Part 14

‘The man who lays his hands upon a woman, Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch Whom ’twere gross flattery to call a coward.’

What epithet then belongs to him who makes it a trade to win a woman’s gentle affections, betray her generous confidence, and then, when the consequences become apparent, abandon her to dependence, and the scorn of a cold, a self-righteous, and a wicked world; a world which will forgive anything but rebellion against its tyranny, and in whose eyes it seems the greatest of crimes to be unsuspecting and warm-hearted! I will give my hand freely to a galley-slave, and speak to the highway-robber as to an honest man; but there is one character with whom I desire to exchange neither word nor greeting—the cold-hearted, deliberate, practised, and calculating seducer!

“And, let me ask, what is it gives to the arts of seduction their sting, and stamps to the world its victim? Why is it, that the man goes free and enters society again, almost courted and applauded for his treachery, while the woman is a mark for the finger of reproach, and a butt for the tongue of scandal? Because she bears about her the mark of what is called her disgrace. She becomes a mother; and society has something tangible against which to direct its anathemas. Nine-tenths, at least, of the misery and ruin which are caused by seduction, even in the present state of public opinion on the subject, result from cases of pregnancy.

“If the little being lives, the dove in the falcon’s claws is not more certain of death, than we may be, that society will visit, with its bitterest scoffs and reproaches, the bruised spirit of the mother and the unconscious innocence of the child.

“If, then, we cannot do all, shall we neglect a part? If we cannot prevent every misery which man’s selfishness and the world’s cruelty entail on a sex which it ought to be our pride and honor to cherish and defend; let us prevent as many as we can. If we cannot persuade society to revoke its unmanly and unchristian persecution of those who are often the best and gentlest of its members—let us, at the least, give to woman what defence we may, against its violence.

“I appeal to any father, trembling for the reputation of his child, whether, if she were induced to form an unlegalized connexion, her pregnancy would not be a frightful aggravation? I appeal to him, whether a preventive which shall save her from a situation which must soon disclose all to the world, would not be an act of mercy, of charity, of philanthropy—whether it might not save him from despair, and her from ruin? The fastidious conformist may frown upon the question, but to the father it comes home; and, whatever his lips may say, his heart will acknowledge the soundness and the force of the argument it conveys.

“It may be, that sticklers for morality will still demur to the positions I defend. They will perhaps tell me, as the committee of a certain society in this city lately did—that the power of preventing conception ‘holds out inducements and facilities for the prostitution of their daughters, their sisters, and their wives.’

“Truly, but they pay their wives, their sisters, and their daughters, a poor compliment! Is, then, this vaunted chastity a mere thing of circumstance and occasion? Is there but the difference of opportunity between it and prostitution? Would their wives, and their sisters, and their daughters, if once absolved from the fear of offspring, all become prostitutes—and sell their embrace for gold, and descend to a level with the most degraded? In truth, but they slander their own kindred: they libel their own wives, sisters, and daughters. If they spoke truth—if fear were indeed the only safeguard of their relatives’ chastity, little value should I place on virtue like that! and small would I esteem his offence, who should attempt to seduce it.

“That chastity which is worth preserving is not the chastity that owes its birth to fear and to ignorance. If to enlighten a woman regarding a simple physiological fact will make her a prostitute, she must be especially predisposed to profligacy. But it is a libel on the sex. Few, indeed, there are, who would continue so miserable and degrading a calling, could they but escape from it. For one prostitute that is made by inclination, ten are made by necessity. Reform the laws—equalize the comforts of society, and you need withhold no knowledge from your wives and daughters. It is want, not knowledge, that leads to prostitution.

“For myself, I would withhold from no sister, or daughter, or wife of mine, any ascertained fact whatever. It should be to me a duty and a pleasure to communicate to them all I knew myself; and I should hold it an insult to their understandings and their hearts to imagine, that their virtue would diminish as their knowledge increased. Vice is never the offspring of just knowledge, and they who say it is, slander their own nature. Would we but trust human nature, instead of continually suspecting it, and guarding it by bolts and bars, and thinking to make it very chaste by keeping it very ignorant, what a different world we should have of it! The virtue of ignorance is a sickly plant, ever exposed to the caterpillar of corruption, liable to be scorched and blasted even by the free light of heaven; of precarious growth; and even if at last artificially matured, of little or no real value.

“I know that parents often think it right and proper to withhold from their children—especially from their daughters—facts the most influential on their future lives, and the knowledge of which is essential to every man and woman’s well-being. Such a course has ever appeared to me ill-judged and productive of very injurious effects. A girl is surely no whit the better for believing, until her marriage night, that children are found among the cabbage leaves in the garden. The imagination is excited, the curiosity kept continually on the stretch; and that which, if simply explained, would have been recollected only as any other physiological phenomenon, assumes all the rank and importance and engrossing interest of a mystery. Nay, I am well convinced, that mere curiosity has often led ignorant young people into situations, from which a little more confidence and openness on the part of their parents and guardians, would have effectually secured them.

“But if we could prevent the circulation of truth, why should we? We are not afraid of it ourselves. No man thinks his morality will suffer by it. Each feels certain that his virtue can stand any degree of knowledge. And is it not the height of egregious presumption in each to imagine that his neighbor is so much weaker than himself, and requires a bandage which he can do without? Most of all is it presumptuous to suppose, that that knowledge which the man of the world can bear with impunity, will corrupt the young and the pure-hearted. It is the sullied conscience only that suggests such fears. Trust youth and innocence. Speak to them openly. Show them that you respect them, by treating them with confidence; and they will quickly learn to respect and to govern themselves. You enlist even their pride in your behalf; and you will soon see them make it their boast and their highest pleasure to merit your confidence. But watch them, and show your suspicions of them but once,—and you are the jailor, who will keep his prisoners just as long as bars and bolts shall prevent their escape. The world was never made for a prison-house; it is too large and ill-guarded: nor were parents ever intended for jail-keepers; their very affections unfit them for the task.

“There is no more beautiful sight on earth, than a family among whom there are no secrets and no reserves; where the young people confide everything to their elder friends—for such to them are their parents—and where the parents trust everything to their children; where each thought is communicated as freely as it arises; and all knowledge given, as simply as it is received. If the world contain a prototype of that Paradise, where nature is said to have known no sin or impropriety, it is such a family; and if there be a serpent that can poison the innocence of its inmates, that serpent is SUSPICION.

“I ask no greater pleasure than thus to be the guardian and companion of young beings whose innocence shall speak to me as unreservedly as it thinks to itself; of young beings who shall never imagine that there is guilt in their thoughts, or sin in their confidence; and to whom, in return, I may impart every important and useful fact that is known to myself. Their virtue shall be of that hardy growth, which all facts tend to nourish and strengthen.

“I put it to my readers, whether such a view of human nature, and such a mode of treating it, be not in accordance with the noblest feelings of their hearts. I put it to them, whether they have not felt themselves encouraged, improved, strengthened in every virtuous resolution, when they were generously trusted; and whether they have not felt abased and degraded, when they were suspiciously watched, and spied after, and kept in ignorance. If they find such feelings in their own hearts, let them not self-righteously imagine, that they can only be won by generosity, or that the nature of their fellow-creatures is different from their own.

“There are other considerations connected with this subject, which farther attest the social advantages of the control I advocate. Human affections are mutable, and the sincerest of moral resolutions may change. Every day furnishes instances of alienations, and of separations; sometimes almost before the honey-moon is well expired. In such cases of unsuitability, it cannot be considered desirable that there should be offspring; and the power of refraining from becoming parents until intimacy had, in a measure, established the likelihood of permanent harmony of views and feelings, must be confessed to be advantageous.

“It would be impossible to meet every argument in detail, which ingenuity or prejudice might put forward. If the world were not actually afraid to think freely or to listen to the suggestions of common sense, three-fourths of what has already been said would be superfluous; for most of the arguments employed would occur spontaneously to any rational, reasoning being. But the mass of mankind have still, in a measure, everything to learn on this subject. The world seems to me much to resemble a company of gourmands, who sit down to a plentiful repast, first very punctiliously saying grace over it; and then, under the sanction of the priest’s blessing, think to gorge themselves with impunity; as conceiving, that gluttony after grace is no sin. So it is with popular customs and popular morality. Everything is permitted, if external forms be but respected. Legal roguery is no crime, and ceremony-sanctioned excess no profligacy. The substance is sacrificed to the form, the virtue to the outward observance. The world troubles its head little about whether a man be honest or dishonest, so he knows how to avoid the penitentiary and escape the hangman. In like manner, the world seldom thinks it worth while to inquire whether a man be temperate or intemperate, prudent or thoughtless. It takes especial care to inform itself whether in all things he conforms to orthodox requirements; and if he does, all is right. Thus men too often learn to consider an oath an absolution from all subsequent decencies and duties, and a full release from all responsibilities. If a husband maltreat his wife, the offence is venal; for he premised it by making her at the altar, an ‘honest woman.’ If a married father neglects his children, it is a trifle; for grace was regularly said before they were born.

“With such a world as this, it is a difficult matter to reason. After listening to all I have said, it may perhaps cut me short by reminding me, that nature herself declares it to be right and proper, that we should reproduce our species without calculation or restraint. I will ask, in reply, whether nature also declares it to be right and proper, that when the thermometer is at 96°, we should drink greedily of cold water, and drop down dead in the streets? Let the world be told, that if nature gave us our passions and propensities, she gave us also the power wisely to control them; and that, when we hesitate to exercise that power we descend to a level with the brute creation, and become the sport of fortune—the mere slaves of circumstance.

“To one other argument it were not, perhaps, worth while to advert, but that it has been already speciously used to excite popular prejudice. It has been said, that to recommend to mankind prudential restraint in cases where children cannot be provided for, is an insult to the poor man; since all ought to be so circumstanced that they might provide amply for the largest family. Most assuredly all ought to be so circumstanced; but all are not. And there would be just as much propriety in bidding a poor man to go and take by force a piece of Saxony broadcloth from his neighbor’s store, because he ought to be able to purchase it, as to encourage him to go on producing children, because he ought to have the wherewithal to support them. Let us exert every nerve to correct the injustice and arrest the misery that results from a vicious order of things; but, until we have done so, let us not, for humanity’s sake, madly recommend that which grievously aggravates the evil; which increases the burden on the present generation, and threatens with neglect and ignorance the next.

“It now remains, after having spoken of the desirability of obtaining control over the instinct of reproduction, to speak of its practicability.

“I have taken great pains to ascertain the opinions of the most enlightened physicians of Great Britain and France on this subject; (opinions which popular prejudice will not permit them to offer publicly in their works;) and they all concur in admitting, what the experience of the French nation positively proves, that man may have a perfect control over this instinct: and that men and women may, without any injury to health, or the slightest violence done to the moral feelings, and with but small diminution to the pleasure which accompanies the gratification of the instinct, refrain at will from becoming parents. It has chanced to me, also, to win the confidence of several individuals, who have communicated to me, without reserve, their own experience: and all this has been corroborative of the same opinion.

“However various and contradictory the different theories of generation, almost all physiologists are agreed, that the entrance of the sperm itself (or of some volatile particles proceeding from it) into the uterus, must precede conception. This it was that probably first suggested the possibility of preventing conception at all.”

The eloquent writer, who was at that time unaware of the existence of Desomeaux’s mode of prevention to conception, states the same result was attained by a complete withdrawal on the part of the male previous to emission. But this mode, it will be readily perceived, is attended with, to some, insurmountable difficulties.

In the first place, few men can invariably control themselves in this respect, and to be an effectual preventive, he must ever, and invariably control his passions. Now it cannot be denied, that even those who habitually can, and do control themselves, will inevitably, now and then, in so exciting a passion, lose their self-control. It is impossible to do otherwise. And one moment’s forgetfulness defeats the end. In the second place, even if always and invariably practicable, it makes the act of coition incomplete and unsatisfactory. In the third place it would be almost, nay quite impossible, to prevent an imperceptible and unconscious escape of semen, sufficient however to produce conception, often giving rise to unjust and unfounded suspicions, when, in fact, the cause for the existence of pregnancy is the same as though no withdrawal was practised. And lastly, its effects upon the constitution are frequently not unlike those produced by onanism. In addition to which, it is unsafe, because uncertain; consequently, when indispensable to prevent pregnancy, is of no avail, if not actually dangerous.

To sum up, in brief, why pregnancy should be prevented, the reasons adduced seem to be conclusive to the able and talented writer, in its moral, social, and physiological aspect.

Morally. Firstly. It induces early marriages by removing the principal obstacle thereto, viz.: the fear of having offspring before the parents are in a pecuniary condition to support, rear, and educate them. And,

Secondly, By inducing early marriages, seductions would become less frequent, and consequently prostitution, comparatively, become extinct.

Socially. Firstly. Young men, instead of seeking excitement and amusement in the intoxicating cup, gaming, night carousals, brothels, &c., acquiring habits of dissipation deadening alike to the keen, fresh susceptibilities belonging to youth—habits too, which often cling to them in after life, habits which, perhaps for ever destroy their health,—as tainting their constitution with some foul and incurable disease,—would, with a view to early marriage, cultivate the social and domestic ties, while yet pure and uncontaminated by contact with the dissolute and vicious. And