Chapter 2
Men and women, by indulging the appetite in eating rich and
highly-seasoned foods, especially flesh-meats, with rich gravies, and
by using stimulating drinks, as tea and coffee, create unnatural ap-
petites. The system becomes fevered, the organs of digestion become
injured, the mental faculties are beclouded, while the baser passions
are excited, and predominate over the nobler faculties. The appetite be-
comes more unnatural, and more difficult of restraint. The circulation
of the blood is not equalized, and becomes impure. The whole system
is deranged, and the demands of appetite become more unreasonable,
craving exciting, hurtful things, until it is thoroughly depraved.
With many, the appetite clamors for the disgusting weed, tobacco,
and ale, made powerful by poisonous, health-destroying mixtures.
Many do not stop even here. Their debased appetites call for stronger
drink, which has a still more benumbing influence upon the brain.
Thus they give themselves up to every excess, until appetite holds
complete control over the reasoning faculties; and man, formed in the
image of his Maker, debases himself lower than the beasts. Manhood
and honor are alike sacrificed to appetite. It required time to benumb
the sensibilities of the mind. It was done gradually, but surely. The
indulgence of the appetite in first eating food highly seasoned, created
a morbid appetite, and prepared the way for every kind of indulgence,
until health and intellect were sacrificed to lust.
Many have entered the marriage relation who have not acquired
property, and who have had no inheritance. They did not possess
physical strength, or mental energy, to acquire property. It has been
just such ones who have been in haste to marry, and who have taken
upon themselves responsibilities of which they had no just sense. They
did not possess noble, elevated feelings, and had no just idea of the
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duty of a husband and father, and what it would cost them to provide
for the wants of a family. And they manifested no more propriety in the
increase of their families than that shown in their business transactions.
Those who are seriously deficient in business tact, and who are the
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