A Solemn Appeal

EFFECTS

“Happiness is the one constitutional product of every function of our being. Yet every function is capable of painful action. Nor are these two forms or products of the action of our respective functions, chance comers and goers, but all are governed by inflexible law. That function is necessarily pleasurable which harmonizes with the primitive constitution, and fulfills the legitimate designs, of the faculty exercised, and is called normal or natural. That action of any function is painful which violates or departs from its normal primitive institution or end, and is called abnormal, which means unnatural. SOAP 196.2

“Of course, these natural axioms apply with significant emphasis to the element before us. To fulfill the legitimate ends for which this was ordained, is to be happy in its exercise; not to fulfill it, and especially to depart from it, is to suffer in and by its exercise. Now excessive promiscuous, and matrimonial, and solitary, indulgence, violate this function and cause pain. We come now to consider the evils consequent on these its perversions.” SOAP 197.1

“To enumerate the tithe of the evils consequent on excessive sexual indulgence, whether promiscuous, or matrimonial, or solitary, all one in substance, would fill a world with volumes, as it already has with woes, and keep it full. We shall develop, first, some of its destruction of health, and generation of physical evils and sufferings; next, its destruction of the moral tone or stamina, and its production of propensity and depravity in forms without number, and aggravation beyond description. To enumerate a few. SOAP 197.2