It is not to be thought that all men who are impure suffer such penalties as these; nor yet is it to be thought that these conditions are very rare. It will be well for him who so far considers himself clean and pure not to boast, lest he may fall; for the bright steel of the sword's blade is not safe from rust and corrosion. The dew and the wet will quickly damage that sword unless it is held up and protected; and although the grindstone and emery wheel may remove that rust, it will yet be a sword with another face. Every individual has some moral sense, partly inherited, partly acquired, which is stamped upon his personality as his most noble attribute; and it can never be entirely effaced, though it may be much marred by ill usage or tarnished by exposure to the fumes of an evil atmosphere. Every one is equipped with some conscience which tells him in a way admitting of no dispute what he ought to do; and although it may fail to restrain him from wrongdoing, nevertheless it fails not to punish by reproaching and condemning him. This sense of duty, which has come to be regarded as a racial instinct, has, by working atavistically through the education of centuries, become fixed as a principle which we say should be supreme over all our actions, leading us to consider the welfare of others, to ignore ridicule, threats, bribery, flattery, or even to imperil our lives for others who are in danger.
Those who have deeply pursued studies in heredity tell us that the past is profoundly at work in the present, and that we may expect life and history in the future to be largely moulded by the vice or virtue, the health or disease, the normal stability of the nervous system or the neurasthenia of those who are now living, to flow down in a stream to the generations to come. Every rightly minded man
wishes in his heart to subdue those hereditary tendencies which are defects and imperfections, and to consolidate and develop within himself and transmit to his descendants certain high and virtuous social instincts of commanding importance, such as love, and sympathy, and selfcontrol, and chivalry toward women, and altruism.
This conscience has been defined as the "vicegerent of God," or, as Byron says, "The oracle of God." It is a monitor of the actions of all normal men, preventing the full enjoyment of wrongful deeds and motives, and reproving them when they disobey its voice. By neglecting its monitions one can so blunt its sensibilities that it becomes functionless, and may eventually cease to operate in a healthy way; and when that has occurred he is no longer a desirable member of a community, but a menace to that good order which renders it possible for the human race to live socially together. By fanning his desire and stifling his conscience, by the employment of artificial stimulants and mental trickery, a man can force himself to enter into pursuits and relationships which, could he but know, he would
detest in his ancestors.
Men do not seem to realize the tremendous importance of heredity, and that their illegitimate pleasures and acquired preferences for impure courses are as likely to crop out in their daughters as in their sons, invariably in an evil way, sometimes as a surcharge of lustful passion, sometimes as a directing influence toward vice and crime, and sometimes as disease; and it is well recognized that the progeny of the impure have in the domain of their sexual lives a distinct predilection for morbid tendencies colored by eroticism. The lustful impulse which leads a man to seek an agreeable sensation in an evil environment, which is a social sin of extreme moment, is entirely incompatible with this racially implanted principle called conscience upon which the foundations of all morality rest.
Of course the irresponsible fornicator, who allows his lower impulses to become fixed characteristics, cannot for a moment contend that he acts in accordance with true morality for the benefit of others of the race, nor can he at this stage realize to what an extent he shatters all the essential elements of the Law of Honor; for if he did, he would burn up with shame at the thought of causing so much suffering, so much agony, so much saturation of evil to himself, to his paramours, to his wife, to his children and their children, and to society. A decent man, after yielding to a temptation which he feels to be immoral and base, is impressed
with a feeling of personal dissatisfaction, remorse and shame, and sometimes undergoes such a revulsion of feeling that he effectually repents.
Our intellectual functions are so far under the control of the will power that we can by practice largely direct any selected one as we choose. None is so susceptible, if we cheat ourselves into so thinking, as this internal tribunal called conscience, which, by repeated efforts, we may snuff out and cover with a pall.
As the cicatrix over a wounded surface, for instance an extensive burn, has an impaired sensitiveness owing to the destruction of the sensory nerves which normally supply the skin, so also does an habitually disregarded conscience lose its sensitiveness and become "seared as with a hot iron." One of the necessary equipments, then, for a pleasurable life of lust is a seared conscience, or else one must suffer the humiliation and remorse which condemn the man who recognizes such a thing as personal accountability.