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

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I deny the position of the Shaker, then, that the instinct is justifiable (if, indeed, it be at all) only as necessary to the reproduction of the species. It is justifiable, in my view, just in as far as it makes a man happier and a better being. It is justifiable, both as a source of temperate enjoyment, and as a means by which the sexes can mutually polish and improve each other.

If a Shaker has read my little book thus far, and cannot reconcile his mind to this idea, he may as well shut it at once. I found all my arguments on the position, that the pleasure derived from this instinct, independent of, and totally distinct from, its ultimate object, the reproduction of our race, is good, proper, worth securing and enjoying. I maintain, that its temperate enjoyment is a blessing, both in itself and in its influence on human character.

Upon this distinction of the instinct into its two-fold character, hinges the chief point in the present discussion. It sometimes happens, nay, it happens every day and hour, that mankind obey its impulses, not from any calculation of consequences, but simply from animal impulse. Thus many children that are brought into the world owe their existence, not to deliberate conviction in their parents that their birth was really desirable, but simply to an unreasoning instinct, which men, in the mass, have not learnt either to resist or control.