DW For this reason polygamy even in the countries where it was theoretically allowed was very rarely actually met with. Throughout the entire history of the polygamous Jews only about half a dozen polygamous marriages are recorded.

Tacitus found among the Teutons only a few nobles to possess concubines besides their wives.

DX “It is, indeed,” says Hartmann, “her own bed which the immoral wife besmirches. While the husband misconducts himself outside the family circle, the iniquity of the woman is bound to effect a change in the home.”

Even the unchastity of the single woman has far more serious biological consequences than that of the man. Her transgression creates a perfect blood chaos in her future offspring. Long after a man’s death a woman sometimes bears children to another man, who resemble the first. The absorbed sperma seems to leave an indelible impression upon the woman.

DY The masculine morality is as yet very little influenced by reason. Hence the male standard of morality of sex is as yet very low. So much so that with meretricious venery rampant, male monogamy is as yet a dream of the idealist. Yet there is a valid reason why the man should not be inferior to woman in the standard of chastity. If there was no racial reason for his chastity in ancient times, there is a good reason for him to be chaste now.

DZ The man, says Schopenhauer, can beget a hundred children annually if he had so many wives, hence he is looking for many; the woman can only beget one child and is hence always desirous to preserve the supporter of her offspring.

EA Female coyness is found in many animals where it serves to increase the tumescence of the male. Animal coyness is especially developed during pregnancy when no animal admits the male any longer.

EB Feminine modesty and coyness have become real instinctive sentiments by which woman dominates man. This dominance is so great that among all peoples the male sex is and was always subjected to the rule of the female despite appearances to the contrary, and in the face of all the laws against her.

EC Virtue and moral consciousness, says Schrenk-Notzing, are not inherited in any person, man or woman. We inherit only the disposition to goodness and right-willing as we may that of cruelty.

ED The radical preachers of revolt against chastity are fond to assert that chastity has been forced upon women by men. This assertion does not betray profound logic. The entire institution of monogamy, or of marriage for that matter, is in the interest of woman and eminently adapted to her needs only. Woman’s greatest need is to love and to be loved, a man can more readily sublimate his sexual instinct into higher channels.

The same shallowness of observation is shown in catch-phrases, such as this: “Once women married because they were not permitted to work at all, now they marry because they are forced to work beyond their endurance.” And why do men marry? Not for the satisfaction of their sexual desires; this they can have without the valuable privilege of being allowed to support some other men’s daughters. No, men and women marry because, if they are not degenerates, they are driven to marriage by the permanent mating instinct, which is innate in man for the benefit of the offspring.

EE Noeggerat claims that, in the city of New York, of 1000 married men 800 have had gonorrhoea, 90 per cent. of all these have not been healed and can infect their wives. As a result, at least three out of every five married women in New York have gonorrhoea as a gift of their husbands.

These statistics may be somewhat exaggerated, still the percentage of diseased young men is appalling. At least 50 per cent. of young men approaching the age of maturity become infected with venereal diseases in a single year.

Kirchner, of the Prussian ministerium of cultus, claims that about one hundred thousand men suffer daily of venereal diseases within the Prussian monarchy. The result is a loss of a daily income of at least 250,000 marks, or a loss of 90,000,000 marks a year.

Rogers claims that over ninety per cent. of our young men stray from the paths of virtue before marriage; sixty per cent. contract venereal diseases which are difficult to cure. More wives than prostitutes have venereal diseases, innocently contracted from husbands. Thousands of unborn babies are annually killed by parental infection. Sixty per cent. of the blindness in this country is due to venereal diseases. One-eighth of all cases in New York hospitals are venereal. Two hundred thousand infected persons walk the streets of New York daily.

Among men the author meets with in his practice or socially, the man who never had gonorrhoea once at least in his life is an extreme rarity.

EF When a newly married woman experiences a burning pain in urinating, noticing at the same time a certain leucorrhoea, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it is caused by the gonococcus. If two weeks after she was married, she feels pain in her lower abdomen, the case is suspicious of gonorrhoeal salpingitis. The gonorrhoeal infection reaches the tubes about ten to fourteen days after the initial infection of the cervix. The vagina may not be affected at all. Gonorrhoeal vaginitis is exceedingly rare. The pavement epithelium, covering the vaginal surface, seems to afford protection against the specific infection. Gonorrhoeal endometritis is also rare. Gonorrhoea infects the female genital tract by jumps. From the urethra and vulva the infection jumps to the cervix and hence to the tubes and ovaries.

EG According to Neisser there are in Germany thirty thousand blind persons whose loss of sight may be thus accounted for.

EH These gonorrhoeal complications may serve as a deterrent for the individual but would have nothing to do with morality, if they would not also be met with in the innocent party. If gonorrhoea and its complications would only affect the individual that voluntarily exposes itself to infection, it would be of no more moral concern than measles or pneumonia. But gonorrhoea insidiously strikes the innocent women and children. Hence it is subject to the “moral imperative,” “Thou shalt not kill, blind or maim your wife and child.” To give such a loathsome disease to another person is hence a moral crime, apart from the fact that the misconduct of the unchaste man is to the detriment of himself and of the race and is immoral. Still writers who call themselves independent thinkers demand yet better proofs of the immorality of man’s unchastity.

The only excuse for the men who carry gonorrhoea into their families is that they do not know the consequences. As a rule, the misfortune comes upon the family quite unaware. The man cannot even be blamed of negligence. Not only the woman acquires gonorrhoea without her knowledge and in absence of all local or general symptoms, but even the man does not know that he is still harboring infectious material in his genital tract.

Prof. Bum has found gonococci in the urine and in the urethral secretions, five and ten years after the onset of the infection. At such a late period no man ever thinks of still being infectious, and in this way he becomes not infrequently unaware the murderer of his mate.

EI The prevalence of syphilis is estimated at 18 per cent. of the adult population. Ruggles found in New York City, in the better class of families, one-third of the sons of adult age to be infected with syphilis. Syphilis causes about forty per cent. of all miscarriages. The mortality of syphilitic children is about sixty per cent. Syphilis is the only disease transmitted to the offspring in full virulence. Sixty to eighty per cent. of all infected children die before they are born, or come into the world with the mark of death upon them. The mortality of the children who have inherited syphilis from the father is about twenty-eight per cent., of those who have inherited it from the mother is over sixty per cent. A large number of those who survive childhood dies from hereditary syphilis between the ages of ten and twenty.

EJ Let several men in the club or at the saloon-bar touch in their conversation the topic of sex, and they will poke fun at the man who never had a venereal disease.

EK Among the European working-classes and peasants, according to Ellen Key, the free union of love has long been the custom. This premature sexual life contributes to hinder the full bodily and mental development of the lower classes.

EL All ethical possessions in the inner man, his modesty, morality, his divine adoration, his aesthetic and his social service are all due to the repression of sexuality.

EM Pflüger (In Jacobsohn’s Article, St. Petersburg Med. Wochenschr., 1907, p. 97) says: If all the authorities of the world should proclaim the innocuousness of continence, it would have no influence upon youth, for forces are here active which will break every obstacle.

Thus even Pflüger admits that continence is compatible with perfect health and only thinks that the force of sensuality would sweep aside all recommendations of abstinence. Now, about the possibility of total abstinence, there may be a great difference of opinion. But granted absolute abstinence is only an ideal, no ideal can be realized, otherwise it would not be an ideal. We can only approach an ideal, and this would be a great gain in regard to sexual continence. Näcke says that absolute sexual abstinence is an utopia just as the total abolition of prostitution, public and clandestine, or the absolute abstinence from alcohol. Man’s impulses are too powerful, but they may be restrained and kept in proper bounds.

EN Statistics show that it is not at all the question about the men being continent, but about the boy controlling early passions. Most men contract venereal diseases between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. The mature man is always able to control his passions. The more healthy, says Chassaignac, and the nearer the normal an individual is, the better he can not only control his passions, but the less is his condition likely to be disturbed by continence. It is the neurasthenic who is most prone to be upset by an attempted or enforced continence and who, as well, is most given to excess.

EO The Talmudists, the keenest observers of human life and conduct, knew this when they said אבר קטן יש באדם משביעו רעב ומרעיבו שבע (Sanhedrin, p. 107A). “There is a small organ in the body of a man which is always hungry if one is trying to satisfy it, and is always satisfied if one starves it.”

EP The family, i. e., near their father and mother, is the only institution where children were meant to be brought up. No collective work, settlements, vacation homes or asylums can protect or guide friendless children properly. The spiritual and emotional education of the child, the awakening of its higher sentiments can only be carried out in the atmosphere of the parental home, under the guidance of love and affection of those who have given life to this child.

EQ Since men’s deviation from the strict path of chastity jeopardizes the very existence of the race, sexual morality must be binding upon all men, under all conditions without any regard to the original reason for the establishment of the moral law. A law, in its nature, can not acknowledge any exceptions. There may be a case where infection could be excluded with absolute certainty, just as there may be a case where the father’s doubt would have no consequences for the child. Embezzlement is also sometimes allowed and even a duty, as Cicero shows in “De Officiis,” “Si gladium quis apud te sana mente deposuerit, repetat insaniens, reddere peccatum sit officium non reddere.” In a remote future, under communism, as Mardach paints it, all the reasons for male or female sexual morality may become non-existent. Then the standard will surely change. But in our present state of society one standard of morality must be established for men and women, from which no one should have a right to deviate, no matter even if the reasons for the standard are not applicable in the particular case.

ER The imperious instinct which decrees the perpetuation of the race, says Lewis, can be controlled and directed aright by the consistent knowledge of truth. When the young man has been taught the dignity of virility, when he has learned that purity is conducive to bodily development, while vice carries with it the most serious diseases in its train and the danger not only of ruining his own life but also the health of his future bride and the entire progeny, he will not stoop to vice for the gratification of his desires. The average man is not a criminal, he does not wreck the life and health of his wife and children knowingly and wilfully. In most cases he does it through ignorance of the nature and terrible consequences of the disease.