ns, his most violent desires for genesial delight
are developed, is twenty years. Now during the ten fairest years of his
life, during the green season in which his beauty, his youth and his wit
make him more dangerous to husbands than at any other epoch of his life,
his finds himself without any means of satisfying legitimately that
irresistible craving for love which burns in his whole nature. During
this time, representing the sixth part of human life, we are obliged to
admit that the sixth part or less of our total male population and the
sixth part which is the most vigorous is placed in a position which is
perpetually exhausting for them, and dangerous for society.

"Why don't they get married?" cries a religious woman.

But what father of good sense would wish his son to be married at twenty
years of age?

Is not the danger of these precocious unions apparent at all? It would
seem as if marriage was a state very much at variance with natural
habitude, seeing that it requires a special ripeness of judgment in
those who conform to it. All the world knows what Rousseau said: "There
must always be a period of libertinage in life either in one state or
another. It is an evil leaven which sooner or later ferments."

Now what mother of a family is there who would expose her daughter to
the risk of this fermentation when it has not yet taken place?

On the other hand, what need is there to justify a fact under whose
domination all societies exist? Are there not in every country, as
we have demonstrated, a vast number of men who live as honestly as
possible, without being either celibates or married men?

Cannot these men, the religious women will always ask, abide in
continence like the priests?

Certainly, madame.

Nevertheless, we venture to observe that the vow of chastity is the most
startling exception to the natural condition of man which society makes
necessary; but continence is the great point in the priest's profession;
he must be chaste, as the doctor must be insensible to physical
sufferings, as the notary and the advocate insensible to the misery
whose wounds are laid bare to their eyes, as the soldier to the sight
of death which he meets on the field of battle. From the fact that the
requirements of civilization ossify certain fibres of the heart and
render callous certain membranes, we must not necessarily conclude that
all men are bound to undergo this partial and exceptional death of the
soul. T