HOW often have you heard or read that it is psychologically and physically unhealthy for someone to go without sexual relations? College newspapers especially like to run articles making this point. The idea is not new. It was prevalent in the late nineteenth century too. The Rev. Arthur Devine, writing in 1897 in his essay “The Virtue of Chastity,” challenged it:

I shall notice one or two other excuses that are so false and misleading, but, nevertheless, are often used for the worst of purposes–that is, the falsehood that ‘all young men exceed the bounds of morality,’ and that those amongst them who have lived pure and chaste have been mere ‘prigs,’ ‘milksops,’ ‘weaklings,’ ‘muffs,’ men whose society must have been uncommonly ‘slow’ (to use the slang phraseology of the vicious). On the contrary, many can look to old acquaintances who as young men lived pure, chaste lives, uncontaminated by the grosser vices which constitute dissipation, and these, in the words of Mr. Hime, who refers to them, ‘were the first specimens of the young men at the time I refer to in the University . . . and were acknowledged superior to the large majority of their class fellows in all respects–physically as well as morally and intellectually.

They were remarkable for their brilliant successes at the most searching and critical examinations, quite as much as they were for the propriety and steadiness of their conduct; and they were remarkable also for their distinguished achievements in the racquet-court, in the gymnasium, in the hunting-field, in the football-field, on the water, as sportsmen, and at cricket.’

All young men, I repeat, do not fall; and among those who scorn to yield up the supremacy of their conscience and self-esteem to that of their passions, you will find, I again repeat, even as you might naturally expect, not only the most diligent and distinguished of our University students, but also her ablest cricketers, football-players, oarsmen, athletes, and sporting men. It is among such as these you will find your most agreeable and pleasant companions, your most loyal and truest friends.’

The foregoing remarks and arguments will furnish an answer to all that can be said against a pure and chaste life being the best and the happiest for all, young and old. There is, however, one other form which an excuse may sometimes take, from the example of those who were wild and vicious in their youth, and afterwards settled down to a steady, quiet and respectable position in life. It is shaped in this manner, by the author already so often quoted: ‘But look at old Mr. So-and-So! He was an awfully wild fellow in his youth, and yet he is now one of the best and happiest and most respected old men I know.’ [cont.]

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