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Chapter 02

The Entrepreneurial Mind: Crafting a Personal Entrepreneurial Strategy

True / False Questions

1. The psychological motivation of entrepreneurial behavior states that the

need for achievement is the need to build a relationship with others.

True False

2. In the context of psychological motivation of entrepreneurial behavior, the

need for power is the need to influence others to achieve a goal.

True False

3. In the context of entrepreneurial behavior, the need for affiliation is the need
to excel.

True False

4. Entrepreneurs motivated purely by monetary reward typically build

companies of substantial value.

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 True False

5. All successful business people share characteristics of raw energy and

intelligence.

True False

6. The third volume of the Praeger Perspectives examines people and refers to
a wide and diverse range of contextual factors that influence the
entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial process.

True False

7. Successful entrepreneurs possess a well-developed capacity to exert

influence without formal power.

True False

8. Entrepreneurs are self-starters who are internally driven by a strong desire

to compete and attain challenging goals.

True False

9. Research has shown that an entrepreneur is more driven by the

conservation of resources, whereas a manager is more opportunity-
driven.

True False

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10. Studies show a strong connection between the presence of role models
and the emergence of entrepreneurs.

True False

11. Entrepreneurs are their own bosses and completely independent.

True False

12. Successful entrepreneurs seek power and control over others.

True False

Multiple Choice Questions

13. Which of the following is defined as the need for measurable personal
accomplishment?

A.The need for achievement

B.The need for power
C.The need for affiliation
D.The need for attachment

14. Which of the following is the least characteristic motivational need of

successful entrepreneurs?

A.Achievement
B.Control
C.Power
D.Affiliation

15. Which of the following volumes of the Praeger Perspectives proceeds

through the life cycle of a new venture startup by tackling several key steps
in the course of action?

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 A.People
B.Process
C.Place
D.Plan

16. Which of the following is not an entrepreneurial attribute?

A.Being a calculated risk taker

B.Being a perfectionist
C.Being obsessed with value creation
D.Being intensely curious in the face of risk

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17. In the context of creativity, self-reliance, and adaptability, which of the
following attitudes of an entrepreneur is desirable?

A.Skepticism about conflicts and failure

B.Ability to be a lone wolf
C.Restlessness with the status quo
D.High need for status and power

18. In the troika of the foundation of a successful new venture, which of the
following is an external environmental influence?

A.Value creation
B.Ethical behavior
C.Focus
D.Adaptability

19. Successful entrepreneurs consistently focus on:

A.seizing a market-based opportunity.

B.obtaining resources.
C.networking.
D.making money.

20. When compared to an entrepreneur, a manager is more:

A.resource-driven.
B.opportunity-driven.
C.creative.
D.innovative.

21. According to research, which of the following statements about entrepreneurs

is false?

A.Many successful entrepreneurs are well educated.

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 INTRODUCTION

Age after age brings forward varying phases of thought, when some
particular facts of life are thrown into unusual prominence, such special
development of thought serving to mould the society of that generation,
giving it a special stamp, and thus advancing the progress of humanity
one step forward. Of all the ideas gradually worked out and gained as the
permanent possession of human society, the slowest in growth is the idea
of the true relations of the sexes. The instinct of sex always exists as the
indispensable condition of life and the foundation of society. It is the
strongest force in human nature. Whatever else disappears, this
continues. Undeveloped, no subject of thought, but nevertheless as the
central fire of life, Nature guards this inevitable instinct from all
possibility of destruction. But as an idea, thought out in all its wide
relations, shaped in human practice in all its ennobling influences, it is
the latest growth of civilization. In whatever concerns the subject of sex,
customs are blindly considered sacred, and evils deemed inevitable. The
mass of mankind seems moved with anger, fear, or shame, by any effort
made to consider seriously this fundamental idea. It must necessarily
come forward, however, in the progress of events, as the subject of
primary importance. As society advances, as principles of justice and
humanity become firmly established, as science and industry prepare the
way for the more perfect command of the material world, it will be found
that the time has come for the serious consideration of this first and last
question in human welfare, for the subject of sex will then present itself
as the great aid or obstacle to further progress. The gradually growing
conviction will be felt that, as it is the fundamental principle of all
society, so it is its crowning glory. In the relations of men and women
will be found the chief cause of past national decline, or the promise of
indefinite future progress.
The family, being the first simple element of society—the first natural
product of the principle of sex—the whole structure of society must
depend upon the character of that element, and the powers that can be
unfolded from it. Morality in sex will be found to be the essence of all
morality, securing principles of justice, honour, and uprightness in the
most influential of all human relations, and as it is all-important in life,
so it is all-important in the education which prepares for life. A great
social question lies, therefore, at the foundation of the moral education of
youth, and influences more or less directly each step of education. It
becomes indispensable to consider the relation of this subject to the
various stages of education, and the methods by means of which
education may guide and strengthen youth in their entrance into wider
social life.
The principles which should guide the moral education of our children
—our boys and girls—must necessarily depend upon the views which we
hold in relation to their adult life, as men and women; these views will
unavoidably determine the course of practical education. Two great
questions, therefore, naturally present themselves at the outset of every
careful consideration of moral sexual education—
1. What is the true standard for the relations of men and women—the
type which contains within itself the germ of progress or continual
development?
2. How can this standard be attained by human beings?
The endeavour to ascertain the true answer in its bearing upon the
growth of the young and the welfare of family life is the object of this
essay.
 CHAPTER I
Physiological Laws which Influence the Physical and Mental Growth
of Sex

The very gradual growth of mankind from lower to higher forms of

social life, makes the study of the relation of the sexes a very
complicated one; but a sure guide may be found in the great truths of
physiology, viewed in their broad relation to human progress, and it is on
the solid foundation of these truths that correct principles of education
must be based. The tendency of our age, in seeking truth, is to reject
theories and study facts—facts, however, on the largest and most
comprehensive scale. Every physician knows that nothing is more stupid
than routine practice; nothing more unreliable than theories unsupported
by well-observed facts; and, at the same time, nothing more misleading
than partial facts. The laws of the human constitution itself, as taught by
the most comprehensive investigations of science, must be carefully
studied. We must learn what reason, observing the facts of physiology,
lays down as the true laws which should govern the relations of men and
women—laws whose observance will secure the finest development of
our race, and serve as a guide in directing the education of our children.
The relations of human beings to each other, depend upon the nature
and requirements of individuals. It is, therefore, essential to know what
the nature of the individual human being really is; how it grows and how
it degenerates. Such knowledge must necessarily form the basis of all
true methods of education.
We find throughout Nature, that every creature possesses its peculiar
type, towards which it must tend, if it is to accomplish the purpose of its
creation. There is a capacity belonging to the original germ, which, if the
necessary conditions are presented, will lead it through the various stages
of growth and of development, to the complete attainment of this type.
This type or pattern is the true aim of the individual. With the process
by which it is reached, it constitutes its nature.
In order to determine the nature of any creature, both the type it should
attain and the steps by which alone that type can be attained, must be
taken into consideration, or we are led astray in our judgment of the
nature of the individual. Thought is often confused by a vague use of the
term ‘nature.’ The educated man is more natural than the savage,
because he approaches more nearly to the true type of man, and has
acquired the power of transmitting increased capacities to his children.
What is popularly called a state of nature, is really a state of rudimentary
life, which does not display the real nature of man, but only its imperfect
condition.
Striking instances of unusual imperfection may often be observed in
the physical structure of the individual, for there are blind as well as
intelligent forces at work, in the long and elaborate process of forming
the complete human being. Thus, sometimes we find that the
developmental process of the body goes wrong, and produces six fingers
instead of five through successive generations, or the formative power of
some organ runs blindly into excess, producing the diseased condition of
hypertrophy. Arrest of development, also, may take place at any stage of
youthful life as well as before birth, the consequence being deficiency of
organic power, or even defective organs, although in such cases growth
and repair continue, and even long life may be attained. These conditions
are not natural, because, although they exist, they are contrary to the type
of man. For the same reason the cannibal must be regarded as unnatural.
In studying the individual human type, we find some points in which it
resembles the lower animals, some points in which it differs from all
others, and some temporary phases during which it passes from the brute
type to the human. If it stop short at any stage of the regular sequence or
development, it fails in its essential object, and, although living, it is
unnatural.
When we seek for the distinguishing type of the human being—the
type for which the slow and careful elaboration of parts is necessary—
we find it in the mental, not in the physical, capacity of man. Physical
power and the perfection of physical instincts are attained by the lower
animals in a higher degree than by man. It is only when we observe the
uses and education of which the physical powers are susceptible, and the
development of which the mental powers are capable, that we perceive
the immense superiority of the human race, and recognise the type—viz.,
the true nature of man, towards the attainment of which all the elaborate
processes of growth are directed. The more carefully we examine the
intellectual growth of the lower animals, tracing the reflex movements
and instinctive actions of the invertebrata, through the intelligent mental
operations of the dog or the elephant, the more clearly we perceive the
distinguishing type of Man. This type is that union of truth and good
which we name Reason. Reason is the clear perception of the true
relation of things, and the love of their harmonious relations. It includes
judgment, conscience—all the higher intellectual and moral qualities.
Reason, with the Will to execute its dictates, is the distinguishing type
of man. It is towards this end that his faculties tend; in this consists his
peculiarity, his charter of existence. Any failure to reach this end, is as
much an arrest of development as is a case of spina bifida, or the
imperfect closure of the heart’s ventricles. We cannot judge of the Nature
of man, without the clear recognition of this distinctive type, and it is
impossible to establish sound methods of education, without constantly
keeping in view, both the true nature of man and the steps by which it
must be reached. These steps—i.e., the method by which man grows
towards his distinctive type in creation—constitute the fundamental
question in the present inquiry.
One distinguishing feature of human growth is its comparative
slowness. No animal is so helpless during its infancy, none remains so
long in a state of complete dependence on its parents. During the first
few years, the child is quite unable either to procure its own food, or to
keep itself from accidents, and it attains neither its complete bodily nor
mental development, until it is over twenty years of age. We find this
slow growth of faculties to be an essential condition of their excellence.
It is observed to be a law of organized existence that the higher the
degree of development to be reached, the slower are the processes
through which it is attained, and the longer is its period of dependence on
parental aid.
The forces employed in the elaboration of the human being, differ in
their manifestation at various stages of its growth. There are two marked
forces to be noted, often confounded together, but important to
distinguish—viz., the power of growth and the power of development,
the former possessed throughout life, the latter at certain epochs only.
The capacity for growth and nutrition, by means of which the human
frame is built up and maintained out of the forces derived from food and
other agents, is shown until the last breath of life, by the power of repair,
which continues as long as the human being lives. All action of the
organism, every employment of muscular or nervous tissue, uses up such
tissue. The body is wasted by its own activities, and it is only by the
exact counterpoise of these two forces—disintegration and repair—that
health and life itself are maintained. In youth, in connection with very
rapid waste of tissue, exists a great excess of formative power, which
excess enables each complete organ to enlarge and consolidate itself. The
reduction of this excess of formative power to a balance with the waste
of tissue, marks the strength of adult life. Its diminution below the power
of repair marks the decline of life.
The force of development, however, is shown, not in the enlargement
and maintenance of existing parts, but in the creation of new tissues or
organs or parts of organs, so that quite new powers are added to the
individual. After birth these remarkable efforts of creative force belong
exclusively to the youth of the individual. They are chiefly marked by
dentition, by growth of the skeleton and the brain, and still more by the
addition of the generative powers. With this work of development the
adult has nothing to do; it is a burden laid especially upon the young: it is
a work as important and exclusively theirs, as child-bearing is the
exclusive work of the mother.
One of the first lessons, then, that Physiology teaches us in relation to
the healthy growth of the human being, is the slow and successive
development of the various faculties. Although the complete type of the
future man exists potentially in the infant, long time and varying
conditions are essential to its establishment, and the type will never be
attained, if the necessary time and conditions are not provided.
The second physiological fact to be noted is the order observed in
human development. The faculties grow in a certain determined order.
First, those which are needed for simple physical existence; next, those
which place the child in fuller relations with Nature; and, lastly, those
which link him to his fellows. As digestion is perfected before
locomotion, so muscular mobility and activity exist before strength,
perception before observation, affection and friendship before love. The
latest work of Nature in forming the perfect being is the gift of sexual
power. This is a work of development, not simply of growth. There are
new organs coming into existence, and the same necessary conditions of
gradual consolidation and long preparation for special work exist as in
the growth of all the organs of animal life. At the age of puberty, when
the special life of sex commences, the other organs of relation—skeleton,
muscles, brain—are still carrying on their slow process of consolidation.
‘At eighteen the bones and muscles are very immature. Portions of the
vertebræ hardly commence to ossify before the sixteenth year. After
twenty, the two thin plates on the body of the vertebræ form, completing
themselves near the thirtieth year. Consolidation of the sacrum
commences in the eighteenth year, completing after the twenty-fifth. The
processes of the ribs and of the scapula are completed by the twenty-fifth
year; those of the clavicle begin to form between eighteen and twenty;
those of the radius and ulna, of the femur, tibia, and fibula, are all
unjoined at eighteen, and not completed until twenty-five. The muscles
are equally immature; they grow in size and strength in proportion to the
bones, and it is not until twenty-five years of age, or even later, that all
epiphyses of the bones have united, and that the muscles have attained
their full growth.’[16]
As a necessary consequence of this slow order of natural growth, the
individual is injured when sufficient time for growth is not allowed, or
when faculties which should remain latent, slowly storing up strength for
the proper time of unfolding, are unduly stimulated or brought forward
too soon. The writer above quoted remarks: ‘It is not only a waste of
material, but a positive cruelty, to send lads of eighteen or twenty into
the field.’[17] The evil effect of undue stimulation to a new function is
twofold. The first effect is to divert Nature’s force from the consolidation
of faculties already fully formed, and, second, to injure the substantial
growth of the later faculty, which is thus prematurely brought forward.
Thus the child compelled to carry heavy burdens will be deformed or
stunted; the youth weighed down by intellectual labour will destroy his
digestion or injure his brain. So, if the faculty which is bestowed as the
last work of development, that which requires the longest time and the
most careful preparation for its advent—the sexual power—be brought
forward prematurely, a permanent injury is done to the individual, which
can never be completely repaired.
The marked distinction which exists between puberty and nubility
should here be noted. It is a distinction based upon the important fact that
a work of long-continued preparation takes place in the physical and
mental nature, before a new faculty enters upon its complete life. Puberty
is the age when those changes have taken place in the child’s
constitution, which make it physically possible for it to become a parent,
but when the actual exercise of such faculty is highly injurious. This
change takes place, as a general rule, from fourteen to sixteen years of
age. Nubility, on the other hand, is that period of life when marriage may
take place, without disadvantage to the individual and to the race. This
period is generally reckoned, in temperate climates, in the man at from
twenty-three to twenty-five years of age. About the age of twenty-five
commences that period of perfect manly vigour, that union of freshness
and strength, which enables the individual to become the progenitor of
vigorous offspring. The strong constitution transmitted by healthy
parents between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five indicates the
order of Nature in the growth of the human race. The interval between
these two epochs of puberty and confirmed virility, is a most important
period of rapid growth and slow consolidation. Not only is the lifelong
work of the body going on at this time, with much greater activity than
belongs to adult life—i.e., the work of calorification, nutrition, and all
that concerns the maintenance of the body during its unceasing
expenditure of mechanical and mental force—but the still more powerful
actions of development and growth are being carried on to their last and
greatest perfection. Although, as will be shown later, the influences
brought to bear upon the very young child strongly affect its later growth
in good or evil, yet this period between fourteen and twenty-five is the
most critical time of preparation for the work of adult life.
Another important fact announced by physiological observation, is the
absolute necessity of establishing a proper government of the human
faculties, by the growth of intelligent self-control. Reason, not Instinct, is
the final guide of our race. We cannot grow, as do the lower animals, by
following out the blind promptings of physical nature. From the earliest
moment of existence, intelligence must guide the infant. At first this
guiding intelligence is that of the mother, and through all the earlier
stages of life, a higher outside intelligence must continue to provide the
necessary conditions of growth, until the gradual mental development of
the child fits it for independent individual guidance. The great difficulty
of education lies in the adjustment of intelligence, for there are
antagonisms to be encountered. There is first of all to be considered the
adaptation of parental intelligence to the large proportion of
indispensable physical instinct, with which each child is endowed by
Nature. There is next the adjustment of the two intelligences, the parental
and filial. These relations are constantly changing, and the true wisdom
of education consists in meeting these changes rightly.
It is very important to observe that each new phase of life, each new
faculty, begins in the child-like way—that is to say, there is always a
large proportion of the blind, instinctive element which absolutely needs
a higher guidance. The instinctive life of the body always necessarily
exists, and, therefore, constantly strives to make itself felt. This life of
sensation will (in many different ways) obtain a complete mastery over
the individual, if Reason does not exist, and grow into a controlling
force. This danger of an undue predominance of the instinctive force is
emphatically true of the life of sex. It begins, child-like, in a tumult of
overpowering sensations—sensations and emotions which need as
wisely-arranged conditions and as high a guiding influence as does the
early life of the child. At this period of life, an adjustment of the parental
and filial intelligence is required, quite as wisely planned as in
childhood, in order to secure the gradual growth of intelligent self-
control in the young life of sex. If we do not recognise this necessity, or
fail to exercise this directing influence, we do not perceive the crowning
obligation of the older to the younger generation. However much parents
may now shrink from this obligation, and, owing to incorrect views of
sex, be really unable to exercise the kind of influence required, the
necessity for such influence, nevertheless, exists as a law of human
nature, unchangeable, rooted in the human constitution. It is Nature’s
method, that every new faculty requires intelligent control from the
outset, but only gradually can this guidance become self-control.
This necessity is seen more clearly as we continue our physiological
inquiry. The preceding considerations refer chiefly to the slow processes
by which the various parts of the body must be built up step by step,
under the guidance of outside intelligence, which furnishes the proper
conditions of physical growth. Equally certain, and within the legitimate
scope of true physiology, is the influence which the mind of the
individual exercises upon the growth of the body. This difficult half of
the subject presents itself in increasing importance as science advances.
The particular theory of mind held by individuals does not affect our
inquiry. Everyone understands the term, and gives to its influence a
certain importance. Our perception of the degree of power exercised by
the mind over the body, and the importance of that power, will
continually grow as we observe the facts around us. It is a fact of every-
day experience, that fright will make the heart beat, that anxiety will
disturb digestion, that sorrow will depress all the vital functions, whilst
happiness will strengthen them. How often does the physician see the
languid, ailing invalid converted from mental causes—through happiness
—into a bright, active being! Medical records are full of accumulated
facts showing the extent to which such mental or emotional influence
may go; how the infant has been killed when the mother has nursed it
during a fit of passion, or the hair turned gray in a single night, through
grief or fright.
We find that the mind, acting through the nervous system, affects not
only the senses and muscles—the organs of animal life, under the direct
influence of the cerebro-spinal axis—but that it may also extend its
influence to those processes of nutrition and secretion which belong to
the vegetative life of the body. Emotion can act where Will is powerless,
but a strong Will also can acquire a remarkable power over the body. It
has been remarked ‘that men who know that there is any hereditary
disease in their family, can contribute to the development of that disease,
by closely directing their attention to it, and so throwing their nervous
energy in that direction.’ It was a remark of John Hunter ‘that he could
direct a sensation to any part of his body.’
‘As in the case of other sensations, the sexual, when moderately
excited, may give rise to ideas, emotions, and desires of which the brain
is the seat, and these may react on the muscular system through the
intelligence and Will. But when inordinately excited, or when not kept in
restraint by the Will, they will at once call into play respondent
movements, which are then to be regarded as purely automatic. This is
the case in some forms of disease in the human subject, and is probably
also the ordinary mode of operation in some of the lower animals.... In
cases, however, in which this sensation is excited in unusual strength, it
may completely over-master all motives to the repression of the
propensity, and may even entirely remove the actions from volitional
control. A state of a very similar kind exists in many idiots, in whom the
sexual propensity exerts a dominant power, not because it is in itself
peculiarly strong, but because the intelligence being undeveloped it acts
without restraint or direction from the Will.’[18]
The mental power exercised by the Will over the body is strikingly
shown in the control exerted by human beings over the strongest of all
individual cravings—the craving of hunger. The exigencies of human
society have caused this tremendous power of hunger to be kept so
completely in check, that the gratification of it, except in accordance
with the established laws (of property, etc.), is considered as a crime. In
spite of the terrible temptation which the sight of food offers to a
starving man, society punishes him if he yield to it. Still stronger than the
established laws are those unwritten laws which are enforced by ‘public
opinion,’ in obedience to which, countless people in all civilized
countries suffer constant deprivation—even starving more or less slowly
to death—rather than transgress universally accepted principles, and
subject themselves to social condemnation by taking the food which does
not belong to them. Another curious and important illustration of mental
action is shown in the accumulating instances of self-deception, of
contagious hallucination, and of emotional influence acting upon the
physical and mental organizations, so strikingly depicted by Hammond
and other writers in the accounts of pretended miracles, ecstasies,
visions, etc.
Of all the organic functions, that of secretion is the one most strongly
and frequently influenced by the mind. The secretion of tears, of bile, of
milk, of saliva, may all be powerfully excited by mental stimuli, or
lessened by promoting antagonistic secretions. This influence is felt in
full force by those of the generative system, ‘which,’ writes a
distinguished author, ‘are strongly influenced by the condition of the
mind. When it is frequently and strongly directed towards objects of
passion, these secretions are increased in amount to a degree which may
cause them to be a very injurious drain on the powers of the system. On
the other hand, the active employment of the mental and bodily powers
on other objects, has a tendency to render less active, or even to check
altogether, the processes by which they are elaborated.’[19]
That the mind must possess the power of ruling this highest of the
animal functions, is evident, from its uses, and from the nature of man.
The faculty of sex comes to perfection when the mind is in full activity,
and when all the senses are in their freshest youthful vigour. Its object is
no longer confined to the individual, it is the source of social life, it is the
creator of the race. Inevitably, then, the human mind (the Emotions, the
Will) must control this function more than any other function. It assumes
a different aspect from all other functions, through its objective
character. The individual may exist without it—the race not. Every
object which addresses itself to the senses or the mind acts with peculiar
force upon this function. Either for right or for wrong, the mind is the
controlling power. The right education of the mind is the central point
from which all our efforts to help the younger generation must arise. It
will thus be seen that the standpoint of education changes in childhood
and in youth, the first period being specially concerned with the
childhood of the body or of the individual, the second period
representing more particularly the childhood of sex or of the race. In
neither childhood nor youth must either of the double elements of our
nature—mind and body—be neglected, but in childhood the body comes
first in order, in youth the mind.
The higher the character of a function and the wider its relations, the
more serious and the more numerous are the dangers to which it is
exposed. A physiologist remarks, ‘In youth the affinity of the tissues for
vital stimuli seems to be greater when the development is less complete.’
That which the strong adult may endure with comparative impunity
destroys the growing youth, whose nature, from the very necessities of
development, possesses a keener sensitiveness to all vital stimuli. This
important remark is true of mental as well as physical youth, and applies
with especial force to the prevention of the dangers of premature sexual
development. More care is needed to secure healthy, strengthening
influences for the early life of sex than for any other more simply
physical function.

In the preceding considerations, the faculty of sex has been regarded

chiefly in its individual aspect, and the principles laid down by means of
which the largest amount of health and strength can be secured for each
individual. But this half-view is entirely insufficient in considering those
physiological peculiarities of the function of sex, which must determine
the true aim of education. There are two other physiological facts to be
considered—viz., the Duality of Sex, and its Results.
The power we are now considering enters into a different category
from all other physical functions, as being, first, the faculty of two, not
of one only, and, second, as resulting in parentage. Directly a physical
function is the property of two, it belongs to a different class from those
faculties which regard solely the individual. That very fact gives it a
stamp, which requires that the relations of the two factors should be
considered. No faculty can be regarded in the light of simple self-
indulgence, which requires two for its proper exercise. The consideration
of such faculty in its imperfect condition as belonging to one-half only is
an essentially false view. It is unscientific, therefore, to regard this
exceptional faculty simply as a limited individual function, as we regard
the other powers of the human body. Its inevitable relations to man, to
woman, and to the race must always stand forth as a prominent fact in
determining the aim of education. If this be so, the moral education of
youth, with the necessary physiological guidance given to their sexual
powers, must always be influenced by a consideration of these two
inevitable physiological facts—viz., duality and parentage, and the
training of young men and women, should mould them into true relations
towards each other and towards offspring.
 The question of the hereditary transmission of qualities, of the
influence of both mind and body in determining the character of
offspring, is a question of such vital importance that it cannot be
disregarded even in the narrowest view of family welfare, and still less in
any rational view of education, which lies at the base of national
progress. This great question is still in its infancy, collected facts
comparatively few, and the immense power of future development
contained in it, hardly suspected by parents and philanthropists. We
know already that various forms of disease, physical peculiarities, and
mental qualities may all become hereditary; also that the tendency to
drunkenness and to sensuality may be transmitted as surely as the
tendency to insanity or to consumption. If we compare the mental and
moral status of women in a Mahommedan country with the
corresponding class of women in our own country, we perceive the effect
which generations of simply sensual unions have produced on the
character of the female population. The Christian idea of womanly
characteristics is entirely reversed. The term ‘woman’ has become a by-
word for untruth, irreligion, unchastity, and folly.[20]
The same observation may be made in so-called Christian countries
under Mahommedan rule, in independent countries in close proximity to
this degrading influence, and wherever the influence of unions whose
key-note is sensuality, prevails. The woman is considered morally
inferior. ‘She is man’s help, but not his helpmate. He guards and protects
her, but it is as a man guards and protects a valuable horse or dog, getting
all the service he can out of her, and rendering her in turn his half-
contemptuous protection. He uncovers her face and lets her chat with her
fellows in the courtyard, but he watches over her conduct with a jealous
conviction that she is unable to guard herself. It is a modification, yet a
development, of the Mussulman idea, and he seems to think if she has a
soul to be saved he must manage to save it for her.’[21] Everyone who has
observed society in Eastern Europe must be aware of the constant
relation existing between the prevalence of sensuality and this moral
degeneration of female character. This influence on the character is due,
not only to the customs, religion, and circumstances which form the
nation, but also to the accumulating influence of inherited qualities. The
hereditary action produces tendencies in a particular direction in the
offspring, which renders its development easier in that direction. It is
only gradually, through education and the influence of heredity in a
different direction, that the original tendency can be removed. But if all
the circumstances of life favour its development, the individual, the
family, and the nation will certainly display the result of these tendencies
in full force.
A striking illustration of this subject has been published in the report
of the New York Prison Association for 1876. An inquiry was
undertaken by one of the members of the association, to ascertain the
causes of crime and pauperism, as exhibited in a particular family or
tribe of offenders called ‘The Jukes,’ which for nearly a century has
inhabited one of the central counties of the State. The investigation is
carried back for some five or six generations, the descendants numbering
at least 1,200, and the number of persons whose biographies are
condensed and collated is not less than 709. The facts in these criminal
lives, which have grown in a century from one family into hundreds, are
arranged in the order of their occurrence and the age given at which they
took place, so that the relative importance of inherited tendencies and of
immediate influences may be measured. The study of this family shows
that the most general and potent cause, both of crime and pauperism, is
the habit of licentiousness, with its result of bastardy and neglected and
miseducated childhood. This tribe was traced back on the male side to
two sons of a hard drinker named Max, living between 1720 and 1740,
who became blind in his old age, transmitting blindness to some of his
legitimate and illegitimate children. On the female side the race goes
back to five sisters of bad character, two of whom intermarried with the
two sons of Max, the lineage of three other sisters being also traced. In
the course of the century, this family has remained an almost purely
American family, inhabiting the same region of country in one of the
finest States of the Union, largely intermarrying, and presenting an
almost unbroken record of harlotry and crime. ‘The Jukes,’ says the
report, ‘are not an exceptional race; analogous families may be found in
every county of the State.’[22]
Conspicuous facts such as these, display in a striking manner the
indubitable influence of mind in the exercise of the highest—the parental
—function. We see as a positive fact that mental or moral qualities quite
as much as physical peculiarities, tend to reproduce themselves in
children. The mental quality or character of the parent must then be
considered physiologically, as a positive element in the parental relation;
thought, emotion, sensation, are all mental qualities. In human unions
this great fact must be borne in mind. Any sneer at ‘sentiment’ proceeds
from ignorance of facts. Happiness is as vivifying as sunshine, and is a
potent element in the formation of a child. Hence arises the necessity of
love between parents—love, the mental element, as distinguished from
the simple physical instinct.
To understand the true relations of men and women in their bearing
upon the race (relations which must determine the moral aim of
education) the duality of sex and the peculiarity of the womanly
organization must be recognised. Woman, having a special work to
perform in family life, has special requirements and sharpened
perceptions in relation to this work. She demands the constant presence
of affection, an affection which alone can draw forth full response, and
she possesses a perception which is almost a special instinct for detecting
coldness or untruthfulness in the husband’s mental attitude towards her.
The presence of unvarying affection has a real, material, as well as a
moral power on the body and soul of a woman. Indifference or neglect is
instantly felt. Sorrow, loneliness, jealousy, all constantly depressing
emotions, exercise a powerful and injurious effect upon the sources of
vital action. This physiological truth and the necessity of securing the
full assent of the mother in the joint creation of superior offspring, are
important facts bearing on the character and happiness of one-half of the
human race, and influencing through that half the quality of offspring.
These facts have not yet received the attention which so weighty a
subject demands.
In pursuing the physiological inquiry, we are met by one remarkable
fact which it is impossible to ignore, and which remains from age to age
as a guide to the human race. This guide is found in the physiological
fact of the equality in the birth of the sexes. This is a clear indication of
the intention of Providence in relation to sexual union, a proof of the
fundamental nature of the family group. Boys and girls are born in equal
numbers all over the world, wherever our means of observation have
extended, a slight excess of boys alone existing. Sadler writes: ‘The near
equality in the birth of the sexes is an undoubted fact; it extends
throughout Europe and wherever we have the means of accurate
observation, the birth-rate being in the proportion of twenty-five boys to
twenty-four girls.’[23] The injurious inequality which we so often find in
a population is not Nature’s law, but is evidence of our social stupidity. It
proves our sin against God’s design in the existence of brutal wars and
our careless squandering of human life. All rational efforts for the
improvement of society must be based upon Nature’s true intention—
viz., the equality of the sexes in birth and in duration of life, not upon the
false condition of inequality produced by our own ignorance. It is
essential always to bear in mind this distinction between the permanent
fact and the temporary phenomenon.

The foregoing facts illustrate fundamental physiological truths. They

show the Type of creation towards which the human constitution tends
and the distinctive methods of growth by which that type must be
reached. In brief recapitulation, these truths are the following—viz., the
slowness of human growth; the successive development of the human
faculties; the injury caused by subverting the natural order of growth; the
necessity of governing this order of growth by the control of Reason; the
influence of Mind—i.e., Thought, Emotion, Will—on the development
or condition of our organization; the necessity of considering the dual
character of sex; the transmission of qualities by parents to their
children; the natural equality in the creation of the sexes.
These truths, which are of universal application to human beings,
furnish a Physiological Guide, showing the true laws of sex, in relation
to human progress. We find that the laws of physiology point in one
practical direction—viz., to the family—as the only institution which
secures their observance; they show the necessity of the self-control of
chastity in the young man and the young woman, as the only way to
secure the strong mental and physical qualities requisite in the parental
relation, whilst they also prove the special influence exerted by mutual
love in the great work of Maternity. The preparation, therefore, of youth
for family life should be the great aim of their sexual education.
Experience as well as Reason confirms the direct and indirect teaching
of Physiology; they both point to the natural family group as the element
out of which a healthy society grows. It is only in the family that the
necessary conditions for this growth exist. The healthy and constantly
varying development of children naturally constitutes the warmest
interest of parents. Brothers and sisters are invaluable educators of one
another; they are unique associates, creating a species of companionship
that no other relation can supply. To enjoy this interest, to create this
young companionship, to form this healthy germ of society, marriage
must be unitary and permanent. A constantly deepening satisfaction
should exist, arising from the steady growth together through life, from
the identity of interest and from the strength of habit. Still farther we
learn that such union should take place in the early period of complete
adult life. Children should be the product of the first fresh vigour of
parents. Everything that exhausts force or defers its freshest exercise is
injurious to the Race. Customs of society or incorrect opinions which
obstruct the union of men and women in their early vigour, which impair
the happiness of either partner, or prevent the strong and steady growth
of their union, impair their efficacy as parents, and are fatal to the
highest welfare of our Race.
 CHAPTER II
Social Results of Neglecting these Physiological Laws

The wide bearing and importance of the truths derived from

physiology will become more and more apparent, as we examine another
branch of the subject, and ascertain from an observation of facts around
us, how far the present relations of men and women in civilized
countries, are based upon sound principles of physiology. It is necessary
to know how far these principles are understood and carried out from
infancy onward, whether efforts for the improvement of the race are
moulded by physiological methods of human growth, and what are the
inevitable consequences which result from departure from these
principles.
According to a rational and physiological view of life, the family
should be cherished as the precious centre of national welfare; every
custom, therefore, which tends to support the dignity of the family and
which prepares our youth for this life, is of vital importance to a nation.
Thus the slow development of the sexual faculties by hygienic regime,
by the absence of all unnatural stimulus to these propensities, by the
constant association of boys and girls together, under adult influence, in
habitual and unconscious companionship, the cultivation in the child’s
mind of a true idea of manliness and the perception that self-command is
the distinctive peculiarity of the human being, are the ordinary and
natural conditions which rational physiology requires. On the contrary,
every custom which insults the family and unfits for its establishment,
which degrades the natural nobility of human sex, which sneers at it and
treats this great principle with flippancy, which tends to kill its Divine
essence, all such influences and such customs are a great crime against
society, and directly opposed to the teaching of rational physiology.
An extended view of social facts, not only in different classes of our
own society, but also in those countries with which we are nearly related,
is of the utmost value to the parent. Physiological knowledge would be
valueless to the mass of mankind, if its direct bearing upon the character
and happiness of a nation could not be shown. So in considering the
sexual education of youth according to the light of sound physiology, the
social influences which affect the natural growth of the human being are
an important part of applied physiology.
 The tendencies of civilization must be studied in our chief cities. The
rapid growth of large towns during the last half-century and the
comparatively stationary condition of the country population show where
the full and complete results of those principles which are most active in
our civilization must be sought for. London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, New
York, are not exceptions, but examples. They show the mature results
towards which smaller towns are tending. Those who live in quiet
country districts often flatter themselves that the rampant vice of large
towns has nothing to do with villages, small communities, and the
country at large. This is a delusion. The condition of large towns has a
direct relation to the country.
In these focal points of civilization we observe, as examples of sexual
relationship, two great institutions existing side by side—two institutions
in direct antagonism—viz., Marriage and Prostitution, the latter steadily
gaining ground over the former.
In examining these two institutions, the larger signification of
licentiousness must be given to prostitution, applicable to men and
women. Marriage is the recognised union of two, sharing
responsibilities, providing for and educating a family. Prostitution is the
indiscriminate union of many, with no object but physical gratification,
with no responsibilities, and no care for offspring. It is essential to study
the effects, both upon men and women and upon mankind at large, of
this great fact of licentiousness, if we are to appreciate the true laws of
sexual union in their full force, and the aims, importance, and wide
bearing of Moral Education. We shall only here refer to its effects upon
the young.
We may justly speak of licentiousness as an institution. It is
considered by a large portion of society as an essential part of itself. It
possesses its code of written and unwritten laws, its sources of supply, its
various resorts, from the poorest hovel to the gaudiest mansion, its
endless grade, from the coarsest and most ignorant to the refined and
cultivated. It has its special amusements and places of public resort. It
has its police, its hospitals, its prisons, and it has its literature. The
organized manner in which portions of the press are engaged in
promoting licentiousness, reaching, not thousands, but millions of
readers, is a fact of weighty importance. The one item of vicious
advertisements falls into distinct categories of corruption. Growing,
therefore, as it does, constantly and rapidly, licentiousness becomes a
fact of primary importance in society. Its character and origin must be
studied by all who take an interest in the growth of the human race, and
who believe in the maintenance of marriage, and the family, as the
foundation of human progress.
Everyone who has studied life in many civilized countries, and the
literature reflecting that life, will observe the antagonism of these two
institutions: the recognition of the greater influence of the mistress than
the wife, the constant triumph of passion over duty and deep, steady
affection. We see the neglect of the home for the café, the theatre, the
public amusement; the consequent degradation of the home into a place
indispensable as a nursery for children, and for the transaction of
common, every-day matters, a place of resort for the accidents of life, for
growing old in, for continuing the family name, but too tedious a place to
be in much, to spend the evening and really live in. Enjoyments are
sought for elsewhere. The charm of society, the keener interests of life,
no longer centre in the household. It is a domestic place, more or less
quiet, but no home in the true sense of the word. The true home can only
be formed by father and mother, by their joint influence on one another,
on their children, and on their friends. The narrow, one-sided,
diminishing influence of Continental homes amongst great masses of the
population, from absence of due paternal care, is a painful fact to
witness. That there are beautiful examples of domestic life to be found in
every civilized country—homes where father and mother are one in the
indispensable unity of family life—no one will deny who has closely
observed foreign society. Indeed, any nation is in the stage of rapid
dissolution where the institution of the family is completely and
universally degraded; but the preceding statement is a faithful
representation of the general tone and tendencies of social life in many
parts of the Continent. That the same fatal principles, leading to the like
results, are at work both in England and America will be seen as we
proceed. Licentiousness may be considered as still in its infancy with us,
when compared with its universal prevalence in many parts of the
Continent; but it is growing in our own country with a rapidity which
threatens fatal injury to our most cherished institution, the pure Christian
home, with its far-reaching influences, an institution which has been the
foundation of our national greatness.
The results of licentiousness should be especially considered in their
effects upon the youth of both sexes, of both the richer and poorer
classes; also in their bearing upon the institution of marriage and upon
the race. In all these aspects it enters into direct relation with the family,
and no one who values the family, with the education which it should
secure, can any longer afford to ignore what so intimately affects its best
interests. It is to the first branch of the subject that reference will here be
chiefly made.
The first consideration is the influence exerted by social arrangements
and tone of thought upon our boys and young men as they pass out of the
family circle into the wider circles of the world, into school, college,
business, society. What are the ideas about women that have been
gradually formed in the mind of the lad of sixteen, by all that he has
seen, heard, and read during his short but most important period of life?
What opinions and habits, in relation to his own physical and moral
nature, have been impressed upon him? How have our poorer classes of
boys been trained in respect to their own well-being, and to association
with girls of their own class? What has been the influence of the habits
and companionships of that great middle-class multitude, clerks,
shopkeepers, mechanics, farmers, soldiers, etc.? What books and
newspapers do these boys read, what talk do they hear, what interests or
amusements do they find in the theatre, the tavern, the streets, the home,
and the church? What has been the training of the lad of the upper class
—that class, small in number but great in influence, which, being lifted
above any sordid pressure of material care, should be the spiritual leader
of the classes below them—a class which has ten talents committed to it,
and which inherits the grand old maxim, Noblesse oblige? How have all
these lads been taught to regard womanhood and manhood? What is their
standard of manliness? What habits of self-respect and of the noble uses
of sex have been impressed upon their minds? Throughout all classes,
abundant temptation to the abuse of sex exists. Increasing activity is
displayed in the exercise of human ingenuity for the extension and
refinement of vice. Shrewdness, large capital, business enterprise, are all
enlisted in the lawless stimulation of this mighty instinct of sex.
Immense provision is made for facilitating fornication; what direct
efforts are made for encouraging chastity?
It is of vital importance to realize how small at present is the formative
influence of the individual home and of the weekly discourse of the
preacher, compared with the mighty social influences which spread with
corrupting force around the great bulk of our youth. We find, as a matter
of fact, that complete moral confusion too often meets the young man at
the outset of life. Society presents him with no fixed standard of right or
wrong in relation to sex, no clear ideal to be held steadily before him and
striven for. Religious teaching points in one direction, but practical life
points in quite a different way. The youth who has grown up from
childhood under the guardianship of really wise parents, in a true home,
with all its ennobling influences, and has been strengthened by
enlightened religious instruction, has gradually grown towards the
natural human type. He may have met the evils of life as they came to
him from boyhood onwards, first of all with the blindness of innocence,
which does not realize evil, and then with the repulsion of virtue, which
is clear-sighted to the hideous results of vice. Such a one will either pass
with healthy strength through life, or he may prove himself the grandest
of heroes if beset with tremendous temptations; or, again, he may fall,
after long and terrible struggles with his early virtue. But in the vast
majority of cases the early training through innocence into virtue is
wanting. Evil influences are at work unknown to or disregarded by the
family, and a gradual process of moral and physical deterioration in the
natural growth of sex corrupts the very young. In by far the larger ranks
of life, before the lad has grown into the young man, his notions of right
and wrong are too often obscured. He retains a vague notion that virtue is
right, but as he perceives that his friends, his relations, his widening
circle of acquaintance, live according to a different standard, his idea of
virtue recedes into a vague abstraction, and he begins to think that vice is
also right—in a certain way! He is too young to understand
consequences, to realize the fearful chain of events in the ever-widening
influence of evil acts—results which, if clearly seen, would frighten the
innocent mind by the hideousness of evil, and make the first step towards
it a crime. No one ventures to lift up a warning voice. The parent dares
not, or knows not how to enter upon this subject of vital importance.
There are no safeguards to his natural modesty; there is no wise help to
strengthen his innocence into virtue.
Here is the testimony in relation to one important class, drawn from
experience by our great English satirist: ‘And by the way, ye tender
mothers and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing that
theory of life is as orally learned at a great public school. Why, if you
could hear those boys of fourteen, who blush before mothers and sneak
off in silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among each
other, it would be the woman’s turn to blush then. Before he was twelve
years old, and while his mother fancied him an angel of candour, little
Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon certain
points; and so, madam, has your pretty little rosy-cheeked son, who is
coming home from school for the ensuing Christmas holidays. I don’t
say that the boy is lost, so that the innocence has left him which he had
from “Heaven which is our home,” but the shades of the prison-house
are closing very fast over him, and that we are helping as much as
possible to corrupt him.’ ‘Few boys,’ says the Headmaster of a large
school, ‘ever remain a month in any school, public or private, without
learning all the salient points in the physical relation of the sexes. There
are two grave evils in this unlicensed instruction: first, the lessons are
learned surreptitiously; second, the knowledge is gained from the vicious
experiences of the corrupted older boys, and the traditions handed down
by them.’
Temptations meet the lad at every step. From childhood onward, an
unnatural forcing process is at work, and he is too often mentally
corrupted, whilst physically unformed. This mental condition tends to
hasten the functions of adult life into premature activity. As already
stated, an important period exists between the establishment of puberty
and confirmed virility. In the unperverted youth, this space of time,
marked by the rush of new life, is invaluable as a period for storing up
the new forces needed to confirm young manhood and fit it for the
healthy exercise of its important social functions. The very indications of
Nature’s abundant forces at the outset of life, are warnings that this new
force must not be stimulated, that there is danger of excessive and hasty
growth in one direction, danger of hindering that gradual development
which alone insures strength. If at an early age, thought and feeling have
been set in the right direction, and aids to virtue and to health surround
the young man, then this period of time, before his twenty-fifth year, will
lead him into a strong and vigorous manhood. But where the mind is
corrupted, the imagination heated, and no strong love of virtue planted in
the soul, the individual loses the power of self-control, and becomes the
victim of physical sensation and suggestion. When this condition of
mental and physical deterioration has been produced, it is no longer
possible for him to resist surrounding temptations. There are dangers
within and without, but he does not recognise the danger. He is young,
eager, filled with that excess of activity in blood and nerve, with which
Nature always nourishes her fresh creative efforts.
At this important stage of life, when self-control, hygiene, mental and
moral influence, are of vital importance, the fatal results of his weakened
will and a corrupt society, ensue. Opportunity tempts his wavering
innocence, thoughtless or vicious companions undertake to ‘form’ him,
laugh at his scruples, sneer at his conscience, excite him with
allurements. Or a deadly counsel meets him—meets him from those he is
bound to respect. The most powerful morbid stimulant that exists—a
stimulant to every drop of his seething young blood—is advised viz., the
resort to prostitutes. When this fatal step has been taken, when the
natural modesty of youth and the respect for womanhood is broken
down, when he has broken with the restraints of family life, with the
voice of Conscience, with the dictates of religion, a return to virtue is
indeed difficult—nay, often impossible. He has tasted the physical
delights of sex, separated from its more exquisite spiritual joys. This
unnatural divorce degrades whilst it intoxicates him. Having tasted these
physical pleasures, often he can no more do without them than the
drunkard without his dram. He ignorantly tramples under foot his
birthright of rich, compound, infinite human love, enthralled by the
simple limited animal passion. His Will is no longer free. He has
destroyed that grand endowment of Man, that freedom of the youthful
Will, which is the priceless possession of innocence and of virtue, and
has subjected himself to the slavery of lust. He is no longer his own
master; he is the servant of his passions. Those whose interest it is to
retain their victim employ every art of drink, of dress, of excess, to urge
him on. The youthful eagerness of his own nature lends itself to these
arts. The power of resistance is gradually lost, until one glance of a
prostitute’s eye passing in the street, one token of allurement, will often
overturn his best resolutions and outweigh the wisest counsel of friends!
The physiological ignorance and moral blindness which actually lead
some parents to provide a mistress for their sons, in the hope of keeping
them from houses of public debauchery, is an effort as unavailing as it is
corrupt. Place a youth on the wrong course instead of on the right one,
lead him into the career of sensual indulgence and selfish disregard for
womanhood instead of into manly self-control, and the parent has, by his
own act, launched his child into the current of vice, which rapidly hurries
him beyond his control.
The evils resulting from a violation of Nature’s method of growth by a
life of early dissipation are both physical and mental or moral. In some
organizations the former, in some the latter, are observable in the most
marked degree; but no one can escape either the physical deterioration or
the mental degradation which results from the irrational and unhuman
exercise of the great endowment of sex.
 Amongst the physical evils the following may be particularly noted.
The loss of self-control, reacting upon the body, produces a morbid
irritability (always a sign of weakness) which is a real disease, subjecting
the individual to constant excitement and exhaustion from slight causes.
The resulting physical evils may be slow in revealing themselves,
because they only gradually undermine the constitution. They do not
herald themselves in the alarming manner of a fever or a convulsion, but
they are not to be less dreaded from their masked approach. The chief
forms of physical deterioration are nervous exhaustion, impaired power
of resistance to epidemics or other injurious influences, and the
development of those germs of disease, or tendencies to some particular
form of disease, which exist in the majority of constitutions. The brain
and spinal marrow and the lungs are the vital organs most frequently
injured by loose life. But whatever be the weak point of the constitution,
from inherited or acquired morbid tendencies, that will probably be the
point through which disease or death will enter.
One of the most distinguished hygienists of our age writes thus: ‘The
pathological results of venereal excess are now well known. The gradual
derangements of health experienced by its victims are not at first
recognised by them, and physicians may take the symptoms to be the
beginning of very different diseases. How often symptoms are
considered as cases of hypochondria or chronic gastritis, or the
commencement of heart disease, which are really the results of
generative abuse! A general exhaustion of the whole physical force,
symptoms of cerebral congestion, or paralysis, attributed to some
cerebrospinal lesion, are often due to the same causes. The same may be
said of some of the severest forms of insanity. Many cases of
consumption appearing in young men who suffer from no hereditary
tendency to the disease enter into the same category. So many diseases
are vainly treated by medicine or regime which are really caused by
abuse of these important functions.’[24] Another of our oldest surgeons
writes: ‘Among the passions of the future man which at this period
should be strictly restrained is that of physical love, for none wars so
completely against the principles which have been already laid down as
the most conducive to long life; no excess so thoroughly lessens the sum
of the vital power, none so much weakens and softens the organs of life,
none is more active in hastening vital consumption, and none so totally
prohibits restoration. I might, if it were necessary, draw a painful—nay, a
frightful—picture of the results of these melancholy excesses, etc.’[25]
Volumes might be filled with similar medical testimony on the
destructive character of early licentiousness.
Striking testimony to the destructive effects of vice in early manhood
is derived from a very different source—viz., the strictly business
calculation of the chances of life, furnished by Life Insurance
Companies. These tables show the rapid fall in viability during the
earlier years of adult life. Dr. Carpenter has reproduced a striking
diagram[26] from the well-known statistician Quetelet, showing the
comparative viability of men and women at different ages, and its rapid
diminution in the male from the age of eighteen to twenty-five. He
remarks: ‘The mortality is much greater in males from about the age of
eighteen to twenty-eight, being at its maximum at twenty-five, when the
viability is only half what it is at puberty. This fact is a very striking one,
and shows most forcibly that the indulgence of the passions not only
weakens the health, but in a great number of instances is the cause of a
very premature death.’[27] Dr. Bertillon (a well-known French
statistician) has shown by the statistics of several European countries that
the irregularities of unmarried life produce disease, crime, and suicide;
that the rate of mortality in bachelors of twenty-five is equal to that of
married men at forty-five; that the immoral life of the unmarried and the
widowed, whether male or female, ages them by twenty years and more.
Many of the foreign health resorts are filled with young men of the
richer classes of society, seeking to restore the health destroyed by
dissipation. Could the simple truth be recorded on the tombstones of
multitudes of precious youth, from imperial families downward, who are
mourned as victims of consumption, softening of the brain, etc., all
lovers of the race would stand appalled at the endless record of these
wasted lives. ‘Died from the effects of fornication’ would be the true
warning voice from these premature graves.
The moral results of early dissipation are quite as marked as the
physical evils. The lower animal nature gains ever-increasing dominion
over the moral life of the individual. The limited nature of all animal
enjoyments produces its natural effects. First there is the eager search
after fresh stimulants, and as the boundaries of physical enjoyment are
necessarily reached, come in common sequence, disappointment,
disgust, restlessness, dreariness, or bitterness. The character of the
mental deterioration differs with the difference of original character in
the individual, as in the nation. In some we observe an increasing
hardness of character, growing contempt for women, with low material
views of life. In others there is a frivolity of mind induced, a constant
restlessness and search for new pleasures. The frankness, heartiness, and
truthfulness of youth gradually disappear under the withering influence.
[28]

The moral influence of vice upon social character has very wide
ramifications. This is illustrated by the immense difficulties which
women encountered in the rational endeavour to obtain a complete
medical education. Licentiousness, with all its attendant results, is the
great social cause of these difficulties.
The dominion of lust is necessarily short-sighted, selfish, or cruel. Its
action is directly opposed to the qualities of truth, trust, self-command,
and sympathy, thus sapping the foundations of personal morality. But
apart from the individual evils above referred to, licentiousness
inevitably degrades society, firstly, from the disproportion of vital force
which is thus thrown into one direction, and, secondly, from the
essentially selfish and ungenerous tendency of vice, which, seeking its
own limited gratification at the expense of others, is incapable of
embracing large views of life or feeling enthusiasm for progress. The
direction into which this disproportionate vital force is thrown is a
degrading one, always tending to evil results. Thus the noble enthusiasm
of youth, its precious tide of fresh life, without which no nation can grow
—life whose leisure hours should be given to science and art, to social
good, to ennobling recreation—is squandered and worse than wasted in
degrading dissipation.
This dissipation, which is ruin to man, is also a curse to woman, for, in
judging the effects of licentiousness upon society, it must never be
forgotten that this is a vice of two, not a vice of one. Injurious as is its
influence upon the young man, that is only one-half of its effect. What is
its influence upon the young woman? This question has a direct bearing
on the Moral Aim of Education. The preceding details of physical and
moral evils resulting to young men from licentiousness will apply with
equal force to young women subjected to similar influences. One sex
may experience more physical evil, the other more mental degradation,
from similar vicious habits; but the evil, if not identical, is entirely
parallel, and a loss of truthfulness, honour, and generosity accompanies
the loss of purity.
 The women more directly involved in this widespread evil of
licentiousness are the women of the poorer classes of society. The poorer
classes constitute in every country the great majority of the people; they
form its solid strength and determine its character. The extreme danger of
moral degradation in those classes of young women who constitute such
an immense preponderance of the female population is at once evident.
These women are everywhere, interlinked with every class of society.
They form an important part (often the larger female portion) of every
well-to-do household. They are the companions and inevitable teachers
of infancy and childhood. They often form the chief or only female
influence which meets the young man in early professional, business, or
even college life. They meet him in every place of public amusement, in
his walks at night, in his travels at home and abroad. By day and by night
the young man away from home is brought into free intercourse, not with
women of his own class, but with poor working girls and women, who
form the numerical bulk of the female population, who are found in
every place and ready for every service. Educated girls are watched and
guarded. The young man meets them in rare moments only, under
supervision, and generally under unnatural restraint; but the poor girl he
meets constantly, freely, at any time and place. Any clear-sighted person
who will quietly observe the way in which female servants, for instance,
regard very young men who are their superiors in station, can easily
comprehend the dangers of such association. The injustice of the
common practical view of life is only equalled by its folly. This practical
view utterly ignores the fact of the social influence and value of this
portion of society. The customs of civilized nations practically consider
poor women as subjects for a life so dishonourable, that a rich man feels
justified in ostracizing wife, sister, or daughter who is guilty of the
slightest approach to such life. It is the great mass of poor women who
are regarded as (and sometimes brutally stated to be) the subjects to be
used for the benefit of the upper classes. Young and innocent men, it is
true, fall into vice, or are led into it, or are tempted into it by older
women, and are not deliberate betrayers. But the rubicon of chastity once
passed, the moral descent is rapid, and the preying upon the poor soon
commences. The miserable slaves in houses of prostitution are the
outcasts of the poor. The young girls followed at night in the streets are
the honest working girl, the young servant seeking a short outdoor relief
to her dreary life, as well as the unhappy fallen girl, who has become in
her turn the seducer. If fearful of health, the individual leaves the
licensed slaves of sin and the chance associations of the streets, it is
amongst the poor and unprotected that he seeks his mistress:—the young
seamstress, the pretty shop girl, the girl with some honest employment,
but poor, undefended, needing relief in her hard-working life. It is
always the poor girl that he seeks. She has no pleasures, he offers them;
her virtue is weak, he undermines it; he gains her affection and betrays it,
changes her for another and another, leaving each mistress worse than he
found her, farther on in the downward road, with the guilt of fresh injury
from the strong to the weak on his soul. Any reproach of conscience—
conscience which will speak when an innocent girl has been betrayed, or
one not yet fully corrupted has been led farther on in evil life—is quieted
by the frivolous answer: ‘They will soon marry in their own class.’ If,
however, this sin be regarded in its inevitable consequences, its effects
upon the life of both man and woman in relation to society, the nature of
this sophistry will appear in its hideous reality. Is chastity really a virtue,
something precious in womanhood? Then, the poor man’s home should
be blessed by the presence of a pure woman. Does it improve a woman’s
character to be virtuous? Has she more self-respect in consequence?
Does she care more for her children, for their respectability and welfare,
when she is conscious of her own honest past life? Does she love her
husband more, and will she strive to make his home brighter and more
attractive to him, exercising patience in the trials of her humble life,
being industrious, frugal, sober, with tastes that centre in her home?
These are vital questions for the welfare of the great mass of the people,
and consequently of society and of the nation.
We know, on the contrary, as a fundamental truth, that unchastity
unfits a woman for these natural duties. It fosters her vanity, it makes her
slothful or reckless, it gives her tastes at variance with home life, it
makes her see nothing in men but their baser passions, and it converts
her into a constant tempter of those passions—a corrupter of the young.
We know that drunkenness, quarrels, and crimes have their origin in the
wretched homes of the poor, and the centre of those unhappy homes is
the unchaste woman, who has lost the restraining influence of her own
self-respect, her respect for others, and her love of home. When a pretty,
vain girl is tempted to sin, a wife and mother is being ruined, discord and
misery are being prepared for a poor man’s home, and the circumstances
created out of which criminals grow. Nor does the evil stop there. It
returns to the upper classes. Nurses, servants, bring back to the
respectable home the evil associations of their own lives. The children of
the upper classes are thus corrupted, and the path of youth is surrounded
at every step with coarse temptations. These consequences may not be
foreseen when the individual follows the course of evil customs, but the
sequence of events is inevitable, and every man gives birth to a fresh
series of vice and misery when he takes a mistress instead of a wife.[29]
The deterioration of character amongst the women of the working
classes is known to all employers of labour, to all who visit amongst the
poor, to every housekeeper. The increasing difficulty of obtaining
trustworthy domestic servants is now the common experience of
civilized countries. In England, France, Germany, and the larger towns of
America, it is a fact of widespread observation, and has become a source
of serious difficulty in the management of family life. The deepest
source of this evil lies in the deterioration of womanly character
produced by the increasing spread of habits of licentiousness. The action
of sex, though taking different directions, is as powerful in the young
woman as in the young man; it needs as careful education, direction, and
restraint. This important physiological truth, at present quite overlooked,
must nevertheless be distinctly recognised. This strong mental instinct, if
yielded to in a degrading way (as is so commonly the case in the poorer
classes of society), becomes an absorbing influence. Pride and pleasure
in work, the desire to excel, loyalty to duty, and the love of truth in its
wide significance, are all subordinated, and gradually weakened, by the
irresistible mastery of this new faculty. In all large towns the lax tone of
companions, the difficulty in finding employment, the horrible cupidity
of those who pander to corrupt social sentiment and ensnare the young—
all these circumstances combined render vice much easier than virtue—a
state of society in which vice must necessarily extend and virtue
diminish. We thus find an immense mass of young women gradually
corrupted from childhood, rendered coarse and reckless, the modesty of
girlhood destroyed, the reserve of maidenhood changed to bold, often
indecent, behaviour. No one accustomed to walk freely about our streets,
to watch children at play, to observe the amusements and free gatherings
of the poorer classes, can fail to see the signs of degraded sex. The
testimony of home missionaries, of those experienced in Benevolent
Societies and long engaged in various ways in helping women, as well as
the Reports of Rescue Societies, all testify to the dangerous increase and
lamentable results of unchastity amongst the female population.
We observe in all countries a constant relation also between the
prevalence of licentiousness and degradation of female labour; the action
and reaction of these two evil facts is invariable. In Paris we see the