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Karezza, Ethics of Marriage, by Alice B. Stockham, [1903], at sacred-texts.com
Facts corroborating any new theory or habit of life are always in demand. As Karezza is comparatively new to many and as the results of its adoption will be far reaching it is due the reader that the theories and principles taught in this work be substantiated by testimony from intelligent, unprejudiced people, who give their experience for the benefit of others.
If some have derived happiness and satisfaction from the course herein proposed others may do so. Of course it may require self training and greater knowledge of the laws of life; therefore, if questions arise, or in any way the subject does not seem clear, or if men or women desire reading that will aid their understanding, the author holds herself in readiness to give such aid. It is right understanding and right application of truth that should be sought.
ALICE B. STOCKHAM, M. D.,
1388 Washington Boulevard, Chicago, Ill.
The following correspondence was originally published in Creative Life - a brochure for young ladies. It is reproduced here as especially corroborative of theories advanced on pages 14-18 and 109, and no doubt will be read with interest and profit:
DEAR DR. STOCKHAM:
When I read your great book, TOKOLOGY, and looked at your portrait, for the first time in my life I felt that I had found one in whom I could confide, and from whom I might hope for real help.
Very early in life I became addicted to a bad, secret habit. It does not seem as if I ever learned it. I seemed always to have had it; nor did I know I was doing wrong until about eighteen years of age, when my conscience seemed to tell me it was not right. I was a professing Christian, and I began to feel any secret propensity, no matter what the pleasure it gave, could not be right.
Sometime after I read of the fearful results
that would follow this habit; I soon decided that I must stop. I made up my mind to conquer the habit solely by my own will power, but utterly failed. Humbled, I sought Divine help; but for a long time it seemed that to stop the sun in his course would prove as easy a task as to abandon the habit entirely.
At twenty-two, a year after graduating, I went out to China as a missionary. For more than two years I realized what it was to be kept by the power of God; but like many a drunkard, I began to think I was safe, and neglected to be as watchful and prayerful as I should have been, and, being overtaken by temptation, yielded several times. I know the desire is still there, and what I want to know is this:
What course of treatment will succeed in destroying the desire?
Should I entertain the idea of marriage?
What effect will the past have upon the marriage relation?
I do not expect to be married for a year or more. My intended husband is also a missionary. I am in perfect health, but have a poor memory. I take frequent baths and live an abstemious life. Please advise me at _______. If you can offer any relief, I shall always be
Gratefully yours,
C.
To this earnest appeal I sent this reply:
DEAR MISS C. :
I thank you most sincerely for your confidence. There certainly must be help for you as you so greatly desire it. I think you would not have had such a struggle if you had understood that passion is simply the evidence or sign of creative power. It does not follow that this creative power should be devoted to procreation, but it may be used in any good work. Now, according to your attitude of mind, will be your experience. When the feeling comes on, say, 'Yes, I know I am a creator. What am I to do?' It may be to form plans, help another, to teach school, to build a home, whatever comes before you in your life work. Respond quickly. At once think out your plans, create, and lo! what you call temptation is gone. It is a call from God. Do you know we are wrong in attaching baseness to these feelings? Get that idea out of your mind.
The treatment most surely lies in following the law. Turn your creative power to good uses, to tremendous uses, if need be. Your consecration to good work is all right, now consecrate especially your creative powers. Every indication of passion must be treated as a call from God for some new work - some creation. Put your mind to work to know what it is. It is not the body that calls; it is the spirit, and obedience is the cure.
Say over and over again, 'I am a creator. What am I to produce?' Listen, listen, and God will answer.
Yours sincerely,
A.
No letter ever gave me such real joy as her answer. Believing that the perusal of it will be helpful to many, I quote with the writer's permission:
DEAR DOCTOR:
Your letter was received several weeks ago when I was away on a tour speaking at missionary meetings.
Really, I do not know when I have been at such a loss for words as I am in finding any that will correctly and sufficiently express my gratitude for what you have done for me. For a long time I have thought that the work of the Christian physician is such a noble one that it is second only to that of the Christian minister and missionary. Since receiving your letter it has seemed as though I might go farther than that, and place it before that of the Christian ministry; but perhaps it would be more correct to feel that, in your particular case, both offices are combined, for who could better minister to the soul, or teach a spiritual truth of more vital importance than you have done in my case?
As I read and re-read that part of your letter in relation to the cure, and began to comprehend
its full meaning and bearing, I felt as I have done at important crises of my life when some new spiritual truth has fully dawned upon me, and I have taken a great stride in the Christian life, and my feeling towards you was more than that of gratitude and admiration. You have done me good for life, as you have done many others, and who knows how much good to future generations?
Were I to send you five times the amount you charged, you would be no more nearly paid for what you have done for me than by the amount named. I take the knowledge gained as a gift from God, through you His agent, realizing that thereby my responsibility is increased, and knowing that from Him you will receive your reward.
All being well, I shall be married at home in August and return at once to China. I may go by Chicago. If I should do so, it would be a very great gratification to me to have the honor of meeting you and the privilege of thanking you in person for what you have done for me.
Sincerely yours,
C.
The following is from a personal friend, eminent as a teacher of metaphysical philosophy:
I thank you, Dear Doctor, for the perusal of Karezza in MSS. God bless you - I know it is true. I have had experience that has proved it to my satisfaction. To me the experience is very
sacred, but if it aids to lift the veil (or chain) of animalism from the hearts of women and men and thus open the realm to spiritual possibilities, I have no objection to your using it. * * *
My wife and I had for months talked over together this problem, with its possible results. With our deep love for each other, and our love and interest for humanity we wished no theory to be left unproven.
Each of us had made a close study of the Science of Being, so we well understood the power of thought, and knew that the mind must consent before the simplest act in life can be performed. This was our theory: Man and woman are opposite to and counterpart of each other, as Tennyson beautifully expresses it:
"For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse -
Not like to like, but like in difference,
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
She mental breadth, -
Till at last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities;
But like each other ev'n as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to man;
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm;
Then springs the crowning race of humankind.
May these things be!"So then we said that man might fully appreciate woman, and that woman might fully appreciate man. To do this it is necessary that they adjust themselves on a spiritual plane, that he may be more a woman in nature and she more a man, and yet maintain the secret of their individuality. * * *
To make the experiment complete, for several successive cohabitations we kept the physical under complete control - at no time allowing a crisis.
We found that neither one was disturbed in any physical sense. There was no uneasiness, no unrest, no unsatisfied desire, rather on the contrary the satisfaction was complete, resulting in a beautiful rest and a sweet sleep. Each occasion was indeed a sacrament.
I feel confident however that this particular relation could not have been satisfactory had we not known the power of the mind over the body. We were fortified and prepared far each occasion. We fixed our minds on and expected spiritual attainment. The result was perfectly successful. We had previously agreed upon the duration (the complete union not more than thirty minutes) and that there must not be a desire on the part of one which the other would not readily meet. Following the relation, side by side, in the beautiful stillness, I experienced
a peace, a perfect satisfaction passing mortal understanding. I was lifted up and up. I seemed to go into the realm of spirit - clairvoyant, intensely so - not to behold spirits, but rather spiritual possibilities. Indeed it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive all the things prepared for him, with the proper appropriation of creative energy.
To those seeking knowledge from the spirit of truth, my name may be given. To all others I am,
Sincerely,
SIGMA
Chicago, Feb. 8, 1896.
In Male Continence, a pamphlet now out of print, after giving a graphic and eloquent plea for the rights of the child, the writer says:
The discovery was occasioned and even forced upon me by a very sorrowful experience. In the course of six years my wife went through the agonies of five births. Four of them were premature. Only one child lived. This experience was what directed my studies and kept me studying. After our last disappointment I pledged my word to my wife that I would never again expose her to such fruitless suffering. I made up my mind to live apart from her, rather than break this promise. I conceived the idea that the sexual organs have a social function which is
distinct from the propagative function, and that these functions may be separated practically. I experimented on this idea, and found that the self-control which it requires is not difficult; that my enjoyment was increased; that my wife's experience was very satisfactory, as it had never been before; that we had escaped the horrors and fear of involuntary propagation. This was a great deliverance. It made a happy household. I communicated my discovery to a friend. His experience and that of his household were the same. In normal condition, men are entirely competent to choose in sexual intercourse whether they will stop at any point in the voluntary stages of it, and so make it simply an act of communion, or go through to the involuntary stage, and make it an act of propagation.
The situation may be compared to a stream in three conditions, viz.:
a fall; a course of rapids above the fall; and still water above the rapids. The skillful boatman may choose whether he will remain in the still water, or venture more or less down the rapids, or run his boat over the fall. But there is a point on the verge of the fall where he has no control over his course; and just above that, there is a point where he will have to struggle with the current in a way which will give his nerves a severe trial, even though he may escape the fall.
[paragraph continues] If he is willing to learn, experience will teach him the wisdom of confining his excursions to the region of easy rowing, unless he has an object in view that is worth the cost of going over the falls.
You have now our whole theory. It consists in analyzing sexual intercourse, recognizing in it two distinct acts, the social and the propagative, which can be separated practically, and affirming that it is best, not only with reference to prudential considerations, but for immediate pleasure, that a man should content himself with the social act, except when he intends procreation.
It does not seek to prevent the intercourse of sexes, but rather to prevent that which generally puts an end to such intercourse. It does not seek to prevent the natural effects of the propagative act, but to prevent the propagative act itself except when it is intended to be effectual. Of course it does not seek to destroy the living results of the propagative act, but provides that impregnation and child-bearing shall be voluntary, and therefore desired. And now to speak affirmatively, the exact thing that our theory does propose is, to take that same power of moral restraint and self-control which Paul, Malthus, the Shakers, and all considerate men use in one way or another to limit propagation, and instead of applying it, as
they do, to the prevention of the intercourse of the sexes, to introduce it at another stage of proceedings, viz., after the sexes have come together in social effusion, and before they have reached the propagative crisis; thus allowing the most essential freedom of love, and at the same time avoiding undesired procreation and all the other evils incident to male incontinence.
The objection urged to this method is, that it is unnatural, and unauthorized by the example of other animals. I may answer that cooking, wearing clothes, living in houses, and almost everything else done by civilized man, is unnatural in the same sense, and that a close adherence to the example of the brutes would require us to forego speech and go on all fours! But, on the other hand, if it is natural in the best sense, as I believe it is, for rational beings to forsake the example of the brutes and improve nature by invention and discovery in all directions, then truly the argument turns the other way, and we shall have to confess that until men and women find a way to elevate their sexual functions above those of the brutes, by introducing into them self-control and moral culture, they are living in unnatural degradation.
But I will come closer to this objection. The real meaning of it is that it is a difficult interruption of a natural act. But every instance of self-denial
is an interruption of some natural act. The man who virtuously contents himself with a look at a beautiful woman is conscious of such an interruption. The lover who stops at a kiss denies himself a natural progression. It is an easy descending grade through all the approaches of sexual love from the first touch of respectful friendship to the final complete amalgamation. Must there be no interruption of this natural slide? Brutes, animal or human, tolerate none. Shall their ideas of self-denial prevail? Nay, it is the glory of man to control himself, and the Kingdom of Heaven summons him to self-control in ALL THINGS. If it is noble and beautiful for a betrothed lover to respect the law of marriage in the midst of the glories of courtship, it may be even more noble and beautiful for the wedded lover to respect the laws of health and propagation in the midst of the ecstasies of sexual union. The same moral culture that ennobles the antecedents and approaches of marriage will some time surely glorify the consummation.
The method of controlling propagation which results from our argument is natural, healthy and effectual.
The useless expenditure of seed certainly is not natural. God cannot have designed that men should sow seed by the wayside where they
do not expect it to grow, nor in the same field where it has already been sown and is growing; and yet such is the practice of men in the ordinary sexual relation. They sow seed habitually where they do not wish it to grow. This is wasteful of life and cannot be natural. Yet is it not manifest that the instinct of our nature demands congress of the sexes, not only for propagative, but for social and spiritual purposes? The act of propagation should be reserved for its legitimate occasions when conception is intended. The idea that sexual intercourse, limited to the social part of it, is impossible or difficult, and therefore not natural, is contradicted by the experience of many. Abstinence from masturbation is impossible or difficult where habit has made it a second nature, and yet no one will say that habitual masturbation is natural. So abstinence from the propagative part of sexual intercourse may seem impracticable to depraved natures, and yet be perfectly natural and easy to persons properly trained to chastity. Our method simply proposes the subordination of the flesh to the spirit, teaching men to seek principally the elevated spiritual pleasures of sexual connection. This is certainly natural and easy to the spiritual man however difficult it may be to the sensual.
In the first place it secures woman from the curses of involuntary and undesirable procreation;
and secondly, it stops the drain of life on the part of the man.
The habit of making sexual intercourse a quiet affair, restricting the action of the organs to such limits as are necessary to the avoidance of the crisis, can easily be established, and then there is no risk of conception without intention.
Our theory, separating the amative from the propagative, not only relieves us of involuntary and undesirable procreation, but opens the way to scientific propagation. We believe that propagation, rightly conducted and kept within such limits as life can fairly afford, is a blessing. A very large proportion of all children born under the present system are begotten contrary to the wishes of both parents, and lie nine months in the mother's womb under their mother's curse or a feeling little better than a curse. Such children cannot be well organized. We are opposed to excessive, and consequently, oppressive procreation, which is almost universal. We are opposed to random procreation, which is unavoidable in the present marriage custom. But we favor intelligent, well-ordered procreation.
We believe the time will come when involuntary and random propagation will cease, and when scientific combination will be applied to human generation as freely and successfully as it is to that of other animals. And at all events,
we believe that good sense and benevolence will very soon sanction and enforce the rule that women shall bear children only when they choose. They have the principal burden of breeding to bear, and they, rather than men, should have their choice of time and circumstances.
Strike of A Sex, by Geo. N. Miller, has been read by thousands. 2 He writes:
To the teachers of the young, Zugassent's Discovery appeals with the voice of a prophet. It concerns the happiness of millions yet to be. If it were taught to the young by enlightened and pure-minded teachers they would never be conscious of any sacrifice. On the contrary, they would prefer it, as has been demonstrated; and the tremendous compensations which such a wise conservation of force would bring would speedily make the earth astir with a new prepotent race.
Those who perceive the crying need for a radical reformation in existing beliefs on sexual subjects, must look to the instruction of the young for the step in advance they earnestly hope to see.
Let the young be taught that it was never nature's intention that man should take pride in his purely animal instincts and desires, and that the progress of the race depends more upon the
absolute control of the sexual nature for the improvement of the species than upon any other one thing except the broadest idea of human brotherhood.
Let them be taught that the organs for love's expression are entirely distinct from those of generation, and that it is an unworthy act to use the latter except for nature's purposes; that the proper use of the former raises the sexual act to a mental plane where it ceases to be the brutalizing and degrading animalism it often is, but becomes the next step toward soul development which is the appointed task of man.
And indeed, if a discerning public sentiment could be formed, and the young could be taught by pure-minded teachers, that it would be far better for their own health and happiness, as well as that of their posterity, to regulate their lives by this rule of temperance, a great many happy marriages would be possible which are now cruelly postponed or hopelessly abandoned for fear of the expense and embarrassment of children. It considers the welfare and happiness of others in the most engrossing of human pleasures, and thus partakes of the divine. It lifts the interchanges between the sexes from the purely sensual plane, tending toward death, into that of joyous social and religious fellowship tending toward life. It envelops those who
really apprehend it in an atmosphere of purity and chastity sweeter and far more real than that possessed by nuns.
There is today among pure-minded people who believe that the sexual nature is sacred, holy, and glorious, a crying and insistent demand for a pure and innocent method of limiting the size of their families and mitigating the woes of poverty and ill-health resulting from too frequent child-bearing. Conscientious and God-fearing persons naturally recoil from the methods adopted by the irreligious. They cannot feel that such methods have the justifying and ennobling effect which should pertain to the associations of a sacrament. And shall such people as these be always left to misdirection, chance, and misery? Do not the infinite resources of Christianity contain an assured cure for this evil? Here is one that seems completely to supply this demand. It is not only intrinsically pure and innocent, but in teaching self-control and true temperance, without asceticism, it reacts powerfully for good on the whole character. It is not a merely nugatory device, but a stimulus to spirituality.
The young people who are now approaching marriageable age live in a world whose ideas, in nearly every department of life, have been largely modified, if not completely changed, by the advent of steam, electricity, the microscope,
the telescope, the telephone, and other constantly multiplying agents of enlightenment. Is it not reasonable to suppose that there is the same opportunity for infinite improvement and revolutionizing discovery in such a vital department as that of the sex relation, and that the results of such discovery will be commensurate with the immense importance of the subject? The Discovery of Zugassent has been demonstrated to be such an improvement, and it alone provides a sure foundation for the perfect solution both of the sexual and population problems.
The final supremacy over nature lies in the full subjection of man's own body to his intelligent will. There are already an abundance of familiar facts showing the influence of education and direct discipline in developing the powers of the body. We see men every day who, by attention and painstaking investigation and practice in some mechanical art, have gained a power over their muscles, for certain purposes, which to the mere natural man would be impossible or miraculous. In music the great violinists and pianists are examples. All the voluntary faculties are known to come under the power of education, and the human will is found able to express itself in the motions of the body, to an extent and perfection that is in proportion to the painstaking and discipline that are applied. So far as
the department of voluntary outward habits is concerned, the influence of will and education to control the body is universally admitted. But there is a step further. Investigation and experience are now ready to demonstrate the power of the will over what have been considered and called the involuntary processes of the body. The mind can take control of them, certainly, to a great extent; the later discoveries point to the conclusion, that there are strictly no involuntary departments in the human system, but that every part falls appropriately and in fact within the dominion of mind, spirit, and will. 3
As a promoter of domestic happiness and a preventer of the woes that lead to divorce, Zugassent's Discovery is entitled to the lasting gratitude of all good people, as is shown by the many testimonies on record, two of which follow:
"Since my husband became acquainted with the philosophy of Zugassent, he has endeared himself to me a hundred-fold, and although our so called 'honeymoon' was passed five years ago, it was no more real, and far less lasting, than the ecstatic, the unspeakable happiness which is now
continually mine. My prosaic and sometimes indifferent husband has changed by a heavenly magic into an ardent and entrancing lover, for whose coming I watch with all the tender raptures of a schoolgirl. His very step sends a thrill through me, for I know that my beloved will grasp me and clasp me and cover me with kisses such as only the most enthusiastic lover could give. And though the years lapse, I cannot see or feel any change in the way he cherishes me. To each other we are continual objects of deepest reverence and the most sacred mystery. Our affection deepens, our romance seems as sure and enduring as the stars. My lover! my hero! my knight! my husband! I date my marriage from the time when he became a disciple of Zugassent, for that was the beginning of our assured happiness.
But it is not alone as a cherishing lover that my husband has become my crown of happiness. He has grown perceptibly nobler in character, in purpose; in strength, in all the qualities that make a man God-like, so that beside a lover I have a strong friend and wise counsellor, and my happiness is complete.
L.S.""I am a young man, 24 years of age, enjoying the most vigorous health. For two years after becoming engaged I delayed marriage, simply because I did not think my income sufficient to
support a wife and the children which I regarded as an inevitable consequence. Happily for me a friend, who knew my circumstances, wrote me about Zugassent's Discovery. The ideas contained in this discovery were so different from all my preconceived ideas of what constituted marital happiness, that I was inclined to reject them as utterly impracticable and absurd. But the more I thought of the matter the more clearly I saw that if there was a possibility of these new ideas being true, they were exactly adapted to a man in my circumstances, and that they made my marriage immediately practicable. The wholly new thought that retaining the vital force within himself would naturally make a man stronger, cleaner, and better also seemed to me not irrational. With some misgivings, therefore, I determined to venture upon marriage, and it has been completely successful. I have had a continuous honeymoon for four years. I have never been conscious of any irksome restraint or asceticism in my sexual experience; and my self-control and strength, mental and physical, have greatly increased since my marriage. In the light of my own experience I regard the idea that the seminal fluid is a secretion that must be got rid of as being the most pernicious and fatal one that can possibly be taught to young people. J. G."
My Dear Dr. Stockham:
Your most gracious answer to my request came promptly. Last evening I devoted to Karezza and Creative Life. I bless you from my heart for this beautiful interpretation of the relation between the sexes. Passion has always seemed to me to be a sharing of God's creative life and a divine instinct. Its perversion and sensuality have profaned the holiest joys, and veiled souls from one another, shutting out the Love, which is the very High Priest of the Holy of Holies. All Womankind should give living praise and thanks for the beneficence of Karezza's influence, as I do.
It is delightful and reassuring to find one's own truest intuitions purely interpreted on an open page. My own nature is filled and vibrant with that creative fire. I have never been ashamed of it, but it has been strongly repressed. I give to my ministry the love-forces that have never been satisfied except by the transfusion of the Universal Love. I believe that the ennoblement of this passion to its own spiritual plane will lift the whole race heavenward and redeem the home and social world from retrogression. It is the divine regeneration, the new birth of Spiritual Consciousness, for which the world has suffered long and long. Permit me to express my admiration for the dignity, purity and sweet
seriousness of style of Karezza and the booklets. Accept my very real thanks.
Believe that I shall try to promote, in all ways that a sister minister may, your beneficent message to women.
Yours sincerely, for love and purity,
M.L.L.
Fort Collins, Colorado, November, 1900
Dear Dr. Stockham:My dear wife and I are indeed very grateful for the valuable advice so freely given in your letter and in the books, which accompanied it. You will be glad to know that the information enabled us to consummate our marriage in a very beautiful way - and we are still lovers, with extended opportunities for showing our affection and devotion for each other. I can truthfully add that the beautiful simile used in your letter of two lives flowing together like waters is applicable to us, and as we think, will be so to the end.
Acting on your advice before marriage, we read together Karezza and two of the other books you sent. My dear one was much interested and imbued by your uplifting teaching and the new ideals, which it opened up for her. Your excellent WEDDING NIGHT and the most advanced of the other books I thought best that she should read by herself, and she now desires me to express to you her heartiest thanks for the former
especially, as it gives her just the information she wanted and which she had not been able to obtain elsewhere. She wishes that the WEDDING NIGHT could be placed in the hands of every prospective bride, as she is quite sure it would save much suffering and misunderstanding at the very beginning of married life.
Yours sincerely,
J.A.L.
Birmingham, England, March 28, 1901
Dear Dr. Stockham:I want to say that I knew of, believed in, and practiced Karezza long before I knew there was such a book, and still believe it most fully.
The teachings of Karezza came to me in a critical and trying time of my life. I had been married several years, and the harmony between my wife and self seemed dying out. She had loved me dearly, but the old sex embrace had no attraction for her, and grew more and more repulsive. The new teaching brought us into a new heaven and a new earth.
I cannot tell you how happy we became. We were simply lovers, but such lovers as we had never been before. An indescribable tenderness pervaded all our relations. My wife proved a sexual power and perfection rare and wonderful. Her mental and moral nature both developed until I hardly knew her, and I for the first time was sure that I was a poet. And all this ever increased until her death some years after.
Karezza seems to me to be the sex blending of the moral natures, it seems to call out and arouse to an ecstasy of delight and power the spiritual and poetic nature of both man and woman. It gives strength as if it were the key to unlock powers.
Karezza is perfectly successful where the two come together with a mutual loving desire to assist and bless each other, to blend and exchange spiritual gifts, to inspire each other to the noblest moods. Then the "Heaven" stage is easily reached.
J.W.L.
March, 1901
My Dear Dr. Stockham:A sweet and wise American friend has introduced my dear husband and myself to the pure delights of Karezza, and I should feel myself the basest of ingrates if I left this land without writing you this word of heartfelt thanks; and yet how poor words are to convey real gratitude! We rob words of meaning by our wretched way of using them to express paltry things, and when a benefit has been done one, which enriches - nay, transforms life - the whole world - one has but the same old exhausted words.
For this wonderful discovery is in sober reality a transformer of wedded life. I am a woman of passion (until now I have always been ashamed of it). My dear husband is a man of
passion; until now it has seemed that it was the one blemish on his noble manhood. How ignorant - nay, how wicked - it all seems now.
But, my dear Dr. Stockham, how does it happen that the most mighty, the most beautiful of the natural desires - that which is at the very foundation of society, and which is connected with all the sanctities of life - marriage, with all it ideally means, motherhood - fatherhood - why is it that this powerful and holy passion has remained under a kind of ban?
Why, we have taken up the latent capacity which is in us for music and have trained and refined it till it ministers now to every highest thing in us, and also affords us the purest pleasure. What a distance from the savage's tom-tom to a modern piano - from the discordant savage chant to the intermezzo! We no longer eat with our fingers, tearing half-roasted flesh as we squat about a fire, but have taken up the natural desire for food and made it minister to the sweetest social pleasures. We have put thought and skill and fancy and art to work to lift eating into a great rational pleasure and refinement. And now Karezza has come! How numberless are the benefits! The first and greatest is that, at last, after nine years of legal marriage (and of real love, too), we are really married. There is not a film of constraint, false modesty, or conventionality
between us, and with the downfall of the physical barrier has come such a flowing together of soul as I cannot describe. I really have never known my darling until now. He seems to me more beautiful than ever did the Apollo, and so grand and manly in his continence and self-control, while it is perfectly evident that just I - his nine years' wife, and twice a mother - am a delight to him, and oh, how satisfying are now the days of happy anticipation and then the happier fulfillment. Oh, dear joy-giving Dr. Stockham, what satisfaction must be yours as you think how (to thousands, I suppose), you have brought the purest, truest joys of marriage - the real nobility of self-control! Yes, you have brought to light true marriage, and true womanhood as well. I am no longer conscious of being a separate being, ministering to the "animal" desires of my husband as he ministered to mine. We are taught to dance, to play upon the harpsichord, to embroider, to govern servants, to enter and leave a room properly, but never how to be wives. It is as if we should teach officers how to bow and to dance, but not how to fight. The things worthy of the highest possible development are "left to Nature." Why do we not leave manners and eating and art to Nature?
...Those who have an idea of suppressing passion
are fatally wrong - vain endeavor - instead of using and giving it its regnant place. Sir J. and I have had no surer revelation in our hours of spiritual exaltation, through controlled union, than that this passion which God has made strongest and upon which is builded the family and social order, is also a nexus of spirit, soul and body. Every power, every emotion, every resource of the volitional life, blend with every thrilling nerve of the physical life in the controlled union....One of the blissful results of this vita nuova, is that we both are perfectly unmoved by others. We are sovereigns in the sphere of our own personal beings. No other crosses the frontier....
Footnotes
128:2 Zugassent's Discovery is the same theory of control as Karezza.
132:3 Those familiar with the writings of Henry Wood, W. F. Evans, Ursula N. Gestefeld and a host of others will see that G. N. Miller hints only at fundamental truths that are in everyday usage and guidance for thousands of people.
Very warmly yours,
(Lady) J.G.C.
Boston, June 2, 1900