Human Physiology. 297 



think that they cannot live as purely in any after time in 

 marriage when required or rendered advisable in absence in 

 widowhood. The opposite doctrine seems to me not only 

 utterly false, and opposed to all nature and the highest human 

 experience, but most shameful and degrading an insult to our 

 manhood and our womanhood a libel on daughters, sisters, 

 wives, and mothers. 



Chastity is the conservation of life and the consecration of 

 its forces to the highest use. Sensuality is the waste of life and 

 the degradation of its forces to pleasure divorced from use. 

 Chastity is life sensuality is death. 



From the age of puberty to marriage the law is the same 

 for both sexes. Full employment of mind and body, temper- 

 ance, purity, and perfect chastity in thought, word, and deed. 

 The law is one of perfect equality. There is no license for the 

 male which is not equally the right of the female. There is 

 no physiological ground for any indulgence in one case more 

 than in the other. No man has any more right to require or 

 expect purity in the woman who is to be his wife, than 

 the woman has to require and expect purity in her husband. It 

 is a simple matter of justice and right. No man can enter 

 upon an amative relation with a woman except in marriage, 

 without manifest injustice to his future wife, unless he allow 

 her the same liberty; and also without a great wrong to the 

 woman, and to her possible husband. 



It is contended that the sins of men against chastity are more 

 venial than those of women, because of the liability of women to 

 have children. But men are also liable to be the fathers of 

 children ; and they are deeply wronged by the absence of pater- 

 nal care. The child has its rights, and every child has the 

 right to be born in honest, respectable wedlock, of parents 

 able to give it a sound constitution and the nurture and 

 education it requires. The child who lacks these conditions is 

 grievously wronged by both father and mother. 



