The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

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and finally are stigmatised as criminal propensities. But

because their origin was natural and necessary, their guilt is

not lessened an iota. All men are born with these propensities;

all know that they are evil; all can suppress them if they

please. There are some, indeed, who appear to be criminals by

nature; who do not feel it wrong to prey upon mankind. These

are cases of reversion; they are savages or wild beasts; they

are the enemies of society, and deserve the prison, to which

sooner or later they are sure to come. But it is rare indeed

that these savage instincts resist a kind and judicious

education; they may all be stifled in the nursery. Life is full

of hope and consolation; we observe that crime is on the

decrease, and that men are becoming more humane. The virtues as

well as the vices are inherited; in every succeeding generation

the old ferocious impulses of our race will become fainter and

fainter, and at length they will finally die away.

 

There is one moral sentiment which cannot be ascribed to the

law of gregarious preservation, and which is therefore of too

much importance to be entirely passed over, though it cannot

here be treated in detail. The sense of decorum which is

outraged at the exposure of the legs in Europe is as artificial

as that which is shocked at the exhibition of the female face

in the East: if the young lady of London thinks that the

absence of underclothing in the Arab peasant girl “looks rather

odd,” on the other hand no Arab lady could look at her portrait

in an evening dress without a feeling of discomfort and

surprise. Yet although the minor details of nudity are entirely

conventional; although complete nudity prevails in some parts

of Africa, where yet a petticoat grows on every tree, and where

the people are by no means indifferent to their personal

appearance, for they spend half their lives upon their

coiffure; although in most savage countries the unmarried girl

is never permitted to wear clothes; although decoration is

everywhere antecedent to dress, still the traveller does find

that a sentiment of decency, though not universal, is at least

very common among savage people.

 

Self-interest here affords an explanation, but not in the human

state; we must trace back the sentiment to its remote and

secret source in the animal kingdom. Propriety grows out of

cleanliness through the association of ideas. Cleanliness is a

virtue of the lower animals, and is equivalent to decoration;

it is nourished by vanity, which proceeds from the love of

sexual display, and that from the desire to obtain a mate; and

so here we do arrive at utility after all. It is a part of

animal cleanliness to deposit apart, and even to hide, whatever

is uncleanly; and men, going farther still, conceal whatever is

a cause of the uncleanly. The Tuaricks of the desert give this

as their reason for bandaging the mouth; it has, they say, the

disgusting office of chewing the food, and is therefore not

fit to be seen. The custom probably originated as a precaution

against the poisonous wind and the sandy air; yet the

explanation of the people themselves, though incorrect, is not

without its value in affording a clue to the operations of the

savage mind. But the sense of decorum must not be used by

writers on Mind to distinguish man from the lower animals, for

savages exist who are as innocent of shame and decorum as the

beasts and birds.

 

There is in women a peculiar timidity, which is due to nature

alone, and which has grown out of the mysterious terror

attendant on the functions of reproductive life. But the other

qualities, physical or mental, which we prize in women are the

result of matrimonial selection. At first the female was a

chattel common to all, or belonging exclusively to one, who was

by brute force the despot of the herd. When property was

divided and secured by law, the women became the slaves of

their husbands, hewing the wood, drawing the water, working in

the fields; while the men sewed and washed the clothes, looked

after the house, and idled at the toilet, oiling their hair,

and adorning it with flowers, arranging the chignon or the wig

of vegetable fibre, filing their teeth, boring their ears,

putting studs into their cheeks, staining their gums, tattooing

fanciful designs upon their skins, tying strings on their arms

to give them a rounded form, bathing their bodies in warm

water, rubbing them with lime-juice and oil, perfuming them

with the powdered bark of an aromatic tree. Decoration among

the females was not allowed. It was then considered unwomanly

to engage in any but what are now regarded as masculine

occupations. Wives were selected only for their strength.

They were hard, coarse, ill-favoured creatures, as inferior

to the men in beauty as the females are to the males almost

throughout the animal kingdom. But when prisoners of war

were tamed and broken in, the women ceased to be drudges,

and became the ornaments of life. Poor men select their

domestic animals for utility: rich men select them for

appearance. In the same manner, when husbands became rich they

chose wives according to their looks. At first the hair of

women was no longer than that of men, probably not so long. But

long hair is universally admired. False hair is in use all over

the world, from the Eskimos of the Arctic circle to the

negroes of Gaboon. By the continued selection of long-haired

wives the flowing tresses of the sex have been produced. In the

same manner the elegance of the female form, its softness of

complexion, its gracefulness of curve are not less our creation

than the symmetry and speed of the racehorse, the magnificence

of garden flowers, and the flavour of orchard fruits. Even the

reserved demeanour of women, their refined sentiments, their

native modesty, their sublime unselfishness, and power of self-control are partly due to us.

 

The wife was at first a domestic animal like a dog or a horse.

She could not be used without the consent of the proprietor;

but he was always willing to let her out for hire. Among

savages it is usually the duty of the host to lend a wife to his

stranger guest, and if the loan is declined the husband considers

himself insulted. Adultery is merely a question of debt. The

law of debt is terribly severe: the body of the insolvent belongs to the

creditor to sell or to kill. But no other feelings are involved in the

question. The injured husband is merely a creditor, and is always pleased

that the debt has been incurred. Petitioner and co-respondent

may often be seen smoking a friendly pipe together after the

case has been proved and the money has been paid. However, as

the intelligence expands and the sentiments become more

refined, marriage is hallowed by religion; adultery is regarded

as a shame to the husband, and a sin against the gods; and a

new feeling — Jealousy — enters for the first time the heart

of man. The husband desires to monopolise his wife, body and

soul. He intercepts her glances; he attempts to penetrate into

her thoughts. He covers her with clothes; he hides even her

face from the public gaze. His jealousy, not only anxious for

the future, is extended over the, past. Thus women from their

earliest childhood are subjected by the selfishness of man to

severe but salutary laws. Chastity becomes the rule of female

life. At first it is preserved by force alone. Male slaves are

appointed to guard the women who, except sometimes from

momentary pique, never betray one another, and are allied

against the men.

 

But as the minds of men are gradually elevated and refined

through the culture of the intellect, there rises within them a

sentiment which is unknown in savage life. They conceive

a contempt for those pleasures which they share with

the lowest of mankind, and even with the brutes. They feel that

this instinct is degrading: they strive to resist it; they

endeavour to be pure. But that instinct is strong with the

accumulated power of innumerable generations; and the noble

desire is weak and newly born: it can seldom be sustained

except by the hopes and fears of religion, or by the nobler

teaching of philosophy. But in women this new virtue is

assisted by laws and customs which were established, long

before, by the selfishness of men. Here, then, the abhorrence

of the impure, the sense of duty, the fear of punishment, all

unite and form a moral law which women themselves enforce,

becoming the guardians of their own honour, and treating as a

traitor to her sex the woman who betrays her trust. For her the

most compassionate have no mercy: she has broken those laws of

honour on which society is founded. It is forbidden to receive

her; it is an insult to women to allude to her existence, to

pronounce her name. She is condemned without inquiry, as the

officer is condemned who has shown cowardice before the foe.

For the life of women is a battlefield: virtue is their

courage, and peace of mind is their reward. It is certainly an

extraordinary fact that women should be subjected to a severe

social discipline, from which men are almost entirely exempt.

As we have shown, it is explained by history; it is due to the

ancient subjection of woman to the man. But it is not the women

who are to he pitied: it is they who alone are free; for by

that discipline they are preserved from the tyranny of vice. It

would be well for men if they also were ruled by a severe

opinion. The passions are always foes, but it is only when they

have been encouraged that they are able to become masters; it

is only when they have allied themselves with habit that their

terrible power becomes known. They resemble wild beasts which

men feed and cherish until they are themselves devoured by

their playmates. What miseries they cause, how many intellects

they paralyse, how many families they ruin, how many innocent

hearts they break asunder, how many lives they poison, how many

young corpses they carry to the tomb! What fate can be more

wretched than that of the man who resigns himself to them?

 

As to the beautiful mind of Mendelssohn every sound, whatever it

might be — the bubbling of a brook, the rustling of the wind

among the trees, the voice of a bird, even the grating of a

wheel — inspired a musical idea, so — how melancholy is the

contrast! — so — how deep is the descent! — so to the mind

that is steeped in sensuality every sight, every sound, calls

up an impure association. The voluptuary dreads to be alone;

his mind is a monster that exhibits foul pictures to his eyes:

his memories are temptations: he struggles, he resists, but it

is all in vain: the habits which once might so easily have been

broken are now harder than adamant, are now stronger than

steel: his life is passed between desire and remorse: when the

desire is quenched he is tortured by his conscience: he soothes

it with a promise; and then the desire comes again. He sinks

lower and lower until indulgence gives him no pleasure: and yet

abstinence cannot be endured. To stimulate his jaded senses he

enters strange and tortuous paths which lead him to that awful

borderland where all is darkness, all is horror, where vice

lies close to crime. Yet there was a time when that man was as

guileless as a girl: he began by learning vice from the example

of his companions, just