The unmarried life after thirty years of age is often injured in mind or body. The exceptions arising from character or occupation, from religious enthusiasm or devotion to some great work, do not refute the general statement. It must necessarily be so. As sex is a natural and most powerful human force, there is risk of injury in permanently stifling it. Marriage being its true method of expression and education, the character is injured through want of this development. It is only through honourable marriage that the beneficial growth of manly character of mind and body can be attained. The illegitimate exercise of the sexual powers is a source of direful social and national evil, and requires those strong restraints of both law and custom which help to educate a nation. No fear that some individuals, unable to marry, may suffer in their private lives, can for one moment justify the establishment of practices or the sanctioning of customs which are destructive to the general welfare. Far more evil, mental and physical, arises to the race from the effects of licentiousness than from any effects of abstinence. CHAPTER IV _Methods by which Sexual Morality may be Promoted_ The important question will present itself to everyone who realizes the gravity of the dangers which we have now exposed: What practical steps can be taken to secure the truer standard of morality which will remodel the education of youth? This weighty question can only gradually receive a complete answer, as the intelligence of our age awakens to the fact that the attainment of true sexual morality is the fundamental principle of national growth. The first indispensable basis of all efforts for practical reform is the acceptance of a true principle of action. The great guiding principle now laid down is this: that Vice--that is, the illegitimate exercise of the sexual faculty, regardless of religious conscience and the welfare of others--is not essential to the constitution of the human being, but is the result of removable conditions. The importance of this truth is immense. Its acceptance or denial produces two diametrically opposite courses of action--action in education, in society, and in legislation. It is one of those abstract truths which are stronger than all facts, being eternal instead of temporary, moulding practical action instead of depending on it. The belief or denial of this truth may express itself in varying forms, according to the age or country, according to the more or less logical workings of a nation’s mind; but whether clearly recognised in all its bearings, or blindly acted on in a confused and near-sighted way, the results will always follow in the same direction. The acceptance of this truth will always tend to diminish and gradually destroy evil; its denial must inevitably intensify and extend evil.