Male Continence | Page 5

answers ready for you; but I will content myself for the present with this limited presentation.
Yours respectfully, J. H. NOYES.
This letter soon after its date was printed in tract form, as a convenient answer to many letters of inquiry that were pouring in upon the Editors of the CIRCULAR. That little tract is all that we have offered the public directly on the subject of Male Continence since 1866; and it has been sent only where it was explicitly demanded. Four editions of it have been called for and exhausted, and the demand still continues and increases. Thus the time seems to have come for something more elaborate; and meanwhile our experience has been maturing, so that we have more to say. Instead, therefore, of issuing simply a fifth edition of the tract, it has been thought best now to make the exposition more complete by adding to the brief theory therein presented, some account of the origin, history, and practical results of that theory.
To those who regard the principle of Male Continence as a valuable addition to science, it will be interesting to learn how it was discovered; and the misrepresentations on this point which have been put in circulation by Hepworth Dixon and others make it proper and even necessary that the true story of the discovery should be put on record. I tell that story in few words thus:
I was married in 1838, and lived in the usual routine of matrimony till 1846. It was during this period of eight years that I studied the subject of sexual intercourse in connection with my matrimonial experience, and discovered the principle of Male Continence. And the discovery was occasioned and even forced upon me by very sorrowful experience. In the course of six years my wife went through the agonies of five births. Four of them were premature. Only one child lived. This experience was what directed my studies and kept me studying. After our last disappointment, I pledged my word to my wife that I would never again expose her to such fruitless suffering. I made up my mind to live apart from her, rather than break this promise. This was the situation in the summer of 1844. At that time I conceived the idea that the sexual organs have a social function which is distinct from the propagative function; and that these functions may be separated practically. I experimented on this idea, and found that the self-control which it requires is not difficult; also that my enjoyment was increased; also that my wife's experience was very satisfactory, as it had never been before; also that we had escaped the horrors and the fear of involuntary propagation. This was a great deliverance. It made a happy household. I communicated my discovery to a friend. His experience and that of his household were the same. In the course of the next two years I studied all the essential details and bearings of the discovery. In 1846 we commenced Community life at Putney, Vt. In 1848, soon after our removal to Oneida, I published the new theory in a pamphlet which passed through several editions, but is now out of print. This is the only true account of my discovery of Male Continence.
The pamphlet referred to embraced a general exhibition of the principles of the kingdom of heaven promised in the Bible, and for this reason it was entitled The Bible Argument; but the most important chapter of it was that which undertook to show "How the sexual function is to be redeemed and true relations between the sexes are to be restored." Under this caption the doctrine of Male Continence was propounded substantially as it is in the letter to the Medical student, but more in detail and with less reserve. For the sake of showing what we believed and printed on this subject twenty-five years ago - which therefore essentially belongs to the history of Male Continence - I will now venture to reprint that notable chapter.
From The Bible Argument, printed in 1848.
The amative and propagative functions of the sexual organs are distinct from each other, and may be separated practically. They are confounded in the world, both in the theories of physiologists and in universal practice. The amative function is regarded merely as a bait to the propagative, and is merged in it. The sexual organs are called "organs of reproduction," or "organs of generation," but not organs of love or organs of union. But if amativeness is the first and noblest of the social affections, and if the propagative part of the sexual relation was originally secondary, and became paramount by the subversion of order in the fall [as had previously been shown], we are bound to raise the amative office of the sexual organs into