incompetent, debilitated, and totally incapacitated for mental or manual
labor. This may be the result of youthful indiscretion, ignorantly
committed, but not unfrequently it is the effect of a pernicious
literature which inflames the imagination, tramples upon reason, and
describes to the youth a realm where the passions are the ruling
deities.

Many persons are born into the world with disordered organizations for
which they are not themselves responsible. Such individuals are entitled
to the sympathy of humanity. Dyspepsia, scrofula, consumption, and a
thousand ills to which mankind is heir, are inherited from parents, the
results of ill-assorted marriages. Intoxicated parents often produce
offspring utterly demented. Children of healthy parents, with good
constitutions, are usually healthy and intelligent. There are marked
varieties of character in children of the same parents. One manifests
great precocity, another is below the average in mental attainments; one
is amiable, another irritable in disposition; indeed, there are often as
great differences between children of the same, as of different
families. This is due to the physical and mental conditions of the
parents, more especially the mother, not only at the time of the
impregnation but also during the period intervening between conception
and the birth of the offspring. The ancients regarded courage as the
principal virtue. By us, purity is so estimated. Moral purity is an
essential requisite to the growth and perfection of the character.

SELF-ABUSE. Untold miseries arise from the pollution of the body.
Self-pollution, or onanism, is one of the most prolific sources of evil,
since it leads both to the degradation of body and mind. It is practiced
more or less by members of both sexes, and the habit once established,
is overcome with the greatest difficulty. It is the source of numerous