Unquestionably the sexual instinct not the sensual is the most powerful of the appetites, and exerts a directing influence, beyond the bounds of ordinary belief, over the life-history of every man and woman. It were false to deny this; and woe to the world when this is not so! But from every consideration which appeals to reason, or science, or love, or morality, or health, the indulgence of this powerful passion must be kept within the physiological limits which are afforded only by the married life.
To accentuate the power of the sexual instinct is not to assume, that normal men's and women's minds are over burdened with a desire to fornicate; but we desire to point out that it is this noble instinct which impels love between the sexes, love of progeny, love of home, love of purity, and admiration for true manliness and true womanliness being, in fact, the very fountain-source of love, which must not be polluted. Love and the sexual instinct go hand in hand. On this account we see a girl fonder of another's brother, and a youth fonder of another's sister; we see it throughout all animate nature, if we will but observe; we see it in all its purity between male and female birds and nothing is prettier than the share which each loyal parent assumes in constructing and maintaining their nest and family.
After a wife has conceived and is carrying the embryo child within her womb, and still more so after parturition, a new and different kind of love springs up in her breast for her husband, and also in the heart of the husband for his wife, both being awed by the feeling that they have been permitted in the course of natural law to reproduce a new human being which partakes equally of their natures.
As beautiful an event as we can think of is the transformation of a virgin into a wife and mother; and had society been rightly educated, it would regard the transformation of a man into a husband and father as equally beautiful. If both are pure, both are ennobled; if one is impure, both are degraded; they twain are one flesh. An incontinent man forfeits this high privilege.
Those of extended experience in the affairs of "men of the world" well know the prevalence of the practice of promiscuous fornication, not only among bachelors, but also among married men with families. Such infractions of the moral canons of civilization nature visits with dire punishment by the imposition of "venereal diseases." These maladies are most feared by those who understand them best; for they often ruin the health of the sufferer, remain latent for long periods of time, and are liable to be transmitted to one's wife and posterity. Irregular sexual intercourse among the lower animals is not so punished by venereal disease, for the brutes are far purer in their desires and cleaner in their methods than the lewd part of humanity.
Every physician of much experience can report a multitude of instances in which a pure girl has been degraded by marriage with a libertine, and infected with an acute or latent form of venereal disease of which she never suspects the nature, but on account of which she enters upon a life of invalidism, her children often sharing in the catastrophe. Women are only exceptionally the aggressors; it is the men who bring the poison into the family circle. It is certain that wives are by far more generally true to their vows, and that they as a rule love the bonds of matrimony more than their husbands do, and that a shameful number of married men secretly violate conjugal vows, only to bring sorrow, disease and destruction into their own households.
Such a man approaches the nature of a beast; nay, he is worse than a beast; for the beast breaks no vows and enjoys an assurance of immunity from venereal disease, while the man treads a path known to be beset with sorrow, broken vows, separations, disease, anguish and death It is a fact that innumerable men, otherwise intelligent, are miserably and calamitously unenlightened concerning matters pertaining to their sexual nature, having an active, deformed ignorance, and being distinguished for their one purpose to enjoy themselves men of but one idea, and that a wrong one. Doubtless they think it convenient to be thus ignorant. In affairs of business, men usually have an established mode of investigating every detail, and are guided by reason and judgment in their transactions; but when it comes to the question of health or morals factors of paramount importance many give over all responsibility. Because punishment is remote and slow in being meted out, some offenders apparently escaping, they think to avoid the inexorable retribution which a violation of Nature's laws entails.