WOMAN, AND THE UNMANLINESS OF DEGRADING HER.
THE contemplation of womankind as a theme for study cannot fail to render any right minded man respectfully enthusiastic over their qualities and functions, and to impress upon him the significance of the reciprocal relationship between the sexes, and the preponderance of moral obligation on his part.
The role of the Male in Nature is secondary to that of the Female, for she is the Mother the Generatrix of all animate beings; and it is more important for us to have highly endowed mothers than fathers with like characteristics. Woman represents the prolific energy most conspicuously, while Man merely has the power of generating or giving origin to life; it is the female parent who perfects and brings forth the new life and nourishes it for many months after parturition, and it is the male parent's duty to protect and provide for them both.
All the activities of men, with their superior inventive and creative genius, lead to no racial improvement whatever unless they are directed toward the betterment of posterity, the welfare of contemporaneous womanhood, and an obedience to the laws of stirpiculture, which aims to improve the nobility of the race. Reason tells us to guard, protect and reverence this potentiality of womankind for motherhood, which makes them the holiest of beings; or at the very least to bear ourselves toward them with the same equality and consideration which is universally shown by all animals toward their females.
"They say that man is mighty, He governs land and sea,
He wields a mighty sceptre O'er lesser powers that be; But a mightier power and stronger Man from his throne has hurled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world".
So the very hopes of mankind hang on our fidelity toward women and our care of them. The distinctively womanly qualities, which shine forth as rays from heaven in their souls, may be quite accurately expressed by the beautiful words, love, tenderness, gentleness, forgiveness, mercy, pity, compassion, grace, purity, affection, sympathy, charity, self sacrifice, devotion and trustfulness; while bravery, boldness, strength, pugnacity, courage, pluck, self reliance, large heartedness, philanthropy, justice and magnanimity may be styled the attributes of ideal and robust men.
Both sexes, at this stage of moral development in the world's history, should have in common, as virtues of transcendent importance, a fervent love of the truth, of patriotism, of chastity, and a feeling of obligation to do good. Moderation in any of these qualities is never praised. It is universally admitted that our gentler companions "pour celestial balm" on the hearts of men, and in whatever relationship they may be to us, whether as sisters, daughters, wives or mothers, they have well earned the title of "ministering angels" to mankind. "Every mother's son" of us is under obligation to the sex, and we may well pause to consider and prevent, as far as lies in our power, the damnable consignment of a multitude of women, mostly young girls with sweetly attractive graces, to the vilest useo known to man on earth, or conceivable in hell.
It will be noticed that the essentially distinctive attributes of women, which we regard as heavenly qualities of Wallace, "What Rules the World".
Mind and heart, would be termed the symbols of strength, were society perfect; but in the hurly burly of a wicked world they are in reality marked elements of weakness, readily overcome by brutality, falsehood and imposition.
Man with his rougher qualities is fitted to stand, and resembles the oak that resists, while woman with her gentler and yielding nature, being fitted to lean, is too often like the reed that bends, and may easily be trampled in the mire. And yet there is a bond of relationship between men and women which is totally unappreciated by the mass of people, and credible to those only who have pursued anatomical and physiological studies. Embryologically, both the feminine and the male types are fulfilled in the person of each individual, i.e., up to the end of the ninth week of intrauterine life the embryo has the sexual glands of both sexes so perfectly developed that its future gender is still indistinctive and uncertain; and every man and every woman forever retains in rudimentary form the traces of the sexual organs of the opposite sex.
Kemember, then, that the human sexual organs, as well as those of all mammals, are thus bisexual, and that the mono sexual type begins to develop only at the end of the ninth week of foetal life.
Kraff Ebing points out the possibility that, under pathological conditions, the cerebral and spinal centres which correspond with these rudimentary sexual residua may exert an influence on the dispositions of certain individuals, so that they have the feelings of the opposite sex and a sexual inclination toward individuals of their own gender, while yet possessing well formed sexual organs.