Feminism; Women; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account