasting dilation

of the cervix than all the instrumental dilatations and the usual

curettages will ever effect.

While in the interest of the offspring the horizontal position of the

woman after initus is most desirable, and concarnatio should hence take

place in the beginning of the night, the rules are somewhat different,

if initus is practised for libido only.

Initus is slow and dangerous immediately after a meal and during the

two and three hours which the first digestion needs, or after having

finished a rapid walk or any other violent exercise. In the same

way, if the mental faculties are excited by some mental effort, by a

theatre party or a dance, rest is necessary, and it is advisable to

defer amatory delights till the next morning. After the calm and the

rest of the night the bodily organism and the intellectual faculties

are in a happy serenity and the sensibility has the whole virginity

of its impressions. On the other hand, initus ought to be avoided in

the morning immediately before rising. The time for beginning daily

occupations is by no means favorable to the attainment of a happy

lassitude. The most propitious hour for initus is, therefore, during

the night after the first sleep.

_Impeditio conceptionis._—The most frequent method employed conceptum

impeditare is that of coitus interruptus, or onanism at the moment

when it is felt that ejaculation of the semen is about to take place.

The male orgasm then occurs outside the vagina, and the female orgasm

is, as a rule, not induced at all. This practice is very injurious

to both mates. Although the male act is allowed to reach its acme,

still the ejaculation occurring outside the natural place, the proper

satisfaction is missing, and there remains a constant hankering after

the repetition concubitus which leads to excesses. Besides, this

constant feeling of dissatisfaction causes in the long run a number of

serious symptoms in both mates.

The weakness of the brain is manifested by phobias and psychic effects,

as ill humor, headaches, vertigo, syncope, insomnia, spasms of laughter

or crying, irritability, fatigue and spinal pains. The affections of

the gastro-intestinal canal are, spasm in swallowing, nausea, ravenous

appetite or loss of appetite and constipation. The affection of the

lungs is shown by nervous asthma. The heart shows palpitation and

tachycardia. The genito-urinary system shows the following symptoms:

impotence, frequent urination, hyperaesthesia in urethra, pressure in

perineum, neuralgia of the testicles and spermatorrhoea. The muscles

and skin show their affection by a certain tremor, paraesthesia in the

legs and perspiration at the least exertion.

Besides these symptoms, found in men and women alike, the female shows

serious local symptoms. In the woman congressus interruptus prevents

the inducing of the orgasm. In this way the tumefaction of the female

genitals is not removed. The genital organs become engorged and are

not allowed to enjoy the relaxation, consequent upon the completion

congressus. If these interrupted sexual meetings are often repeated,

serious diseases of uterus and ovaries develop. The uterine walls

become dense and thickened and the menstruation is disturbed. The woman

suffers from pains, tenderness and the sense of bearing down. In the

course of time the absence of the detumescence causes real chronic

disturbances, such as vulvitis, vaginitis, erosions of the cervix,

endometritis, retroposition of uterus, salpingitis, oöphoritis and even

fibroids or cancers.

Furthermore, as this practice of coitus interruptus does not allow

the impulse of detumescence to be gratified, after every preliminary

step has been taken to arouse it, the woman often takes her refuge to

stuprum manu. Hence we find after a certain lapse of time, the clitoris

to be considerably enlarged in volume as well as in length. The prepuce

is thickened, the labia minora are enlarged, wrinkled, contracted and

slate-colored. They are frequently covered with black spots, due to an

accentuated pigmentation. Repeated friction produces coxcomb labia, and

thigh friction, mostly found in young girls, is the cause of one lip

being larger than the other. The urinary and the vaginal orifices are

open, the constrictores vesicae and cunni having lost their tonicity.

To avoid all these serious consequences in the woman, it has been

suggested fascinum non est extrahendum until the woman’s impulse of

detumescence has been satisfied and the tumefaction muliebrium removed.

Such initus has been claimed to be of the same value for the woman

as the normal. But the greatest drawback to this mode of concarnatio

is that very few men will be able to perform such a delicate act.

It requires a great concentration of mind to succeed. Besides, it

would be an error to consider such concarnatio normal, even for the

woman. For it is not entirely a matter of indifference to the woman

whether the sperma flows into the vagina or not.[DD] Initus involves

the transmission into the female organism of certain fluids from the

man, which have a beneficial effect upon the woman. This is often

demonstrated by the helpful effect marriage has upon weak and anaemic

girls. A happy union is the charm wherewith to banish chlorosis and

many other female ailments and irregularities. The influence of the

seminal excitation is quite different from the copulative excitation.

If the latter is induced while the former does not follow, the

practice will cause in the woman debility and sometimes even nervous

prostration.

Any device to prevent the entrance of the sperma into the vagina or

uterus, such as condoms, cervical obturators or sponges, for the same

reason, have an injurious effect upon the woman’s general health.

Besides, all these devices do not prevent at all, especially the

sacrifices at the door of the temple do not always afford security

against an accidental conception. The spermatozoa with their faculty

of motion may penetrate into the female genital tract without the

introduction of the mentula into the vagina, and no obturator or sponge

can close up the os uteri so tightly that the spermatozoa will not be

able to find their way into the uterine cavity. No condom is strong

enough that it will not occasionally burst, and all the precautions of

months are suddenly set at naught.

The following history shows that the introduction of the fascinum into

the vagina is not an absolute necessity for pregnancy.

An uncle brought his niece, eighteen years of age, to the author with

some indefinite intestinal complaints. Several physicians made the

diagnosis pregnancy. But the girl, knowing that she never had any

carnal relations, laughed at their diagnosis. The examination showed

an intact hymen and a vaginal lumen which had never been dilated.

But the combined examination per rectum did reveal a four months'

pregnancy. The girl was told that her virginal state showed that she

really never had any carnal relations, but that dalliance with a

lover during which ejaculation takes place upon the crines volvulæ

may be the cause of pregnancy. This must have happened in her case.

Thereupon the girl broke down and confessed that such dalliance has

been indulged in.

Minime perniciosa marito maritæque sunt suppositoria medicata, pulveres

et injectiones acidae statim post initum. But they are all no more

trustworthy in killing the spermatozoa than congressus interruptus

and all the other anti-conceptional devices. They all fail without

exception.[DE]

The best means conceptionem impedire is total abstinence, which is

perfectly harmless for those who are able to accomplish it. Chastity

does no harm to the soul nor to the body. The belief that abstinence

causes diseases of the genitals or impotency of any kind is a great

error. Love never dies of want, but it often dies of indulgence.

Abstinence has for those who are able to maintain it no harmful

consequences. But it may be said that sexually normal individuals

are generally unequal to the task. Especially is abstinence almost

impossible in married people, whose nerves are keyed to the highest

pitch by the close intimacies of their lives.

_Means of sexual excitement._—In our modern way of living even

moderation in sexual matters seems to be impossible. Not a few of our

young men are satyrs and our young women nymphomaniacs, who “faute de

mieux” seize on stuprum manu. Once married they know no restraint. They

are living in constant sexual excitement.

There are five special influences that incite to sexual overindulgence.

The abuse of spirituous liquors, which has reached alarming proportions

among modern women, increases their sexual desires and destroys their

natural modesty. Dancing is another cause of sexual excitement. To-day

young girls in their teens frequent public balls and receptions, dance

with male partners, and mutually excite each other. The modern stage

is another important factor in sexually overstimulating the passions

of many of our young men and women. The modern stage no longer appeals

to the intellect of trained minds that have reached a certain age.

The modern stage is more sensual, it lays the main stress upon the

scenery, which may be enjoyed by young boys and girls, scarcely passed

the period of puberty. The play is, as a rule, an ordinary, every-day,

small suggestive love-affair. (It is euphemistically called a realistic

play.) Nude and vulgar art and impure literature have another great

influence in exciting sexual desires. The modern novelist finds his

greatest delight in descending to the gutter in search for his heroes,

and knows no higher aim in art than to give a realistic picture of the

blandishments of bad women and of the allurements of degenerated men.

One of the strongest sexual excitements which, directly concern

only men but indirectly leads to mutual erethism, is the modern

woman’s dress. Although from time immemorial woman always so dressed

as to accentuate and bring into prominence her secondary sexual

characteristics, yet the former modesty, the customs and certain

sumptuary laws dictated moderation in this respect. The modern woman

acknowledges no restraint. She copies slavishly the Parisian fashion,

which, as a rule, is a creation suggested by the demi-mondaine and

designed to increase her trade by exciting the passions of the other

sex. The modern woman, throughout the civilized world, consciously

or unconsciously, imitates her erring Parisian sister. Not only does

she try to bring into bold relief by means of the corset her main

secondary sexual characteristics, her bosom and her pelvis, but by

means of her hose supporters, her legs and the space between them are

only partly veiled. Thus a really obscene effect is created which

is far more exciting than if she were perfectly nude. The effect

of contrast and expectation renders the partly veiled nudity more

exciting. This is the psychological reason why man tries to conceal his

natural state and covers it by artifice, while animals try to win their

mates by showing and exposing their sexual qualities.

All these artificial excitements tend to create voluptuousness and

lead to excesses in venere. These excesses have the indispensable

consequence of making a large number of our men and women highly

neurasthenic.[DF]

FOOTNOTES:

[BJ] Medical students who ought to know the sequels of venereal

diseases are not chaster than other young men of the same age.

[BK] Such pamphlets as “What a young boy ought to know” or “What a

young girl ought to know” show a touching naïveté. Young boys and

girls, if of the age to understand such pamphlets, do not need to know

anything, for the simple reason that they know everything, and in a

more prurient way than their elders. It is the height of absurdity

to give lectures on sex problems before classes in high schools or

colleges, where a large percentage of the boys have already passed

through all the stages of gonorrhoeal infection and a good many of the

girls are addicted to the practice of autoeroticism. After such habits

have been acquired, lectures will be of no avail. Nor are books, fit

to be given into the hands of boys or girls, of any value. By the time

a child is able to understand such books it knows more of sex than the

book can teach.

[BL] It is questionable if physicians always appreciate the dangers of

venereal diseases and of sexual irregularities. It may sound queer, but

the author has met with many physicians who think no more of gonorrhoea

than of a cold in the head, and who consider a chancre a huge joke.

Such physicians—and their number is legion—have never acquired any

proper knowledge of sex.

[BM] It is only the covering that gives to any part of the human

anatomy a certain element of the obscene. The female arms are certainly

more beautiful than the female legs. Still the bare feminine arms,

because they are constantly seen everywhere, are seldom noticed by any

healthy male; but let a woman bare her legs in public and she will

shock the entire community by the strange, unusual sight.

[BN] The following lessons for boys and girls at the period of puberty

should be given only if preceded by preventive measures during infancy

and early childhood and by lessons in propagation of plants and of

animals. If the children have never been instructed before, and there

is the least suspicion that they have already tasted from the tree of

knowledge, either in the form of masturbation or in that of illicit

venery, such lessons are not only of no value, but they may even do

more harm than good. The descriptions of the sequelae of masturbation

and of venereal diseases may make the young people desperate and not

seldom cause suicide or wanton recklessness.

[BO] In the girl a certain kind of nocturnal ejaculation also takes

place, manifested by an abundant discharge from the Bartholinian glands

and the expulsion of Kristeller’s slimy plug from the cervix. These

phenomena during sleep are usually of a vague kind in young girls and

are seldom impressed upon their consciousness. The real pollution that

awakens the sleeper and leaves its traces in the individual’s memory

occurs usually only in boys, and in the female sex only, after a

perfect orgasm has been experienced in the state of wakening.

[BP] Vide B. S. Talmey; Contribution to the study of the Aetiology of

Varicocele; New York Medical Journal, July 14, 1894.

[BQ] To be sure this will mean preaching the morality of fear, and

it may be objected that “burglary is wrong, irrespective whether the

burglar does or does not get caught.” But the teaching of pure ethics

is best left to the minister, who is the natural teacher of morality.

The latter, with all the authority of religion, cannot prevent sex

irregularities. Rev. J. M. Wilson (Journ. of Education, 1881) says:

“Emotional religious appeals are far from rooting out sensuality and

sometimes even stimulate licentiousness.” This is a confession of the

ministry that, as far as chastity is concerned, pure ethics seem to

have been a complete failure. Hence, the pedagogue and physician will

have to give other, more appealing reasons for the avoidance of a

promiscuous life. Besides this, the morality of fear is a pretty good

working morality. The Bible (Exodus xx, 5 and 12, and xxii, 23, the

observance of a command carries its reward and the transgression of a

prohibition its punishment) often preaches the morality of fear, and

upon the Biblical morality all the western civilizations are founded.

Morality is the arrest of the instincts by the intellect, and the

intellect always asks for the ethical “why.” The instincts are the

voices of the past generations, reverberating like distant echoes in

the cells of the nervous system. To overcome this powerful inheritance,

the intellect needs a sound, valid reason, and the best reason will

be, if we can show the violator of the usages of society that he is

not only injuring himself but that he does harm to others. An immoral

act must harm somebody. A man alone in the world can not be immoral.

If humanity suddenly perished, leaving only one man on earth, there

would be no morality left for him. There is no moral precept which

is not a social precept, no other duty except toward one’s neighbor.

If human sanitation and the universal intelligent use of venereal

prophylaxis could banish venereal diseases from this planet, there

would be no medical sex-problem, although there might still remain some

sex-problems for the sociologists to solve.

But venereal diseases are still here among us. If prostitution could

be expelled from our earth, the generations following such a happy

catastrophe would be free of venereal diseases. But as humanity seems

to be now constituted, we shall have to wait a long time for the

spontaneous disappearance of this plague. Even in the ideal state of

society, dreamt of by our economic determinists, prostitution will

still be in existence, as long as we continue to breed mental defects.

Only a very small percentage of prostitution is due to economic

conditions. In the great majority of cases it is absence of every moral

principle and will-power which determine the girls to embrace this

unhappy profession. Dr. Pauline Tarnowsky (Etudes anthropométriques sur

les voleuses et prostituées) found that professional prostitutes are

imperfect beings, affected by arrest of development, generally due to

morbid heredity, and present mental and physical signs of degeneracy in

accord with their imperfect evolution. They accept their abject trade

agreeably and do not want to change it. Laziness and absence of moral

sense are the principal traits characteristic of the prostitute. Dr.

Olga Bridgman (Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc., August 16, 1913) found among

a hundred and four sexually immoral girls, examined at admission at

the State training school for girls at Geneva, one hundred and one

or ninety-seven per cent. feeble-minded and only three normal. Dr.

Edith E. Spaulding, Physician, Massachusetts Reformatory for Women,

Sherborn, Mass. (The Amer. Social Hygiene Assoc. Bulletin, May, 1914),

has completed a study of the mental and physical factors in the cases

of 244 girls leading a life of prostitution. Of these over ninety-nine

per cent. had one of the venereal diseases, fifty per cent. had both

syphilis and gonorrhoea. Of the total number 60 per cent. showed

syphilis and 89 per cent. gonorrhoea. The mental and environmental

factors disclosed by this investigation are no less valuable and

interesting. In only 15 per cent. did environmental conditions alone

seem to have determined the entrance into a life of prostitution,

the remaining eighty-five per cent. showed some underlying mental or

physical defect.

All these investigations tend to show that defective mentality is

responsible for the presence of prostitution. Prostitution, therefore,

will always be with us, as long as we allow mental defectives to

propagate. With the presence of prostitution, the venereal scourge

will rage among us, unless we can convince men to stay away from

contamination.

[BR] This course will mean a much larger task than merely lobbying a

bill through the legislature for the eradication of prostitution, the

common remedy of the reformer. It will come only by the slowest and

most difficult of processes and by that hardest of all work in the

world, i. e., thinking.

The off-hand reformers are too impatient with the slow and toilsome

process of competent and judicious sex-education. For them a law,

forbidding the marriage of the diseased, suffices to eradicate

hereditary syphilis and ophthalmia neonatorum. As a rule, their laws

often intensify the very ills they seek to cure. To the average

reformer life is presented in a stark and rigid outline. He has no

perception of proportions, no knowledge of values. Even when he

acquiesce in the slow, patient, laborious study of sex, he is blandly

unconscious of distinctions. He at once exaggerates matters. He can not

see that the truth about sex may be imparted to the child by parents,

family physician or teacher, but that it cannot be acquired by the

child from the platform, stage, novel or the ubiquitous magazine.

[BS] Lewis (D. Amer. Jour. Derm., 1906) has known girls of thirteen

and fourteen years of age quæ conceptaverunt without realizing their

condition. The author examined once a gravid girl of seventeen years

who had no idea what pregnancy means and where hers resulted from.

[BT] Woodruff (Expansion of Races, p. 193) estimates about one million

prostitutes in this country. Roe asserts that the average life of

these girls is about five years. This means that two hundred thousand

prostitutes die every year in the United States and are replaced by new

ones, or two hundred thousand girls are led into a life of shame, every

year, in this country.

[BU] Belaschko’s statistics show that fifty-five per cent. of all the

venal women in Berlin come from the great cities and forty-five per

cent. from the country. Thirty-four per cent. of these girls belonged

to middle-class families and three per cent. of them were graduates

from high schools.

[BV] Social and not economic conditions, says Nascher, are responsible

for most of the prostitution in New York City. Very few are driven to

it through want.

[BW] Gibb (N. Y. Med. Record, 1907, p. 643), who examined nine hundred

children for the society of prevention of cruelty to children,

has found girls of nine or ten years of age and even younger with

abnormally developed instincts who often submit willingly.

The author had once under treatment for chancre a child of eleven years

of age who submitted to concubitus for money to be able to buy pretty

clothes. Her mother, a widow, was well able to support her and did so.

There was no question of poverty.

In another case, a girl of twelve, already menstruating, whose mother

was in an insane asylum, “tentavit tangere genitalia medici sui,” while

being examined for bronchitis.

[BX] Clifford G. Roe (in Woman’s World, September, 1909) claims that

the average life of the prostitutes is about five years, according to

the best statistics.

[BY] Through the consultation about pregnancy, several cases became

known to the author where respectable young men and women, who, known

to each other and of the same set in society, would never had thought

of indulging in illicit venery, after participating in a carouse

together found themselves in some hotel the next morning, without the

least knowledge how they landed there.

[BZ] The automobile has caused the ruin of more respectable girls than

all the poverty of the slums has ever been able to accomplish.

[CA] In the present state of society, the most rabid, radical and

free-love advocate will scarcely cherish the thought of his young

daughter becoming impregnated by a chance acquaintance. Nor will the

child, born of such a union, thank his parents for the bestowal of the

handicap of illegitimacy upon his life journey.

[CB] How little influence fear of infection has upon the conduct

of our young men, leading a promiscuous life, shows the following

characteristic case. The author was consulted by a young man, engaged

to be married, who was suffering from gonorrhoea, complicated by a

terrible orchitis. He was put to bed where he suffered terrific pains

for quite a number of days. The first question the patient asked, after

he got well, was whether he may marry the next month. He was warned

against marrying before repeated examinations have shown the absence of

gonococci. He then requested some drug for the prevention of another

infection. Now, if there ever was a man who had a reason to fear

infection, it surely was he. He suffered enough. Still he was ready

again to plunge into his promiscuous sex-life, without any thought of

the young girl who was waiting to become his bride.

[CC] Col. L. M. Maus, U. S. A., has used among the troops of his

department of the Lakes for one year, with surprisingly effective

results, a small tin collapsible tube containing a paste made of phenol

3 per cent., calomel 25 per cent. and lanolin 72 per cent. He has found

this paste an absolute preventive against gonorrhoea, chancroid and

syphilis, if properly used within half an hour after contact. One-third

of the paste is squeezed into the urethra, the remaining two-thirds are

applied to the glans. Cleansing the genitalia is not necessary, if the

tube is used.

[CD] As long as there is a supply of prostitutes there will always be

a demand for the services of these unfortunates. The notion that it

is the demand which creates the supply has been spread by superficial

observers. It was not the demand for the telephone that led to its

invention, or the demand for railroads that led to invention of the

steam engine. As long as we allow mental defectives to propagate

their kind, there will always be degenerate women who will prostitute

themselves, and by this very act create a demand.

[CE] Le Pileur says: Lessons to young girls, showing them the dangers

to which they expose themselves, can only have a favorable influence.

Perhaps the physicians of Saint-Lazare will then hear no more, from at

least one-fourth of all these unfortunate girls in this institution,

that they have given themselves to some stranger. We will not hear

twenty per cent. of them answer that they have allowed themselves to be

defloured out of curiosity, to know what it is, to be as smart as their

friends.

This ignorance is due to the fact that the majority of parents have no

more knowledge of sex than what is known to every animal by instinct.

Pinard (Chronique Médicale, 1903, p. 488) says: “Jusqu’à présent l’acte

procréateur n’a été qu’un acte instinctif tel qu’il existait à l’âge

des cavernes, c’est le seul de nos instincts n’ayant pas été civilisé.

L’acte est accompli à l’aurore du XXe siècle comme à l’âge de pierre.”

[CF] The Sanitarian (March, 1904) claims that not one per cent. of

prostitutes are able to read or write because they are of such a low

order of intelligence that they cannot be educated.

[CG] What are a few generations in the history of humanity? One to two

centuries represent only a short space of time. Prostitution is older

than history. The Hammurabi codex, paragraph 100, has already rules

about Hierodules, or girls consecrated to the service of Venus. Moses,

Deuteronomy xxiii, 18, commands: “There shall be no temple prostitute

of the daughters of Israel.” Still prostitution existed among the Jews

as seen by I. Regum, xiv, 24; xv, 12; xxii, 46; II. Regum, xxiii, 7;

Amos, ii, 7; Hosea, iv, 14. At this point the prophet distinguishes

between the common and the temple prostitute. If such an ancient

institution could be banished from this earth by eugenics within a few

centuries, humanity could be satisfied.

[CH] If the symbol of inheritance be placed as 1, and the symbol of

environment as 0, both together will give the figure 10; each alone

amounts to little in one case and to nothing in the other.

[CI] These conditions are now noticed even in our young country,

where not only the native of the Anglo-Saxon stock sets a limit to

his offspring but also the immigrant, who begins the same practices

as soon as he has reached a higher step of the social ladder. The

same Russian Jewess who in her native country set her pride to follow

the religious dictates of her race to increase and multiply, the same

Italian or Irish woman who in her native country would not have thought

of defying the tenets of the Catholic church regarding the limitation

of offspring, will ask her physician for some anti-conceptional remedy,

as soon as she has reached a certain degree of affluence. With wealth

and power come love for luxury and ease, and the consequence is the

limitation of the offspring.

[CJ] Any sex-order for breeding purposes must be a public institution,

and such an institution would be the worst slavery history has ever

seen. Mardach (The Tragedy of Man, twelfth scene) gives in his drama a

true picture of the tyranny of such institutions. The hero and heroine

of the drama are Adam and Eve, who are repeatedly reincarnated at

different important periods in the history of the world but do not know

who they are. At the different incarnations they always happen to meet

and fall in love with each other. The last reincarnation on this earth

takes place several thousand years after our present era. At the end of

the twelfth scene, Adam is present, when the old man or judge of the

town (called at that period Phalanster) disposes of children and wives.

Two women, one of them the reincarnated Eve, arrive with their young

children, and the judge, upon the advice of the scientist, decides

which trade they should learn.

FIRST SCENE

JUDGE. Scientist! Examine the skulls of these two children.

SCIENTIST. This child should be brought up to be a physician, the other

to be a shepherd.

JUDGE. Out with them.

EVE. Do not touch him! This is my child. Who dares to tear him away

from his mother-breast?

JUDGE. Take him away! Why tarry with him any longer?

EVE. My child, my child! Did not I nourish thee with my heart-blood?

Where is the power that may rend this holy bond? Shall I disclaim thee

forever, that thou mayest be lost in the crowd, and my searching eye,

in restless fear, shall in vain look for thee among a hundred similar

phalanster-types?

ADAM. O friend, if ought is sacred to you, leave this child to his poor

mother.

JUDGE. You play, oh stranger, a daring game! If we allow the revival

of the conquered prejudice, formerly called the family, then the

acquisitions of our present science will tumble at once.

EVE. What is to me your frozen science? May it fall, where nature’s

voice speaks.

JUDGE. Well! will it be done soon? (_The child is carried away._)

EVE. My child, my child! (_Eve faints._)

SECOND SCENE

JUDGE. These two women are not mated yet. Those who wish them for

pairing come forward.

ADAM. Upon this woman make I claim.

JUDGE. Scientist! What is thy opinion?

SCIENTIST. The man sentimental, the woman nervous, an unhealthy issue

would be the result. This pair fits not together.

ADAM. Still I shall not let her go, if she wishes me.

EVE. Magnanimous man, I am thine.

ADAM. I love thee, oh woman, with the whole fervor of my heart!

EVE. Also I, this I feel, will forever love thee.

SCIENTIST. Why, this is madness. Strange, indeed, to see reappear the

spirit of bygone ages in our enlightened world. How comes this?

ADAM. It is a late ray of light from paradise.

JUDGE. It is pitiable.

ADAM. Pity us not. This madness is ours. We surely envy not you for

your soberness. What in the world ever was great and noble was such

madness, which is not confined by circumspect anxiety. The angel’s

speech that sweetly sounds down to us from higher spheres is a safer

proof of our soul’s affinity and kinship to the higher regions. We

despise the low common dust of this earth, boldly searching the road to

the higher spheres. (_He holds Eve in close embrace._)

JUDGE. Why listen any longer to this nonsense. Away to the hospital

with both of them.

This poetical fancy gives, nevertheless, a true picture of the

conditions our descendants in future generations will have to contend

with if the patriarchal doctrines of our radical sociologists should

ever materialize. Their order of things must logically lead to the

hardest and most bewildering tyranny mankind has ever known. The

tyrannical Draconic laws will prescribe what to eat, what to drink, how

long to sleep, how to mate, and what the children should be.

This is not a fancy-dream. Even in our free country the drift of the

law-giving power is towards such conditions. In one State, it is

allowed to drink tea or coffee, but not alcohol, although ten grains

caffeine is already a deadly poison, but it will take many more grains

alcohol to kill. In another State it is allowed to smoke cigars but not

cigarettes, although of the three modes of using tobacco, snuffing,

chewing and smoking, the cigar is the worst of the last mode, because,

as a rule, it combines the effects of chewing and smoking. Another

state forbids marriage without a physician’s certificate, although,

if the marriage candidate wishes to conceal the truth, there is no

physician living, Neisser, the discoverer of the gonococcus, and

Wassermann with his test, included, who could tell with absolute

certainty whether a man has been infected or not. Even if the candidate

himself, having been infected, wishes to know whether he has been

cured, the different tests are of such an elaborate nature that very

few physicians, even in the metropolis, are able to make them. Still

ignorance passes laws. Besides this, no law, forbidding marriage, can

prevent mating and the propagation of the unfit. Even if the king, the

representative of the law, should imprison his young daughter in a

brazen tower, her Jupiter will find his way to her by a shower of gold.

[CK] No doubt castration is a severe penalty for any human being. But

degeneracy itself is the penalty for the violation of biological laws,

and the eradication of degeneracy is no more than the satisfaction

of the law of talion and the restoration of the moral equilibrium.

Society has a right to make use of these measures of defense to free

itself of the degenerates, and nothing short than depriving them of the

capability of procreation will do the work.

This right does not mean that it is the duty of the State to make

search for inoffensive degenerates to satisfy the law of talion. In

the interest of personal liberty, it would be very dangerous to give

society the right to pick up inoffensive men and women on the streets,

declare them imbeciles and sterilize or castrate them. This would throw

the doors wide open to abuse. Only those who place themselves or are

placed under society’s protection, either in asylums or in prisons, and

have thus become society’s wards should be subjected to the rules and

regulations of society.

[CL] The brutality of Nietzsche’s philosophy has never attracted normal

people, even if they had the assurance that the offspring of the

brutal mating will turn out to be supermen. This assurance can not be

given. The lessons of history teach just the contrary. The artificial

breeding of the Spartan warrior led to the sterility of every progress

of culture, science, art or commerce, while the chaotic panmixia of

Athens did not prevent this town of only thirty thousand inhabitants,

two-thirds of them slaves, to become the spiritual centre of Greece and

the teacher of untold future generations in art and science. But for

Athens and its panmixia, Sparta’s history would have remained unwritten

and its people buried in oblivion, like many another nation that is

known by name only. The most vaunted Spartan vigor has not left the

least sign of a monument, chiseled, written, carved, or stained, to

record Sparta’s very existence. Sparta’s vigor was the vigor of the

bull or the elephant.

[CM] Even at the time of Shakespeare this fact was well known. The

poet’s advice is: “Let still the woman take an elder than herself; so

wears to him, so sways she level in her husband’s heart.”

[CN] Premature union means loss for the child, says Ellen Key; it may

arrest in their growth countless excellent forces. Woman’s nature does

not attain its full spiritual maturity before about the age of thirty.

[CO] During pregnancy the prone position is the one least injurious

to the child. In the later months, it is sometimes the only position

possible.

[CP] Brehem reports that in the Sudan the woman stands in initu, bends

over and places her hands on her knees.

Among the Kamtschadals maritus maritaque jacent in lateribus.

Some of the Australian tribes exercent compressionem in a squatting

position.

[CQ] The question of frequency was a matter of solicitude to many

ancient legislators. Zoroaster requires as the minimum frequency

to secure a sufficient gratification mulieri una congressio nono

quoque die; Solon three times a month; Mohammed requires once a week,

otherwise the woman shall have cause for divorce.

[CR] Among young married people it is often the wife who is more

exacting than the husband. The sensations are entirely new to her and

she demands their repetition so often till the male erections fail to

perform their part.

[CS] The mental faculties suffer most under excesses. The Talmud says

that the brain dries up through excesses in venere and masturbation.

The symptoms of cerebrasthenia e abusu sexuali, says Hegar, is pressure

in the head, inability to do continuous mental work and to concentrate

one’s thoughts, which involuntarily continue to stray upon the sexual

sphere, lack of mental energy, hypochondria and insomnia.

The eyes of the patients are disturbed by light. They fear light in

such a degree that reading after a short time has to be interrupted.

Mooren reports the case of an American lady who, manu stupri causa from

her early youth, could not even stand the lustre of another person’s

eye.

Weber found that, excessive congressus, especially in the female

sex, has an unfavorable influence upon the organ of hearing. The

accompanying symptoms are pains in the vertebral column, in the region

of the last pectoral and the first lumbar vertebrae.

Mackenzie says that excesses in venere may lead to inflammations of

the nasal mucous membrane, to epistaxis and to abnormal sensations of

smelling.

[CT] This explains why so many middle-aged men have no other aim in

life except to make money and spend it on frivolities, and why so many

women turn their minds to mere fads and sheer inanities; whose minds

harbor only one thought, dress, and who worship only one divinity—the

goddess of fashion.

[CU] The young bride entering the bridal chamber a pure virgin, says

Ribbing, is not prepared for the things to come as is her husband. In

any case, she somewhat fears the changed conditions and surroundings.

[CV] Even among barbarians women were taboo and considered unclean

during the catamenial period. Concarnatio was strictly prohibited. The

Mosaic law declares the menstruating woman unclean for seven days.

Likewise the man, qui comprimebat a menstruating woman, was considered

unclean for seven days.

[CW] A confinement, says Freund, is a menstruation in which a perfectly

developed ovum is expelled.

[CX] Trousseau says, conjugal congressus is not injurious to nurse and

nursling, provided it is regulated by great moderation.

[CY] Garnier consulit ut manus mariti voluptarie titillet mammas et

alias rotundas partes mulieris. These caresses convey to the spirits

of both mates the most vivid excitation, which hasten and induce

ejaculation. Ovid gives the same advice.

“Nec manus in lecto laeva jacebit iners.

“Invenient digiti quod agant in partibus illis.

“In quibus occulte spicula tangit Amor.”

It is known that Vanswieten gave the following advice to Empress Maria

Theresia who was childless in the beginning of her married life. “Ego

vero censeo, vulvam Sanctissimae Majestatis ante coitum diutius esse

titillandam.”

[CZ] Hensen (Physiologie der Zeugung) concludes from statistics

compiled from 284 cases wherein the day concarnationis was known,

that the greatest number of conceptions follows the act practised in

the days immediately after menstruation. The chances of conception

following the act practised during menstruation are increased the

nearer the catamenial period is approaching its end. The number of

conceptions after the act practised before menstruation, Hensen found

to be the smallest.

[DA] In a general way Hesiod advises never to practise concarnatio

on the return home from a funeral, but rather after having enjoyed a

good comedy, for the semen transfers cheerfulness as well as sorrow

and other affections to the offspring. For the same reason concubitus

should be avoided when in a state of intoxication. Diogenes said to a

stupid boy: “My son, thy father was drunk when thy mother conceived

thee.”

[DB] Noirot found that the healthiest and strongest children are those

conceived in the spring, the time of the rejuvenation of nature.

Oettinger found that liaisons produce an abnormally large proportion of

females, incestuous unions of males.

Westermark says that among exogamous peoples the female birth rate is

often excessively high.

[DC] Soranus goes so far as to claim that conception cannot ensue if

initus is not desired and longed for by the woman. Just as the man

can have no ejaculation, or rather erection, without desire, so is

conception impossible without it in the woman. Just as food, taken

without appetite or with disgust, will not be properly digested, so the

sperma can not be received by the womb, if inclination and lust are

wanting during concarnatio.

This opinion is not borne out by experience, for we find that pregnancy

does take place after concarnatio while the woman is in a natural or

hypnotic sleep, in a chloroformed state, in drunkenness and in rape.

These facts prove that pregnancy may follow concarnatio where the woman

did not experience the least degree of libido.

But even if conception be possible without libido, the lack of the

latter is a great impediment to impregnation.

[DD] Roubaud says that, initus interruptus causes in the woman

voluptuous excitation without allowing the reception of the spermatic

fluid into the organs. The desire and the copulative-voluptuousness

awaken the sensibility of the womb and prepare it to receive the

normal excitation of the sperma. If its arrival fails, the uterine

sensibility, awakened by the erotic sensibility, reacts upon the

mobility in a confused manner and causes unsuitable and irregular

motions. If these manoeuvres are often repeated the woman eventually

becomes a nervous wreck.

[DE] E. Kraus (Centralblatt f. Gynaecol., 1911, p. 747) found that all

chemicals which are recommended for the prevention of conception prove

themselves extremely unreliable in the practice. His experiments with

4 per cent. boric acid, 0.8 per cent. citric acid, etc., on hares and

rabbits failed entirely.

For this reason, namely, that there is no anti-conceptional device in

existence which affords real security against pregnancy, there arose

recently certain sociologists and physicians in Europe who demand the

abrogation of the laws contra abortionem.

The Pirogoff medical society in Russia demands the legalization

abortionis.

Hans Gross (Gross Archiv, Vol. 12, p. 345) says that in his opinion the

time is not far away when abortion will not be punished any longer.

Ed. v. Liszt (Die kriminelle Fruchtabtreibung, Zürich, 1910) says,

the punishment for committing abortion should only take place after

the pregnancy has advanced to a certain point. The possibility of

recognizing the human form or of distinguishing the sex of the embryo

or the capability of motion should mark the point in question. The

moment, after which abortion would be punished, would thus coincide

with the end of the second month.

Such proposals can only be made in countries where Roman law is in

force. From the point of view of the Roman law the embryo is “pars

viscerum mulieris.” Hence if she has a right to remove any part of her

body, she may also remove her embryo. No law denies a man his right

to have his healthy appendix removed even against the advice of his

surgeons, if he thinks it may bother him later on. Hence if the woman

thinks that carrying her embryo to term will subject her and her child

to great hardships, she has a right to have it removed.

But in our free country, under Anglo-Saxon law, nobody has a right over

his own body. Suicide is a crime. A woman has no right to remove a part

of her bowels. She and her body belong to the State.

For the same reason sterilization or castration for prevention of

conception must be considered criminal according to the philosophy of

our laws. The operation for the permanent destruction of the faculty of

propagation is nothing less than a partial homicide. For it destroys

the individual’s growth in the infinite. Hence the physician who

performs the operation of sterilization to prevent conception in a

perfectly healthy person is guilty of a crime, just as the homicide

committed, in the interest of euthanasia, upon the victim’s request, is

a criminal offense.

[DF] In their natural sexual life, men live at a loss, hence are more

katabolic, i. e., the changes in consequence of their sexual activity

are disruptive. Women, living at a profit, are more anabolic, i. e.,

the male sperma absorbed by her organs serve for constructive

processes. But erethism of any kind, in both male and female,

represents a katabolic crisis.

PART VIII.

MORALITY[DG]

CHAPTER XXII

THE MORAL STANDARD

Moral judgments claim to be subjective and demand assent from all

men. Hence they imply a standard by which the claims can be tested.

What is this standard? In logic there is an abstract truth which is

the standard of thought. In ethics there must be an ideal good which

furnishes the criterion of what ought to be. What is this ideal supreme

good, by which the ethics of an action can be judged?

Only revealed religion approached the question of morality in a logical

way. It first created as a standard of morality the will of God, as

laid down in the sacred scriptures and traditions of every creed. If

the philosopher, or rather the freethinker, can not accept the standard

of revelation he must find some other criterion for general morality,

or rather he must learn in some way to read the will of the supreme

intelligence. Every advance in science, the unlocking of every secret

in nature, every interpretation and revelation of her laws that comes

to man through scientific research proves, confirms and stamps, with

the seal of eternal truth, the existence of a supreme intelligence,

the Great First Cause, the Soul and Source of all life, energy, and

intelligence. When the will of the supreme intelligence is found,

then there is also found the standard of morality. A philosopher can

not raise his finger and say this is moral and this immoral. Such

an arbitrary standard must lead to chaos, disorder and confusion in

the realm of morals. The moral sense is the last to be developed and

the first to be confused and disordered. With the dogmas of revealed

religion the old standards of morality were also swept aside, and

the modern moralists have no foundation to build their moral systems

upon, hence their drifting from one system to another, from economic

determinism to the worship of the superman, to work-worshipping,

love-worshipping, or pleasure-worshipping.

Among all the modern systems of moral conduct, the radicals who are

building theirs upon economics have chosen the easiest way. They

simply borrowed the ideal of revealed religion and raised it to their

moral standard. They preach economic equality. This represents their

religion, their economics, their morality, their all. Their watchword

is, social justice by giving the laborer the full share of his

labor. This principle of social justice has been borrowed from the

Judeo-Christian creed.[DH]

Social justice composes the chief part of the religious tenets of the

Bible. Even Nietzsche (Jenseits des Guten und Bösen) considers the Old

Testament as essentially the book of Divine justice. אל רחום וחנון a

God of mercy and pity is Jehova—, but אל רחום וחנון he will by no means

clear the guilty. (Exodus xxxiv, 6-7.) Even the passage in the stern

Nahum (I, 2) אל קנוא ונקם is falsely translated, “a god of revenge.”

It really means “He is a god of retributory justice.” The prophetic

teachers, just as the present-day socialists, never asked for love

and mercy but for right and justice. The portrayal of a pious man in

ancient Israel is given in Job xxix, 12, and xxxi, 13. It is the man of

strict social justice. Philo Judeus (Περὶ Φιλανθρωπίας) pointed out the

greatness of the social law in ancient Judaism.

These Biblical ideas of liberty, equality and brotherly love have

been taken up by the altruistic materialists and raised to the top

of the mountain of life as a beacon for humanity’s fragile skiff.

But the sources whence these ideals originated are not only entirely

ignored but are reviled, defamed and ridiculed by these radicals. The

socialists did not create the ideals of social justice, as found in

their doctrines. They borrowed them from the Jewish-Christian creed,

and as atheists—ninety per cent. of them profess atheism—they repudiate

this same creed. They borrow the ancient religious ideals of charity

and social justice from Christianity and repudiate Christianity.[DI]

As altruistic materialists, they are theologically agnostics, but

their impulses are Christian. But by this repudiation of religion they

forfeit the very foothold to stand upon. Religion has behind its ideal

the authority of the divine will. What is behind the materialistic

ideal? What is the goal of materialism? Supposing the Spirit of the

age, that puts material well-being before all other prizes of life,

should carry the victory, supposing the ideal of a perfect materialism

should be realized, what then? Cui bono?

Contrary to the Judeo-Christian highest ideal of protection of the

poor and disinherited, there is the brutal philosophy of Nietzsche’s

superman. While the former proclaims the sublimity of abnegation in

the interest of the present weak and downtrodden, the latter preaches

the extermination of these weaklings in the interest of the future

generations of supermen.

The vindictive vandal-like philosophy of Nietzsche demands the

destruction of the weaker by the stronger.[DJ] In this way a perfect

aristocracy will arise. But the principle of a good aristocracy must

be not to exist for the sake of society, but only as a foundation and

scaffolding by means of which an elect kind of being may arise to its

higher tasks.

But what are the higher tasks? Here Nietzsche is perfectly silent.

What is the highest value, what is man’s standard of values by which

we may judge and measure the valuable? What is the best for society?

What are the greatest aims and ends in life? Are the material gains of

society of supreme value? Is the building of railroads, telegraphs,

telephones or factories of supreme value, or are the ends of life the

writing of lyrics, painting of pictures, and the chiseling of statues?

What will be reached with the superstate of society? If the end and

purpose of human existence were known, we could decide whether it

is worth while to expend human energy upon the increase of material

well-being, whether it is preferable to conserve the energy for the

attainment of spiritual joys, or whether the ethical efforts would be

of the highest cosmic value. But the ultimate purpose being unknown,

or even unknowable, what will be reached when the superman has been

produced? What is he going to accomplish? What when the highest degree

of accomplishment has been reached in science, art, literature and

economics, what then? If all men were Aristoteles, Kants, Spencers, if

all women were Sapphos, Mme. de Staëls or George Eliots, what then?

Humanity would soon starve if it consisted of Apollos, Venuses and

intellectual giants only. A Venus was not created to wash dishes,

neither will an astronomer make a proficient bricklayer or a poet

a good shoemaker, Hans Sachs to the contrary notwithstanding. The

catch-phrase that society nowadays wants not the man who is a good

machine but the man who can make one, sounds clever but is not true.

The truth is that for every machine invented, we need hundreds and

thousands of men to handle the same. A population consisting of

supermen only, such as inventors, captains of industry, professional

men, rulers, statesman, generals, poets, artists, etc., could not exist

for any length of time.

The different brands of reformers claim that, following their

doctrines, it will lead to the highest advantage of humanity. But

they fail to give the definition of advantage. What is the best for

humanity? What is man’s purpose and aim in this world? What is meant by

the fulfilment of man’s destiny? The answer is entirely meaningless,

that the real aim is to be useful in real life, and only begs the

question. What is life, what is it here for? Whence does man come,

whither is he traveling?

What is the aim of civilization? All civilization is merely an intense

effort to make life beautiful. If life is trivial, then civilization

is vanity and vexation of the spirit. What profits man to wear out

body and mind in the service of civilization? Civilization has

been developed on a metallic basis. Tools, implements, instruments

and machinery form the landmarks of the different civilizations.

The gold of Ophir, the copper of Sinai, the silver of Laurium were

part of the web and woof of the early civilization. In modern times

industrialism has become nearly the sum total of our civilization. The

highest boast of our present civilization is wireless, aeroplanes,

telephones, telegraphs, railroads, all mere facilities of living and

communication. If life is mere vanity, then all civilization or

progress is a figment.

Another kind of ethical valuation has been proclaimed by the “moralists

of work.” It has first found eloquent expression in Zola’s so-called

four evangelia, especially in ‘Le Travail’ and in ‘La Fécondité.’ The

sermon preached there is work for work’s sake. The god worshiped is the

god of things material. Man is told to go forth with a high and noble

purpose toward the god of things. These new preachers of the morality

of work have almost succeeded to create a certain frenzy for work. The

success virus of things material is being steadily pumped into men and

even women, so that life has become simply a whirl of things of no

survival value whatsoever. The crude materialism and realism of our

times have created a feverish and almost insane craving for things, a

quenchless fever for things material. The spirit of the hour is the

material world-building, the lust for material things, the intoxication

of work.[DK] Hence the high-pressure requirements of modern existence

which have created in the people a total lack of proportion, a lack

of all sense of relative values. The relative value of a thing,

representing its power to relieve man’s wants, has become confounded

with positive values which only timeless things possess.