The history of the evolution of marriage furnishes the reason for woman’s chastity. The purity of the wife and her faithfulness are of the greatest racial importance. Chastity has been forced upon her in a just and laudable cause, not by menED but by economic conditions. When the moral law once had been established restricting the wife to a permanent mate, she had to place obstacles, in the form of general chastity, modesty and coyness, in the way of man’s finding gratification of his sensual desires elsewhere except with a permanent mate.
Now, is there a racial reason why men should be as chaste as women? There are two valid racial reasons why in the interest of posterity men should be held to as strict a form of chastity as women are. The two reasons are the “Spirocheta pallida” and the “Gonococcus,” or in other words, “syphilis” and “gonorrhoea.”
Of the triad of venereal infections, “chancroid” (chancroid may produce extensive ulcerative processes and mutilate the sexual organs), “syphilis” and “gonorrhoea” the two latter are of the greatest menace to the continuation of the human race. Especially gonorrhoea is undermining the vital forces of humanity, on account of its wide spread among men.
Neisser, the discoverer of the gonococcus, claims that of the adult male population inhabiting large cities only an insignificant proportion escapes gonorrhoeal infection.EE
The reason of the spread of gonorrhoea is the mistaken idea that gonorrhoea is a local trouble. Even among the educated people who have had the best opportunities of education and refinement, there are very few who know that gonorrhoea, once acquired, may remain latent for years and still be the means of infecting an innocent wife and destroying the eyesight of her child. The so-called cure of gonorrhoea is not seldom only the establishment of toleration of the presence of the gonococcus on the part of the individual’s urethra. But the imperceptible discharge still remains virulently contagious to the healthy virginal genito-urinary passage of the young wife and to the delicate tender conjunctiva of the new-born baby.
The non-multiplying gonococci, which have apparently been deprived of their power to cause suppuration any longer at the point of the first infection, may possess full virulence and also the capacity of producing suppuration if transferred to some other mucous membrane, especially in the virginal vulva, urethra, Bartholinian glands, cervix, tubes, ovaries and peritoneum of the newly-married wife.EF
Even if the non-multiplying gonococci should remain inactive in the female genital tract in the beginning of married life, they may do a great deal of damage later on. Gonococci may remain in the genital tract during the entire period of pregnancy, without clinical manifestations, and yet become active during the puerperium, which explains many obscure cases of puerperal infection. In this way the ignorance of the prolonged infectious character of latent chronic gonorrhoea has ruined many and many a young wife. The individual considers himself cured, while in fact the gonorrhoea remains contagious for many years to the innocent wife and her child.
The disease is markedly accentuated in virulence and danger in the wife and mother in fulfilling her marital and maternal functions, and the results of the disease are appalling. Eighty per cent. of the deaths from inflammatory diseases, peculiar to women, seventy-five per cent. of all special surgical operations performed on women, many of them serious desexing operations, and sixty per cent. of all the work done by specialists in diseases of women are the result of gonorrhoea. Besides the numerous fatal operations in the wake of gonorrhoea of the urogenital tract, septicaemia or pyaemia may sometimes develop, which, as a rule, lead to death.
The so-called one-child sterility is accounted for, in a large measure, by the extension of a preexisting gonorrhoeal infection during the puerperium. In this way fifty per cent. or more of all the infected women are rendered sterile, in addition many are condemned to a life-long invalidism. The aspirations, centred in motherhood and children, are thus swept away.
Besides mutilating the innocent women, gonorrhoea destroys the eyesight of innocent babies. From seventy to eighty per cent. of the ophthalmia, which blots out the eyes of babies, and fifteen to twenty-five per cent. of all blindness is caused by gonococcus infection. In the passage of the child through the infected maternal parts, the conjunctiva becomes, as a rule, infected, and the danger of blindness is imminent.EG
Besides this danger of infecting the innocent mother and child, gonorrhoea is not such an innocent disease even for the man himself. It is not a local disease only, it is a general infection and its manifestations may be as grave to the individual as syphilis. The infection may ascend to the urinary passages and cause a catarrh of the bladder and an infection of the ureters and kidneys. It may affect the genital organs, as the testicles and prostate in men, and uterus and tubes and ovaries in women. The germs of gonorrhoea may enter the blood and attack the joints. (Osier says: In many respects gonorrhoeal arthritis is the most damaging, disabling and serious of all the complications of gonorrhoea.) The germs may also enter the heart and cause endocarditis and they may invade the brain and cause meningitis and myelitis.EH
Syphilis.—The other most appalling venereal disease is syphilis. The constitutional disturbances caused by syphilis and the risks to the offspring make this disease one of the most dreaded affections known to medical science. Even the primary infection may become disastrous to the man and woman. Still the acute stage, but for its contagiosity, would be of secondary importance. Syphilis is essentially a chronic disease. The duration of the disease is unlimited. It may remain latent for years and then break out, either in form of chronic inflammations or in form of syphilitic tumors or gummata. Fournier found during the tertiary period of syphilis, as late as in the tenth year after the primary infection, mucous papules in the mouth and in the vagina, which had recently reappeared. This shows that even during the tertiary stage syphilis may become a source of infection for others.EI
Syphilis plays an important rôle in the etiology of almost every known disease. Syphilis spares no tissue or structure, it affects every organ of the body.
In the alimentary canal and its accessory glands, syphilis may cause cicatrical obstructions of the esophagus, affections of the stomach and intestines and gummatous productions of the rectum. The liver, and sometimes the pancreas are affected, either in form of chronic syphilitic inflammations or in form of gummatous nodules.
The following case is very instructive. The patient, a young girl eleven years of age, who for some time previously suffered from diabetes insipidus, could not be aroused from her quiet sleep one morning. The author saw the child at about 4 P. M. She was still quietly sleeping, and no matter which means he applied to awaken her, going so far as to burn the soles of her feet, she could not be aroused. The following morning the author found the child sitting in bed perfectly well and only awaiting his permission to go to school. The next morning the child was found again in a comatous state from which she could not be aroused by every known means. In this state she died the following night.
At the autopsy, the author found a small nodule, of the size of a large pea, on the left side of the dura mater, pressing upon the left frontal lobe, and at the point of entrance of the vena portae he discovered the liver turned into a grayish-looking mass of the size of a child’s hand.
Both, the nodule of the dura mater and the liver, were taken to the Pathological Institute, where the two tumors were found to be syphilitic gummata. The child was suffering from hereditary syphilis.
In the respiratory tract we find, in the first place, the affections of the nose. The septum of the nose is often destroyed, and the nose sinks in, in the form of a triangle. The palate is sometimes destroyed already in the secondary stage, and the patient’s speech is greatly impaired. The syphilitic affections of the larynx cause extensive destructions of the organ and a permanent impairment of the phonation. Deformities of the trachea are not seldom the consequences of syphilis. Pneumonia may also be caused by syphilis. Infiltrations of the lungs are not such a rare occurrence. Gummata of the lungs may undergo the destructive process, and cavities are formed which are not infrequently diagnosed as tuberculosis.
The circulatory system is very often affected by syphilis, in the form of arteriosclerosis. Gummata are sometimes found in all the muscular parts of the heart. Syphilitic myocarditis and sclerotic endocarditis are not rare. The syphilitic affection of the ganglia and the nerves of the heart are the cause of different forms of angina pectoris. The spleen and the other blood-producing organs, the bone-marrow, are frequently the seat of syphilitic manifestations. Pseudoleukaemia is often caused by syphilis. The different aneurisms are often caused by syphilis of the arteries.
The genito-urinary system is especially affected by syphilis. Apart from the initial affection, which is usually found at the genitals, tertiary syphilis of the genital organs is not rare. Syphilitic orchitis and gummata of the penis and testicles are often observed. Gummata are also found on the external genitals of women. The ovaries are often affected in form of diffuse or gummatous oöphoritis. Syphilis is not seldom the etiological factor of Bright’s disease.
The skeleton is also often affectedly syphilis. Besides the bone-marrow, the bones themselves are especially subject to syphilitic lesions. No joint escapes the attack of syphilis. The most frequently affected joints are the knees and the elbows.
The muscles are affected by syphilis in form of an irritative myositis and of chronic interstitial inflammations. Gummatous infiltrations of the muscles are no rarity. The tendons are affected in form of an acute irritative tendo-synovitis. Swelling of the bursae is quite frequently met with in syphilitic patients.
Syphilis of the nervous system is especially disastrous for the patient. Syphilis not rarely causes cerebral and spinal meningitis. Most of the tumors found in the brain are of syphilitic origin and cause headaches, insomnia, flashing of light before the eyes, vertigo, epileptic convulsions, a retarded pulse, polyuria and polydipsia, and greatly affect the eyesight. Gummata of the brain also cause aphasia, hemiplegia and paralysis. Syphilis of the spinal cord manifests itself by heavy weight of the extremities, neuralgia, paralysis of the muscles and paresis of the bladder and rectum. The insanity caused by syphilis may mimic every known form of mental derangement, such as mania, melancholia, paretic dementia, locomotor ataxia and general paresis.
Any of these terrible diseases may be the gift the young wife receives from her infected husband in the wedding-night. Still the danger from syphilis for the woman is by far less imminent than that threatening her from gonorrhoea. No man, except he be an idiot, would think of getting married while still suffering from syphilis of the initial and secondary stages, when the disease is highly infectious. During the latent and tertiary stages the danger of infecting the wife is very slight indeed. But there is no immunity for the offspring, during the latent and tertiary stages.
The two venereal diseases are thus, each in its way, inflicting the greatest suffering upon the innocent wife and child, disrupting the family and causing the degeneration of the race. There is no greater scourge devastating every nation to-day than the two venereal diseases. No other disease has such a murderous influence upon the offspring as syphilis, and no other disease is so destructive to the health and reproductive function of woman as gonorrhoea.
Thus the dangers of venereal diseases beset not only the individual but through the individual the whole race. Both venereal diseases respect no social position and recoil before no virtue. They ramify through every class and rank of society. Like “pallida mors” they approach with equal step the habitations of the poor and the palaces of the rich.
With these dangers staring at him, no man has a right to justify the double standard of sex-morality. No young man should even think of exposing himself, his future wife and offspring to all these dangers for the mere pittance of a short momentary enjoyment in the company of the pestiferous individuals, of these fallen angels whom the Bible describes as the “strange woman which flattereth with her words, her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell, going down to the chambers of death.”
These meretricious women are constantly seeking those whom they may devour and are laughing at the wholesale ruin they are spreading. These unscrupulous courtesans are individuals without industry, preferring indolent lives with a show of finery and a brief period of gratification of their sensuality. They indulge their selfish lust ad libitum, with no thought as to what the result may be.
Most of the devotees of Venus vulgativa spend their brief lives, trying to lead boys and young men into wickedness and mischief. As a rule, they are all unclean and diseased and rejoice to return to their partners, the so-called “prostituants,” the infection they have received from other prostituants. The young man, therefore, will in the majority of cases surely carry away some foul disease from these women. When we consider how difficult and rare a thing it is to thoroughly cure a woman of gonorrhoea, it is easily understood how dangerous it is for the youth to trust himself at any time in her subsequent life within her infected presence.
Hence the youth have no right to become the main contributors to the resources of the venal woman, whether of the street or of the palatial home. Clandestine vice is, as a rule, more dangerous in regard to contracting venereal diseases than the immorality of the street. The majority of young men drift into illicit, sensual life and its dangers and pitfalls without the least physiological necessity. Until the age of twenty of the woman and twenty-five of the man is reached, youth itself gains by complete abstinence. The teens, says Ellen Key, should be the age of the erotic prologue not of the drama. Premature erotic claims are less the result of the needs of the organism than the influence of the imagination upon it. The young boys of sixteen to twenty-five are only in love with love. It is the longing for love rather than love itself that renders them an easy prey for the venal woman.
Masculine chastity must not, therefore, be laughed at. The necessity of self-control and of chastity must be impressed upon the mind of the young man as the only way to secure the strong mental and physical qualities for the future paternal relations.EJ
There is not the slightest shadow of support in any teachings of physiology or hygiene for the double standard of morality of the sexes. There is no reason why a moral wrong in the woman should be a justifiable necessity with the man. From no medical studies and investigations anywhere attainable, would the physical necessity of sowing of “wild oats” for a young man hold good. No one will deny that, as far as the gentler sex is concerned, continence (at least between the age of sixteen to thirty-five) is compatible with health, then the general belief of young men that sensual indulgence is necessary for healthy manhood, has no justification in physiology. Purity is as little injurious to a man as to a woman. It is a most absurd and erroneous teaching that, unless inclination is gratified, a man’s health will suffer.
The instinct of generation has been compared with the instinct of hunger and thirst, and as the latter must be satisfied, so must the former be gratified. But there is no proper parallelism between these two instincts. Food and drink are vital necessities of the organism from the first day of conception, to replace the stuffs consumed in the metabolism of the vital functions. The generative instinct appears a number of years after birth, hence does not serve any vital necessity. This instinct could, if at all, only be compared with the instinct of micturition or defecation, and the relief of the physical pressure in the generative organs is brought about by the self-regulating action of nocturnal emissions. It may be more natural and agreeable for a healthy man and woman, after they have reached a certain age, to indulge in the exercise of their organs of generation at reasonable intervals, than to abstain from it. But to proclaim that this abstinence, compatible with health in women, is injurious to men, is sheer absurdity.
It is especially hard to understand how any medical men could recommend to a young man to resort to illicit relations for health and to jeopardize his own health and that of his future family. If it is justified to recommend illicit relations to a young man, as a cure for masturbation and its resulting neurasthenia, instead of explaining to him that a healthy hygiene and the exercise of his will-power will make easy the control of the desire without any loss of health, then why not recommend the same remedy to young women. Continence is no more injurious to the man than to the woman. The conventional view that incontinence in men is a necessary condition of health must be corrected. Instead of the popular fallacy that a young man is physically the worse for a clean moral life, the entire weight of evidence of the world’s foremost medical scholars is unreservedly of the opinion that he is physically better for it.EK It is recognized by the highest authorities that continence is perfectly compatible with the most perfect health. Chastity properly understood is health, it never does any harm to mind or body.EL It is the consensus of the opinions of most of the great medical thinkers that it is not prejudicial to the health of a man to keep his body clean until he has found a true mate in life.EM
The boy who has just passed adolescence ought, therefore, to learn that the injudicious premature use of the organs of generation is prejudicial to his health and is beset with great dangers.EN There is a great distinction between puberty and nubility, and the boy must learn to check his sensual impulses until marriage which is not so very hard to accomplish.
There are enough sexual stoics in the world to prove by practical experience that continence is not only possible but also practicable. Caesar says of the ancient Teutons: “Ante annum vicesimum sextum feminis notionem habere inter res turpissimas habeatur.” “It was considered one of the most shameful things to have any relations with a woman before the twenty-sixth year of age” (Bellum Gallicum). Yet no one will dispute that the ancient Teutons were strong and healthy. These ancient barbarians seem to have learned by experience that before this time sexual maturity is not yet complete. The same thing was found in modern times by Eulenburg (Zeitschr. f. Bekämpf. d. Geschlechtskrankheiten, 1907, p. 194), that the combined statistics teach that complete sexual maturity is reached by the woman only after the twentieth year of age, and by the man not before the twenty-fifth year.
Besides the historic proof there are daily examples which show the compatibility of chastity with health at any age. Many young men, engaged to be married, remain chaste for long periods without detriment to their health, although often living in continuous sexual excitement. Patients suffering from venereal diseases abstain during long periods of treatment without any impairment of their general health. Men remain chaste and healthy during long periods when their wives are ill or during the periods of confinements. Athletes, training for some physical contest, remain in enforced continence and yet healthy. Seafaring men are often continent for long periods without injury. It is not known that the discoverers of the North Pole have greatly suffered by their enforced continence.
These few examples tend to show that abstinence is not detrimental to health. In fact, no other condition of life is more thoroughly consistent with perfect mental and physical vigor than absolute chastity. The instinct only needs to be controlled. Continence is only a matter of habit. When the young man has not been debased by vile practices, it is usually a comparatively easy task to be continent and requires no extraordinary efforts. Every year of voluntary effort, at chastity, renders the task easier by force of habit.EO
Hence when the young man has been taught the advisability of sensual control, when the positive assurance has been given to him that total abstinence can be maintained without loss of power and when his fears of impairing his health have been dispelled, he will exercise his will-power and refrain from a departure from moral standards, especially when the dearth of wholesome information regarding the dangers of such a departure has been removed.
In large cities sensual control is made very hard for the young man. The unfortunate phase of the life in a big city is the early introduction of the youth to temptations and vicious conditions. Vice is obtruding upon him at every nook and corner. A vile so-called literature, a suggestive perverse art and an obscene stage panders his sensual curiosity.
But because, forsooth, it is hard to control that does not mean that he has to yield to temptation. It is true that the sexual appetite may assume imperiousness, but only in a certain class of men, in hereditary weaklings, whose imagination is constantly fed by lascivious thoughts and sensual images.
But the cause of the unchastity of boys is not that they become sensually mature earlier than they could judiciously enter into matrimony, the trouble lies in the fact that boys cannot see why they should abstain from a tickling amusement, which in their opinion does nobody any harm. Herein lies the greatest obstacle to continence. The youth does not know the ethical why, especially in our modern times with its religious laxity. The ethics of religion, even in its best days, had not had the power to control sensual passion and to create total abstinence, although religion, especially Christianity, has preached the same for the last two thousand years. In modern times with the almost divine worship of the personality of the individual the religious motive for chastity seems to fail entirely.
Hence the ethics of evolution and the ethics of sex-hygiene must be tried. If the theory of evolution is right, and the purpose of our being in this world is to assert life, then the aim of life can not be the single individual but the species, which can only be preserved by the right offspring. The child or what is the same the familyEP will have to furnish the motive for man’s continence. The importance of the chastity of women to the family has been recognized from the earliest history. It is now time to teach the man the importance of his chastity to the family, state and nation. He has to know his responsibility just as the woman knows hers. Rational chastity must be founded upon the sentiment of human responsibility. The average man in his heart does not acknowledge to himself that there is any competent reason why he should control his passion beyond the sentimental idea of the justice of men’s remaining chaste if they require it of women. It must, therefore, be shown to the man that there is also an important racial reason for him to abandon promiscuous life.EQ
If it is shown to the young man, at a time when his heart and mind are still in the thrall of the early and eternal poetry of the race, that it is as important to humanity that he should be chaste as it is for the woman to be pure, then he will refrain from illicit indulgence.
The following case is very instructive in this respect. A student of philosophy at one of the greatest German universities who led a promiscuous life like any other student, gave up such life immediately after reading Tolstoy’s Kreutzer-Sonate. For the first time, as he expressed it, he saw the reason why he should be as chaste as he expects his bride to be.
This shows what a moral lesson may do even for him who grew up to manhood without any sex-instruction. The young man who has the desire not to be dominated or controlled by sensual passions and propensities, requires settled principles, a firm purpose, and a strong will. But if the training of his will-power has begun from early childhood, thus effecting the needed self-discipline, and if disgust against everything vulgar, as the company of lax women, has been implanted in his heart, he will find the means to get out of the way of vice and to avoid the contamination by venal sensuality. The best means of vast importance as occupying and consuming the sexual powers in a substitute form are bodily and mental labors. These labors, as a rule, are lulling to sleep sensuality.
If the control of the sex-reflexes is not cultivated, if the training of the will is ignored, meretricious venery will surely take hold of him and infect him, it being only a matter of time when it happens. The young man will exercise continence if he has been taught from early childhood that his sensual yearnings must be restrained like his propensity to overeat, to overdrink or to overexercise. Because a young man wants a thing it is not necessarily good for him to have it. Man has little right to satisfy his desire by unchastity, says Ellen Key, as he has to satisfy hunger by theft.ER
If the young man has learned in time the responsibility and duty of the man towards the woman, if he has been made aware of the fact that one false step ruins the girl irremediably for her entire life, if his attention has been called upon the serious consequences for the woman, such as pregnancy, motherhood and social ostracism, he will not so easily ever try to seduce an innocent girl. He will treat every woman he meets with in life as he wishes his own sister or future wife to be treated by others.
The young man has further to learn that every union of bodies without the harmony of the souls is humiliating and immoral. That does not mean that the idea should be imparted to our youth that the sexual impulse is something low and bestial, as some moralists would like us to believe. On the contrary, we must teach our youth that a healthy and natural exercise of the human organism is a precious blessing that must not be squandered and recklessly defiled. We must teach the young man that for the future offspring’s sake the monogamic marriage is the only one which the ideal man will resort to. Until his mate is found he will have to control his sensual desires. The control of sensuality develops the deeper feelings of love. Bought love kills the finest instruments of mental activity. Promiscuity destroys the relations of the young companionship. Free love leaves all the best human qualities undeveloped. To form the healthy germ of society, marriage must be unitary and permanent. The individual love assists the elevation of the race. Monogamy was victorious from the experience of its advantages. It exists for the sake of the race.
The race-enhancing form of union is a permanent monogamy. From the physiological standpoint monogamic marriage is a natural and healthful institution. It affords a free outlet to sensuality without generally exhausting it by the unceasing excitement in the presence of new objects. Novelty is the chief stimulus to the sexual feeling and is the main cause of overindulgence and its sequels. In centralizing affection upon one person, marriage furnishes the greatest scope of its development and expansion. Marriage favors the development of a great number of faculties which otherwise would be in danger of being abused. Marriage contributes to the general morality of mankind by the regularity which it brings to all the actions of life, by the calmness which it spreads over human existence, and by the harmony which it introduces into the functional exercise of all our necessities. It creates in man a greater attachment to life in helping to overcome a great number of difficulties. Marriage, therefore, contributes to the progress of humanity, and man is by duty bound that the selection of a mate should contribute to the enhancement of the human race. Every individual acquires duties towards the race. The man or the woman who transgresses the path of strict monogamy has done a disservice to humanity. From the point of view of evolutionary ethics, men and women must make absolute chastity the rule of their lives.