A CHAPTER FOR MARRIED PEOPLE 503 



and refined ladies and gentlemen of the great centers 

 of civilization, as of the misshapen denizens of African 

 jungles, or the scarcely human natives of Australia 

 and Terra del Fuego. His appetites, his tastes, his 

 habits, even his bodily functions, are perverted. Of 

 course, there are degrees of depravity and varieties 

 of perversion. In some respects, savages approach 

 more nearly to the natural state than civilized man, 

 and in other particulars, the latter more nearly repre- 

 sents man's natural condition; but in neither barbar- 

 ism nor civilization do we find man in his primitive 

 state. 



In consequence of this universal departure from his 

 original normal condition,— the causes of which we 

 need not here trace, since they are immaterial in the 

 consideration of this question,— when we wish to as- 

 certain with certainty the functions of particular 

 organs of the human body, we are obliged to compare 

 them with the corresponding organs of lower animals, 

 and study the functions of the latter. It is by this 

 method of investigation that most of the important 

 truths of physiology have been developed; and the 

 plan is universally acknowledged to be a proper and 

 logical one. 



The Sexual Function in Lower Animals. —Then 

 if we wish to ascertain, with certainty, the true func- 

 tion of the reproductive organs in man, we must pursue 

 the course above indicated; in other words, study the 

 function of reproduction in lower animals. We say 

 lower animals, because man is really an animal, a 

 member of the great animal kingdom, though not a 

 beast,— at least, he should not be a beast, though some 

 animals in human form approach rery closely to the 

 line that separates humanity from brutes. We are 



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