Facts and Fictions of Life

[From the Deutsche Revue.]

HEREDITY IN ITS RELATIONS TO A DOUBLE STANDARD OF MORALS

Read before the World's Congress of Representative Women, Chicago, 1893

Ladies and Gentlemen: – As a student of Anthropology and Heredity one is sometimes compelled to make statements which seem to the thoughtless listener either too radical or too horrible to be true. If I were to assert, for example, that good men, men who have the welfare of the community at heart, men who are kind fathers and indulgent husbands, men who believe in themselves as pure, upright and good citizens, if I were to say that even such men are thorough believers in and supporters of the theory that it is right and wise to sacrifice the liberty, purity, health and life of young girls and women and, through the terrible power of heredity, to curse the race, rather than permit men and boys to suffer in their own persons the results of their own misdeeds, mistakes or crimes, I would be accused of being "morbid" and a "man hater." But let us see if the above statement is not quite within the facts.

I shall take as an illustration the words and arguments of a man who stands second, only, to our Chief Police officer in the largest city in the United States, and since he was permitted to present his arguments in the most widely read journals of the country it seems fitting that these opinions be dealt with as of unusual importance. All the more is this the case since they were intended to influence legislation in the interest of State-regulated vice.

Among other things he said:

"Of course there are disorderly houses, but they are more hidden, and less of that vice is flaunted, than in any other city in the world. Such places have existed since the world began and men of observation know that this fact is a safe-guard around their homes and daughters. Men of candid judgment, religious men, know, too, that they had ten thousand times rather have their live, robust boys err in this indulgence, than think of them in the places of those unfortunates on the island, whose hands are muffled or tied behind them. This is a desperately practical question with more than a theoretical and sentimental side. It ought to be talked about and better understood among fathers.

"Thank God that vice is so hidden that Dr. Park-hurst has to get detectives to find disorderly houses, and that thousands of wives and daughters do not know even of their existence. Such horrible disclosures as were made before innocent women and girls in Dr. Parkhurst's audience do vastly more harm in arousing their curiosity and polluting their minds than a host of sin that is compelled to hide its head. When I was Captain of the Twenty-ninth Precinct, I went with Dr. Talmage on his errand for sensational information for his sermons. I know, from observation and from reports which I was careful to gather, that never in their history were the places he described as thronged by patrons, largely from Brooklyn, or so much money spent there for debauchery as after those sermons."

Now I assume that this Police Inspector is a good citizen, father, husband and man. I assume that he is sincere and earnest in his desire and efforts to suppress crime and promote – so far as he is able – the welfare of the community. I assume, in short, that he is, in intent and in fact, a loyal citizen and a conscientious officer. I have no reason to believe that he is not doing what he conceives is best and right, and yet even he is quoted as advocating the sacrifice of purity to impurity, the creating of moral and social lepers in one sex in order that moral and social lepers or the ignorantly vicious of the other sex may escape the results of their own mistakes or vice. It impresses me anew that such teaching, from such authority, is not only the most unfortunate that can be put before a boy but that it goes farther perhaps than anything else can to confirm in men that conditions of sex mania which the Inspector says is more desirable should be cultivated by means of regularly recognized state institutions for the utter sacrifice and death of young girls than that it should end in the wreck of the sex maniac himself and in his own destruction.

But were our statesmen students of heredity, they would not need to be told that there is, there can be, no "safeguards around wives and daughters" so long as their husbands, fathers and sons are polluting the streams of life before they transmit that life itself to those who are to be "our daughters and wives."

But not going so deeply into the subject, for the moment, as to deal with its hereditary bearings; upon what principle his argument can be valid, I fail to see. Why is it better that some girl shall be sacrificed, body, mind and soul; why is it better that she shall be his victim than that he shall be his own? And then again, the problem is not solved when she is sacrificed. He has simply changed the form of his disease, and in the change, while it is possible that he has delayed for himself the day of destruction, he has, in the process, corrupted not only his victim but the social conscience, as well. Were this all perhaps it would be still thought wise to follow the advice of the Inspector – and alas, of some physicians – and continue to sacrifice under the bestial wheel of sex power those who are from first to last prey to the conditions of social and legal environment in which they are allowed no voice.

But this is not all. The seeming "cure" is no cure at all. It is simply a postponement of the awful day for the sex maniac himself and, worse than this – more terrible than this – it is the cause of the continuance of the mania not only in himself but in his children. He marries some honest girl by and by and thus associates, with the burnt-out dregs of his life, one who would loathe him did she know his true character and his concealed but burning flame of insanely inherited, insanely indulged, bestially developed disease. But he is now – under the shadow of social respectability and church sanction – to perpetuate his unfortunate mania in those who are helpless – the unborn. Heredity is not a slip-shod thing. It does not follow One parent and one alone. The children of a father who "sowed his wild oats" by the method prescribed by the Inspector (and alas, by social custom) are as truly his victims as is the pariah of humanity who is to be quarantined in some given locality, made a social leper and a physical wreck that he, personally, may be neither the one nor the other. But nature is a terrible antagonist. She bides her time and when she strikes she does not forget to strike a harder, wider-reaching, more terrible blow than can be compassed by a single individuality or a single generation. This is the lesson that, so far, we have absolutely refused to learn. I do not hesitate to take issue with the Inspector, therefore, and say that it is far better for society, far better for the fathers of unfortunate victims of sex mania, far better for the victim himself that he be "on the Island with hands muffled or tied behind him," where death to one will end the misery to all, than that by applying the remedy which the Inspector recommends, the result should be, as it is, a future generation of sex maniacs, scrofulous, epileptic or simply constitutionally undermined weaklings.

The boys who are encouraged to "sow their wild oats" and taught that it is safe to do so under State regulation should hear the reports of some of the students of hereditary traits, conditions and developments. There is to-day in an asylum not so far from the Inspector's own door but that its records are easy of access, one victim of this pernicious theory whose history runs thus: He was a gentleman of good social, financial and mental surroundings. He was a "young man about town." He possessed, (perhaps it was an hereditary trait) more consciousness of the fact that he was a male animal than that he was an intelligent, self-respecting human being who had no moral right to degrade another human being for his gratification, while he assumed to still retain a higher and safer plane than his companions in vice. He was, in brief, no better and no worse than many young fellows who – alas, that they are so taught by men who believe themselves good and honorable – "turn out to be good family men."

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 associates. 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, constitutional signs of her inheritance."

The youngest son is now less than seven years old; he is such a hopeless sex 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 association 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 sex maniacs, (who, being born in a wedlock, which, by its present terms, laws, and theories, still further develops sex 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 muffled 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 assuming 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 sex at the demands and for the gratification of the other?

Are there not sex maniacs in more directions than one?

Is not this very double standard theory in itself a sex 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 sex 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 sex 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 passions —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 sex 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 sex, 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 damnation – are not these, also, sex 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 illustration 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 God 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 sex 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 sex? the sex 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 classed, 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, unclassified 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 sex 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 entity entitled 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 sex 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 sex relations. And unfortunately it is the wrong party who is restricted to compass 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!