Copulation

“ The first expansions of the human heart were the effects of a novel situation, which united husbands and wives, fathers and children, under one roof. The habit of living together soon gave rise to the finest feelings known to humanity, conjugal love and paternal affection. ”

“ Shall these heaven-born impulses of nature be regarded, or must they be repressed? Shall we permit these tendrils of our love to bind themselves around some kindred heart, or shall we suffer them to be rudely torn asunder, and cast aside to wither and decay? Implanted for the noblest purposes within our breasts, interwoven with the very fibres of our being, the laws of God and of nature unquestionably demand their indulgence. ”

“ Indeed, the care which nature takes to strip us piece by piece of our raiment, to unclothe the soul by enfeebling gradually our hearing, sight, and sense of touch, in making slower the circulation of our blood, and congealing our humors so as to make us as insensible to the approach of death as we were to the beginnings of life, this maternal care which she lavishes on our frail tabernacle of clay, she also exhibits in regard to the emotions of man, and to the double existence which is created by conjugal love. ”

“ Whilst every member of your body is telling you news.
Since each member of your body issued from Not-being,
How much pleasure has it seen, and how much pain?
For no member grows and flourishes without pleasure,
And each member is weakened by every pain. ”

“ You, who must go to pay your respects to the Minister of Finance, to write memorandums at the bank, to make your reports at the Bourse, or to speak in the Chamber; you, young men, who have repeated with many others in our first Meditation the oath that you will defend your happiness in defending your wife, what can you oppose to these desires of hers which are so natural? For, with these creatures of fire, to live is to feel; the moment they cease to experience emotion they are dead. ”

“ Fifth, and lastly, we may classify the affections as one of the structural systems of our spiritual existence. It is that part of our natures that makes us like or dislike both persons and things; and, in regard to the former, it is the capacity for love in its high distinction from the physical appetite of sexual passion. The range of its operation is most various and multiform, but throughout all of its operations it is a spiritual capacity, implanted in us for our happiness as spiritual beings. ”

“ Many a young husband often lays the foundation of many diseases of the womb and of the nervous system in gratifying his unchecked passions without a proper regard for his wife's exhausted condition.
7. The First Conjugal Approaches are usually painful to the new wife, and no enjoyment to her follows. Great caution and kindness should be exercised. A young couple rushing together in their animal passion soon produce a nervous and irritating condition which ere long brings apathy, indifference, if not dislike. True love and a high regard for each other will temper passion into moderation. ”

“ Our Heraclean marriage alliance is so closely interwoven with instinctive impression, hallowed by the unity of an affection independent of the body, that the rupture by death of either of the coaptive sexual individualities, leaves a void, from the material deprivation of functional reciprocation, so desolate to the female in its impression of lonely isolation, that instinct conjures some gentle hallucination, to supply the broken threads of sympathy in the weftage of the severed ties. ”

“ Reciprocated love produces a general exhilaration of the system. The elasticity of the muscles is increased, the circulation is quickened, and every bodily function is stimulated to renewed activity by a happy marriage.
8. The consummation desired by all who experience this affection, is the union of souls in a true marriage. Whatever of beauty or romance there may have been in the lover's dream, is enhanced and spiritualized in the intimate communion of married life. The crown of wifehood and maternity is purer, more divine than that of the maiden. Passion is lost—emotions predominate. ”

“ The whole multiplicity of psycho-physical influences and impressions which the members of a family exercise upon one another for pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and variance, harmony and discord, are now in all relationships, but above all in marriage, felt with greatest intensity. It is in those natures most individually developed, most refined, for whom the nuances of the married life, not its simple primal colors, signify happiness or unhappiness. ”

“ I learnt them by heart, and in that gloriously blue receptacle, by and by, where many pleasant youthful dreams are stowed, I put the hope that one day I would clasp hands with them, and feel and know the unspeakable comfort and heart-rest of congenial companionship. ”

“ I believe that the first step in conjugal life will, according to the circumstances accompanying it, give birth to captivating sympathies or invincible repulsion. But to give birth to these sympathies, to strike the spark that is to set light to this explosion of infinite gratitude and joyful love—what art, what tact, what delicacy, and at the same time what presence of mind are needed. ”

“ If that future embraced a comfortable home, if a mate and affection suggested themselves as possibilities well within his reach, the basis of those tentative yearnings rested upon the need that dwells within every normal human being, and upon what he saw happening now and then to other young men—and young women—within the immediate radius of his observation. ”

“ Under these conditions the lovers will be aiming towards an ideal which recognizes that in wedded life all that is lasting in affection, in tender courtesy, in most intimate companionship, in sweetest demonstration, is possible without the physical union, which in itself is the most transitory of pleasures, but which in unlimited indulgence becomes the most domineering of passions, exhaustive of physical power and of mental vigor, and absolutely annihilating all true love. ”

“ The capacity to feel pleasure reaches its greatest intensity. The sex relations are built up on safe and natural lines, regulated by family life, social feelings, and the carrying of the thoughts and the emotions into other channels, controlled by certain instinctive natural tendencies, by morality and religion. ”

“ The love of offspring, home, friends, in man, is then part of the same system of contrivances of which bodily organization is another part. And thus the author of our corporeal frame is also the author of our capacity of kindness and resentment, of our love and of our wish to be loved, of all the emotions which bind us to individuals, to our families, and to our kind. ”

“ Certainly, if the confronting of danger and the endurance of pain and distress for the sake of the loved one, if sacrifice, unswerving devotion and life-long union, constitute proofs of the reality and intensity (and let us say healthiness) of an affection, then these proofs have been given in numberless cases of such attachment, not only as existing between men, but as between women, since the world began. ”

“ Does it not seem likely that, in the intense organic excitement which attends sexual union, this excitement—especially if strong love be also present—reaches right down into the soul-depths of each person, stirring these also, and the race oversoul at that point, most profoundly? ”

“ For there are two sorts of constancy, the one negative, where there is no transfer of affection, where the bond of attachment is not broken though it may be attenuated to a thread—this may be met with, not so seldom, and, where there is goodness of heart, it may be expected—but the other sort, or positive constancy, where the affection endures in the same intensity with the same or increased tenderness and nearness, of this it is that I doubt whether once in an age an instance occurs where A feels it toward B, and B feels it towards A, and vice versâ. ”

“ The associations which were commenced in the natural world,and which will be continued into the spiritual, must also be gradually reduced to a spiritual basis.—These associations were at first formed on the basis of natural affection, which, before regeneration, is essentially selfish and evil. But as heavenly love becomes developed and confirmed, the natural affection, which once bound the man or the spirit to the father, the son, the brother, or the companion, gradually becomes subordinate, until at length the natural relationship, is lost sight of, and a spiritual one is substituted. ”

“ Temptations Removed.—Marriage sanctifies a home, while adultery and libertinism produce unrest, distrust and misery. It must be remembered that a married man can practice the most absolute continence and enjoy a far better state of health than the licentious man. The comforts of companionship develop purity and give rest to the soul. ”

“ At the age of twenty-three the male graduates from the school inclosure into the active degrees of life’s associate coöperation. In premonition, the connubial censors have studied and kept a record of instinctive traits, and characteristic blendings of affection, of the male and female matriculants, for comparison and the selection of coaptives in the unity of predisposition for the fulfillment of marriage intention. ”

“ Finely clad, tenderly housed, life became for her merely the gratification of her own physical and sexual appetites, and the appetites of the male, through the stimulation of which she could maintain herself. ”

“ He beautifies his table, makes his eating the occasion of social fellowship, takes into consideration the wants and needs of others. If we thus regulate the appetite, why should we not, as intelligent beings, regulate the exercise of the reproductive sense? Why should we yield, like animals, to the first inclination? Why should we despoil ourselves or our companion of the God-given sense of modesty? Why should we [Pg 93] be willing to indulge ourselves to such an extent as to injure the one individual whom we love and prize above all others upon earth? ”

“ This pleasant feeling, like the complete physical adaptation of his wife, also fills him with a certain calmness and serenity which enable him to suffer kindly any exasperating peculiarity in his spouse, to endure with patience her ill-concealed indifference to him as being little more important than a sparking-plug or breadwinner, and to meet in a conciliating spirit any opposition with which she may encounter his plans for their children, or for any other feature of their joint lives. ”

“ In truth, if we are in the habit of feeling affection for places, and temples, and cities, and gymnasia, and the Campus Martius, and for dogs, and horses, and sports, in consequence of our habit of exercising ourselves, and hunting, and so on, how much more easily and reasonably may such a feeling be produced in us by our intimacy with men! ”

“ You have a View of the whole Argument in a few familiar Examples: The Pain of Abstinence from Food, as it is greater or less, produces a greater or less Desire of Eating, the Accomplishment of this Desire produces a greater or less Pleasure proportionate to it. The Pain of Confinement causes the Desire of Liberty, which accomplish'd, yields a Pleasure equal to that Pain of Confinement. The Pain of Labour and Fatigue causes the Pleasure of Rest, equal to that Pain. The Pain of Absence from Friends, produces the Pleasure of Meeting in exact proportion. ”

“ Is this new craving for polarized communion with others, this craving for a new unison, is it sexual, like the original craving for the woman? Not at all. The whole polarity is different. Now, the positive poles are the poles of the breast and shoulders and throat, the poles of activity and full consciousness. Men, being themselves made new after the act of coition, [151] wish to make the world new. A new, passionate polarity springs up between men who are bent on the same activity, the polarity between man and woman sinks to passivity. ”

“ It was a purely spiritual union that his heart was set on. The thought of bodily union did not enter his head. But the need for bodily touch as a means of expressing human feeling is inherent in human nature, and becomes more and more urgent as the feeling becomes warmer. Friends have to shake hands with each other and pat each other on the back in order to show the warmth of their feeling for one another. Women affectionately embrace one another. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, kiss one another. It is impossible adequately to express affection without bodily touch. ”

“ So strong was it, that the very recollection of what I then felt, on the first dawn of my wife's return to something like her usual serenity and cheerfulness, gives me a pleasure, even while I am locked up in my solitary dungeon, that I believe it is not the common lot of man to enjoy. Those who really know what bliss it is to communicate as well as receive true plea sure will never voluntarily inflict pain. ”

“ There is first of all Companionship; the habit of enjoying pleasures, in common, and also of suffering pains: hence a great readiness in sympathizing with one another; that is, in associating trains of their own pains and pleasures, with the pains and pleasures of one another. There is next, when the Education is good, a constant reciprocation, to the extent of their power, of beneficent acts. And lastly there is their common relation to the grand source of all their pleasures, the Parent. ”

“ Every relationship has its devotional rituals and observances which are important to it. Husband and wife, for instance, because of their love and devotion to each other, develop little rituals and ways of doing that are designed to express their devotion to each other. ”

“ We 67know that the pleasures of taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch, muscular exercise, the sexual relations, produce fatigue and exhaustion, or even suddenly become painful. The pleasures of affection, of self-love, of possession, when they become passions—that is to say, when they increase in intensity and stability—cease to be pure pleasures; a painful element is added to them. This phenomenon is natural and logical, since every increase in activity entails losses, and consequently conditions of pain. ”