The Conservation of Vitality. 



tween the sexes which are generally esteemed 

 innocent, were strictly prohibited to unmarried 

 persons." (" Religion of Ancient Britons," Geo. 

 Smith, F.A.S.) 



Dean Milman again quotes Bishop Salvianus 

 in support of the character of barbarians : " The 

 Vandals, if Salvian is to be credited, maintained 

 their severe virtue, not only in Spain, but under 

 the burning sun, and amidst the utter depravity 

 of African morals, and in that state of felicity, 

 luxury and wealth which usually unmans the 

 mind. They not only held in abomination the 

 more odious and unnatural vices which had so 

 deeply infected the habits of Greece and Rome, 

 but all unlawful connexions with the female 

 sex. . . . They enforced the marriage of 

 public prostitutes, and enacted severe laws, 

 against unchastity, thus compelling the Romans 

 to be virtuous against their will." 



And now, I think I have brought sufficient evi- 

 dence in support of the argument that pain and 

 suffering, which includes physical degeneracy, 

 so far from being the result of a " rise in the 

 scale of being," are the inevitable result of a fall. 

 A fall, not in the old theological sense of the 

 term, but that each person, of either sex, falls 

 from a state of physical perfection and moral 

 purity, on the surrender of virginity, and that 

 the race has fallen through the effects of syste- 

 matic indulgence in practices of a degrading 

 nature. 



This seems to me the only way of tackling 

 the question ; we might go on for another 

 century with the application of palliatives, still 



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