And such I take it is the case also with the last of the answers to which I shall at present refer, the still more terrible and destructive custom of self-indulgence, that solitary sin that has hurried so many men to the madhouse and to the grave. To this I need but allude, for hardly the person exists who does not know, from experience or from observation, its blighting effects. With the prudery which prevents the parent from cautioning his son, or the physician his patient, from this violation of every natural instinct and every physiological law, I have not the slightest patience. Enfeebling to the body, enfeebling to the mind, the incarnation of selfishness, it effaces from its victim his fondness for the other sex, unfits him for true love, and likens him in very fact to that embodied concentration of all man’s frailties, devoid of all the apparent virtues of animals still lower in the scale, the ape. And yet, it must be acknowledged, that this baleful habit, like the kindred self-indulgence, inebriety,[18] is in many instances the result not of vice, but of disease. The congestion of hæmorrhoids, the presence of ascarides in the rectum, the existence of constipation, are all of them agencies, which, by their reflex irritation, determining an abnormal excess of blood to the parts, and inducing a state of hyperæsthesia, or undue nervous excitability, may give rise to procedures which, in the same individual, at other and more healthful seasons, would cause for him but the most revolting disgust. Such being the case, and I may consider it as frankly acknowledged by my readers to be true, we are prepared to look more calmly at Marriage as a sanitary measure, and to see whether or no it is for this reason to be resorted to or advised. Every man knows that when the sexual passion has once been aroused and gratified, it can never afterwards be put entirely at rest, even by the hermit in his cell. It is asserted by certain writers, rather, however, upon theoretical than practical grounds, that such passion may always, with comparative ease, be conquered, by sheer force of will. To insure a peaceful life, it should undoubtedly be vanquished; but few feel at first this necessity, and fewer still have the required mental or moral strength. The confessions that are made to every physician prove this. “The incontinent man,” says Acton, “is indulging a servant, who, if he becomes a master, will be what Cicero called him, a furious taskmaster. The slave of his passions has no easy life. Nay, life itself may be in danger. Often the patient falls a victim to sexual misery. The sexual feeling has caused many a suicide; it has made many a misanthrope; many are the cells now peopled by single men, who, unable to control their feelings, have sought the monastery as an alleviation of their sufferings, and there found it in fasting, penance, and prayer.”[19]