Part 6 (1/2)
xl); Darwin's _Works_; Maudsley: _The Physiology of Mind_; Tylor: _Anthropology_; Spencer: _Synthetic Philosophy_--_Prin. Psych., Prin. Sociol._
[AH] The sense of familiarity implies previous perception now dissociated, but subconsciously present and struggling up toward the surface of the upper consciousness to gain recognition. Boris Sidis: _Multiple Personality_, p. 51.
Belief in the existence of a soul has never been repressed; its utility is still recognized; hence, it is present in our active consciousness.
The acc.u.mulated experiences of civilization have, however, declared the inutility of phallic wors.h.i.+p, hence, it has been crowded out of our active consciousness by a process of selection and has been relegated to the innermost recesses of our subliminal consciousness, where also dwell many other formerly active instincts of our savage ancestors. When circ.u.mstances favoring their appearances occur, these pseudo-dormant instincts always become evident; it is due to this fact that the correlation of religious emotion and s.e.xual desire exists.
VIRAGINITY AND EFFEMINATION.
In following up the chain of evolution in animal life from its inception in primordial protoplasm to its end, as we now find it, we discover that the interlinking organisms are, in the beginning, either as.e.xual or hermaphroditic. The moneron, the lowest form of animal life, simply multiplies by division. The different elements through which propagation and generation are carried on, are undoubtedly present even in the moneron, but are not differentiated. The moneron is an organless, structureless organism, consequently as.e.xual. The cell, on the contrary, is hermaphroditic, for it contains within itself the necessary elements for reproducing itself. The am[oe]ba is the connecting link which connects all terrene life with primitive bathybian protoplasm, and is, strictly speaking, a true hermaphrodite. Ascending at once to the sixth stage in the ancestry of man, we come to the _acoelomi_, or worms without body cavity. These worms are phylogenetic, consequently hermaphroditic. I do not mean to say that these worms have the organs of each s.e.x equally developed; therefore, in the use of the word hermaphrodite, I use it in its broadest sense. I simply mean that they are autogenetic. In the _rhabdocoela_ the s.e.xual organs appear in their simplest forms--a testis anterior to a single or double ovary. Other gliding worms have a more complex arrangement of the s.e.xual organs, but most of them are true hermaphrodites. Next in the chain of evolutionary development, and one step nearer man, we find the soft worms (_scolecidae_); from a branch of this family the parent group of vertebrates was developed. The immediate ancestor of the vertebrates was either the amphioxus (lancelet) or some other notochordate animal, whose type is now extinct. Thus we have traced hermaphroditism from the am[oe]ba to the amphioxus, from the ancestor of the parent cell to the ancestor of the vertebrates. We could carry it further, but it is unnecessary. Effemination and viraginity, are due directly to the influence of that strange law laid down by Darwin--the law of reversion to ancestral types. It is an effort of nature to return man to the old hermaphroditic form from which he was evolved. It is an effort on the part of nature to incorporate the individualities of the male and female, both physical and psychical, in one body. The phenomenon of atavism is more apt to occur in feeble types than in strong, healthy and well-developed types. Microcephalism, occurring, as it most frequently does, among ignorant, ill-nourished, and unhealthy people, is an example. Dolichocephalism and a flattening of the cranial arch, with corresponding loss of capacity in the skull--types that we see everywhere among the depraved and vicious--are other examples of this tendency of atavism to seize on weakened and unhealthy subjects.
Effemination finds more victims among the wealthy and the educated than among the poor and uneducated. This phenomenon is a psychic rather than a physical hermaphroditism, and is directly traceable to the enervation produced by the habits of the wealthy and unemployed. Wealth begets luxury, luxury begets debauchery and consequent enervation. Periods of moral decadence in the life of a nation are always coincident with periods of luxury and great wealth, with consequent enervation and effemination; examples of this may be found in the histories of Rome, Greece, and France. During the reign of Louis XV., examples of effemination crowded into the court and vied with the royal fop in the splendor of their raiment and effeminacy of their bearing. Psychic hermaphroditism does not occur _naturally_ in uncivilized or half-civilized races. The reason for this is patent. Atavism finds among them no weakened and enervated subjects on whom to perpetrate this strange travesty on nature.
Large cities are the hotbeds and breeding-places of the various neuroses. There general paresis treads closely upon the heels of s.e.xual neurasthenia, while the victims of hysteria and kindred ills are almost countless in their number. What wonder, then, that the offspring of such parents should be weak and neurasthenic, and fall easy victims to the thousand and one erotic fancies which beset them! What wonder that here atavism finds its richest field, and plays its strangest and most fearful pranks, sending men into the world with the tastes, desires, and habits of women, and women with all the mental hibitudes of men! Juvenal wrote in scathing, searing sarcasm of the degeneracy of the Roman youth; effemination was very prevalent, and this bitter satirist wrote burning words against their degrading and b.e.s.t.i.a.l practices. It seems to me that we are beginning to need a Juvenal for this day and generation!
People divide themselves into cla.s.ses, and these cla.s.ses are generally exceedingly clannish. It is not considered ”good form” to marry out of the cla.s.s to which an individual may belong, consequently, no new types of individuals are added. Luxury and debauchery enervate the cla.s.ses which indulge in them. The people of these cla.s.ses intermarry among themselves, no new blood is added, hence, in a very few generations, degeneration sets in.
Effemination and viraginity are common types of degeneration which always follow in the wake of luxury and debauchery. Effemination makes its appearance early in life. The young boy likes the society of girls; he plays with dolls, and, if permitted, will don female attire and dress his hair like a girl. He learns to sew, to knit, to embroider, to do ”tatting.” He becomes a connoisseur in female dress, and likes to discuss matters pertaining to the toilet of females. He does not care for boyish sports, and when he grows older, takes no pleasure in the amus.e.m.e.nts and pursuits of his masculine acquaintances. He prefers to spend his time with women and to engage in their employments and amus.e.m.e.nts. As the change in his psychic being becomes more p.r.o.nounced and more overpowering, he will endeavor to approach the female in gait, att.i.tude, and style of dress.
I have seen mothers guilty of incalculable harm by fostering such inclinations in their sons. They think (the thought is a natural one) that such perversions of taste indicate gentleness and kindliness, and induce their sons to continue in the practice of them, thus a.s.sisting atavism in its baneful work.
Effemination is a disease which, taken at its inception, can generally be eradicated and cured. As soon as it is discovered, the boy's surroundings should be changed; his mind should be directed into new channels, and his dormant boy's nature aroused. Outdoor exercise and a free intercourse with companions of his own s.e.x should be made important factors in the treatment of an incipient effeminant. He should be carefully watched until _vita s.e.xualis_ has been established; he should then be taught the dangers of youthful follies and indiscretions.
A dandified man is always ridiculous, but when he adds to his foppery, effemination, he then becomes contemptible.
Several years ago I had the opportunity of studying a p.r.o.nounced effeminant. He is one of the best known young men of a Southern city, and is a leader in society. He took me to his ”boudoir” and showed me his ”lingerie.” The words quoted are his own. His nightgowns were marvels of artistic needlework, as far as I was able to judge, and were made by himself. His nightcaps were ”sweetly pretty,” and one of them was a ”perfect dream of beauty.” On his dressing-table were all the accessories of a modern society woman's toilet, including rouge, powder, a complete manicure set, and numerous bottles of perfumes and toilet waters. In his wardrobe he had displayed on forms, some six or eight corsets and chemisettes--”corset-covers,” as he designated them.
This man's voice and manner of speaking are decidedly feminine; all the little mannerisms and affectations of a society woman being faithfully reproduced. I understand from his a.s.sociates that he is a splendid business man, and that not a breath of scandal has ever tarnished his good name. He was reared by his mother, and never a.s.sociated with boys until his sixteenth year. I understood from him that she always treated him as a girl, and consulted him in all things pertaining to her toilet.
He seemed utterly unconscious of his anomalous condition, and as his business a.s.sociates are gentlemen, and his intimate friends are ladies, he may drift through life without a single jar to mar the serenity of his existence.
Viraginity is, comparatively, an infrequent occurrence, but under its influence the unfortunate victims are guilty of startling vagaries. The recent case of Alice Mitch.e.l.l, who killed Miss Ward, at Memphis, Tenn., is an example of p.r.o.nounced viraginity. We see daily in the newspapers accounts of women who masquerade as men, and history abounds in like instances. The celebrated writer Count Sandor V. was a woman who posed as a man, and who was in fact Sarolta (Charlotte), Countess V. ”Among many foolish things that her father encouraged in her was the fact that he brought her up as a boy, called her Sandor, allowed her to ride, drive, and hunt, admiring her muscular energy.” At the age of thirteen she ran away from school, where she had been sent by her mother, and returned home. ”Sarolta returned to her mother, who, however, could do nothing and was compelled to allow her daughter to again become Sandor, wear male clothes, and, at least once a year, to fall in love with persons of her own s.e.x.”
Mothers, early in life, though not from any sense of danger to their daughters, begin to eradicate the tom-boy inclinations in their female children; hence the comparative infrequency of viraginity. The congenital viragint will always remain somewhat masculine in her tastes and ideas, but her inclinations and desires having been turned toward femininity early in life, she will escape the horrors of complete viraginity or gynandry. The victim of effemination, however, is saved by no such accidental forethought. The ignorant mother fosters feminine inclinations and desires in her effeminate son until his psychic being becomes entirely changed, and not even the establishment of _vita s.e.xualis_ will save him from effemination.
An only son, who is in the least degree neurasthenic, runs the risk of becoming an effeminant under the tutelage of a loving but ignorant mother who encourages his feminine tastes and inclinations. A young man of my acquaintance, who is an only son, is so situated. This young man devotes his entire attention to matters of the toilet. He paints his cheeks and powders his face; even his eyebrows and eyelashes are anointed with some dark-colored ointment or pomade.
Effemination and viraginity are more prevalent in the Old World than in the United States. The civilization and settlement of the United States are, comparatively speaking, new. The people are, as yet, a young, strong, and vigorous nation. Years of luxury and debauchery have not yet brought the penalty of enervation and neurasthenia to the _ma.s.ses_, though in certain circles of society, it is becoming painfully evident that that penalty is being even now exacted.
In this article I have described only mild types of viraginity and effemination. In the more p.r.o.nounced types of these singular examples of atavism or reversion, the victims commit the most unheard of and the most unnatural acts.
Almost every case of effemination or viraginity can be cured if recognized and treated in its incipiency. The parents should be the physicians. They should keep a watchful supervision over their offspring, and as soon as any evidences of effemination or viraginity become apparent, treatment, both physical and psychical, should at once be inst.i.tuted.
Effemination has occasioned the downfall of many nations; let us guard against it with all our power. Let us train up our boys to be manly men, and our girls to be womanly women.
BORDERLANDS AND CRANKDOM.
When that bilious critic and merciless crucifier of human foibles, Carlyle, himself a degenerate, wrote that nine-tenths of the world were fools, he was much nearer truth than most men think. When we take an introspective view of our sane personality, we shudder to see how near it is to the borderlands of insanity and the bizarre and eccentric world of crankdom. There hardly lives a man who does not possess some eccentricity, or who does not cherish, hidden, perhaps, deep within himself, some small delusion, which he is ashamed to acknowledge to the outside world. Social relations and the iron rules of custom hold in place the balance-wheel of many a disordered mind. The mental equipoise is kept at the normal standard only by the powerful aid of the will, supported and a.s.sisted by extraneous adjuvants, such as fear of punishment, fear of personal harm, and, above all, by the fear of ridicule. Many a man hugs his delusions closely to his heart, indulges them only in the secret recesses of his soul, and, their sole owner and acquaintance, carries them with him to his grave.
Any man who has a retentive memory, and one capable of minute a.n.a.lysis, can look back in his life and recall moments when his insane personality got the better of his will, and ran riot in forbidden pathways. He may not have committed an insane act; yet the thought, the impulse, the delusion was there and only outside influences kept it from breaking forth. Who fails to remember certain times in his life when he has had an almost overpowering desire to cry out in church, or to laugh on some sad or solemn occasion; or, having a razor in his hand, has had an impulse, sudden and intense, to draw it across his throat; or, being on some high place, has been seized with the desire to hurl himself downward? This shows how near indeed the healthy mind ever hovers on the borderlands of insanity.