Note 687 — Chapter XXV

“Vera” is the heroine of a novel (“Eine für Viele: Aus dem Tagebuche eines Mädchens”) which attracted considerable attention in Germany. She demanded from men entering on marriage the same virgin intactitude which men are accustomed to expect in their wives. English readers will be reminded of Evadne, in Sarah Grand’s “The Heavenly Twins.” Evadne, it will be remembered, left her husband at the church door, owing to information she received regarding his preconjugal career. In England we might speak of “Evadne” enthusiasts, instead of “Vera” enthusiasts.—Translator.

[688] P. Näcke also (“A Contribution to the Woman’s Question and to the Question of Sexual Abstinence,” op. cit., p. 49) strongly condemns this duplex morality, which he regards as “obviously unjust.” Cf. also Max Thal, “Sexual Morality: an Attempt to solve the Problem of Sexual, and more Particularly of the so-called Duplex Morality” (Breslau, 1904).

[689] Friedrich Albert Lange, “History of Materialism,” vol. iii., p. 302, English edition.

[690] “My dear young men,” thus wrote Ernst Moritz Arndt, at the age of eighty-nine, to the Burschenschaft (Students’ Association) of Jena, “I can wish nothing better for you than that you should arrange your course of life in Jena, and pass through it, as I heretofore passed through it, making a courageous, vigorous, and earnest fight against the lusty, overbearing impulses of youth, which in the best case are so easily carried to excess.... In these your most valuable years, between eighteen and twenty, you must, with redoubled manliness, courage, and chastity, strive to deserve the praise given by Caius Julius Cæsar to the young men of Germany.”

[691] Cf., in this connexion, the remarks of A. Herzen, “Science and Morality,” pp. 11, 12 (Berlin, 1901). The same age for human maturity was fixed on also by J. C. G. Ackermann (“The Diseases of the Learned,” p. 268; Nürnberg, 1777).

[692] I need mention only Seved Ribbing, Acton, Rubner, Paget, Hegar, Beale, Herzen, A. Eulenburg, V. Cnyrim, and Fürbringer.

[693] Wilhelm Erb, “Remarks on the Consequences of Sexual Abstinence,” published in the Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1903, vol. ii., No. I., pp. 1-18.

[694] Theodor Mundt, in his “Madonna” (pp. 240, 241; Leipzig, 1835), has very vividly described the beneficial and refreshing influence of coitus upon women.

[695] L. Löwenfeld, “The Sexual Life and Nervous Troubles,” pp. 62-69, fourth edition.