The youngest son is now less than seven years old; he is such a hopeless sex maniac even now that the parents of other children do not dare allow them to be alone with him for one moment.
In telling me of this case the asylum physician, himself a profound student of heredity, said of the child:
"He would shame an old Parisian debauchee. The Spartans were not so far wrong after all. They killed all such children as these before they had the chance to grow up and still further pollute the stream of life." And so our good citizen followed only the usual course prescribed by the inspector--and by society--and the result is (leaving out the horrible, necessary sacrifice of a woman--some woman or some number of women)--the result of the plan is this; a house of vice, (in a secluded quarter "for greater safety"); a few years of license which he believed to be his legitimate perquisite in the world and "no harm done;" the association of the later years of his wasted energies, and his pretense and vice-soaked life and flesh with the life of a pure girl, and then the legacy to society of five more sex maniacs, (who, being born in a wedlock, which, by its present terms, laws, and theories, still further develops sex mania in men and thereby implants the disease in each generation to be fought with or yielded to again); a doddering, drivelling wreck of a man in an asylum at the prime of his manhood; a worse than widowed wife with a knowledge in her soul which is an undying serpent as she looks in despair upon the five lives she has given, in her pathetic ignorance and trust. And his is not an unusual record. Of course its details are seldom known outside of the family and physicians. It is legitimate fruit of a tree which society in its avarice and ignorance and vice carefully fosters. It is the tree, the fruit of which fills our jails, mad-houses, asylums, poorhouses and prisons year after year, and yet we tend it carefully and keep its root strong and vigorous by exactly the methods recommended by the police inspector and by all believers in State regulated and State licensed vice, that is: It must be systematically continued for the good of "robust boys who might else be on the island with muffled hands. It must be kept in certain quarters and secret for greater safety to men, and that our wives and daughters may not hear of it."