After his system was thoroughly inoculated, physically, mentally, and morally or ethically, with the tone, the condition, the _trend_ of the life which the inspector, and many other good men, insist is unfit for the ears of women, but necessary to the welfare of men and "best" for them; after his life and flesh had this trend and absorption he married a lovely wife from a good family. All went well. Society smiled (this is history, not fiction), and said that rapid men when they did marry, made the best husbands after all. It said such men knew better how to fully appreciate purity at home.
Society did not state that there could be no purity in a stream where half of the tributaries are polluted. But society was satisfied to talk of "pure homes" so long as there was one pure partner to the compact, which resulted in the home. It does not talk of an honest firm if but one of its members is (privately and in his own person,) honest while he accedes to the dishonest practices of his a.s.sociates. But society was satisfied. A child was born, society was charmed. Four more children came. Society said that this late profligate was doing his duty as a good citizen of the State. He is now about forty-seven years old. He is a "paretic" in an asylum, and, if that were all, then the inspector"s theory might still stand, because he would say that at least the awful calamity had been staved off all these years while he had built a "pure"
home and left to his country others to take his place. The facts are these: His oldest son is an epileptic, the second is a physical caricature of a man, the third is a moral idiot. He has no moral sense at all, while he is mentally bright. He delights in victimizing dogs, cats, or even smaller children. All things, in fact, which are in his power are his legitimate prey. Then there is a girl. In the phraseology of the doctor she "shows only the general, const.i.tutional signs of her inheritance."
The youngest son is now less than seven years old; he is such a hopeless s.e.x maniac even now that the parents of other children do not dare allow them to be alone with him for one moment.
In telling me of this case the asylum physician, himself a profound student of heredity, said of the child:
"He would shame an old Parisian debauchee. The Spartans were not so far wrong after all. They killed all such children as these before they had the chance to grow up and still further pollute the stream of life."
And so our good citizen followed only the usual course prescribed by the inspector--and by society--and the result is (leaving out the horrible, necessary sacrifice of a woman--some woman or some number of women)--the result of the plan is this; a house of vice, (in a secluded quarter "for greater safety"); a few years of license which he believed to be his legitimate perquisite in the world and "no harm done;" the a.s.sociation of the later years of his wasted energies, and his pretense and vice-soaked life and flesh with the life of a pure girl, and then the legacy to society of five more s.e.x maniacs, (who, being born in a wedlock, which, by its present terms, laws, and theories, still further develops s.e.x mania in men and thereby implants the disease in each generation to be fought with or yielded to again); a doddering, drivelling wreck of a man in an asylum at the prime of his manhood; a worse than widowed wife with a knowledge in her soul which is an undying serpent as she looks in despair upon the five lives she has given, in her pathetic ignorance and trust. And his is not an unusual record.
Of course its details are seldom known outside of the family and physicians. It is legitimate fruit of a tree which society in its avarice and ignorance and vice carefully fosters. It is the tree, the fruit of which fills our jails, mad-houses, asylums, poorhouses and prisons year after year, and yet we tend it carefully and keep its root strong and vigorous by exactly the methods recommended by the police inspector and by all believers in State regulated and State licensed vice, that is: It must be systematically continued for the good of "robust boys who might else be on the island with m.u.f.fled hands. It must be kept in certain quarters and secret for greater safety to men, and that our wives and daughters may not hear of it."
Not hear of it until when? Not until the years come when the honest physician must tell her, if not the cause, at least the horrible facts, when it is too late for her to prevent the awful crime of giving life to the children of such a husband. We hold it a terrible crime to take life. Is it not far more terrible in such a case to give life? In the one instance the results to the victims are simply the sudden ending of a more or less desirable existence in a more or less comfortable world. In the other case it is a.s.suming to thrust unasked upon helpless children a living death, an inheritance of pollution which must, and does, develop itself in one or another form as the years go by. Which is the greater, more awful responsibility, to give or to take life? The law says the latter.
Is it certain that heredity--nature"s surest and least heeded voice--does not in many cases say the former? When society is wiser it will be a bit more like the Spartans. It will say: Far better that they be "on the island" than that they lay their fatal curse upon the world to expand and blight to the third and fourth generation, and, I believe, it was to be the "sin of the _fathers_" which was thus to follow the children, was it not? What was that sin? Are not its roots to be found in the very soil advocated as good by believers in State regulation and in a double standard of morals, and in the ignorance which they say is desirable for "our wives and daughters." Ignorance that such things exist as the secret, legalized, regulated slaughter (social, moral, and actually physical) of hundreds and thousands of one s.e.x at the demands and for the gratification of the other?
Are there not s.e.x maniacs in more directions than one?
Is not this very double standard theory in itself a s.e.x mania?
Are not the men who advocate and the legislators who make laws which recognize these double moral standards, and who ignore the plainest fingerboards set up by nature in hereditary conditions--are not these, in a sense, one and all s.e.x maniacs?
When they talk of "keeping our wives and daughters" pure and ignorant they do not seem to realize that the taint of blood which flows in the veins of that very daughter, which she herself does not understand, and which an ignorant mother does not dream of, and therefore cannot stand guard over, flows as an ever present threat that she shall be one of those very outcasts whom her own father is laboring to quarantine in darkness and oblivion!
Nature has no favorites.
Heredity does not spare _your_ daughter, and yet men who plant the seeds of s.e.x perversion in their own families have the infinite impudence to cast from their doors the blossom of their own tillage!
They go into heroics about being "disgraced." "You are no longer child of mine!" that rings in a thousand pages of literature, in one hundred cases out of one hundred and one should be met by the reply: This act of mine proves as no other could that _I am_, indeed, _your_ daughter!
Blood of your blood and flesh of your flesh! Nature has told your secret through me. Let us cry quits. You put the cursed taint in my blood when I could not protect myself. _I_ am the one to complain, not you. Do not cry out for quarter like a very coward. Face your record made in flesh and blood. This polluted life of mine is Nature"s reply to _your_ life of license and uncleanness! _I_ am Nature"s reply to your uncontrolled pa.s.sions--_inside of marriage and out_; I, the moral or mental idiot; I, the disease polluted wreck; I, the epileptic; I, the lunatic; I, the drunkard; I, the wrecker of the lives of others--I am your lineal descendant! You sacrificed others recklessly, by act and by law, to your desires and your arbitrary s.e.x power; you cultivated a taint in your blood.
It is true that you took the precaution to transmit it through purity and ignorance to me. That very purity and ignorance of my mother served to save your peace of mind and enable you to take advantage of her for infinite opportunity for mischief. It, alas, could not save me, for I am your child also. Her ignorance was your partner in a crime against me, her helpless infant! Do not complain. Dislike my face as you will; presented to you in whatsoever form or phase of distortion it may be, I am your direct, lineal descendant! Build better! Or go down with the structure you planned for other men"s daughters and in which you locked me before I was born!
If, because of their s.e.x, men demand privileges, rights, emoluments, honors, opportunities and freedom, which they claim as good for and necessary to them and their welfare, while they insist that all these are not to be allowed to women--would be her d.a.m.nation--are not these, also, s.e.x maniacs? Has not humanity been long enough cursed by so degrading and degraded, so ignorant and so fatally wrong a mental, moral, social and legal outlook? I am attacking no individual. I am using an individual utterance on this subject simply to the better present the side of the case which is sustained by all of our present laws, conditions and male sentiment. I am wishing to present the reverse side of this awful picture. From man"s point of view it is often presented--and in many ways. But once or twice have I ever seen the other side in print where it was looked at from a rational or scientific point of view.
A short time ago a book was written which touched, to a moderate degree, woman"s side as well as the general human side of this problem. It was put in the form of a novel that it might appeal to a larger reading public than would an essay or magazine article. It had a tremendous sale, and the only--or the chief--adverse criticism made upon it was, that it pictured a type of father which either did not exist or was too rare to be even taken as an ill.u.s.tration in fiction. Now, it is this very type of father of which the Inspector speaks thus: "Men of candid judgment, religious men, know too, that they had rather have their live, robust boys err in this indulgence than think of them in the places of those unfortunates on the island, etc., etc."
That is exactly the point made by the book referred to, and which was criticised by one man as "morbid in its imaginings about fathers." Is this Inspector "morbid?"
He said: "This is a desperately practical question with more than a theoretical or sentimental side. It ought to be talked about and better understood among fathers."
And I agree with him perfectly so far.
It is indeed, a desperately practical question for both men and women and Anthropology and Heredity teach, in all peoples and in each succeeding generation, that the question has not been solved by the adoption of the double standard of morals!
It is so desperately practical that the land is literally covered with the deplorable results, in hospitals, in prisons, in imbecile asylums and in mad houses; but when he goes on to "thank G.o.d that this vice is hidden, and that thousands of wives and daughters do not know of even its existence," it impresses me that the Inspector is, in deploring the ignorance of fathers and commending it in mothers, attempting to still farther hedge boys about with a condition which inevitably makes of them s.e.x maniacs in more directions than one. Is not his mother as deeply interested in her boy"s welfare as is his father? Is it not to her eyes and wisdom his younger days are most left and to whose watchfulness, intelligence and information he must be trusted not to develop or acquire fatal habits? or if he has them in his blood as a heritage from his father, or from his father"s father, by whom vice was looked upon as "safe" if only kept from the ears and eyes of wife and daughter; is it not imperative that the trained eye and mind of a woman who is not ignorant of nor blind to the very earliest indications that Nature has sent a message that there is a blood taint, so that, in so far as it is possible she may labor to modify and control his awful inheritance before it has him in a fatal grip?
Instead of this being the case it is advocated as desirable that she be even "ignorant of the existence of such vice!" It is due more to the fact that she has been ignorant than to any other one thing that, later on, the boy"s developed hereditary curse, or his acquired bad habits, have so fixed themselves upon his young mind and body that the Inspector and the boy"s father find themselves in a position to choose between a straight jacket for the boy himself, or first a wrecked and outraged womanhood and later on descendants that are marked with a brand that is worse than Cain"s.
The Inspector says that such disclosures as Dr. Talmage"s sermon before innocent women and girls do vastly more harm than a host of sin that is compelled to hide its head.
Now what is the implication? Did he mean to imply that those places have, since the sermon, been thronged with the "wives and daughters of Brooklyn?" If not, how did he know that it "polluted _their_ minds?" Has he not jumped at that conclusion and cast a slur upon the wrong s.e.x? the s.e.x that did _not_ "squander its money in patronizing these resorts?"
Was not that a rather desperate effort to sustain an argument by a _non-sequitur?_
Are women"s minds polluted by a knowledge of vice which they avoid intelligently rather than simply escape from ignorantly? Are ignorance and innocence the same thing? Did the Inspector believe that a knowledge of the degradation into which their sons are led and pushed by just such theories as these backed by a blind hereditary impulse which has no intelligent care from a wise parentage, did he believe that such knowledge would drive or lure "wives and daughters" into polluting vice?
And is it not strange to hear of a condition of things which can be spoken of as good and desirable for boys and men which is in the same breath depicted as pollution even to the ears of women? Can good women live with these same men and not be polluted? How about the children?
Man has for ages past, claimed to be the logical animal. Beasts have no logic at all, and in this regard woman has been gallantly cla.s.sed, if not exactly with the beasts, certainly not with man. We may say she has been counted by him as a sort of missing link. She had logic--if she agreed with all he said. Otherwise she was an emotional, irrational, uncla.s.sified creature.
Now, when it comes to dealing with his fellows, man has--in the main--a fair amount of reason and logic; but the moment he is called upon to think of woman as simply a human being like himself, to deal with and for her as such, to give her a chance to do the same with, and by, and for herself, that moment man becomes an emotional, irrational s.e.x maniac. He is absolutely unable to look upon woman as first of all, a free individuality, a human being on exactly the same plane as himself.
She is instantly "wife," "daughter," or victim to his mind always. Never for one instant does he contemplate her as an ent.i.ty ent.i.tled to life and liberty, for, and because of herself. Always it is her relation to him that he sees and deals with--and alas for his theories of justice, gallantry or right--always it is as his subordinate, for his use, abuse, or pleasure, that he thinks of and plans for her.
Why confine gilded houses to one quarter? To keep their vicious inmates away from "our wives and daughters, and the streets which they are on,"
says the Inspector. But that is making s.e.x irregularity a reason for restricting liberty of residence and resort--even of promenade and pleasure. That is to say, it restricts the liberty of one party to the vice--to the irregularity of s.e.x relations. And unfortunately it is the wrong party who is restricted to compa.s.s the object claimed! The one whose vice can and actually does injure--the wife and daughter--(the pure woman who is his victim in marriage, and the daughter who is his victim in heredity) the one who can do infinite wrong, is left to roam at large!
It is the wrong partner in vice from whom State regulation seeks to "protect" "our wives and daughters." It is the one who can do the intelligent wife or daughter no harm whatever!
Man, we are told, is the logical animal. Why not apply a bit of logic right here? Why not set a watch on and restrict the one who does the real and permanent harm to the race?
Men claim that it is necessary to their health, happiness and comfort to sacrifice utterly the characters, health, lives, and even liberty of locomotion of thousands of women every year. This is simply infamous and Nature teaches its infamy and unnaturalness.
From the protozoan to the highest beast or bird there is no distinction of right, or opportunity or privilege as to the occupation, life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness anywhere in nature between the s.e.xes until we reach the one species of animal where one s.e.x has been subordinated to the other by artificial industrial conditions--by financial dependence.
Now, it so happens that as civilization goes on, Nature is taking a most terrible revenge upon the human race for this s.e.x perversion. Asylums multiply, weaklings abound, criminals and lunatics blossom out from heretofore honored ancestry. Nature is a terrible antagonist. Having the power, man may pollute the fountain of life if he will, but Nature revenges herself on him still.
He may cover his vice with the shimmer of gold, but the curse of the serpent is there as of old. He may bind up the eyes of justice and right; but he learns at the last "tis a desperate fight. A cover for vice in the father may be as fatal as ignorant maternity. Combined they sow broadcast on the air the horrors of life and breed its despair.
It is to the "ignorance of our wives and daughters" on these points, combined with the silence of law-protected vice for men and "regulated"
infamy for women that is due the possibility of pa.s.sing in some states a bill to reduce to ten years the "age of consent" at which a girl is held legally responsible for her own ruin. If there was one good woman in the legislature no such bill would have a ghost of a chance to pa.s.s, or be kept from the public knowledge and rushed through a "secret session."
Yet fathers of daughters pa.s.s such bills!
Is it true, after all, that men are not so good protectors of women as is woman of her sister? Ten years of age! Why, a girl is a baby then!
Think of your own little girl at ten! Do not dare to stop thinking and talking and writing on the subject until such infamous laws are an impossibility!
Do not allow any one to make you believe that it is not "modest" or becoming for a woman to know about--and fight to the bitter death--any and all such laws! You have no right _not_ to know it! You have no right to dare to bring into this world a child who shall be subject to such a law! It seems beyond belief but it is true. And then men talk of "protecting" women! Men who hold that a girl is not old enough to give lawful consent to lawful marriage or to the sale of property until she is 18 years old, say she is, at the age of ten, to be held old enough to give consent to her own eternal disgrace, ruin, degradation!
That such atrocious acts are possible is largely due to the fact that "our wives and daughters" do not know these things. The ignorance of one s.e.x in all the vital affairs of life coupled with its financial dependence upon the other s.e.x has gone far to make of all men s.e.x maniacs and of so many children the victims of a polluted ancestry and the future progenitors of an enfeebled race.
A famous physician who is an expert in these matters says in one of his articles, read before his brother pract.i.tioners: "There are few families in this country not tainted with one or another form of s.e.x pollution.
If it is not physical in its demonstrations it is mental. Often it is both, and to the trained eye, and thought, of a student of anthropology and heredity, the present outlook is pitiful, indeed."
And again he says--and remember that it is not said by a woman about man. It is the serious warning of a famous expert to his fellows who were to meet and guard, in their profession, against the hereditary results of just the sort of legislative provision which has gone far to make of man the s.e.x maniac he is. He said: "The wild beast is slumbering in us all. It is not necessary, always, to invoke insanity to account for its awakening." And if you will take the trouble to understand those few sentences by a great specialist you will have found the whole of my essay a mere ill.u.s.tration.
DIVORCE AND THE PROPOSED NATIONAL LAWS
In discussing any question which involves the welfare and happiness of people who live to-day, or are to live hereafter, I think we may take it for granted that we must consider it in the light of conditions now existing or those likely to exist in the future. We must clearly understand to what domain the question fairly belongs; whether it is a question of vital importance between human beings in their relations to each other, and whether it is a matter in which the law is the final appeal. We may fairly a.s.sume that the questions of marriage and divorce have to do with this world only. Indeed, that point is yielded by the marriage service adopted by the various Christian churches when it says, "until death us do part," and by the reply said to have been given by Christ himself, to the somewhat puzzling query put to him as to whose wife the seven times married woman would be in heaven.