Are We a Declining Race?: An Old Sailor's Verdict |
Common terms and phrases
Africa alcohol allowed ancient Ancient Egypt Antisthenes asylums Athenians barbarians Cakobau Causes of Insanity Cecrops cent century chaste chastity child civilisation condition Curschman Daniel Defoe decline degeneration degradation deterioration disease duty Epicurus epilepsy European evil Fiji Fijian FREDERICK MAURICE habit Hippocrates human husband idea immorality important increase indulgence Inebriety inferior influence Islands Jaccoud Dictionnaire Kaffir l'abus des plaisirs l'onanisme large number laws live London County Council lunacy lunatics Lycurgus maladies marriage marry masturbation matrimonial ment missionaries mother native nervous system old age onanism pain and suffering perfect physical physique plaisirs de l'amour polygamy practice prevalent punishable qu'il question race recognised result Ritchie Roman Salvian savage says scarcely Seemann seems sexes sexual excess Sir John Sinclair Spartans species Spermatorrhoea Tabes Dorsalis teeth Theognis tion Tissot to-day tobacco Traité unfit vice virtue Westermarck wife wives women writers young Ziemsson's Cyclopedia
Popular passages
Page 108 - Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words — health, peace, and competence.
Page 7 - Hector heaved to throw, Pointed above, and rough and gross below: Not two strong men the enormous weight could raise, Such men as live in these degenerate days...
Page 111 - It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire.
Page 86 - Would that I could take its melancholy victims with me in my daily rounds (at Hanwell Asylum), and could point out to them the awful consequences which they do but little suspect to be the result of its indulgence. I could show them those gifted by nature with high talents, and fitted to be an ornament and a benefit to society, sunk into such a state of physical and moral degradation as wrings the heart to witness, and still preserving, with the last remnant of a mind gradually sinking into fatuity,...
Page 116 - The writers of the middle ages are full of accounts of nunneries that were like brothels, of the vast multitude of infanticides within their walls, and of that inveterate prevalence of incest among the clergy, which rendered it necessary again and again to issue the most stringent enactments that priests should not be permitted to live with their mothers or sisters.
Page 57 - The relatives of the woman take it as a public Insult if any child should be born before the customary three or four years have elapsed and they consider themselves in duty bound to avenge It in an equally public manner.
Page 60 - If matters remain as they are, Fiji will become like a piece of driftwood on the sea, and be picked up by the first passer-by.
Page 4 - The goods are plundered, those that ought to keep Strict watch are idly skulking or asleep ; All that is left of order or command Committed wholly to the basest hand. In such a case, my friend, I needs must think It were no marvel though the vessel sink. This riddle to my worthy friends I tell, But a shrewd knave will understand it well I SIMONIDES OP AMORGOS.
Page 57 - After childbirth husband and wife keep apart for three, even four, years, so that no other baby may interfere with the time considered necessary for suckling children, in order to make them healthy and strong.
Page 45 - robust or infirm, well-formed or deformed, are called upon by their parents to marry as soon as they have attained the age of puberty. Were a grown-up son or daughter to die unmarried, the parents would regard it as most deplorable.