A pure
womanhood must be accompanied by a pure manhood. The same moral
law applies alike to both. It would be loosening the foundations
of virtue, to countenance the notion that because of a difference
in sex, man were at liberty to set morality at defiance, and to do
that with impunity, which, if done by a woman, would stain her
character for life. To maintain a pure and virtuous condition of
society, therefore, man as well as woman must be pure and
virtuous; both alike shunning all acts impinging on the heart,
character, and conscience--shunning them as poison, which,
once imbibed, can never be entirely thrown out again, but
mentally embitters, to a greater or less extent, the happiness
of after-life.
And here we would venture to touch upon a delicate topic. Though
it is one of universal and engrossing human interest, the moralist
avoids it, the educator shuns it, and parents taboo it. It is
almost considered indelicate to refer to Love as between the
sexes; and young persons are left to gather their only notions of
it from the impossible love-stories that fill the shelves of
circulating libraries. This strong and absorbing feeling, this
BESOIN D'AIMER--which nature has for wise purposes made so strong
in woman that it colours her whole life and history, though it may
form but an episode in the life of man--is usually left to follow
its own inclinations, and to grow up for the most part unchecked,
without any guidance or direction whatever.
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