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402 ESOTERIC ANTHROPOLOGY.
once the sad lovers and victims, alone have charms for
them. They not only have no desire for marriage, but
an invincible repugnance against it. Numberless pus
tules sometimes make their appearance, and inscribe, in
hideous characters, their passions on their brows, where
one would expect to read soft modesty and amiability.
They avoid the gaze of visitors, and are embarrassed
when one suddenly approaches them."
I copy the quoted paragraphs from a French medical
author, who has given this subject great attention.
One of the sad, but most natural, effects of this habit
is the destruction, to a greater or less extent, in both
sexes, of the proper action of the generative function.
When young men have gone to a certain extent in this
practice, they lose the natural desire for women, and
even the power of enjoying the pleasures
of love.
There is either a morbid irritability that produces the
orgasm and the loss of semen at the first attempt to
penetrate the vagina ; or an insensibility that requires
unnatural means of excitement ; or, an finally, entire
impotence, without even the power of erection, when
it is required, though it may occur when it is not.
On the other hand,
women who have exhausted
themselves by secret licentiousness are often so virtuous
as to hate the sight of a man, and abhor the idea of the
holiest expression of the Divine Creative passion.
These are our most censorious prudes, and immacu
late virgins, who do not fail to crush and banish from
their pure society, any poor girl who yields to the
supplications of her lover and her own natural healthy
desires. Froth the continued excitement of the clitoris
and labia, the seat of sensation is wholly transferred