The Relations of the Sexes (Duffey)/Chapter 11

I HOPE those of my readers who have followed me from the opening chapter to the present one, have found the arguments I have used sufficiently incontrovertible, and my illustrations sufficiently plain, to satisfy them that whatever nature, superficially examined, may seem to teach to the contrary, all individual, social and moral interests point unmistakeably to strict monogamic marriage as productive of the highest human happiness, and promotive of the greatest degree of moral and intellectual progress of both sexes.

We have seen how polygamy narrows man's nature, blunts all his finer perceptions, cuts him off from the humanizing influence of refined and cultivated women, and fosters in him self-conceit and arrogance. We have seen how this same polygamy utterly dwarfs and deforms woman mentally and morally, and by making only sexual demands upon her, turns her into a sexual monster, in regard to whom the worst that can be said has some elements of truth. We have seen how society is extinguished by the means of this institution, and how entire ​nations, existing under its influence, never rise above a certain low level in civilization. We have seen, too, how free love, though pretending to recognize womanly and motherly rights, still works mischief to the world, in separating the interests of men and women, and bringing them into a state of antagonism, in which the weaker and more heavily burdened are totally unfitted to cope with the stronger, and must necessarily be crushed and enslaved through whose influence society is to be overturned, home destroyed, and children, the heritage of the race, left unprotected and uncared-for, or else thrown entirely on the hands of already overburdened mothers. We have also considered how prostitution, and the whole list of immoral irregularities which belong to the same category, result, in spite of all precautions, in ruin of purse, and health, in destruction of the finer attributes of mankind, and in moral death. How thunderbolts are sent to hearth-stones, wives made broken-hearted; and an inheritance of misery—the punishment of the fathers' sins—entailed upon children. This, therefore, cannot be right. The curses of God and of man are upon it. Nor do I think I need bring stronger argument than that which I have produced in the last chapter, to convince the unprejudiced reader that none of these things are justified by any so-called "physical necessity"—any requirement of man implanted in his nature by his Creator, or by any other power than his own wilful depravity and selfish disregard of women. Health, manly strength, and ​good morals, all justify and sanction—nay, require—a rigid chastity in men no less than in women—a chastity in thought, word and deed—up to the time of perfect physical maturity, when a man is justified in marriage; and beyond which time, if he has exercised that chastity, he cannot, except in exceptional cases, long delay marriage without injustice to himself and to society. Such a man will naturally turn to marriage, and for him it has reserved its highest joys.

The young man who, having reached a proper marriageable age, deliberately decides against marriage, unless he be already wedded to science or philosophy, and foregoes conjugal duties and pleasure, in order that he may more faithfully devote himself to his studies, has spoken his own moral condemnation. Let pure women beware of the man who proclaims himself "not a marrying man."

A marriage, properly entered into by chaste partners, with the natural laws which should regulate the relations of marriage properly understood and regarded, is probably the happiest condition upon earth. But how many understand these laws? More than this, how many persons are there who really know that there are natural laws in the marriage relations, which, if disregarded, will bring apathy, disease, suffering, even death? Is not every effort to reveal these laws frowned down as something criminally improper, by a certain class who rule public sentiment? I know I run the risk, in writing and pub​lishing the following chapters, of shocking and offending many excellent people, who would hide all these subjects in complete obscurity, and never speak of them above a whisper. But when I hear the moans of suffering women, when I see infants dying through the ignorance of their parents, when I find husbands are inconsiderate and even brutal—not intentionally so, but because they do not know what consideration and humanity in these relations really require of them—it gives me courage to speak, and I shall speak to the utmost that is in my heart, unless I am silenced.

Even whilst penning the foregoing paragraph, a cry of despair reached me from one who was going down to the grave through ignorance on a kindred subject. "Oh!" exclaimed a young man in the last stage of consumption, as his hands and eyes fell upon a book of a class which is usually kept hidden, "If my father had permitted me to read such a book as this, I should not be dying now!" Think of it, fathers and mothers. Your children's deaths may lie at the door of your mistaken notions in regard to purity and innocence! Their future lives may be marred past remedy by that unjustifiable ignorance in which you are keeping them! Are, then, the relations of husband and wife, the functions of motherhood, and the impulses and passions of youth, so unholy and impure in your minds, that you can invoke no reverent spirit, nor think of fitting words in which to tell your children of these things, and prepare them to walk in safety and in wisdom, ​the path that incontrovertibly stretches out before them? Out upon such assumption of modesty and purity! It is either the child of gross, inexcusable ignorance, or of black defilement of heart. It belongs to the dark ages, when monks held that women were impure in all their attributes and functions, and when celibacy was extolled as freeing men from their disgraceful and sensual thraldom. But you are worse than the monks of old, for you neither preach nor practice celibacy—you are living a daily life which is so shameful, in your own consideration, that you cannot speak of it.

This cry that has come to me from the grave, I have received as a good omen regarding my work. It is typical of the cry of universal manhood and womanhood, who are longing for that knowledge which shall save them from suffering, sin and death, and open the gates to a higher humanity.

God has ordained no such mock modesty in these matters. He signalizes his disapproval by punishing the sins of ignorance as severely and as openly as those of any other kind. God has made his social laws just as comprehensible and plain as any other laws of our being, and if we do not choose to learn them, we must bear the consequences. Yet if we dare to study these laws, the world looks askance at us, and prides itself in its ignorance. As if its ignorance were innocent! As if this ignorance did not continually lead to errors and crimes! As if people did not perpetually sin against their bodies, ​who would stand aghast at the enormity of their offenses, if a little light of knowledge was let in upon them! But if they seek that light, they must look for it in out-of-the-way corners, and in hidden places, in secret and in silence, as though it was a shame to know God's laws concerning their bodies, and the most important and sacred things which can concern humanity! They must read books inscribed "private," which in their very secret character, foster the lusts which they are professedly written to denounce.

This is no "private" book. I spread its open pages before humanity, that all the world may read. No honorable man need hesitate to place it in the hands of a pure wife; no woman need start with shame and horror at finding it in the possession of her husband. There is, in fact, no need of his keeping its possession a secret from her. I do not recommend that this book shall be read aloud in social and family circles; but I do wish that its pages might reach the eye of every married man and woman in the land, that they might take its truths into their hearts and into their lives, and be better and happier for them. I wish especially, that all young men and women, who are approaching marriageable age, might learn from it the lessons I am trying to teach, that only the most unsullied purity, the most chaste affections and chastened passions, either in marriage or out, constitute the highest and most perfect law of our being;—to learn that marriage is not a cloak for lust in man, nor is it a ​condemnation to servitude and abasement in woman; that they may read and be wise in time, before they have wrecked their own happiness, and, through their children—conceived in ignorance and lust, and born to wretchedness—added to the sum of misery which now almost overwhelms mankind. This, I repeat, is no "private" book. I leave that sort of thing to the quacks and charlatans who pander to the lusts of mankind to enrich themselves.

Is there any one who thinks I have exaggerated the sum of misery which falls upon the world through ignorance in sexual matters? What of the massacre of the innocents which our statistics yearly show—a massacre more cruel and merciless than that of King Herod, because more extended in its results? How many households are there without gaps? And do you really believe that God orders all this? I could not be so blasphemous. If we sin, we or our children must pay the penalty, in accordance with His immutable laws; but is it His wish that we should sin? Are there no vacant places at your hearths and in your hearts, oh fathers and mothers, which even with your faint glimmering of knowledge, you feel might have remained filled, "if you had only known!" And would not every increase of knowledge bring additional security to infant life? Did you never feel, troubled father, when you have seen your son enter forbidden paths, that possibly if you had trusted to a warning voice, instead of to a restraining hand, he might have ​been kept by you and to you in paths of integrity? And you, worn, weary mother, who would not harbor in your breast for one moment a single feeling of reproach or rebellion towards God—did you never have in your heart, when you were exhausted and overburdened with conflicting duties, and when you thought you saw the path of duty stretch out straight before you, but your failing strength and tottering footsteps made you faint and falter by the way—did you never have an emotion of vague unrest—a sore spot in your heart; and feel, rather than think, that there was great injustice somewhere? and that if you had had the ordering of the universe, you would somehow have managed things better, and not have made the burdens of wives and mothers so out of all proportion to their strength? Oh! I know the sad, helpless feelings! No wonder many a mother despairingly lays down her load of cares and dies! But your feeling is not an irreverent one. It is but the natural outcry of the heart against injustice and wrong. Only, repining will do you no good. You had better spend the time in thinking, and you may think out some way which leads more parallel with our highest ideas of the infinite justice, mercy and goodness of God, than that which you in your ignorance are following.

Oh, I am sure I have not overstated the sad results of the universal ignorance of man and womankind in matters which pertain to their most important interests, If you still doubt, ask any intelligent physician, and ponder well his reply.

​A girl before marriage is secluded from nearly all knowledge regarding wifely and maternal duties, which is likely to be of the least use to her. The knowledge of the young man, though somewhat more extended, is uot one whit more practical in its character. His ideas concerning the other sex are probably perverted in every particular. On his marriage night he not at all unlikely approaches his bride in something the same spirit which causes the bridegroom of a certain barbarous tribe which I have already mentioned, to whip his bride in order to subdue her coyness. I do not say that this is always the case; but if I have not been misinformed, there is a very prevalent feeling among men that violence at such a time is not only one of the privileges of their manhood, but actually real kindness to women.

Balzac, who certainly was an adept in all knowledge concerning the passions, said: "The husband who begins with his wife with a rape, is a lost man. He will never be loved." M. Legouve, author of the histoire morale des femmes, says of the marriage night: "The young girl finds herself delivered to this man whose brutal violence sometimes compromises, in a second, the happiness of a life-time! What impression, indeed, must not this gross attack produce upon the mind of a young, trembling, delicate, nervous girl? Can we not imagine what image of love must be engraven upon her spirit? There are those whom this savage taking possession has inspired with such horror that they have been stricken ​with incurable sufferings; there are others whom this memory alone has forever separated from their husbands, thenceforth, for them, objects of repulsion."

I trust all men do not go to the excess of brutality; but is there one man in ten who does not insist on the payment of the conjugal debt on the first night of marriage, be his wife's reluctance and terrors what they may? Is there one man in a hundred, who will give his new-made bride a week to become accustomed and reconciled to the idea of the new relations to which she is pledged? Is there one in one thousand who is willing to wait with the same patience, and to use the same arts that the libertine in his superior wisdom knows so well how to employ—arts perfectly proper and commendable in lawful wedlock—even though it may take months before his purpose is gained, so that his wife shall be a willing partner to the consummation of marriage? Oh what an amount of physical suffering to women might be saved by such a course! But all this is hardly worth mentioning, when we consider the unhappiness, disappointment and disgust it brings the young wife—feelings which she probably does her best to conceal, for she cannot bear to own even to herself how great is the shock to her sentiments and affections. But the romance of life is gone for her with this rude awakening. Passion, which she, while still unmarried, had looked forward to as something to bring her pleasure, is by this rude and violent masculine gratification, presented to her in so hideous a guise, that it will ​take the utmost consideration on the husband's part afterwards, to enable her ever completely to overcome her repugnance. But, probably, her husband goes on in his infatuated blindness, and adds to her disgust by excesses. He may have lived conscientiously the purest of lives before marriage, and that act has opened the door of gratification to him. He has never in all the phases in which the matter has been presented to him, heard that there should be any limit in the conjugal relations save that imposed by satiety. In fact, the contrary idea is rather held, among even the best of people, that it is desirable that the conjugal debt shall be frequently paid, as an incentive to affection. I find such an idea expressed in a book before me. It is needless to say that this book was written by a man: "To the reluctant wife: note every invitation to this banquet of love, and cordially respond. . . For you to yield is to conquer. . . Abundant excuse, such as the most unreasonable demand on his part, and utter inability on yours, alone should warrant your refusal." This writer overlooks the fact that the man capable of making an unreasonable demand of this sort, is also perfectly capable of insisting on its gratification. To the husband the same writer says: "To promote desire is your only plan."

I think I could tell young men something in this matter, and give them far sounder advice than that I have just quoted. I do not pretend to speak for all women, but I am certain I may speak for a large proportion of ​them. So far from being a believer in the "sexual starvation" theory which certain writers advocate in regard to women, I believe the passions of many women are never developed until marriage. Before that event, all the physical sensations they experience are a "sort of vague unrest," as some author terms it, which incites them to love in its least sensual form. They are not subject to the lascivious dreams which many even of the virtuous of the other sex are sometimes troubled with. This bud of passion cannot be forced rudely open. Its development must be the work of time. If the young wife is met with violence—if she finds that her husband regards the gratification of his own desires more than her feelings—and if she be worn and wearied with excesses in the early days of her married life, the bud will be blighted. The husband will have only himself to blame, if he is bound all his life to an apathetic, irresponsive wife. She will be wounded in her deepest feelings, and disgusted and sickened. The apple of pleasure will turn to ashes in her taste. She will become convinced, as this apathy extends through years, that she was denied all passional feelings by nature. If she has given the matter serious consideration, she will feel deep regret that she should have lost out of her life something so essential, which of right belonged to her. If, however, she is as thoughtless as are the majority of women on these subjects, she will naturally give herself airs of superiority over her more impassioned sisters, on account ​of her assumed purity of nature, and be inclined to look with contempt upon all women not equally frigid with herself.

It is easy to imagine the unsatisfactory conjugal relations which are brought about in punishment of the husband's early impetuosity and ignorance. He, finding an unreciprocal wife, doubts her affection for him, because, with his masculine nature, he cannot conceive of a love unblended with passion. She, in her defrauded womanhood, feels aggrieved and debased by any conjugal approach—especially by an enforced one—and finds it equally hard to understand how affection and passion can be united; the one she knows to be so self-forgetful and denying, and the other she has such abundant cause for believing utterly selfish and rapacious.

I am not painting a fancy sketch. I see women whose worn, patient faces tell the story to me every time I look at them—women who feel that they bear the brand of the prostitute within their souls, because they are forced to yield their bodies unwillingly to gratifying that which they can regard in no other light than as a selfish lust, hallowed as it is by no mutual desire, nor exalted by self=forgetting impulses. "I know that I am a prostitute!" exclaimed a married woman to me one day; "I know it, and feel it in my inmost soul. I am prostituted to my husband whenever he requires of me that which I cannot give him through affection and passionate impulse. But what am I to do?" It was a wail from the very depths ​of her heart; a wail that will be echoed by many un happy women. How my soul goes out to them in pity Am I wrong in speaking in their behalf? Right or wrong, listen to me, young men. Do not be in too great haste to brush the bloom from the fruit you covet. It will lose half its attractions at once. Practice in lawful wedlock the arts of the seducer, rather than the violence of the man who commits rape; and you will find the reward for your patience very sweet and lasting. Having avoided the brothel during the days of your youth, do not degrade marriage by bringing into it the lusts and excesses which belong only to the brothel. Women are not like men in sensual matters. They,—the most of them at least—do not love lust for lust's sake. Passion must come to them accompanied not only with love, but with the tender graces of kindness and consideration and self-denial, or they are quickly disgusted. Let the word engraved on the portal of your marriage structure be "freedom." Then shall you enjoy a "free love" of which those who oftenest repeat the term never dream.

I shall not be satisfied with merely influencing men to give their wives their freedom in sexual matters. I wish to impress upon the wives themselves that this is one of their inborn rights. The right to self will be a new doctrine to many wives and husbands. But it is the true doctrine; and upon it is based all the happiness that can possibly be found in the marriage state. The wife's ​body is unqualifiedly her own, except that she may be guilty of no infidelity to her husband. She should give or withhold her favors according to her own best judgment, uninfluenced either by fear or over-persuasion. A man has no "marital rights" in this respect, except to take what is granted to him freely and lovingly. A woman is no more bound to yield her body to her husband after the marriage between them, than she was before, until she feels that she can do so with the full tide of willingness and affection. I know these are hard truths, but it is time the world began to recognize them as truths. Every true wife should be made to see wherein she defrauds her husband, and does violence to her own moral nature, by yielding unwillingly to demands or pressing importunities; and should have the courage to assert her individual rights in this respect, at whatever cost. Do right, and leave the result with God. Mothers should teach their daughters this lesson, so that they should enter marriage with it clearly engraven on their hearts, and would shrink from any violation of its spirit as they would from mortal sin. With such a basis for marriage, women would be freer and men happier; because it never adds to any one's real happiness to be tyrannical or unjust to another.

Husbands lose much by making unreasonable demands and persistent importunities. They are placing a great strain upon their wives' affections, and lowering themselves almost past reinstatement in their respect and esteem.

​I do not think my readers will accuse me of being an affected prude;" in spite of the charge to that effect in the extract which I am about to quote; but I cannot agree with an author who, in referring to the sexual relations of marriage, says: "Affected prudishness may pretend to frown upon this home truth; but, viewed in whatever light you please, the long and short, warp and woof, and the whole embodiment, of both love and matrimony—the one legitimate element, end, motive, and object desired and prompted—of either separately, and of both collectively—consists in the anticipation and pledging of each to participate in this function of love with the other. This is the origin of the marriage rites. The bridegroom justly thinks himself entitled to these rites, because the very act of the bride in becoming his wife consists simply in a surrender of her celibacy, and a pledge to partake in this parental function. And the value set by either party on matrimony is mainly the price set on this repast.

"On nothing does the bridegroom set an equal value. All else in married life is of little value to him compared with reciprocity and happiness here. This expected pleasure alone prompts marriage." What a libel upon manhood, what a slander upon womanhood, is this! I do not believe that sexual commerce is the "one end, motive and object," the "warp, and woof" of marriage. It may enter as an important element in marriage, especially with men; but I defend even them from the ​charge of such gross sensuality. Such a charge is an outrage upon decency and morality. It is an insult to the wife, to tell her that passion alone attracted and still holds her husband to her. It is equally an insult to the husband to say to him that the wife whom he knows to be pure and delicate in all her feelings, could be stirred by such an unconquerable lust that it should become the "end and aim" of her existence. If this be true, by how frail a tenure do we hold our husbands and our wives! When lust is satiated, then love is gone. Moral beauties, mental fitnesses, and harmony of taste and thought, all count for nothing. The smiles of conjugal partners all come from the remembrance of carnal desire gratified; their kisses are prompted by desire expectant. Passion courses in their blood, agitates all their thoughts, desires, hopes, and ambitions, and burns upon their lips. Is this really true? Are there, then, no bonds of intellect and affection between a happy married couple, which can sometimes, at least, take the place of desire, if desire is necessarily thwarted, and leave them just as happy, and filled with love for one another, as ever? Is it not possible that there may be a love strong enough and abiding enough, untinged by passion, to hold a husband and wife firm and fast in its bonds, and leave them little to desire? I believe it: I know it. Women will tell you they are capable of such a love; and shall we believe less of men? I cannot think that this physical phase of love dwells in the lover's mind and is never absent,—that it is that and ​only that, continually, which makes him sigh in the loved one's absence, take delight in her presence, and look forward to the marriage day. I believe in marriage all through—the soul, the mind, the heart, and the body, and I would make the last the weakest and least indispensable tie; though I would say that a perfect marriage includes this with the others. Bear me out, oh men and women who have wives and husbands whom you cherish with a love deeper, broader, and stronger than the mere sensualist can dream of.

It is this laus veneris—this "sexual religion" as some fancifully call it—this adulation of the senses, and making everything secondary to them, which is the besetting sin of this generation. It poetises lust, and makes all things else subservient, until to disappoint desire seems to be regarded as one of the deadly sins. I hope the world will presently become ashamed of this figurative worship of Venus and Priapus, as it has already outgrown their literal worship. I think that certain self-styled reformers are making a great mistake when they lay such overweening stress on these physical matters. Neither the age, nor the race, need to be encouraged in the development of sensuality; nor are they wanting for excuses to serve them in the gratification of that sensuality. This mode of treating passion, only strengthens what is already developed out of all proportion in humanity It makes men feel virtuous, who would otherwise know they were monsters of injustice and iniquity. It humbles and ​subdues women, and teaches them a further self-abnegation, when that is their besetting sin already. It builds up prostitution, by teaching our men the imperious necessity of self-gratification. It desolates our homes, by justifying our women in seeking elsewhere for those lustful delights which they may fail to find in their fullest perfection in marriage. It seems that Phallic worship has not quite died out of the world. In the name of common decency, if not of morality, let us have no more of it.

When the author, above quoted, clinches his arguments by references to the incestuous passions of Nero, and the adulterous desires of Potiphar's wife as illustrations of human love, and tells us that their ungratified lusts, turned to hatred and revengeful thoughts, are an illustration of what is likely to occur among sexually disappointed husbands and wives, he has certainly reached the acme of absurdity, and written himself out of all claim to respectful consideration.

I wish it distinctly understood, that I place men and women on a very different basis passionally, physicians who would make them equal, to the contrary, notwithstanding. I have a book by such a physician before me. In speaking of sexual indifference, this man says: "Females are more subject to it than males, for the reason that"—etc. It dosen't make any difference what the reason is. He admits the fact, and that admission is all I want. As for his reasons, I know them to ​be false. He gives diseases of the organs of procreation as one of these causes, while probably almost any intelligent woman whom you might ask in regard to the matter, will tell you that this is too often an effect also; both perhaps resulting from the same cause—sexual abuse of the husband. I will venture to say that there is not one man in fifty who, in the first years of his married life, is not guilty of sexual abuse towards his wife, which fact is alone sufficient to account for the great prevalence of female diseases. Not that every woman is injured by it to the extent of inflammation and ulceration; yet many are. I am not running a tilt against married men. I blame them for no intentional wrong—only for ignorance. And women are almost equally to blame in this matter. They are just as ignorant as their husbands, and often allow themselves to yield to demands or importunities, when, if they were taught to consider it a conscientious duty to refuse, they would do so.

There comes to me just in the midst of penning these pages, the address of Dr. James E. Reeves, of Wheeling, Va., before the annual meeting of the American Health Association, on the subject of "Physical and Moral Causes of Bad Health in American Women." This Doctor does not hesitate to speak plainly on this matter of sexual excesses, and of their results. He says:

"Whether the charge made by some writers that much of the ill health of American women is the immediate result of too early marriages be true or not, there ​can be no doubt whatever of the pernicious effect of those excesses usually practiced during the first year of married life, and it may be true that such abuse is one of the chief causes of the frightful mortality among firstborn children."

The Doctor has referred to the mortality among children. This is not the only result. The tender, delicate organs of generation in woman are often abused to such an extent by too frequent use, that they become inflamed, and ulcerate, and render the woman an invalid. Even the husband does not see the cause, or measure the extent of his folly, but persists in his selfish course in spite of the suffering he causes his wife, constantly aggravating her disorders, and rendering them more and more hopeless of cure.

Thus the husband, kind and attentive in all other matters,—who would not allow the winds of heaven to visit the cheek of his wife too roughly,—becomes in this one respect a very—I was about to say brute, but the animal creation presents no parallel case, so I find no appropriate word in comparison.

I am convinced that many of the diseases of women, which physicians fancy they trace to certain methods of preventing conception, are due, not to the preventing methods, but to the frequency of conjugal approach alone, which the husband considers perfectly safe and justifiable with the use of these preventives. I am all the more certain of this fact, from the mistakes which these ​Doctors make in regard to the nature of the sexual act in woman. Never having been women, they simply know nothing about it, and any married woman can well afford to laugh at their blunders.

Who can say," asks Dr. Dixon, "that these excesses are not often followed by those direful diseases, insanity and consumption? The records of our mad-houses, and the melancholy deaths by consumption, of the newly-married, bear ample witness to the truth of such assertion. Are they not transmitted to posterity? Look at the frequent mental imbecility, and the pallid hue, and attenuated form of the children who are the earlier products of marriage, and see the parents vibrating between life and the grave, until the candid physician, or the terrors of death, teach them to abstain, and nature gathers up her shattered powers, and asserts anew her control of the organism. Should the lesson suffice, and mature age be attained, again look at the offspring. If the first children survive, the last would not seem to be born of the same parents, so different are they in vigor and sprightliness; and in maturer life, almost invariably more intellectual."

The reason why physicians so frequently recommend a change of air to their lady patients—ordering them off to the mountains or the seaside—is that they very well know there is no hope for their improvement in health so long as they remain with their husbands, and subject to their ever-recurring conjugal demands. These de​mands have first produced the disease, and afterwards aggravated it, so that there is no hope of an amelioration of their condition, except through absence more or less prolonged, from the conjugal bed. If physicians did their duty in these matters, they would speak out plainly, and tell both husband and wife the truth and the whole truth.

"What shall I do?" comes the cry to me from near and from far, from suffering yet loving women, who feel instinctively that in their hands rests the physical and moral salvation of their husbands and themselves.

I not long since asked a woman of rare intelligence this question, with a special view to answering these women through the pages of this book. She said: "I will tell you what I did myself, when I found too frequent conjugal conjunctions were injuring me. I told my husband that my health was suffering, and that it was my first duty to take care of that—a duty I owed not to myself alone, but to my family, also. So, in view of the course I found it necessary to pursue in this matter, he must do just what he thought most consistent with his manhood and his ideas of morality; and I should ask him no questions. I knew I could trust him." She added triumphantly, "If I had thought I could not, I should have told him to go his way, and I would go mine." She was fortunate that she could trust her husband; but I doubt if she would have done as she said, if he had not ​been so trustworthy. Women are so foolishly loving, and so lovingly foolish, that they will sacrifice themselves rather than risk a husband's affection. As I have already said, self-abnegation is their besetting sin, and it is all the more shame to a man to take advantage of it.

But I am sure men—the generality of men—do not mean to take advantage of it. It is all unwitting on their part. They do not understand the alphabet, even, of a woman's nature. They read such books as those I have already quoted, in which men describe women from masculine standpoints—standpoints assumed, not in the contemplation of the best and healthiest of the sex, but of the diseased and morally depraved, who come to them in the guise of patients. Men read these books, and hear the talk of other men, who have read similar books, and they know as much about the real characteristics of the other sex, as they would of America, after studying about that country in a language of which they had no knowledge. It takes years of their married life to unlearn a great many of the ideas they have imbibed so early that they have become settled prejudices—even, if they conscientiously desire to comprehend that half of humanity with whom their own weal and woe is so inseparably bound. If they are indifferent, or wise in their own conceit, they probably never do learn.

A writer on kindred topics to those I am considering, says: "While we readily admit, and claim for our argument, that a woman capable of bearing children, is also ​capable of the sexual instinct, the simple fact remains that the majority, perhaps—or certainly an immense proportion—of those who have borne children, are innocent of the faintest ray of sexual pleasure." I do not know why I feel impelled to dwell so strongly on this point, except it be because I know just the contrary idea prevails among the majority of men—young men in particular—and I know the terrible mistakes they commit in matrimony in consequence.

Women (I am speaking of the type, not of individuals,) have more of the motherly nature than the conjugal about them. Their husbands are to them only children of larger growth, to be loved and cared for very much in the same way as their real children. It is the motherly element which is the hope, and is to be the salvation of the world. The higher a woman rises in moral and intellectual culture, the more is the sensual refined away from her nature, and the more pure and perfect and predominating becomes her motherhood. The real woman regards all men, be they older or younger than herself, not as possible lovers, but as a sort of step-sons, towards whom her heart goes out in motherly tenderness. An instance of this belief in the absorbing quality of motherhood in the minds of real womanly women, struck me forcibly not long since, at the same time that it amused me greatly. I was speaking with a lady friend about a young girl who was languishing in health, and threatened with consumption.

"It is the motherly element in her that is making the ​trouble," my friend said. "She wants a baby, and if she had one she would be all right."

"Why don't she get married, then," I asked?

"Oh, dear, no; don't mention it!" she exclaimed in reply, in a kind of comic dismay; adding, "What a pity it is that women can't have babies of their own accord, without any interference from men!"

Parenthetically I will say that I do not think it was a baby at all that the young lady needed or wanted, but an active life with an object in it. But my anecdote illustrates the idea of the predominance of motherhood in the minds of women.

So far, I have only touched upon the effects of marital excess in women. The results are even more disastrous in men. I will not do more than hint at the effect upon their moral natures, in lessening their respect and consideration for women, in deadening their finer sentiments, strengthening their sensual impulses, and making them disregardful of the feelings, wishes, and even health and well-being of their wives. All these are important points, but they possess little weight with the sensualist. The only way is to make a man feel that he is injuring himself, and not only lessening his capacity for enjoyment in the pleasures which he prizes so dearly, but is also slowly and surely lessening his powers to participate in them. I have already shown what a tax upon a man's system the conjugal act is. When it is repeated too often, the man will become gradually conscious of dimin​ished strength, diminished nervous force, and diminished mental powers. Excess weakens a man's energies, and enervates and effeminates him. It moreover renders a man liable to an infinity of diseases, and a readier victim to death. All the train of evils which follow masturbation, attend, only in a lesser degree, the too lustful marriage bed. Even though the general health may remain comparatively unimpaired, physical power will begin to wane early in life, and the man will become prematurely old, and broken down, instead of being enabled to look forward to a long, vigorous old age in the full possession of all his faculties. It might pass into a proverb that he who gives away his life often, cannot hope to retain it long. It seems to me this matter is sufficiently serious for men to pause, at least, in their selfish course, and consider a little.

What is moderation in sexual matters?—is a natural question, which one should be prepared to answer before he or she denounces excess. I have had women ask me the question with sad eyes, and I, coward that I was, have either given an evasive reply, or else temporised with what I thought was likely to be practicable in their individual cases. It is indeed a difficult question to answer. It depends so much on the physical and mental characteristics of the person asking it. What would be moderation in a person of vigorous physical nature and small nerves and brain development, following an active life, would be excess in one leading a sedentary life, with a ​nervous system perhaps already disordered, and with a large active brain. For this reason, laboring men are more given to excesses in this direction, with the least resultant harm, of any class. Their employment makes no demands upon nervous and brain force, and they there fore do not feel exhaustion in these directions. What vigor they have is called for only in sexual matters. Their intelligence and sensibilities are sacrificed to their sensuality. Still, we must remember that these men almost always break down early in life, and it is possible that the vitality, which they have not seemed to need, and which they have therefore exhausted in sexual excesses, fails them thus early because of those excesses.

A month is the least interval which the nerve-and-brain-worker should allow to elapse between his marital indulgences; while the muscle-worker would feel no sensible injury in gratification three or four times as often. If men were reasonable and just, both to themselves and to their wives, once a month should content them. But how can I hope men to heed me, when physicians of their own sex place the limit of restraint just within "utter exhaustion."

How curious a thing is human nature! Man, who is master of all created things; who can send a plummet to the depths of the universe, and who strives to comprehend the nature of infinity; is yet so much the slave of a tyrant called self, that he, knowing he is doing serious injury to his health, proving himself cruel and ​heartless towards the being who is dearest to him in all the world, and actually sacrificing his best happiness, and compromising his greatest pleasures even in this regard; nevertheless submits to the domination of his passions, without a single effort to regain his freedom.

Some one has wittily, and, I fear, not without a certain wisdom, declared that "marriage is the grave of love." I am sure it often is of sensual love. Most married people recall the days of their courtship as the happiest period of their whole lives. Now why is it not possible to extend this period of courtship indefinitely through married life? The reason why it is not thus extended is, because satiety blunts the edge of passion, and clips the wings of love. Let a man woo his wife, after the law has delivered her over to him, as assiduously as he did in their ante-nuptial days, until she yields willingly to his desires. When once this is accomplished, let him sink the husband in the lover again, and, imposing on himself a strict continence perfectly compatible with the health of both, for a definite period, say a month at least, meantime woo his wife again. Let him resist temptation as conscientiously as in their unmarried days, and treat her with all the deference, consideration, and modest respect that he showed in those days. And he will find that each returning monthly marital conjunction will be fraught with greater delight than the sensualist, who indulges in daily or semi-weekly excesses, can ever dream of. Even if there should be occasional "slips from ​virtue" in this married courtship, no one would have the right to say a word, and husband and wife would forgive each other out of the abundance of their mutual love.

If married people wish to gather all the delicate aroma of mutual passion, there should be no occupying the same bed, nor even the same room. There should be no robing and disrobing in each other's presence. All the duties of the toilet should be performed in the secrecy of their individual dressing-rooms; and there should be the same outward show of decorum, one towards the other, that there was in their unmarried days. These seem like little things, and they are almost universally disregarded. But it is a great mistake. This kind of familiarity surely breeds contempt and indifference.

I would especially recommend the use of separate beds by married people on the score of morality and good health. Two people are seldom, if ever, both benefitted by sleeping together. What one may gain in vitality and magnetic force, the other surely loses. Then the close bodily contact under a common bed-covering, in the slight protection which the night-clothing affords, is a constant provocative of amorous ideas and sensations to the husband, if not to both. It is all wrong; and the sooner the custom is banished by either fashion or good sense, the sooner will the standard of morality and health be raised among the married.