I. The Origin of the Matriarchate.

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 races of primitive folks which are yet in existence, notably the autochthons of the Aleutian Islands. Huddled together in their communal kachims, 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 any cause 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 the tali, or marriage cord, 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 personal and 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 female government, 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.

II. The Viragint.

There are two kinds of genius. The first is progressive genius, which always enunciates new and original matter of material benefit 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 the world 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 she was 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 human psychos) 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 was born 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 a rouÉ, frequenting brothels and cafÉs and often becoming intoxicated. All of 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 instance more 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 action and 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 of the subject will be discussed in Part III of this paper.

III. The Decadence.

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 in which 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 made woman 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 degeneration on 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 would be utterly lost, and society would sink into some such state of existence as we now find en evidence among 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 production of 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 the clientÈle of the alienist and neurologist is 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 nature provided 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 communal kachims of the Aleutian Islanders.