of Malta promise not to give way to lustful incontinence in the only case in which God might forgive it, but they reserve the license of being lustful unlawfully as often as they please, and whenever an opportunity may offer itself; and that immoral, illicit license is granted to them to such an extent, that they are allowed to acknowledge legally a child which can be born to them only through a double crime!  The most revolting part of it all is that these children of crime, who are of course perfectly innocent themselves, are called natural children, as if children born in wedlock came into the world in an unnatural manner!  In one word, my dear son, the vow of chastity is so much opposed to Divine precepts and to human nature that it can be agreeable neither to God nor to society, nor to those who pledge themselves to keep it, and being in such opposition to every divine and human law, it must be a crime.”

He enquired for the second time whether I was married; I replied in the negative, and added that I had no idea of ever getting married.

“What!” he exclaimed; “I must then believe that you are not a perfect man, or that you intend to work out your own damnation; unless you should tell me that you are a Christian only outwardly.”

“I am a man in the very strongest sense of the word, and I am a true Christian.  I must even confess that I adore women, and that I have not the slightest idea of depriving myself of the most delightful of all pleasures.”

“According to your religion, damnation awaits you.”

“I feel certain of the contrary, because, when we confess our sins, our priests are compelled to give us absolution.”

“I know it, but you must agree with me that it is absurd to suppose that God will forgive a crime which you would, perhaps, not commit, if you did not think that, after confession, a priest, a man like you, will give you absolution.  God forgives only the repenting sinner.”

“No doubt of it, and confession supposes repentance; without it, absolution has no effect.”

“Is onanism a crime amongst you?”

“Yes, even greater than lustful and illegitimate copulation.”

“I was aware of it, and it has always caused me great surprise, for the legislator who enacts a law, the execution of which is impossible, is a fool.  A man in good health, if he cannot have a woman, must necessarily have recourse to onanism, whenever imperious nature demands it, and the man who, from fear of polluting his soul, would abstain from it, would only draw upon himself a mortal disease.”

“We believe exactly the reverse; we think that young people destroy their constitutions, and shorten their lives through self-abuse.  In several communities they are closely watched, and are as much as possible deprived of every opportunity of indulging in that crime.”

“Those who watch them are ignorant fools, and those who pay the watchers for such a service are even more stupid, because prohibition must excite the wish to break through such a tyrannical law, to set at nought an interdiction so contrary to nature.”