“I was born of poor parents, and early left an orphan. When of age,
though my circumstances promised poorly for the support of a family, I
desired to marry, knowing that a good wife would greatly add to my
happiness. The preventive spoken of in your book presented itself to my
mind, and for seven years that I have now been married, it has been
used. I was successful in business, and acquired the means of
maintaining a family; but still I have been unwilling, because my
constitution is such a one as I think a parent ought not to transmit to
his offspring. I prefer not to give birth to sentient beings, unless I
can give them those advantages, physical as well as moral and
intellectual, which are essential to human happiness.”
From the letter of an aged French gentleman, who holds a public office
in the western country, I translate the following; and I would to heaven
that every young man and woman in these United States could read it:
“I have read your work with much interest; and desire that it may have a
wide circulation and that its recommendations may be adopted in
practice. If you publish another edition, I could wish that you would
add a piece of advice of the greatest importance, especially to young
married persons. Many women are ignorant, that, in the gratification of
the re-productive instinct, the exhaustion to the man is much greater
than to the woman; a fact most important to be known, the ignorance of
which has caused more than one husband to forfeit his health, nay, his
life. Tissot tells us, that the loss by an ounce of semen is equal to
that by forty ounces of blood;[41] and that, in the case of the
healthiest man, nature does not demand connexion oftener than once a
month.[42]
“How many young spouses, loving their husbands tenderly and
disinterestedly, if they were but informed of these facts, would watch
over and preserve their partners’ healths, instead of exciting them to
over-indulgence.”—Another extract.
“A member of the Society of Friends, from the country, called at our
office; he informed me that he had been married twenty years, had six
children, and would probably have had twice as many, but for the
preventive, which he found in every instance efficacious. By this means
he made an interval of two or three years between the births of each of
his children. Having at last a family of six, his wife earnestly desired
to have no more; and on one occasion, when the preventive was neglected
to be used, she shed tears at the prospect of again becoming pregnant.
He said he knew, in his own neighborhood, several married women who were
rendered miserable on account of their continued pregnancy, and would
have given anything in the world to escape, but knew not how.”
Our readers may implicitly depend on the accuracy of the facts we have
stated. Though in the present state of public opinion we may not, for
obvious reasons, give _names_ in proof.
That most practical of philosophers, Franklin, interprets chastity to
mean, _the regulated and strictly temperate satisfaction, without injury
to others, of those desires which are natural to all healthy adult
beings_. In this sense, chastity is the first of virtues, and one most
rarely practised, either by young men or by married persons, even when
the latter most scrupulously conform to the letter of the law.
It is all important for the welfare of our race, that the re-productive
instinct should never be selfishly indulged; never gratified at the
expense of the well-being of our companions. A man who, in this matter,
will not consult, with scrupulous deference, the slightest wishes of the
other sex; a man who will ever put his desires in competition with
theirs, and who will prize more highly the pleasure he receives than
that he may be capable of bestowing—such a man appears to me, in the
essentials of character, a brute. The brutes commonly seek the
satisfaction of their propensities with straight-forward selfishness,
and never calculate whether their companions are gratified or teased by
their importunities. Man cannot assimilate his nature more closely to
theirs, than by imitating them in this.
Again. There is no instinct in regard to which strict temperance is more
essential. All our animal desires have hitherto occupied an undue share
of human thoughts; but none more generally than this. The imaginations
of the young and the passions of the adult are inflamed by mystery or
excited by restraint, and a full half of all the thoughts and intrigues
of the world has a direct reference to this single instinct. Even those,
who like the Shakers, ‘crucify the flesh,’ are not the less occupied by
it in their secret thoughts; as the Shaker writings themselves may
afford proof. Neither human institutions nor human prejudices can
destroy the instinct. Strange it is, that men should not be content
rationally to control, and wisely to regulate it.