The sufferings of the continent man, though constantly requiring fortitude, do not compare with those of the incontinent. If a man has been properly brought up, protected from evil practices, and not early debased by sensuality, his habits become fixed, and he prizes his health and virility too much to put them in jeopardy. Love is a necessity of man's nature as he is constituted, and a pure attachment for a woman whom he hopes some day to make his wife is most desirable.
The intensity of the longing for sexual gratification is readily given as an excuse for satisfying that craving; but, outside of marriage, wilful compliance with these desires stifles the primitive, fundamental purposes of Nature, which has designedly conferred upon every healthy individual of either sex a lavish, bounteous and almost superabundant endowment of sexual longing, the object of which is to render certain the perpetuation of the species. Throughout all Nature this is seen as a passion, and no apology need be offered for saying that chaste men and women experience this sexual passion in fuller force than the unchaste, but not as sensuality.
This liveliness of sexual feeling makes a man and a wo man unite themselves in marriage; it is the very essence of true conjugal love the love compelling principle of Nature.
The silent music of the boy Cupid strikes its sweet notes everywhere where sexual power remains, and without it the race would cease to exist. As Grant Allen says: " To it we owe the paternal, maternal and marital relations; the growth of the affections, the love of little pattering feet and baby laughter; the home, with all the dear associations that cluster around it; in one word, the heart and all that is best in it." '
So we actually boast that the chaste, and that they only, feel this sexual longing in full and natural intensity, being tempted like those who fall, and experiencing unmistakable yearnings which are not shameworthy, but physiological. But rational men and women, observant of natural law and of their brethren who have been trapped or poisoned, restrain themselves from indulging in unnatural and impure practices, because they regard their own bodies and their progeny as the most sacred things in the world.
The unchaste man prostitutes and subverts his purest and most energizing incentive to marriage by otherwise gratifying his longings; and he furthermore defrauds some true woman of her legitimate chance of marriage by his substitution of a selfish sensuality for the highest honor of husbandship and paternity.
It surely cannot be that he knows what he is doing in going contrary to the immutable laws of Nature, which never fail to punish artificial infringements upon her rights in a manner quite appreciable to our earthly senses.
It is not a light sin, this perversion of impure sexual gratification, but the most heinous offence against Nature opposing her prolific aims, begetting loathsome diseases, blighting marriages, tainting offspring, and assuring anguish and heartrending sorrows; and, furthermore, it is the gravest offence against religion; for we can clearly see that if a man is so criminally and voluntarily unfit for this world, he rightly has no inheritance in the Holy City. To any one who may assert that there are two sides to "The New Hedonism", every important question, we reply that in this case there is no question and no room for argument. The outcome of all records, past and present, shows that the man who indulges in sexual irregularities is practically certain to sooner or later undergo suffering so grave as to far outweigh any possible selfish gratification.
The moral sentiments of a community fashion the customs and habits of its individuals; and those who advocate perversions of the sexual functions which are at variance with natural law and hygiene and morality, must be held accountable for the physical, mental and moral retrogression and decline of human progress; for they clash against every argument which pleads for the welfare of the fathers and mothers and children, and triflingly antagonize scientific facts which are absolutely demonstrated to be essential for the promise of the soundness of the race. Morality and virtue are the machinery which render impossible the triumph of the sensualists and barbarians.
A few men are naturally bad, deaf to the soft voice of Nature, and with little sentiment of justice or humanity; but an acquaintance with the tremendous personal evils which a life of lust entails might be presumed to restrain them in their mad and wicked careers, if they have not entirely become "sin's fools".
We look almost solely to the stupendous force of the sexual instinct, rightfully guided by the harmony of morality and science, to advance civilization to its most fruitful and its highest destiny.