The crime of silence

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Preface

How shall we teach sex hygiene? How shall we safeguard our children from possible sex perversion or contamination? How shall we best forewarn and forearm them so that they may transmit the familjj^ blood without contamination or impurity, may pass the family name down to their children as pure as they received it?

Never before were those questions uppermost in the minds of so many fathers, mothers, preachers, teachers and people of all classes as to-day.

We are slowly awakening to their tremendous import. The age-old crime^of^lence in regard to sex matters is at last being broken. In the light of modern progressive thought it seems incomprehensible that society should so long have conspired to pass over in silence this vital subject, thus, year after year, exposing millions of our youths to the frightful dangers flowing from ignorance of it. Probably the xii Preface statement of a recent physician writer in this connection is not exaggerated. "Pick out any ten men you meet in the street/* he says, ''and at least nine will be suffering from some sort of present or past immorality." / All the wa rs of histo ry have not caused any- 1 thing like the number of tragedies which have 1 been caused by this criminal silence. There is \jiothing so much needed to-day as non-prurient, scientific sexual instruction.

''If you have been upon these waters twenty-five years," said a young man to the captain of a steamer, "you must know every rock and sandbank in the river." "No, I don't," was the reply, "but I know where the deep water is."

It is not so much the object of the author of this book to make a chart of the dangers to be avoided in life's voyage as to mark out a course that is sane and safe.

It is sent forth as a beacon, in the hope that it will be the means of guiding voyagers away from the sex rocks and reefs on which unnumbered j^ouths have been wrecked in the past because they were not safeguarded by the light of self-knowledge.

i

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

,/l Purity is Power 1

II The Crime of Silence 19

Chapter I

My strength is as the strength of ten. Because my heart is pure. — -Alfred Tennyson.

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would

By her own radiant light, though sun and moon

Were in the flat sea sunk. — John Milton.

A LEADING lawyer and public official in the Sandwich Islands overturned a lighted lamp on his hand and was amazed to find that the blazing oil caused no paiuo On examination he was horrified to discover that he was a leper.

In its early stages moral leprosy causes no physical pain. On the contrary, its insidiousness lies in the very fact that it gives its victim gross, sensual pleasure. While titillating the lower animal nature, it gradually tends to numb the spiritual, to blot out the image of the Divine in man. As opium deadens the physical sensibilities, so sexual impurity, while treacherously undermining the body, deadens the moral sensibilities, and soothes the wrongdoer into unconsciousness of his peril.

There is a profound philosophy in the lines which Tennyson puts into the mouth of the stainless young knight, Sir Galahad, —

My strength is as the strength of ten. Because my heart is pure.

Purity strengthens ; impurity weakens. One is constructive; the other is destructive. Purity builds up; impurity tears down.

Purity is power because it means integrity of thought, integrity of conduct. It means wholeness. The impure man can not be a great power because he can not thoroughly believe in himself when conscious that he is rotten in any part of his nature. Impurity works like a leaven: it affects everything in a man. The very consciousness that impurity is working within him robs him of power. He may prosper for a time, but there is a canker at work in his nature which ultimately destroys him.

In every realm of life, — the physical, moral, mental, intellectual, — there is no more practical, necessary, health-preserving, success-assuring command than ''Keep thyself pure." It is the youth's greatest commandment. Do not listen to those who tell you that "vice is a necessity." Nothing is a necessity that is wrong. All wickedness is weakness. Vice and vigor have nothing whatever in common. Purity is strength, health, power, character. It is the divinity in man. ''Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" should have been translated "for they do see God."

It is only the pure in heart who can see God, or the divine in man. "A pure heart is the end of all religion, and the beginning of divinity." Impurity, on the other hand, forms a scale upon our eyes, covers the spiritual vision with a curtain, blinding us to all that is pure, clean and lovely. It draws a veil between man and his Creator. It shuts the door between its victim and his God, so that he no longer sees or appreciates divine qualities.

Purity of life means, for man no less than for woman, physical and moral health. It means efficiency, harmony of faculties, increased self-confidence. It means courage as lagainst cowardice, a positive as against a negative mind. It means initiative, force, instead of imitation, dependence.

No one not familiar with the facts knows the fearful mental effects of the violation and abuse of the sex function. There is no other thing that so affects the mind as the consciousness that there is something wrong with the sex life. Thousands of people have committed suicide because of the mental depression caused by the consciousness of contracting a sexual disease which they thought incurable. A young man once came to me for advice with a revolver in his pocket, and told me that unless I could give him encouragement or tell him where he could get relief he would end it all then and there.

Everything in the human organism shows that purity, cleanliness and right living in every form are not only entirely normal and natural, but are absolutely imperative to human integrity, for everywhere that sexual impurity has been introduced into society, a terrible curse has followed. Demoralization, deterioration, tragedy and death of all that is highest and noblest in humanity are its legitimate fruits. Immorality, impurity, always and everywhere blights, blasts, deadens. It is the great curse of the race.

On the other hand, to be superbly sexed, without hereditary taint or acquired sex abuse or misuse, means more than anything else to the individual. Nothing else will contribute so much to mental virihty, to creative power of the brain, as consciousness of sexual integrity and sexual virility, which awakens, enriches, and vitalizes all the faculties, and develops the creative energy which renews the whole nature.

It is the law that any human function whose normal, direct exercise is for any reason denied will be transmuted through other channels into general life force. This creative force, which most people squander and wickedly waste in beastly indulgences, in the virtuous man is transmuted into brain power, soul power. It is the very flowering out of life. Men who lead a pure, clean life are infinitely more virile, more magnetic, more forceful, more productive, more buoyant, more spiritual than those who squander their creative energy and waste their vitality in dissipation.

Purity means virility and is the very spirit of the master book, the master painting, the master creation, in every department of human activity. It is this sex virihty which does the most superb thing in every line of human endeavor. It is this that sparkles in the life. It is the secret of spontaneity, of buoyancy. It is the very soul of joy and gladness.

Intellectual integrity is impossible without moral integrity. If there is any disintegration or demoralizing influence operating anywhere in the nature, weakness is inevitable. No one can live a life which is sapping his vitality, which is running counter to the highest thing in him, and still express his maximum of possible power.

''How many great minds, irremediably destroyed by misguided voluptuousness," says M. Jean Finot, ''are cut down before having expended for the human race one-tenth of their knowledge."

The same author, in his "Problems of the Sexes," quoting Sainte-Beuve, in deploring this waste of creative power caused by sexual dissipation, says: "Who shall say how, in a great city, at certain hours of the evening and the night, there are periodically exhausted treasures of genius, of beautiful and beneficent works, or fruitful fancies ? One in whom, under rigid continence, a sublime creation of mind was about to unfold, will miss the hour, the passage of the star, the kindhng moment which will nevermore be found. Another, inclined by nature to kindness, to charity, and to a charming tenderness, will become cowardly, inert, or even unfeeling. This character, which was almost fixed, will be dissipated and volatile."

Upon the proper use and conservation of sexual force the progress of civilization itself depends. All history shows that just in proportion as the sex instinct is kept sacred, pure, and the life essence properly used and converted into creative, productive power, does a nation reach a high state of civilization. Wherever this instinct becomes generally perverted, as it did in ancient Rome, people become devitalized, lose their physical and mental stamina, and rapidly deteriorate. Where it is protected by virtue and purity of life, the nation rises in the scale of civilization ; where it is abused, perverted, the nation sinks to the level of low-flying ideals.

In the last analysis of success, the mainspring of achievement must rest in the strength of a man's vitaKty; for without a stock of health equal to great emergencies and consistent longevity even the greatest ambition is comparatively powerless. Dissipation and impure living steal the energies, weaken the nature, lower the standards, blur the ideals, undermine thei ambition, and lessen the whole vitality and power of a man.

This is true not only of physical, but also of mental impurity, for nothing is truer than that ''To be carnally minded (sensually minded) is death." There are multitudes of people who break the seventh commandment mentally, who are injured as much as if they had broken it physically. Mental debauch is in some respects more disastrous in its effects than physical debauch. Lascivious longings, emotions that run riot, uncontrolled, are most demoralizing to the character. Some of the worst nerve diseases are really nothing but sexual neurosis, brought on by lascivious imaginings, unlawful mental revelings. Those whom we may well call sexual neurotics are unbalanced, selfish, usually cold-blooded, and lack all sense of pro-

I portion. They are driven under impulse, committing all sorts of criminal deeds.

The mind should be kept as unstained as the body. Every part of the being should be regarded as too holy to tamper with, too sacred to abuse, for the integrity or purity of each part of one's organism has a direct bearing upon the integrity, purity, and efficiency of every other part.

If a person who has always previously been honest conmiits one contemptible, dishonorable act, the texture of his entire character seems to be changed thereafter. In a far more serious degree is this true in regard to the sex instinct. It is not like a mistake or a blunder, however serious, that may be made in any other direction. This would not materially change the hfe structure; but, when one deliberately violates his sex instinct, the tainted leaven never ceases to work until it permeates the whole man. No human being has ever been great enough to practice immorality, to tamper with his sexual nature, without suffering very serious mental and moral deterioration.

Impurity, because of its blighting, deadening influence upon the mental as well as the moral faculties, very seriously interferes with one's success in life. Not only does it undermine self-confidence, but it also takes the bloom from life, robs it of that buoyancy, spontaneity and effervescence which are the products of virtuous living, pure thoughts, a clean mind in a clean body.

Sexual indulgence not only saps the physical, the mental and the moral vitality; but it also takes the spring out of life, the force, the resilience. It destroys freshness, enthusiasm, the impulse to do and to be one's best.

A Roman emperor used to have the right hand cut off of every prisoner who was captured in war so that the men could not fight again ; but this same mutilation also destroyed their productive power so that they were not as useful citizens as before. Sexual vice is more cruel than this pagan emperor. It not only cuts off the right hand of its victim's efficiency, but it also murders the man in him, leaving nothing but the shell of his former beauty and grand possibilities.

The human beings who have attained to the highest and most glorified perfection have

}een those in whom sex integrity had been preserved in all its purity. It is man's relation to divinity which paints the best part of the picture, which writes the divinest thing in authorship and in poetry. It is the sublimest part of genius, of creative energy. It is that which sparkles in the eye and is that which furnishes the sweetness and light in the lover's glances. It is a source of the sweetest thing in friendship. It is that which gives virility, vigor, strength and sweetness to human acts and human endeavor.

Men are rnost efficient, most vigorous, when they think most of themselves, when they have the greatset respect for themselves, and we are all so constituted that we can not respect ourselves unless we do right.

A man is a giant when he can look himself and the world in the face Avithout wincing; but he is a weakling when he is conscious that his self-respect is gone, that the ermine of his character is soiled, polluted. He has a fearful sense of mutilation and shame, of lost power. Many a man has been kept from doing a giant's work because of the consciousness of wrong-doing, which has shorn him of his power ;

so that, considering it from the most selfish standpoint alone, impurity generates inferiority, weakness, paralysis of energy, the killing of ambition, the beastializing of the ideal, the lowering of the moral and physical standards, — in short, the loss of manhood, the loss of womanhood.

Purity is the corner-stone, the very foundation of character; for, without purity, there can be no sterling quality, and without quality there can be no superiority.

Even the lower animals have no respect for the impure man, the loose hver. F. C. Bostock, the celebrated trainer of wild animals, says, ''In some curious, incomprehensible way, wild animals know instinctively whether men are addicted to bad habits. It is one of the many problems that are beyond human understanding. For those who are in the least inclined to drink, or who live a loose life, a wild animal has neither fear nor respect. He despises them with all the contempt of his nature and recognizes neither their authority nor their superiority. If a man has begun to take just a little intoxicating liquor or has deviated from the straight road, animals will discover it long

II before his fellowmen. The quaUty in the trainer which dominates the animal nature within himself is precisely the quality which dominates the animal he trains. If he yields to the brute within him, no matter how little, his perfect poise and self-mastery are gone and the keen instinct of the wild beast recognizes this instantly. Brutes seem to understand man's degradation to their level, and his hf e is in danger every moment he is in their cage.''

An impure man is never out of danger. He is perpetually risking his life in a den of wild beasts which he harbors within. Nothing is so pernicious ; nothing will so quickly undermine the mental, the physical, and the moral life, as impure practices, vicious habits. We all know how rapidly those who live impure lives bum out and deteriorate physically and age prematurely. Impurity is decay. Impurity is death.

Multitudes manage to get along in comparative comfort and many have even achieved great success in spite of painful bodily afflictions ; but, as physicians well know, when there is anything wrong with the sexual life, it affects the mind even more than the body. Many impure men have gone to insane asylums, have committed suicide, or have been so afflicted with worry, mental depression, and despondency that they have not been able to do any effective work.

I have known a girl (and there are multitudes of similar cases), who stood very high in her community, a conscientious church worker, who became so completely transformed in a single year, after she had been betrayed and abandoned by a man she loved and trusted, that it did not seem possible she could be the same human being. No other sin could have wrought such terrific changes in her nature in so brief a time.

There is something about the sexual instinct which strikes at the very root of our nature, the very marrow of our being. It is the very essence of character; and, when this instinct is preserved in all its integrity, the integrity of absolute purity, when the sexual life is kept wholesome, healthy and robust, the whole life blossoms out in beauty and glory, but when it is perverted, abused, or misused, when its sacredness is gone, everything else seems to go with it,

A prominent writer says, ''If young persons poison their bodies and corrupt their minds with vicious courses, no lapse of time, after a reform, is likely to restore them to physical soundness and the soul purity of their earlier days."

The sexual taint seems to be indelible. Not even religion is able to wipe it entirely out, for the bitter memory of past excesses haunts the individual clear to his grave; the horrible picture mocks one even at the point of death. We can not tell why this is, but it would appear that Nature herself takes revenge for the violation of the sex instinct, implanted in man for the continuance of the race.

Many people seem to think that if their acts are pure and clean, so far as the public is concerned, it does not matter what they do privately. The privacy of the deed has nothing to do with the results to ourselves. A shepherd once saw an eagle soar out from a crag. It flew majestically up far into the sky, but by and by became unsteady and began to waver and wobble in its flight. First one wing dropped, then the other, and at length the poor bird fell to the ground. The shepherd sought the fallen bird and found that a little serpent had fastened itself upon it while resting on the crag. Unseen, unfelt, by the eagle, the serpent crawled in through its feathers, and while the proud monarch was sweeping through the air the reptile's fangs were thrust into its flesh, poisoning its blood, and bringing it reeling to the earth. It is the story of many a life. Some secret sin has long been eating its way into the heart, and at last the proud life lies soiled and dishonored in the dust.

Without purity there can be no lasting greatness. Vice honeycombs the physical strength and destroys also the moral fiber. Now and again the community is shocked and startled when some man of note topples with a crash to sudden ruin and death. Yet the cause of the moral collapse is not sudden in its operation. There has been a slow undermining of virtue, a gradual poisoning of the very life centers going on for years. Then, perhaps, in an hour when honor, truth or honesty is brought to a crucial test, the weakened character gives way and there is an appalling commercial or social crash which too often finds an echo in the revolver shot of the suicide.

There never was a more beautiful prayer than that of the poor, soiled, broken-hearted psalmist in his hour of shame and repentance, — "Create in me a clean heart." ''Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart." There are thousands of men in this country to-day who would cut off their right hands to be free from the stain, the I poison of impurity with which they became tainted in youth.

It is not a figure of speech to say ^'Purity is power." It is literally true. Purity is the very essence of our being, of forcefulness, of masterfulness.

There is nothing else which will whittle away the life quite so rapidly as indulgence in sexual vice. When a man is guilty of this sin all other bad things seem to rush to its aid to help pull him down. We sometimes see a tragic illustration of its destroying power in the case of the youth who is sent away from home to college. Overwhelmed by his new-found freedom he becomes sexually contaminated, plunges into other excesses, and in an incredibly short time goes down to ruin and death.

The impure age very rapidly. It is impossible to dissipate, especially in sexual vice, and keep young. It is well known that the women of the street are very short-lived, — that they only average four or five years in their miserable business. The violation of the most sa-i cred thing in them so demoralizes and devitalizes their whole being, physically, mentally,^ morally, that the very consciousness of having killed the most precious thing they ever possessed rapidly grinds away their lives. Some of them age more in a single year than a girl who lives a pure life does in ten.

Purity is not only a health-preserver, but it is also a youth-preserver, a life-prolonger-.^ The pure in heart realize the Scriptural promise,^ — ''His flesh shall be fresher than a child's..^ He shall return to the days of his youth."

Oh, no ! we live our lives again ;

For, warmly touched or coldly dim, The pictures of the past remain:

Man's works shall follow him.

— J. G. Whittier.

Chapter II

Self -reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead life to sovereign power.

— Alfred Tennyson.

Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one and must ask of knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

— Horace Mann.

I "How it happened I can hardly under- ( stand," said a well-known man to me in confi- ; dence, "for when a boy I was very inquisitive and eager for information on every possible i subject of inquiry; but, until I was more than twelve years old, I do not think that I had I given even a passing thought to sexual matters. I I had heard a few "smutty" stories, it is true, I but they had no suggestive significance of lasciviousness to me, and were interesting or not only in proportion as they were merely intellectually witty. Perhaps my escape was largely due to the fact that, when active, I was so full of life and so engrossed in sport that there was no chance to talk to me about anything besides the game at issue, when I was playing, for I played with all my might and gave my playmates all they could attend to to prevent my beating them. When I was not active physically, I at once plunged into some book, for I was a great reader and could so concentrate my mind that I could read undisturbed with seven brothers and sisters playing around me, so long as they did not touch me.

''But one day a sudden, violent thunder shower drove me to shelter with two companions under an old shed, where we had to remain about two hours. The conversation drifted from one thing to another until one of the boys asked me if I had ever practiced self-abuse, calling it by a name common among the young. I did not even understand what he meant, and told him so ; whereupon he explained his meaning, and added that I ought to try it, for I did not know what a good thing I was missing.

"Yet, even after this, it was several weeks before I did try it, and curiosity rather than inclination was the impelling motive. Of course I repeated the act, but soon realized that in some way I did not comprehend it was injuring me and reducing my abounding vivacity, so I decided to stop it. But somehow I did not stop, and then came the most sickening and terrifying consciousness I have ever ex-

j perienced, as it suddenly dawned upon me that I was in the remorseless grip of a cruel habit. But I continued, though I felt much as the

! dying western stage driver must have felt when he cried out, in the delirium of fever, 'I'm on

I the down grade, and I can't reach the brake!'

' ''I had had the best of religious as well as

; intellectual training, and I remember thinking, one day, to myself, 'Your soul is no longer

( your own ! It is no use for you to talk of such things as God and heaven, for they are not for you! You are worse off than a slave, — worse off than if you were chained, as St. Paul said, to the body of death, — for you are by your own

! deeds dragging out the most miserable of lives and seem bound to go down to the most miserable of graves. Is this all you are good for? Is this what you were created for? No, I was born for better things, and I will not become the ghastly victim of this cruel devil that seems to possess me now! It was a hard struggle — to get and keep my hand on 'the brake,' — but I finally won, although I cannot think even now ' without a mental shudder of the starless midnight of despair which seemed to be closing down upon me."

If this was the experience of one who drifted into this practice solely through curiosity, without any original temptation of inclination, what must have been that of thousands, perhaps millions, of others of naturally prurient susceptivities? If, struggling against it with all his might, he barely escaped, how about others of weaker wills who have not become alarmed so soon? Where were all the ''guardians and protectors" of the young that they gave him no warning or instruction in such matters? — ^where were parents, schools, churches, the state, philanthropists, and others commonly supposed to be deeply interested in the welfare of youth? Think of building a powerful locomotive 6y steamship and putting it upon the track or the ocean, as the case may be, with all steam turned on, but without giving the captain any chart or map to sail by, or the engineer any idea of the time schedule or the meaning of the danger signals along the line!

''The idea that ignorance is essential to innocence is happily being exploded," says Dr. Irving D. Steinhardt, ''and we physicians are in a better position than the laity to speak of the wreckage and disaster that result from ignorance and neglect of proper instruction on sex hygiene."

I know of nothing which has wrecked the happiness and lives of more young people than our foolish prudery, our criminal silence, regarding the most vital facts of their being, facts which underlie the very foundation of society. How little you fathers and mothers \ who remain silent on the all-important subject I of sex life realize the painful and humiliating ! experiences, the terrible suffering and wreck- I age, which your silence may be laying up for your children in the years to come. If you I could follow them into the future — follow them I to the confessional, to their clergymen, to their I physicians, to the operating table ; if you could j only hear them years hence pouring into the ' ears of their priests, their pastors, their doci tors, the woes of their blighted lives, you would j certainly learn a lesson which you would never I forget. You would realize that, while it may ' be difficult for you now to speak on this delicate subject to your children, your silence is putting a terrible premium on their ignorance, a premium which may cost them untold future suffering, which may bring tragedy into their homes when they marry, and may entail disease worse than death upon their children.

We are only just beginning to recognize and appreciate the tremendous modifying power of the sex element in the growing boy and girl, the body-changing, mind-changing, charactermolding influence of the sexual organs.

Accidents or surgical operations resulting in the destruction of the sexual glands in the boy, say of ten or twelve years of age or a httle older, cause radical changes in everything which marks sex distinction. The voice becomes thin and squeaky and the muscles grow flabby and soft ; the chest instead of developing becomes narrow, the shoulders often slope and the mind loses its virility. In other words, the boy becomes mentally as well as physically emasculated. He has lost his stamina and the very characteristics which mark the strong man and he becomes feminine. In fact, if he were dressed like a girl he would pass for one, but a very weak, characterless one.