Part 9 (2/2)
The inherited psychical habitudes, handed down through hundreds and thousands of years, would prevent the immediate destruction of that ethical purity for which woman is noted, and in the possession of which she stands so far above man. I do not think that this ethical purity would be lost in a day or a year, or a hundred years, for that matter; yet there would come a time when the morality of to-day would be utterly lost, and society would sink into some such state of existence as we now find _en evidence_ among the Nairs. In support of this proposition I have only to instance the doctrines promulgated by some of the most advanced advocates of equal rights. The ”free love” of some advanced women, I take it, is but the free choice doctrine in vogue among the Nairs and kindred races of people.
John Noyes, of the Oneida Community, where equal rights were observed, preached the same doctrines. It is true that the people who advocate such unethical principles are degenerate individuals, psychical atavists, yet they faithfully foreshadow in their own persons that which would be common to all men and women at some time in the future, if equal rights were allowed, and carried out in their entirety.
This is an era of luxury, and it is a universally acknowledged fact that luxury is one of the prime factors in the production of degeneration.
We see forms and phases of degeneration thickly scattered throughout all circles of society, in the plays which we see performed in our theaters, and in the books and papers published daily throughout the land. The greater portion of the _clientele_ of the alienist and neurologist is made up of women who are suffering with neurotic troubles, generally of a psychopathic nature. The number of viragints, gynandrists, androgynes, and other psycho-s.e.xual aberrants of the feminine gender is very large indeed.
It is folly to deny the fact that the right of female suffrage will make no change in the environment of woman. The New Woman glories in the fact, that the era which she hopes to inaugurate will introduce her into a new world. Not satisfied with the liberty she now enjoys, and which is proving to be exceedingly harmful to her in more ways than one, she longs for more freedom, a broader field of action. If nature provided men and women with an inexhaustible supply of nervous energy, they might set aside physical laws, and burn the candle at both ends without any fear of its being burned up. Nature furnishes each individual with just so much nervous force and no more; moreover, she holds every one strictly accountable for every portion of nervous energy which he or she may squander; therefore, it behooves us to build our causeway with exceeding care, otherwise we will leave a chasm which will engulf posterity.
The baneful effects resulting from female suffrage will not be seen to-morrow, or next week, or week after next, or next month, or next year, or a hundred years hence, perhaps. It is not a question of our day and generation; it is a matter involving posterity. The simple right to vote carries with it no immediate danger, the danger comes afterward; probably many years after the establishment of female suffrage, when woman, owing to her increased degeneration, gives free rein to her atavistic tendencies, and hurries ever backward toward the savage state of her barbarian ancestors. I see, in the establishment of equal rights, the first step toward that abyss of immoral horrors so repugnant to our cultivated ethical tastes--the matriarchate. Sunk as low as this, civilized man will sink still lower--to the communal _kachims_ of the Aleutian Islanders.
IS IT THE BEGINNING OF THE END?
When we come to examine the history of the world we find evidence that certain nations have, at times, reached a high state of prosperity, and have then degenerated to such a degree that they have either pa.s.sed entirely out of existence, or have lapsed into a state of semi-barbarity. This has generally been brought about by conquest, but the races conquered had first become enfeebled by their habitudes of thought and manner of living. It is a well-established fact that luxury brings debauchery, and that debauchery occasions degeneration. All nations that have, heretofore, reached the zenith of their prosperity, have been engulfed, at some time or other, in the maelstrom of luxurious habits, and have fallen under the lethal influence of a degeneration occasioned solely by debauchery; for the luxury and debauchery of one cla.s.s brought increased poverty on, as well as excess in, other cla.s.ses, and poverty and excess are prominent factors in the production of degeneration, as we shall see further on in this paper. Says the brilliant author of ”Psychopathia s.e.xualis,” Krafft-Ebing: ”Periods of moral decadence in the life of a people are always contemporaneous with times of effeminacy, sensuality, and luxury. These conditions can only be conceived as occurring with increased demands upon the nervous system, which must meet these requirements. As a result of increase of nervousness, there is increase of sensuality, and, since this leads to excesses among the ma.s.ses, it undermines the foundations of society--the morality and purity of family life. When this is destroyed by excesses, unfaithfulness, and luxury, then the destruction of the state is inevitably compa.s.sed in material, moral, and political ruin.”
Such was the condition of the Latin race when the fierce and hardy Vandals overran the Roman peninsula; such was the condition of the a.s.syrians when Babylon fell beneath the onslaughts of the great Macedonian; such was the condition of the Egyptians when the northern myriads swept down upon the fertile valley of the Nile, and destroyed forever the once powerful and all-conquering kingdom of the Pharaohs; and such, too, was the condition of the French nation in 1794, when Anarchy unfurled its red banner at the head of the most gigantic social revolution the world has ever known.
At the present time, community of interests, as well as higher civilization, would utterly forbid the total subjugation of one civilized nation by another, such as occurred in the olden times; hence no nation need fear annihilation from such a source. The danger comes from another point, and consists in the almost certain uprising, at some time in the future, of degenerate individuals in open warfare and rebellion against society.
The question whether the world is growing better or worse is often debated, and can be answered affirmatively on both sides. Better, because superst.i.tion, bigotry, and dogmatism have given way, to a great extent, to the tolerance and freedom of higher civilization and purer ethics in normal, healthy man; worse, because crime (and I mean by crime _all_ anti-social acts) has greatly increased on account of the pernicious influence of degeneration.
That superst.i.tion, bigotry, and dogmatism are on the wane, and that they will, sooner or later, be entombed in that depository of obsolete savage mental habitudes--absolute and utter oblivion--a glance at the success that science has achieved in the warfare waged against it by the Church, will at once declare. (Throughout this article I use the word Church to express priests of any and every denomination, whether Jew, Gentile, or Pagan, Protestant or Catholic.) A short incursion into this subject, _i.
e._, the Church's warfare on science, is absolutely necessary. For the triumph of science over its enemies--superst.i.tion, bigotry, and dogmatism, coincidently, ignorance and illiterateness--shows that the civilized world, at the present time, is markedly different in some respects from the world of ancient, medieval, and even comparatively recent times; and, in summing up, this changed condition will be a weighty factor in making up an answer to the question which heads this paper.
When Olympus first faded away from the enlightened eyesight of the Greeks, and changed into s.p.a.ce besprinkled with stars; when Zeus no longer held his divine court on its mystic summit; when oracles became mute and the fabled wonders of the ”Odyssey” either vanished, or resolved themselves into prosaic commonplaces under the investigations of the skeptic or the accidental discoverer, the Church made a most strenuous protest against the destruction of its traditions.
Many of these early seekers after truth were even killed and their goods confiscated. The Church issued its edict against heresy (and any doctrine that taught a belief antagonistic to the accepted tenets of pagan mythology and theogony was heresy), and hurled its anathemas against the heretic. Olympus, in the eyes of the Church, still existed, and Zeus, the man-G.o.d, still quaffed the sacred ambrosia in its shady groves. The Sirens still sang their entrancing songs, while Scylla and Charybdis were ever stretching out eager arms toward unwary mariners.
Gigantic one-eyed Cyclops, with Polyphemus as their leader, still patrolled the sh.o.r.es of Sicily, and kept their ”ever-watchful eyes”
turned toward the open sea.
The hardy Greek sailor landed on the Cyclopean island, and discovered that Polyphemus, and Arges, and Brontes, and Steropes, and all the other one-eyed monsters were nothing but sea-wrack, bowlders, and weeds.
He sailed farther, past Scylla and Charybdis, and discovered no greater dangers than sharp rocks and whirlpools. Yet farther he sailed out into the unknown sea, and the only Siren's song he heard was the whistling of the wind through the cordage of his vessel.
In vain the Church thundered against the daring investigator. Neither fire, nor sword, nor imprisonment, nor death itself could check the march of truth. Mythology and pagan theogony had received their death-blows; superst.i.tion, bigotry, and dogmatism were elbowed aside and gave place to dawning science. The Church held that that which had been believed by pious men for untold ages must necessarily be true. Science, in the garb of philosophy, with cold, dispa.s.sionate criticism, proved that these hitherto accepted truths were arrant fallacies. The poets and writers then took up the subject, and finally the people fell into line, so superst.i.tious, bigoted, dogmatic mythology died, intellectuality took its place, and higher civilization took a step forward.
Thomas H. Huxley writes, in his preface to ”Science and Christian Tradition,” as follows: ”I have never 'gone out of my way' to attack the Bible or anything else; it was the dominant, ecclesiasticism of my early days, which, as I believe, without any warrant from the Bible itself, thrust the book in my way.
”I had set out on a journey, with no other purpose than that of exploring a certain province of natural knowledge; I strayed no hair's breadth from the course which it was my right and my duty to pursue; and yet I found that, whatever route I took, before long I came to a tall and formidable looking fence. Confident as I might be in the existence of an ancient and indefeasible right of way, before me stood the th.o.r.n.y barrier with its comminatory notice-board--'NO THOROUGHFARE. By order.
MOSES.' There seemed no way over; nor did the prospect of creeping round, as I saw some do attract me.... The only alternatives were either to give up my journey--which I was not minded to do--or to break the fence down and go through it.”
Huxley found that this Mosaic fence, as erected by dogmatic theologians and scholasticists, was but a flimsy structure at best, and one that was easily overthrown and destroyed.
Dogmatic theology teaches that man was created from the dust of the earth, and that he at once fell heir to an estate of physical and psychical habitudes which were G.o.d-like in character; scientific investigation, on the contrary, demonstrated the fact that man's inception begins in bathybian protoplasm and culminates, as far as his general physical organism is concerned, in the last link of an evolutionary chain that reaches back and back, through countless eons of ages, to the very beginnings of life.
The History of Life written upon the rocky frame-work of this gray and h.o.a.ry old world, declares that man's physical being is but the result of the laws of evolution. He did not spring into being, like the sea-born Venus, a creature of physical grace, and strength, and beauty; nor did the sacred flame of an inborn intelligence at once illumine his countenance. For thousands of years, the forbears of the present civilized _h.o.m.o sapiens_ were but slightly above the _Alalus_ (ape-like man) of Haeckel in point of personal pulchritude; and for thousands of years, the ancestors of the civilized man of to-day were savages, with all the psychical traits of primitive peoples.
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