Kitabı oku: «Religion and Lust», sayfa 5

“Eccentricity is certainly not always insanity, but there can be no question that it is often the outcome of insane temperament, and may approach very near to, or actually pass into, insanity.” Alienists rely on the eccentric and peculiar changes which take place in the characters of their patients, who either present themselves or are brought to them for treatment, to establish their diagnosis. If a modest and truthful man suddenly becomes a braggart and a liar; or, if a humane man becomes cruel, or a neat man slovenly, there is reason to suspect brain trouble. The intellect may appear intact, so also the reasoning powers, but these eccentricities indicate a deviation which may lead to mental destruction. The last faculty to develop in the mind of man is the moral faculty; this faculty is the one first lost by diseased brains. If a man, who suddenly becomes dissolute and licentious (who, heretofore, has led a virtuous, moral life), be examined, in nine cases in ten his brain will be found to be diseased. The little cloud, which at first is no larger than a man’s hand, grows ever larger and larger, and in the end overspreads the entire mental sky!

GENIUS AND DEGENERATION

That the psychical function or intellectuality is frequently developed at the expense of the physical organism is well known, and that genius is seldom or never unaccompanied by physical and mental degeneration is a fact that can be no longer denied. I use the word degeneration in its broadest sense, and intend it to include all kinds of abnormalities. The facts noted above are by no means recent knowledge, but were vaguely recognized and commented on centuries and decades of centuries ago by the Hebrews and kindred races of people. The Hebrew word nabi means either madman or prophet, and it is now admitted that most of the prophets gave evidences of insanity as well as genius. The Greeks and the Romans recognized this kinship, and we read in the Bible of a certain Festus, who, when confronted by a man of genius, and being unable to answer his arguments, said to him, “Paul, much learning hath made thee mad!” Lauvergne, when speaking of the oxycephalic (sugarloaf) skull, an unquestionable example of degeneration, wrote many years ago, “This head announces the monstrous alliance of the most eminent faculty of man, genius, with the most pronounced impulses to rape, murder, and theft.”

The purpose of this paper is to show that wherever genius is observed, we find it accompanied by degeneration, which is evinced by physical abnormalties or mental eccentricities. It is a strange fact, however, and one not noticed by Lombroso, or any other writer, as far as I know, that mechanical geniuses, or those who, for the most part, deal with material facts, do not, as a rule, show any signs of degeneration. I have only to instance Darwin, Galileo, Edison, Watts, Rumsey, Howe, and Morse to prove the truth of this assertion. It is only the genius of æstheticism, the genius of the emotion, that is generally accompanied by unmistakable signs of degeneration.

Saul, the first king of Israel, was a man of genius and, at times, a madman. We read that, before his coronation, he was seized with an attack of madness and joined a company of kindred eccentrics. His friends and acquaintances were naturally surprised and exclaimed: “Is Saul among the prophets?” i. e., “Has Saul become insane?” Again, we are told that he was suddenly seized with an attack of homicidal impulse, and tried to kill David. Before this time he had had repeated attacks of madness, which only the harp of David could control and subdue. David himself was a man whose mental equilibrium was not well established, as his history clearly indicates. He forsook his God, indulged in licentious practices, and was, withal, a very, immoral man at times. At his time, the Hebrews had reached a high degree of civilization. Abstract ethics had become very much developed, and any example of great immorality occurring during this epoch is proof positive of atavism or degeneration.

As I have intimated before, many of the ancient Hebrew prophets, who were unquestionably men of genius, gave evidences of insanity; notably Jeremiah, who made a long journey to the River Euphrates, where he hid a linen girdle. He returned home, and in a few days made the same journey and found the girdle rotten and good for nothing; Ezekiel, who dug a hole in the wall of his house, through which he removed his household goods, instead of through the door; Hosea, who married a prostitute, because God, so he declared, had told him so to do; and Isaiah, who stripped himself naked and paraded up and down in sight of all the people. King Solomon, a man of pre-eminent genius, was mentally unbalanced. The “Song of Solomon” shows very clearly that he was a victim of some psychical disorder, sexual in its character and origin. The poems of Anacreon are lascivious, lustful, and essentially carnal, and history informs us that he was a sexual pervert.

Swinburne’s poems show clearly the mental bias of their author, who is described as being peculiar and eccentric. Many of the men of genius who have assisted in making the history of the world have been the victims of epilepsy. Julius Cæsar, military leader, statesman, politician, and author, was an epileptic. Twice on the field of battle he was stricken down by this disorder. On one occasion, while seated at the tribune, he was unable to rise when the senators, consuls, and prætors paid him a visit of ceremony and honor. They were offended at his seeming lack of respect, and retired, showing signs of anger. Cæsar returned home, stripped off his clothes, and offered his throat to be cut by anyone. He then explained his conduct to the senate, saying that he was the victim of a malady which, at times, rendered him incapable of standing. During the attacks of this disorder “he felt shocks in his limbs, became giddy, and at last lost consciousness.” Molière was the victim of epilepsy; so also was Petrarch, Flaubert, Charles V., Handel, St. Paul, Peter the Great, and Dostoieffsky; Paganini, Mozart, Schiller, Alfieri, Pascal, Richelieu, Newton, and Swift were the victims of diseases epileptoid in character.

Many men of genius have suffered from spasmodic and choreic movements, notably Lenau, Montesquieu, Buffon, Dr. Johnson, Santeuil, Crébillon, Lombardini, Thomas Campbell, Carducci, Napoleon, and Socrates.

Suicide, essentially a symptom of mental disorder, has hurried many a man of genius out into the unknown. The list begins with such eminent men as Zeno, Cleanthes, Dionysius, Lucan, and Stilpo, and contains the names of such immortals as Chatterton, Blount, Haydon, Clive, and David.

Alcoholism and morphinism, or an uncontrollable desire for alcohol or opium in some form or other, are now recognized as evidences of degeneration. Men of genius, both in the Old World and in the New, have shown this form of degeneration. Says Lombroso: “Alexander died after having emptied ten times the goblet of Hercules, and it was, without doubt, in an alcoholic attack, while pursuing naked the infamous Thais, that he killed his dearest friend. Cæsar was often carried home intoxicated on the shoulders of his soldiers. Neither Socrates, nor Seneca, nor Alcibiades, nor Cato, nor Peter the Great (nor his wife Catherine, nor his daughter Elizabeth) were remarkable for their abstinence. One recalls Horace’s line, ‘Narratur et prisci Cantonis sæpe mero caluisse virtus.’ Tiberius Nero was called by the Romans Biberius Mero. Septimius Severus and Mahomet II. succumbed to drunkenness or delirium tremens.”

Among the men and women of genius of the Old World who abused the use of alcohol and opium, were Coleridge, James Thomson, Carew, Sheridan, Steele, Addison, Hoffman, Charles Lamb, Madame de Staël, Burns, Savage, Alfred de Musset, Kleist, Caracci, Jan Steen, Morland Turner (the painter), Gérard de Nerval, Hartley Coleridge, Dussek, Handel, Glück, Praga, Rovani, and the poet Somerville. This list is by no means complete, as the well-informed reader may see at a glance; it serves to show, however, how very often this form of degeneration makes its appearance in men of genius.

In men of genius the moral sense is sometimes obtunded, if not altogether absent. Sallust, Seneca, and Bacon were suspected felons. Rousseau, Byron, Foscolo, and Caresa were grossly immoral, while Casanova, the gifted mathematician, was a common swindler. Murat, Rousseau, Clement, Diderot, Praga, and Oscar Wilde were sexual perverts.

Genius, like insanity, lives in a world of its own, hence we find few, if any, evidences of human affection in men of genius. Says Lombroso: “I have been able to observe men of genius when they had scarce reached the age of puberty; they did not manifest the deep aversions of moral insanity, but I have noticed among all a strange apathy for everything which does not concern them; as though, plunged in the hypnotic condition, they did not perceive the troubles of others, or even the most pressing needs of those who were dearest to them; if they observed them, they grew tender, at once hastening to attend them; but it was a fire of straw, soon extinguished, and it gave place to indifference and weariness.”

This emotional anæsthesia is indicative of psychical atavism, and is an unmistakable evidence of degeneration. Lombroso gives a long list of the men of genius who were celibates. I will mention a few of those with whom the English-speaking world is most familiar: Kant, Newton, Pitt, Fox, Beethoven, Galileo, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Gray, Dalton, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Lamb, Bentham, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Reynolds, Handel, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Schopenhauer, Camoëns, and Voltaire. La Bruyère says of men of genius: “These men have neither ancestors nor descendants; they themselves form their entire posterity.”

There is a form of mental obliquity which the French term folie du doute. It is characterized by an incertitude in thought coördination, and often leads its victims into the perpetration of nonsensical and useless acts. Men of genius are very frequently afflicted with this form of mental disorder. Dr. Johnson, who was a sufferer from folie du doute, had to touch every post he passed. If he missed one he had to retrace his steps and touch it. Again, if he started out of a door on the wrong foot he would return and make another attempt, starting out on the foot which he considered the correct one to use. Napoleon counted and added up the rows of windows in every street through which he passed. A celebrated statesman, who is a personal friend of the writer, can never bear to place his feet on a crack in the pavement or floor. When walking he will carefully step over and beyond all cracks or crevices. This idiosyncracy annoys him greatly, but the impulse is imperative, and he can not resist it.

Those who have been intimately associated with men of genius have noticed that they are very frequently amnesic or “absent-minded.” Newton once tried to stuff his niece’s finger into the bowl of his lighted pipe, and Rovelle would lecture on some subject for hours at a time and then conclude by saying: “But this is one of my arcana, which I tell to no one.” One of his students would then whisper what he had just said into his ear, and Rovelle would believe that his pupil “had discovered the arcanum by his own sagacity, and would beg him not to divulge what he himself had just told to two hundred persons.”

Lombroso has combed history, as it were, with a fine-tooth comb, and very few geniuses have escaped his notice. This paper, so far, is hardly more than a review of his extraordinarily comprehensive work; therefore, I will conclude this portion of it with a list of men of genius, their professions, and their evidences of degeneration, as gathered from his book:

Carlo Dolce, painter, religious monomania.

Bacon, philosopher, megalomania, moral anaesthesia.

Balzac, writer, masked epilepsy, megalomania.

Cæsar, soldier, writer, epilepsy.

Beethoven, musician, amnesia, melancholia.

Cowper, writer, melancholia.

Chateaubriand, writer, chorea.

Alexander the Great, soldier, alcoholism.

Molière, dramatist, epilepsy, phthisis pulmonalis.

Lamb, writer, alcoholism, melancholia, acute mania.

Mozart, musician, epilepsy, hallucinations.

Heine, writer, melancholia, spinal disease.

Dr. Johnson, writer, chorea, folie du doute.

Malibran, epilepsy.

Newton, philosopher, amnesia.

Cavour, statesman, philosopher, suicidal impulse.

Ampère, mathematician, amnesia.

Thomas Campbell, writer, chorea.

Blake, painter, hallucinations.

Chopin, musician, melancholia.

Coleridge, writer, alcoholism, morphinism.

Donizetti, musician, moral anaesthesia.

Lenau, writer, melancholia.

Mahomet, theologian, epilepsy.

Manzoni, statesman, folie du doute.

Haller, writer, hallucinations.

Dupuytren, surgeon, suicidal impulse.

Paganini, musician, epilepsy.

Handel, musician, epilepsy.

Schiller, writer, epilepsy.

Richelieu, statesman, epilepsy.

Praga, writer, alcoholism, sexual perversion.

Tasso, writer, alcoholism, melancholia.

Savonarola, theologian, hallucinations.

Luther, theologian, hallucinations.

Schopenhauer, philosopher, melancholia, omniphobia.

Gogol, writer, melancholia, tabes dorsalis.

Lazaretti, theologian, hallucinations.

Mallarmé, writer, suicidal impulse.

Dostoieffsky, writer, epilepsy.

Napoleon, soldier, statesman, folie du doute, epilepsy.

Comte, philosopher, hallucinations.

Pascal, philosopher, epilepsy.

Poushkin, writer, megalomania.

Renan, philosopher, folie du doute.

Swift, writer, paresis.

Socrates, philosopher, chorea.

Schumann, musician, paresis.

Shelley, writer, hallucinations.

Bunyan, writer, hallucinations.

Swedenborg, theologian, hallucinations.

Loyola, theologian, hallucinations.

J. S. Mill, writer, suicidal impulse.

Linnæus, botanist, paresis.

The reader will observe that I have made use of the comprehensive word, writer, to designate all kinds of literary work except theology and philosophy. The above list is by no means complete, and only contains the names of those geniuses with whom the world is well acquainted.

When we come to the geniuses of the New World, we find that, though few in number, they, nevertheless, show erraticism and degeneration. Poe was undoubtedly a man of great genius, and his degeneration was indicated by his excessive use of alcohol. Aaron Burr was the victim of moral anæsthesia, and Jefferson was pseudo-epileptic and neurasthenic. Randolph was a man of marked eccentricity, and Benedict Arnold was, morally, anæsthetic. Daniel Webster was addicted to an over-indulgence in alcohol, likewise Thomas Marshall and the elder Booth. Booth also had attacks of acute mania. His son Edwin had paresis; so also had John McCullough, John T. Raymond, and Bartley Campbell. A distinguished statesman and politician, and a man who stands high in the councils of the nation, has, for a number of years, given evidence of mental obliquity by his uncontrollable desire for alcohol. No power, outside of bodily restraint, can control him and keep him from indulging his appetite for alcohol when this desire seizes him. One of the most noted poets of to-day, whose verses stir the heart with their pathos and bring smiles to the gravest countenances with their humor, was, for a number of years (and still is, so I have been told), an inordinate user of alcohol.

Robert Ingersoll was undoubtedly a man of genius and of considerable originality, and a close study of his writings shows conclusively his mental eccentricity. Judging wholly from his printed utterances, Mr. Ingersoll was only a superficial scientist and mediocre scholar. His power lay in his wonderful word imagery, and his intricately constructed verbal arabesques. He was a verbal symbolist. Symbolism, wherever found, and in whatever art, if carried to any extent, must necessarily be an evidence of atavism, consequently of degeneration.

Thomas Paine gave evidences of a lack of mental equipoise. We find scattered throughout his works the most brilliant, irrefutable, and logical truths side by side with the most inane, illogical, and stolid crudities. Among other men of genius who showed signs of degeneration we may include Alexander Stevens, Joel Hart, Adams, Train, Breckenridge, Webster, Blaine, Van Buren, Houston, Grant, Hawthorne, Bartholow, Walt Whitman. We must not confound genius and talent—the two are widely different. Genius is essentially original and spontaneous, while talent is to some extent acquired. Genius is a quasi abnormality, and one for which the world should be devoutly grateful. Psychos, in the case of genius, is not uniformly developed, one part, being more favored than the others, absorbs and uses more than its share of that element, whatsoever it be, which goes to make up intellectuality, hence the less favored or less acquisitive parts show degeneration.

THE EFFECT OF FEMALE SUFFRAGE ON POSTERITY

The greatest, best, and highest law of higher civilization is that which declares that man should strive to benefit, not himself alone, but his posterity

I. The Origin of the Matriarchate

In the very beginning woman was, by function, a mother; by virtue of her surroundings, a housewife. Man was then, as now, the active, dominant factor in those affairs outside the immediate pale of the fireside. Life was collective; “communal was the habitation, and communal the wives with the children; the men pursued the same prey, and devoured it together after the manner of wolves; all felt, all thought, all acted in concert.” Primitive men were like their simian ancestors, which never paired, and which roamed through the forest in bands and troops. This collectivism is plainly noticeable in certain races of primitive folks which are yet in existence, notably the autochthons of the Aleutian Islands. Huddled together in their communal kachims, naked, without any thought of immodesty, men, women, and children share the same fire and eat from the same pot. They recognize no immorality in the fact of the father cohabiting with his daughter—one of them naïvely remarking to Langsdorf, who reproached him for having committed this crime: “Why not? the otters do it!” Later in life the men and women mate; but even then there is no sanctity in the marriage tie, for the Aleutian will freely offer his wife to the stranger within his gates, and will consider it an insult if he refuses to enjoy her company. “As with many savages and half-civilized people, the man who would not offer his guest the hospitality of the conjugal couch, or the company of his best-looking daughter, would be considered an ill-bred person.”

This laxity in sexual relations was, at first, common to all races of primitive men, but, after a time, there arose certain influences which modified, to a certain extent, this free and indiscriminate intercourse. Frequent wars must have occurred between hostile tribes of primitive men, during which, some of them (physically or numerically weaker than their opponents) must have been repeatedly vanquished, and many of their females captured, for, in those old days (like those of more recent times, for that matter) the women were the prizes for which the men fought.

Under circumstances like these, the few remaining women must have served as wives for all the men of the tribe; and, in this manner polyandry had its inception. Polyandry gives women certain privileges which monandry denies, and she is not slow to seize on these prerogatives, and to use them in the furtherance of her own welfare. Polyandry, originating from any cause whatever, will always end in the establishment of a matriarchate, in which the women are either directly or indirectly at the head of the government.

There are several matriarchates still extant in the world, and one of the best known, as well as the most advanced, as far as civilization and culture are concerned, is that of the Nairs, a people of India inhabiting that portion of the country lying between Cape Comorin and Mangalore, and the Ghâts and the Indian Ocean.

The Nairs are described as being the handsomest people in the world; the men being tall, sinewy and extraordinarily agile, while the women are slender and graceful, with perfectly modeled figures. The Nair girl is carefully chaperoned until she arrives at a marriageable age, say, fourteen or fifteen years, at which time some complaisant individual is selected, who goes through the marriage ceremony with her. As soon as the groom ties the tali, or marriage cord, about her neck, he is feasted and is then dismissed; the wife must never again speak to, or even look at, her husband. Once safely wedded, the girl becomes emancipated, and can receive the attentions of as many men as she may elect, though, I am informed, it is not considered fashionable, at present, to have more than seven husbands, one for each day of the week.

Of no importance heretofore, after her farcical marriage the Nair woman at once becomes a power in the councils of the nation; as a matter of course, the higher her lovers the higher her rank becomes and the greater her influence. Here is female suffrage in its primitive form, brought about, it is true, by environment, and not by elective franchise.

As far as the children are concerned, the power of the mother is absolute; for they know no father, the maternal uncle standing in his stead. Property, both personal and real, is vested in the woman; she is the mistress and the ruler. “The mother reigns and governs; she has her eldest daughter for prime minister in her household, through whom all orders are transmitted to her little world. Formerly, in grand ceremonials, the reigning prince himself yielded precedence to his eldest daughter, and, of course, recognized still more humbly the priority of his mother, before whom he did not venture to seat himself until she had given him permission. Such was the rule from the palace to the humblest dwelling of a Nair.”

During the past fifty years, these people have made rapid strides toward civilization, monandry and monogamy taking the places of polyandry and polygamy, and fifty or a hundred years hence, this matriarchate will, in all probability, entirely disappear.

I have demonstrated, I think, clearly and distinctly, that matriarchy, or female government, is neither new nor advanced thought, but that it is as old, almost, as the human race; that the “New Woman” was born many thousands of years ago, and that her autotype, in some respects, is to be found to-day in Mangalore! A return to matriarchy at the present time would be distinctly and emphatically and essentially retrograde in every particular. The right to vote carries with it the right to hold office, and if women are granted the privilege of suffrage, they must also be given the right to govern. Now let us see if we cannot find a reason for this atavistic desire (matriarchy) in the physical and psychical histories of its foremost advocates. I will discuss this question in Part II of this paper.

II. The Viragint

There are two kinds of genius. The first is progressive genius, which always enunciates new and original matter of material benefit to the human race, and which is, consequently, non-atavistic; the second is atavistic or retrogressive genius, which is imitative and which always enunciates dead and obsolete matter long since abandoned and thrown aside as being utterly useless. The doctrines of communism and of nihilism are the products of retrogressive genius and are clearly atavistic, inasmuch as they are a reversion to the mental habitudes of our savage ancestors. The doctrines of the matriarchate are likewise degenerate beliefs, and, if held by any civilized being of to-day, are evidences of psychic atavism.

Atavism invariably attacks the weak; and individuals of neurasthenic type are more frequently its victims than are any other class of people. Especially is this true in the case of those who suffer from psychical atavism.

The woman of to-day who believes in and inculcates the doctrines of matriarchy, doctrines which have been, as far as the civilized world is concerned, thrown aside and abandoned these many hundred years, is as much the victim of psychic atavism as was Alice Mitchell, who slew Freda Ward in Memphis several years ago, and who was justly declared a viragint by the court that tried her.

Without entering into the truthfulness or falseness of the theory advanced by me elsewhere in this book, in regard to the primal cause of psychic hermaphroditism, which I attributed and do still attribute to psychic atavism, I think that I am perfectly safe in asserting that every woman who has been at all prominent in advancing the cause of equal rights in its entirety, has either given evidences or masculo-femininity (viraginity), or has shown, conclusively, that she was the victim of psycho-sexual aberrancy. Moreover, the history of every viragint of any note in the history of the world shows that they were either physically or psychically degenerate, or both.

Jeanne d’Arc was the victim of hystero-epilepsy, while Catharine the Great was a dipsomaniac, and a creature of unbounded and inordinate sensuality. Messalina, the depraved wife of Claudius, a woman of masculine type, whose very form embodied and shadowed forth the regnant idea of her mind—absolute and utter rulership—was a woman of such gross carnality, that her lecherous conduct shocked even the depraved courtiers of her lewd and salacious court. The side-lights of history, as Douglas Campbell has so cleverly pointed out in his “Puritan in Holland, England, and America,” declare that there is every reason to believe that the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth of England, was not such a pure and unspotted virgin as her admirers make her out to be. Sir Robert Cecil says of her that “she was more man than woman,” while history shows conclusively that she was a pronounced viragint, with a slight tendency toward megalomania. In a recent letter to me, Mr. George H. Yeaman, ex-Minister to Denmark, writes as follows: “Whether it be the relation of cause and effect, or only what logicians call a “mere coincidence,” the fact remains that in Rome, Russia, France, and England, political corruption, cruelty of government, sexual immorality—nay, downright, impudent, open, boastful indecency—have culminated, for the most part, in the eras of the influence of viragints on government or over governors.”

Viraginity has many phases. We see a mild form of it in the tom-boy who abandons her dolls and female companions for the marbles and masculine sports of her boy acquaintances. In the loud-talking, long-stepping, slang-using young woman we see another form; while the square-shouldered, stolid, cold, unemotional, unfeminine android (for she has the normal human form, without the normal human psychos) is yet another. The most aggravated form of viraginity is that known as homo-sexuality; with this form, however, this paper has nothing to do.

Another form of viraginity is technically known as gynandry, and may be defined as follows: A victim of gynandry not only has the feelings and desires of a man, but also the skeletal form, features, voice, etc., so that the individual approaches the opposite sex anthropologically, and in more than a psycho-sexual way (Krafft-Ebing).

As it is probable that this form of viraginity is sometimes acquired to a certain extent, and that, too, very quickly, when a woman is placed among the proper surroundings, I shall give the case of Sarolta, Countess V., one of the most remarkable instances of gynandry on record. If this woman, when a child, had been treated as a girl, she would in all probability have gone through life as a woman, for she was born a female in every sense of the word. At a very early age, however, her father, who was an exceedingly eccentric nobleman, dressed her in boy’s clothing, called her Sandor, and taught her boyish games and sports.

“Sarolta-Sandor remained under her father’s influence till her twelfth year, and then came under the care of her maternal grandmother, in Dresden, by whom, when the masculine play became too obvious, she was placed in an institute and made to wear female attire. At thirteen she had a love relation with an English girl, to whom she represented herself as a boy, and ran away with her. She was finally returned to her mother, who could do nothing with her, and was forced to allow her to resume the name of Sandor and to put on boy’s clothes. She accompanied her father on long journeys, always as a young gentleman; she became a roué, frequenting brothels and cafés and often becoming intoxicated. All of her sports were masculine; so were her tastes and so were her desires. She had many love affairs with women, always skillfully hiding the fact that she herself was a woman. She even carried her masquerade so far as to enter into matrimony with the daughter of a distinguished official and to live with her for some time before the imposition was discovered.” The woman whom Sandor married is described as being “a girl of incredible simplicity and innocence;” in sooth, she must have been!

Notwithstanding this woman’s passion for those of her own sex, she distinctly states that in her thirteenth year she experienced normal sexual desire. Her environments, however, had been those of a male instead of a female, consequently her psychical weakness, occasioned by degeneration inherited from an eccentric father, turned her into the gulf of viraginity, from which she at last emerged, a victim of complete gynandry. I have given this instance more prominence than it really deserves, simply because I wish to call attention to the fact that environment is one of the great factors in evolutionary development.

Many women of to-day who are in favor of female suffrage are influenced by a single idea; they have some great reform in view, such as the establishment of universal temperance, or the elevation of social morals. Suffrage in its entirety, that suffrage which will give them a share in the government, is not desired by them; they do not belong to the class of viragints, unsexed individuals, whose main object is the establishment of a matriarchate.