The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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and finally are stigmatised as criminal propensities. But
because their origin was natural and necessary, their guilt is
not lessened an iota. All men are born with these propensities;
all know that they are evil; all can suppress them if they
please. There are some, indeed, who appear to be criminals by
nature; who do not feel it wrong to prey upon mankind. These
are cases of reversion; they are savages or wild beasts; they
are the enemies of society, and deserve the prison, to which
sooner or later they are sure to come. But it is rare indeed
that these savage instincts resist a kind and judicious
education; they may all be stifled in the nursery. Life is full
of hope and consolation; we observe that crime is on the
decrease, and that men are becoming more humane. The virtues as
well as the vices are inherited; in every succeeding generation
the old ferocious impulses of our race will become fainter and
fainter, and at length they will finally die away.
There is one moral sentiment which cannot be ascribed to the
law of gregarious preservation, and which is therefore of too
much importance to be entirely passed over, though it cannot
here be treated in detail. The sense of decorum which is
outraged at the exposure of the legs in Europe is as artificial
as that which is shocked at the exhibition of the female face
in the East: if the young lady of London thinks that the
absence of underclothing in the Arab peasant girl βlooks rather
odd,β on the other hand no Arab lady could look at her portrait
in an evening dress without a feeling of discomfort and
surprise. Yet although the minor details of nudity are entirely
conventional; although complete nudity prevails in some parts
of Africa, where yet a petticoat grows on every tree, and where
the people are by no means indifferent to their personal
appearance, for they spend half their lives upon their
coiffure; although in most savage countries the unmarried girl
is never permitted to wear clothes; although decoration is
everywhere antecedent to dress, still the traveller does find
that a sentiment of decency, though not universal, is at least
very common among savage people.
Self-interest here affords an explanation, but not in the human
state; we must trace back the sentiment to its remote and
secret source in the animal kingdom. Propriety grows out of
cleanliness through the association of ideas. Cleanliness is a
virtue of the lower animals, and is equivalent to decoration;
it is nourished by vanity, which proceeds from the love of
sexual display, and that from the desire to obtain a mate; and
so here we do arrive at utility after all. It is a part of
animal cleanliness to deposit apart, and even to hide, whatever
is uncleanly; and men, going farther still, conceal whatever is
a cause of the uncleanly. The Tuaricks of the desert give this
as their reason for bandaging the mouth; it has, they say, the
disgusting office of chewing the food, and is therefore not
fit to be seen. The custom probably originated as a precaution
against the poisonous wind and the sandy air; yet the
explanation of the people themselves, though incorrect, is not
without its value in affording a clue to the operations of the
savage mind. But the sense of decorum must not be used by
writers on Mind to distinguish man from the lower animals, for
savages exist who are as innocent of shame and decorum as the
beasts and birds.
There is in women a peculiar timidity, which is due to nature
alone, and which has grown out of the mysterious terror
attendant on the functions of reproductive life. But the other
qualities, physical or mental, which we prize in women are the
result of matrimonial selection. At first the female was a
chattel common to all, or belonging exclusively to one, who was
by brute force the despot of the herd. When property was
divided and secured by law, the women became the slaves of
their husbands, hewing the wood, drawing the water, working in
the fields; while the men sewed and washed the clothes, looked
after the house, and idled at the toilet, oiling their hair,
and adorning it with flowers, arranging the chignon or the wig
of vegetable fibre, filing their teeth, boring their ears,
putting studs into their cheeks, staining their gums, tattooing
fanciful designs upon their skins, tying strings on their arms
to give them a rounded form, bathing their bodies in warm
water, rubbing them with lime-juice and oil, perfuming them
with the powdered bark of an aromatic tree. Decoration among
the females was not allowed. It was then considered unwomanly
to engage in any but what are now regarded as masculine
occupations. Wives were selected only for their strength.
They were hard, coarse, ill-favoured creatures, as inferior
to the men in beauty as the females are to the males almost
throughout the animal kingdom. But when prisoners of war
were tamed and broken in, the women ceased to be drudges,
and became the ornaments of life. Poor men select their
domestic animals for utility: rich men select them for
appearance. In the same manner, when husbands became rich they
chose wives according to their looks. At first the hair of
women was no longer than that of men, probably not so long. But
long hair is universally admired. False hair is in use all over
the world, from the Eskimos of the Arctic circle to the
negroes of Gaboon. By the continued selection of long-haired
wives the flowing tresses of the sex have been produced. In the
same manner the elegance of the female form, its softness of
complexion, its gracefulness of curve are not less our creation
than the symmetry and speed of the racehorse, the magnificence
of garden flowers, and the flavour of orchard fruits. Even the
reserved demeanour of women, their refined sentiments, their
native modesty, their sublime unselfishness, and power of self-control are partly due to us.
The wife was at first a domestic animal like a dog or a horse.
She could not be used without the consent of the proprietor;
but he was always willing to let her out for hire. Among
savages it is usually the duty of the host to lend a wife to his
stranger guest, and if the loan is declined the husband considers
himself insulted. Adultery is merely a question of debt. The
law of debt is terribly severe: the body of the insolvent belongs to the
creditor to sell or to kill. But no other feelings are involved in the
question. The injured husband is merely a creditor, and is always pleased
that the debt has been incurred. Petitioner and co-respondent
may often be seen smoking a friendly pipe together after the
case has been proved and the money has been paid. However, as
the intelligence expands and the sentiments become more
refined, marriage is hallowed by religion; adultery is regarded
as a shame to the husband, and a sin against the gods; and a
new feeling β Jealousy β enters for the first time the heart
of man. The husband desires to monopolise his wife, body and
soul. He intercepts her glances; he attempts to penetrate into
her thoughts. He covers her with clothes; he hides even her
face from the public gaze. His jealousy, not only anxious for
the future, is extended over the, past. Thus women from their
earliest childhood are subjected by the selfishness of man to
severe but salutary laws. Chastity becomes the rule of female
life. At first it is preserved by force alone. Male slaves are
appointed to guard the women who, except sometimes from
momentary pique, never betray one another, and are allied
against the men.
But as the minds of men are gradually elevated and refined
through the culture of the intellect, there rises within them a
sentiment which is unknown in savage life. They conceive
a contempt for those pleasures which they share with
the lowest of mankind, and even with the brutes. They feel that
this instinct is degrading: they strive to resist it; they
endeavour to be pure. But that instinct is strong with the
accumulated power of innumerable generations; and the noble
desire is weak and newly born: it can seldom be sustained
except by the hopes and fears of religion, or by the nobler
teaching of philosophy. But in women this new virtue is
assisted by laws and customs which were established, long
before, by the selfishness of men. Here, then, the abhorrence
of the impure, the sense of duty, the fear of punishment, all
unite and form a moral law which women themselves enforce,
becoming the guardians of their own honour, and treating as a
traitor to her sex the woman who betrays her trust. For her the
most compassionate have no mercy: she has broken those laws of
honour on which society is founded. It is forbidden to receive
her; it is an insult to women to allude to her existence, to
pronounce her name. She is condemned without inquiry, as the
officer is condemned who has shown cowardice before the foe.
For the life of women is a battlefield: virtue is their
courage, and peace of mind is their reward. It is certainly an
extraordinary fact that women should be subjected to a severe
social discipline, from which men are almost entirely exempt.
As we have shown, it is explained by history; it is due to the
ancient subjection of woman to the man. But it is not the women
who are to he pitied: it is they who alone are free; for by
that discipline they are preserved from the tyranny of vice. It
would be well for men if they also were ruled by a severe
opinion. The passions are always foes, but it is only when they
have been encouraged that they are able to become masters; it
is only when they have allied themselves with habit that their
terrible power becomes known. They resemble wild beasts which
men feed and cherish until they are themselves devoured by
their playmates. What miseries they cause, how many intellects
they paralyse, how many families they ruin, how many innocent
hearts they break asunder, how many lives they poison, how many
young corpses they carry to the tomb! What fate can be more
wretched than that of the man who resigns himself to them?
As to the beautiful mind of Mendelssohn every sound, whatever it
might be β the bubbling of a brook, the rustling of the wind
among the trees, the voice of a bird, even the grating of a
wheel β inspired a musical idea, so β how melancholy is the
contrast! β so β how deep is the descent! β so to the mind
that is steeped in sensuality every sight, every sound, calls
up an impure association. The voluptuary dreads to be alone;
his mind is a monster that exhibits foul pictures to his eyes:
his memories are temptations: he struggles, he resists, but it
is all in vain: the habits which once might so easily have been
broken are now harder than adamant, are now stronger than
steel: his life is passed between desire and remorse: when the
desire is quenched he is tortured by his conscience: he soothes
it with a promise; and then the desire comes again. He sinks
lower and lower until indulgence gives him no pleasure: and yet
abstinence cannot be endured. To stimulate his jaded senses he
enters strange and tortuous paths which lead him to that awful
borderland where all is darkness, all is horror, where vice
lies close to crime. Yet there was a time when that man was as
guileless as a girl: he began by learning vice from the example
of his companions, just
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