James Weir
Religion and Lust
Woman is a creature of the emotions, of impulses, of sentiment, and of feeling; in her the logical faculty is subordinate. She is influenced by the object immediately in view, and does not hesitate to form a judgment which is based on no other grounds save those of intuition. Logical men look beyond the immediate effects of an action and predicate its results on posterity. The percepts and recepts which form the concept of equal rights also embody an eject which, though conjectural, is yet capable of logical demonstration, and which declares that the final and ultimate effect of female suffrage on posterity would be exceedingly harmful.
We have seen that the pronounced advocates and chief promoters of equal rights are probably viragints—individuals who plainly show that they are psychically abnormal; furthermore, we have seen that the abnormality is occasioned by degeneration, either acquired or inherent, in the individual. Now let us see, if the right of female suffrage were allowed, what effect it would produce on the present environment of the woman of to-day, and, if any, what effect this changed environment would have on the psychical habitudes of the woman of the future. This portion of the subject will be discussed in Part III of this paper.
III. The Decadence
It is conceded that man completed his cycle of physical development many thousands of years ago. Since his evolution from his pithecoid ancestor the forces of nature have been at work evolving man’s psychical being. Now, man’s psychical being is intimately connected with, and dependent upon, his physical being; therefore it follows that degeneration of his physical organism will necessarily engender psychical degeneration also. Hence, if I can prove that woman, by leading a life in which her present environments are changed, produces physical degeneration, it will naturally follow that psychical degeneration will also accrue; and, since one of the invariable results of degeneration, both physical and psychical, is atavism, the phenomenon of a social revolution in which the present form of government will be overthrown and a matriarchate established in its stead, will be not a possibility of the future, but a probability.
That the leaders of this movement in favor of equal rights look for such a result, I have not the slightest doubt; for, not many days ago, Susan B. Anthony stood beside the chair of a circuit judge in one of our courthouses and, before taking her seat, remarked that there were those in her audience who doubtless thought “that she was guilty of presumption and usurpation” (in taking the judge’s chair), but that there would come a day when they would no longer think so!
Statistics show clearly and conclusively that there is an alarming increase of suicide and insanity among women, and I attribute this wholly to the already changed environment of our women. As the matter stands they have already too much liberty. The restraining influences which formerly made woman peculiarly a housewife have been, in a measure, removed, and woman mixes freely with the world. Any new duty added to woman as a member of society would modify her environment to some extent and call for increased nervous activity. When a duty like suffrage is added the change in her environment must necessarily be marked and radical, with great demands for an increased activity. The right of suffrage would, unquestionably, very materially change the environment of woman at the present time, and would entail new and additional desires and emotions which would be other and most exhausting draughts on her nervous organism.
The effects of degeneration are slow in making their appearance, yet they are exceedingly certain. The longer woman lived amid surroundings calling for increased nervous expenditure, the greater would be the effects of the accruing degeneration on her posterity. “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 on 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 excess among the masses it undermines the foundations of society—the morality and purity of family life” (Krafft-Ebing).
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 clientèle 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-sexual 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 passed 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 class brought increased poverty on, as well as excess in, other classes, 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 Sexualis,” 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 masses, 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 compassed 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 Assyrians 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 superstition, 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 superstition, 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—superstition, 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 space 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-god, 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 shores 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; superstition, 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, dispassionate 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 superstitious, 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 thorny 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 God-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 hoary 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 homo 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.
Social ethics are as much the result of evolutionary growth as is man himself. Civilization, which is but another name for ethical culture, is the outcome of the inherited experiences of thousands of years. These experiences were the results of law, and that law can be embraced in one comprehensive word—evolution.
Now, one of the most noticeable facts in biological history is the tendency that animal structures or organisms, under certain circumstances, have toward atavism or reversion to ancestral types. Not only is this to be observed in the physical organisms of animals, but also in their psychical beings as well.
Atavism is invariably the result of degeneration, as I will endeavor to demonstrate later on in this paper.
I believe that we are rapidly hurrying toward a social cataclysm, beside which the downfall of the Roman Empire, the destruction of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations, and the bloody days of the French Revolution will sink into utter insignificance. I believe, also, and think that I can demonstrate the truthfulness of my belief, that the inciting cause of this social revolution will not be found in those citizens of the United States of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic parentage, but that it will be observed among our Slavonic, Teutonic, and Latinic citizens. But, in order to furnish a parallel (from which you may draw your own conclusions), before I enter fully into the discussion of this part of my subject, I wish to review, very briefly, certain historical epochs.
When the first conquerors of Egypt, about whom history can tell us so little, first occupied the fertile valley of the Nile, the country, in all probability, was inhabited by negroes. The conquering race drove out or enslaved the native population and founded the ancient kingdom of Egypt. This kingdom waxed strong and mighty until, at the time of Rameses the Great, more than three thousand two hundred years ago, it was the most powerful monarchy in the whole world. The mighty son of Ra, Meiamoun Ra, or Rameses, as he is most generally styled, was a warrior and a statesman. He led his victorious troops north, east, and west, conquering nations as he went, until he dominated and brought into a state of vassalage over two-thirds of the then known world.
Wealth flowed into his kingdom from all the surrounding countries, consequently, luxury, with its never-failing associate, debauchery, made its appearance, and the decadence of this mighty kingdom set in.
It is true that many Pharaohs reigned after Rameses, and that the monarchy maintained its greatness for a long period of time, but luxury had taken hold on the Egyptians at the time of their greatest prosperity and had sown the seeds of degeneration, which flourished and grew apace, until the emasculated and effeminate people yielded up their independence to the conquerors, and passed out of existence as a nation forever.
The Roman people, under the leadership of their ancient heroes, was a nation of hardy warriors and husbandmen. That preëminent military genius, Julius Cæsar, had carefully fostered this warlike spirit in the bosoms of his compatriots, and, by a series of brilliant campaigns, had made the Roman nation the most powerful on the face of the globe. The Roman legions were not only victorious on land, extending their conquests into Iberia, farther Gaul, and still farther Britain, but the Roman triremes also swept the Mediterranean, from the Pillars of Hercules to the shores of Syria and Egypt. Wealth poured into the country from all sides, and the people reveled in a boundless prosperity.
Luxury had already begun to enervate the hardy soldiery at the time of Cæsar’s assassination, yet not enough to show the full effects of degeneration and demoralization. The empire under the first emperors steadily grew richer and more powerful, and the luxury of the rich more unlimited and licentious. At length a change can be noticed. The Roman legions, hitherto victorious over every foe, are now frequently vanquished; conquered tribes uprear the standard of revolt and refuse to pay tribute; the territorial boundaries of the empire materially shrink, and its once conquered provinces pass out of its dominion forever.
The gradual degeneration of this nation is faithfully mirrored in the character of the emperors who governed it. Nero, Caligula, Tiberius, Caracalla, and Messalina, the depraved wife of Claudius and the daughter of Domitia Lepida, herself a licentious and libidinous woman, were but accentuated types of the luxurious and debauched nobility. Not only did the nobility become victims of degeneration, but the poorer classes also lost their virility, until at last we find the stability of the nation preserved through the instrumentality of foreign mercenaries. The greatness of this once widespread empire dwindled away (the freedom of its institutions contracting along with its shrinking boundaries), until we find it lapsed into a state of barbarian despotism under the son of Aurelius; and, had it not been for outside influences, it would have eventually fallen into a state of utter and complete savagery.
Now let us turn to a recent civilization. At the time of Louis XVI., the French nation was thoroughly under the influence of degeneration consequent to a luxury and licentiousness that had had a cumulative action for several hundred years. The peasantry and the inhabitants of the faubourgs, owing to their extreme poverty, itself a powerful factor in the production of degeneration, had lapsed into a state closely akin to that of their savage ancestors. The nobility were weak and effeminate, the majority of them either sexual perverts or monsters of sensuality and lechery.
The middle class, as ever the true conservators of society, seeing this miserable state of affairs, attempted to remedy it. Not fully understanding the danger of such a procedure, they allowed the degenerate element to share in their deliberations. Their moderate and sensible counsels were quickly overruled by their savage associates, who brought about a Reign of Terror (with such psychical atavists as Marat, Danton, and Robespierre at its head), the like of which the world had never seen before, nor has ever experienced since.
I have demonstrated, in the three instances of history just cited, that degeneration has invariably followed luxury, and that a social and political cataclysm has been, invariably, the result of this degeneration. That certain classes of the Old World, and of the New World, also, are living in inordinate luxury; and that certain other classes are, even now, struggling in the very depths of poverty, is a well-known fact. That this state of affairs is rapidly increasing the percentage of degenerates, such as sexual perverts, insane individuals, and congenital criminals, is not generally known; yet it is a woeful truth.
The factors in the production of degeneration are as multitudinous as they are varied, and I can find space for only a few of them. The artificiality of many peoples’ lives, wherein night is turned into day, is a prominent factor in the production of degeneration. Now, the long continued influence of artificial light exerts a very deleterious effect on the nervous system; hence it is not to be wondered at that so many men and women of society are neurasthenic. Not only are those individuals who, voluntarily and preferably, spend the greater portions of their lives in artificial light, rendered nervously irritable, but those, also, who are driven by force of circumstances to turn night into day are likewise afflicted. Several years ago, I met a distinguished editor at Waukesha, who was suffering greatly from nervous exhaustion. He told me that he was so situated that he did all of his work at night, often writing until three o’clock in the morning. I advised him to quit this and to do his editorial work during daylight. Not long after, he wrote me that he had followed my advice, and that he was a new man in point of health.
The loss of nervous vitality makes itself evident by a feeling either of exhaustion or irritability. The fashionable devotee, in order to counteract this, either stimulates the system with alcohol, or exorcises the “fidgets” by the use of sedatives, such as chloral or morphia. The baneful effects of such medication are not at once appreciable, but, if continued for any length of time, they will eventually result in a total demoralization of the nervous system. Time and again have I seen fashionable men and women, at the close of the season, veritable nervous wrecks.
What necessarily would be the effect of physical and psychical lesions like these on a child begotten by such parents? The inevitable result would be degeneration in some form or other.
Again, many men and women stand the drain of a fashionable season on their nervous systems without attempting to recoup through the agency of drugs, and at the end find themselves physically and psychically exhausted. They go to the seaside or some other resort, and, in a measure, recover their nervous vitality, only to lose it again during the next season. This continues for season after season, the nervous system all the time becoming weaker, until some day there is a collapse, ending in hysteria, paresis, or some other of the hundred forms of neurotic disorder. What will be the effect on the progeny resulting from the union of such individuals? Again the answer must necessarily be—degeneration.
The long and continued intercourse of the sexes in the ball-room, where the women are dressed so décolleté that they excite sensuality in the men, very frequently without the men being conscious of the fact, must necessarily exert a deleterious effect on the nervous system.
Contact of the sexes in the dance is only pleasurable because of that contact. I am fully aware of the fact that this idea is scouted and denied by those who indulge in the waltz and kindred dances. They claim that no thought of carnality ever enters into their feelings. I know from personal experiences that they are honest in this declaration, yet, from a psychical standpoint, they are woefully in error. Aestheticism and carnality are by no means as dissociate as the æsthete would have us believe. All pleasurable emotions that have their inception in the senses are, fundamentally, of carnal origin. The waltz is æsthetic, yet all of its pleasure is based on an emotion closely akin to sensuality. Men derive no pleasure from waltzing with one another, nor do women under like circumstances.
Nature demands in the interest of health a certain amount of exercise. The luxurious society man or woman utterly disregards this demand of nature, consequently indigestion, with all of its associated ills, steps in, and becomes an additional factor in the production of nervous exhaustion. To tempt the appetite, highly seasoned foods, many of which are deleterious and injurious, are prepared and taken into the torpid and crippled stomach. Finally nature rebels and the unfortunate dyspeptic is forced to go through life on a diet of oatmeal, or, weakened by lack of healthy sustenance, the brain gives way, and the victim passes the remainder of his or her life in a lunatic asylum. Children begotten by miserable invalids like these, beyond a peradventure, must necessarily be degenerate.
Indigestion is not the only ill that nature inflicts for any disregard of her laws. She is a rough nurse but a safe one, consequently she forbids the rearing of her hardiest creation, man, in hot houses, as though he were a tender exotic. The luxurious individual pampers his body, following the dictates of his own selfish desires and utterly disregarding the laws of nature, and before he reaches middle age, discovers that he has become an old, old man, weak in body, but still weaker in mind.
The children resulting from the union of the various neurasthenics described above are necessarily degenerate. As they grow up, they show this degeneration by engaging in all kinds of licentious debauchery, and unnatural and perverted indulgences of appetite. In nine cases out of ten, they will spend the fortunes inherited from their parents in riotous debauchery, and will eventually sink, if death does not overtake them, to the level of their fellow degenerates—those who have been brought into existence by poverty and debauchery, and who await them at the foot of the social ladder. Among such degenerate beings, the doctrines of socialism, of communism, of nihilism, and of anarchy have their origin.
Now let us turn our attention to the evidences of luxury and debauchery, and the consequent evidences of degeneration, which obtrude themselves on all sides. The reckless extravagance of the nobility of the Old World is well known. Vice and licentiousness even penetrate to royal households, and princes of the blood pose as roués and debauchees. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, degeneration in the wealthy classes of society generally makes itself evident by the appearance of psycho-sexual disorders. The horrible abominations of the English nobility, as portrayed in the revelations of Mr. Stead, are well known. Charcot, Segalâs, Féré, and Bouvier give clear and succinct accounts of the vast amount of sexual perversion existing among the French, while Krafft-Ebing informs us that the German empire is cursed by the presence of thousands of these unfortunates. When we come to examine this phase of degeneration in our own country, we find that it is very prevalent. This is especially noticeable in the larger cities, though we find examples of it scattered broadcast throughout the land.