the one standard equally binding on men and women alike. Whatever your
creed, you have got to hold fast to this great truth, which life itself
forces upon you, and which is a truth of Christian ethics because first
of all it is a truth of life. It is simply a moral Q.E.D., that if
chastity is a law for women--and no man would deny that--it is a law for
every woman without exception; and if it is a law for every woman, it
follows necessarily that it must be for every man, unless we are going
to indulge in the moral turpitude of accepting a pariah class of women
made up of other women's daughters and other women's sisters--not our
own, God forbid that they should be our own!--set apart for the vices of
men.

But perhaps, looking at our complicated civilization, which, at least in
the upper classes, involves, as a rule, the deferring of
marriage--looking at the strength of the passions which generations of
indulgence have evolved beyond their natural limits, some women will
feel constrained to ask, "Is this standard a possible one? Can men keep
their health and strength as celibates? Is not my husband right when he
says that this is a subject we women can know nothing about, and that
here we must bow to the judgment of men?"

I answer that a mother must know by what standard she is to educate her
boy, and therefore must have the data supplied to her on which to form
her own judgment, and be fully persuaded in her own mind what she is to
aim at in the training she is to give him; and the mere fact that the
current judgment of men involves the sacrifice in body and soul of a
large class of our fellow-women lays a paramount obligation upon all
women to search for themselves into the truth and scientific accuracy of
the premises on which that judgment is based.