MARITAL AND EXTRA-MARITAL INTERCOURSE.
For the upholding and protection from ridicule of the adherents to the teachings of this book it is a pleasure to have much to say that is encouraging, and which may give the confidence which incites to perseverance. It will be remembered that the dominant idea throughout has been that there is no possible way in which a man or woman can honorably enjoy sexual intercourse outside of the marriage relationship. No extraordinary acuteness of perception will be required to recognize the innumerable reasons for this, and they can escape the notice of only those who are morally dull or inattentive.
On a few occasions the author has been saddened by hearing remarks and seeing statements in print by doctors to the effect that "notwithstanding the author of the Sexual Instinct to the contrary, it is necessary for men to have relationships with women from time to time". It is worth while to answer this benighted professional minority because they really have more influence than those who outline an austere code.
They ruin their tens of thousands,1 while it is generally conceded that we are left but a few who can be much influenced. There is no difficulty in finding renegades in the religious, military, political, or business fields, and human frailties also crop out in due proportion in doctors. But when the latter become advocates of free love, it is not surprising that followers of their teachings will readily enter upon a course where the allurements are so seemingly attractive as they are in the subject which occupies us.
The defenders of lust seem to maintain that human semen is designed not altogether as a propagating fluid, but mainly for health and pleasure by its expenditure. At any time, however, one ejaculation may be worth a child. A contrary minded doctor recently said that he would not wish his daughter to marry a man who had had no practice in venery with women who were adepts. Evidently he believed in expert instruction, even though it came through intercourse with those who held the secrets of a black magic! Of course his hearers enthusiastically received his remark as wisdom which would crush the moralists.
But the author has made it a particular point to put certain questions to a great number of specialists in venereal diseases who were quite free from charlatanry. "With perfect unanimity these men say that personally they would rather have syphilis if it could be properly treated, than gonorrhoea which was neglected or badly treated. And, furthermore, they say that while a certain number of men who are seemingly cured of these diseases may be allowed to marry, they positively do not want them as husbands for their daughters.
The most eminent medical men, the best books, and all statistics so overwhelmingly crush these few backsliding pretenders to the stores of medical knowledge that their statements are not tolerated in professional gatherings. And yet, when these wrongly advised men advocate license, it counts for much and does great harm. It is the same inferior talk which comes from the lips of the roue, but with more force. A few such statements do not stagger us, nor weaken our convictions, but merely stimulate to a more careful search for possible error in our previous assertions. Heretofore we have never come across a single valid excuse for illicit love, and a cordial invitation is extended in all good faith to any reader, professional or lay, who can furnish any.
Compromises must sometimes be made, and ethics be comes flexible occasionally in those branches of it which do not belong to natural law. One instance is the "lie of necessity". Another is even more striking, and is not supposititious. Suppose, for instance, that all the members of a party have been massacred except one man and a woman who are surrounded by bloodthirsty, fiendish savages, who will torture and kill the man by the most devilish cruelties, and subject the woman to a fate worse than death. The man, let us suppose, has fought to the last ditch, but has saved one cartridge for the woman and one for himself. Here murder and suicide, if one pleases to call them such, offer the only right course.