To him who has carnally worshipped his belly and his genital functions by gluttony and lust and sensuous excitations, perverting them into organs of pleasure, nothing eventually is left except what ethics regards as refuse and dross and throws on the dump heap. The deadened sensibilities and exhausted organs of such a man need stronger and stronger irritants until he is recognized as a pervert, or as a dull and jaded roue. Desire of a normal kind has now ceased prematurely, and all efforts to get enjoyment in the old way are futile. The man may have extracted a lot of wisdom from the avenae fatuae, or wild oats, but with it he has also got the rakish list of a derelict. He is not fit to marry your robust daughter, for you are quite sure that he cannot have a beautiful soul in such a sickly and pampered body.
From the initial steps in this mode of life the sensualist has played at being happy among his mates, but he has missed exercising the largest and best part of his nature, and he has failed to derive the satisfaction which leads to the supremest measure of happiness, namely, the massive gratification which comes from rendering service to others. In times not remote licentiousness has been regarded as trivial and as the characteristic mark of the liberal education of a gentleman. But this idea is wholly maleficent and destructive of happiness, both present and future, for the individual and for groups of individuals.
Many men lead lives full of ennui and are bent on deriving pleasure where and when they can. But a man who is not blameless in sexual relations is morally deformed. Honorable men do not wish to be satisfied with pleasures of that kind, and the time is perhaps near at hand when they will loathe all the influences, polite or coarse, which in any way conduce to tremendous social harm.
Every sensualist is the recipient of pleasure by the sacrifice of others, and by accepting this becomes demoralized and incapable of real happiness. If he does not feel more pain than pleasure in inflicting consequential damages he is indeed in an unhealthy moral condition and the forecast of his future is unfavorable. Good citizens honor the Ideal and regard as traitors those who commit lese majeste against it. No one is excusable for being ignorant, brutal, and selfish. Religion alone can control morbid changes of the heart and disposition, but preventive medicine cannot tolerate grave disturbances of the healthful functions of the State, nor can offenses against the majesty of the people's idea of decorum be ignored by those who have its welfare at heart.
We do not in the least degree like the type of the sensualist. Nor do we like the type of man who wears a perfect air, for it is rare that it is not assumed. Every man doubtless has some faults, but he is wholly wrong if he defends those faults. An ethical man may be of the first, second, third, or nth degree of excellence, but as soon as he begins to taper he loses moral dignity. On account of their natural gravity sexual offenses belong to this wth (lowest) degree of morals and cannot be otherwise classified.
Healthy young men are, of course, the most promising recruits for all purposes, but there is, nevertheless, hope for the regeneration of all grades of men. Some bulldogs are cowardly runaways, and those men who are wholly filthy will remain so. The Germans, who in ancient times ravaged and destroyed everything which belonged to culture, are now to be ranked with the chief promoters of the arts and sciences. In a similar manner vandalic men sometimes become vindicators of what is right, and through remorse, or innate decency, abandon habits and dissipations which seemed inveterate, so that the new current of their desires not infrequently turns their activities into efforts which seek to repair and atone.
Thrice noble is he who is content to suffer and to struggle against urgent propensities by the sheer force of conviction 1 For him who reverses the current of his evil ways every decent man has a more profound respect than for one who has had fewer temptations, a better environment, and proper instruction. His moral transgressions, but not the physical, are forgiven, and he is redeemed into the first ranks of morality with full honors.