Читать книгу A Treatise on the Crime of Onan. Illustrated with a Variety of Cases, Together with the Method of Cure онлайн

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These Zoïluses of society and literature, who themselves do nothing, and blame every thing that is done, will have the assurance to say, that this Work is fitter to spread than to stop this vice, and that it will make it known to such as would otherwise have remained in ignorance of it. I shall make them no answer; they deserve none; it is debasing one’s self to do them that honor: but there are those of weak though virtuous minds, upon whom these objections might make an impression: to these I owe a general reflexion, it is this, that, in that point of light, my Book is liable to no worse exception than what might be made to all books of morality: they must be all prohibited, if pointing out the dangers of a vice was the way to multiply it. The sacred writings, those of the Fathers, those of the Casuists, ought all to be forbidden before mine is so. Besides, what young person is likely to think of reading a Treatise of Physic on a matter of which he does not so much as know the name? It is to be wished, indeed, that this Book were become familiar to all persons to whom the education of youth is committed; it might be of service to them to set an early watch; and detect, in time, any practice of this detestable habit; it would enable them to take the precautions they should judge necessary for preventing the consequences.