I have often had long arguments with my friends, the Shakers,[8] touching the two-fold light in which the reproductive instinct may be regarded. They commonly stand out stoutly against the propriety of considering it, except as a means of perpetuating the species; and, apart from that, they deny that it may be regarded as a legitimate source of enjoyment. In this I totally dissent from them. It is a much more noble, because less purely selfish, instinct, than hunger or thirst. It is an instinct that entwines itself around the warmest feelings and best affections of the heart; and though it differ from hunger and thirst in this, that it may remain ungratified without causing death. I have yet to learn, that because it is _possible_, it is therefore also _desirable_, to mortify and repress it. I admit, to the Shakers, that in the world, profligate and hypocritical as we see it, this instinct is the source of infinite misery; perhaps even, on the whole, of a _balance_ of unhappiness: and I always freely admit to them, that if I had to choose between the life of the profligate man of the world and that of the ascetic Shaker, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But for admitting that the most social and kindly of human instincts is sensual and degrading in itself, I cannot. I think its influence moral, humanizing, polishing, beneficent; and that the social education of no man or woman is fully completed without it. Its mortification (though far less injurious than its excess) is yet very mischievous. If it do not give birth to peevishness, or melancholy, or incipient disease, or unnatural practices, at least it almost always freezes and stiffens the character, by checking the flow of its kindliest emotions; and not unfrequently gives to it a solitary, anti-social, selfish stamp. I deny the position of the Shaker, then, that the instinct is justifiable (if, indeed, it be at all) only as necessary to the reproduction of the species. It is justifiable, in my view, just in as far as it makes a man happier and a better being. It is justifiable, both as a source of temperate enjoyment, and as a means by which the sexes can mutually polish and improve each other. If a Shaker has read my little book thus far, and cannot reconcile his mind to this idea, he may as well shut it at once. I found all my arguments on the position, that the pleasure derived from this instinct, independent of, and totally distinct from, its ultimate object, the reproduction of our race, is good, proper, worth securing and enjoying. I maintain, that its temperate enjoyment is a blessing, both in itself and in its influence on human character.