CHAPTER XXXVI

CONTINENCE

It has been several months now since we had our last confidential talk. Many changes have taken place in your body and mind during these months. You have been inclined to be more with large boys and young men and this is due to the changes that are going on. With the coming months you will have less the feelings of the boy and more the feelings of the man.

=The two forms of incontinence.=--I have been anxious to have a talk with you on the subject of continence. By this word as applied to young men, we mean abstinence from all voluntary sexual gratification. Having given you talks on the subject of the “solitary vice,” which is one form of sexual gratification, I will now talk with you about the other form of incontinence, cohabitation or sexual relation with women.

=A false idea.=--There is a widely prevailing idea among young men that they must gratify their sexual desire in some way, and that if they do not they will lose their reproductive power, or their ability to become fathers. They have an idea that sexual gratification is essential to sexual and physical health, mental development and manliness. They think young men are weak-minded and incapable who do not gratify themselves in one of these two ways. Where did they get this idea?

=The wrong application of biological law.=--They will tell you that doctors teach that young men should gratify themselves. They will tell you then that the non-use of an organ will lead to the loss of its function. The illustration they use is, “If the arm be kept in a sling for a year, one will find he has lost the use of his arm for several days. If the arm should be kept in a sling for ten years, he would likely lose the use of his arm for life and the arm would wither; therefore, if a young man should live a continent life for ten years, his sexual organs would atrophy and he would lose his powers of fatherhood.”

=No reliable physician holds to the sexual necessity theory.=--In reply to these arguments, no intelligent and reliable physician to-day teaches sex necessity. Some ignorant, unreliable, “quack” doctor occasionally tells a young man that his physical, mental and sexual strength will be ruined unless he indulges in sexual gratification. This young man will tell twenty young men what he has learned and each of these will tell twenty others. It is in this way that so many young men get the idea that doctors advise sexual indulgence.

=Continence does not destroy virility.=--Ten years, twenty years, or even more, of absolute continent living will no more cause a man to lose his virility than twenty years of absence from nursing a child will destroy the function of lactation in a woman.

=Only the unreliable doctors advocate sexual necessity.=--In every profession of men there are some fakes. This is as true of the medical profession as it is of other professions. In all large cities and in many small towns there are ignorant, unreliable and unscrupulous doctors. In almost every State, I have had young men to tell me that they have been advised by doctors to visit the prostitute. Such frauds are a great social and moral misfortune to any community. The high-minded, capable, honorable doctors all advocate continence for young men. They are real friends to young men. Even the young man who has made his mistakes will find the advice and treatment of this class of doctors to be far the safest and cheapest in the end.

=Unanswerable arguments.=--It is not an uncommon occurrence to hear some very prominent citizen advocate the necessity for a few public characters in every community to conserve the health of young men by ministering to their sexual necessity and in this way protecting the virtue of innocent girls and respectable women.

The test of sincerity and honesty of a man who claims to believe in foreign missions, is his willingness to go, to allow his child to go, or to help support those who do go as missionaries. The test of the sincerity and honesty of a man who advocates the necessity for the immoral woman, is his willingness to contribute a mother, wife, sister, or daughter to the philanthropic interest of masculine health and the safeguarding of innocent girls and respectable women. If he is not willing to make this contribution he is not honest and not sincere when he advocates public prostitution.

If public prostitution protects innocent girls and respectable women from the abnormal man, cases of rape and seduction would occur most frequently where there are no lewd women. But the reverse is true. The continent young men would be guilty of committing all the assaults on female virtue. But it is the incontinent men who commit all the crimes of this kind.

If the social evil is a necessity and the immoral woman protects the virtue of the innocent girls and virtuous wives, is she not a benefactor? Who is engaged in a more commendable, philanthropic or Christian service? Then why should she be treated as an outcast? Should she not be invited as a guest of honor at our social functions? Should she not sing in the choir, or sit in a front pew in the most aristocratic church?

The pugilist and athlete, in their training for special tests of strength, endurance, and skill, abstain for long periods from all sexual gratification.

It is by living a continent life that the lower animals, unmolested by man, reach a state of physical perfection.

=Effects of incontinence upon the married life.=--An incontinent single life will naturally lead to excesses in the married life. Such young men get the idea that marriage means unlimited gratification. With these perverted views they enter and soil the sacred precincts of marriage and parentage. By marital excess, indulged in by no other animal or savage, their health is injured, their lives are shortened and their children are poorly born. This is a very common harvest reaped in the married life. Back of this harvest, and back of the sowing is ignorance.

From these facts and many others that could be had we see that absolute continence is not unnatural, but it is the only sane solution to a young man’s sex problems.