In the hottest of latitudes, the development can be both swift and early. In cooler, northern latitudes, it is slow, like the vegetation. In towns and cities I can most certainly attest it comes more rapidly than in the country and the risks of a stimulating diet will see it develop far more rapidly than a cooling one. Remember this in your dealings with your children. Do not shirk from the duty of installing within them that knowledge necessary for a long, healthy and prosperous life.

Sexual Desire: -

Sexual love in men and women is most easily understood as ‘Sexual Desire’. It is the driving passion behind the entire human race. It is felt by all in differing quantities – there are those to whom it is an extreme and those who feel it as a soft breeze on a summer’s day. The Licentious Libertine or the Sentimental Prude are wholly incapable of feeling or understanding its power.

I know there are those who say that ‘woman has but little sensual desire’. I would argue that they are wrong in the worst and most base of ways. Women love with their whole and complete soul. To a woman love is life; to a man, love is the joy of life. If he suffers misfortune in love, it will only bruise the man, even though it may bruise him deeply. To a woman, it is the ruin of life and wrecks her happiness. So I would state without fear that women feel love, and sexual love, most keenly. Love in marriage, and the love required for the creation of children, is reliant on the existence of sexual love. If this is not capable of being expressed by both parties, how is mankind supposed to continue in its reproductive enterprise? Since love implies the presence of sexual desire it can only truly exist between those persons willingly committed to creating a family. When this condition is found to be wanting, or is destroyed, then that love will be replaced by friendship.

The Invariable Risks of Celibacy: -

There are those who do not believe that sexual desire, or the love felt between a man and a woman, is worthy of their attention. I have attended meetings to hear them speak, those paragons of virtue, encapsulated – it has been reported – by a ‘Dr.’ Henry Philpot, a supposed leading light in the ‘New Celibacy’ movement. Their followers are encouraged to pledge themselves to ‘eschew the joys and sorrows of matrimony’ and spend their lives devoted to intellectual pursuits so as to ‘guide the thought of the world’. I would remind the bachelors of England of the motto of one of our greatest and most noble leaders, the gallant Nelson, ‘England expects every young man to do his duty’.

The reported medical risks of celibacy are far too great to be ignored. In either sex, there can be no doubt that the celibate life creates the most miserable perversions of the mind and body. In men, I have seen the symptoms of mania, apoplexy and melancholy most clearly manifested. Other fearsome characteristics include a loss of vision, deafness and many various foul diseases of the skin. It is true, as well, I would not doubt that you are aware, that man’s commitment to the celibate life is not so often strictly observed.

Should a man find he is denied the opportunity for sexual intercourse then there is a great risk of him turning to that most distressing of all practices, masturbation. I shall say more on this matter later, for it is deserving of special attention. Whilst it has the sole benefit of warding off the evils that I have previously listed in great measure, it allows a number of far worse such terrors to appear in their place. In women, celibacy, which society prizes as the highest and most brilliant quality for her to possess, can – in certain cases and with little provocation – sadly submit her to the horrors of hysteria and other such nervous derangements. The only recommendation I can support for the course of celibacy is for those unfortunate peoples who have been born carrying the marks of the polluted disease of syphilis. Although their crime is an innocent one – the guilt resting heavily on the souls of their parents – it is inadvisable for them to seek a match or physical union and pass the pollution on to their lover. Let them be content with the bonds of friendship.