Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/11

 For example, there are ten thousand treatises extant concerning what the doctors call the sin of one Onan, meaning, thereby, a certain nameless solitary vice. But the man alluded to in the Bible never was guilty of that sin at all. Albeit his crime was equally bad, equally disastrous and hateful. In these days it is politely called "conjugal fraud," and in plain terms consists of the nuptive union to the orgasmal climax, which was allowed to occur only in a manner never intended by the Infinite God. "He wasted his seed upon the ground, that he might not beget children to inherit his brother's name." (See Bible.) Millions do the accursed thing to-day that they may be childless, as indeed they deserve to be; for he who does that heinous wrong commits a quadruple crime, against his wife, himself, nature and God; to say nothing about the right of all souls to be incarnated by the act of man.

Now the doctors truly say that the sin solitary, and the fraud conjugal are both bad; but fail to give us even half the reasons why.

Here let me make a point for the doctors, and all others besides. In the normal, proper nuptive union, a term I invent expressive of the most sacred and intimate fact of marriage, there is a certain amount of the male vital life in fluid form (semen) voided; exactly the same by actual weight or volume may be wasted in a lascivious dream,—a spontaneous ejection of superfluous vital force in the same form; 3d, the same may be lost by the abominable conjugal fraud; or by the heinous sin against one's self—solitary vice. But note the tremendous difference in the results that follow in each of the four cases. 1st. In the reciprocal and normal one, only joy results, positive and pronounced; and never is followed by any particularly sombre feelings; happiness ensues, and the man's soul is at perfect peace with his physical form.

In the second case, resulting from spermatic plethora, a relief follows, but leaves a weakness after it, requiring phosphoric food to recuperate from. There's a little shame-facedness too, but not much. In the third case the whole being is shocked, and the man feels himself to be contemptible and mean; and so he is. In the fourth case, a bitter, poignant remorse haunts the self-sinner day and night, for sometimes weeks together; and the results of his