is ruinous. This is especially true of marriage matters, which are only productive of two results—hell or heaven. For the true and holy rite is ascensive, and leads to health, happiness, delight, longevity, gracious, celestial and glorious joy; or descensive, leading to the lowest depths of social, moral and domestic horror, on which sad rocks too many souls are wrecked.
LXXYII. Love between husband and wife should last to the brink of the grave; but it don't. With careful obedience to these rules, and judicious food, drink, and occasional baths, it will. Doctors, clergymen, merchants, lawyers, people of letters, all whose minds are constantly on the stretch; also, women of like mental culture, are all more or less deficient in vital energy, and all will speedily reach primitive vigor, endurance, and elasticity of spirit and body, only through the natural methods herein set forth.
LXXVIII. Conjugal love never stands still. It either increases or diminishes, and husbands and wives both injure and mar it by heedlessness.
LXXIX. She who yields to a libertine is sure to be despised by him. lie who patronizes a harlot is worse than a beast, and either are unworthy of the forms they bear, for no beast sins against beast-morals, as humans do against theirs. . . . Whoever yields to passion not love-founded is not only a fool but a suicide; for love-passion builds up the human soul, but mere lust absolutely wastes soul, and every one guilty of the folly knows this from experience, for a debauch lessens the entire volume of power. Whoever is false to a true wife or husband contracts the malaria of the Shades, and is sure to bring home the subtle poison, and lay the broad foundation of domestic Ruin. Sexual faith and purity is the price of power; just as Love is the sole base of immortality. All people no do have souls.
LXXX. Both husbands and wives will grant as a boon, when either would refuse to accord a rite claimed as a right. Nothing is lost, but everything is gained by the persuasive mood. He comes too near who comes to be denied. Insistance is brutalism. Ask in love—be sure to show it; if you're true, she's sure to know it.
