A clerk in a solicitor’s office, at Alton, Hampshire, England, one afternoon took a walk outside the town, when he met some children. He persuaded one of these, a girl of nine, to go with him into a neighboring garden. A short while after, he was seen walking quietly home; he was seen to wash himself in the river and then go back to his office. The little girl did not return home, and, search having been instituted, her dismembered body was found strewn about the garden. The clerk was arrested, and in his diary was found this entry, recently made: “Killed a little girl; it was fine and hot.” This man was either a sadistic sexual pervert, or a victim of homicidal impulse. Maudsley gives this instance as an example of the latter, whileKrafft-Ebinggives it as an example of the former. There is a great difference between these two mental derangements. The victim ofhomicidal impulse kills without any ulterior object, while the sadist kills in order to gratify his unnatural and perverted sexual appetite.
The victim of homicidal impulse is, to all outward appearances, perfectly sane otherwise. His impulse frequently leaves him for years and then returns with overpowering force.
Epileptics who have just passed through violent convulsions, will frequently attack bystanders with great fury. Some alienists declare that homicidal mania is frequently only a masked epilepsy. All epileptics should be carefully watched; they may become dangerous to society at any moment. Numerous instances are recorded of murder committed by sufferers frompetit mal, a form of epilepsy. I once saw a negro walk up to a white man, who was a stranger and unknown by him, and fell him to the earth by striking him with a club. The negro was arrested, and the next day sworethat he was entirely unconscious of having struck anyone. It was proven at his trial that he was subject to mild epileptic attacks.
I believe that all suicides are due to mental aberration. It may be the result of a momentary and sudden loss of mental equipoise, or the final and fatal ending of a premeditated desire carried through days, weeks, months, and even years.
We see a man, blessed with everything that makes life enjoyable, genial, gay, with a ready smile and kindly word for everyone, suddenly, in a moment, pass forever out into the unknown—self-killed, a victim of his own creation. We stand amazed! Why did he do it? We can find nothing in his past or present condition to warrant such an action.
He was the victim of momentary aberration, or, perhaps, deep in his mind, buried and hidden even from himself, there dwelt a desire for self-slaughter, when a“physical pain, an unexpected impression, a moral affection, an indiscreet proposition” uncovered this desire, and he at once committed the deed!
There are epidemics of suicide. Let the papers chronicle some peculiar method of suicide selected by some unfortunate, and others will immediately follow his example. Unconscious cerebration also hurls many souls out of the world. I was called to see a gentleman who had attempted suicide by slashing the radial artery at the wrist. I found him holding a compress on the severed vessel and greatly alarmed. He swore to me that he was totally unconscious how he had come to do the deed, and that he did not know that he had cut himself until he felt the pain and saw the blood flowing from the wound!
Viraginity and effemination, while not mental insanities, strictly speaking, are, nevertheless, mental deformities, and their unfortunate victims are dwellers in the borderlands.Mild forms of these types of degeneration are very abundant. The effeminate, cigarette-smoking, soda-drinking young man of the comic weeklies, and the loud, horsy, slang-using, vulgar, masculine young woman are seen everywhere.
Effemination and viraginity are the results of the weakening effects of luxury and consequent debauchery. Nations, time and again, have felt the dire effects of effemination and have sunk beneath them. The Grecian, the Roman, the Egyptian nations are familiar examples. The satirists of the golden age of the Latin people dipped theirstili, metaphorically, in gall and bitter wormwood and berated the effeminate nobility time and again. One of them advised the Roman ladies to look formenamong the gladiators and the peasants! Anacreon’s poems are filled with allusions to effemination and the delights of psychic hermaphroditism.
In the time of Louis XIV., of France,the royal palaces were filled to repletion with effeminants, who vied with the women in the splendor of their robes and the salacious eccentricities of their conduct. The case of Alice Mitchell, who killed Freda Ward in Memphis not long ago, was one of pronounced viraginity.
Fortunately, for the good of the community at large, there are, comparatively speaking, few viragints. The careful mother restrains, tempers, and abolishes the hoydenish habits of her “tom-boy” girl early in life, and turns her thoughts toward feminine pursuits and desires. The unfortunate effeminant, however, is encouraged in his feminine tastes and habits by his unwise mother, who likes her boy to sit beside her and sew and knit, if he so desires. She discusses matters of the toilet with him, and, in fact, treats him as she would a daughter. In the end, his psychic hermaphroditism becomes complete, and one more unfortunategoes out into the world to swell the ranks of crankdom!
Kleptomaniacs are greatly to be pitied, for they are generally women in whom the moral sense is very much developed. The victim of kleptomania will steal any and everything; they are like magpies in this respect. An acquaintance of mine, a most estimable lady, a devout Christian, and a most exemplary wife and mother, is the most incorrigible thief I ever saw. She has often picked my pockets while I was engaged about her sick-bed. The merchants of the city where she lives know her infirmity, watch her while she is in their shops, and respectfully and kindly relieve her of her pilferings when she starts to leave. She expresses great sorrow for her unfortunate insane impulse, and has often begged her husband to have her placed in an asylum. This he refuses to do, as she is perfectly sane otherwise. The husband was called away for several weeks, and, on his return,took me to his house and showed me her room. In the room were the objects stolen during his absence. It was the most miscellaneous collection of valuables and trash I ever saw. She had gathered together everything from a darning-needle to a tombstone, a small specimen of the latter forming a unit of this heterogeneous whole. This form of mental dyscrasia is much more frequent than people suppose, and the antecedents of shop-lifters and the like should be carefully examined before a judgment on their criminality is passed.
“Eccentricity is certainly not always insanity, but there can be no question that it is often the outcome of insane temperament, and may approach very near to, or actually pass into, insanity.” Alienists rely on the eccentric and peculiar changes which take place in the characters of their patients, who either present themselves or are brought to them for treatment, to establish their diagnosis. If a modest and truthfulman suddenly becomes a braggart and a liar; or, if a humane man becomes cruel, or a neat man slovenly, there is reason to suspect brain trouble. The intellect may appear intact, so also the reasoning powers, but these eccentricities indicate a deviation which may lead to mental destruction. The last faculty to develop in the mind of man is the moral faculty; this faculty is the one first lost by diseased brains. If a man, who suddenly becomes dissolute and licentious (who, heretofore, has led a virtuous, moral life), be examined, in nine cases in ten his brain will be found to be diseased. The little cloud, which at first is no larger than a man’s hand, grows ever larger and larger, and in the end overspreads the entire mental sky!
That the psychical function or intellectuality is frequently developed at the expense of the physical organism is well known, and that genius is seldom or never unaccompanied by physical and mental degeneration is a fact that can be no longer denied. I use the word degeneration in its broadest sense, and intend it to include all kinds of abnormalities. The facts noted above are by no means recent knowledge, but were vaguely recognized and commented on centuries and decades of centuries ago by the Hebrews and kindred races of people. The Hebrew wordnabimeans either madman or prophet, and it is now admitted that most of the prophets gave evidences of insanity as well as genius. The Greeks and the Romans recognized this kinship, and we read in the Bible of a certain Festus, who, when confronted by a man of genius, and being unable to answer hisarguments, said to him, “Paul, much learning hath made thee mad!” Lauvergne, when speaking of the oxycephalic (sugarloaf) skull, an unquestionable example of degeneration, wrote many years ago, “This head announces the monstrous alliance of the most eminent faculty of man, genius, with the most pronounced impulses to rape, murder, and theft.”
The purpose of this paper is to show that wherever genius is observed, we find it accompanied by degeneration, which is evinced by physical abnormalties or mental eccentricities. It is a strange fact, however, and one not noticed by Lombroso, or any other writer, as far as I know, that mechanical geniuses, or those who, for the most part, deal with material facts, do not, as a rule, show any signs of degeneration. I have only to instance Darwin, Galileo, Edison, Watts, Rumsey, Howe, and Morse to prove the truth of this assertion. It is only the genius of æstheticism, the geniusof the emotion, that is generally accompanied by unmistakable signs of degeneration.
Saul, the first king of Israel, was a man of genius and, at times, a madman. We read that, before his coronation, he was seized with an attack of madness and joined a company of kindred eccentrics. His friends and acquaintances were naturally surprised and exclaimed: “Is Saul among the prophets?”i. e., “Has Saul become insane?” Again, we are told that he was suddenly seized with an attack of homicidal impulse, and tried to kill David. Before this time he had had repeated attacks of madness, which only the harp of David could control and subdue. David himself was a man whose mental equilibrium was not well established, as his history clearly indicates. He forsook his God, indulged in licentious practices, and was, withal, a very, immoral man at times. At his time, the Hebrews had reached a high degree of civilization.Abstract ethics had become very much developed, and any example of great immorality occurring during this epoch is proof positive of atavism or degeneration.
As I have intimated before, many of the ancient Hebrew prophets, who were unquestionably men of genius, gave evidences of insanity; notably Jeremiah, who made a long journey to the River Euphrates, where he hid a linen girdle. He returned home, and in a few days made the same journey and found the girdle rotten and good for nothing; Ezekiel, who dug a hole in the wall of his house, through which he removed his household goods, instead of through the door; Hosea, who married a prostitute, because God, so he declared, had told him so to do; and Isaiah, who stripped himself naked and paraded up and down in sight of all the people. King Solomon, a man of pre-eminent genius, was mentally unbalanced. The “Song of Solomon” shows very clearly that he was a victim of somepsychical disorder, sexual in its character and origin. The poems of Anacreon are lascivious, lustful, and essentially carnal, and history informs us that he was a sexual pervert.
Swinburne’s poems show clearly the mental bias of their author, who is described as being peculiar and eccentric. Many of the men of genius who have assisted in making the history of the world have been the victims of epilepsy. Julius Cæsar, military leader, statesman, politician, and author, was an epileptic. Twice on the field of battle he was stricken down by this disorder. On one occasion, while seated at the tribune, he was unable to rise when the senators, consuls, and prætors paid him a visit of ceremony and honor. They were offended at his seeming lack of respect, and retired, showing signs of anger. Cæsar returned home, stripped off his clothes, and offered his throat to be cut by anyone. He then explained his conduct tothe senate, saying that he was the victim of a malady which, at times, rendered him incapable of standing. During the attacks of this disorder “he felt shocks in his limbs, became giddy, and at last lost consciousness.” Molière was the victim of epilepsy; so also was Petrarch, Flaubert, Charles V., Handel, St. Paul, Peter the Great, and Dostoieffsky; Paganini, Mozart, Schiller, Alfieri, Pascal, Richelieu, Newton, and Swift were the victims of diseases epileptoid in character.
Many men of genius have suffered from spasmodic and choreic movements, notably Lenau, Montesquieu, Buffon, Dr. Johnson, Santeuil, Crébillon, Lombardini, Thomas Campbell, Carducci, Napoleon, and Socrates.
Suicide, essentially a symptom of mental disorder, has hurried many a man of genius out into the unknown. The list begins with such eminent men as Zeno, Cleanthes, Dionysius, Lucan, and Stilpo,and contains the names of such immortals as Chatterton, Blount, Haydon, Clive, and David.
Alcoholism and morphinism, or an uncontrollable desire for alcohol or opium in some form or other, are now recognized as evidences of degeneration. Men of genius, both in the Old World and in the New, have shown this form of degeneration. Says Lombroso: “Alexander died after having emptied ten times the goblet of Hercules, and it was, without doubt, in an alcoholic attack, while pursuing naked the infamous Thais, that he killed his dearest friend. Cæsar was often carried home intoxicated on the shoulders of his soldiers. Neither Socrates, nor Seneca, nor Alcibiades, nor Cato, nor Peter the Great (nor his wife Catherine, nor his daughter Elizabeth) were remarkable for their abstinence. One recalls Horace’s line, ‘Narratur et prisci Cantonis sæpe mero caluisse virtus.’ Tiberius Nero was called by the RomansBiberius Mero. Septimius Severus and Mahomet II. succumbed to drunkenness ordelirium tremens.”
Among the men and women of genius of the Old World who abused the use of alcohol and opium, were Coleridge, James Thomson, Carew, Sheridan, Steele, Addison, Hoffman, Charles Lamb, Madame de Staël, Burns, Savage, Alfred de Musset, Kleist, Caracci, Jan Steen, Morland Turner (the painter), Gérard de Nerval, Hartley Coleridge, Dussek, Handel, Glück, Praga, Rovani, and the poet Somerville. This list is by no means complete, as the well-informed reader may see at a glance; it serves to show, however, how very often this form of degeneration makes its appearance in men of genius.
In men of genius the moral sense is sometimes obtunded, if not altogether absent. Sallust, Seneca, and Bacon were suspected felons. Rousseau, Byron, Foscolo, and Caresa were grossly immoral, whileCasanova, the gifted mathematician, was a common swindler. Murat, Rousseau, Clement, Diderot, Praga, and Oscar Wilde were sexual perverts.
Genius, like insanity, lives in a world of its own, hence we find few, if any, evidences of human affection in men of genius. Says Lombroso: “I have been able to observe men of genius when they had scarce reached the age of puberty; they did not manifest the deep aversions of moral insanity, but I have noticed among all a strange apathy for everything which does not concern them; as though, plunged in the hypnotic condition, they did not perceive the troubles of others, or even the most pressing needs of those who were dearest to them; if they observed them, they grew tender, at once hastening to attend them; but it was a fire of straw, soon extinguished, and it gave place to indifference and weariness.”
This emotional anæsthesia is indicativeof psychical atavism, and is an unmistakable evidence of degeneration. Lombroso gives a long list of the men of genius who were celibates. I will mention a few of those with whom the English-speaking world is most familiar: Kant, Newton, Pitt, Fox, Beethoven, Galileo, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Gray, Dalton, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Lamb, Bentham, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Reynolds, Handel, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Schopenhauer, Camoëns, and Voltaire. La Bruyère says of men of genius: “These men have neither ancestors nor descendants; they themselves form their entire posterity.”
There is a form of mental obliquity which the French termfolie du doute. It is characterized by an incertitude in thought coördination, and often leads its victims into the perpetration of nonsensical and useless acts. Men of genius are very frequently afflicted with this form of mentaldisorder. Dr. Johnson, who was a sufferer fromfolie du doute, had to touch every post he passed. If he missed one he had to retrace his steps and touch it. Again, if he started out of a door on the wrong foot he would return and make another attempt, starting out on the foot which he considered the correct one to use. Napoleon counted and added up the rows of windows in every street through which he passed. A celebrated statesman, who is a personal friend of the writer, can never bear to place his feet on a crack in the pavement or floor. When walking he will carefully step over and beyond all cracks or crevices. This idiosyncracy annoys him greatly, but the impulse is imperative, and he can not resist it.
Those who have been intimately associated with men of genius have noticed that they are very frequently amnesic or “absent-minded.” Newton once tried to stuff his niece’s finger into the bowl of hislighted pipe, and Rovelle would lecture on some subject for hours at a time and then conclude by saying: “But this is one of my arcana, which I tell to no one.” One of his students would then whisper what he had just said into his ear, and Rovelle would believe that his pupil “had discovered the arcanum by his own sagacity, and would beg him not to divulge what he himself had just told to two hundred persons.”
Lombroso has combed history, as it were, with a fine-tooth comb, and very few geniuses have escaped his notice. This paper, so far, is hardly more than a review of his extraordinarily comprehensive work; therefore, I will conclude this portion of it with a list of men of genius, their professions, and their evidences of degeneration, as gathered from his book:
Carlo Dolce, painter,religious monomania.
Bacon, philosopher,megalomania,moral anaesthesia.
Balzac, writer,masked epilepsy,megalomania.
Cæsar, soldier, writer,epilepsy.
Beethoven, musician,amnesia,melancholia.
Cowper, writer,melancholia.
Chateaubriand, writer,chorea.
Alexander the Great, soldier,alcoholism.
Molière, dramatist,epilepsy,phthisis pulmonalis.
Lamb, writer,alcoholism,melancholia,acute mania.
Mozart, musician,epilepsy,hallucinations.
Heine, writer,melancholia,spinal disease.
Dr. Johnson, writer,chorea,folie du doute.
Malibran,epilepsy.
Newton, philosopher,amnesia.
Cavour, statesman, philosopher,suicidal impulse.
Ampère, mathematician,amnesia.
Thomas Campbell, writer,chorea.
Blake, painter,hallucinations.
Chopin, musician,melancholia.
Coleridge, writer,alcoholism,morphinism.
Donizetti, musician,moral anaesthesia.
Lenau, writer,melancholia.
Mahomet, theologian,epilepsy.
Manzoni, statesman,folie du doute.
Haller, writer,hallucinations.
Dupuytren, surgeon,suicidal impulse.
Paganini, musician,epilepsy.
Handel, musician,epilepsy.
Schiller, writer,epilepsy.
Richelieu, statesman,epilepsy.
Praga, writer,alcoholism,sexual perversion.
Tasso, writer,alcoholism,melancholia.
Savonarola, theologian,hallucinations.
Luther, theologian,hallucinations.
Schopenhauer, philosopher,melancholia,omniphobia.
Gogol, writer,melancholia,tabes dorsalis.
Lazaretti, theologian,hallucinations.
Mallarmé, writer,suicidal impulse.
Dostoieffsky, writer,epilepsy.
Napoleon, soldier, statesman,folie du doute,epilepsy.
Comte, philosopher,hallucinations.
Pascal, philosopher,epilepsy.
Poushkin, writer,megalomania.
Renan, philosopher,folie du doute.
Swift, writer,paresis.
Socrates, philosopher,chorea.
Schumann, musician,paresis.
Shelley, writer,hallucinations.
Bunyan, writer,hallucinations.
Swedenborg, theologian,hallucinations.
Loyola, theologian,hallucinations.
J. S. Mill, writer,suicidal impulse.
Linnæus, botanist,paresis.
The reader will observe that I have made use of the comprehensive word,writer, to designate all kinds of literary work except theology and philosophy. The above list is by no means complete, and only contains the names of those geniuses with whom the world is well acquainted.
When we come to the geniuses of the New World, we find that, though few in number, they, nevertheless, show erraticism and degeneration. Poe was undoubtedly a man of great genius, and his degeneration was indicated by his excessive use of alcohol. Aaron Burr was the victim of moral anæsthesia, and Jefferson was pseudo-epileptic and neurasthenic. Randolph was a man of marked eccentricity, and Benedict Arnold was, morally, anæsthetic. Daniel Webster was addicted to an over-indulgence in alcohol, likewise Thomas Marshall and the elder Booth. Booth also had attacks of acute mania. His son Edwin had paresis; so also had John McCullough, John T. Raymond, and Bartley Campbell. A distinguished statesman and politician,and a man who stands high in the councils of the nation, has, for a number of years, given evidence of mental obliquity by his uncontrollable desire for alcohol. No power, outside of bodily restraint, can control him and keep him from indulging his appetite for alcohol when this desire seizes him. One of the most noted poets of to-day, whose verses stir the heart with their pathos and bring smiles to the gravest countenances with their humor, was, for a number of years (and still is, so I have been told), an inordinate user of alcohol.
Robert Ingersoll was undoubtedly a man of genius and of considerable originality, and a close study of his writings shows conclusively his mental eccentricity. Judging wholly from his printed utterances, Mr. Ingersoll was only a superficial scientist and mediocre scholar. His power lay in his wonderful word imagery, and his intricately constructed verbal arabesques. He was a verbal symbolist. Symbolism, whereverfound, and in whatever art, if carried to any extent, must necessarily be an evidence of atavism, consequently of degeneration.
Thomas Paine gave evidences of a lack of mental equipoise. We find scattered throughout his works the most brilliant, irrefutable, and logical truths side by side with the most inane, illogical, and stolid crudities. Among other men of genius who showed signs of degeneration we may include Alexander Stevens, Joel Hart, Adams, Train, Breckenridge, Webster, Blaine, Van Buren, Houston, Grant, Hawthorne, Bartholow, Walt Whitman. We must not confound genius and talent—the two are widely different. Genius is essentially original and spontaneous, while talent is to some extent acquired. Genius is aquasiabnormality, and one for which the world should be devoutly grateful.Psychos, in the case of genius, is not uniformly developed, one part, being more favored than the others, absorbs and uses more thanits share of that element, whatsoever it be, which goes to make up intellectuality, hence the less favored or less acquisitive parts show degeneration.
The greatest, best, and highest law of higher civilization is that which declares that man should strive to benefit, not himself alone, but his posterity.
The greatest, best, and highest law of higher civilization is that which declares that man should strive to benefit, not himself alone, but his posterity.
In the very beginning woman was, by function, a mother; by virtue of her surroundings, a housewife. Man was then, as now, the active, dominant factor in those affairs outside the immediate pale of the fireside. Life was collective; “communal was the habitation, and communal the wives with the children; the men pursued the same prey, and devoured it together after the manner of wolves; all felt, all thought, all acted in concert.” Primitive men were like their simian ancestors, which never paired, and which roamed through the forest in bands and troops. This collectivism is plainly noticeable in certain racesof primitive folks which are yet in existence, notably the autochthons of the Aleutian Islands. Huddled together in their communalkachims, naked, without any thought of immodesty, men, women, and children share the same fire and eat from the same pot. They recognize no immorality in the fact of the father cohabiting with his daughter—one of them naïvely remarking to Langsdorf, who reproached him for having committed this crime: “Why not? the otters do it!” Later in life the men and women mate; but even then there is no sanctity in the marriage tie, for the Aleutian will freely offer his wife to the stranger within his gates, and will consider it an insult if he refuses to enjoy her company. “As with many savages and half-civilized people, the man who would not offer his guest the hospitality of the conjugal couch, or the company of his best-looking daughter, would be considered an ill-bred person.”
This laxity in sexual relations was, at first, common to all races of primitive men, but, after a time, there arose certain influences which modified, to a certain extent, this free and indiscriminate intercourse. Frequent wars must have occurred between hostile tribes of primitive men, during which, some of them (physically or numerically weaker than their opponents) must have been repeatedly vanquished, and many of their females captured, for, in those old days (like those of more recent times, for that matter) the women were the prizes for which the men fought.
Under circumstances like these, the few remaining women must have served as wives for all the men of the tribe; and, in this manner polyandry had its inception. Polyandry gives women certain privileges which monandry denies, and she is not slow to seize on these prerogatives, and to use them in the furtherance of her own welfare. Polyandry, originating from anycause whatever, will always end in the establishment of a matriarchate, in which the women are either directly or indirectly at the head of the government.
There are several matriarchates still extant in the world, and one of the best known, as well as the most advanced, as far as civilization and culture are concerned, is that of the Nairs, a people of India inhabiting that portion of the country lying between Cape Comorin and Mangalore, and the Ghâts and the Indian Ocean.
The Nairs are described as being the handsomest people in the world; the men being tall, sinewy and extraordinarily agile, while the women are slender and graceful, with perfectly modeled figures. The Nair girl is carefully chaperoned until she arrives at a marriageable age, say, fourteen or fifteen years, at which time some complaisant individual is selected, who goes through the marriage ceremony with her. As soon as the groom ties thetali, or marriagecord, about her neck, he is feasted and is then dismissed; the wife must never again speak to, or even look at, her husband. Once safely wedded, the girl becomes emancipated, and can receive the attentions of as many men as she may elect, though, I am informed, it is not considered fashionable, at present, to have more than seven husbands, one for each day of the week.
Of no importance heretofore, after her farcical marriage the Nair woman at once becomes a power in the councils of the nation; as a matter of course, the higher her lovers the higher her rank becomes and the greater her influence. Here is female suffrage in its primitive form, brought about, it is true, by environment, and not by elective franchise.
As far as the children are concerned, the power of the mother is absolute; for they know no father, the maternal uncle standing in his stead. Property, both personaland real, is vested in the woman; she is the mistress and the ruler. “The mother reigns and governs; she has her eldest daughter for prime minister in her household, through whom all orders are transmitted to her little world. Formerly, in grand ceremonials, the reigning prince himself yielded precedence to his eldest daughter, and, of course, recognized still more humbly the priority of his mother, before whom he did not venture to seat himself until she had given him permission. Such was the rule from the palace to the humblest dwelling of a Nair.”
During the past fifty years, these people have made rapid strides toward civilization, monandry and monogamy taking the places of polyandry and polygamy, and fifty or a hundred years hence, this matriarchate will, in all probability, entirely disappear.
I have demonstrated, I think, clearly and distinctly, that matriarchy, or femalegovernment, is neither new nor advanced thought, but that it is as old, almost, as the human race; that the “New Woman” was born many thousands of years ago, and that her autotype, in some respects, is to be found to-day in Mangalore! A return to matriarchy at the present time would be distinctly and emphatically and essentially retrograde in every particular. The right to vote carries with it the right to hold office, and if women are granted the privilege of suffrage, they must also be given the right to govern. Now let us see if we cannot find a reason for this atavistic desire (matriarchy) in the physical and psychical histories of its foremost advocates. I will discuss this question in Part II of this paper.
There are two kinds of genius. The first is progressive genius, which always enunciates new and original matter of materialbenefit to the human race, and which is, consequently, non-atavistic; the second is atavistic or retrogressive genius, which is imitative and which always enunciates dead and obsolete matter long since abandoned and thrown aside as being utterly useless. The doctrines of communism and of nihilism are the products of retrogressive genius and are clearly atavistic, inasmuch as they are a reversion to the mental habitudes of our savage ancestors. The doctrines of the matriarchate are likewise degenerate beliefs, and, if held by any civilized being of to-day, are evidences of psychic atavism.
Atavism invariably attacks the weak; and individuals of neurasthenic type are more frequently its victims than are any other class of people. Especially is this true in the case of those who suffer from psychical atavism.
The woman of to-day who believes in and inculcates the doctrines of matriarchy,doctrines which have been, as far as the civilized world is concerned, thrown aside and abandoned these many hundred years, is as much the victim of psychic atavism as was Alice Mitchell, who slew Freda Ward in Memphis several years ago, and who was justly declared a viragint by the court that tried her.
Without entering into the truthfulness or falseness of the theory advanced by me elsewhere in this book, in regard to the primal cause of psychic hermaphroditism, which I attributed and do still attribute to psychic atavism, I think that I am perfectly safe in asserting that every woman who has been at all prominent in advancing the cause of equal rights in its entirety, has either given evidences or masculo-femininity (viraginity), or has shown, conclusively, that she was the victim of psycho-sexual aberrancy. Moreover, the history of every viragint of any note in the history of theworld shows that they were either physically or psychically degenerate, or both.
Jeanne d’Arc was the victim of hystero-epilepsy, while Catharine the Great was a dipsomaniac, and a creature of unbounded and inordinate sensuality. Messalina, the depraved wife of Claudius, a woman of masculine type, whose very form embodied and shadowed forth the regnant idea of her mind—absolute and utter rulership—was a woman of such gross carnality, that her lecherous conduct shocked even the depraved courtiers of her lewd and salacious court. The side-lights of history, as Douglas Campbell has so cleverly pointed out in his “Puritan in Holland, England, and America,” declare that there is every reason to believe that the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth of England, was not such a pure and unspotted virgin as her admirers make her out to be. Sir Robert Cecil says of her that “she was more man than woman,” while history shows conclusively that shewas a pronounced viragint, with a slight tendency toward megalomania. In a recent letter to me, Mr. George H. Yeaman, ex-Minister to Denmark, writes as follows: “Whether it be the relation of cause and effect, or only what logicians call a “mere coincidence,” the fact remains that in Rome, Russia, France, and England, political corruption, cruelty of government, sexual immorality—nay, downright, impudent, open, boastful indecency—have culminated, for the most part, in the eras of the influence of viragints on government or over governors.”
Viraginity has many phases. We see a mild form of it in the tom-boy who abandons her dolls and female companions for the marbles and masculine sports of her boy acquaintances. In the loud-talking, long-stepping, slang-using young woman we see another form; while the square-shouldered, stolid, cold, unemotional, unfeminine android (for she has the normal human form,without the normal humanpsychos) is yet another. The most aggravated form of viraginity is that known as homo-sexuality; with this form, however, this paper has nothing to do.
Another form of viraginity is technically known as gynandry, and may be defined as follows: A victim of gynandry not only has the feelings and desires of a man, but also the skeletal form, features, voice, etc., so that the individual approaches the opposite sex anthropologically, and in more than a psycho-sexual way (Krafft-Ebing).
As it is probable that this form of viraginity is sometimes acquired to a certain extent, and that, too, very quickly, when a woman is placed among the proper surroundings, I shall give the case of Sarolta, Countess V., one of the most remarkable instances of gynandry on record. If this woman, when a child, had been treated as a girl, she would in all probability have gone through life as a woman, for she wasborn a female in every sense of the word. At a very early age, however, her father, who was an exceedingly eccentric nobleman, dressed her in boy’s clothing, called her Sandor, and taught her boyish games and sports.
“Sarolta-Sandor remained under her father’s influence till her twelfth year, and then came under the care of her maternal grandmother, in Dresden, by whom, when the masculine play became too obvious, she was placed in an institute and made to wear female attire. At thirteen she had a love relation with an English girl, to whom she represented herself as a boy, and ran away with her. She was finally returned to her mother, who could do nothing with her, and was forced to allow her to resume the name of Sandor and to put on boy’s clothes. She accompanied her father on long journeys, always as a young gentleman; she became aroué, frequenting brothels andcafésand often becoming intoxicated. Allof her sports were masculine; so were her tastes and so were her desires. She had many love affairs with women, always skillfully hiding the fact that she herself was a woman. She even carried her masquerade so far as to enter into matrimony with the daughter of a distinguished official and to live with her for some time before the imposition was discovered.” The woman whom Sandor married is described as being “a girl of incredible simplicity and innocence;” in sooth, she must have been!
Notwithstanding this woman’s passion for those of her own sex, she distinctly states that in her thirteenth year she experienced normal sexual desire. Her environments, however, had been those of a male instead of a female, consequently her psychical weakness, occasioned by degeneration inherited from an eccentric father, turned her into the gulf of viraginity, from which she at last emerged, a victim of complete gynandry. I have given this instancemore prominence than it really deserves, simply because I wish to call attention to the fact that environment is one of the great factors in evolutionary development.
Many women of to-day who are in favor of female suffrage are influenced by a single idea; they have some great reform in view, such as the establishment of universal temperance, or the elevation of social morals. Suffrage in its entirety, that suffrage which will give them a share in the government, is not desired by them; they do not belong to the class of viragints, unsexed individuals, whose main object is the establishment of a matriarchate.
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 actionand 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 ofthe subject will be discussed in Part III of this paper.
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 inwhich 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 madewoman 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 degenerationon 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 wouldbe utterly lost, and society would sink into some such state of existence as we now finden evidenceamong 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 productionof 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 theclientèleof the alienist andneurologistis 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 natureprovided 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 communalkachimsof the Aleutian Islanders.
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 debaucheryof 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 Latinrace 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 individualsin 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 crimeallanti-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 accidentaldiscoverer, 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 thatPolyphemus, 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 truthswere 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 andindefeasible 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 hisgeneral 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 civilizedhomo sapienswere but slightly above theAlalus(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 forethical 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 thinkthat 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 monarchyin 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 fartherBritain, 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 preservedthrough 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 majorityof 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 certainother 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 circumstancesto 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 theunion 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 sodécolletéthat 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 miserableinvalids like these, beyond a peradventure, must necessarily be degenerate.