Chapter X: Concluding Remarks

After the publication of Mr. Owen’s first edition of this work, several communications were received by him, approbatory of his book, some of which I think of sufficient importance to be introduced into this edition, inasmuch as they contain facts that are worthy of being treasured up in the recollection of all young married persons. In the one to which I now allude his correspondent remarks as follows:

“I have read your little work with much interest, and desire that it may have a wide circulation, and that its recommendations may be adopted in practice. If you publish a third edition, I could wish that you would add a piece of advice of the greatest importance, especially to young married persons. Many women are ignorant, that, in the gratification of the reproductive instinct, the exhaustion to the man is much greater than to the woman: a fact most important to be known, the ignorance of which has caused more than one husband to forfeit his health, nay, his _life_. TISSOT tells us, that the loss by an ounce of semen is equal to that by forty ounces of blood;[32] and that, in the case of the healthiest man, nature does not _demand_ connexion oftener than once a month.[33]

“How many young spouses, loving their husbands tenderly and disinterestedly, if they were but informed of these facts, would watch over and preserve their partners’ healths, instead of exciting them to over-indulgence.

“I send you a copy of Italian verses, appropriate, like the German stanzas you have quoted in your work, to the above remarks:

“‘Merta gli alleri al crine
Chi scende in campo armato,
Chi a cento squadre a lato,
Impallidir nun sa:
Ma piu gloria ha nel fronte
Chi, alla ragion soggetto,
D’un sconsigliato astello
Trionfator si fà.’[34]
L. G.”

Mr. Fowler the Phrenologist in speaking upon this subject in his pamphlet entitled, “Amativeness warning and advice to married and single,” makes the following remarks, that “a hard day’s work does not equally prostrate and fatigue. The fallow-buck after his passion has subsided is tamed down by exhaustion, that he can be approached and almost caught by hand. Frequent indulgence in any of its forms will run down and run out any one of either sex. Those who would write or speak or study must forego this indulgence or intellectual exertion or else die. Powerful constitutions will stand an immense drain before they finally break, but terrible is the result. Mere animal temperaments are less injured, because by supposition their vitality is abundant, and its drain by other functions is slight; nor do they enjoy this function as do those more highly organised and hence are proportionally less exhausted; such live, to be sure; so do brutes—carnal grovelling, sensual, low-lived animals, living mainly on a single pleasure, when their nature serves up so many. Let such revel in lust because capable of little else. But then highly organised must partake rarely, else it will excite to distraction and proportionally exhaust.”

FINIS.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The readers of the editor’s second enlarged edition of the Hon. R. D. Owen’s Moral Physiology, are apprized that since the publication of his first edition of this work, considerable opportunity has been afforded by the sale of the _Electro-Galvania_ alluded to in this work, for testing its efficacy as a preventive of conception. Time is required to test the effect and establish the certainty of every new remedial agent. Sufficient opportunity has been afforded in this instance, since this instrument was first introduced to public notice, for proving the certain control which the electrical influence is capable of exercising over the nervous system.

The increased demand for the instrument has demonstrated its perfect adaption to the accomplishment of the important object for which it is designed, and has most fully established its claim to the confidence heretofore reposed in its preventive influence. Communications from abroad, and orders for this work or the article herein alluded to, addressed to Dr. R. Glover, New York, will meet with due attention.

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Footnote 1:

The Greeks and Romans considered that by familiarizing the population
with the exhibition of the human figure completely naked, libidinous
propensities and desires would be less excited. The continence and
chastity of the half-clad Germans, Tacitus highly extols, and
contrasts with the effeminate and luxurious habits of the more
polished nations of his time. The worship of the Phallus, or erect
penis, is of the most remote antiquity, and derived its origin not
from vulgar or obscene notions, but from a consideration that the
generative powers of nature were thus best personified; and to render
the type more complete, the Deities were often made Hermaphroditic or
of a two-fold sex, to show that either alone would be incomplete
without the other, to represent nature engendering and reproducing.
The Phallus was also used as an amulet or charm suspended from the
neck, and its exhibition over a house in Pompeii is explained by the
words “domus felicitatis.” On this interesting subject, Mr. O’Brien’s
learned, but too fanciful work, on the Round Towers of Ireland, will
throw considerable light.

Footnote 2:

See “Memoires de la Court d’Espagne,” by Madame d’Aunoy.

Footnote 3:

See Tournefort’s Travels in Turkey.

Footnote 4:

See Buckingham’s Travels in Asia.

Footnote 5:

See Bruce’s Travels in Abyssinia.

Footnote 6:

One of the English kings, Edward III., in the year 1344, picked up
from the floor of a ball-room, an embroidered garter, belonging to a
lady of rank. In returning it to her, he checked the rising smile of
his courtiers with the words, “Honi soit qui mal y pense!” or,
paraphrased in English, “Shame on him who invidiously interprets it!”
The sentiment was so greatly approved, that it has become the motto of
the English national arms. It is one which might be not inaptly nor
unfrequently applied in rebuking the mawkish, skin-deep, and
intolerant morality of this hypocritical and profligate age.

Footnote 7:

See “A brief exposition of the principles of the United Society called
Shakers,” published by Calvin Green and Seth Y. Wells, 1830.

Footnote 8:

I call them my friends, because, however little I am disposed to
accede to all their principles, I have met, from among their body, a
greater proportion of individuals who have taken with them my
friendship and sympathy, than perhaps from among any other sect or
class of men.

Footnote 9:

By _unrestrained_, Malthus and his disciples mean, not restricted or
destroyed by any incidental check whatever, moral or immoral,
prudential or violent. Thus, poverty, war, libertinism, famine, &c.
are all powerful checks to population. In this sense, and not simply
as applying to preventative moral restraint, have I employed the word
throughout this chapter.

Footnote 10:

Mandeville.

Footnote 11:

Some wag, adverting to the fact, that Mr. Malthus himself has a large
family, remarked, “that the reverend gentleman knew better how to
preach than to practice.”

Footnote 12:

Lawrence, the ingenious author of the “Empire of the Nairs,” says
shrewdly enough, “Wherever the women are prudes, the men will be
drunkards.”

Footnote 13:

It may perhaps be argued, that all married persons have this power
already, seeing that they are no more obliged to become parents than
the unmarried; they may live as the brethern and sisters among the
Shakers do. But this Shaker remedy is, in the first place, utterly
impracticable, as a general rule; and, secondly, it would chill and
embitter domestic life, even if it were practicable.

Footnote 14:

Will our sensitive fine ladies blush at the plain good sense and
simplicity of such an observation? Let me tell them, the indelicacy is
in their own minds, not in the words of the French mother.

Footnote 15:

For a vice so unnatural as onanism there could be no possible
temptation, and therefore no existence, were not men unnaturally and
mischievously situated. It first appeared, probably, in monasteries;
and has been perpetuated by the more or less anti-social and
demoralizing relation in which the sexes stand to each other, in
almost all countries. In estimating the consequences of the present
false situation of society, we must set down to the black account the
wretched, wretched consequences (terminating not unfrequently in
incurable insanity) of this vice, the preposterous offspring of modern
civilization. Physicians say that onanism at present prevails, to a
lamentable extent, both in this country and in England. If the
recommendations contained in this little treatise were generally
followed, it would probably totally disappear in a single generation.

Footnote 16:

See letter of Percy Byssche Shelley, published in the “Lion,” of
December 5, 1828.

Footnote 17:

Every reflecting mind will distinguish between the
unreasoning—sometimes even generous, imprudence of youthful passion,
and the calculating selfishness of the matured and heartless
libertine. It is a melancholy truth, that pseudo-civilization produces
thousands of seducers by profession, who, while daily calling the
heavens to witness their eternal affections, have no affection for any
thing on earth but their own precious and profligate selves. It is to
characters so utterly worthless as these that my observations apply.

Footnote 18:

Jesus said unto her, “Neither do I condemn thee.”—_John_ viii. 11.

Footnote 19:

What is the actual state of society in Great Britain and even in this
republic, that pseudo-civilization, in her superlative delicacy,
should so fastidiously scruple to speak of or to sanction a simple,
moral, effectual check to population? Are her sons all chaste and
temperate, and her daughters all passionless and pure? I might
disclose, if I would, in this very city of New York—and in our
neighbour city of Philadelphia—scenes and practices that have come to
light from time to time, and that would furnish no very favourable
answer to the question. I might ask, whether all the houses of
assignation in these two cities are frequented by the known profligate
alone? or whether some of the most outwardly respectable fathers—ay,
_mothers_ of families—have not been found in resorts supported and
frequented only by “good society” like themselves?

As regards Great Britain, I might quote the evidence delivered before
a “Committee of the House of Commons, on Labourers’ Wages,” by Henry
Drummond, a banker, magistrate, and large land-owner in the county of
Surrey, in which the following question and answer occur: Q. “What is
the practice you allude to of forcing marriages?” A. “I believe
nothing is more erroneous than the assertion, that the poor laws tend
to imprudent marriages; I never knew an instance of a girl being
married until she was with child, nor ever knew of a marriage taking
place through a calculation for future support.” Mr. Drummond’s
assertions were confirmed by other equally respectable witnesses; and
from what I myself have learnt in conversation with some of the chief
manufacturers of England, I am convinced, that the statement, as
regards the working population in the chief manufacturing districts,
is scarcely exaggerated.

I might go on to state, that the spot on which the Foundling Hospital
in Dublin now stands, formerly went by the name of “Murderer’s Lane,”
from the number of child murders that were perpetrated in the
vicinity.

I might adduce the testimony of respectable witnesses in proof, that,
even among the married, the blighting effects of ergot are not
unfrequently incurred; by those very persons, probably, who, in
public, would think fit to be terribly shocked at this little book.

But why multiply proofs? The records of every court of justice, nay,
the tittle tattle of every fashionable drawing-room, sufficiently
marks the real character of this prudish and pharisaical world of
ours.

Footnote 20:

See letter of the Committee of the Typographical Society to Robert
Dale Owen, published in the Commercial Advertiser of the 29th of
September, and copied into the Free Enquirer of the 9th of October,
1830.

For a statement of the circumstances connected with that letter, and
which induced me, at this time, to write and publish the present
treatise, see Preface.

Footnote 21:

I should like to hear these gentlemen explain, according to what
principle they imagine the chastity of their _wives_ to grow out of a
fear of offspring; so that, if released from such fear, prostitution
would follow. I can readily comprehend that the unmarried may be
supposed careful to avoid that situation to which no legal cause can
be assigned; but a wife must be especially dull, if she cannot assign,
in all cases, a legal cause; and a husband must be especially
sagacious, if he can tell whether the true cause be assigned or not.
This safeguard to married chastity, therefore, to which the gentlemen
of the Typographical Committee seem to look with so implicit a
confidence, is a mere broken reed; and has been so, ever since the
days of Bethsheba.

Yet _conjugal_ chastity is that which is especially valued. The
inconstancy of a wife commonly cuts much deeper than the dishonor of a
sister. In that case, then, which the world usually considers of the
highest importance, the fear of offspring _imposes no check whatever_.
It cannot make one iota of difference whether a married woman be
knowing in physiology or not; except perhaps, indeed, to the husband’s
advantage; in cases where the wife’s conscience induces her at least
to guard against the possibility of burthening her legal lord with the
care and support of children that are not his. Constancy, where it
actually exists, is the offspring of something more efficacious than
ignorance. And if in the wife’s case, men must and do trust to
something else, why not in all other cases, where restraint may be
considered desirable? Shall men trust in the greater, and fear to
trust in the less? Whatever any one may choose to assert regarding his
relatives’ secret inclinations to profligacy, these arguments may
convince him that if he has any safeguard at present, a perusal of
Moral Physiology will not destroy it.

’Tis strange that men, by way of suborning an argument, should be
willing thus to vilify their relatives’ character and motives, without
first carefully examining whether any thing was gained to their cause,
after all, by the vilification.

Footnote 22:

Instances innumerable might be adduced. Not one young person, for
example, in twenty, is ever told, that sexual intercourse during the
period of a woman’s courses is not unfrequently productive, to the
woman of a species of fluor albus, and sometimes (as a consequent) to
the man of symptoms very similar to those of urethritis or gonorrhœa,
but more easily removed. Yet what fact more important to be
communicated! And how ridiculous the mischievously prudish refinement
that conceals from human beings what it most deeply concerns them to
know? The following case is related by Dr. Dewees in his work on
Diseases of Females: “We have known a complaint communicated to the
male by intercourse with a woman labouring under _Pruritis_. It was
very similar to that which affected the female in its general
character. When this occurs with the married man, much disturbance is
sometimes created from a supposition that the wife has been
unfaithful, and the contrary. Indeed it has occurred in more instances
than one, within our own knowledge, where the woman has thought
herself the injured party; and in one case, the recrimination was
mutual. In this instance, the friends of the parties assembled to
determine on the terms of separation, when it was suggested, by one of
those who happened to be more rational than the rest, that before they
proceeded to such an extremity, their family physician should be
consulted. We were accordingly sent for. After an attentive hearing of
both parties, and an examination of the parts, we were satisfied that
there was not the slightest ground for either to be charged with want
of fidelity, and we assured the parties that this was the case, and
were fortunate enough to cause all further proceedings to be
suspended.”

Footnote 23:

Le premier serment que se firent deux êtres de chair, ce fut au pied
d’un rocher, qui tombait en poussière; ils attestèrent de leur
constance un ciel qui n’est pas un instant le même: tout passait en
eux, et autour d’eux; et ils croyaient leurs cœurs affranchis de
vicissitudes. O enfans! toujours enfans!

DIDEROT; _Jacques et son maitre_.

Footnote 24:

Some German poet, whose name has escaped me says,

“Tapfer ist der Lowensieger,
Tapfer is der Weltbezwinger,
Tapferer, wer sich selbst bezwang!”

“Brave is the lion-victor,
Brave the conqueror of a world,
Braver he who controls himself!”

It is a noble sentiment, and very appropriate to the present
discussion.

Footnote 25:

See “Historie de l’Académie des Sciences,” for the year 1679, page
279.

Footnote 26:

Hippocrates positively asserts this latter hypothesis, and is
outrageous against all sceptics in his theory. In his work on diet, he
tells us, “_Si quis non credat animam animæ misceri, demens est._”
Tertullian warmly supports the orthodoxy of this opinion.

Footnote 27:

Bonner, I believe.

Footnote 28:

Velpeau defines conception to be, that change which takes place
between the instant of vivification, and the period at which the germ
shows evidence of development.

Footnote 29:

My father, Robert Owen’s definition of chastity is also an excellent
one: “PROSTITUTION, Sexual intercourse _without_ affection: CHASTITY,
Sexual intercourse _with_ affection.”

Footnote 30:

Proverbs v. 18.

Footnote 31:

It is not uncommon to hear of women deriving no pleasure from the
sexual embrace; and however powerful an inducement the expected reward
of the highest sensual gratification may be to encourage propagation,
such a consummation, although much it may be wished for, is not
absolutely necessary for impregnation. I have met with numerous
females who, like [35]the mother of one of Napoleon’s Generals, have
declared: “Qu’elle n’avoit eu que les douleurs d’enfanter.”

Footnote 32:

This, of course, must be rather a matter of conjecture and
approximation, than of accurate calculation.

Footnote 33:

And I doubt whether she _permits_ it, without more or less of injury,
to the average of constitutions, oftener than once a week. Certain I
am, that any young man who will carefully note and compare his
sensations, will become convinced, that temperance positively forbids
such indulgence, at any rate, more than twice a week; and that he
trifles with his constitution who neglects the prohibition. How
immeasurably important that parents should communicate to their sons,
but especially to their daughters, facts like these!

Footnote 34:

For the English reader, I have attempted the following imitation of
the above lines:

Crown his brows with laurel wreath,
Who can tread the field of death—
Tread—with armed thousands near—
And know not what it is to fear.
But greater far his meed of praise,
Juster his claim to glory’s bays,
Who, true to reason’s voice, to virtue’s call,
Conquers himself, the noblest deed of all!

Footnote 35:

Elliotson’s notes to Blumenbach’s Physiology.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Table of Contents added by transcriber. 2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 3. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.