The philosophy of sexual desires has been frequently discussed by learned men, and interesting experiments have been made to test whether the attraction of the two sexes was not precisely the same in human beings as in the minor animals. These tests proved that our animal natures are not directed altogether by the intellect. We see young persons of opposite sex mutually caress and embrace each other by some mysterious influence, even before they are of sufficient age to experience sexual desires. This mutual attraction is attributed by some people to Animal Magnetism—the male being the positive, and the female the negative principle. We, however, believe it to be an instinctive sympathy; for experiments have been made which prove that the Generative Organs of either sex exercise a certain mysterious influence one upon the other. A French physiological writer says that two vigorous young persons were put in a semi-insensible state by the use of certain drugs. Being stripped and their private parts placed slightly in contact, (their heads being fully covered,) this slight touch instantly excited the sexual feeling. This experiment is reported in detail, and we do not doubt that it was _bona-fide_. The peculiar instinctive attraction in this case was so delicate that it acted almost like electricity to the male organ. Besides this instinctive attraction, the nervous sensibility is so constituted as to aid in the union of the sexes. In the present state of society, however, young people do not usually wait the slow process of Nature’s teachings, but gain their knowledge by a precocious association or under the instruction of their seniors. The sexual impulse, under such circumstances, is forced and unnatural, and is frequently the parent of incurable disease. Coition, or sexual union, may be compared to a fit of epilepsy, or to an electrical shock. It entirely engages both the mind and the body; we neither hear nor see, but the soul is entirely absorbed in the act. When a man is performing this act, if his thoughts wander, the product will be feeble, and if his wife become pregnant the offspring will be inferior. This fact is applied to the offspring of great geniuses, who are supposed to be thinking of something else when they beget their children, and hence their descendants are often much below them in intellect. In further confirmation of this theory, history informs us that some of the greatest men the world ever saw were bastards—children begotten with vigor, and when the minds of the parents are supposed to have been absorbed in the one idea of a loving sexual embrace. Aristotle believed that the causes of deformed children, of monstrosities, and of all defective offspring, were in consequence of imperfect connections, or acts of generation when the minds of the parents were depressed by passion, anxiety, trouble, or any difficult or abstract matters.