Sanctorius positively establishes his assertion, that the motions weaken more than the emission of the seed: and it is surprising that M. de Gorter, his commentator, should have sought to persuade the contrary. The reason which he gives, in his averment that these motions do not weaken any more than any other motion, “because they are not convulsive,”[67] will persuade no one. One example, could he produce it, would not pass for a law of nature. Lister, Noguez, Quincy, who had commented this work before him, are not of his opinion; they attribute part of the danger to the weakness that remains after the convulsions. “Coition (says Noguez) is itself a convulsion; it disposes the nerves to convulsive motions, and the slightest occasion consequently produces them.”

J. A. Borelli, one of the first creators of physiology, had not looked upon them in the same light as M. Gorter. He is clearly positive upon this article.

“This act (says he) is accompanied with a sort of convulsive pathos, which carries with it the most sensible affections of the brain, and of the whole nervous system[68].”

Mr. Senac specifically imputes to the nerves the weakness which follows coition.

“The most likely cause (says he) of the fainting fit which comes when an abscess breaks in the interior of the abdomen, is the action of the nerves then brought into play. This is confirmed by the ejection, or by the fits of faintness which follow the effusion of seed; for it is only to the nerves that this sinking can be imputed[69].”

M. Lewis[70] attributes more to this cause than to the other, in which he is of the opinion of Sanctorius. Where there is convulsion, the nervous system is in a state of tension, or, to say more correctly, in an extraordinary degree of action, of which the necessary consequence is an excessive relaxation. Every organ, that has been wound up beyond its natural pitch, falls beneath it; and from that very fall must necessarily result a bad performance of the functions which depend on it; and as the nerves have an influence over them all, there is not one of the functions but what must be more or less disordered when the nerves are weakened.

One reason, too, that may contribute to the weakness of the nervous system, is the augmentation of the quantity of blood in the brain, during the venereal act; an augmentation well demonstrated, and which has gone sometimes so far as to produce an apoplexy. Many examples of it are furnished by observing practitioners, and Hoffman relates one of a soldier, who, in the rage of lust with which he abandoned himself to this act, died apoplectic in the very instant of fruition. On being opened, the brain was found full of blood. It is by this augmentation of blood, that the reason is explained of those excesses producing madness[71]. Such a quantity of blood distending the nerves, enfeebles them: they can the less resist impressions, and thence their weakness.

On a reflection upon these two causes, the evacuation of the seed, and the concomitancy of the convulsive motions, it is easy to explain the disorder that must result from the excess of them to the animal œconomy. They may be ranged under three heads.

We shall see that there is no chronical disease that may not be deduced from this triple cause.

“The relaxation proceeding from these excesses, disorders the functions of all the organs,” says one of the authors who has written the most sensibly on the dietetic branch of physic; and the digestion, the concoction, the perspiration, and the other evacuations become respectively faulty: thence results a sensible diminution of strength, of memory, and even of the understanding; a dimness of the eye-sight, all the disaffections of the nerves, all kinds of the gout and rheumatism, an amazing weakness of the back, the consumption, a feebleness of the organs of generation, bloody urines, head-achs, and a multitude of other disorders superfluous to specify here; in short, nothing so much abridges life as the abuse of the pleasures of venery[72].

The stomach is the part the first affected by all the causes of weakness: this is owing to its being the part of which the functions require the greatest perfection in the organ. The others are, for the most part of them, as much passive as active; the stomach is almost intirely active; so that as soon as its strength diminishes, its functions grow disordered; an observable truth, which combined with the variety of the first impressions, often vexatious ones, produced upon this instrument of digestion by what is taken in at the mouth, combined too, I say, with the immediately following observation, will account for the frequency, the oddity, the obstinacy of its ailments. It is of all the parts of the body that which receives the greatest number of nerves, and in which therefore, by that very means, there must be distributed the greatest quantity of animal spirits. Whatever then weakens the action of the one, and diminishes the quantity or depraves the quality of the other, must in course more diminish the strength of the stomach than of any other intestine; and this is what happens in excesses of venery. The importance of the function to which it is destinated, is the cause, that when it is ill or deficiently performed, all the others feel it, and are the worse for it.

From the moment that the digestions are imperfectly performed, the humors assume a character of crudity, which disqualifies them for all their destinations, but which, above all, hinders nutrition, upon which depends the reparation of the vital forces. To be assured of the general influence of the stomach, there needs only to observe the state of a person under the complaint of a laborious digestion; his strength fails in a few minutes; a general uneasiness renders that weakness still harder to be indured; the organs of sensation grow obtuse; the soul itself cannot exercise its faculties but imperfectly; the memory, and especially the imagination, seem annihilated; nothing, in short, makes a man of sense so nearly resemble a fool, as a painful or defective digestion.

A very curious observation, specified by M. Payva, a Portuguese physician, who resided in Rome, throws a great light on the prodigious weakness into which an excessive indulgence of venery will throw those who are guilty of it.

“When (says he) the desires of the sensual joy are, in young people, risen to the greatest height, they feel a kind of agreeable sensation at the orifice of the stomach; but if they satisfy these desires with too great an impetuosity, and beyond their strength, they feel, in the same place, an extremely disgustful sensation, with something of a bitterness in it they cannot express; they pay dearly besides for their excesses, by the leanness and marasmus, &c. into which they fall[74].”

Aretæus had, before him, taken notice of this truth[75], and Boerhaave employs the same expressions as Payva, with this addition, that that sense of pain goes off in proportion as they recover their strength[76]. He informs, in another place, the same thing, joining thereto a very useful practical rule, which is, that on the coming on of epileptic fits, after venereal excesses, care should be taken to strengthen the nerves of the stomach[77].

Secondly, The weakness of the nervous system, which disposes to all the paralytic and spasmodic accidents, is produced, as I have before observed, by the convulsive motions which accompany the emission, and, in the second place, by the disorder of the digestions: when these are faulty, the nerves suffer by it, and suffer the more, for that the fluid with which they are imbibed, being the very ultimate elaboration of coction, and that which requires the greatest perfection of that elaboration; when, I say, that coction is faulty, it is of all the animal fluids that which is thereby the most sensibly affected, and upon which the crudity of the rest of the humors has the most influence. In short, what augments this weakness, is an evacuation of a humor that has great affinity to the animal spirits, and which, by reason of that affinity, cannot be evacuated without diminishing the strength of the nervous system, which I cannot help attributing to those spirits, notwithstanding the modest doubts of some great men, who dare not affirm any thing, in natural philosophy, the truth of which does not fall under the senses, and notwithstanding the objections of some subaltern or systematical physiologists.

Besides: independently of the damage resulting from this evacuation, relatively to the quantity of the animal spirits, it hurts, by its depriving the vessels of that gentle stimulation produced by the absorbed seed, and which contributes so much to the coction of those spirits. It is pernicious, then, both by its drawing off a part of the animal spirits, or, at least, of a very pretious humor, and by diminishing the coction, without which those spirits can, at best, be only imperfectly and insufficiently prepared.

There is between the diseases of the stomach to those of the nerves, and from those of the nerves again to those of the stomach, a vitious circle. The first beget the second, and these, once formed, contribute infinitely to augment them. If daily observation were not to prove it, the bare anatomical inspection of the stomach would carry sufficient conviction with it. The quantity of nerves distributed through it, is abundantly a demonstration how necessary they are to its functions, and how, consequently, those functions must be disordered when the nerves are not in good condition.

Thirdly, Perspiration does not proceed kindly in that case. Sanctorius has even determined the quantity diminished by it; and this evacuation, the most considerable of all the others, cannot be suppressed without there resulting from it a croud of different symptoms.

It is easily then conceivable that there can be no disorder which may not be produced by this triple cause. I will not enter into the explanation of all the particular symptoms; such a particularization would too much expand this little work, and could not interest the physicians to whom it would be superfluous. What M. de Gorter has said upon it, is worth consulting[78].

M. Clifton Wintringham has very sensibly particularised the dangers of this evacuation with respect to the gouty, and his explanation merits attention[79].

The late M. Gunzius, snatched from the medical career in the flower of his age, has given a very ingenious mechanical explanation[80] of the inconveniences resulting from this excess to the faculty of respiration. He speaks, on this occasion, of a man who had thereby brought upon himself a continual cough; a symptom which I myself observed in a young man who died a victim of self-pollution.

He was come to Montpelier, to pursue there his studies. His excesses in that infamous practice had thrown him into a consumption, and I recollect that his cough was so strong and so continual, that it disturbed all his neighbours. He was frequently blooded, which must have been, I supposed, by way of making the quicker dispatch of his sufferings. A consultation on his case, prescribed his going home, and living there upon turtle-broth. His residence was, if I am not mistaken, in Dauphiny. The persons consulted promised him a complete cure; but he died two hours after the consultation. How curious an one! and what physicians must they have been who were consulted!

But what is the least easy to conceive, or rather, what is beyond all comprehension, is, that of its prodigious weakening of the faculties of the soul.

The solution of this problem is connected with the question undeterminable by us, of the mutual influence of the two substances upon each other, upon which we are reduced to the observation of these phenomenons, without being able to account for them. We are ignorant of the nature both of the spirit and of the body; but we know that they are so intimately united, that all the changes that the one undergoes are felt by the other: a circulation a little more or less quick, the blood a little more or less thick, some ounces more or less of aliments, the same quantity of one aliment rather than of another, a dish of coffee instead of a glass of wine, a sleep more or less long or tranquil, a stool a little more or less copious, a perspiration too profuse or too languid, will totally change our manner of seeing or judging of objects: From one hour to another, the revolutions of the machine bring with them different sensations, different thoughts, and, arbitrarily, form to us new principles of vices and of virtues; so just is the idea of the poet who first wrote Satires in France.

So exact is the description which Lucretius has furnished of this intimate union:

Observation also teaches us, that of all the diseases there is not one that affects more quickly the soul, than those of the nervous system: of this the epileptics, who, at the end of a certain number of years, most commonly fall into a state of imbecillity, furnish a melancholy proof, which may, at the same time, give us to understand, that it is not at all surprising that those acts, which, as has been precedently remarked, are always in a small degree epileptic, should produce such a weakening of the brain, and, consequentially, of the vital faculties.

The weakening of the brain, and of the nervous system, is followed by that of the senses, which is nothing but natural.

Sanctorius, Hoffman, and some others, have endeavoured at explaining why the sight more especially suffers; but their reasons, however founded on truth, do not appear to me sufficient. The principal ones, and which are drawn from qualities particular to this organ, are, the multitude of parts that constitute the eye, and which being, all of them, susceptible of different ailments, render it infinitely more subject than the others, to disorders. In the next place the nerves serve here for various uses, and are very numerous. In short, the afflux of humors to that part, during the time of the act, an afflux of which the sparkling perceived in the eyes of animals, at that juncture, forms a sensible proof, produces in the vessels of the eye, at first a weakness, and afterwards obstructions, of which a loss of sight is the necessary consequence.

Nor is it actually difficult to answer the question above proposed, why it is that Eunuchs, who have no seed, are not exposed to the disorders we have precedently described?

Of this there are two very sufficient reasons.

The first is, that if Eunuchs do not actually draw from this liquid those advantages which are produced by its being prepared and resorbed; on the other hand, they lose nothing of that precious part of the blood which is destined to become seed. It is true, they do not experience those changes which are owing to the preparation of the seed, and which have been above set forth; but then again, they cannot be exposed to the evils which proceed from a privation of this non-prepared humor. The seed, if I could have leave to employ terms of metaphysic, is either seed imperfect, and in fieri, or seed in potentia; which is that precious part of the humors separated by the testicles, and seed actually made, or in actu. If the first is not separated, the animal machine is deprived of the advantages it draws from the seed prepared, and does not undergo the changes which depend on it, but then it is not depauperated: it does not gain, indeed, neither does it lose; the body remains in a sort of state of puerility. When the seed is separated and evacuated, it is then a privation, a real impoverishment.

The second reason is, that the Eunuchs escape that kind of spasm or convulsion, to which I have imputed a great part of the evils which are the consequence of excesses in this way.

The accidents which, on the like account, befall the women, are to be accounted for in the like manner with those of the men. The humor which they lose being less precious, less elaborate, than the seed of the man, the loss of it does not perhaps so quickly produce a weakness; but when they go to excesses, the nervous system being, in them, weaker, and naturally more disposed to spasm or convulsion, the fits are more violent. Sudden excesses will throw them into fits somewhat a-kin to those of the young man whom I mentioned at the end of the fourth section. I have also seen a melancholic instance of this kind.

In 1746 a girl of the age of about twenty three years challenged, to the combat of venery, six Spanish dragoons, and bore their assaults for a whole night in a house at the gates of Montpellier. In the morning she was brought into the town, dying, and weltering in her own blood, which issued from the womb. It would have afforded matter of instruction, to have been satisfied whether that effusion of blood was the consequence of some hurt, or whether it depended on the dilatation of the vessels, by the augmentation of the action of the womb.

SECTION VIII.
Causes of the dangers particular to self-pollution.

It has been precedently observed, that self-pollution is more pernicious than excesses with women. Those who, on every occasion, bring a particular Providence into play, will assign for a reason, that it is the special will of God, in punishment of this crime. Persuaded as I am, that bodies have been, primordially from their creation, subjected to laws, which necessarily regulate all their motions, and of which the Deity does not probably change the œconomy, unless in a small number of reserved cases, I should not chuse to have recourse to miraculous causes, but when there is found a manifest opposition to natural ones. This is not the case here: every thing may be very well explained by the laws of the mechanism of the body, and by those of its union with the soul.

This common custom of a recourse to supernatural causes, has been anciently combated by Hippocrates, who speaking of a disease which the Scythians imputed to its being a particular punishment inflicted by God, makes this fine reflexion:

“It is true (says he) that this disease comes from God; but not, in any other sense, than as all other diseases come from him: one does not come from him more than another; because all of them follow his laws of nature, by which every thing is governed[83].”

Sanctorius, in his Observations, furnishes us with one primary cause of this particular danger:

“Moderate coition (says he) is rather of service, when it is sollicited by nature: when it is sollicited by the imagination, it weakens all the faculties of the soul, and especially the memory[84].”

It is not difficult to explain the cause of this. Nature, in a state of health, does not inspire with desires, but when the seminal vesicules are full of a quantity of liquor, which has acquired a degree of inspissation, that renders the resorption of it the more difficult; which is a sign that the evacuation of it will not sensibly weaken the body. But such is the organisation of the parts of generation, that their action, and the desires consequential thereto, are not only put into play, by the presence of a redundancy of seminal humor, but the imagination has also a great influence over those parts. Imagination can, by laying itself out for the excital of desires, and by busying itself with objects present, or of its own formation, put the parts into a state which produces those desires, and those desires impell to an action, so much the more pernicious for its being the less necessary.

It is, with regard to this organ of a natural necessity, as it is with regard to all the others, who are never beneficially brought into play, but when they are so by nature herself. Hunger and thirst point out the need of a recourse to meat and drink; but if more is taken of them than these sensations require, the surplusage hurts and weakens the body. The need of going to stool or urine are equally limited to certain natural conditions; but a bad habit may so far pervert or deprave the constitution of those organs, that the necessity of evacuation will cease to depend on the quantity of matters to be evacuated. Men subject themselves to false wants, and such is the case of those addicted to self-pollution. It is imagination and habit that sollicit them; it is not nature. They rob nature of what is necessary to her, and of which, for that very reason, she is so chary, and loath to part with it.

In short, in consequence of this law of the animal œconomy, that humors will tend to where there is an irritation, so it will happen, that, after a certain time, there will be a continual afflux of humors to the irritated parts of generation: that case will come into existence, which Hippocrates has already observed, “When a man exercises the act of coition, the seminal veins dilate, and attract the seed[85].”

It may be remarked here, that there is in self-pollution particularly a danger for children before they arrive to the age of puberty. It is happily not common to find such monsters, of either sex, as to debauch children before that epoch; but it is but too common for children of that age to debauch themselves. A great number of circumstances may concur to keep a lewd commerce with others at a distance from them, or at least to moderate it; but a solitary lewdness meets with no obstacle, and knows no bounds.

A second cause is, the tyranny which this odious practice gains over the senses, and which the author of the English Onania describes very justly.

“This impurity has no sooner subdued the heart, than it pursues the criminal every where: it takes hold of him, and engrosses his thoughts at all times and in all places: in the midst of the most serious occupations, even in acts of devotion, he is in prey to sensual desires and to lascivious ideas, which never leave him free[86].”

Nothing can be more infeebling than this continual stretch of the mind, ingrossed by the same object. The self-pollutor, perpetually abandoned to his obscene meditations, is, in this regard, something in the case of the man of letters, who fixes all his attention on one point, and it is rare that such an excess is not pernicious. That part of the brain which is then in action, makes an effort, which may be compared to that of a muscle long and violently on the stretch: thence results, either such a mobility, that there is no stopping the activity of the part, which is notably the case of self-pollution, or an incapacity of action. Exhausted, at length, by a continual fatigue, these wretched beings fall into all the diseases of the brain; melancholy, catalepsy, epilepsy, imbecillity, loss of sense, weakness of the nervous system, and a croud of the like evils[87].

This cause of disorder does an infinite mischief to a number of young people, in that, when even their faculties are not as yet extinct, the use of them is perverted. To whatever vocation they devote themselves, there is no making a proficiency in any thing, without a degree of application, of which this pernicious habit renders them incapable. Among even those who dedicate themselves to nothing, and the class of these is but too numerous, there are some, whom that vacuity more than commonly misbecomes; an air of absence, of embarrassment, of giddiness, adds to the circumstance of their being good for nothing, that of their being disgustfully so.

I could point out some, whom this incapacity of fixing themselves to any thing, combined with the diminution of their faculties, disables from ever being of any use or value in society. Melancholic condition! which sinks the man beneath the brute, and, very justly renders an object rather of contempt than of pity to his fellow-creatures!

From these two causes there necessarily results a third; and that is the frequency itself of the act. As soon as the habit has gained a little strength, both body and soul concur in sollicitation to this crime. The soul, immersed in obscene ideas, is almost constantly exciting to lascivious acts, and if ever she is, for some moments, interrupted by other thoughts, the acrid humors, which irritate the organs of generation, soon recall her attention, and drag her back again to her mire.

How fit would these truths, collected from observation, be to check youth, if they could but foresee that in this case one false step would bring on another; that they will become slaves to the temptation; that in proportion as the motives of their seduction increase, that reason of theirs, which ought to restrain them, will grow weaker and weaker; and that they will, in a little time, find themselves cast away in a sea of misery, without, perhaps, the aid of any the least plank, to bring them to the shore again.

If sometimes their beginning infirmities give them strong and salutary advice, if the danger terrifies them for some moments, their rage of debauchery replunges them again, so that it may well be said of them,

In the mean while the danger is actual, the destruction so imminent, that short indeed is the time of opportunity for amendment.

While I studied in Geneva, a time, of which the remembrance will be dear to me for the rest of my life, one of my condisciples was come to that state of horror, that he was not master enough of himself to abstain from these abominations, even during the time of the lessons. He did not wait long for his punishment: and perished miserably of a consumption, in about two years time. A similar case to this may be found in the Onania.[88]

The ingenious author, who, from the Latin edition of this work, furnished the extract in the excellent Latin Journal of Literature, which, about a twelvemonth, made its first appearance at Berne, tells you, with regard to this observation, that a whole college had recourse to this filthy practice, by way of an amusement, to avoid falling asleep, at the lessons of scholastic metaphysics, which a very old professor used to teach them, as he nodded between sleeping and waking[89]. But this little story seems to me less fit to prove what I have been physically advancing, than the actual horrid dissoluteness into which the contagion of example may plunge a number of young people. The same author has recently published a work, which I have not as yet had the advantage of perusing, but to which an excellent judge assigns a rank among the best productions of this age. There he mentions, that, in a certain town, there was some years ago discovered a whole society of wicked boys, from fourteen to fifteen years old, who met to practise this vice, and that a whole school was to this moment infected with it.[90]

The health of a young Prince was daily declining, without any one’s being able to discover the cause of it. At length his surgeon suspected it, watched him, and surprized him in the fact. He confessed, that one of his valets de chambre had taught him the practice, and that he had been often guilty of it. The habit was so strong upon him, that the most pressing considerations, and the most strenuously inforced, could not break him of it. The evil was constantly gaining ground; his strength was daily wasting; and there was no such thing as saving him, but by keeping guard over him, so as not to let him be a moment out of sight, for above eight months.

A patient, in one of his letters, gave me a lively description of the difficulties of his victory.

“There are great efforts (these are his terms) required to conquer a habit, that is every instant urging its recalls to us. I own to you, with blushes, that the bare sight of a female, no matter what she is, is enough to excite my desires. I do not even need that provocative; my polluted imagination is but too ready to present constantly to me objects of concupiscence. It is true that this passion never rekindles in me without my remembring, at the same time, your good advice: I struggle with myself; but even that struggle fatigues and exhausts me. If you could but find and suggest to me the means of diverting my thoughts from such objects, I believe my cure would be soon effected.”

It has been seen, in my extract from the English Onania, that a frequent repetition had produced in a woman the furor uterinus. The habit of being ingrossed by one idea renders one incapable of having any others; it usurps the sole dominion of the mind, and reigns despotically. The organs constantly irritated contract a morbific disposition, which becomes an ever present goad, independent of all external cause. There are disorders of the urinary passages which give a constant tendency to make water; the reiterated irritation of the organs of generation produces a disorder, in its way, analogous to that. It is therefore not surprizing if the concurrence of these two causes, moral and natural, combined, should throw one into that horrid disorder: and how powerful ought this idea to be, for inspiring a salutary terror to all in any danger of being in this case, and who have as yet any traces of reason or shame left!

A fourth cause to self-pollutors of their waste of strength, is, that independently of their frequency of emissions of seed, that frequency of their erections, though imperfect ones, of which they complain, considerably exhausts them. Every part, that is in a state of tension, produces an expence of the vital forces, and they have none to spare: the animal spirits croud thither in the greater abundance, and dissipate themselves. This is a great cause of weakness: they are proportionably deficient in the other functions, which are, in course, thereby imperfectly executed; and the concurrence of these two causes has the most dangerous consequences.

Another mischief, to which this fourth cause subjects self-pollutors, is a sort of paralytical affection of the organs of generation, whence follow impotency, incapacity of erection, and the simple gonorrhœa; for, the relaxed parts suffer the true seminal liquid to come from them as fast as it arrives, and the humor separated by the prostates to keep continually oozing, and, in short, all the internal membrane of the urethra acquires a catarrhous disposition to furnish a gleet, much of the same nature as the fluor albus in women: a catarrhous disposition, which, let me here somewhat digressively remark, is less rare and more general to the parts of the human body than is commonly imagined; not being confined to the membrane that invests the nostrils, the throat, the lungs, but which often attacks all the cavities of the intestines, where the disease is not discerned, because not suspected, and must, for want of that knowledge, be improperly prescribed for: nor would it be difficult to collect, from various medical observations, examples of this disorder having been mistaken for some other, and attempted to be cured accordingly.

An able surgeon, once, mentioned to me a man, who, from a singularity of taste, used to indulge his debauchery with the lowest street-walkers, and being accustomed to satisfy his desires with them, in a standing posture, against some wall or bulk, fell into a wasting, accompanied with the most cruel pains of his loins, and with an atrophy or shrivelling of his thighs and legs, combined with a palsy in those parts, which seemed to be a consequence of the attitude in which he used to indulge his dirty amours. After having kept his bed about a month, he died in a condition equally fit to inspire compassion and terror.

But does not this observation furnish also a fifth cause of the dangers particular to self-pollution?

When one loses one’s strength by two means at once, the weakness must be considerably augmented. A person who is standing upright, or sitting, has need for the supporting himself in those postures, and especially in the first, of putting into action a great number of the muscular parts; and this action dissipates the animal spirits. Weak persons, who cannot keep, for an instant, in a standing posture, without feeling a weakness, and the sick, that cannot sit up without the like uneasiness, very evidently prove this. But in lying down, or in the being extended at full length, there is not required the same strain on the vital strength. Thence it is clear enough, that the same act, performed in the one or in the other attitude, will produce a much greater weakening in the first than in the last case.

Sanctorius has not failed to point out the danger of this attitude: “Usus coïtus stando, lædit, nam musculos et eorum utilem perspirationem diminuit.”

Other observations, well examined, afford a sixth cause, which may, at the first superficial view, appear of the slightest, but which no intelligent naturalist will readily pronounce null.

All living bodies perspire. Every instant there exhales through, perhaps, one half of the pores of our skin, a humor of extreme tenuity, and which is a great deal more considerable than all our other evacuations: at the same time, another kind of pores admit a part of the fluids which surround us, and convey them into the vessels. These are the invisible torrents (to use M. Senac’s happy expression) that have their egress and regress into our body[91]. It stands demonstrated, that, in some cases, this insorption is enormous. The strong and healthy perspire the most: the weak, who have hardly any atmosphere of their own, inhale more. Now the miasms, or perspired matter of healthy persons, contains something nutritious and corroborative, which inhaled by another, contributes to give him vigor. These are observations, which explain why the young virgin, selected to cherish David, by lying in his bosom, gave him strength; why the same experiment has succeeded with other old men, to whom it had been prescribed; why that process weakens the young person, who loses, without receiving anything; or rather receives, in return, faint, sickly, corrupt, putrid exhalations, which cannot but be noxious.

Now, in the time of coition, people perspire more than at any other, the force of the circulation being augmented. This perspiration is also, probably, more active, more spirituous, than at any other time: it is a real loss that is, on that occasion, sustained, and which takes place, in whatever manner the emission of the seed is made, as it depends on the agitation that accompanies it. In coition it is reciprocal, and then, the one inhales what the other perspires. This exchange stands unquestionably proved by sure observations. I saw myself, not long ago, one, who having no gonorrhœa, no cutaneous symptom of the lues, had given the venereal distemper to a woman, who, at that instant was giving him the itch in exchange. In coition, then, there is a sort of mutual compensation of loss on both sides. But in the case of self-pollution, the person guilty of it loses, and in lieu of his loss, receives nothing.

An observation of the effect of the passions discovers a seventh cause of evil, in the difference between those who indulge themselves with women, and the self-pollutors; a difference which is intirely to the disadvantage of these last.

That joy which is allied to the soul, and which it is so very right essentially to distinguish from that merely corporal pleasure, in which the man shares but with the brute, and from which it is totally different; that joy, I say, aids the digestions, animates circulation, favors all the functions, restores the vital forces, cherishes, and supports them. Where it is found combined or united with the pleasures of love, it contributes to repair that strength which those pleasures may have diminished or exhausted. This stands proved by observation. Sanctorius has remarked it.

“A man (says he) after an excessive coition with a woman he loves, and has passionately desired, does not feel that fatigue of weakness which one would naturally suppose would be the consequence of such an excess; because the joy of the soul augments the power of the heart, favors the functions, and repairs the losses.”

It is upon this principle that Venette, in whose work there may be seen a good chapter on the dangers of pushing the pleasures of love to an excess, establishes it as a maxim, that an union with a beautiful woman is less apt to exhaust the strength, than with a homely one.

“Beauty (says he) has charms which dilate the heart, and multiply the vital spirits, that proceed from it. We may very well believe, with St. Chrysostom, that to excite one’s self repugnantly to the laws of nature, is, in that respect, a much greater crime than the other.”

And, in fact, can there be a doubt of Nature’s not having annexed more joy to the pleasures procured by the means which are in her appointed course, than by any which are out of it?

An eighth and last cause which augments the dangers of self-pollution, is the regrets, the horrors, which cannot fail of being the consequence of it, when once one’s eyes come to be opened on the crime and its dangers.