In many instances, the genital organs are rendered so irritable by the repletion to which unnatural continency gives rise, and by the much thinking caused by such repletion, as to induce a disease known to medical men by the name of _Gonorrhoea Dormientium_. It consists in an emission or discharge of the semen during sleep. This discharge is immediately excited in most instances by a lascivious dream, but such dream is caused by the repletion and irritability of the genital organs. It is truly astonishing to what a degree of mental anguish the disease gives rise in young men. They do not understand the nature, or rather, the cause of it. They think it depends on a weakness--indeed, the disease is often called a "seminal weakness"--and that the least gratification in a natural way would but serve to increase it. Their anxiety about it weakens the whole system. This weakness they erroneously attribute to the discharges; they think themselves totally disqualified for entering into or enjoying the married state. Finally, the genital and mental organs act and react upon each other so perniciously as to cause a degree of nervousness, debility, emaciation and melancholy--in a word, wretchedness that sets description at defiance. Nothing is so effectual in curing this diseased state of a body and mind in young men as marriage. All restraint, fear and solicitude should be removed. "Inasmuch, then, as the scruples of incurring heavy responsibilities deter from forming moral connections and encourage intemperance and prostitution, the knowledge which enables man to limit the number of his offspring would, in the present state of things, save much unhappi-ness and prevent many crimes. Young persons sincerely attached to each other, and who might wish to marry, should marry early, merely resolving not to become parents until prudence permitted it. The young man, instead of solitary toil and vulgar dissipation, would enjoy the society and the assistance of her he has chosen as his companion; and the best years of life, whose pleasures never return, would not be squandered in riot, nor lost through mortification."* * The passages quoted are from Robert Dale Owen's "Moral Physiology." CHAPTER II. ON GENERATION I hold the following to be important and undeniable troths: That every man has a natural right both to receive and convey a knowledge of all the facts and discoveries of every art and science, excepting such only as may be secured to some particular person or persons by copyright or patent; that a physical truth in its general effect cannot be a moral evil; that no fact in physics or in morals ought to be concealed from the inquiring mind. Some may make a misuse of knowledge, but that is their fault; and it is not right that one person should be deprived of knowledge, of spirits, of razors, or of anything else which is harmless in itself and may be useful to him, because another may misuse it.