The wide bearing and importance of the truths derived from physiology will become more and more apparent, as we examine another branch of the subject, and ascertain from an observation of facts around us, how far the present relations of men and women in civilized countries, are based upon sound principles of physiology. It is necessary to know how far these principles are understood and carried out from infancy onward, whether efforts for the improvement of the race are moulded by physiological methods of human growth, and what are the inevitable consequences which result from departure from these principles.

According to a rational and physiological view of life, the family should be cherished as the precious centre of national welfare; every custom, therefore, which tends to support the dignity of the family and which prepares our youth for this life, is of vital importance to a nation. Thus the slow development of the sexual faculties by hygienic regime, by the absence of all unnatural stimulus to these propensities, by the constant association of boys and girls together, under adult influence, in habitual and unconscious companionship, the cultivation in the child’s mind of a true idea of manliness and the perception that self-command is the distinctive peculiarity of the human being, are the ordinary and natural conditions which rational physiology requires. On the contrary, every custom which insults the family and unfits for its establishment, which degrades the natural nobility of human sex, which sneers at it and treats this great principle with flippancy, which tends to kill its Divine essence, all such influences and such customs are a great crime against society, and directly opposed to the teaching of rational physiology.

An extended view of social facts, not only in different classes of our own society, but also in those countries with which we are nearly related, is of the utmost value to the parent. Physiological knowledge would be valueless to the mass of mankind, if its direct bearing upon the character and happiness of a nation could not be shown. So in considering the sexual education of youth according to the light of sound physiology, the social influences which affect the natural growth of the human being are an important part of applied physiology.

The tendencies of civilization must be studied in our chief cities. The rapid growth of large towns during the last half-century and the comparatively stationary condition of the country population show where the full and complete results of those principles which are most active in our civilization must be sought for. London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, New York, are not exceptions, but examples. They show the mature results towards which smaller towns are tending. Those who live in quiet country districts often flatter themselves that the rampant vice of large towns has nothing to do with villages, small communities, and the country at large. This is a delusion. The condition of large towns has a direct relation to the country.

In these focal points of civilization we observe, as examples of sexual relationship, two great institutions existing side by side—two institutions in direct antagonism—viz., Marriage and Prostitution, the latter steadily gaining ground over the former.

In examining these two institutions, the larger signification of licentiousness must be given to prostitution, applicable to men and women. Marriage is the recognised union of two, sharing responsibilities, providing for and educating a family. Prostitution is the indiscriminate union of many, with no object but physical gratification, with no responsibilities, and no care for offspring. It is essential to study the effects, both upon men and women and upon mankind at large, of this great fact of licentiousness, if we are to appreciate the true laws of sexual union in their full force, and the aims, importance, and wide bearing of Moral Education. We shall only here refer to its effects upon the young.

We may justly speak of licentiousness as an institution. It is considered by a large portion of society as an essential part of itself. It possesses its code of written and unwritten laws, its sources of supply, its various resorts, from the poorest hovel to the gaudiest mansion, its endless grade, from the coarsest and most ignorant to the refined and cultivated. It has its special amusements and places of public resort. It has its police, its hospitals, its prisons, and it has its literature. The organized manner in which portions of the press are engaged in promoting licentiousness, reaching, not thousands, but millions of readers, is a fact of weighty importance. The one item of vicious advertisements falls into distinct categories of corruption. Growing, therefore, as it does, constantly and rapidly, licentiousness becomes a fact of primary importance in society. Its character and origin must be studied by all who take an interest in the growth of the human race, and who believe in the maintenance of marriage, and the family, as the foundation of human progress.

Everyone who has studied life in many civilized countries, and the literature reflecting that life, will observe the antagonism of these two institutions: the recognition of the greater influence of the mistress than the wife, the constant triumph of passion over duty and deep, steady affection. We see the neglect of the home for the café, the theatre, the public amusement; the consequent degradation of the home into a place indispensable as a nursery for children, and for the transaction of common, every-day matters, a place of resort for the accidents of life, for growing old in, for continuing the family name, but too tedious a place to be in much, to spend the evening and really live in. Enjoyments are sought for elsewhere. The charm of society, the keener interests of life, no longer centre in the household. It is a domestic place, more or less quiet, but no home in the true sense of the word. The true home can only be formed by father and mother, by their joint influence on one another, on their children, and on their friends. The narrow, one-sided, diminishing influence of Continental homes amongst great masses of the population, from absence of due paternal care, is a painful fact to witness. That there are beautiful examples of domestic life to be found in every civilized country—homes where father and mother are one in the indispensable unity of family life—no one will deny who has closely observed foreign society. Indeed, any nation is in the stage of rapid dissolution where the institution of the family is completely and universally degraded; but the preceding statement is a faithful representation of the general tone and tendencies of social life in many parts of the Continent. That the same fatal principles, leading to the like results, are at work both in England and America will be seen as we proceed. Licentiousness may be considered as still in its infancy with us, when compared with its universal prevalence in many parts of the Continent; but it is growing in our own country with a rapidity which threatens fatal injury to our most cherished institution, the pure Christian home, with its far-reaching influences, an institution which has been the foundation of our national greatness.

The results of licentiousness should be especially considered in their effects upon the youth of both sexes, of both the richer and poorer classes; also in their bearing upon the institution of marriage and upon the race. In all these aspects it enters into direct relation with the family, and no one who values the family, with the education which it should secure, can any longer afford to ignore what so intimately affects its best interests. It is to the first branch of the subject that reference will here be chiefly made.

The first consideration is the influence exerted by social arrangements and tone of thought upon our boys and young men as they pass out of the family circle into the wider circles of the world, into school, college, business, society. What are the ideas about women that have been gradually formed in the mind of the lad of sixteen, by all that he has seen, heard, and read during his short but most important period of life? What opinions and habits, in relation to his own physical and moral nature, have been impressed upon him? How have our poorer classes of boys been trained in respect to their own well-being, and to association with girls of their own class? What has been the influence of the habits and companionships of that great middle-class multitude, clerks, shopkeepers, mechanics, farmers, soldiers, etc.? What books and newspapers do these boys read, what talk do they hear, what interests or amusements do they find in the theatre, the tavern, the streets, the home, and the church? What has been the training of the lad of the upper class—that class, small in number but great in influence, which, being lifted above any sordid pressure of material care, should be the spiritual leader of the classes below them—a class which has ten talents committed to it, and which inherits the grand old maxim, Noblesse oblige? How have all these lads been taught to regard womanhood and manhood? What is their standard of manliness? What habits of self-respect and of the noble uses of sex have been impressed upon their minds? Throughout all classes, abundant temptation to the abuse of sex exists. Increasing activity is displayed in the exercise of human ingenuity for the extension and refinement of vice. Shrewdness, large capital, business enterprise, are all enlisted in the lawless stimulation of this mighty instinct of sex. Immense provision is made for facilitating fornication; what direct efforts are made for encouraging chastity?

It is of vital importance to realize how small at present is the formative influence of the individual home and of the weekly discourse of the preacher, compared with the mighty social influences which spread with corrupting force around the great bulk of our youth. We find, as a matter of fact, that complete moral confusion too often meets the young man at the outset of life. Society presents him with no fixed standard of right or wrong in relation to sex, no clear ideal to be held steadily before him and striven for. Religious teaching points in one direction, but practical life points in quite a different way. The youth who has grown up from childhood under the guardianship of really wise parents, in a true home, with all its ennobling influences, and has been strengthened by enlightened religious instruction, has gradually grown towards the natural human type. He may have met the evils of life as they came to him from boyhood onwards, first of all with the blindness of innocence, which does not realize evil, and then with the repulsion of virtue, which is clear-sighted to the hideous results of vice. Such a one will either pass with healthy strength through life, or he may prove himself the grandest of heroes if beset with tremendous temptations; or, again, he may fall, after long and terrible struggles with his early virtue. But in the vast majority of cases the early training through innocence into virtue is wanting. Evil influences are at work unknown to or disregarded by the family, and a gradual process of moral and physical deterioration in the natural growth of sex corrupts the very young. In by far the larger ranks of life, before the lad has grown into the young man, his notions of right and wrong are too often obscured. He retains a vague notion that virtue is right, but as he perceives that his friends, his relations, his widening circle of acquaintance, live according to a different standard, his idea of virtue recedes into a vague abstraction, and he begins to think that vice is also right—in a certain way! He is too young to understand consequences, to realize the fearful chain of events in the ever-widening influence of evil acts—results which, if clearly seen, would frighten the innocent mind by the hideousness of evil, and make the first step towards it a crime. No one ventures to lift up a warning voice. The parent dares not, or knows not how to enter upon this subject of vital importance. There are no safeguards to his natural modesty; there is no wise help to strengthen his innocence into virtue.

Here is the testimony in relation to one important class, drawn from experience by our great English satirist: ‘And by the way, ye tender mothers and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing that theory of life is as orally learned at a great public school. Why, if you could hear those boys of fourteen, who blush before mothers and sneak off in silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among each other, it would be the woman’s turn to blush then. Before he was twelve years old, and while his mother fancied him an angel of candour, little Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon certain points; and so, madam, has your pretty little rosy-cheeked son, who is coming home from school for the ensuing Christmas holidays. I don’t say that the boy is lost, so that the innocence has left him which he had from “Heaven which is our home,” but the shades of the prison-house are closing very fast over him, and that we are helping as much as possible to corrupt him.’ ‘Few boys,’ says the Headmaster of a large school, ‘ever remain a month in any school, public or private, without learning all the salient points in the physical relation of the sexes. There are two grave evils in this unlicensed instruction: first, the lessons are learned surreptitiously; second, the knowledge is gained from the vicious experiences of the corrupted older boys, and the traditions handed down by them.’

Temptations meet the lad at every step. From childhood onward, an unnatural forcing process is at work, and he is too often mentally corrupted, whilst physically unformed. This mental condition tends to hasten the functions of adult life into premature activity. As already stated, an important period exists between the establishment of puberty and confirmed virility. In the unperverted youth, this space of time, marked by the rush of new life, is invaluable as a period for storing up the new forces needed to confirm young manhood and fit it for the healthy exercise of its important social functions. The very indications of Nature’s abundant forces at the outset of life, are warnings that this new force must not be stimulated, that there is danger of excessive and hasty growth in one direction, danger of hindering that gradual development which alone insures strength. If at an early age, thought and feeling have been set in the right direction, and aids to virtue and to health surround the young man, then this period of time, before his twenty-fifth year, will lead him into a strong and vigorous manhood. But where the mind is corrupted, the imagination heated, and no strong love of virtue planted in the soul, the individual loses the power of self-control, and becomes the victim of physical sensation and suggestion. When this condition of mental and physical deterioration has been produced, it is no longer possible for him to resist surrounding temptations. There are dangers within and without, but he does not recognise the danger. He is young, eager, filled with that excess of activity in blood and nerve, with which Nature always nourishes her fresh creative efforts.

At this important stage of life, when self-control, hygiene, mental and moral influence, are of vital importance, the fatal results of his weakened will and a corrupt society, ensue. Opportunity tempts his wavering innocence, thoughtless or vicious companions undertake to ‘form’ him, laugh at his scruples, sneer at his conscience, excite him with allurements. Or a deadly counsel meets him—meets him from those he is bound to respect. The most powerful morbid stimulant that exists—a stimulant to every drop of his seething young blood—is advised viz., the resort to prostitutes. When this fatal step has been taken, when the natural modesty of youth and the respect for womanhood is broken down, when he has broken with the restraints of family life, with the voice of Conscience, with the dictates of religion, a return to virtue is indeed difficult—nay, often impossible. He has tasted the physical delights of sex, separated from its more exquisite spiritual joys. This unnatural divorce degrades whilst it intoxicates him. Having tasted these physical pleasures, often he can no more do without them than the drunkard without his dram. He ignorantly tramples under foot his birthright of rich, compound, infinite human love, enthralled by the simple limited animal passion. His Will is no longer free. He has destroyed that grand endowment of Man, that freedom of the youthful Will, which is the priceless possession of innocence and of virtue, and has subjected himself to the slavery of lust. He is no longer his own master; he is the servant of his passions. Those whose interest it is to retain their victim employ every art of drink, of dress, of excess, to urge him on. The youthful eagerness of his own nature lends itself to these arts. The power of resistance is gradually lost, until one glance of a prostitute’s eye passing in the street, one token of allurement, will often overturn his best resolutions and outweigh the wisest counsel of friends! The physiological ignorance and moral blindness which actually lead some parents to provide a mistress for their sons, in the hope of keeping them from houses of public debauchery, is an effort as unavailing as it is corrupt. Place a youth on the wrong course instead of on the right one, lead him into the career of sensual indulgence and selfish disregard for womanhood instead of into manly self-control, and the parent has, by his own act, launched his child into the current of vice, which rapidly hurries him beyond his control.

The evils resulting from a violation of Nature’s method of growth by a life of early dissipation are both physical and mental or moral. In some organizations the former, in some the latter, are observable in the most marked degree; but no one can escape either the physical deterioration or the mental degradation which results from the irrational and unhuman exercise of the great endowment of sex.

Amongst the physical evils the following may be particularly noted. The loss of self-control, reacting upon the body, produces a morbid irritability (always a sign of weakness) which is a real disease, subjecting the individual to constant excitement and exhaustion from slight causes. The resulting physical evils may be slow in revealing themselves, because they only gradually undermine the constitution. They do not herald themselves in the alarming manner of a fever or a convulsion, but they are not to be less dreaded from their masked approach. The chief forms of physical deterioration are nervous exhaustion, impaired power of resistance to epidemics or other injurious influences, and the development of those germs of disease, or tendencies to some particular form of disease, which exist in the majority of constitutions. The brain and spinal marrow and the lungs are the vital organs most frequently injured by loose life. But whatever be the weak point of the constitution, from inherited or acquired morbid tendencies, that will probably be the point through which disease or death will enter.

One of the most distinguished hygienists of our age writes thus: ‘The pathological results of venereal excess are now well known. The gradual derangements of health experienced by its victims are not at first recognised by them, and physicians may take the symptoms to be the beginning of very different diseases. How often symptoms are considered as cases of hypochondria or chronic gastritis, or the commencement of heart disease, which are really the results of generative abuse! A general exhaustion of the whole physical force, symptoms of cerebral congestion, or paralysis, attributed to some cerebrospinal lesion, are often due to the same causes. The same may be said of some of the severest forms of insanity. Many cases of consumption appearing in young men who suffer from no hereditary tendency to the disease enter into the same category. So many diseases are vainly treated by medicine or regime which are really caused by abuse of these important functions.’[24] Another of our oldest surgeons writes: ‘Among the passions of the future man which at this period should be strictly restrained is that of physical love, for none wars so completely against the principles which have been already laid down as the most conducive to long life; no excess so thoroughly lessens the sum of the vital power, none so much weakens and softens the organs of life, none is more active in hastening vital consumption, and none so totally prohibits restoration. I might, if it were necessary, draw a painful—nay, a frightful—picture of the results of these melancholy excesses, etc.’[25] Volumes might be filled with similar medical testimony on the destructive character of early licentiousness.

Striking testimony to the destructive effects of vice in early manhood is derived from a very different source—viz., the strictly business calculation of the chances of life, furnished by Life Insurance Companies. These tables show the rapid fall in viability during the earlier years of adult life. Dr. Carpenter has reproduced a striking diagram[26] from the well-known statistician Quetelet, showing the comparative viability of men and women at different ages, and its rapid diminution in the male from the age of eighteen to twenty-five. He remarks: ‘The mortality is much greater in males from about the age of eighteen to twenty-eight, being at its maximum at twenty-five, when the viability is only half what it is at puberty. This fact is a very striking one, and shows most forcibly that the indulgence of the passions not only weakens the health, but in a great number of instances is the cause of a very premature death.’[27] Dr. Bertillon (a well-known French statistician) has shown by the statistics of several European countries that the irregularities of unmarried life produce disease, crime, and suicide; that the rate of mortality in bachelors of twenty-five is equal to that of married men at forty-five; that the immoral life of the unmarried and the widowed, whether male or female, ages them by twenty years and more.

Many of the foreign health resorts are filled with young men of the richer classes of society, seeking to restore the health destroyed by dissipation. Could the simple truth be recorded on the tombstones of multitudes of precious youth, from imperial families downward, who are mourned as victims of consumption, softening of the brain, etc., all lovers of the race would stand appalled at the endless record of these wasted lives. ‘Died from the effects of fornication’ would be the true warning voice from these premature graves.

The moral results of early dissipation are quite as marked as the physical evils. The lower animal nature gains ever-increasing dominion over the moral life of the individual. The limited nature of all animal enjoyments produces its natural effects. First there is the eager search after fresh stimulants, and as the boundaries of physical enjoyment are necessarily reached, come in common sequence, disappointment, disgust, restlessness, dreariness, or bitterness. The character of the mental deterioration differs with the difference of original character in the individual, as in the nation. In some we observe an increasing hardness of character, growing contempt for women, with low material views of life. In others there is a frivolity of mind induced, a constant restlessness and search for new pleasures. The frankness, heartiness, and truthfulness of youth gradually disappear under the withering influence.[28]

The moral influence of vice upon social character has very wide ramifications. This is illustrated by the immense difficulties which women encountered in the rational endeavour to obtain a complete medical education. Licentiousness, with all its attendant results, is the great social cause of these difficulties.

The dominion of lust is necessarily short-sighted, selfish, or cruel. Its action is directly opposed to the qualities of truth, trust, self-command, and sympathy, thus sapping the foundations of personal morality. But apart from the individual evils above referred to, licentiousness inevitably degrades society, firstly, from the disproportion of vital force which is thus thrown into one direction, and, secondly, from the essentially selfish and ungenerous tendency of vice, which, seeking its own limited gratification at the expense of others, is incapable of embracing large views of life or feeling enthusiasm for progress. The direction into which this disproportionate vital force is thrown is a degrading one, always tending to evil results. Thus the noble enthusiasm of youth, its precious tide of fresh life, without which no nation can grow—life whose leisure hours should be given to science and art, to social good, to ennobling recreation—is squandered and worse than wasted in degrading dissipation.

This dissipation, which is ruin to man, is also a curse to woman, for, in judging the effects of licentiousness upon society, it must never be forgotten that this is a vice of two, not a vice of one. Injurious as is its influence upon the young man, that is only one-half of its effect. What is its influence upon the young woman? This question has a direct bearing on the Moral Aim of Education. The preceding details of physical and moral evils resulting to young men from licentiousness will apply with equal force to young women subjected to similar influences. One sex may experience more physical evil, the other more mental degradation, from similar vicious habits; but the evil, if not identical, is entirely parallel, and a loss of truthfulness, honour, and generosity accompanies the loss of purity.

The women more directly involved in this widespread evil of licentiousness are the women of the poorer classes of society. The poorer classes constitute in every country the great majority of the people; they form its solid strength and determine its character. The extreme danger of moral degradation in those classes of young women who constitute such an immense preponderance of the female population is at once evident. These women are everywhere, interlinked with every class of society. They form an important part (often the larger female portion) of every well-to-do household. They are the companions and inevitable teachers of infancy and childhood. They often form the chief or only female influence which meets the young man in early professional, business, or even college life. They meet him in every place of public amusement, in his walks at night, in his travels at home and abroad. By day and by night the young man away from home is brought into free intercourse, not with women of his own class, but with poor working girls and women, who form the numerical bulk of the female population, who are found in every place and ready for every service. Educated girls are watched and guarded. The young man meets them in rare moments only, under supervision, and generally under unnatural restraint; but the poor girl he meets constantly, freely, at any time and place. Any clear-sighted person who will quietly observe the way in which female servants, for instance, regard very young men who are their superiors in station, can easily comprehend the dangers of such association. The injustice of the common practical view of life is only equalled by its folly. This practical view utterly ignores the fact of the social influence and value of this portion of society. The customs of civilized nations practically consider poor women as subjects for a life so dishonourable, that a rich man feels justified in ostracizing wife, sister, or daughter who is guilty of the slightest approach to such life. It is the great mass of poor women who are regarded as (and sometimes brutally stated to be) the subjects to be used for the benefit of the upper classes. Young and innocent men, it is true, fall into vice, or are led into it, or are tempted into it by older women, and are not deliberate betrayers. But the rubicon of chastity once passed, the moral descent is rapid, and the preying upon the poor soon commences. The miserable slaves in houses of prostitution are the outcasts of the poor. The young girls followed at night in the streets are the honest working girl, the young servant seeking a short outdoor relief to her dreary life, as well as the unhappy fallen girl, who has become in her turn the seducer. If fearful of health, the individual leaves the licensed slaves of sin and the chance associations of the streets, it is amongst the poor and unprotected that he seeks his mistress:—the young seamstress, the pretty shop girl, the girl with some honest employment, but poor, undefended, needing relief in her hard-working life. It is always the poor girl that he seeks. She has no pleasures, he offers them; her virtue is weak, he undermines it; he gains her affection and betrays it, changes her for another and another, leaving each mistress worse than he found her, farther on in the downward road, with the guilt of fresh injury from the strong to the weak on his soul. Any reproach of conscience—conscience which will speak when an innocent girl has been betrayed, or one not yet fully corrupted has been led farther on in evil life—is quieted by the frivolous answer: ‘They will soon marry in their own class.’ If, however, this sin be regarded in its inevitable consequences, its effects upon the life of both man and woman in relation to society, the nature of this sophistry will appear in its hideous reality. Is chastity really a virtue, something precious in womanhood? Then, the poor man’s home should be blessed by the presence of a pure woman. Does it improve a woman’s character to be virtuous? Has she more self-respect in consequence? Does she care more for her children, for their respectability and welfare, when she is conscious of her own honest past life? Does she love her husband more, and will she strive to make his home brighter and more attractive to him, exercising patience in the trials of her humble life, being industrious, frugal, sober, with tastes that centre in her home? These are vital questions for the welfare of the great mass of the people, and consequently of society and of the nation.

We know, on the contrary, as a fundamental truth, that unchastity unfits a woman for these natural duties. It fosters her vanity, it makes her slothful or reckless, it gives her tastes at variance with home life, it makes her see nothing in men but their baser passions, and it converts her into a constant tempter of those passions—a corrupter of the young. We know that drunkenness, quarrels, and crimes have their origin in the wretched homes of the poor, and the centre of those unhappy homes is the unchaste woman, who has lost the restraining influence of her own self-respect, her respect for others, and her love of home. When a pretty, vain girl is tempted to sin, a wife and mother is being ruined, discord and misery are being prepared for a poor man’s home, and the circumstances created out of which criminals grow. Nor does the evil stop there. It returns to the upper classes. Nurses, servants, bring back to the respectable home the evil associations of their own lives. The children of the upper classes are thus corrupted, and the path of youth is surrounded at every step with coarse temptations. These consequences may not be foreseen when the individual follows the course of evil customs, but the sequence of events is inevitable, and every man gives birth to a fresh series of vice and misery when he takes a mistress instead of a wife.[29]

The deterioration of character amongst the women of the working classes is known to all employers of labour, to all who visit amongst the poor, to every housekeeper. The increasing difficulty of obtaining trustworthy domestic servants is now the common experience of civilized countries. In England, France, Germany, and the larger towns of America, it is a fact of widespread observation, and has become a source of serious difficulty in the management of family life. The deepest source of this evil lies in the deterioration of womanly character produced by the increasing spread of habits of licentiousness. The action of sex, though taking different directions, is as powerful in the young woman as in the young man; it needs as careful education, direction, and restraint. This important physiological truth, at present quite overlooked, must nevertheless be distinctly recognised. This strong mental instinct, if yielded to in a degrading way (as is so commonly the case in the poorer classes of society), becomes an absorbing influence. Pride and pleasure in work, the desire to excel, loyalty to duty, and the love of truth in its wide significance, are all subordinated, and gradually weakened, by the irresistible mastery of this new faculty. In all large towns the lax tone of companions, the difficulty in finding employment, the horrible cupidity of those who pander to corrupt social sentiment and ensnare the young—all these circumstances combined render vice much easier than virtue—a state of society in which vice must necessarily extend and virtue diminish. We thus find an immense mass of young women gradually corrupted from childhood, rendered coarse and reckless, the modesty of girlhood destroyed, the reserve of maidenhood changed to bold, often indecent, behaviour. No one accustomed to walk freely about our streets, to watch children at play, to observe the amusements and free gatherings of the poorer classes, can fail to see the signs of degraded sex. The testimony of home missionaries, of those experienced in Benevolent Societies and long engaged in various ways in helping women, as well as the Reports of Rescue Societies, all testify to the dangerous increase and lamentable results of unchastity amongst the female population.

We observe in all countries a constant relation also between the prevalence of licentiousness and degradation of female labour; the action and reaction of these two evil facts is invariable. In Paris we see the complete result of these tendencies of modern civilization in relation to the condition of working women—tendencies which are seen in London and Berlin, in Liverpool, Glasgow—i.e., in all large towns. The revelations made by writers and speakers in relation to the condition of the working women of Paris, are of very serious import to England. Such terrible facts as the following, brought to light by those who have carefully investigated the state of this portion of the population, must arrest attention. In relation to vast numbers of women it is stated[30]: ‘In Paris a woman can no longer live by the work of her own hands; the returns of her labour are so small that prostitution is the only resource against slow starvation. The population is bastardized to such an extent that thousands of poor girls know not of any relation that they ever possessed. Orphans and outcasts, their life, if virtuous, is one terrible struggle from the cradle to the grave; but by far the greater number of them are drilled, whilst yet children, in the public service of debauchery.’ The great mass of working women are placed by the present state of society in a position in which there are the strongest temptations to vice, when to lead a virtuous life often requires the possession of moral heroism.

Of the multitude of those who fall into vice, many ultimately marry, and, with injured moral qualities and corrupted tastes, become the creators of poor men’s homes. The rest drift into a permanent life of vice. The injurious effects of unchastity upon womanly character already noted, can be studied step by step, to their complete development in that great class of the population—the recognised prostitutes. Their marked characteristics are recklessness, sloth, and drunkenness. This recklessness and utter disregard of consequences and appearances, a quarrelsome, violent disposition, the dislike to all labour and all regular occupation and life, the necessity for stimulants and drink, with a bold address to the lower passions of men—such are the effects of this life upon the character of women. Unchaste women become a most dangerous class of the community. To these bad qualities is added another, wherever, as in France, this evil life is accepted as a part of society, provided for, organized, or legalized; this last result of confirmed licentiousness is a hardness of character so complete, so resistant of all improving influences, that the wisest and gentlest efforts to restore are often utterly hopeless before the confirmed and hardened prostitute.[31]

The growth of habits of licentiousness amongst us exerts the most direct and injurious influence on the lives of virtuous young women of the middle and upper classes of society. The mode of this influence demands very serious consideration on the part of parents. It is natural that young women should wish to please. They possess the true instinct which would guide them to their noble position in society, as the centres of pure and happy homes. How do our social customs meet this want? All the young women of the middle and upper classes of society, no matter how pure and innocent their natures, are brought by these customs of society into direct competition with prostitutes! The modest grace of pure young womanhood, its simple, refined tastes, its love of home pleasures, its instinctive admiration of true and noble sentiments and actions, although refreshing as a contrast, will not compare for a moment with the force of attraction which sensual indulgence and the excitement of debauch exert upon the youth who is habituated to such intoxications. The virtuous girl exercises a certain amount of attraction for a passing moment, but the intense craving awakened in the youth for something far more exciting than she can offer, leads him ever farther from her, in the direction where this morbid craving can be freely indulged. This result is inevitable if licentiousness is to be accepted as a necessary part of society. Physical passion is not in itself evil; on the contrary, it is an essential part of our nature. It is an endowment which, like every other human faculty, has the power of high growth. It possesses that distinctive human characteristic—receptivity to mental impressions. These impressions blend so completely with itself as to change its whole character and effect, and it thus becomes an ennobling or a degrading agent in our lives. In either case, for good or for evil, sex takes a first place as a motive power in human education. The young man inexperienced in life and necessarily crude in thought, but fallen into vice, is mastered by this downward force, and the good girl loses more and more her power over the strong natural attraction of sex which would otherwise draw him to her. The influence which corrupt young men, on the other hand, exercise upon the young women of their own standing in society, is both strong and often injurious. It being natural that young women should seek to attract and retain them, they unconsciously endeavour to adapt themselves to their taste. These tastes are formed by uneducated girls and by society of which the respectable young woman feels the effects, and of which she has a vague suspicion, although, happily, she cannot measure the depth of the evil. The tastes and desires of her young male acquaintance, moulded by coarse material enjoyments, act directly upon the respectable girl, who gives herself up with natural impulse to the influence of her male companion. We thus witness a widespread and inevitable deterioration in manners, dress, thought, and habits amongst the respectable classes of young women. This result leads eventually, as on the Continent, to the entire separation of young men and women in the middle and upper ranks of life, to the arrangement of marriage as a business affair, and to the union of the young with the old.

The faults now so often charged upon young women, their love of dress, luxury, and pleasure, their neglect of economy and dislike of steady home duties, may be traced directly to the injurious influence which habits of licentiousness are exercising directly and indirectly upon marriage, the home, and society. The subject of dress is one of serious importance, for it is a source of extravagance in all classes, and one of the strongest temptations to vice among poor girls. The creation of this morbid excess in dress by licentiousness is evident. If physical attraction is the sole or chief force which draws young men to young women, then everything which either enhances physical charms, which brings them more prominently forward, or which supplies the lack of physical beauty, must necessarily be resorted to by women, whose nature it is to draw men to them. The stronger the general domination of physical sensation—over character, sympathy, companionship, mutual help, and social growth—becomes amongst men, the more exclusive, intense, and competitive must grow this morbid devotion to dress on the part of women. Did young men seriously long for a virtuous wife and happy home, and fit themselves to secure those blessings, young women would naturally cultivate the domestic qualities which insure a bright, attractive home. The young man, however, is now discouraged from early marriage; the question soon presents itself to him: ‘Why should I marry and burden myself with a wife and family? I am very well off as I am; I can spend my money as I like on personal pleasures; I can get all that I want from women without losing my liberty or assuming responsibilities!’ The respectable girl is thus forced into a most degrading and utterly unavailing competition with the prostitute or the mistress. Marriage is indefinitely postponed by the young man; at first it may be from necessity, later from choice. The young woman, unable to obtain the husband suited to her in age, must either lead a single life or accept the unnatural union with a rich elderly man.

The grave physiological error of promoting marriage between the young and the old cannot be dwelt on here. It is productive of very grave evils, both to the health and happiness of the individual and to the growth of the Race. The steady decrease of marriage, and at the same time the late date at which it is contracted as licentiousness increases, is shown by a comparison of the statistics of Belgium and France with those of England. We find also that the character of the population deteriorates with the spread of vice—the standard of recruiting for the army is lowered, an ever-increasing mass of fatherless children die or become criminals, and, finally, the natural growth of the population of the country constantly decreases.

The records of History confirm the teaching of Physiology and Observation in relation to the fundamental character of sexual virtue, as the secret of durable national greatness. The decline of all the great nations of antiquity is marked by the prevalence of gross social corruption. The complex effects of the same cause are strikingly observed in the condition of the Mohammedan and other Eastern races and in all the tribes subject to them. We find amongst these races, as the result of their sexual customs, a want of human charity. This is shown in the absence of benevolent institutions and other modes of expressing sympathy. A great gulf separates the rich and poor, bridged over by no offices of kindness, no sense of the sacred oneness of humanity, which is deeper than all separations of caste or condition. There is no respect shown for human life, which is lightly and remorselessly sacrificed, and punishment degenerates into torture. There is also an incapacity for understanding the fundamental value of truth and honesty, and a consequent impossibility of creating a good government. We observe that bravery degenerates into fierceness and cruelty, and that the apathy of the masses keeps them victims of oppression. It is the exhibition of a race where there is no development of the Moral Element in human nature. These general characteristics and their cause were well described by the celebrated surgeon Lallemand, who says: ‘The contrast between the polygamous and sensual East and the monogamous and intellectual West displays on a large scale the different results produced by the different exercise of the sexual powers. On one side, Polygamy, harems, seraglios—the source of venereal excesses—barbarous mutilations, revolting and unnatural vice, with the population scanty, inactive, indolent, sunk in ignorance, and consequently the victim of misery and of every kind of despotism. On the other side, Monogamy, Christian austerity, more equal distribution of domestic happiness, increase of intelligence, liberty, and general well-being; rapid increase of an active, laborious, and enterprising population, necessarily spreading and dominating.’

The great moral element of society, which contains the power of self-renewal and continual growth, must necessarily be wanting in all nations where one-half of the people—the centre of the family, out of which society must grow—remains in a stunted or perverted condition. Women, as well as men, create society. Their share is a silent one. It has not the glitter of gold and purple, the noise of drums and marching armies, the smoke and clank of furnaces and machinery. All the splendid din of external life is wanting in the quiet realm of distinctive woman’s work; therefore it is often overlooked, misunderstood, or despised. Nevertheless, it is of vital importance. It preserves the only germ of society which is capable of permanent growth—the germ of unselfish human love and innate righteousness—in distinction to which all dazzling material splendour and intellectual ability, divorced from the love of Right, is but sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. It is for this reason that no polygamous or licentious customs, which destroy the woman’s nature and dry up the deepest source of human sympathy, can possibly produce a durable or a noble and happy nation. The value of a nation, its position in the scale of humanity, its durability, must always be judged by the condition of its masses, and the test of that condition is the strength and purity of home virtues—the character of the women of the nation.

No reference to the lessons of History, however brief, should omit the effect produced by religious teaching. The influence exercised by the Christian religion in relation to sex is of the most striking character. Christian teaching is distinguished from other religious teaching by its justice to women, its tender reverence for childhood, and by the laying down of that great corner-stone, Inward Holiness, as the indispensable foundation of true life. This is all summed up in its establishment of unitary marriage, through the emphatic adoption of the original Law, ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.’ The development of this Law by Jesus Christ into its high significance of spiritual purity, whilst it has been a principle of growth in the past, is the great hope of the future. The study of this Christian type, in its radical effect upon national life, is full of interest and instruction, but is also a study of great difficulty. This teaching of our Lord has never been adopted as the universal rule of practical life by any nation. The results of this law of union can only be judged on a large scale by comparing the condition of so-called Christian countries—where a certain amount of this high teaching has been diffused through the community—with the condition of nations where no such teaching has existed. The great battle between Christianity and Paganism still continues in our midst. The actual practical type prevailing in all civilized nations is not Christian. In these nations the Christian idea of unitary sexual relations is accepted theoretically, as conducive to the best interests of the family and binding upon the higher classes of women; but it is entirely set aside as a practical life for the majority of the community. Christ’s Law is considered either as a vague command, applicable only to some indefinite future, or as a theory which it would be positively unwise to put into practice in daily life. The statement is distinctly made, and widely believed, that the nature of men and women differs so radically that the same moral law is not applicable to the two sexes.

The great lesson derived from History, however, is always this—viz., that moral development must keep pace with the intellectual, or the race degenerates. This moral element is especially embodied by woman, and purity in woman cannot exist without purity in man, this weighty fact being shown by the facts already stated—viz., the action of licentiousness upon the great mass of unprotected women, its reaction upon other classes, and the accumulating influence of hereditary sensuality.

In the indisputable principles brought forward in the preceding pages, and the mass of facts and daily observation which support them, is found the answer to the first question proposed as a guide to the moral education of youth—viz.: What is the true standard for the relations of men and women, the type which contains within itself the germ of progress and indefinite development?

We see that the early and faithful union of one man with one woman is the true Ideal of Society. It secures the health and purity of the family relation, and is the foundation of social and national welfare. It is supported by sound principles of Physiology, by the history of the rise and fall of nations, and by a consideration of the evils of our present age. The lessons of the past and present, our clearer knowledge of cause and effect, alike prove the wisdom of the highest religious teaching—viz., that the faithful union of strong and pure young manhood and womanhood is the only element out of which a strong and durable nation can grow.