Moral physiology Author:Robert Dale Owen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MORAL PHYSIOLOGY. I Sit down to write alittle treatise, which will subject me to abuss from the self-righteous, to misrepresentation from the hypocritical, an... more »d to reproach even from the honestly prejudiced. Some may refuse to read it; and many more will misconceive its tendency. I would have de layed its publication, had the choice been permitted me, until the popular mind was better prepared to receive it. but the enemies of reform have already foisted the subject, under an odious form, on the public; and I have ( no choice left. If, therefore, I prematurely touch the; honest prejudices of any, let them bear in mind, that; the occasion is not of my seeking. The subject I intend to discuss is strictly a physiological subject, although connected, like many other physiological subjects, with political economy, morals, and social science. In discussing it, I must speak as plainly as physicians and physiologists do. What I mean, I must say. Pseudo-civilized man, that anomalous creature who has been not inaptly defined "an animal ashamed of his own body," may take it ill that I speak simply: I cannot help that. A foreign princess, travelling towards Madrid to become queen of Spain, passed through a little town of the peninsula, famous for its manufactory of gloves and stockings. The magistrates of the place, eager to evince their loyalty towards their new queen, presented her, onher arrival, with a sample of those commodities foi which alone their town was remarkable. The major domo, who conducted the princess, received the gloves very g raciously; but, when the stockings were presented, he flung them away with great indignation, and severely reprimanded the magistrates for this egregious piece of indecency. " Know," said he, " that a queen of Spain has no legs." I never c...« less