Excerpt from Traps for the Young
Before any one consents to introduce a work written by another, three questions should be settled. These are: Is a book upon the subject needed? Is this book adapted to be useful? Is the author a person whose testimony is trustworthy and one who can be commended to the favorable consideration of those who respect the writer of the proposed introduction? Nor are these all the questions which naturally arise; for unless there be something said in the introduction which is not contained in the body of the work, it is superfluous to write anything but a simple word of commendation. Yet it would not be legitimate to introduce wholly foreign matter. Consenting to write the introduction to Mr. Comstock's work, implies that I have determined these inquiries in the affirmative.
The difference between an ingenuous and uncorrupted youth and one in whom vicious tastes and appetites have usurped dominion over the better nature, is as great as that between a healthy human body and one infected with a loathsome disease. It is a radical unlikeness as great as that which exists between an angel and a demon. The absence of knowledge of evil in youth has much more to do with innocence than many seem to fancy. For the passions are automatic and unreasoning; their uprisings are apparently natural, and when an evil thought is suggested to the mind of a youth who is unaccustomed to analysis and a creature of impulse, it becomes a self-propagating seed of impurity.
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