Conjugial Love (Rogers) n. 507

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507. (1) By a lust for variety we mean a lust to fornicate that has become utterly dissolute. This lust insinuates itself in people who in adolescence loosened the bonds of morality, and for whom a supply of harlots was not lacking, especially if they had at the same time the means to pay their price. They implant and enroot this lust in themselves by excessive and unrestrained acts of licentiousness, by entertaining shameless thoughts in regard to love and the feminine sex, and by persuading themselves that adulteries are not evils and certainly not sins. This lust increases as it progresses in them until they lust after all the women of the world and wish to have troops of them and a new one every day. Since this lust breaks out of the confines of the normal love for the opposite sex implanted in every person, and altogether those of a love for one of the sex which is conjugial love, and casts itself into the outer regions of the heart, as a delight of love separated from those other loves and yet stemming from them, it becomes seated therefore in the outer coverings of the skin, and this so firmly that after its powers wane, it remains in the sense of touch. Men of this character think nothing of adulterous affairs. Consequently they think of the entire female sex as a collective harlot and of marriage as collective harlotry. Thus they mix immorality with morality and as a result of the mixture become insane. It is apparent from this what we mean here by the lust for variety, namely, that it is a lust to fornicate that has become utterly dissolute.


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