Читать книгу Owen's Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question онлайн

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I check my pen. I have said enough, perhaps, to awaken the confidence of those whose confidence I value; and enough, assuredly, to excite the ridicule, or the sneer, of him who walks through life wrapped up in the cloak of conformity, and laughs among his private boon companions, at the scruples of every novice, who will not, like himself, regard debauchery and seduction (in secret) as manly and spirited amusements.

And now, reader! if I have succeeded in awakening your attention, and enlisting in this enquiry your reason and your better feelings, approach with me a subject the most interesting and important to you—to me—to all our fellow-creatures. Reader! if you be a woman, forget that I am a man: if a man, listen to me as you would to a brother. Let us converse, not as men, nor as women, but as human beings, with common interests, instincts, wants, weaknesses. Let us converse, if it be possible, without prejudice and without passion. Reader! whatever be your sex, sect, rank, or party, to you I would now, ere I commence, address the poet’s exhortation—here, far more strictly applicable, than in the investigation to which he applied it:—