The essentials of manliness are conceded to be manifested by a deep reverence for women, the protection of the weak, and unostentatious chivalry toward those who are harassed by misfortune, or who are unable to cope with the stronger in the battle of life. But this is precisely what a licentious man does not and cannot do, for he finds his easiest and most accustomed prey, as a rule, among those who are young and unsuspecting or deeply unfortunate. The gentle, soft, yielding, and confiding natures of women, which should hedge them around with a wall of strength for their protection, become frail weaknesses when exposed to the machinations of such men. If a woman has once slipped, these men's hands are against her; if she arrives unprotected in a strange city, methods are applied to lead her on to destruction merely for the sake of wanton pleasure, there never being an intention on the part of the men to share any portion of the responsibility or shame, but they abandon her to any fate rather than suffer the slightest harm themselves. Such men do to these women those things for doing which to their sisters or daughters they would at once slay another man. Instead of showing sympathy, or contributing money to help in their reformation, they wantonly bear a share in keeping them down in the bottom lands of infamy. If pregnancy be a result of their immoral union, the bastard children are abandoned to the mother's care, and the only effective way of righting the wrong, by marriage, is laughed to scorn.
DECEIT AND FALSEHOOD ARE INSEPARABLY CONNECTED WITH IMPURITY.
The making and telling of lies is universally recognized to be but a mere incident in connection with impurity, and without exception fornicators must lie for a falsehood is the necessary handle to sin. Of all conceivable things, a lie is the most despicable; and he who lacks the courage to tell the truth is admittedly an infamous coward who has annihilated the dignity of his manhood. Fortunate is he who advances year by year, always transferring to the future the telling of his first lie! No cloud casts such a sombre shade over a man's life as this simple word "liar". The telling of one deliberate untruth is a tragedy in one's life. Just think of its import! It means that the person who violated the truth will, under pressure, do the same thing again; it means that that individual can never be implicitly trusted again. If we detect a man in even one false statement, we reserve to ourselves the privilege forever after of using our own judgment whether we shall trust him again.
One lie is so terrible because it shatters a man's trustworthiness; for if a person tells one deliberate falsehood, the tendency is in his nature, and he will repeat it whenever convenient. Therefore if a man is known to be a liar, the author puts him upon his reliable list; for he can be depended on to lie again, and is indeed re lie able. Evidently it cannot be manly to enter upon any course which necessitates the telling of lies; but a hundred instances will come to mind to show that fornicators must lie, sometimes to the women, sometimes to the hotel clerks when they register under assumed names, sometimes to their households, sometimes to the police, and sometimes even to their doctors, while as a rule they do so habitually, having acquired the ethical defect which is always manifested by those who pollute the most manly elements of their natures.
Impurity surely unmans, and the unchaste man, the diseased man, the illegitimate father, the profaner and dese crator of the standards of chivalry, the liar, cannot hold his head up and look one straight in the face except by a brazen effrontery.
An old professor of surgery at Edinburgh University used to say, when the author was a student there, that he could tell a venereal patient at a glance by his peculiar shamefaced, "crab like gait," a one sided, shifting step. A venereal patient simply cannot look manly; all that is, temporarily at least, gone from him.
Just reflect that a man in order to counterbalance all these terrible responsibilities can only offer the single excuse of the gratification of an immoral impulse. The penalties immeasurably outweigh the pleasures: the crown of manhood must be laid down, and the throne of self respect abdicated.
Criminals are noted for their lack of compassion and their deficiency in the altruistic feeling, and a sensual man must necessarily be at least a moral criminal on account of his egoism and utter carelessness of the welfare of others. The perfidy of lewd men is something execrable; but the ages have not taught a large number of women to beware of their snares, or to analyze their promises, which are often made under the cloak of love, or to see that these men are working with devil's tools, or to appreciate the vastly more momentous outcome of sexual intercourse to themselves.
The cowardliness of immoral men toward women is self apparent. It is a commonly accepted opinion that modern civilization demands absolute chastity in women. Not at all! Just consider how the matter stands.