Supplements

415. - To no. 24. That more general adjustment of which the discussion is undertaken there follows especially pleasures that are at least more vehement and fully conscious.

Indeed, the efficacy which sensations themselves as such possess for inducing certain reflex movements in other faculties is not to be denied: thus, while we eat, a certain spontaneous production or secretion of saliva takes place.

But the process most notable and to be attended to by us is that from a sensation - by which name more recent philosophers also call pain and pleasure, le plaisir - there results a certain definite affection, especially an affection of feeling well or ill (sentiment de bien-être ou de malaise); and that this affection determine a more general harmonious adjustment of the body or within the body. These physiological changes of the body are generally: palpitation of the heart, more or less strong and frequent; varying local pressure (pression) of the blood (par vaso-motion); breathing more or less ample and frequent. These changes are accompanied here and there by a more intense or relaxed muscular tone (ton musculaire); a varying distribution of electrical power throughout the body; a varying affection and action of the nerves (différences d'innervation), etc.

416. To no. 25. - § 1 will be proposed more accurately thus: 1. This adjustment of the body can accompany exterior satisfactions and can also precede them, if they have been foreseen and expected. But an apt disposition of the body prepares us for a fuller enjoyment of pleasurable things.

By a rationale not dissimilar, some remedy can be brought to cryptorchism and eunuchoidism - the state, as it were, of eunuchs - and perhaps some potency restored even to eunuchs themselves and to old men.

417. To no. 37. - Sexual inversion of a certain kind seems capable of being corrected by the at least partial extirpation of the testicles of the infirm man suffering from sexual paresthesia, and by the transplantation of healthy testicles, or a part of them, into the infirm subject. For it has been observed that the stimulating elements called "hormones," which pertain to internal secretion, are in themselves diverse for females and for males; and that the "hormones" of one sex are impeded and lulled by the "hormones" of the other sex. Cf. Dr. Hirschfeld, Künstliche Verjüngung; Künstliche Geschlechts-Umwandlung.

418. To no. 91. - Concerning the special rationale of venereal pleasure, it is useful to set forth these things more distinctly. 1. Insofar as sensation is taken concretely with pleasantness, or pleasure is considered as incorporated in sensation, this one thing formally differs from the pleasures which other agreeable sensations of sight, hearing, and touch afford. 2. But if we take the enjoyment itself of the subject - I mean sensible enjoyment, not more spiritual joy - according to the opinion more probable today, the various enjoyments (jouissances), taken as such and as though separated from their cause, indeed vary in the unequal participation of body and soul - the body has a greater part in the satisfaction of taste than in the satisfaction of sight; the participation of the body is greatest in venereal satis- faction - and they also vary in intensity; but all enjoyments are reduced to one common thing generically or specifically, so that the moral specification must be derived from the cause.

418-bis. To no. 116. - In the present Russian republic, so tyrannically oppressed by the "Bolshevik" faction, the tenets of "free love" have obtained legal sanction in the new Code, whose second section, consisting of five chapters, is devoted to matrimonial law. Thus matrimony, despoiled of every religious note, neither gives any right to spouses nor imposes any duty of cohabitation, nor introduces a community of goods: it creates only the obligation of supporting a needy spouse. The just causes of perfect divorce, moreover, are mutual consent and even the separation desired by either spouse. How truly St. Paul wrote: "For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from justice" (Romans 6:20)!

419. To no. 199. - Concerning the manner and method of revealing the mysteries of life. It also pertains to a prudent method that those things which suggest the phantasm of sexual intercourse not be proposed. Therefore, let the discussion be rather of the conjunction of the spermatozoa with the female ovum than of the conjunction of the sexual parts or the penetration of the male member into the vagina.

In a learned report concerning this argument, Rev. Father Hurth, S.J., opportunely distinguishes sexual education, which is simply to be commended, and sexual revelation, which can be nothing except a part of the former education, to be prudently carried out.

420. To no. 235. - Concerning the use of a doubtful marriage, the things written there suppose that no impediment of crime intervenes by which the marriage is certainly rendered null; and that the faculty of contracting another, certain marriage has not been granted to the innocent party, because the presumption for the validity of the prior marriage induces a presumption for the nullity of the other marriage, which latter presumption would restore liberty to the party who is held by no prior bond.

421. To no. 327. - Concerning the essential malice of pollution, these things are furthermore to be observed.

Those who place the essential malice of pollution in the complete use of the venereal powers deprived of a relation to the species, and those who place it in pleasure wrongly sought, do not seem to differ so greatly from one another as regards the matter.

For both profess that the order whose privation is principally to be attended to is the order toward the species.

But the former contend that, according to the principles of St. Thomas, pleasure follows the nature of the operation, so that the operation is not evil because of the pleasure, but the pleasure is evil because of the operation, and consequently the rationale of malice cannot be found in the pleasure itself as such; that pleasure, as a subjective affection of the subject, can have no immediate order toward the species: that the subject is pleased is always some good of man; but pleasure is regulated by the operation, which here is regulated by the good of the species; that the abuse of pleasure is not the sole malice of pollution, because that abuse would place merely a disorder in the subject himself, whose reason would be conquered by passion.

But these things do not seem capable of being denied.

The latter, however, assume the principle of St. Thomas: sins are morally specified from the mutable good toward which the sinner turns himself. But here the good is pleasure. Nor does this seem capable of being doubtful to anyone.

Wherefore, the two opinions seem capable of being reconciled in this manner, by distinguishing the gravity of the sin and its specification. Because the sinner seeks pleasure, the sin is against chastity and is referred to Temperance. But there is a privation of the order toward the species which the operation to which the pleasure is joined ought to have. And from this privation pollution has its principal malice. If it were principally an abuse of pleasure as such, it would destroy only the order of man within himself.

But if you judge the controversy to concern this, whether pollution is evil because the pleasure sought is deprived of a relation to the good of the species, or because the operation from which the pleasure is taken is deprived of this relation, we judge that the latter must be held.

Wherefore, with pleasure removed, the complete use of the venereal powers outside intercourse remains gravely forbidden because of the privation of the order toward the species; but with the use of the venereal powers removed, pleasure is deprived of its proximate rule and must be judged from elsewhere to be good or evil.

We are confirmed by the authority of St. Thomas. When I-II, question 34, article 1, in the body, concludes, "The pleasures of good operations are good, but those of evil operations are evil"; when II-II, question 154, article 4, demonstrates the malice of imperfect lust from the fact that "consent to the pleasure of mortal sin is a mortal sin, and not only consent to the act," he certainly does not place the primary rationale of malice in the pleasure itself but in the disordered act. Wherefore, II-II, question 153, article 3, represents the sin of lust as an abuse of the venereal powers, not as an abuse of pleasure.