CONTINENCE
It has been several months now since we had our last confidential talk.
Many changes have taken place in your body and mind during these months.
You have been inclined to be more with large boys and young men and this
is due to the changes that are going on. With the coming months you will
have less the feelings of the boy and more the feelings of the man.
=The two forms of incontinence.=--I have been anxious to have a talk with
you on the subject of continence. By this word as applied to young men,
we mean abstinence from all voluntary sexual gratification. Having given
you talks on the subject of the “solitary vice,” which is one form of
sexual gratification, I will now talk with you about the other form of
incontinence, cohabitation or sexual relation with women.
=A false idea.=--There is a widely prevailing idea among young men that
they must gratify their sexual desire in some way, and that if they do
not they will lose their reproductive power, or their ability to become
fathers. They have an idea that sexual gratification is essential to
sexual and physical health, mental development and manliness. They think
young men are weak-minded and incapable who do not gratify themselves in
one of these two ways. Where did they get this idea?
=The wrong application of biological law.=--They will tell you that
doctors teach that young men should gratify themselves. They will tell
you then that the non-use of an organ will lead to the loss of its
function. The illustration they use is, “If the arm be kept in a sling
for a year, one will find he has lost the use of his arm for several
days. If the arm should be kept in a sling for ten years, he would
likely lose the use of his arm for life and the arm would wither;
therefore, if a young man should live a continent life for ten years,
his sexual organs would atrophy and he would lose his powers of
fatherhood.”
=No reliable physician holds to the sexual necessity theory.=--In reply to
these arguments, no intelligent and reliable physician to-day teaches
sex necessity. Some ignorant, unreliable, “quack” doctor occasionally
tells a young man that his physical, mental and sexual strength will be
ruined unless he indulges in sexual gratification. This young man will
tell twenty young men what he has learned and each of these will tell
twenty others. It is in this way that so many young men get the idea
that doctors advise sexual indulgence.
=Continence does not destroy virility.=--Ten years, twenty years, or even
more, of absolute continent living will no more cause a man to lose his
virility than twenty years of absence from nursing a child will destroy
the function of lactation in a woman.
=Only the unreliable doctors advocate sexual necessity.=--In every
profession of men there are some fakes. This is as true of the medical
profession as it is of other professions. In all large cities and in
many small towns there are ignorant, unreliable and unscrupulous
doctors. In almost every State, I have had young men to tell me that
they have been advised by doctors to visit the prostitute. Such frauds
are a great social and moral misfortune to any community. The
high-minded, capable, honorable doctors all advocate continence for
young men. They are real friends to young men. Even the young man who
has made his mistakes will find the advice and treatment of this class
of doctors to be far the safest and cheapest in the end.
=Unanswerable arguments.=--It is not an uncommon occurrence to hear some
very prominent citizen advocate the necessity for a few public
characters in every community to conserve the health of young men by
ministering to their sexual necessity and in this way protecting the
virtue of innocent girls and respectable women.
The test of sincerity and honesty of a man who claims to believe in
foreign missions, is his willingness to go, to allow his child to go, or
to help support those who do go as missionaries. The test of the
sincerity and honesty of a man who advocates the necessity for the
immoral woman, is his willingness to contribute a mother, wife, sister,
or daughter to the philanthropic interest of masculine health and the
safeguarding of innocent girls and respectable women. If he is not
willing to make this contribution he is not honest and not sincere when
he advocates public prostitution.
If public prostitution protects innocent girls and respectable women
from the abnormal man, cases of rape and seduction would occur most
frequently where there are no lewd women. But the reverse is true. The
continent young men would be guilty of committing all the assaults on
female virtue. But it is the incontinent men who commit all the crimes
of this kind.
If the social evil is a necessity and the immoral woman protects the
virtue of the innocent girls and virtuous wives, is she not a
benefactor? Who is engaged in a more commendable, philanthropic or
Christian service? Then why should she be treated as an outcast? Should
she not be invited as a guest of honor at our social functions? Should
she not sing in the choir, or sit in a front pew in the most
aristocratic church?
The pugilist and athlete, in their training for special tests of
strength, endurance, and skill, abstain for long periods from all sexual
gratification.
It is by living a continent life that the lower animals, unmolested by
man, reach a state of physical perfection.
=Effects of incontinence upon the married life.=--An incontinent single
life will naturally lead to excesses in the married life. Such young men
get the idea that marriage means unlimited gratification. With these
perverted views they enter and soil the sacred precincts of marriage and
parentage. By marital excess, indulged in by no other animal or savage,
their health is injured, their lives are shortened and their children
are poorly born. This is a very common harvest reaped in the married
life. Back of this harvest, and back of the sowing is ignorance.
From these facts and many others that could be had we see that absolute
continence is not unnatural, but it is the only sane solution to a young
man’s sex problems.