Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/64

48 in accordance with the previous secret practice, accustom themselves to the association with prostitutewomen. At the age when European youths are put into the soldier's uniform or are wont to enter the university, this association frequently becomes an object of boasting, and to calm the sexual desires in a pool of filth and, in connection with it, to undermine health by intemperance or disgusting diseases, is generally developed into a fine art in soldier and student life.

Thus prepared, the young man approaches the time when he can seriously think of making the acquaintance of a girl who as his wife is to satisfy his heart and his sexual needs. Most men of the educated classes enter the marriage-bed with the consciousness of leaving behind them a whole army of prostitutes or seduced women in whose arms they cooled their passions and spent the vigor of their youth. But with this past the married man does not at the same time leave behind him its influence on his inclinations. The habit of having a feminine being at his disposal for every rising appetite, and the desire for change inordinately indulged for years, generally make themselves felt again as soon as the honeymoon is over. The satisfaction which an uncorrupted man could find in the arms of his wife for many years is shortened all the more for the man of the common sort, the more he has learned to look upon woman as a mere instrument for the