THE EXCUSES OF MEN.
In the previous chapter I have dwelt on the sins against women which our sex commits through prostitution. In order to be just towards both sides I shall also point out the circumstances which for the present may still serve to excuse men, although not to justify them.
The sexual instinct is as natural and as legitimate as the instinct for eating and drinking. Whatever nature demands cannot and should not be denied her; it is only necessary to find the ethical rules which will secure the satisfaction of the natural needs without involving degeneration.
Whatever is unnatural is also immoral. But it is unnatural, consequently immoral, that circumstances will not allow a man after having reached puberty to follow his natural instincts and to associate himself with a woman. If it were possible to the youth to marry young, he would, at the hand of his beloved, pass by all the moral cesspools through which the unmarried are driven by the passion of their sexual instinct. He would not have to go through those schools of corruption in which he learns to fit himself for everything which later makes him unfit for any true conjugal relation. In the arms of his beloved he
