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be fully recognized that men are rightly to be held responsible for
the consequences of their own acts, and that these are no longer to be
visited on the woman alone. It follows from this that it is the duty of
men who do not wish to lead a life of infamy to practice such continence
in respect to all woman as they would were the female society in which
they move made up exclusively of their own mothers and sisters.
A more rational mode of life should be adopted which would include
abstinence from all alcoholic drinks, from excess in eating and from
flesh meat, on the one hand, and recourse to physical labor on the
other. I am not speaking of gymnastics, or of any of those occupations
which may be fitly described as playing at work; I mean the genuine toil
that fatigues. No one need go far in search of proofs that this kind of
abstemious living is not merely possible, but far less hurtful to health
than excess. Hundreds of instances are known to every one. This is my
first contention.
In the second place, I think that of late years, through various reasons
which I need not enter, but among which the above-mentioned laxity
of opinion in society and the frequent idealization of the subject in
current literature and painting may be mentioned, conjugal infidelity
has become more common and is considered less reprehensible. I am of
opinion that this is not right. The origin of the evil is twofold. It is
due, in the first place, to a natural instinct, and, in the second, to
the elevation of this instinct to a place to which it does not rightly
belong. This being so, the evil can only be remedied by effecting a
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