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270 ESOTERIC ANTHROPOLOGY.
in the sexual relation, difficult and painful childbirth,
and a whole train of nervous and hysterical affections,
which make the lives of women a curse to themselves
and to all around them.
Closely
connected with masturbation in woman is
another practice, already
alluded to. When a man
enters upon the sexual relation, he wishes the woman
he loves to partake of his enjoyment. If, either from
an original lack of nervous power in the organs of gene
ration, or early habits of masturbation, or from bearing
children, she has lost, or partially lost, the sensibility to
pleasure, men try to provoke it by exciting manipula
tions, before or during the sexual embrace. This is a
common practice, and full of mischief. Where there
is already a lack of nervous power, any attempt to
force sensation is doubly exhausting. It is even worse
in its effects than masturbation. The lives of many
women are made wretched by this selfishness or kind
ness, whichever it may be, of their husbands. No
passion is oftener false in its manifestations than benevvolence,
and killing with kindness is the most frequent
of all the methods of human slaughter.
and under
Amative excesses, even at a proper age,
proper circumstances, produce exhaustion, and so cause
disease. Good, pious, loving husbands and wives, iso
lated from all the world, or all the world to each other,
which is a very unhealthy condition, kill each other
with kindness, make their own lives wretched, and give
birth to short-lived, suffering children. Loving, ab
sorbed in each other, actually eating each other up ;
with no variety in their lives, nothing but this one pas
sion, to which all their force is turned, this vital force is