Plain Facts for Old and Young Part 10

Mental Unchast.i.ty.--It is vain for a man to suppose himself chaste who allows his imagination to run riot amid scenes of amorous a.s.sociations.

The man whose lips delight in tales of licentiousness, whose eyes feast upon obscene pictures, who is ever ready to pervert the meaning of a harmless word or act into uncleanness, who finds delight in reading vivid portrayals of acts of lewdness,--such a one is not a virtuous man. Though he may never have committed an overt act of unchast.i.ty, if he cannot pa.s.s a handsome female in the street without, in imagination, approaching the secrets of her person, he is but one grade above the open libertine, and is as truly unchaste as the veriest debauchee.

Man may not see these mental adulteries, he may not perceive these filthy imaginings; but One sees and notes them. They leave their hideous scars upon the soul. They soil and mar the mind; and as the record of each day of life is photographed upon the books in Heaven, they each appear in bold relief, in all their innate hideousness.

O purity! how rare a virtue! How rare to find a face which shows no trace of sensuality! One turns with sadness from the thought that human "forms divine" have sunk so low. The standard of virtue is trailing in the dust. Men laugh at vice, and sneer at purity. The bawdy laugh, the ribald jest, the sensual glance, the obscene song, the filthy tale, salute the eyes and ears at every street corner, in the horse-car, on the railroad train, in the bar-room, the lecture hall, the workshop.

In short, the works and signs of vice are omnipresent.

Foul thoughts, once allowed to enter the mind, stick like the leprosy.

They corrode, contaminate, and infect like the pestilence; naught but Almighty power can deliver from the bondage of concupiscence a soul once infected by this foul blight, this moral contagium.

Mental Uncleanness.--It is a wide-spread and deadly error, that only outward acts are harmful; that only physical transgression of the laws of chast.i.ty will produce disease. We have seen all the effects of beastly abuse result from mental sin alone.

"I have traced serious affections and very great suffering to this cause.

The cases may occur at any period of life. We meet with them frequently among such as are usually called, or think themselves, continent young men. There are large cla.s.ses of persons who seem to think that they may, without moral guilt, excite their own feelings or those of others by loose or libidinous conversation in society, provided such impure thoughts or acts are not followed by masturbation or fornication. I have almost daily to tell such persons that physically, and in a sanitary point of view, they are ruining their const.i.tutions. There are young men who almost pa.s.s their lives in making carnal acquaintances in the street, but just stop short of seducing girls; there are others who haunt the lower cla.s.ses of places of public amus.e.m.e.nt for the purpose of s.e.xual excitement, and live, in fact, a thoroughly immoral life in all respects except actually going home with prost.i.tutes. When these men come to me, laboring under the various forms of impotence, they are surprised at my suggesting to them the possibility of the impairment of their powers being dependent upon these previous vicious habits."[4]

[Footnote 4: Acton.]

"Those lascivious _day-dreams_ and amorous reveries, in which young people--and especially the idle and the voluptuous, and the sedentary and the nervous--are exceedingly apt to indulge, are often the sources of general debility, effeminacy, disordered functions, premature disease, and even premature death, without the actual exercise of the genital organs! Indeed, this unchast.i.ty of thought--this adultery of the mind--is the beginning of immeasurable evil to the human family."[5]

[Footnote 5: Graham.]

Amativeness.--Certain phrenologists contend that the controlling center of the s.e.xual pa.s.sion is the cerebellum, or little brain, which is situated at the lower and back part of the head. They apparently love to dwell upon the theme, and ride their hobby upon all possible occasions, often in the most disgusting manner, and always leaving the impression that they must be themselves suffering from perversion of the very function of which they speak.

There may be some doubt whether the function called amativeness is located in the cerebellum at all; at least, it is perfectly certain that amativeness is not the exclusive function of the cerebellum. Says Carpenter, the learned physiologist, "The seat of the s.e.xual sensation is no longer supposed to be in the cerebellum generally; but probably in its central portion, or some part of the medulla oblongata."

The cerebellum is intimately connected with the princ.i.p.al vital organs; hence, if it is largely developed, the individual will possess a well-developed physical organism and a good degree of const.i.tutional vigor. He will have vigorous health, and probably strong s.e.xual powers; not, however, as a special function, but for the same reason that he will have a good digestion.

To the majority of mankind, apparently, amativeness, or s.e.xual love, means l.u.s.t. The faculty has been lowered and debased until it might almost be considered practically synonymous with sensuality. The first step toward reform must be a recognition of a higher and purer relation than that which centers every thought upon the gratification of the animal in human nature. If one may judge from the facts which now and then come to the surface in society, it would appear that the opportunity for sensual gratification had come to be, in the world at large, the chief attraction between the s.e.xes. If to these observations we add the filthy disclosures constantly made in police courts and scandal suits, we have a powerful confirmation of the opinion. Even ministers, who ought to be "ensamples to the flock," are rather "blind leaders of the blind," and fall into the same ditch with the rest.

This perversion of a natural instinct, and these sudden lapses from virtue which startle a small portion of community and afford a filthy kind of pleasure to the other part, are but the outgrowths of mental unchast.i.ty. "Filthy dreamers," before they are aware, become filthy in action. The thoughts mold the brain, as certainly as the brain molds the thoughts. Rapidly down the current of sensuality is swept the individual who yields his imagination to the contemplation of lascivious themes. Before he knows his danger, he finds himself deep in the mire of concupiscence. He may preserve a fair exterior; but deception cannot cleanse the slime from his putrid soul. How many a church-member carries under a garb of piety a soul filled with abominations, no human scrutiny can tell. How many pulpits are filled by "whited sepulchers," only the Judgment will disclose.

Unchaste Conversation.--"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." "Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of Judgment." "By thy words thou shalt be condemned." Matt. 12: 34, 36, 37. In these three brief sentences, Christ presents the whole moral aspect of the subject of this paragraph. To any one who will ponder well his weighty words, no further remark is necessary. Let filthy talkers but consider for a moment what a mult.i.tude of "idle," unclean words are waiting for account in the final day; and then let them consider what a load of condemnation must roll upon their guilty souls when strict justice is meted out to every one before the bar of Omnipotence, and in the face of all the world--of all the universe.

The almost universal habit among boys and young men of relating filthy stories, indulging in foul jokes, making indecent allusions, and subjecting to lewd criticism every pa.s.sing female, is a most abominable sin. Such habits crush out pure thoughts; they annihilate respect for virtue; they make the mind a quagmire of obscenity; they lead to overt acts of lewdness.

But boys and youths are not alone in this. More often than otherwise, they gain from older ones the phraseology of vice. And if the sin is loathsome in such youthful transgressors, what detestable enormity must characterize it in the old.

And women, too, are not without their share in this accursed thing, this ghost of vice, which haunts the sewing-circle and the parlor as well as the club-room. They do not, of course, often descend to those black depths of vulgarity to which the coa.r.s.er s.e.x will go, but couch in finer terms the same foul thoughts, and hide in loose insinuations more s.m.u.t than words could well express. Women who think themselves rare paragons of virtue can find no greater pleasure than in the discussion of the latest scandal, speculations about the chast.i.ty of Mrs. A. or Mr. B., and gossip about the "fall" of this man's daughter or the amorous adventures of that woman's son.

Masculine purity loves to regard woman as chaste in mind as well as in body, to surround her with conceptions of purity and impregnable virtue; but the conclusion is irresistible that those who can gloat over others' lapses from virtue, and find delight in such questionable entertainments as the most recent case of seduction, or the newest scandal, have need to purify their hearts and re-enforce their waning chast.i.ty. Nevertheless, a writer says, and perhaps truly, that "the women comprise about all the real virtue there is in the world."

Certainly if they were one-half as bad as the masculine portion of humanity, the world would be vastly worse than it is.

Causes of Unchast.i.ty.--Travelers among the North American Indians have been struck with the almost entire absence of that abandonment to vice which might be expected in a race uninfluenced by the moral restraints of Christianity. When first discovered in their native wilds, they were free from both the vices and the consequent diseases of civilization.

This fact points unmistakably to the conclusion that there must be something in the refinements and perversions of civilized life which is unfavorable to chast.i.ty, notwithstanding all the restraints which religion and the conventionalisms of society impose. Can we find such influences? Yes; they abound on every hand and leave their blight in most unwelcome places, oft unsuspected, even, till the work of ruin is complete.

Early Causes.--The earliest of all causes is hereditary predisposition.

As we have shown, a child conceived in l.u.s.t can no more be chaste by nature than a negro can be a Caucasian. But back of this there is a deeper cause, as we shall see, one that affects parents as well as offspring. Between infancy and p.u.b.erty, are in operation, all those influences mentioned under "s.e.xual Precocity."

The frequent custom of allowing children of the opposite s.e.x to sleep together, even until eight or ten years of age, or longer, is a dangerous one. We have known of instances in which little boys of seven or eight have been allowed to sleep with girls of fourteen or sixteen, in some of which most shameful lessons were taught, and by persons who would not be suspected of such an impropriety. In one instance a little boy of eight, occupying the same bed with three girls several years older, was used for ill.u.s.tration by the older girl in instructing the younger ones in the _modus operandi_ of reproduction. The s.e.xes should be carefully separated from each other at least as early as four or five years of age, under all circ.u.mstances which could afford opportunity for observing the physical differences of the s.e.xes, or in any way serve to excite those pa.s.sions which at this tender age should be wholly dormant.

Diet vs. Chast.i.ty.--From earliest infancy to impotent old age, under the perverting influence of civilization, there is a constant antagonism between diet and purity. Sometimes--rarely we hope--the helpless infant imbibes the essence of libidinous desires with its mother's milk, and thence receives upon its forming brain the stamp of vice. When old enough to take food in the ordinary way, the infant's tender organs of digestion are plied with highly seasoned viands, stimulating sauces, animal food, sweetmeats, and dainty tidbits in endless variety. Soon, tea and coffee are added to the list. Salt, pepper, ginger, mustard, condiments of every sort, deteriorate his daily food. If, perchance, he does not die at once of indigestion, or with his weakened forces fall a speedy victim to the diseases incident to infancy, he has his digestive organs impaired for life at the very outset of his existence.

Exciting stimulants and condiments weaken and irritate his nerves and derange the circulation. Thus, indirectly, they affect the s.e.xual system, which suffers through sympathy with the other organs. But a more direct injury is done. Flesh, condiments, eggs, tea, coffee, chocolate, and all stimulants, have a powerful influence directly upon the reproductive organs. They increase the local supply of blood; and through nervous sympathy with the brain, the pa.s.sions are aroused.

Overeating, eating between meals, hasty eating, eating indigestible articles of food, late suppers, react upon the s.e.xual organs with the utmost certainty. Any disturbance of the digestive function deteriorates the quality of the blood. Poor blood, filled with crude, poorly digested food, is irritating to the nervous system, and especially to those extremely delicate nerves which govern the reproductive function. Irritation provokes congestion; congestion excites s.e.xual desires; excited pa.s.sions increase the local disturbance; and thus each reacts upon the other, ever increasing the injury and the liability to future damage.

Thus, these exciting causes continue their insidious work through youth and more mature years. Right under the eyes of fathers and mothers they work the ruin of their children, exciting such storms of pa.s.sion as are absolutely uncontrollable.

Clerical Lapses.--Our most profound disgust is justly excited when we hear of laxity of morals in a clergyman. We naturally feel that one whose calling is to teach his fellow-men the way of truth, and right, and purity, should himself be free from taint of immorality. But when we consider how these ministers are fed, we cannot suppress a momentary disposition to excuse, in some degree, their fault. When the minister goes out to tea, he is served with the richest cake, the choicest jellies, the most pungent sauces, and the finest of fine-flour bread-stuffs.

Little does the indulgent hostess dream that she is ministering to the inflammation of pa.s.sions which may imperil the virtue of her daughter, or even her own. Salacity once aroused, even in a minister, allows no room for reason or for conscience. If women wish to preserve the virtue of their ministers, let them feed them more in accordance with the laws of health. Ministers are not immaculate.

The remedy for the dangers to chast.i.ty arising from this source, is pointed out in the article on "Continence."

Tobacco and Vice.--Few are aware of the influence upon morals exerted by that filthy habit, tobacco-using. When acquired early, it excites the undeveloped organs, arouses the pa.s.sions, and in a few years converts the once chaste and pure youth into a veritable volcano of l.u.s.t, belching out from its inner fires of pa.s.sion torrents of obscenity and the sulphurous fumes of lasciviousness. If long-continued, the final effect of tobacco is emasculation; but this is only the necessary consequence of previous super-excitation. The lecherous day-dreams in which many smokers indulge, are a species of fornication for which even a brute ought to blush, if such a crime were possible for a brute. The mental libertine does not confine himself to bagnios and women of the town. In the foulness of his imagination, he invades the sanct.i.ty of virtue wherever his erotic fancy leads him.

We are aware that we have made a grave charge against tobacco, and we have not hesitated to state the naked truth; yet we do not think we have exaggerated, in the least, the pernicious influence of this foul drug. As much, or nearly as much, might be said against the use of liquor, on the same grounds.

Bad Books.--Another potent enemy of virtue is the obscene literature which has flooded the land for many years. Circulated by secret agencies, these books have found their way into the most secluded districts.

Nearly every large school contains one of these emissaries of evil men and their Satanic master. Some idea of the enormity and extent of this evil may be gained from the following quotations from a published letter of Mr. Anthony Comstock, who has been for some time employed by the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation in suppressing the traffic by arresting the publishers and destroying their goods:--

"I have succeeded in unearthing this hydra-headed monster in part, as you will see by the following statement, which, in many respects, might be truthfully increased in quant.i.ty. These I have seized and destroyed:--

"Obscene photographs, stereoscopic and other pictures, more than one hundred and eighty-two thousand; obscene books and pamphlets, more than five tons; obscene letter-press in sheets, more than two tons; sheets of impure songs, catalogues, handbills, etc., more than twenty-one thousand; obscene microscopic watch and knife charms, and finger-rings, more than five thousand; obscene negative plates for printing photographs and stereoscopic views, about six hundred and twenty-five; obscene engraved steel and copper plates, three hundred and fifty; obscene lithographic stones destroyed, twenty; obscene wood-cut engravings, more than five hundred; stereotype plates for printing obscene books, more than five tons; obscene transparent playing-cards, nearly six thousand; obscene and immoral rubber articles, over thirty thousand; lead molds for manufacturing rubber goods, twelve sets, or more than seven hundred pounds; newspapers seized, about four thousand six hundred; letters from all parts of the country ordering these goods, about fifteen thousand; names of dealers in account-books seized, about six thousand; lists of names in the hands of dealers, that are sold as merchandise to forward circulars or catalogues to, independent of letters and account-books seized, more than seven thousand; arrest of dealers since Oct. 9, 1871, more than fifty."

"These abominations are disseminated by these men first obtaining the names and addresses of scholars and students in our schools and colleges, and then forwarding circulars. They secure thousands of names in this way, either by sending for a catalogue of schools, seminaries, and colleges, under a pretense of sending a child to attend these places, or else by sending out a circular purporting to be getting up a directory of all the scholars and students in schools and colleges in the United States, or of taking the census of all the unmarried people, and offering to pay five cents per name for lists so sent. I need not say that the money is seldom or never sent, but I do say that these names, together with those that come in reply to advertis.e.m.e.nts, are sold to other parties; so that when a man desires to engage in this nefarious business, he has only to purchase a list of these names, and then your child, be it son or daughter, is liable to have thrust into its hands, all unknown to you, one of these devilish catalogues."

"Since the destruction of the stereotype plates of old books, secret circulars have been discovered of a notice to dealers that twelve new books are in course of preparation, and will soon be ready for delivery."

Says Hon. C. L. Merriam, as quoted by Dr. Lewis: "We find that the dealers in obscene literature have organized circulating libraries, which are under the charge of the most vicious boys in the schools, boys chosen and paid by the venders, and who circulate among the students, at ten cents a volume, any of the one hundred and forty-four obscene books heretofore published in New York City."

Largely through the influence of Mr. Comstock, laws have been enacted which promise to do much toward checking this extensive evil, or at least causing it to make itself less prominent. Our newspapers still abound with advertis.e.m.e.nts of various so-called medical works, "Marriage Guides," etc., which are fruits of the same "upas-tree" that Mr. Comstock has labored so faithfully to uproot.

It is a painful fact, however, that the total annihilation of every foul book which the law can reach will not effect the cure of this evil, for our modern literature is full of the same virus. It is necessarily presented in less grossly revolting forms, half concealed by beautiful imagery, or embellished by wit; but yet, there it is, and no law can reach it. The works of our standard authors in literature abound in lubricity. Popular novels have doubtless done more to arouse a prurient curiosity in the young, and to excite and foster pa.s.sion and immorality, than even the obscene literature for the suppression of which such active measures have recently been taken. The more exquisitely painted the scenes of vice, the more dangerously enticing. Novel-reading has led thousands to lives of dissoluteness.

Idleness.--This evil is usually combined with the preceding. To maintain purity, the mind must be occupied. If left without occupation, the vacuity is quickly filled with unchaste thoughts. Nothing can be worse for a child than to be reared in idleness. His morals will be certain to suffer. Incessant mental occupation is the only safeguard against unchast.i.ty. Those worthless fops who spend their lives in "killing time" by lounging about bar-rooms, loafing on street corners, or strutting up and down the boulevard, are anything but chaste. Those equally worthless young women who waste their lives on sofas or in easy-chairs, occupied only with some silly novel, or idling away life's precious hours in reverie--such creatures are seldom the models of purity one would wish to think them. If born with a natural propensity toward sin, such a life would soon engender a diseased, impure imagination, if nothing worse.

Dress and Sensuality.--There are two ways in which fas.h.i.+onable dress leads to unchast.i.ty; viz., 1. By its extravagance; 2. By its abuse of the body.

How does extravagance lead to unchast.i.ty? By creating the temptation to sin. It affects not those gorgeously attired ladies who ride in fine carriages, and live in brown-stone fronts, who are surrounded with all the luxuries that wealth can purchase--fine apparel is no temptation to such. But to less favored--though not less worthy--ones, these magnificent displays of millinery goods and fine trappings are most powerful temptations. The poor seamstress, who can earn by diligent toil hardly enough to pay her board bill, has no legitimate way by which to deck herself with the finery she admires. Plainly dressed as she must be if she remains honest and retains her virtue, she is scornfully ignored by her proud sisters. Everywhere she finds it a generally recognized fact that "dress makes the lady." On the street, no one steps aside to let her pa.s.s, no one stoops to regain for her the package that slips from her weary hands. Does she enter a crowded car, no one offers her a seat, though she is trembling with fatigue, while the showily dressed woman who follows her is accommodated at once. She marks the difference; she does not pause to count the cost, but barters away her self-respect, to gain the respect, or deference, of strangers.

How Young Women Fall.--It has been authoritatively stated that there are, in our large cities, hundreds of young women who, being able to earn barely enough to buy food and fuel and pay the rent of a dismal attic, take the advice offered by their employers, "Get some gentleman friend to dress you for your company." Others spend all their small earnings to keep themselves "respectably" dressed, and share the board and lodgings of some young _roue_ as heartless as incontinent. Persons unaccustomed to city life, and thousands of people in the very heart of our great metropolis, have no conception of the frightful prevalence of this kind of prost.i.tution. Young women go to our large cities as pure as snow. They find no lucrative employment. Daily contact with vice obtunds their first abhorrence of it. Gradually it becomes familiar. A fancied life of ease presents allurements to a hard-worked sewing-girl. Fine clothes and comfortable lodgings increase the temptation. She yields, and barters her body for a home without the trouble of a marriage ceremony.

Wealthy women could do more to cure the "social evil" by adopting plain attire than all the civil authorities by pa.s.sing license laws or regulating ordinances. Have not Christian women a duty here? A few years ago, some Nashville ladies made a slight move in the right direction, as indicated in the following paragraph; but we have not heard that their example has been followed:--

"The lady members of the first Baptist Church, of Nashville, Tenn., have agreed that they will dispense with all finery on Sunday, wearing no jewels but consistency, and hereafter appear at church in plain calico dresses."

A more radical reform would have been an extension of the salutary measure to all other days of the week as well as Sunday; though we see no reason for restricting the material of clothing to calico, which might, indeed, be rather insufficient for some seasons of the year.