History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present | Page 4

find the following: "Shall we
remain silent on so important a subject? By no means. The sacred
authors, the Fathers of the Church, who present their thoughts in living
words, and ecclesiastical authors have not felt that silence was best. I
have followed their example, and shall exclaim, with St. Augustine, 'If
what I have written scandalizes any prudish persons, let them rather
accuse the turpitude of their own thoughts than the words I have been
obliged to use.'"
For my part, I think that people who can go to the theatre and enjoy "As
in a Looking-Glass," and witness some of the satyrical or billy-goat
traits of humanity so graphically exhibited in "La Tosca," with evident
satisfaction; or attend the more robust plays of "Virginius" or of "Galba,
the Gladiator," with all its suggestions of the Cæsarian section, and the
lust and the fornications of an intensely animal Roman empress,
without the destruction of their moral equilibrium or tending to induce
in them a disposition to commit a rape on the first met,--I think such
people can be safely intrusted to read this book.
And as to the reading public, there are but few general readers who
could honestly plead an ignorance of the "Decameron," Balzac, La
Fontaine, "Heptameron," Crébillon fils, or of matter-of-fact Monsieur le
Docteur Maitre Rabelais,--works which, more or less, carry a moral
instruction in every tale, which, like the tales of the "Malice of
Women," in the unexpurged edition of the literal translation of the
"Arabian Nights," contains much more of practical moral lessons, even
if in the flowery and warm, spiced language of the Orient, than any
supposed nastiness, on account of which they are classed among the
prohibited. To these, and the readers of Amelie Rives's books, or other
intensely realistic literature, I need not imitate the warning of Ansonius,
who warned his readers on the threshold of a part of his book to "stop
and consider well their strength before proceeding with its lecture."
Metaphorically speaking, the general theatre-going, or modern

literature-reading public, can be considered pretty callous and morally
bullet proof. I shall therefore make no apology.
Some fault may, perhaps, be found with some of the occasional style of
the book, or with some of the subjects used to illustrate a principle. To
the extremely wise, good, and scientific, these illustrations were
unnecessary; this need hardly be mentioned; and the passages which to
some may prove objectionable were not intended for them, either with
the expectation of delighting them or with the purpose of shocking
them. These passages, they can easily avoid. This book, however, was
written that it might be read: not only read by the Solon, Socrates, Plato,
or Seneca of the laity or the profession, but even by the billy-goated
dispositioned, vulgar plebeian, who could no more be made to read
cold, scientific, ungarnished facts than you can make an unwilling
horse drink at the watering-trough. Human weakness and perversity is
silly, but it is sillier to ignore that it exists. So, for the sake of boring
and driving a few solid facts into the otherwise undigesting and
unthinking, as well as primarily obdurate understanding of the
untutored plebeian, I ask the indulgence of the intelligent and
broad-minded as well as the easily inducted reader. Cleopatra was
smuggled into Cæsar's presence in a roll of tapestry; the Greeks
introduced their men into Troy by means of a wooden horse; and the
discoverer of the broad Pacific Ocean made his escape from his
importunate creditors disguised as a cask of merchandise. So, when we
wish to accomplish an object, we must adopt appropriate means, even
if they may apparently seem to have an entirely diametrically opposite
object. The Athenian, Themistocles, when wishing to make the battle
of Salamis decisive, was inspired with the idea of sending word to the
Persian monarch that the Greeks were trying to escape, advising him to
block the passage; this saved Greece.
There is a weird and ghostly but interesting tale connected with the
Moslem conquest of Spain, of how Roderick, the last of the Gothic
kings, when in trouble and worry, repaired to an old castle, in the secret
recesses of which was a magic table whereon would pass in grim
procession the different events of the future of Spain; as he gazed on
the enchanted table he there saw his own ruin and his country's and

nation's subjugation. Anatomy is generally called a dry study, but, like
the enchanted brazen table in the ancient Gothic castle, it tells a no less
weird or interesting tale of the past. Its revelations lighten up a long
vista, through the thousands of years through which the human species
has evolved from its earliest appearance on earth, gradually working up
through the different evolutionary processes to what