The cold, calculating materialist, whose ideal is circumscribed by the laws that have been deduced from the phenomena of the material world, can scarcely appreciate the higher sentiments that are involved in this investigation, unless he becomes changed in thought and feeling to the things that are about him. To accomplish this result is hardly within the scope of this work. With the average man as we find him, my observation has taught me that it makes, after all, little difference, whether he believes in a spiritual nature or is avowedly materialistic. The great majority of men and women live, so to say, in the turbulent waters of their own passions, wafted hither and thither by the impulses of emotional excitement and instinctive desires. There is little or no hope for reform, if they have not sufficient force of character to cry halt, and stop to think a little upon questions which are to them of the greatest importance. Marital excesses are the mainspring of so much disease, that ordinarily is attributed to quite different causes, that this chapter would be very deficient were I to omit to call the attention of my readers to this fact. The men on the whole are oftener the victims of the ill effects of unbridled lust than the women, which shows itself by violent and uncontrollable temper, in the one case, and stupid docility in the other: by a lean, hungry, nervous appearance, or a brutish, sanguineous obesity; extremes of the different temperaments and habits are but the natural outgrowth of the constitution inherent in each individual case. Women, as a rule, are more passive, less amorous and more chaste in thought and feeling than men, and if we define emotion as an _idea_ associated with pleasurable or painful feelings, women are, as far as appertains to their sexual nature, contrary to the generally-accepted opinion, much less _emotional_ than men. Continence, among the unmarried women, is the rule, while among the men it is the rare exception; this is because her _will_ is by nature stronger, while her _reason_ is weaker, she intuitively arrives at conclusions that are her guide and saviour. It is a prevalent idea among men that the marriage ceremony removes all restraint from the exercise of the sexual function; this not only neutralizes and destroys all sentiment of true love, which seeks for the happiness of the object it loves, but breeds hatred and contempt. To be permanently happy and mutually respectful, there must be love beyond the pleasure of gratifying the mere sexual instinct, there must be love in the realm of thought and a spiritual communion above the instincts of the flesh.