James Weir
Religion and Lust
The editor of one of our leading magazines, in a remarkable series of letters, has shown that the wealthy New Yorkers revel in a luxuriousness that is absolutely startling in its license. Thousands are expended on a single banquet, while the flower bills for a single year of some of these modern Luculli would support a family of five people for three or four years! Bacchanalian orgies that dim even those of the depraved, corrupt, and degenerate Nero are of nightly occurrence.139 Drunkenness, lechery, and gambling are the sports and pastimes of these ultra rich men, and it is even whispered that milady is not much behind milord in the pursuit of forbidden pleasures.
Psycho-sexual disorders are not the only evidences of degeneration in the wealthy, by any means. Many a congenital criminal is born in the purple, who shows his moral imbecility in many ways. Sometimes he sinks at once to the level of a common thief, but generally his education keeps him within the pale of the law. Always, however, his sensuality is unbounded, and he will hesitate at nothing in order to gratify his desires. This unbridled license has already had its effect elsewhere. We see that it has even corrupted the guardians and conservators of the public peace. The recent investigation of the police board of New York shows a degree of corruption that is simply overwhelming, and that the same state of affairs exists in Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, and other large cities, I have every reason to believe.
There are yet other evidences of degeneration; witness the eroticism that is to be found in our literature. Unless a book appeals to the degenerate tastes of its readers it might just as well never have been published. This is not cynicism; it is plain, unvarnished truth. Again, turn to the stage, and we find the same thing. The tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare are shelved, while immoral “society plays” and “living pictures” and “problem plays” hold the boards. Salacity, with only sufficient and that is, degeneration. That which happened centuries ago will happen again, for covering to hide downright lewdness, is everywhere apparent. Now what is the result of this? There can be but one answer, man is governed by the same laws of nature now as he was then.
Statistics show that insanity is markedly on the increase. This is not to be wondered at when we take into consideration the fact that debauchery is the rule, and not the exception, among certain classes of people. Syphilis, one of the most productive causes of degeneration, is exceedingly active throughout the whole civilized world. Blashko states that one out of every ten men in the city of Berlin is tainted with this terrible malady. This is wholly attributable to the unbounded sensuality of the people. Crime of every description is rearing its hydra-head, and clasping in its destroying embrace an alarming proportion of human beings.
I have shown elsewhere, that the congenital criminal is the result of degeneration, and that he comes from all classes of society. He is, however, most frequently the product of the lower classes, and lives and dies among his congeners. I have shown, also, that the anarchist, the nihilist, and the socialist belong to the same category of degenerate beings. Poverty, brought on by high taxation, by war, and by overcrowding, has been, during the last millenary period, very fertile in the production of degenerates in the Old World. Lack of food and sanitation, the usual adjuncts of poverty, are powerful factors in the production of degenerate individuals. The Old World has gotten rid of these people as rapidly as possible by unloading them on our shores. Year after year, practically without restriction, thousands of these anti-social men and women have swarmed into our country, until we, comparatively speaking, a nation just born, contain as many of these undesirable citizens as any of the older nations. They still continue to enter our gates, and we ourselves are adding to their number, as I have shown, by our own production.
Some day—and I greatly fear that day is not very far distant—some professional anarchist (for there are professional anarchists as well as professional thieves) will consider the time ripe for rebellion, and, raising the fraudulent cry of “Labor against Capital!” instead of his legitimate cry of “Rapine! Murder! Booty!” will lead this army of degenerates, composed of anarchists, nihilists, sexual perverts, and congenital criminals, against society. And who will bear the brunt of this savage irruption? The ultra-rich? By no means! The great “middle class”—the true conservators of society and civilization—will fight this battle. It will be a fight between civilization and degeneration, and civilization will carry the day. There would have been no French revolution had the middle class been as wise then as it is to-day. It was taken by surprise at that savage, bloody time, but as soon as it recovered, how quickly it brought order out of chaos!
Education is the bulwark of civilization, and the great middle class, freed of dogmatism, bigotry, and superstition, is welcoming education with outstretched hands. It is gaining recruits, and is strengthening its defenses, so that when the time comes its enemies may find it fully prepared.
From the signs of the times and the evidence before me, I have no hesitation in declaring that I believe that the beginning of the end is at hand! This social cataclysm may not occur for many years, yet the agencies through which it will finally be evolved are even now at work, and are bringing the culmination of their labors ever nearer and nearer as time passes!
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