THE IMPENDING SUBJECTION OF MAN
"The Earth never tires.... Nature is rude and incomprehensible at
first;
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well
envelop'd;
I swear to you there are Divine Things more beautiful than words
can tell."
_Walt Whitman._
I
In the long and painful history of man's more or less total failure to
value and to honour woman for her greatest, her most vital and
self-sacrificing part in human affairs, none has approached in obliquity
his recent deplorable blunder of awarding her the suffrage and the right
to sit in Parliament, as recognition of her War-services.
All the long ages of Mother-surrender, of quiet heroism and attainment,
all the best, beautiful years of women's lives which the burden and
sickness, the weariness, danger and anguish have devoured down the
centuries, while the mothers were giving themselves to be the nation's
bone and blood and brain, to nourish, cherish, and upbring it--All were
passed over without word or sign.
Not for her long ages of devoted duty to the nation's sick and helpless,
for rearing and safeguarding its priceless infant and child-life, for
administering its homes--fashioning, cleansing, beautifying, contriving,
making the utmost of its means and ends--Not for her inestimable
services as man's good comrade and wise counseller, his love and friend
and faithful help, in sorrow, evil and adversity; not even for her
age-long, arduous labours and achievements in Religion, Charity, Reform.
For none of these, her great intrinsic and eternal ministries to Life
and to Humanity, has man now set her by him in the Van of Things.
But for filling shells and felling trees, for turning lathes and driving
motors, ploughing fields and lighting street-lamps--all valuable duties,
it is true, in the crisis we have passed through, and indispensable to
carrying on the nation's business. Yet what a drop from the supreme and
tender to the trite and banal, from the vital and essential to the
merely incidental, is seen in this belated recompense.
Not woman, Generatrix of Humanity and inspiration of all that is fairest
in Humanity, has been now honoured--but woman the bus-conductor,
ticket-clipper, clerk and agricultural labourer, woman in breeches and
workman's overall, woman whom German frightfulness had dislocated for a
space from her high lot and labours; twisting her powers awry to fit a
hideous revulsion of barbarism.
How, if the gods ever laugh at the fantastic tricks of poor mankind,
they must now have laughed (or wept) over the opportunity that one sex
had--and forfeited--to requite the other's finest merit.
How deeply-moving and far-reaching in its impulse and its inspiration
would have been the tribute, had it been made in reverent gratitude to
the mothers-of-men who had saved the world by mothering the men who
saved the Empire--For achievement stamped with the high and unique
quality of service that woman alone could have rendered. And not
because, when tested by men's standards, she proved herself a worthy
second-best in doing things that men have always done.
The gods must long have wept, I think, that men had thought so lightly
of the women living every day beside them, surrendering their lives and
powers, their interests, desires and individuation; toiling over
cooking-pans and wash-tubs, tied for years to children's cots, for life
to some or another person's sick-bed; smothering talents, impulse,
hopes, impatiences, to find the soft and simple word; solacing,
inspiring, making-believe above an aching spirit and a breaking heart
that all was fair and well with the world. And, moreover, in every
generation making these beautiful fictions ever a fraction more truth
and less fiction. For the gods alone know how that kindlier, purer and
more tender Home-environment which women have created in men's
stony-hearted cities involves the most laborious, heart-wearing, complex
and widest exercise of faculty of any human task.
Women themselves had long been tiring of it; stung to the soul and
mortified by centuries of man's ingratitude--when not contempt.
Nevertheless, where love and duty did not, chains of custom and
tradition bound them faithful to their oars.
Till German Frightfulness releasing them, the cry is now:
Since you can do something better and more profitable than merely to row
the old Galley of Life--since you can do men's work, forsooth, come out
into the market-place and help us pay our big War-Bill!
And yet--Whither will drift the Galley of Life when its rowers put their
strength elsewhere?
II
In the haze of false sentiment exaggerating--not the value of masculine
work done by the sex during War, because this was, of course, invaluable
and indispensable, but exaggerating, absolutely, the values of this work
as compared with the woman's work it had been doing previously, the
decision to admit women to Parliament was a precipitate and an
ill-considered measure, by no means innocent of party motive.
Threatening, as it does, a drastic sweep of all political, economic and
every other difference between the standards, training, and employment
of the sexes, it was pressed forward, nevertheless, not only with
characteristic masculine failure to recognise the vital significance of
the other sex in Human Things, but in utter blindness to social and
racial consequences, immediate and remote, which make it possibly the
most momentous decision ever arrived at in the history of human
progress.
Showing how little it was known for the turning-point in our great
destiny, the question was debated with unseemly levity, while less than
half the parliamentary members troubled (or had hardihood) to record
their votes; the abstention of the others proving which way blew the
straws of their faint wills. And of those voting in favour, half,
perhaps, did so (as some confessed) under intimidation of otherwise
losing their seats. (What would be said of the soldier who should turn
his back upon the enemy for fear of losing life even?)
No more than twenty-five found courage to say their "No's" like honest
gentleman.
Yet far from Enfranchisement having been a burning need blazing in the
hearts of women, their newly-awarded vote required to be spurred and
whipped out of all but a small minority. Or coaxed from them by
abandoning appeal on all the wider issues of Imperial and national
policy, and, in so far as their interest was sought, by reducing the
programme to personal and domestic issues--electric lighting in their
parlours, hot-water taps in their kitchens, and so forth.
And here was seen, at once, the threat of a grave and an increasing
diversion from that purely political outlook of men, which should be
impersonal in issue, broad in enterprise. Not that the human and
domestic side is a whit less momentous than the more abstract and
national. But appealing to a different order of mind, it demands that
different order of mind which characterises the woman-sex, to deal with
it effectively.
The plea that women will acquire in time the masculine political
view-point threatens, on the other hand, the loss in them of their own
highly-specialised and invaluable interests, morale and qualities;
which, being womanly of impulse and of trend, make for the individual
welfare, happiness and elevation of the nation's members.
III
As with every other human function, there are two departments of
politics. And the House of Commons represents man's.
It stands for all that is best accomplished politically by his
highly-specialised order of brain; by his concrete energy and
initiative, his justice and rationalism, his power of administration,
and his uncompromising sternness--pitilessness, if need be--to deal with
and to punish crime and aggression, national and international. It
stands, in a word, for that virile outlook and the virile grip in
Statesmanship which are indispensable to materialise a people's
prosperity and to pioneer its progress. These are the functions of
_men_. Just as the Army and Navy, Science and Commerce, are the
functions of men. Because the male bent and intellect are those best
fitted to raise these developments to their highest and most effective
issues, just as the male physique and energy are best fitted to achieve
these issues in material results.
Had anything been needed to emphasise the values of such virile
characteristics in the administration of a nation's policy, the War
furnished it. And the many blunders and vacillations marring the conduct
of the War emphasised the lack of these invaluable masculine qualities
in the concurrent House of Commons. Army, Navy, and Air-Services proved
their manhood doughtily in their respective provinces. Had they been
supplemented by an equally virile Statesmanship, the War, having begun,
would have been brought to a speedy termination. In point of fact, it
would never have begun.
If now, our British politics are already so lacking in the manly ability
and grip indispensable to national permanence and progress, the presence
of women in Parliament can but further emasculate these. It may be said
that some women outside the House are more male of mind and mode (not to
speak of muscle) than are some men inside. But this is reason, surely,
for replacing these weak males by stronger ones, rather than for
adulterating British statesmanship with Femaleness.
The presence of a masculine woman in a house--whether this be writ with
a small or a capital letter--far from stiffening the manly calibre of
weak men in it, only further enervates and paralyses them. To serve on a
committee of mixed sex is to realise this.
Women should be represented in the counsels of the nation--but not in
the councils of men. They should have a House of their own, wherein to
foster the interests of women and children mainly, as well as to further
The Humanities and The Moralities; which are, at the same time, woman's
true political sphere and her chiefest concern--because she and the
child most suffer from failures thereof. Thus, the House of Men would be
relieved of problems their sex is unqualified to deal with. While more
time and energy would be left them to dispose of affairs they are best
fitted to administer.
As already pointed out, the all-potent factor of Sex intervening,
members of neither sex are capable of doing their best work while in
association with the other. Sex-rivalries are stirred, or
sex-antagonisms. Either of which range the sexes on opposite sides; thus
precluding amicable co-operation. Or they engender sex-ascendancy.
Which, making one sex dominate or defer to the other, precludes
intelligent co-operation. Through all, moreover, only too often run
threads of intrigue, to entangle and hamper the powers of both.
British politics have notably declined since woman's incursion therein.
British commerce, once supreme among the nations, has notably declined
since women entered business-houses. Good and thorough work demands,
beyond all things, undivided concentration of the powers upon it. And
for nine persons out of ten, this concentration is impossible while in
the presence of members of the opposite sex. And emphatically this is
true of the male, since woman exercises a hypnotic, and, accordingly, an
enervating influence upon him. Worse still, he poses for her: becoming
meretricious and insincere. It is held by some that women in Parliament
might elevate the codes and modes of latter-day politics, many of our
best men withholding themselves therefrom because of bad odour imparted
by self-seeking and unscrupulous politicians.
But let us keep our House of Commons a House of men, and make it
representative of the nation's finest manhood. It is the first and
foremost function of the sex, the way of national success and progress.
And just as the presence of women would blunt the pioneering spirit and
cripple the action of a party of Arctic explorers, so women in the House
must blunt the enterprise and hamper the exploits of Statesmanship.
So far, the good sense alike of women as of men has declared against the
innovation; rejecting, by large majorities, all but one of women
Parliamentary candidates. It remains to be seen, however, whether men
outside the House will later endorse the new departure, by electing
members of the other sex to represent them. A thing impossible for one
sex to do for the other, of course, seeing that not only do men and
women arrive at their different conclusions by wholly different routes,
but all questions bear wholly different values for them.
It may be argued that the existence of dual departments of politics, and
dual points-of-view is argument for electing representatives of both
sexes to The Commons. Not so, however. Each sex is specialist in its
own domain. And an aurist wastes time, and most likely blunders, when he
applies himself to treat eye-diseases. An oculist wastes time, and
probably blunders, when delicate ear-operations are required of him.
Since by his dual constitution, moreover, man possesses, by inheritance
from his mother, the quotum of woman-apprehension, foresight, and
altruism required to present the woman-bent and view-point in his
outlook and conduct of political and civic affairs, woman's personal
intervention in these is as superfluous as it would be harmful.
Further, there are two orders of men: An order strictly male in trend
and talent, and an order whose mentality is tinctured with a higher than
average proportion of womanly conservatism, sympathy and intuition. And
these two orders of male--typified, respectively, by the Conservative
and the Radical parties--perpetually struggling to secure the measures
prompted by their respective orders of mind, and intermittently gaining
ascendancy, sustain a poise, or mean, between the unduly conservative
and traditional, and the unduly radical and transitional in our
political administration.
These two orders of mentality are found again in Youth and Age. All
healthy and vigorous-minded young men are radical of bias; hot-headed,
precipitate and intolerant of crusted orthodoxy, keen to demolish old
institutions and established methods. While maturity makes for
conservatism. It _knows_. And having learned by experience the values of
institutions which have become institutions because of their values, it
is prudent in its counsels of slow and stable reform, in its distrust of
drastic, precipitate change, and, beyond all, in its wise misdoubtings
of the world in general as being better than it is, and ripe,
accordingly, for the best things.
For the present, there are numberless problems and questions of women's
industrial employment, of children's employment, of the industrial
supervision of young girls and their moral protection; problems of
female drunkenness and prostitution, crimes of children, crimes against
infants and children; questions of health, of the education and
upbringing of the young, of dress and conduct, and of the general moral
purification and the mental elevation of the Race--with all of which
women are essentially qualified to deal; and the vital national
importance whereof men have proved themselves as incapable of
apprehending as they have shown themselves powerless to administer them.
The two classes of national problems, or the two departments into which
most of these problems might be advantageously sub-classed, should be
recognised as being the functions, respectively, of the one or of the
other sex, and should be deputed for consideration to the House of Men
or to the House of Women. With the result that in both, every problem of
reform would be dealt with by the sex specialised by nature, by
sympathy, and by training, best to understand and best to legislate for
it.
As with The Lords, either House should have power to question or to
reject the conclusions of the other.
We need urgently, indeed, such a House of Women to employ its native
wisdom, its intuitive apprehension, and its moral and emotional impulse,
and, moreover, to bring its experience and tact to bear upon a
hundred-and-one tangled and neglected issues of moral and social reform.
In order to remedy evils that have come, from long neglect, to be a
cancer, slowly and surely sapping and vitiating our national life and
endangering our racial supremacy.
IV
That women may do useful work in male departments of politics and
economics is quite beside the question. Far more valuable work is needed
and is possible from them in their own especial fields of aptitude. In
these latter, moreover, they would be fostering, in place of
sacrificing, that morale and those distinctive talents Nature has
specialised in them. While their withdrawal _in toto_ from male
political and economic functions would put men on their mettle, and
stimulate their efforts and achievement therein.
Woman's influence, like that of Religion, is most potent when it is
indirect and inspirational. Like the Church, when she exchanges her
indirect and devotional ministrations for direct and material ones,
temporal or militant, she destroys herself or the peoples she dominates.
Or she destroys both.
It is common fallacy that so long as the world's work is done and its
affairs tolerably well conducted, it is of no significance whatsoever by
which sex these ends are attained.
Sight is lost of the intrinsic truth that Life exists for Man--not Man
for Life; its purpose being the evolution of the human Species by way of
the evolution of human Faculty. The world's work has no slightest value
save as spur and instrument of human education. And the evolution of the
dual orders of human Faculty having differentiated the human Species
into two sexes, each representing a wholly different order of
Faculty--obviously the perfection of both orders of Faculty and,
accordingly, the further evolution of both sexes wherein these orders
are respectively specialised, can be attained only by the exercise, by
each order, of the role and the functions that best evoke its powers.
If, therefore, the male sex repudiates its allotted role and functions,
and forfeits, in consequence, the education of its distinctive talents
and moral, by shelving its responsibilities upon the other sex,
howsoever capable a substitute this other sex may prove itself, man acts
as foolishly and fatuously as the schoolboy who shirks his schooling and
the discipline thereof, by enlisting his capable sister to do his
lessons for him.
It is, at the same time, man's duty and his privilege manfully to
shoulder and ably to perform his own allotted part in Life's affairs.
Evading this, or from a false conception of chivalry allowing woman to
usurp a share therein, he degenerates inevitably; in default of his
natural spur to development. Moreover he obliges--or connives at woman
doing likewise, in respect of her allotted part.
That he has already grown so slack, his virile pride and enterprise have
so far lapsed, as to reconcile him to woman's usurpation of his
masculine functions and prerogatives should warn him of incipient
dry-rot in him. As too, the portentous fact that had he not declined in
physical and mental calibre, she could never so readily and efficiently
have taken his place as we have seen her doing. So efficiently, indeed,
that he will be hard put to it to regain and to retain his lost
professional and industrial footing, by proving himself appreciably the
better man.
As Dr. Havelock Ellis says, if they are to cope with the new Feminism,
men must needs look to their laurels and produce a new Masculinism. For
truly these weak-chinned, neurotic young men of the rising generation
are no match at all for the heavy-jawed, sinewy, resolute young women
Feminist aims and methods are giving us.
On every side, in politics, literature, journalism, oratory, commerce,
even in scientific invention, women are swiftly coming up abreast of
men, and threaten shortly to out-distance them.--And this upon their own
ground.
On the other hand, the finer and more exquisite womanly qualities and
aptitudes, the emotions and devotions; purity, sweetness, patience,
forbearance, tenderness, lovingness and lovableness, together with the
courtesies and graces, have fallen out of culture and are fast declining
toward extinction. And this, in the measure of the mushroom-growth of
masculine abilities and aims and bent, now substituted for them in the
sex. With which decline of womanly characteristics, the religion and
nobility, virility and chivalry, manly reverence and regard for women,
wherewith the true mother illumines the souls of her sons, and which are
man's response to the appeal of true woman, are waning rapidly also.
There is, in all men worth the name, an instinctive recognition that the
world's most strenuous labours and the world's administration are their
natural functions, and that upon their sex, accordingly, rests the
responsibility alike of progress or decline in these directions.
This sense of responsibility is both stimulating and uplifting, in the
degrees of its realisation and fulfilment. The yielding, by man, to the
other sex, of masculine essential rights and obligations is, at the same
time, a symptom in him of declining virility, physical and mental, and a
cause inevitable of his further speedy decadence. The position yielded,
and equality in all things ceded to woman, that pride in his sex, in
himself, and in his work, which were his strongest incentives to
progress, drop to ever lower grades. Until he comes at last to the state
of the decadent savage, who keeps as many wives to work for him as their
work for him enables him to keep.
The spirit and pride of Sex are normal and inspiring, and are the
expression of that impulse which has directed, in both sexes, the
contrary trend of both. No man of mettle feels ever again the same zest
or spur to achievement in a role that has become equally woman's.
Arrogance? Possibly. But wholesome and energising. Defect of that pride
in his man's mission which inspired Drake, Columbus, Nelson, Caesar,
Shakespeare, Newton, to great conquest. Without it, man ceases to be
man. That it is a factor to be reckoned with, was proved by the recent
election, which was signalised by being woman's first authorised entry
into the political arena--and was characterised by nothing so much as by
man's indifference, even his neglect to record his vote. And that it is
a factor to be reckoned with, is further and seriously proved by the
slackness and diminished zest and output of masculine Labour, since the
other sex has invaded the field.
Woman, for her part, is characterised by a similar spirit and pride of
her sex. Equally she loses it when men intrude upon her province. And
this Sex-pride and spirit in her would be nobly intensified and uplifted
to ever higher levels of expression and attainment, were she but assured
of the fine quality and issues of those woman-faculties and functions,
by way of which it is her privilege first to create Life, and afterwards
to minister to it.
A potent factor in man's impotence to hold his own either in moral or
achievement, when pitted directly against the other sex, is that power
many women exercise of recruiting their vital forces from those of
persons--and of men, particularly--in association with them. The highest
levels of work and inspiration are the product of _reserve_ and surplus
forces. When these are depleted, only languid and lower-grade aims and
capacities are possible.
The extent to which over-worked women may impair the health and
constitutional vigour of men associated with them in work was strikingly
shown during the changed conditions of War. Surrounded by over-wrought
girls and women, who kept themselves going by stimulus of nervous
excitement, of strong tea or more dangerous drugs, many men, co-workers
or heads of departments, became neurasthenic wrecks. Others lapsed to
the condition of infirm old men. The like was seen in fathers and
husbands of such over-wrought War-workers. And nervous depletion
occasioned by working-wives has doubtless much to do with the inanition
and depression now crippling our industrial output.
I may be charged with holding a brief for the Enemy-sex. If so, it is
not only because man's cause is woman's, but, moreover, because his
present disposition to surrender his prerogatives all round shows him
dangerously blind to the truth of woman's power; misdirection whereof
from its natural channels menaces not only him, but woman herself, and
the Race. _Find the woman!_ said the French cynic. Jestingly: because he
no more than other men had gauged the profundity of the saying, in all
its deep and vast biological phenomena and implications.
Our national survival stands in jeopardy already, indeed, from the
lower-grade males--narrow-brained neurotics or feeble-brained
neurasthenics--whom latter-day women are producing yearly in tens of
thousands. And the deplorable truth of this degeneracy is overlooked,
because no more than a fractional number of our doctors distinguish
between The Normal and The Average. With the result, that comparing an
abnormal with others more abnormal, they declare the less abnormal
satisfactory. Of the fine physique, the vital health and faculty, the
zest and joy of living which characterise true Normality--and which are
the birthright of every human being--only the few have any conception.
It is significant that the sole ancient civilisations now surviving,
India and China, have never hazarded their chances of survival by
emancipating their women. On the other hand, because their women are in
bondage, personally and psychologically, and because their women's vital
powers are exhausted by laborious and de-sexing occupations, the moral
and material progress of these peoples is at low ebb.
V
Recruiting statistics have shown us the Damocles-sword of Decadence
suspended by a hair above our heads; have shown us our great people so
riddled with disease, defect and abnormality, that nearly _half our
manhood was declared_ unfitted for man's elementary duty of fighting for
his country (55.9 per cent. only being classed in Grade I.). All that
our centuries of evolutionary progress have achieved for us, all that
the Race has achieved for itself by faculty and enterprise, integrity
and industry, threatens now to be sacrificed to a Feminist fanaticism,
which, denying to woman any more vital or tender human faculties or
offices than those of man, has increasingly repudiated all else for her
than rights to pit her wits and muscles against his.
England has long been, and has once again proved herself supreme among
the nations. Because England, more than any other land, had freed her
women from the more laborious industrial employments; leaving them, in
consequence, more vital power to put into the making of a splendid Race,
fine of body, stable of character; the men of it charged with virile
energy and enterprise, the women house-proud, home-abiding; faithful
wives and admirable mothers.
Recruiting statistics have valuably emphasised the truth that in those
localities where women are most employed in labour, there disease and
degeneracy are most rampant. Significantly it was shown that
colliery-districts and the Universities (the latter with about 80 per
cent. of Grade I. men), were conspicuous in providing the greatest
number of men qualified for military service. Why? Because neither the
mothers of men enrolled in Universities, nor, for the most part, those
of colliery-districts, are employed industrially.
While, on the other hand, the health and physique of cotton-mill
operatives proved so "alarmingly low" that of 184 weavers and spinners
only 57 could even be passed for Army-training. Of 290 examined, only 57
men of one cotton-spinning town were graded I.; only 64 were graded II.,
while 169 were graded III. and IV.
Again, _Why_? Because, unlike colliery-districts where the standard of
health was notably good, in cotton-towns where physique and health were
"alarmingly low" the vast majority of wives and mothers are employed in
factories. It is important, moreover, to note that in such gradings of
men for military service, even those classed first were by no means
necessarily normal or vigorous. On the contrary, many passed were later
shown defective, by breakdown under stress of military discipline.
Further, that so many as 20 _per cent._ of the young manhood of our
highest culture were disqualified for Grade I. is a serious
circumstance.
Mr. Lloyd George has said regarding this most vital question: "The next
great lesson of the war is that if Britain has to be thoroughly equipped
to meet any emergencies, the State must take a more constant and a more
intelligent interest in the health and fitness of the people. If the
Empire is to be equal to its task, the men and women who make up the
Empire must be equal to it. The number of B2 and C3 men is prodigious. I
asked the Minister of National Service how many more men could we have
put into the fighting ranks if the health of the country had been
properly looked after. I staggered at the reply: '_At least a
million_.' A virile race has been wasted by neglect and want of
forethought, and it is a danger to the State and to the Empire. I
solemnly warn my fellow countrymen that you cannot maintain an A1 Empire
with a C3 population."
This estimate of abnormality, by reason of a million of the nation's
young manhood disqualified by definite disease, defect or degeneracy, is
far below the mark. Because owing to the urgent need for fighting men,
the standard of fitness was compulsorily low. And the estimate takes no
account of the huge number of such low-grade "Fit," who succumbed in
death or incapacitation to the strain of military training, or to the
vicissitudes of active service.
The _British Medical Journal_ has published figures showing that of
2,080,709 men examined by Medical Boards--the men constituting "a fair
sample of the male population between the ages of 18 and 43, and a
smaller proportion of the more fit between 43 and 51"--_only 1 in 3
could be classed in Grade I_. That is, out of every 150 members of our
British manhood in its best years of life, _only 50 were up to the mark
in health and normality_.
The _Journal_ comments on "this mass of physical inefficiency, with all
its concomitant human misery, and direct loss to the country."
Sir Auckland Geddes, addressing the Federation of British Industries,
stated that "_appalling facts about the health of the nation have been
disclosed in reports of medical examinations carried out by recruiting
authorities_." One of the most startling and disquieting of these
disclosures was that of hundreds of thousands of our men, between the
ages of 18 and 43, dying of tuberculosis.
Despite all this, however, because our authorities fear to face the
truth and the drastic economic upheaval involved in the prohibition of
all young wives and mothers from the stress of breadwinning, attempt is
being made to shelve the whole blame of this appalling state of national
health upon faulty industrial and hygienic conditions; too long hours of
work, imperfect ventilation, bad housing, inferior cooking, poor wages,
and so forth. All factors, of course, but only contributory to the great
vital one. And in order to placate the public conscience, reforms in
these directions are promised. Excellent and sadly needed reforms, it is
true--in so far as they go; but bound to failure because they will not
go to the root of things. They will be tried, no doubt, in our promised
Reconstruction-scheme. But being palliative merely, further holocausts
of human life and faculty and happiness will be sacrificed in the
experiment.
Sooner or later--and Heaven send it be sooner lest it come too
late!--the truth must be confronted, and the crisis met. The further the
Feminism now threatening our downfall secures footing, however, and more
and more diverts the nation's life-resources into merely economic
channels, more and more squanders them in abnormal ambitions and output,
the more deeply-rooted and more desperate will have become the cancer of
our national decadence. And incalculably the more difficult and
dangerous will be the task of its eradication.
The reform should have come while _man_ still held the reins securely in
his grasp--ere Feminism had entrenched itself and its deforming aims and
powers behind an enfranchised woman-sex; to intimidate and out-number
his own. Because women in general, misled by these false standards, and,
moreover, deteriorated by de-sexing training, become every year less and
less disposed toward home and family-life; less and less willing to
burden themselves with the duties and sacrifices indispensable to the
proper fulfilment of wife and motherhood. And now, more than ever, when
they are still further to be pitted against men in the industrial
struggle, woman-instincts and aptitudes will become ever more warped and
enfeebled in them.
The Danger menacing us is the graver because, while Disease is the
expression of a healthy vital conscience protesting, in terms of pain
and disability, against conditions, environmental or personal, adverse
to normal states of health and development (and to which the healthy
living organism declines therefore to conform), Degeneracy is
characterised by a vital conscience of so low an order that it conforms
and adapts the type, without pain or protest, to conditions perversive
of healthy normality and of further evolutionary advance.
There comes a stage, accordingly, in Racial decline, when the Racial
vital conscience no longer rebels, in terms of Disease, but conforms, in
terms of Degeneracy, to artificial, abnormal and evil conditions of
living, environmental and personal. And then as happened to those mighty
civilisations snuffed out before us--the major portion of the community
having lapsed from health and normality into decadent states of mind and
body, vice and corruption become its Normal both of mind and body. Evil
and chaos run riot. Till Nature, defied and transgressed at every turn,
opens the vials of her wrath, and pours forth her microbic myriads to
sow death and destruction wholesale.
Thus she sweeps from the board of Life another great Race--that had
failed.
VI
Already, there are disquieting signs that the physical disease and
abnormality among us have engendered such degrees of mental and of moral
aberration as may lead at any hour to grave disruption. Below the quiet
order of our British constitution are heard, from time to time, the
rumble of chaotic and disintegrating forces. With growing frequency, the
shriek of anarchy shrills. Red flags break. We shall be truly fortunate
if we succeed in bridging over, without more or less serious upheaval,
the critical gap between War and Peace.
Woman is Nature's peacemaker and welder. She it is who, in the home,
knits the loose ends of the multiple incongruous and turbulent human
elements into social unities--families, friendly communities, townships
and peoples--by her annealing powers of affection and sympathy, of
charity and intuitive understanding.
"_Keep the Home-fires burning!_" sang our soldiers. No considerations of
The British Constitution, the London Stock Exchange, or Worshipful Civic
Company, fired them to heroism, spurred them to victory. But for the
Home-fires burning in suburban villas, in four-roomed cottages or
two-room lodgings--as equally in hereditary mansions--it was, our
gallants dared and died, and reaped their glorious triumph.
My father, an early and an earnest advocate of Female enfranchisement,
used to counsel Lord Beaconsfield that to enfranchise women would be to
establish the Conservative party for a century, at least. Because nine
out of ten women were, in those days, Conservative.
Since then, Feminism has been active, however. Less by way of direct
propaganda of anarchy or Bolshevism, be it said, than by fostering that
masculine bent and spirit of material unrest and discontent which
destroy in women all the finer, fairer ideals and attributes of their
intrinsic womanhood, and those self-denying ordinances which so sweeten
and dignify the humblest tasks as to content the doers of them with the
inspiring sense that they are worth the while. With the result that
nothing so characterises the great mass of latter-day working women as a
smouldering irrational and intemperate Socialism. And the Socialism of
working-women (as, too, of the majority of working-men) is based on
total ignorance of the impracticability and evil of making for
universal equality in a vast Scheme of Things, the values and the
ultimate successes whereof depend absolutely on preserving those
highly-specialised diversities and inequalities, alike of faculty and
bent, into which Life, with its countless degrees of evolutionary
development, has progressively graded living creatures, brute and human.
The innumerable orders and classes of our sociology are as inevitable as
they are invaluable. Because they serve for stages of faculty and
avocation upon that biological gradient of Ascent by which we climb.
As was pointed out earlier in this book, woman, although passive and
reposeful of inherence, is variable and unstable of temperament; her
powers being eternally at ebb and flux, in order that she may be the
medium of those evolutionary mutations which engender human progress. A
nature truly perilous when too great dominance is permitted the sex in
affairs so momentous as those of State-administration, upon the firm
stability and permanence whereof depend so many destinies. Because this
evolutionary impulsiveness of hers is dangerously liable to express
itself in irresponsible, chaotic and anarchical outbreaks. As history
shows, wreckage of many once mighty, but now extinct, civilisations set
in when the males thereof weakly, or basely, surrendered their manhood's
rights of rule to a sex disqualified by its native non-conformability to
rule in national and international policies.
Should women ever come to exercise political power identical with man's,
they would be liable to subvert the whole national and international
administration of their country on an impulse. Not solely from craving
for novelty, but, too, as result of their inherent bent toward forward
and precipitate movement, and their implicit faith in change as being
necessarily _reform_.
Nations in which the feminine element is strong betray the native
fickleness thereof in perpetual change of Ministry--even in frequent
revolution. This element of instability is Ireland's curse, the flaw in
her people's splendid Celtic faculty.
In view of the stern and strenuous and narrowly-rationalistic creed and
claims of Feminism, as too of the steel-brained, steel-willed fighting
women leading it, men may scoff, with sense of false security, at odds
of danger from feminine weakness and fickleness in Feminist ranks. They
scoffed just so at the menace of Prussianism--whereof Feminism is the
female rendering.
It must always be remembered, moreover, that the civic and political
privileges ceded to Woman, the Feminist, are ceded alike to that
freakish, irresponsible creature Woman, the Femininist, who, to
counterbalance the decline of woman-quality in those others of her sex,
adds to her number and her freakishness as those others wax in number
and in stern determination. And in a House of Commons of mixed sex,
Feminists would find, to their undoing, that here as elsewhere the
Ultra-Feminines would speedily outnumber and out-power themselves. The
Movement, inaugurated in all the stern and sterile sex-insensibility of
the Feminist code, would soon be dry-rotten and corrupt with the
weaknesses bred of Effeminacy.
Nor should it be forgotten that the present Feminist leaders it was who,
by their dangerous Bolshevist tactics of Militant Suffragism, proclaimed
the anarchy seething in themselves and their adherents.
So long as there survives within the breast of man a spark of that
Chivalry which has been both the inspiring and impelling power of his
virile development, he can neither meet, nor can he treat with woman
upon equal terms.
Always the aspects of her in capacities of mother, wife or love (or
mistress) must intervene to disarm, and to incapacitate him from
exerting his full strength against her. Whether her appeal to him be
sacred or profane, accordingly--that of woman at her best or at her
worst--always so long as he is man, her highest and most tender (as her
basest) appeal will be by way of those woman-Unfitnesses which in every
age have served as highest incentive of his Fitnesses; that he might
win, safeguard and cherish her. This chivalrous instinct it was, in
part--for behind it lurked the recognition of more than half a nation
suffering from the wrong of Unenfranchisement--which disarmed and
paralysed his action in respect of those same Suffragist outbreaks. And
so long as he is man, will he be similarly disarmed and dangerously
inhibited from meeting and from battling successfully with woman.
History repeats itself. And if men suppose that they have seen the last
of female Militancy, and overlook the menacing truth that their own
incapacity to cope with this must increase inevitably in direct
proportion to woman's waxing power, they are blind, indeed, to dangerous
breakers ahead.
Having sown the fickle wind of woman's variability, they are like to
reap the whirlwind in her inherent non-conformability; a difficult and
parlous factor such as they have never previously encountered in
political and industrial administration. Such non-conformability as is
seen at an extreme in the anarchy of revolutions; in which women, having
lost control and balance, plunge deeper and deeper into excesses,
without power, it would seem, of recoil. While men reach a maximum,
recover poise, and then setting about to re-constitute order out of
chaos, more often than not evolve a higher form of order than had
previously obtained.
VII
Secure in their traditional superior strength, however, and with
characteristic complacency in this relation, men have no suspicion of
the sex-antagonism--hatred even--seething against them in Feminism. And
this far from having been annealed or softened, has been, on the
contrary, greatly aggravated by the concessions and new privileges
lately accorded the sex.
Strange to say, the chief talk of extremist women in their new
War-capacities was bitterest grievance and hostility against the male,
because, although installed in masculine positions, they were denied
rights identical with his; of rank and recognition, of responsibility
and pay. That they held these capacities temporarily merely, and as
novices and amateurs, while men held theirs as experts, for long service
or for superior values by right of masculine abilities, had no weight
whatsoever. Never in all her days of so-called subjection has woman been
so loud and denunciatory of the injustices of The Oppressor, of his
conspiracies and crimes against her, as since she has been yielded a
number of those rights which Feminism claims.
Feminists will say this is because complete equality in all things has
not yet been granted--has yet to be fought for. The truth is, however,
that the interests and functions of men fail wholly to satisfy the
wholly dissimilar natures of women. But until they have realised
this--the true reason of their discontent--an ever-increasing number of
women will continue to make these their coveted goal, and to chafe with
anger and bitterest resentment against the other sex for denying them
full measure of things--without intrinsic value for them.
* * * * *
It needs no saying by me, that, apart from the Feminist extremist
faction, the Woman's Movement includes a number of the sex
characterised by the noblest ideals and impulse, as by the finest
achievements; their creed and aims being pure of self-seeking or
materialist ambitions for themselves or for their kin. And these it is
to whom we owe it, that, amid the clamour and the combat of those
others, the spirit of true Womanhood, devoted, wise and altruistic, is
making itself felt everywhere in modern thought and modern progress.
Such women for the most part discredit Feminism, in many cases directly
oppose both its doctrine and practice.
VIII
The huge numerical preponderance of women must, of itself, presently
swamp all masculine power and initiative in State affairs unless the
political functions of the sexes be separated. Thenceforward, _Vox
populi_ must be the voice of Woman--man's having ceased to be heard.
And man's chiefest menace lies, be it reiterated to the point of tedium,
in that momentous fact of the biological investment in woman, of the
Racial Trustfund. For this is, at the same time, his sole heritage and
that of the nation. And not only does it constitute her the custodian of
Human Life and Faculty but it makes her arbitress as well of man's and
of the nation's destiny.
In yielding his House of Parliament, man has surrendered not only his
highest and most characteristic prerogative, but he has yielded the last
exclusive stronghold of his manhood. An entrenchment indispensable to
his difficult task of holding his own against a sex overwhelmingly
superior in number, and chartered, by right of womanhood, with
time-honoured baffling privileges which handicap and defeat him at all
turns. A sex Nature has armoured with charms, moreover, and with
weaknesses for his disarming; by appeal, on the one hand, to his
chivalry, on the other, to his senses.
Entrenched in his last stronghold, he stood some chance of exerting his
allotted dominance in life's affairs. All his strongholds invaded, he
stands none.
For the rest, it can only be said that men who should reject their own,
and elect members of the opposite sex to represent them in Parliament,
would by that vote alone of non-confidence in the ability or the good
faith of their kind, proclaim the human male a pitiful failure in
species; an order without specialisation of brain, of character, or of
moral, to give it essential values in Human concerns.
Woman, on the other hand, would stand acclaimed a Super-Being. One not
only highly-specialised by God and Nature, as creatrix of the Race, and
endowed with gifts to be the Racial nurse and guide and teacher, but,
added to these most vital of human capacities, she would stand
accredited by man with such superior qualifications also for the
administration of the State as to lead him to adjudge her his superior
in this capacity likewise. While her still further pre-eminence is now
to be emphasised by pitting her on equal terms against the male, in all
the Arts and Crafts, the professions and the businesses.
Truly--poor Super-Being that she is to be--burdened and spent by her
super-tax of faculties and functions, she will need, indeed, to break
into the Racial Trust-Fund, in order to equip herself for these her
multifarious exactions. Because not only will it be her affliction to
produce the Race and mother it, but she must provide for it too;
moreover, must doctor it, play lawyer, parson and accountant to it;
paint its pictures, mould its statuary, plan its architecture, build its
houses, compose its music, blow its trumpets, beat its drums; and, over
and beyond all these, must administer its politics, and serve it
presently, no doubt, as Premier, Primate and Chancellor.
While it must be merely a matter of brief time, when, to her other
tasks, will be added the manning of its Army, its Navy and Air-Services,
and the serving of its guns.
Should Feminist aims be realised--and already they are more than
half-won--it will be a case, truly, of _Exit Man!_
Rejected on all counts, as possessing no intrinsic sex-values, to offset
woman's vital and pre-eminent one of the creation of Life (for his
biological part in this is so slight and brief as to be unworthy of note
were it not indispensable, and will be insignificant, indeed, when he no
longer serves as highly-specialised agent and artificer of the Racial
faculty); possessing no distinctive qualities and no obligations of
fatherhood, to protect and to provide for offspring, and thereby to
offset woman's vital and important one of nurturing and rearing this; no
more than woman's equal (if that) in the Sciences and Arts, in Politics
and Commerce--Truly no alternative will be left him save to retire,
abased, into the dim background of the Human Pageant; a self-admitted
failure, without place or standing, by virile and exclusive right and
power of body, brain and office.
IX
A more inspiring picture presents itself, however.
Of a Manhood, worthy of its racial and national traditions, waking
timely to a recognition of its manhood's powers and duties, and, having
emancipated itself from woman's rule in all beside her natural province,
reinstating its supremacy in every virile field and function; and thus
re-shouldering bravely its allotted burdens in Labour, Faculty and
Administration.
Of a Womanhood re-finding itself also, and finding itself and its
natural lot upon a fairer and a nobler plane--the plane of Life, as
ever, but illumined now by broader outlook, and instinct with higher
understanding.
And these two working for the common good, of our Anglo-Saxon Race,
recruited by their sympathetic impulse and reciprocal achievement,
having been set, in course of a few generations, upon routes of such a
Human Renaissance as should carry it forward to fulfilment of its
splendid destiny.
In this New Human Dispensation would be a House of Women to serve as a
second--a balancing and an uplifting--wing to the House of Men.
Thus in the national as in the natural life, The Sexes would be most
effectively operating and co-operating; travelling each along its own
inherent and allotted lines, employing each its own intrinsic powers and
fulfilling its intrinsic functions, apart from, but abreast of and in
continual touch with the other; inspiring, fortifying, supplementing and
complementing the attributes, the trend and the achievements, each of
each.
* * * * *
Said Mazzini, "_Man and Woman are the two human Wings that lift the soul
toward the Ideal we are destined to attain_." And the value and the
effectiveness of these two human, as of other wings, lie in the degree
to which, although they work in unison, _they move in different areas_;
apart from and independent, each of the other; balancing and
correlating, but, nevertheless, each sustaining its own side of the
body, Vital and Social.
APPENDIX
FURTHER EVIDENCES IN SUPPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL AND MENDELIAN
PROPOSITIONS ADVANCED IN BOOK I.
I
_The Male is the impelling force in Physical Development, or
Adaptation to environment_
Scientific stock-breeding supplies valuable practical examples of
applied Genetics, or the Science of Heredity.
Although artificial, in the sense that the creatures of the Stock-yard
are not mated by law of Natural Selection, nor are they bred or reared
under normal environmental conditions, the circumstance that breeders
are breeding for special characteristics, and mate the parents with a
view to the transmission and the accentuation of such, provides
important indications regarding hereditary influence and its determinant
factors.
Mr. Horace G. Regnart, who has done much to establish Stock-breeding on
a scientific basis, kindly furnishes me with the following interesting
and suggestive data:
"We Breeders pay more attention to the bull because he can sire fifty
calves yearly; while the cow can produce only one. One can afford to pay
a thousand guineas for a bull, whereas one cannot afford fifty cows at
the same price. And the purchase of a first-class bull is the cheapest
way of getting a good herd. The history of practically every great herd
is the history of some particular bull. As we say, '_a bull is half the
herd_.' It is equally true to say that every great bull is the son of a
great cow. With one highly-prepotent bull we can raise a high-class
herd, even if we start with second-rate females; while a bad bull will
ruin the best herd in the county. It is for this reason that we 'put all
our money' on the bull."
All of which supports my theory that the male is the impelling agency
in Adaptation to Environment, or evolutionary development on the plane
of physics, and that such progressive development is achieved by way of
the male traits being Dominant upon this plane, and manifesting,
accordingly, in the physical terms of stature and muscle and
force-production.
The male being the determinant agent in the physical characteristics of
size and flesh and nervous energy--for which breeders of Live-stock are
making--the bull is "half the herd." "With one highly-prepotent bull," a
high-class herd may be raised, even though inaugurated with second-rate
females. Whilst "a bad bull will ruin the best herd in the county." Akin
to which is the circumstance that, in two generations, the improvement
which occurs in the offspring of a New Forest pony-mare when mated with
a horse, lapses; the descendants reverting to the type of the New Forest
pony.
If, however, the male, being the agent of Adaptation, determines
progressive development in the direction of such physical traits as
further fit species to its material environment, the female it is, that,
being the agency of the Evolution of Life (and of the equipment of
species in terms of Life, accordingly) supplies offspring with the Vital
potential of living cells and vital organs--heart, lungs, digestive and
assimilative organs and functions--which, by engendering the multiple
functions and vital processes of Life, _sustain_ the existence and the
powers of the organism in relation to environment. The female, moreover,
provides it with the Vital potential of reproductive organs for the
transmission of types ever further evolved and adapted, in terms both of
Life and Adaptation.
The male thus broadly sketches out the lines and supplies the initiative
of structural development. The female supplements the sketch with the
structural potential of living cells, whereby structural development is
achieved; as too with the vital potential of organs whereby living
organisation is sustained and transmitted.
The great sire, bull or man, generates the great daughter. But since
Life is earlier in origin and precedes Development, the great mother it
must be who first _engenders_ the great son. Because, as I have already
pointed out, Life and Reproductive-Energy must exist in the potential
before they can evolve upon the plane of personal development. In other
words, function precedes structure. The potential of both function and
structure must precede the _development_ of either on the plane of Life.
Woman, accordingly, is Creatrix of the Race, because in her the Race
becomes potential. Man is Artificer of the Race, however, because from
him the Race receives its powers of concrete development.
For progressive evolutionary advance, therefore, every new generation of
females must contribute a new complement of Vital potential, equal in
potence to the new complement of Developmental initiative which the new
generation of males contribute, and by way of which the female Vital
potential is differentiated into further concrete powers. Fruitless for
one parent to supply a finer complement than the other is able to render
in terms, respectively, of Life or Development. The female potential
must be adequate to energise the male powers of differentiation. The
male powers must be adequate to differentiate the female potential.
II
_The female supplies the Typal and Vital Potentials of Adaptation_
To Mr. Regnart, I am indebted for the following further data, which seem
further to support my view:
"Ursula Raglan was a Beef-cow that milked heavily. To a Beef-bull, she
produced Gainford Champion--a great bull. While to a Dairy-bull, she
produced the dam of Priceless Princess--about the best Dairy-cow that
ever looked through a halter."
Here we find the Vital-potential indispensable to the equipment of great
offspring, proved great in the mother, by her Female vital-function of
lactation. While her respective bull-mates appear as the determinant
factors which differentiate this Vital potential in offspring,
respectively, into the Beef-traits (stature and muscle, that is) or the
Milking-traits (Vital function, that is). The very term "Dairy-bull,"
signifying a male with power to transmit to female descendants the
purely Female trait of milking, is evidence, in itself, of a female
trait, derived by a male from his mother, passing into the potential,
and lying dormant, or Recessive, for a generation, in his male
organisation, and then emerging again in his daughter.
The great bull is sire of a great cow--_because he was son of a great
cow_. And he is a great bull because he received from his dam a great
female Vital-potential, for differentiation into greatness of the male
traits that characterise great males. And in his turn, he may sire a cow
greater than his mother, because in passing on to his daughter the great
female Vital-potential of his mother, he passes on a female potential of
greatness to which his own male inherence of greatness has added a
further power of Differentiation. This increased _Male_ power of
differentiation, descending in the female line, however, manifests in
traits of increased _Female_ functioning--the function of milking, that
is.
The daughter inherits thus from her father the Female potential of her
paternal grandmother, with new power of Male differentiation acquired by
its residence during a generation (so to speak) in a male organisation.
Which new power, when reawakened to function in a female organism,
manifests in a further degree of Femaleness.
Male development having progressed along lines of increasing brain- and
nervous power, which the female has ever further inherited, Female
development has progressed along lines of such increasing brain-power as
has enabled her to transform her native simple and undifferentiated
Femaleness into ever further developed and more complex Female _traits_,
or functional and nervous characteristics.
While, on the other hand, since Female evolution has proceeded along
lines of increasing Life, or Vital Power, which the male has ever
further inherited this increasing Vital power it has been that has
served as _potential_ for the evolution of his Maleness in terms of
higher brain- and nervous power.
The great cow is mother of a great bull _because she was daughter of a
great sire_. And she was a great cow because she received from her sire
a great male complement of developmental power, which imparted to her
Recessive, and undifferentiated Femaleness, further power of functioning
as female characteristics. And she may mother a son greater even than
her sire because the great male Developmental impetus of her father
becomes in her a greater Vital potential; which, descending in the male
line, engenders further power for the further differentiation of male
characteristics.
III
_Evolution of Species and evolution of the Individual occur on
different planes_
The Evolution of Species progresses in every generation by way of each
Sex having derived from the other Sex a new and opposite potential to
engender, in every alternate generation, the further evolution of its
Sex-traits along its own (and contrary) lines.
It may be considered therefore that Type, or Species, evolves to higher
inherences by way of progressive divergences of Sex-characteristics.
While the Evolution of the individual progresses in every generation in
proportion as parents of both sexes had mated, in the previous
generation, with such members of the opposite sex as were best fitted to
supply, in the gametes contributed to offspring, complements which, by
union with their own, so matched and supplemented their own as to have
quickened and energised the development of offspring to the fullest and
the most efficient issues. In any line, however, a strain of greatness
or of other inherence descends in alternating succession, now in the
female, now in the male line; receding now into the potential, and then
evolving in development. So that while the Individual normally evolves
in every generation, the Type evolves only in alternate generations.
The evolution of Type, or Species, is the intrinsic function of the
spontaneous Evolution of Life into two orders of Sex. It occurs on a
wholly different plane from that of the evolution of the Individual. But
by way of his, or her, complement to the biological constitution of
offspring, members of both sexes contribute alike to the evolution of
_Species_ and to that of the _Individual_--according as such complement
enhances the power of the traits of the opposite Sex to manifest, and
further to evolve in offspring.
The intensification in the one sex of its own inherences stimulates a
proportional intensification of the opposite inherences in the other
Sex, both as regards the evolution of the Type and of the Individual.
The phenomenon would seem to be akin to that increase of one electrical
potential evoking a proportional increase of the other electrical
potential, to complement it. When one sex fails to supply its due
potential, or complement, to the other, the evolution both of Type and
Individual receives a check.
And because the evolution of Type is achieved by the Germ-plasm derived
from a parent of one sex obtaining new increment from being invested in
the organisation of offspring of the opposite sex, it is not until the
new Typal-inherence of this Germ-plasm is revivified again in the
organisation of a member of the Sex from which the plasm was derived,
that such new impulse manifests. Hence the phenomenon of characteristics
being transmitted from parents to offspring of opposite sex. So that
daughters of normal womanly organisation reproduce the Typal
characteristics of their fathers' maternal line; while in sons of normal
male organisation those of their mothers' paternal line emerge.
Hence too, the reversion of offspring of hybrid plants to the
types,--pure Dominant and pure Recessive--of their grandparents.
IV
_Progressive segregation of Male and Female traits in opposite
sides of body ever further intensifies and differentiates their
intrinsic qualities_
The biological constitution of humans and of the other higher organisms
differentiating them into two opposite symmetrical sides, in which, as
development rises higher in the scale, the Dominance, or Maleness, in
them is ever further and more perfectly segregated from the
Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them, secures the progressive
intensification, respectively, of Maleness or of Femaleness in them, by
ever further ranging the factors, or traits, of these on opposite sides
of the biological equation; and by thus more effectively centralising
the powers, according to sex, in one or the other side thereof.
Mendel's peas, not thus differentiated into two sides, are bi-sexual and
self-fertilising. Of the original stock, that order in which Dominant
traits are prepotent is differentiating toward a male _genus_, however.
While the Recessives are differentiating toward a female _genus_.
Although regarded as "pure" Dominants and "pure" Recessives, they are
nevertheless hybrids in respect of Sex. Being self-fertilising, both
Dominants and Recessives are of low power, alike for reproduction and
development. Because the Dominance, or Male developmental power, of the
Recessives being inhibited by the Recessiveness, or Femaleness, in them,
is of low Vigour. While the Recessiveness, or Female vital power in the
Dominants being unduly expended by the Dominance, or Maleness, in them,
is of low Vitality. The male sex-cells of the self-fertilising Dominants
thus fertilise female sex-cells of low vitality. While the female
sex-cells of the self-fertilising Recessives are fertilised by male
sex-cells of low vigour.
In cross-breeding, the conditions cease not only to be those of
self-fertilising, but they cease, moreover, to be those of the
close inbreeding of self-fertilisation. In the "hybrids" obtained
by crossing the higher-vigoured male sex-cells of the "pure"
Dominants with the higher-vitalised female sex-cells of the "pure"
Recessives, the Dominants--because Dominance is prepotent for exterior
characteristics--submerge the external traits of the Recessives, which
are prepotent for vital and internal functioning. Such Dominants are a
bi-sexual species in which the male is prepotent. And to be male, means
that they have expended, in terms of structural development, a great
proportion of the female Vital power inherent in them; thus masking the
Recessive female traits in them, as regards exterior characteristics.
But since reproductive power inheres in these Recessive traits, these
traits are preserved in the sex-cells, equally with the Dominant traits.
The plants being not only bi-sexual, but self-fertilising also, the
sex-cells must obviously be bi-sexual too; in order to provide the
organism with factors both of life and development. Every sex-cell is a
hybrid cell, therefore; bearing both Dominant and Recessive traits. But,
like their parents, in some, the Dominant, in others, the Recessive
traits are prepotent. And the Dominant sex-cells mating with Dominants,
the Recessives with Recessives, the original types of so-called "pure"
Dominants and "pure" Recessives reappear in the third generation.
V
_Self-fertilising organism is a female organism with a male
organism differentiated in it_
Because the female represents the Life-potential of species and the
Vital potential of organisms, a self-fertilising plant or creature must
be regarded as a female organism, with a male organism of Adaptation, or
Differentiation, developed in it. This male organism energises both its
developmental and its functioning power, and fertilises it; although the
_potential_ of structure, of growth, of function and of reproduction are
engendered in the female organism. The female is the root-stock or
parent-stem of all species, therefore.
If Dominance is Maleness, and Recessiveness is Femaleness, and if
Dominance energises structural development while Recessiveness engenders
reproduction, a Dominant self-fertilising plant is a female plant, with
a male plant of superior Dominance differentiated in it. While a
Recessive self-fertilising plant is a female plant of superior
Recessiveness, with a male plant of inferior Dominance differentiated in
it. In crossing stock of superior Dominance with stock of superior
Recessiveness, the Dominant prevails over the Recessive in the general
structural traits of the resulting "hybrid," but not in its reproductive
inherence. The new hybrids being male in inherence, nothing is added to
the female reproductive, or Vital, potential in them. The root-stock
transmits to its sex-cells therefore just as its grandmother
did--Recessives of her type, and Dominants of the type of the Dominant
male engrafted on her, of the male grandfather of this third
generation, that is. Hence reversion.
VI
_Sterility of offspring of alien species proves evolution of
Species and of Individual are independent phenomena_
The fact that dog and wolf, when mated, breed fertile species, proves
them sprung from the same root-stock. While the hybrid offspring of
different species are sterile. Showing such an intrinsic incompatability
of the alien complements in the zygote as, while operating as no bar to
their immediate union and their development into a complete hybrid
individual, nevertheless bars the incorporation of the alien breed in
the Vital potential of stock.
Such sterility in the offspring of creatures of different species is
weighty evidence that the Evolution of Type, or Species, and the
Evolution of the Individual are wholly independent phenomena; occurring
upon wholly different planes, and involving wholly different principles
and sets of processes. In the mating of alien species, the two
sex-cells, although of dissimilar species-inherence, unite nevertheless
and develop in the maternal environment into a living entity of mongrel
order. But the Germ-plasm contained in the gamete of one species will
not germinate in the alien environment of an organism of alien species.
No potential, either Vital or of Differentiation, is engendered,
therefore, for production of offspring. Hence sterility results. The
potential of a living individual is seen thus to belong to a wholly
different plane of phenomena from the potential of Stock. Conditions
which do not annul the powers of life and of function in the one, quench
life and function in the other with the seal of sterility.
VII
_Possible explanation of "Sports"_
Mr. Regnart says: "We often meet with Sports. Second- and third-rate
parents may produce an exceptionally fine individual, but such animals
are always failures to breed from. The law of Filial Regression comes
into operation. Our aim is to find families that have produced a large
number of fine animals--we know then that we are on safe ground."
In these cases, it would seem that the "fine individual" results from so
singularly harmonious and successful a complementing and fructifying of
the parental halves in offspring as conduce to develop the best points
of both; doubtless, too, to eliminate or to annul weak or faulty factors
of either parental strain. Neither of such inferior-grade parents
transmitting a fine _lineal_ potential, however, the exceptional
fineness of the individual is not inherent in the Germ-plasm he or she
transmits to offspring. The fine characteristics of such "Sports" are
not transmissible, therefore, to descendants.
Proof again of two planes of Life and Evolution, that of Species and
that of the Individual. Moral, too, of the importance of fine selection
in mating, since the harmonious mating of second- or third-rate parents
may produce finer offspring than are born of ill-assorted matings of two
finer breeds of parent.
The case is recorded of a pony about the size of a Shetland pony, which
was the offspring of pedigree Shire-parents on both sides, _both parents
being over 17 hands_. The most striking feature about the animal was
that there was nothing of the _horse_-type about him--he was a perfect
example of _pony_.
Shire horses are typical examples of Vigour, or developmental power,
expressed in terms of stature, muscle and nervous energy. And for so
long as the breeding for these characteristics was supplemented in terms
of vital organs and vital functioning, by an equivalent maternal
complement of Vital potential, to sustain the constitutional expenditure
involved in stature, muscular equipment, and nervous energy, the breed
improved in these particulars. Pushed beyond this limit, by introducing
into stock further strains of Vigour, or developmental initiative,
without simultaneously providing the indispensable equivalents of these
in increasing Vital potentials, all at once the balance toppled, and
reversion to inferior type resulted.
An excessive proportion of the Vital power of these two Pedigree Shires
of great stature and great strength had been expended in the
achievement of such great stature and great strength, and in the
equipment of digestive and assimilative organs required to sustain
these. But little had remained, accordingly, for Reproductive
investments. Hence reversion in the de-vitalised stock.
One conceives of the counterpoise in Stock, of Male and Female
complements, as being akin to that of the opposite and complementary
curves of an arch. So long as equipoise is sustained by the perfect
balance of the contrary curves, so long each re-inforces the other to
support a heavy superstructure of development. Lopsidedness of either
curve leads to collapse.
VIII
_Vigour is Male. Vitability is Female_
"Vigour," which breeders regard as a potent factor in heredity, is
commonly confounded with Vital Power, or Vitability; although the two
would seem to be diametrically opposite in cause, in nature and effect.
An athlete, in so-called "condition," is in the prime of Vigour; his
muscular and nervous powers being at high levels of structure and of
functioning. His Vital powers are proportionally at low ebb, however; as
is proved by his notable lack of recuperative power in illness. He is
bad subject, indeed, in respect of progress and recovery from disease.
Feeble-minded persons possess but little Vigour of brain or of body, yet
their Vital power, as shown in healthy organic functioning and
vitativeness, is often extraordinary. Vigour is an expression of nervous
energy, and is generated by the brain. Vitability is Life-power, and
results from vital organs efficient both in structure and in processes.
It is engendered in the Reproductive System; which may be regarded as
the power-house of Life and vital function.
_Vigour_ is the power of Differentiation, or Individuation, of an
organism, structural and functional, physical and mental, in terms of
its relation to environment. _Vitability_ is the intensification of the
individualism and of the functioning of an organism in terms of
Life-power.
Vigour, being katabolic, a male and a Dominant trait, manifests in man
(as in plants) as Tallness, or the expenditure of vital energy upon the
material plane, in growth and stature; as too in functional initiative
and activity, both physical and mental, on the material plane.
Vitability, being anabolic, a female and a Recessive trait, manifests as
Dwarfness, or the conservation of vital energy upon the material plane,
in respect of growth and stature; as too in weakness, or inhibition of
vigour and activity, both physical and mental.
The male trait of Vigour makes men larger, stronger, hardier, and more
resistant to disease than women are. The female trait of Vitability
makes women healthier, more charged with vital power and temperament,
more recuperative from disease, and longer-lived than men. The
complementary inherences of Vigour and Vitability, derived respectively
from the two parents, and supplementing one another in offspring, endow
him or her with fine form and structure, healthy vital organs and
efficient function, power of Life and nervous energy.
In the normal male, Vigour dominates Vitability; the maternal potential
of Vitability being differentiated in him into its male equivalent.
While in the normal female, Vigour recedes within the Female traits of
vital power and healthy functioning, endurance and womanly faculty.
The opposite modes of Vigour and Vitality are well shown in disease. In
vigorous men, disease may assume the type known as "sthenic";
occasioning such violent re-activity, or rebellion, of the system, and
such consequent severity of symptoms as speedily exhaust the resources,
and tend to fatal ending. While Vital power, being anabolic and
conservative, meets the foe passively, and instead of wasting,
economises the forces by moderation of symptoms; bending to the course
and processes of sickness, and making thereby for recovery. Because of
the lesser vitability of their cells, disease in men tends toward
structural, or organic deteriorations. While disease in normal women is
more often functional, merely.
In masculine women, disease is prone, as in men, to structural
degenerations. Masculine women are very liable to cancer; a liability
they transmit as heritage to offspring of both sexes. Hence the
increasing masculinity of latter-day women has entailed upon the race an
increased liability to cancer and to other structural degeneration. This
liability has assumed such grave proportions as to occur in children
even, showing in the abnormal growths, "adenoids" now so prevalent as to
have become "the normal" of modern childhood.
IX
_The living body is a highly-vitalised Vegetative organism with a
highly-specialised Cerebro-nervous organism differentiated in it_
Professor Cuvier said, "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole
animal; the other systems are there only to serve it."
Professor Bergson amplifies the statement:
"A higher organism is essentially a sensori-motor system installed on
systems of digestion, respiration, circulation, secretion, etc., whose
function it is to repair, cleanse and protect it, to create an
unvarying, internal environment for it, and above all to produce its
potential energy for conversion into locomotive movement."
In both statements, is recognition of the Dual differentiation of the
body into an organism of Life which functions in relation to its own
intrinsic being, and an organism of Consciousness which functions in
relation to exterior environment. That in death from starvation, the
brain and the nerves remain almost unimpaired, while all the other
organs and tissues lose weight, their cells undergoing profound
degenerative changes, is further indication of two distinct and separate
departments of development and processes in every animal existence.
As in its Mendelian phenomena of the Segregation of its Contrasting
Traits, and the Dominance and Recessiveness of these in constitution and
heredity, so, in its living organisation, the human body is
extraordinarily and in a number of ways essentially plant-like. The
brain and the nervous system may be regarded, indeed, as a
highly-differentiated Cerebro-Nervous organism grafted upon a simpler
Vital, and vegetative body, from which, as from a soil, it draws its
life and energy: and from which, as age advances, it gradually withdraws
the power of further sustaining its existence.
This Cerebro-Nervous graft perishes only because the Vegetative body on
which it is installed has come to the end of its power to sustain the
life of the Nervous organism picketed upon it.
The close resemblances in structure and in processes between the Cells
of vegetable and animal organisms, when taken in conjunction with a
number of other biological indications, justify the conclusion that
living bodies are actually vegetative organisms to which have been
super-added, by progressive evolutionary differentiations, faculties of
Motion and of Consciousness.
(Plants are recognised as possessing rudimentary consciousness. While
Growth is a mode of Motion.)
The trunk, which contains the respiratory, circulatory, nutritive and
reproductive organs represents the Vitative, or Vegetative, system. The
brain with its tributary spinal cord and spinal-nervous system
represents the Sensori-motor organism. While the limbs are
highly-differentiated implements which the Cerebro-Nervous organism has
developed in the Vitative organism; to serve it with means of locomotion
and of action, for the achievement of intelligent purpose.
The lungs, with their ramifications of tubes and their air-cells,
closely resemble the branches and leaves of a tree, which spread into
and absorb from the atmosphere the oxygen whereby it lives. While the
convoluted intestines are like the roots of a tree, absorbing nurture
for it from environment.
The Vegetative organism, being the agency of Life, is female in origin
and inherence.
The Cerebro-spinal organism, being the agency of Adaptation, is male in
origin and inherence. In both, however, the inherences of the other sex
are represented.
The body resembles thus a bi-sexual plant, its root-stock being female
and Recessive, with a male Dominant and differentiating organism
incorporated in it.
X
_Vegetative body has its own brain and nervous system and its
(involuntary) muscles_
This Vegetative body has its own separate (organic) brain, in the Solar
Plexus--or "Abdominal brain"--and its nervous system, in the intricate
"Sympathetic" system of nerves; which, in addition to administering the
nutrition of the body, is intimately and closely associated, in
psychology, with the brain and with the spinal-nervous system of the
Psychical organism. Itself subconscious, this organic brain nevertheless
contributes vital impulse and colour to Consciousness.
It possesses also its own specialised system of muscles, the
"Involuntary muscles"; which are not under control of the conscious
brain and will, but operate automatically--by so-called reflex action.
The motions they subtend are concerned with vital functions; nutrition,
respiration, circulation, assimilation, elimination, reproduction.
The Vitative organism, being vegetative of growth and passive of mode,
needs rest and sun and wind and air and water for its nurture and
development. With that rising of the sap in the world of vegetation
which occurs in spring, kindred processes occur within the human
vegetative body. It responds to the re-creative forces of its
mother-earth.
With every recurring Spring-tide, youth turns again to thoughts of love,
because of this natural renaissance of its vitative resources, for
purposes of re-creation--both of Cells and individuals.
Old age is a permanent winter of this plant-body. Summer suns revive but
little more than flickerings of its vegetative pulsings. Although the
psychical life, intellectual and nervous, may be still vigorous, the sap
of the plant-body no longer rises, quick and warm and fructifying, to
earth's perennial call.
This plant-like body with its plant-like fruiting Cells, it is, that
when charged with the graces and magnetic potences of health and high
nurture, supplies the pleasing personality found not seldom in sinners,
while often conspicuously lacking in saints--a seeming anomaly which
has gone far to discredit the virtues.
By way of it, human personality resembles a mystical flowering plant
that breathes and feels and moves; and a fruiting plant that reproduces.
The Cerebro-Nervous system animates and intelligises this beautiful
vessel of flesh wherein it subsists.
The vigour of its Vegetative stock, supplementing brain and nervous
system by fine structure, fine stature, organic vigour, native faculty,
and reproductive power, has given the Anglo-Saxon race its world-wide
rule. It is to this that its women have owed their shapely frames, their
healthful constitutions and their loveliness; the warm tints of hair and
skin, the fresh and flower-like complexions, and the fruit-like form and
bloom of cheek for which they once were famed.
Rich personal charm and sweetness of healthful condition which are all
too swiftly passing from our modern women, hag-ridden by a strenuousness
that is wrecking the flower-body, with its vital joy and warmth, its
grace of being and its bliss of sense, its temperamental thrill and
colour.
* * * * *
The doctrine of Evolution is signally incomplete unless we realise it as
a sequence of progressive developments, direct and without intermission,
from the simplest forms of Elemental Matter to the highest, living
orders of Creation--Mineral, Vegetable, Brute and Human being
progressive stages in the evolution of Life and of Consciousness; graded
by links so subtly and infinitesimally constituted as to belong equally
to the kingdom below and to that above them.
The subject appears full of interest and suggestion, showing all the
planes of Nature, from mineral to man, linked in an unbroken line by way
of this half-vegetable body of flesh, with its roots in earth and its
branches in Consciousness. No more than this briefest of mentions can be
given here, however.
XI
_Mysterious "Internal Secretions"_
Biologists tell of Dual planes of operation in the processes of every
organ of the body. Because some of these function on the external plane,
in visible secretions or in other ways calculable by scientific methods,
and they function, too, upon an Inner and occulted, plane; in the form
of mysterious "Internal Secretions," the mode and nature whereof have
long baffled and eluded the most intricate scientific appliances and
intellections.
What is indicated if not an Inner, and Potential, plane of Life
and vital processes--a _plane of Involution_, or Recession
(centripetal)--whereon factors of environment, air, food, water and so
forth are transformed by vital involutionary processes, into
_potentials_ of living form and function? Which potentials remain
latent, or Recessive, in the cells and glands secreting them, and
available for transformation by evolutionary processes, into actualities
of physical form and function on the Outer (centrifugal) plane of
Life--the _plane of Evolution_.
And Life and health, together with normality of faculty and function,
depend upon the perfect balance and co-ordination of these two contrary
orders of factors and processes, which, I assume, are engendered,
respectively, in the Male and the Female departments of living organisms
of both sexes.
All the vital functions--Respiration, Circulation, Digestion,
Reproduction--may be classed as Recessive functions, because they are
characterised by a Recession, or withdrawal, from the Without to the
Within. This is a phenomenon of the _Involution_ of Environment, for
transformation thereof into potential Life, and potential Evolutionary
output.
_Death_ is a centripetal withdrawal of the soul from the material
Without to an Inner zone of Spiritual, or Potential, Being. And in due
time, analogy assures us, having assimilated and transformed the
resultant of a terrestrial existence into a new potential of Life, Life
issues forth again, by the centrifugal impulse of re-Birth, to
differentiate itself once more in living form upon the Outer plane.
(_Re-incarnation_ is, obviously, the true interpretation of
_Resurrection of the body_, which otherwise is scientifically
impossible.)
Winter withdrawal, or Involution, of the sap of Vegetation from the
outer plane of functioning to the inner plane of potential Life, whereby
it derives such new increment of Vital potential as, with the outgoing
of sap again in the renaissance of spring, evolves in increased growth
and new foliage, is further example of the principle and processes of
Dominance and Recessiveness--of the female Vital impulse and the male
Developmental impetus, operating in an eternal tidal rhythm of ebb and
flow.
XII
_Dual planes of Mentality: Outer and Material, Inner and Occult_
As in the Domain of Life and vital processes, so in the Domain of
Consciousness and nervous processes, there are two planes of function;
an Inner and occulted plane of Mind, or potential Consciousness, and an
Outer plane of material Consciousness; representing respectively
afferent (or centripetal) and efferent (or outgoing) nervous currents.
Faculty and sense may be regarded as having developed in one direction
along lines of the telescope, with increasing capability to horizon the
Without; while they have developed simultaneously along lines of the
microscope, to reveal an Invisible Within.
The Senses, which adapt man's Consciousness to environment by the
functions of Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell, have become, with
evolutionary development, so increasingly sensitised in response to The
Without as ever further to have set him in rapport with the world
exterior. While, at the same time, so have they become sensitised in
response to The Within, as ever further to have deepened and quickened
his apprehension of an occulted Interior plane. Faculty has acquired
thus, simultaneously with its increasing power of focusing the Outer and
Objective, an increasing power so to invert its focus as to penetrate
ever more deeply into the Inner and Subjective, alike of man's own
constitution and that of environment.
These two contrary, but co-operative, modes of mentality are,
respectively, Intellection and Intuition--Male and Female modes of mind.
XIII
_Differentiation of the Zygote, or Mated Sex-cell_
I have described, throughout, the right side of the human body as the
male-side--that in which the Male-traits of Humanity are specialised in
the individual; the left as the woman-side, that in which the
Woman-traits of Humanity are centred.
But the modes of constitution, as of inheritance, are more complex, of
course, than that one parent supplies the potential of one side, the
other parent that of the other side.
As regards inheritance, the maternal ovum comprises, I believe, the
potential of the whole body, with the exception of the brain, the
spinal-cord and the spinal nerves. But because the mother is descended
from parents of both sex, and possesses, therefore, both Male and Female
elements, the ovum must contain (as must every other cell) both male and
female factors. These, it is conceivable, are grouped, by contrary
polarities, into two areas, or hemispheres; an upper and a lower. Of
these the upper is Male in inherency. It comprises the potentials of
shoulders and spinal column which are fulcra of action, and of lungs and
heart which are the _energising_ organs of Life. The lower hemisphere of
the ovum is Female in inherency. It comprises the potentials of the
pelvis, which is the cradle of Maternity, of the reproductive organs,
which engender Life and the emotions, and of the digestive and
assimilative organs, which engender vital processes.
So too, because the male parent is likewise descended from parents of
opposite sex, his contribution to offspring must also contain both male
and female factors. But while the mother supplies, in the ovum, the
potential of the whole body--face and head, trunk, limbs and vital
organs, the father contributes the potential of the brain, the spinal
cord and the spinal nerves only, which adapt the organism, by way of
form and Consciousness, to environment. The limbs, which adapt it, by
way of Motion, to environment, may be regarded as differentiations
primarily of the brain and nervous system.
The ovum is spheroidal; the sperm-cell rectilinear (following the rule
that the line of Maleness is a straight one; that of Femaleness, a
curve). And as in the spheroidal ovum, the factors of the opposite
sexes, grouped into two areas, separate it into hemispheres of opposite
sex-inherency, so in the rectilinear sperm-cell, we may surmise the
factors of the two sexes to be grouped lengthwise, and to separate it
thus into a male side and a female side. Such a sperm-cell penetrating
the ovum, and developing laterally, further differentiates this into
anterior, posterior and lateral areas. The two lateral developments of
this potential brain and spinal cord and nerves eventually constitute
the right and the left brain-hemispheres, and differentiate the body
into right and left sides.
The left brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and nerves,
is derived from the _male_ side of the sperm-cell; while the right
brain-hemisphere, with its half of the spinal cord and spinal nerves, is
derived from the _female_ side (by inheritance) of the sperm cell.
Weismann describes the Germ-Plasm as being transmitted in the female
line solely, from ovum of mother to that of daughter.
This supports the above view; namely, that the Germ-Plasm proper is
inherent in the ovum, in which it exists in potential, or
undifferentiated, form, and that it becomes differentiated (in both
sexes) into a right and a left-reproductive gland of contrary
sex-inherence, by differentiative power of the dual-sexed sperm-cell.
The re-polarisation of the fertilised ovum, which is visible beneath the
microscope, would seem to represent this differentiative process.
Since the microcosm is as the macrocosm, the Dual constitution must be
repeated in every living cell of the body; the cell-plasma representing
the vegetative system, the cell-nucleus representing the cerebro-nervous
system. Possibly the nucleolus is the Supra- and Subconscious element.
XIV
_Inorganic Matter is Dual and Hermaphrodite. Life breaks up this
Neuter counterpoise, and progressively unlocks and segregates, and
thus reveals and specialises the inherent attributes of Sex_
Phenomena of Duality characterise not Living Matter only, but Inorganic
Matter too. The elemental atom is never found manifesting singly, but
always as two atoms coupled together, in the form of "the molecule";
these mated atoms being of opposite electrical potential.
And since Living Matter has evolved out of Inorganic Matter--what is to
be inferred but that the duality of the living cell is the evolution, on
the plane of Life, of the duality of the chemical molecule?
Further, that the duality of living forms in terms of
sex-characteristics is the evolution, on the plane of Living Faculty, of
the duality alike of the living cell and of the chemical molecule; the
two sexes representing, respectively, the contrary inherences of all
these dualities, specialised and ever further intensifying in the
contrary trends of the opposite Sex-traits of Male and Female.
The elemental molecule is seen thus to be hybrid, or hermaphrodite, in
constitution, precisely as the living cell and the living body are.
While that both living cells and inorganic crystals reproduce, proves
factors of Sex differentiated and functioning in them.
The inertia of Matter is due to the hermaphrodite state; its contrary
Sex-impulses interlocking and nullifying one another. Life breaks up
this neuter state of equipoise, by increasingly segregating the
dual-sex-inherences and evolving each along its own intrinsic trend;
thereby engendering between their dual factors fructifying
interoperations which result in the motions of Growth and other vital
processes.
Growth is a phenomenon of Reproduction. Living cells increase their
substance by germination of their bi-sexual elements. Attaining
maturity, a cell divides into two cells, each of which by way of similar
processes develops into a mature cell.
And since for all Change, two (or more) contrary impulses are
necessary, and since Reproduction is a function of Sex, what is to be
inferred but that Evolution and Growth and all other phenomena of living
cells result from oppositions, co-operations and correlations of the
contrary impetus and processes of two orders of sex-factors present
therein? By way alone of their bi-sexuality, are cells, both animal and
vegetable, able to reproduce the cell-offspring required by living
organisms for processes of growth, of function and repair.
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IMPORTANT NOTICE.
All the works mentioned in this list may be purchased through any
bookseller. They are also obtainable at all Libraries.
Any book-buyer wishing to see any of the books mentioned before
purchasing them may, on sending to Mr. Unwin the name of his local
bookseller, have the opportunity of so doing.
T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD., 1, ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON, W.C.2.
CONTENTS
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY pages 1 to 8
TRAVEL & DESCRIPTION " 8 " 9
POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY & ECONOMICS " 10 " 13
BELLES LETTRES " 14 " 16
POETRY AND DRAMA " 17
MISCELLANEOUS " 18
FICTION " 19 to 21
NEW EDITIONS AND IMPRESSIONS " 22 " 27
Life and Letters of Silvanus Phillips Thompson, F.R.S. By JANE S.
THOMPSON and HELEN G. THOMPSON. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth.
(Spring, 1920).
21s. 0d. NET Inland Postage, 6d.
This is a straightforward and somewhat intimate account of the career of
a man of great and varied gifts. Born into the family of a simple Quaker
schoolmaster of York his extraordinary energy and devotion to science
carried him into the foremost ranks of physicists, an acknowledged
leader in electro-technology and optics. Both as popular lecturer and as
trainer of technical college students his skill was unrivalled, and
wheresoever he went his enthusiasm for men and things won him
friendships, alike in his own country and abroad. Many of the letters
describe experiences on his journeys, others adventures of the
antiquarian in the pursuit of sixteenth and seventeenth century
scientific literature, and yet others tell of battles for truth in some
field or other.
The book contains appreciations of his works as original investigator,
teacher, writer, artist, and "prophet," and indirectly testifies to the
warmth of personal regard which the frank geniality of his nature won
for him in many spheres.
All and Sundry: More Uncensored Celebrities. By E. T. RAYMOND,
Author of "Uncensored Celebrities." Demy 8vo, cloth.
10s. 6d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
Few books this year have attracted more attention or been more widely
read than Mr. E. T. Raymond's "Uncensored Celebrities," a work as
caustic as it was impartial. In his new work Mr. Raymond does not limit
himself to political personalities only, but includes figures in the
Church, such as the Bishop of London and Dean Inge; in literature, Mr.
G. K. Chesterton, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling; in
journalism, Mr. Harold Begbie, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and Mr. Leo Maxse; in
art and music, Mr. Frank Brangwyn and Sir Thomas Beecham. Mr. Raymond
includes also character sketches of President Wilson, M. Georges
Clemenceau, the Duke of Somerset, Viscount Chaplin, Viscount Esher, Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Ernle, Mr. Speaker, and many other prominent
people. Wider in range than "Uncensored Celebrities" and equally
brilliant, this work may be expected to appeal to even a larger public
than its remarkable predecessor.
The Life of John Payne. By THOMAS WRIGHT, Author of "The Life of
William Cowper," etc. With 18 Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth.
28s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage, 6d.
Few great authors appeal more to the imagination than John Payne, the
hero of "The John Payne Society," who shrank from the lime-light of
"interviewing." Recognised as a true poet by Swinburne, he was probably
the most skilful translator of the nineteenth century, for we owe to him
a version of Villon's poems which is itself a poetic work of consummate
art, the first complete translation of the "Arabian Nights," the first
complete verse rendering of Omar Khayyam's quatrains, to say nothing of
translations of "The Decameron," etc. Among his friends were Swinburne,
Sir Richard Burton, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, French
authors such as Victor Hugo, Banville, and Mallarme, and the artist who
ventured to depict "God with eyes turned inward upon His own glory." Mr.
Wright by an extraordinary exercise of tact and sympathy was able to
pass the barrier which shut Payne off from anybody who sought to know
the man behind the books. For twelve years before Payne's death in 1916
he was his most intimate friend, and as, during all that time, he had in
view the writing of Payne's Life he lost next to none of his
opportunities for obtaining at first hand the facts and opinions needed
for his work. Moreover, Payne made him a present of a MS. autobiography
and supplied him with valuable material from his letter-files. Mr.
Wright was, in fact, Payne's Boswell, and no life which may be written
hereafter can have the weight and interest of this vivid book, much of
which gives us the sound of Payne's own voice.
A History of Modern Colloquial English. By HENRY CECIL WYLD, B.
Litt. (Oxon.), Baines Professor of English Language and Philology
at the University of Liverpool. Demy 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)
21s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.
The book deals more particularly with the changes that have taken place
during the last five hundred years in the spoken forms of English. The
development of English pronunciation and the changes in grammatical
usage are dealt with in considerable detail, and there is a chapter on
idiomatic colloquialisms, modes of greeting, forms of address in
society, conventional and individual methods of beginning and ending
private letters, expletives, etc. The main part of the book is based
almost entirely upon new material collected from the prose and poetical
literature, and also from Letters, Diaries and Wills written during the
five centuries following the death of Chaucer. A sketch is given of the
chief peculiarities of the English dialects from about 1150, to the end
of the 14th century, and special chapters are devoted to a general
account of the languages of the 15th, 16th, and 17th and 18th centuries
respectively. Many questions of general interest are dealt with, such as
the rise of a common literary form of English, and its relation to the
various spoken dialects; the recognition of a standard form of spoken
English, and its variations from age to age, and among different social
classes. The various types of English are illustrated by copious
examples from the writings of all the periods under consideration. This
will be a work of much interest for the intelligent general reader as
well as for the scholar. Professor Wyld is the author of many well-known
and widely read books of which this ought to prove not the least
popular.
Zanzibar: Past and Present. By MAJOR FRANCIS B. PEARCE, C.M.G.
(British Resident in Zanzibar), With a Map and 32 pages
Illustrations. Super Royal 8vo, cloth. (Spring, 1920.)
30s. 0d. NET. Inland Postage 6d.