But as we look at the present , we can trace small ground for hope that this process will have any appreciable influence unless or until there is some change in men more potent and effective than the slow 'love upward working out the beast' of moral evolution. But that which will not perhaps be for the mass may yet be for the individual. And, in ending, I must ask a question and give a warning that I would fain have left unasked, unsaid. But I cannot, I dare not pass them by. Do we do all we canand our profession gives us power that no other has do we do all we can to promote that perfect chastity which alone can save from this, and from that which is worse? The opinions that on pseudo psychological grounds suggest or permit unchastity are absolutely false. Trace them to their ultimate basis and they are groundless.
They rest only on sensory illusions, one of the many illustrations of a maxim which I have often to enforce on various sufferers:
There are no liars like our own sensations. Bather, I should say, they rest on misinterpretations, always biassed, and often deliberate. With all the force that any knowledge I possess can give, and with any authority I may have, I assert as the result of long observation and consideration of facts of every kind, that no man was ever yet in the slightest degree or way the better for incontinence; that for it every man must be worse morally, and that most are worse physically, and in no small number the result is, and ever will be, utter physical shipwreck on one of the many rocks, sharp, jagged edged, or one of the many banks of festering slime, that are about his course, and which no care can possibly avoid. And I am sure, further, that no man was ever yet anything but the better for perfect continence.
My warning is:
let us beware lest we give even a silent sanction to that against which I am sure, on even the lowest grounds that we can take, we should resolutely set our face and raise our voice". Space permits the use of only a few quotations, but by actual It is a pernicious pseudo physiology which teaches that exercise of the generative functions is necessary in order to maintain one's physical and mental vigor of manhood.
For every evil deed that men do they seek some excuse, and long repeated iteration that exercise of the sexual functions is essential for the maintenance of men's healthful ness not women's has caused this doctrine to be enthusiastically accepted as solving the problem for those who are biassed in favor of fornication. But the excuses for indulging in vice are untenable and the foul deeds are defenceless.
Nor can fashion, or custom, or weakness, which are the devices of knaves and fools, excuse, for no such plea will gain for any one remission from the sure physical punishment which is visited by natural law upon those who commit fault or sin; nor can his posterity escape the physical and moral deterioration which is an organic, and not a supernatural penalty.
One argument in favor of incontinence deserves special notice, as it purports to be founded on physiology. I have been consulted by persons who feared, or professed to fear, that if the organs were not regularly exercised, they would become atrophied, or that in some way impotence might be the result of chastity. This is the assigned reason for committing fornication.
There exists no greater error than this, or one more opposed to physiological truth. In the first place, I may state that I have, after many years' experience, never seen a single instance of atrophy of the generative organs from this cause. I have, it is true, met with the complaint but in what class of cases does it occur?
It arises in all instances from the exactly opposite cause early abuse:
the organs become worn out, and hence arises atrophy. Physiologically considered, it is not a fact that the power of secreting semen is annihilated in well-formed adults leading a healthy life and yet remaining continent.
I have daily evidence that the function goes on in the organ always, from puberty to old age. Semen is secreted sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but very frequently only under the influence of the will.
I have already referred to the fact which I shall hereafter treat of in more detail that when the seminal vessels are full, emission at night is not unfrequent.
This natural relief will suffice to show that the testes are fully equal to their work when called upon. No continent man need be deterred by this apocryphal fear of atrophy of the testes from living a chaste life. It is a device of the unchaste a lame excuse for their own incontinence, not founded on any physiological law. The testes will take care that their action is not interfered with."