In accordance with the ribald teachings of loudly boastful and coarse men, youths too often assume to believe that the sooner they throw away their virtue the better, thinking that they see in the tobacco stained mouth, in the whisky laden breath, in the oath polluted lips, in the blustering swagger, or in the other gross indelicacies of the rough, those qualities which will make them manly and gain for them their ambitions to be called "men about town" and "men of the world".
To be brave is of course the first desire of normal men, and all abhor the charge of effeminacy, which means that one has those qualities which in a man are contemptible weaknesses, making one a milksop, weak and spiritless. A chaste lite could not be advocated if it even pointed in that direction, for then the continent man would be overwhelmed with shame. It is, however, the impure life which either effeminates or else compels a naturally brave man to do things which he knows are abhorrent to his sense of manhood. Because of the great and overpowering importance which is conceded by all to manly courage, it is transcendently necessary that we should understand why licentiousness is impossible for a normally brave man. Loquaciousness, boastfulness, swagger, cursing, and self assertive braggadocio will not pass for courage among us.
"How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false As stairs of sand,
wear yet upon their chins The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,
Who, inward eearch'd, have livers white as milk."
Merchant of Venice, Act iii., Sc. 2.
Such men as these, as well as many of the heroes of romance and poetry, are as much inferior to the genuine flesh and blood heroes of real life as a paper flower is inferior to the natural blossom when seen in its full beauty under the searching clearness of the microscope.
"Of course the greatest type of manhood, or the type wherein our ideal of manliness reaches its highest expression, is where the virtues of strength are purged from its vices. To be strong and yet tender, brave and yet kind, to combine in the same breast the temper of a hero with the sympathy of a maiden this is to transform the ape and the tiger into what we know ought to constitute the man".
The man who does not inhibit his sexual longings gives a bitter seasoning to his life, and throws away the elements of strength which must be conserved in order to secure a manly type of physique and mind. Effeminacy is readily apparent in those who squander their sexuai force; and all physiologists agree that the fundamental characteristics of manhood fail to appear in the individual if he has too early in life sacrificed at the altar of lust. By "too early in life" physiologists mean before the period of consolidation, or maturity, i.e., twenty five years of age, before which time a man should not marry.
The physique is unquestionably injured if a young man abuse his reproductive powers to any considerable extent, and Krafft-Ebing1 says: "It is psychologically interesting that when the sexual element is early vitiated, then an ethical defect is manifested." The ancients, regarding profligacy and effeminacy as inseparable, always demanded continence from those heroic men to whom they looked for deeds of valor or masterpieces of intellect. Strict continence was also the rule among the ancient German warriors, whose heroic deeds were inspired by a loyalty to their beloved ones.
"I find great wisdom in this use of physical love, one of the strongest motives by which human nature is actuated. How widely different has the case become among us! This propensity which by prudent management may be made the germ of the most exalted virtue, of the greatest heroism, has degenerated into whining sensibility, or mere sensual gratification, which people enjoy prematurely, and even to satiety; the passion of love, which in those periods [old German] was a security against dissipation, is at present the source of the greatest; the virtue of chastity, the principal foundation, without doubt, of moral firmness and manliness of character, has become a subject of ridicule, and is decried as old fashioned pedantry ; and what ought to be the last and sweetest reward of toil, labor, and danger has become a flower which every stripling crops by the way."