"And it has never made any difference how bad the existing order of things might be. Those who attempted to reform it were always viewed with suspicion. Consequently our practices usually run some decades or centuries behind our theories and history is even full of cases where the theory was thoroughly dead from the standpoint of reason before it began to do its work in society. A determined attitude of resistance to change may therefore be classed almost with the instincts, for it is not a response to the reason alone, but is very powerfully bound up with the emotions which have their seat in the spinal cord.
"It is true that this adhesion to custom is more absolute and astonishing in the lower races and in the less educated classes, but it would be difficult to point out a single case in history where a new doctrine has not been met with bitter resistance. We justly regard learning and freedom of thought and investigation as precious, and we popularly think of Luther and the Reformation as standing at the beginning of the movement toward these, but Luther himself had no faith in 'the light of reason' and he hated as heartily as any papal dogmatist the 'new learning' of Erasmus and Hutten.... We are even forced to realise that the law of habit continues to do its perfect work in a strangely resentful or apathetic manner even when there is no moral issue at stake.... Up to the year 1816, the best device for the application of electricity to telegraphy had involved a separate wire for each letter of the alphabet, but in that year Francis Ronalds constructed a successful line making use of a single wire. Realising the importance of his invention, he attempted to get the British government to take it up, but was informed that 'telegraphs of any kind are now wholly unnecessary, and no other than the one in use will be adopted.'"
The reader will doubtless be able to add from his own experience and observation examples which will support Professor Thomas's admirable account of the power of custom. Among many barbarous tribes certain foods, like eggs, are taboo; no one knows why they should not be eaten; but tradition says their use produces bad results, and one who presumes to taste them is put to death. To-day, we believe ourselves rather highly civilised; but the least observation of society must compel us to acknowledge that taboo is still a vital power in a multitude of matters.
There is a still more forcible opposition to a recasting of the status of women by those men who have beheld no complete regeneration of society through the extension of the franchise in four of our States. Curiously oblivious of the fact that partial regeneration through the instrumentality of women is something attained, they take this as a working argument for the uselessness of extending the suffrage. They point to other evils that have followed and tell you that if this is the result of the emancipation of women, they will have none of it. For example, there can be no doubt that one may see from time to time the pseudo-intellectual woman. She affects an interest in literature, attends lectures on Browning and Emerson, shows an academic interest in slum work, and presents, on the whole, a selfishness or an egotism which repels. There never has been a revolution in society, however beneficial eventually, which did not bring at least some evil in its train. I cannot do better in this connection than to quote Lord Macaulay's splendid words (from the essay on Milton): "If it were possible that a people, brought up under an intolerant and arbitrary system, could subvert that system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character of a people. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence of these outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The rulers in the church and state reaped only what they had sown. They had prohibited free discussion—they had done their best to keep the people unacquainted with their duties and their rights. The retribution was just and natural. If they suffered from popular ignorance, it was because they had themselves taken away the key to knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an equally blind submission.
"It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been for some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine-countries are always sober. In climates where wine is a rarity, intemperance abounds. A newly-liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion; and after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendour and comfort are to be found? If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there never would be a good house or a good government in the world.... There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces—and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day—he is unable to discriminate colours or to recognise faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half-blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to conflict, and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos.
"Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever."
The speedy dissolution of family and state was prophesied by men when first a girl took a public examination in geometry; whenever women have been given complete control of their own property; when they have been received into the professions and industries; and now in like manner people dread the condition of things that they imagine might follow if women are given the right to vote and to hold office. We may well believe, with Lecky, that there are "certain eternal moral landmarks which never can be removed." But no matter what our views may be of the destinies, characteristics, functions, or limitations of the sex, certain reforms are indispensable before woman and, through her, family life can reach their highest development. Of these reforms I shall speak briefly and with them close my history.
I. The double standard of morality for the sexes must gradually be abolished.[[423]] Of all the sad commentaries on Christian nations none is so pathetic or so tragical as the fact that for nineteen centuries men have been tacitly and openly allowed, at least before marriage, unrestrained liberty to indulge in sexual vice and intemperance, while one false step on the part of the woman has condemned her to social obloquy and, frequently, to a life on the street. This strange system, a blasphemy against the Christ who suffered death in order to purify the earth, has had its defenders not merely among the uneducated who do not think, but even among the most acute intellects. The philosopher Hume justifies it by commenting on the vastly greater consequences attendant on vice in women than in men; divines like Jeremy Taylor have encouraged it by urging women meekly to bear the sins of their husbands. This subject is one of the great taboos in modern society. Let me exhort the reader to go to any physician and get from him the statistics of gonorrhea and syphilis which he has met in his practice; let him learn of the children born blind and of wives rendered invalid for life because their husbands once sowed a crop of wild oats with the sanction of society; let him read the Report of the Committee of Fifteen in New York (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1902) on The Social Evil, the records of the Watch and Ward Society in Boston, or the recent report of the special jury in New York which investigated the "White Slave Traffic."[[424]]
The plain facts are not pleasant. A system which has been in vogue from the beginning of history cannot be changed in a decade; but the desired state of things will be more speedily achieved and immediate good will be accomplished by three reforms which may be begun at once—have begun, in fact. In the first place, the "age of legal consent" should be uniformly twenty-one. In most States to-day it is fourteen or sixteen.[[425]] To the ordinary mind it is a self-evident proposition that a girl of those ages, the slippery period of puberty, can but seldom realise what she is doing when she submits herself to the lust of scoundrels. But the minds of legislators pass understanding; and when, a few years ago, a woman in the Legislature of Colorado proposed to have the age of consent raised from sixteen to twenty-one, such a storm of protest came from her male colleagues that the measure had to be abandoned. In the second place the public should be made better acquainted with the facts of prostitution. When people once realise thoroughly what sickness and social ulcers result from the presence in the city of New York of 100,000 debauched women (and the estimate is conservative)—when they begin to reflect that their children must grow up in such surroundings, then perhaps they will question the expediency of the double standard of morality and will insist that what is wrong for a woman is wrong for a man. It is a fact, to be borne carefully in mind, that the vast majority of prostitutes begin their career below the age of eighteen and usually at the instigation of adult men, who take advantage of their ignorance or of their poverty. If the miserable Thaw trial did nothing else, it at least once more called public attention to conditions which every intelligent man knows have existed for years. Something can also be done by statute. New York has made adultery a crime; and the State of Washington requires a physical examination of the parties before marriage. In the third place, physicians should take more pains to educate men to the knowledge that a continent life is not a detriment to health—the contrary belief being more widely spread than is usually suspected.
II. In the training of women, care should be taken to impress upon them that they are not toys or spoiled children, but fellow-citizens, devoted to the common task of advancing the ideals of the nation to their goal.