Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/39

 you throw away the bricks, wherewith shall it build? If a soul can be blotted out of being, these vices are the means best adapted to that end; for the loss of health hurts the body; but the waste of love impoverishes the very soul ! Both sexes commit it, and both alike must pay the dreadful penalty, here, or in the great hereafter.

Human nature is so constituted that in the fair race for power, the female can, if she will, invariably win; but never by using man's or any other weapons than her own, — tenderness, affection, gentleness, and love. But in order that she may gain these powers in their fulness she must have health. There are painful facts, that ought to be brought before the whole people. Especially should they be urged on the attention of parents and teachers, and these facts are that pernicious, baneful, solitary habits in early youth, and in maturity also, go far toward, not only sapping the health, but undermining the mental and moral constitution, deranging the entire system even to the point of confirmed nervousness and total or partial insanity. Of course no medicine on earth can minister to a mind diseased, save where that disease originates in violated magnetic law; then it can and does. I am satisfied that peace will reign in a healthy family; that conjugal storms and estrangements spring mainly from want of light on three little points; that ignorance of that light disorders the wife; that this disorder affects her mind; that it acts and reacts upon the husband and family; hence I cannot too strongly impress upon all women that their feelings, hence conduct, toward their husbands, which often estranges them and mars the peace of families, is far more the result of caprice or whim, dependent upon deranged nervous forces, than of principle. Their grievances are as often imaginary as real; and therefore I bid them ask themselves that question frequently, and by strong will-efforts repress the vagary, and attend to the matter of physical restoration.

Full, free, and reciprocal play of the magnetic spheres of two persons constitutes one phase or mood of love. Where these spheres repel, just in proportion as they do so, and thereby fall short of assimilation or blending, just in so far forth are both discontented and unhappy. "Coldness" begins and other persons become more attractive; of course ending in open or secret