Now, the case being as stated, need a Catholic, young or—­a no longer young—­man look long or strive hard to find his path of duty already clearly traced?  And in making this application we refer to man, not to woman, for reasons that are obvious; we refer, again, to those among men whose spiritual sense is not yet wholly dead, who have not entirely lost all respect for virtue in itself:  who still claim to have an immortal soul and hope to save it; but who have been caught in the maelstrom of vice and whose passions and lusts have outgrown in strength the ordinary resisting powers of natural virtue and religion incomplete and half-hearted.  These can appreciate their position; it would be well for them to do so; the faculty for so doing may not always be left with them.

The obligation to marry, to increase and multiply, was given to mankind in general, and applies to man as a whole, and not to the individual; that is, in the common and ordinary run of human things.  But the circumstances with which we are dealing are outside the normal, sphere; they are extraordinary, that is say, they do not exist in accordance with the plan and order established by God; they constitute a disorder resulting from unlawful indulgence and wild impiety.  It may therefore be, and it frequently is the case, that the general obligation to marry particularize itself and fall with its full weight on the individual, this one or that one, according to the circumstances of his life.  Then it is that the voice of God’s authority reaches the ear of the unit and says to him in no uncertain accents:  thou shalt marry.  And behind that decree of God stands divine justice to vindicate the divine right.

We do not deny but that, absolutely speaking, recourse to this remedy may not be imperiously demanded; but we do claim that the absolute has nothing whatever to do with the question which is one of relative facts.  What a supposed man may do in this or that given circumstance does not in the least alter the position of another real, live man who will not do this or that thing in a given circumstance; he will not, because, morally speaking, he cannot; and he cannot, simply because through excesses he has forgotten how.  And of other reasons to justify non-compliance with the law, there can be none; it is here a. question of saving one’s soul; inconveniences and difficulties and obstacles have no meaning in such a contingency.

And, mind you, the effects of profligate celibacy are farther-reaching than many of us would suppose at first blush.  The culprit bears the odium of it in his soul.  But what about the state of those—­or rather of her, whoever she may be, known or unknown—­whom he, in the order of Providence, is destined to save from the precariousness of single life?  If it is his duty to take a wife, whose salvation as well as his own, perhaps depends on the fulfilment of that duty, and if he shirks his duty, shall he not be held responsible for the results in her as well as in himself, since he could, and she could not, ward off the evil?