Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/239

 PUBERAL HYGIENE 22$

The inhibition of cortical excito-motor centers, to whose hyper-activity is due the great restlessness of apes and idiots, goes to favor perceptive and ideative centers. Genius itself thrives, many times, only at the expense of health and bodily strength, and manhood reaches its height only by the sacrifice of the dearest joys of life.

In the case of Goethe the composition of each one of his great works was followed by an illness. Voltaire said that he never was glad but for a moment, and the ardent desire of per- fection tormented him so that he exclaimed that he would die without having made a work according to his taste.

A law so general could not spare a function of such impor- tance as the generative one. From sexual excesses, even in full virility, one notes, with the deterioration of character, the loss of manly virtues. Despotic governments find in this vice the best condition for their support. The Jesuits of the missions of Paraguay, in order to keep the Indians in servitude, had the bells rung at midnight to awake them from their sleep and invite them to propagation. 1

When the body of the youth is still increasing, even the simple awakening to activity of such a function as the generative one, accompanied with so much loss of nervous force and noble materials, though so enticing to the unresisting youthful soul, must inevitably be hurtful to the complete development of the physical, as well as of the moral, organism.

Man satisfies sexual impulses in two ways, by self-abuse or by natural intercourse. Self-abuse is most common in early youth because of the greater ease of indulgence. It is true that the evils of onanism have been exaggerated. However, I cannot agree with Havelock Ellis when he makes Tissot, Voltaire, Lallemand, and Bicher blameworthy for exaggerating the evil effects of vice, and for doing not a little damage by arousing excessive fears and groundless remorse in sensitive consciences.

It is chiefly by means of such books that the tradition of the evil of that vice has been developed, and has thus prevented so many consequences of an abuse which without them would have

"D'AzARA, Voyage a I' Amerique mlridionale, p. 9.