My visions of poverty and future distress vanished; the present seemed gilded with new charms, and the future appeared no longer to be dreaded. But you can better imagine, than I describe, the revolution of my feelings.

“I have since endeavored to circulate this book as widely as my limited opportunities permit, and shall continue to do so, believing it to be the most useful work that has made its appearance.”

The next extract, from an inhabitant of Pennsylvania, we have selected chiefly as it furnishes a beautiful, and, alas! a rare, example, of that parental conscientiousness which scruples to impart existence where it cannot also impart the conditions necessary to render that existence happy. In this view, the control in question is indeed all-important. Were such virtue as this cultivated in mankind generally, how soon might the very seeds of disease die out among us, instead of bearing, as now, their poison-fruit from generation to generation! and how far might human beings, in succeeding ages, surpass their forefathers in strength, in health, and in beauty!

This view of the subject is to the physiologist, to the philosopher, to every friend of human improvement, a most interesting one. ‘So long,’ to use the words of an eloquent lecturer, ‘as the tainted stream is unhesitatingly transmitted through the channel of nature, from parent to offspring, so long will the text be verified which “visits the sins of the fathers on the children, even to the third and fourth generation.”’ And so long, we would add, will mankind—wise and successful whenever there is question of improving the animal races—be blind in perceiving, and listless in securing, that far nobler object, the physical, and thereby—in a measure—the mental and moral improvement of our own.

Here is the extract which led to these remarks:—

“I was born of poor parents, and early left an orphan. When of age, though my circumstances promised poorly for the support of a family, I desired to marry, knowing that a good wife would greatly add to my happiness. The preventive spoken of in your book presented itself to my mind, and for seven years that I have now been married, it has been used. I was successful in business, and acquired the means of maintaining a family; but still I have been unwilling, because my constitution is such a one as I think a parent ought not to transmit to his offspring. I prefer not to give birth to sentient beings, unless I can give them those advantages, physical as well as moral and intellectual, which are essential to human happiness.”

From the letter of an aged French gentleman, who holds a public office in the western country, I translate the following; and I would to heaven that every young man and woman in these United States could read it:

“I have read your work with much interest; and desire that it may have a wide circulation and that its recommendations may be adopted in practice. If you publish another edition, I could wish that you would add a piece of advice of the greatest importance, especially to young married persons. Many women are ignorant, that, in the gratification of the re-productive instinct, the exhaustion to the man is much greater than to the woman; a fact most important to be known, the ignorance of which has caused more than one husband to forfeit his health, nay, his life. Tissot tells us, that the loss by an ounce of semen is equal to that by forty ounces of blood;^[41] and that, in the case of the healthiest man, nature does not demand connexion oftener than once a month.^[42]

“How many young spouses, loving their husbands tenderly and disinterestedly, if they were but informed of these facts, would watch over and preserve their partners’ healths, instead of exciting them to over-indulgence.”—Another extract.

“A member of the Society of Friends, from the country, called at our office; he informed me that he had been married twenty years, had six children, and would probably have had twice as many, but for the preventive, which he found in every instance efficacious. By this means he made an interval of two or three years between the births of each of his children. Having at last a family of six, his wife earnestly desired to have no more; and on one occasion, when the preventive was neglected to be used, she shed tears at the prospect of again becoming pregnant. He said he knew, in his own neighborhood, several married women who were rendered miserable on account of their continued pregnancy, and would have given anything in the world to escape, but knew not how.”

Our readers may implicitly depend on the accuracy of the facts we have stated. Though in the present state of public opinion we may not, for obvious reasons, give names in proof.

That most practical of philosophers, Franklin, interprets chastity to mean, the regulated and strictly temperate satisfaction, without injury to others, of those desires which are natural to all healthy adult beings. In this sense, chastity is the first of virtues, and one most rarely practised, either by young men or by married persons, even when the latter most scrupulously conform to the letter of the law.

It is all important for the welfare of our race, that the re-productive instinct should never be selfishly indulged; never gratified at the expense of the well-being of our companions. A man who, in this matter, will not consult, with scrupulous deference, the slightest wishes of the other sex; a man who will ever put his desires in competition with theirs, and who will prize more highly the pleasure he receives than that he may be capable of bestowing—such a man appears to me, in the essentials of character, a brute. The brutes commonly seek the satisfaction of their propensities with straight-forward selfishness, and never calculate whether their companions are gratified or teased by their importunities. Man cannot assimilate his nature more closely to theirs, than by imitating them in this.

Again. There is no instinct in regard to which strict temperance is more essential. All our animal desires have hitherto occupied an undue share of human thoughts; but none more generally than this. The imaginations of the young and the passions of the adult are inflamed by mystery or excited by restraint, and a full half of all the thoughts and intrigues of the world has a direct reference to this single instinct. Even those, who like the Shakers, ‘crucify the flesh,’ are not the less occupied by it in their secret thoughts; as the Shaker writings themselves may afford proof. Neither human institutions nor human prejudices can destroy the instinct. Strange it is, that men should not be content rationally to control, and wisely to regulate it.