MY CENTURY PLANT.

CHAPTER I.

Scylla and Charybdis.

CHAPTER II.

My Justification.

CHAPTER III.

First Steps.

CHAPTER IV.

A Word to Liberals.

CHAPTER V.

The Reason Why.

CHAPTER VI.

Explanatory, Letters, etc.

CHAPTER VII.

Dr. Margaret Soule's Letters.

CHAPTER VIII.

Goldena's Letters.

CHAPTER IX.

Doctors Dade, Hague, and Others.

CHAPTER X.

Experiences. The California Medium.

CHAPTER XI.

A Woman's Confidence.

CHAPTER XII.

Two Variety Histories.

CHAPTER XIII.

Another History.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Children of Lust.

CHAPTER XV.

Abnormal Sexuality.

CHAPTER XVI.

What Freedom Means.

CHAPTER XVII.

Woman's Source of Power.

CHAPTER XVIII.

What is Sound Morality.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Obscenity Law.

CHAPTER XX.

My Object, and My Arrest.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Greatest of All.

CHAPTER XXII.

An Appeal to Woman.

————

The closing words of the last speaker give voice to the feelings with which I enter upon the work before me. It is indeed sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, but still I feel impelled to venture. To so portray the straight and narrow path that the many instead of the "few" may find and walk therein is a work for which the ages have waited. It is; it can be found, and woman must find it. It is her work.

The way that leads to the heights is steep; the rocks are slippery and the depths are below, but the path once made plain, each traveller will place a stepping stone or remove an obstruction, even till one can walk and not become weary, can run if there be need for running.

If re-incarnation be a truth. If I am what I am told I am by those on the other side of life, then: "For this cause came I into the world," came to declare the truth I see, leaving it to do its own work while I go—home—go to those I knew and loved in a previous state of existence.

Let it be distinctly understood then by those who read these pages that in the name of eternal justice, in the name of the law of genuine progress, I demand for woman the full right to her own person and such respect from all men that no man will think of approaching her only as she indicates her pleasure; and I further demand that all the movements of the machine called society be so adjusted as to secure such freedom together with all that it involves!

As will be seen, I neither base my claim nor the method of its application upon what is, but upon what should be; or rather, said claim is based upon the law of natural right, and the demand for such a re-adjustment of society as will secure to woman such freedom, is based upon the paramount importance of her work for the race, a work which she cannot rightly perform if subject to, or dependent upon another for the needed conditions.

I am aware that to most people this will seem an astonishing and absurd demand, but to me it is self-evident that Nature, not being a fool, would not put her highest work, that upon which the greatest unfoldment of the race depends, into the keeping of an inferior, and if not inferior why a subject? Oh, woman needs protection, is the plea. Well, protect her; no one objects to that if needing it; protect her with your strength, your manhood, but do this for her as a free woman and not as a present or possible property. Protect her—from what? Why, from men, from yourselves. She needs only that.

Yes, the greatest possible work in the higher evolution of the race is, by Nature's law, woman's. She gives to the nations the bodies and brains through which souls and intellects must act, all nourished by, drawn from her heart's blood. The portion furnished by man is so small that the eye needs the aid of the microscope to discover it, and even then there is a difference of opinion as to whether it is the real germ or a concentrated food, a potent element quickening the true germ into life. Oh the assurance of man in the face of such facts in claiming the child as his! Had not woman first been enslaved this could never have been done.

In virtue of woman's power in maternity, in virtue of the fact that said power is a blessing or a curse both to the child and community, as conditions shall decide, she has the right, not only to the control of her own person, but that such conditions be secured to her as will enable her to be independent of the individual man for the support of herself and children even though said man be her chosen companion and the father of her children. To be dependent upon another for support makes one subject to that other's will, and woman, if so subjected, cannot do her best work for the race.

It matters not what any God is supposed to have commanded, nor what Moses, Paul, or any, or all other men may say or think, not until woman has such freedom, not till society recognizes her right to herself as the evolver of human life shall we as a race actualize the ideal of the ages.

Those who do not see what such freedom for woman really means will begin to imagine this, that and the other evil result as they compare such change with what now is. That will not do; it is not just to the demand made. That demand calls for re-adjustment of society which will admit of such freedom. That it cannot be under the present system is very evident. But we can do this much—we can show the paramount importance of woman's work, we can point to the evils that result from her enslavement; we can prepare the way, and if a century hence the plant I now commit to the mental soil becomes well rooted, the result will be assured.

Yes, entire freedom for woman—not the average woman of to-day, not those who have been demoralized by their enslaved condition under man's rule, but women born of intelligent, self-respecting mothers in whose hearts the consciousness of this natural right has been awakened—women who were gestated from blood made hot from a sense of wrong, aye, such a generation of women will be strong to demand their rights, rights which the men so gestated will gladly accord.

This idea of woman's freedom is not new. The eternal verities find expression all though the ages, often spoken by lips entirely unconscious of the deep significance of the words uttered. When Abraham was told that the son of the bond (bound) woman should not be heir with the son of the free woman, it simply means, translated into modern language, that Isaac was the legal heir. But St. Paul tells us that this is an allegory, means more than a mere personal matter. Treating it as such it means to me much more than Paul expresses.

As I read Nature's law, a woman bound, crippled of her powers by poverty, ignorance, outside authority—such a woman cannot give birth to one capable of entering into, appreciating, enjoying his or her rightful inheritance—the grand possibilities of manhood and womanhood which, touching the very soul of things, make life a perpetual joy. The text says, shall not; Nature says, cannot. If one should say of a man without feet, he shall not walk, or of a man without eyes he shall not see, the absurdity would be apparent. It is just as absurd to say of one who has no musical talent, he shall not sing, or of one who is badly dyspeptic, he shall not enjoy food. Can not is the right word; there is no 'shall not' from any outside power to prevent the fullest enjoyment of all that is; the deficiency is in ourselves. And so of moral deficiencies, there is no outside power other than what man uses in his blindness, to punish one more than the other.

As I read this text and interpret its allegorical meaning I find it expressing the certain fact of woman's ultimate and absolute freedom from whatever tends to hinder her work as mother, or as the evolver of the soul life of the race; and coupled with that other text: "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head," the significance is doubly apparent; though I opine that the second "the" is an interpolation to make the text fit the dogma that Jesus is the seed spoken of, for why should this saying be held as personal and the other not. Drop that one word and the passage harmonizes with the idea of woman's freedom, is a prophecy of its coming.

How can it be otherwise and the hopes of the race be actualized. Soul longings and Nature's protests are both assurances of what is yet to be. The all-pervading Soul is too wise to protest against that which cannot be remedied, therefore every protest that comes from nature through the soul of man or woman, against what is, every effort to better things is a prophecy of what is to come when the needed steps are taken. One illustration:

Why the natural, the almost universal dislike of children to stepmothers?

It is Nature's protest against the ignorance, the false conditions which take a mother out of life or from her children while they need her. It is the still, small, but ever persistent voice which says: There is no need that mothers should die thus, and when you learn to live right they will not.

There is not a single protest thus made and persisted in from generation to generation and from age to age but what is equally significant. What then of all these ages of violated womanhood—woman, the mother of man and yet never the owner of her own person—what of the protest against this state of things till, in spite of every effort made to suppress it, the demand for unqualified self-ownership is fearlessly made. Surely, there is meaning in all this.

Indeed there is, though few as yet dare to speak out, while the many will persecute these and repudiate such ultimate outcome; yet time will show that the "Woman movement" of the last half century means more than the ballot; it means more than an equal right with man in all the pursuits of life. It means an entire reconstruction of society. It means a system in which the motive powers to action shall be brought to bear upon the moral instead of upon the selfish elements of character.

It means a state of society in which human beings shall be considered of more value than property, and knowledge of how to improve our kind of greater importance than that which teaches us how to improve animals, and not as now that government shall spend money to aid in improving the latter while imprisoning men and women who devote themselves to the former.

It means a state of society in which all that tends to the physical, mental and moral welfare of gestating mothers shall be considered of more value than bank accounts, palaces, cathedrals or any other manifestation of place or power held at the expense of the people. In a word, it means a state of society which will give us divine motherhood, and that such motherhood must be free seems to me self-evident. The idea that divinity, or the channel through which it must come if at all, must be subject to man-made law-measurement is simply absurd. Yes, I know they claim divine authority for their enactments but: "by their fruits ye shall know," and the results do not sustain the claim.

But I am not done with bible quotations. Jesus is recorded as saying: "In that world they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels in heaven," and he taught his followers to pray for the same state of things upon earth. I know that those who have mistaken "the beauty of holiness" or wholeness have imagined this to mean the end of sex association, but nature and science tell a different story, demonstrate that there can be no wholeness without the interchange of the two great factors of life universal.

But there is another and a very vivid allegory bearing on this question which can be found in Revelations, that of the woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. No longer sitting in the shadow of a reflected light, moonlight, but clothed with the sun, with direct power. The child which she is to bring forth is to rule the nations with a rod of iron, a male child a positive element, made such by the transition struggle. This allegorical child, this positive spirit born of a sense of wrong, will do more than rule. Its "rod of iron" will be heavy enough to break in pieces the institutions that stand in the path of true motherhood, for only as thus broken can they be so reorganized as to harmonize with the spirit of mother love, love that then need never more be nailed to the cross of agony because of badly born children.

Oh, those children! that are taken by their fathers and locked up in prisons or, being weak, unbalanced, become inmates of asylums that will not be needed when woman is fully free; for, when thus free there will be no unwilling motherhood and the free, glad relation with all the conditions harmoniously adjusted will bring to no mother's arms a badly organized child. Obey Nature's law and she will do her part.

So much for bible allegories, but the student of Nature has no need of them to prove woman's claim, and they are not quoted here simply because found in the bible but because they shadow forth what hereditary law confirms. But for such confirmation they would be of no value, no matter where found. The time is past when thinkers can be held by any "Thus saith the Lord."

I demand unqualified freedom for woman as woman, and that all the institutions of society be adjusted to such freedom.

————

Thousands will start up horror struck at the very idea, will ask how it is possible I can justify myself in making a demand so opposed to the laws of both God and man.

In reply, I will say first: I recognize no God who gives personal commands. As fast as I can understand them I aim to obey the laws of Nature—these, to me, are the methods of the Infinite manifestation, and I acknowledge the authority of no other. These are the laws self-existent in the very constitution of things; consequently, seeing the law which makes the full freedom of woman necessary to the highest good of the race I could not justify myself if I did not declare it. I am therefore justified in making such a demand because of the good which must result from the fulfillment of the conditions which will make the realization of such demand possible.

"What," continues the objector, "good to come from such lawlessness!"

You mistake, my friend; not lawlessness but statutelessness. Law is uncreate, eternal; its authority is absolute, it is unchangeable in its demands, makes no concessions, grants no pardons; obey and command its services; disobey and take the consequences. Such is ever the language of law, and in this certainty lies our hope of progress. Statutes are the rules that men make for others to walk by. Genuine obedience ever disregards them, in spirit at least, whenever they come in contact with law.

As to the good that will, must come through the full freedom of woman I would ask first: Would it not be a great good if all sexual disease could be eliminated from the blood of the race? Why do human beings have such disease? We do not find anything like it in the animal races and why in the human? With the animals the female is free. If woman was free, if she never received the creative embrace only when she desired and from whom she desired the human would not be thus afflicted.

I have questioned physicians upon this point, and I have questioned others; I have yet to find the first one to dissent from the position taken. I do not believe an intelligent physician can be found who will not give his assent to the proposition if so questioned as not to arouse a fear that his business will suffer in consequence, for sex disease furnishes the profession a great deal of that upon which the bread and butter depends. Yes, it would be a sad time for the doctors till they became adjusted to the new order, were sex disease wiped out. but think of what it would be to the race. This one result of woman's full freedom, a result which cannot well be disputed, is of itself a warrant for such freedom, an abundant justification for demanding it.

I will state the proposition again: "If woman ever received the sexual embrace only when she desired and from whom she desired sexual disease would be unknown." My reason for this is: harmony is health, and in such case there would be no conflict between the parties.

That sexual disease is a widespread and terrible evil is too well known to be questioned. It is the prevailing curse of all civilized lands. As an illustration of its prevalence in our large cities, I take the following from an address by E. H. Benn before the Society of Medical Jurisprudence in New York the date of which meeting I neglected to take. He says:

"Within a few days past I have seen some statistics of the diseases caused by public prostitution in New York City and Kings County in 1857, when the population of this city was less than 700,000, and that of Brooklyn much less than it is now; and I was surprised to learn that in that year 14,770 persons were treated in the public institutions of New York City and King's County for syphilis. That is, or was, estimated to be about one fourth of the number treated in private practice, thus making about 74,000 patients for that terrible disease in these two cities in a single year, when the population was less than half it is now. When we consider that this disease is hereditary, and is transmitted from parent to child, and that this sin of the parents is visited upon the children, not only to the third and fourth generations, but far beyond that, we get some idea of the magnitude of this evil in one aspect of the case."

Mr. Benn could find no statistics taken since then. What is the matter? Was the result so alarming they dare not follow up their statistic taking? If neglecting to tabulate them did away with the facts it would be well to do so, but ignoring an evil does not cure it. Stop and consider, please. The same rate with the same population would make the summing up from then till now to be nearly three million cases, and with the increase of population four million would fall considerably short of the actual number of cases treated in those two cities alone in less than forty years for this one terrible disease. Worse than several wars, for those killed in war do not continue from year to year to poison the blood of the coming generations.

Oh mothers of the race, your children are perishing! They stretch their hands to you for help, and where should a child go but to its mother!

Yes, you will help if you can only find the how; then let us study the problem together; let us ask our sons what they have to show for all this to justify such control of woman's person as we now have; is there anything? Are not things even worse in other respects than they would have been with woman free? But our opponents are not so easily satisfied that sex disease is the result of unwilling relations; they urge that it is promiscuity, uncleanness, etc.

Yes, uncleanness, and I will explain how after a little. Indeed, the following extract taken from the 124th page of the "Occult Forces of Sex" is ample explanation, and I will add: I know the statement made to be correct, for I was with the lady during that winter.

But the objector is not yet satisfied. "Why," he asks, "if it is the conflict of forces that produces this disease, why is it not produced between dissatisfied married couples who live true to the letter of the law? Myriads of women have submitted all their lives to relations as distasteful as the one you have supposed, have done so because they have been taught they must, but who ever heard of a case of syphilis being thus generated?"

Not a distinct case perhaps, but there is more than one kind of sex disease that does not go by that name, and who ever heard of a woman so situated who was really well? If all the weakness, the suffering caused to woman because of undesired sex relations could cease, the army of "General Debility" so often spoken of, would be nearly or quite annihilated—yes, I know—young women are unhealthy too; the mothers have had 'sour grapes' forced upon them and the daughters suffer. I maintain my position; harmony is health; woman entirely free, and all the conditions of society adjusted to said freedom, there would be no conflicting relations, consequently, sex disease would be unknown.

This would be more than either law, religion, or the doctors have been able to accomplish. Why then perpetuate the slavery of woman when our best physicians claim that not one family in ten is free from syphilitic taint, and our best writers assert that there is more prostitution inside of marriage than out? Why demand the old standard, the old order of things at such a cost? Remember, please, that the happiness of woman is the true basis for the happiness of all, and relieved forever from the unwelcome embrace an amount of personal misery would be removed which of itself would be ample compensation for the change.

Seeing as I do the immense good that would accrue to the race from such freedom, I dare not be silent. I could not justify myself to myself if I were. Right here some highly sexed man says:

"But what of our suffering? This 'devilish intensity of sex desire' would drive us mad; why should we have it if we may not satisfy it?'

Do you wish to satisfy it at woman's expense? There is where you make your mistake. It is now that you are deprived of legitimate satisfaction. Irresponsive relations give temporary relief but do not satisfy; they cannot; they only deplete, and thus the 'intensity' is increased till in your desperation you destroy the wife or go elsewhere; often both. What you need to satisfy is the love element, the fine soul sex life of woman to blend with your own. This you can not force from her. No bound woman, no bought woman can satisfy that intense need of yours. Only in freedom, absolute, unquestioned freedom, can woman bestow her best upon man, and such freedom she has never had. No attempted enforcement of an arbitrary morality,—no thus saith the Lord, nor thus saith the law can suppress or direct this master passion. It must be satisfied. It never has been only in part, and it never can be only in part till woman is entirely free; so for your sakes, my brothers, I am justified in making my demand.

The general idea of a free woman, is a public woman. It is not strange then, that the demand for the freedom of all women should be looked upon with horror. The mind must be disabused of this idea. A public woman is not free. The term signifies for public use. A free woman—one free in the true sense of the term, is not and never can be for use. She is the equal partner of creative life be that life physical, mental, spiritual, or all three combined, and never can life so blended create disease.

This one great law of health is ample justification for the demand that woman shall be free, and that all the institutions of society be made conformable to said demand. True, the struggle will be great. It cannot well be otherwise; but consider for a moment, please, what has been, what loss of life and property to maintain national honor, to preserve an unsullied flag, and then ask which is of the most importance, a people's flag or a people's health?

But health is not the only blessing which will result from freedom for woman. Her children will become heirs of all there is or can be—this of the final result, and not of the inevitably imperfect first fruits of the transition period. But even these will be of a much higher average than what we now have, while with woman enslaved we can hope for nothing better.

The free woman will, must feel the responsibility of her position. The education which will enable her to understand that responsibility will be a part of her freedom inheritance. She will know that only as she makes the most of herself can she transmit the best to her children. She will not as now, be weary and worn, for all things will contribute to her work.

Science has discovered that the vibrations of the voice upon the atmosphere produce corresponding figures, flowers, serpents, etc., as is the character of the feeling behind it. Having this knowledge, think you that the institutions adjusted to woman's freedom would permit such sights and sounds as we now have, sights and sounds that become a part of the character of the next generation. Knowing this, woman will demand that all the influences brought to bear upon gestating mothers are of a nature to call out the best elements of character, and how much does this involve, what changes from the now? Space would fail me to enumerate the evils that would be thus forever banished.

The complementing blessing would be well born children, healthy, happy, loving children. All that is desirable as to bodily, health, personal appearance, mental balance, moral dignity, and spiritual power will be the inheritance of the children of the free woman—the mother's joy, the father's pride, and a surety of a noble manhood and womanhood.

Hark, the crash!—all prison walls have fallen—another!—asylums are no more—not needed. Fortresses, guns, swords, bayonets, cannons are no longer required; armies disband; the soldier becomes the glad lover, the proud father—justification enough, surely! not now accorded, but I can wait.

But the greatest good to result from woman's freedom will come through the action of the spiritual forces which will be thus set in motion. It is because the spiritual has been shut from the material expression of the love life that we have so much of disease and death. Spirit not only 'giveth life' but it is spirit that preserves, perpetuates it. The soul life, which is the road for spirit to the realm of matter, cannot act through unwilling sex relations, and thus cannot generate spiritual life for the race. There can be no redemption till love is unchained and the spiritual recognized in the sex relation.

Protestants repudiate the idea of a middle state of existence. They in theory send us at the death of the body directly to heaven or hell, (what a host must be coming up from hell on the judgment day) but Catholics have their purgatory in which souls must suffer till helped out. Spiritualists, believing that things are as natural there as here, recognize different grades of growth and the law of progress in spirit life. They claim that ignorant or vicious spirits may, through the law of growth, reach a better, happier state of existence. There is truth here. Catholics and Spiritualists both sense it, but I question if the law of that purgatory, the how of that growth, has been perceived by either.

Further on I will try to elaborate this law as I see it, but here I will only say that the full freedom of woman is not only a necessity to the redemption of the material side of our earth life, but also to the renovation of those darkened spirit spheres which pertain to, are a part of this planet.

In a book written in the interest of Theosophy one of their wise ones, a Mahatma, says:

Throughout all past ages one fatal thought has vitiated every attempt of man on this planet to establish a civilized state. On some other planets, in this, and in greater systems of worlds, larger truth was earlier given. This destroying thought has been the wrong interpretation of sex. The male has assumed that he was the lord of life, whereas the opposite fact is nearer the truth; if there is any distinction the female element of nature is the higher. Man by this false assumption has brought repeated ruin upon all his attempts to build a lasting civilization.

If the idea of man's supremacy has been a fatal one, if it has destroyed the civilizations of the past, it is surely time that woman came to the front. It is time she was free, so far at least as her person is concerned. And as the civilizations which have failed and are failing, were and are suited to woman's sex slavery, it follows as a matter of course that there must be new institutions in which there will be no obstacle to her entire freedom.

Is not a perception of the law through which a civilization can be evolved that will last, a civilization the influence of which will extend to the lower spheres of spirit life as an uplifting power—is not the perception of such a law not only a justification for the demand I make, but should I fail to make such demand would it not be my condemnation? No matter what the result to the present order of things, should I hold my peace I could not face myself.

The bible speaks of the redemption of the body and Christians have taught the resurrection of the same body that we put off; but they are learning better than that, and the bodies of their dead will soon be sent to the crematory instead of to the cemetery to wait the call of Gabriel's trump; and yet the idea is not so far wrong as to fact, as to the how.

We are now continually changing the matter of which our bodies are composed, throwing off and taking on, but suppose that while thus throwing off we utterly lost the power to take on? Why that would be death, you say. Yes, the death of the body, but the soul, the inner garment of the self-hood still exists as a connecting link with matter. Now suppose that this self-hood should discover a law by which there could be drawn to this astral body which is here called soul, enough of matter to form a new body, would not that be resurrection?

That is what spirits are experimenting upon in what is called materialization.

The first body is started on its way through the mingling of male and female secretions from matter and is called generation. But we have the term, regeneration as connected with human destiny; what does that mean? Regenerate; to generate over. Can any kind of generation take place without the mingling of the two elements or forces? Materialization is the beginning of the resurrection of the bodies of the so-called dead, and that which we are told is needed to perfect the work is sufficient spiritualized sex aura to act as a condenser upon matter. Such aura can be eliminated only in love relations.

Said I not that the resurrection of the dead as well as the redemption of the living depended upon the freedom of woman? There will then be none but love relations.

I have surely given good and sufficient reasons for demanding the full freedom of woman, with all it implies. The next question is, how to reach it.

The declaration of the full meaning of the "Woman Movement" will startle many who call themselves reformers, but there are a few who will measure the demand here made, not from what it will cost but from what, actualized, it will be worth to the race. Such will judge of it, not from a standard of morality which has been formulated to sustain a system of authority, but from the standpoint of reason, science, and common sense, and they will ask by what means it is proposed to make so great a change, what are the first steps toward it?

Right thinking is the first step toward right acting. If it be true that 'as a man thinketh so is he' it is equally true of woman, and she must learn, if she would fully respect herself, to realize the dignity of sex independent of statutes. This is necessary to a proper estimate of her place and power even under the marriage bond; for, if sex is something low, something the use of which naturally degrades, then marriage is reduced to the level of a licensed indulgence, a something which is permitted if consent is asked, paid for, and the public informed of the fact.

I shall never forget hearing an old man say when I was a mere child that women and geese were necessary evils. When it is remembered that in those days a "tick" containing from ten to twenty pounds of feathers was considered a necessity for every bed and that geese were the farmer's annoyance, that he endured them because he thought he must the significance of that remark becomes apparent. It was practically saying:

"Woman is a weak, sniveling creature, she is always making a fuss about something, and children make no end of trouble, but her sex is necessary to my gratification, so I, poor man, endure the evil."

Yes, and his wife, a little delicate creature who died nearly twenty years before he did, endured giving birth to six sons and five daughters in connection with the hardships of a pioneer life. I do not mean to say that in those days all men felt as that man did, but there was enough of this feeling to give a heavy tint to the prevailing thought that sex was a low thing anyhow, but considering man's needs, if a woman was owned legally its use was allowable.

But in this legal arrangement woman has not been considered so far as her pleasure is concerned, and her education has been such that she is not willing to own to sex desire lest she should be despised, and if she yields herself outside the marriage bond then, no matter what the circumstances, she is looked upon as ruined. Out upon such nonsense! When, in the book bearing her name and the register of her vow, Helen Harlow declares that no woman is ruined unless she thinks so, she struck the key note of woman's freedom. Men have learned that they can do without feather beds, and they must learn to do without sexual slaves.

In the mutual relations of free men with free women, where all the movements of society have been adjusted to such freedom, while the need for companionship will remain, the 'evil' will disappear. Having changed our thought of sex, having lifted it out of the ditch of obscenity and contempt and made it what it really should be, the crown of life, it is no longer abused, therefore the associative results are good and good only, be they physical, mental, or spiritual.

Our first effort then, must be in thought sphere. We must learn to judge of things from their nature and power and not from the standpoint of human enactments. We must change the mental atmosphere. On pages 85-6 of "The Occult Forces of Sex," speaking of the physical atmosphere we find the following:

Can anything show more clearly the degrading tendency of the sex act under any and all conditions but those of mutual love and respect. Though the above was penned more than twenty years since, the depth and breadth of meaning still grows upon me. In the previous chapter the law of vibrations was touched upon and the fact stated that a method had been discovered through which the form of the vibrations of the human voice upon the atmosphere could be taken, said forms being flowers, serpents, etc., as was the character of the feeling behind the voice.

But the feeling, if the prevailing one, does not always need to be spoken; it has given its character to the mental atmosphere. Now consider the prevailing thought in reference to sex, remembering at the same time that because of it we live, then wonder, if you can, that vice and crime prevail. Despising the source of life, how can there be that genuine respect for ourselves or others which tends to moral strength?

Think how even in the marriage bed woman's sex has been enslaved and abused, and imagine if you can the atmospheric vibrations—imagine the pictures when the husband (?) says: "What do you suppose I married you for," and the wife yields with every feeling of her soul repulsed and with a sense of degradation that nearly crushes the life out of her—imagine the thought vibrations, the feelings taking form in the shape of loathsome creatures corresponding thereto, such feelings to be embodied in the next generation.

How long will it take to save the world while such conditions exist, and exist they will so long as woman is sexually enslaved.

But oh, this mighty thought power! what ruin it can produce and what strength it can give! Think of the young girl who loves to consummation without legal sanction—imagine the thought directed toward her, surrounding her, enveloping her with a cloud of images that are worse than the locusts of Egypt.

Under such a pressure the poor girl is very likely to sink, but she is not ruined by what she has done but by what a falsely educated public thinks of her and forces her to think of herself. Suppose she could be positive to this outside sphere of thought, could rise above it and say with Helen Harlow, no woman is ruined unless she thinks so, would she be ruined then? No, she would be grand.

Let us imagine such one; let us think of a woman strong in the divinity of her self-hood—one who sees clearly her right to herself and deliberately lives that right in spite of man or devils, think of such a woman moving on with head erect, and a strength of soul that, refusing to be crushed, drives the swarming thought images of vileness back with her own positive self-respect, thus forcing respect from others, and you have imagined one greater than any Jesus on the cross, or Daniel in the den of Lions, for the lions flee and the cross disappears as she prepares the way for the fullness of a salvation that neither man, nor God-Man can bring.

In the picture drawn of what is—must be under given conditions so long as present methods and ideas of thinking prevail, the needed first steps toward woman's full freedom are plainly indicated. We must change this mental atmosphere, must clear it of its poison, of its serpent vibrations by thinking right thoughts, pure thoughts, reverential thoughts of sex, must clear it from the malarial idea of the need of woman's being owned in its use, of the idea of degradation if not thus owned.

The married woman is legally in the same position, with the exception of the right of sale, that the negro was before the abolition of chattel slavery, owned, and in the use of her sex, disgraced if she is not owned. The "free nigger" was an abomination in the south. The negroes themselves regarded them as such, or pretended to so regard them if they really did not, in order to win favor with their masters.

Married women now take the same position in regard to the woman who claims the right to her own person. And yet women are thinking, thinking. I read a few pages of what I am now writing, pages containing my full demand for woman, to a friend who called upon me not long since, and when I paused she remarked:

"That is just what I have claimed for years; I have talked it to hundreds of women." This lady has a grown daughter, a sweet girl who is no stranger to her mother's ideas. "In danger of being ruined?" Not a bit of danger. She can never be seduced. She understands herself and if she acts at all, will do so intelligently—with a purpose.

When I talk with women on this subject the responses that I get make me think of the early dawning of the springtime when vegetation is not yet in sight but is all ready to burst through the surface into the sunlight. There are thousands of self-respecting women who, feeling and knowing their need of love and their right to themselves, are living independent lives so far as fact is concerned, though not yet ready to declare that life to the public, for as yet, it would be like opening a sheep fold when the wolves held possession of the surroundings.

There are also thousands of men who respect such women as much as a wife can be respected. The seed is already sown for woman's ultimate freedom and the harvest is sure to come.

But even in all the past nature has been too strong for theory, making those who oppose woman's freedom testify against themselves. Why is woman held to so much more bitter condemnation than are men for the same act if the deciding vote does not rightfully belong to her?

In all else the greatest blame for disastrous consequences, or for the violation of rules, rests upon those to whom are intrusted the greatest responsibility, but how can such responsibility rest upon one who has not the right to herself. How can such responsibility be required of one who may use her natural functions only under the sanction of man-made statute first and then must be subject to the legal owner of this department of herself ever after?

Restore to woman her right to herself, protect her in that right and then she can justly be held responsible for such abuse of that right as tends to curse present or future generations. Till this is done the holding of her to such responsibility is acknowledging her right while refusing to grant it.

Yes, just such freedom, the full ownership of her own person is woman's natural inherent right, and with my head whitening for the tomb, with the surety that my time is short, I fearlessly assert that only in such freedom is there such elevation for the race as we all desire and believe to be possible. I declare this in the full belief that it is the greatest service I can render the coming generations.

To those who object I would say, can such freedom for woman give us worse results than we now have? Please remember that I make this one claim paramount—assert that all else must conform to this—that our economic system must be so changed as to make it possible for all women to secure financial support independent of that subjection to the individual man which is now legalized prostitution.

If a woman must pledge herself for a day or an hour longer than she wishes to any man it is no more or less than prostitution, and then to be held to an unwilling relation in order to be with her children or for a support is adding slavery thereto.

Can women thus held become the mothers of a race of men and women who, self-centered, self-sustained in all high and noble endeavor, shall be able to make this earth what it is capable of becoming, a veritable paradise? Certainly not. Therefore, recognizing the magnitude of the powers that oppose, I unhesitatingly make the full demand as the first step toward its fulfillment, and declare that if an act is pure it is so independent of any outside sanction—that if impure, in and of itself, no outside sanction can make it otherwise.

No outside sanction can change the character of an act either for good or for evil only so far as our ideas have been perverted by being made to believe that such sanction is needed. But in that case it is what we believe and not what we do that produces the results we deplore. Here comes in the power of thought, of belief for good or evil, and one of the most convincing proofs of the power of thought crystalized into institutions is found in the fact that the most of people will acknowledge that love is the basis of marriage—that without it there can be no true marriage, and yet the woman of whom everybody says: "She married the man for his money; she has no love for him"—such a woman, one who openly sells herself in accordance with law, is accepted while the poor girl who loved to its consummation without legal sanction is forsaken by the one she loves and cast out by society.

Now why is this? Society has been built upon the idea of authority—the idea that the ruling power has the right to command us arbitrarily, upon the idea that the powers that be are ordained of God—upon the law of authority instead of the law of love, consequently the crystallized idea rules; it is too strong for our sense of justice. This will, must continue till the law of love becomes strong enough to break in pieces the institutions formed on the basis of the old.

The love which can do this exists in the mother heart, and in the agitation of thought which is taking the place of the fear of the Lord she will gain the light to see how present institutions destroy her children, and then the kindling power of her love will burn as an oven. It is said that "prayer is the motion of a hidden fire, concealed within the breast." Fire in "motion" is a powerful force. It was fire in motion that, bursting through the rock-ribbed earth of the past, tore the continents from their places, cast up the mountain ranges, and mingling with the waters of the ocean converted the waves into steam till the sun itself was darkened.

They say that love is God. Think you that the mother love concealed in woman's breast, when it is once aroused is going to leave one stone upon another of the institutions that crush her children. Do you think there will be one fetter left upon her limbs when she straightens herself. You may imprison her, you may blind her material eyes, but you cannot touch the eyes of her soul and she will make such sport for you as Sampson made for the sport-loving Philistines; she will pull the temple down upon you.

"Rachel" will stop "weeping for her children" when she once realizes that she has the power to redeem them. But she must be free ere she can do this. Her natural love of purity coupled with the false standard of purity in which she has been educated is the greatest obstacle in the way, but she is learning; when her lesson is learned she can no longer be held.

I repeat, however, that the first lesson to be learned, and acted from, is that neither legal enactments nor church sanction can make an act either right or wrong—must learn and act from the fact that unwelcome relations, no matter how sanctioned, are a curse to all concerned—must learn that she has a right to be protected from what she does not desire and to be protected in that which she does desire.

The fact that the right or wrong of sex relations cannot be decided by statute is abundantly shown in that portion of the race for whom prisons and asylums are built. The blind, the insane, the idiotic—all imperfect specimens of humanity give the lie to the idea that sex-relations can be regulated by law, show that no amount of legality can prevent or cover up the consequences of the violations of nature's law, that law which gives to woman the right to her own person and demands that all else shall be made conformable to that right, and the more thoroughly woman understands this natural right, the more firmly she will take the first step toward actualizing it.

Those who have read "The Fountain of Life" will say I have gone back on my ideal, that of the dual relation. Not in the least, but no ideal can be enforced by law. It must be reached by growth, and to those who believe that were woman entirely free there would be more mixed sex relations than now, I will say that to me, as I see the governing law, it is the only path by which the dual ideal can be reached naturally, that is by growth, and when thus reached it will be lived without the aid of statutes.

In deference to the people known by the above name, a large proportion of whom do not believe that we as individuals continue to live after the dissolution of the body, I here devote a limited space to some thoughts to which I respectfully ask their careful consideration.

Some of them accept much that I write as very practical, or that it would be did I not connect it with another state of existence than this. They ask: "Why do you bring in Spiritualism and other superstitions; why not stick to the known laws of heredity, stirpiculture, etc., and leave all visionary ideas out of the question? One world at a time is enough."

Very true; one world at a time is enough, but I want the whole of that world recognized. Otherwise, as I see things, causes will remain untouched, and it is useless to deal with effects only. What we see, hear and touch with the physical—no, with the spiritual senses acting through the physical, are but the effects of causes that must be sought in the realm of that which we call the ideal.

If any one can show me a single thing that is now accepted as practical which did not first exist in the ideal—exist as a theory, then I will concede that in trying to show the invisible but potent causes of things I am leaving the practical sphere.

Yes, the idea of but one world at a time is all right, but I perceive that there is very much more to this one world than has generally been supposed, and that we recognize much to-day that was entirely unknown a hundred years ago, and I believe the time is near when that state of existence which is correlated to soul and intellect but not visibly to the body, will be recognized to be as much a part of this world as are soul and intellect to be constituent elements of a human being.

Could our Liberal friends once perceive the law which makes continued existence not only possible but a necessity, they would know that in dropping the body we do not leave this world, and they would use that knowledge very effectively against the superstitious reverence for that state of existence which now so curses the race. The spirit world, what is it?

As before said, it is simply that state of existence correlated to soul and intellect; we are now in the spirit world as the blind are in the midst of light, or deaf the midst of sound. Who are they who dwell in that world? According to bible teaching they are those who wait for the redemption of their bodies; why then should we reverence those who have lost and are waiting to regain what we still retain? They, having been born into matter as we know it here, but being ignorant of its laws, could not so control and refine it as to hold their bodies at will. Instead of unfolding the spirit in harmony with the laws of the body they did so at its expense, consequently the body was left behind in what is called dying.

In still other words, the law of life that can regenerate, continually make over the body to meet the wants of the indwelling spirit has not been lived, therefore, upon woman has fallen the pangs of continuing to generate bodies for the multitudes who throng the gate of birth.

Those invisible men and women sustain a somewhat similar relation to the physical word that the ideal in the brain of the inventor does to the model he has built from it. The model, which is the body of the idea, may be destroyed but the idea itself still lives and seeks a new embodiment. The idea is unseen only as patterned, only as embodied in matter, but it is nevertheless, indestructible; it is imaged forever upon the vibratory esse of the universe.

So of men and women, even when here in the body; they are forever unseen. We only see the models and very imperfect ones at that; and when the model or body can no longer in any sense represent them, then the real man and woman, the real individual has no way to manifest in this state of existence only as there is again such contact with matter as will give, at least a temporary control of it. That this has been done at times through all the ages of the past the records of all peoples testify, but ignorance of natural law and the false teaching resulting from such ignorance have rendered such manifestations a curse to the human family, vast religious organizations having been reared thereon which to-day hold the world in subjection.

Our mental scientists sometimes succeed quite well in "denying" away disease, pain, etc., but I opine it would be better to seek for and remove the causes, for then the force put forth to rise above the condition would no longer be needed in that direction.

So our materialistic friends, having felt the evils of a superstitious reverence for those unseen but still living intelligences, may be somewhat successful so far as they, themselves, are concerned, in denying it all away, declaring there is no such thing, no cause for the effects manifested.

Would it not be better to scientifically explore this unseen state of existence; to let in the light of reason and common sense upon it, to make ourselves so familiar with it that we shall no more think of deferring to, or taking orders from its inhabitants than we do of worshiping or obeying the people of England, France or Russia.

The belief in such a state of existence must have some sort of a foundation. The idea that all the great systems of religion which rule the world are bottomed on nothing is too much like that other idea that God made the world out of nothing, for an intelligent agnostic to accept if once the mind is divested of prejudice, or so it seems to me.

The reader will find on page 10 of "The Fountain of Life, or The Threefold Power of Sex," the following proposition which is there put forth as an axiom:

"We cannot conceive of that which does not exist. We may narrow the conception, twist it out of shape, pervert it because of our ignorance, but still it is, it must be rooted in truth."

Believing said proposition to be irrefutable I must believe in continued existence, even if I had no other evidence. It is because the conception of that state of existence has been so perverted, so twisted out of shape that so much superstition has arisen, and if our Agnostic and Materialistic, or so-called Infidel friends would cease to ignore—to deny, and looking the question squarely in the face, help to take the twist out of it, they could do so much better than even Spiritualists themselves, because, being more free from hereditary superstition, they could judge more impartially.

In evidence of that continued existence it is a well established fact that photographs of our so-called departed friends have been taken; and yet it has been said that a photograph of that which could not be seen or which did not cast a shadow, could not be obtained but what are the facts? The idea was founded upon a misconception of the law involved, for we have since learned that a likeness, not only of what the eye can not see, but the telescope can not reach, can be caught by the photographer's art.

Distant stars have thus been reached, and by what law? By the law of chemical attraction.

The diffused rays of light coming from such stars were too scattered for the power of the telescope, but by analyzing their nature, chemicals have been combined and used in photography by the attracting power of which these scattered rays have been drawn together, focused, and lo, the astronomer catalogues another star.

It has been found that only a third part of a ray of light, to-wit, its chemical portion. is used in photography. It is this which acts upon the chemically prepared plate to produce the image, consequently, the objection to spirit pictures because there is nothing to be seen, or that casts a shadow, falls to the ground. If they who have left the mortal body have power enough to make themselves so positive to matter as to throw back a third part of a ray of light upon the lens of the camera and their likeness can be taken by the same law that ours is; indeed if taken at all it must be by the same law for there are no miracles.

The world does not question the scientist when he tells us the number of vibrations to the inch of a ray of red light, of blue, purple, and so on through all the primary colors, and yet the majority of people would be as much at a loss to explain how the scientist was able to measure those vibrations as is the Agnostic to understand the law of spirit communication.

The priesthood of all the great religions of the world have understood in a measure the law of the finer forces of nature, and have known how to use them to their own advantage and to the enslavement of mankind, and passing into the unseen life they have continued to use that power through those in this life who harmonize with, or are subject to them; in the latter case holding them by the same law that hypnotists do their subjects.

But this knowledge has been withheld from the "common people" and why? "Oh, because they will. make bad use of it." Turning to "The Occult Forces of Sex," I find on page 97 the following from Professor Elliot Coues, a student of Oriental literature.

"I have long and steadily spoken, in the face of much ridicule, of the inherent dangers, not the less real because little suspected and scarcely credited, which attend the practice of magnetism; and of the disastrous consequences likely to ensue should the knowledge of such arts become public property. I have conscientiously striven to keep such things secret as they should be, or at least confined to those students of psychic science who can be trusted to discreetly use such knowledge. But it is already painfully evident that the secret is an open one, of which any sufficiently courageous knave may avail himself."

Did the gentleman live in India, and were he a member of the Brahmin caste, he would have no difficulty in keeping such knowledge from those they class as the vulgar herd, but are there no "courageous knaves" among the higher classes? Have the initiated always used their knowledge discreetly? Let the condition of the masses in all lands answer. Any knowledge that any courageous knave, if he can gain access thereto, can use to the injury of others, should be made public property so that all may protect themselves from its improper use.

But, admitting the fact of continued life, there is another point to be considered. The ruling classes, taking with them the knowledge obtained here, have become the hierarchies of that life. This in strict accord with the known laws of mind, and I want to ask my Liberal friends right here, if such spirit hierarchies, seeing the observing nature of the average Free-thinker, would not much rather you would disbelieve in continued life than that you should accept and persistently investigate? Are you not possibly playing into the hands of those who hold the masses in superstitious awe?

But, be that as it may, we can see here, all about us the effect of keeping the people in ignorance lest they misuse knowledge, of keeping people enslaved lest they should misuse their freedom; and in no one thing is it more sadly exemplified than in this one question of sex. We have an arbitrary code of sex morality, and ignorant or wise, intensely organized or like an icicle, that code must be lived or social damnation is the result. To show the results of such damnation we give the following as taken from an eastern paper, the same in substance being published of several others:

The—well, I was going to say, infinite nonsense of all that frantic effort to hold the world to an arbitrary morality strikes me so forcibly that but for its pitiable pathos I could laugh. Our Liberals have long known that the religion of "The Lord Jesus Christ" is a failure, that no 20,000,000 or twenty times that number can save those girls, that to eradicate the social evil under an arbitrary system of morality connected with an economic system which inevitably makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, is simply an impossibility.

If a chicken is once tamed, no matter how much it is beaten it will never get wild again, will never have sense enough to be afraid of you. When I read about that "slumming party," and remembered how many times prayer has been tried I could but think of the tamed chicken. When once educational piety strikes in, no matter how many disappointments, the praying ones never get any sense into their heads. They'll keep praying to their Jesus, no matter what the result. The girls themselves showed more sense.

How many of those women would have taken one of those girls to their own homes and given them a chance to live—to regain the self-respect of which they have been robbed? Was there in all that "Purity Congress" self-denial enough to prompt those women to spend a little less upon themselves that they might be able to take that mother out of that place and give her the means of an honorable support with her children?

Oh, that mother! There is the love that can save the world if it can be made to think so, if it can be freed. Oh, crucified life-love! nailed to the cross, spit upon, drinking the wormwood pressed to the lips till death closes the scene, when wilt thou be understood and thy power appreciated!

I should like to have heard the demand for woman's freedom that I here make read before that Social Purity Congress; I should like to have listened to the remarks, to the expressions of horror from those followers of Jesus Christ, and then I would have asked Mrs. Edholm and the others if they believed, with such freedom, such adjustment of societary conditions coupled with an intelligent understanding of sex, as that demand calls for, that even one of those 46,000 girls would be annually carted to the Potter's field? I do not.

What then is the natural inference? Why, that rather than give up their enforced, or attempted enforcement of a legal morality they will sacrifice annually 46,000 girls upon the altar of their false standard—upon the altar of their subservience to the rulership idea of "The Lord Jesus Christ." Will they never learn the futility of trying to dam up the river of life! Will they never learn to sit at the feet of mother nature and learn of her laws instead of trying to impede her work by consenting to the enslaving of her highest representative, Woman!

But right here some Liberal asks: Why do you take so much pains to call our attention to these sad facts? You will find but few, if any of our girls among the inmates of houses of ill-fame. The emotional efforts of religious revivals are but the primary steps to prostitution and we work to bring discredit on all such hot house efforts, and the superstitions connected with them; what more can we do?"

What can you do? Right thinking comes before right acting. You must learn that there is something more to be done than to ignore or ridicule church claims if you would put down church tyranny. You must learn the real source of their power, and that it extends into the, to us, invisible world. When you have cast aside your prejudice, have become willing to weigh human testimony in reference to an almost universal experience—an experience extending back through history till lost in the past, when you have done all this, then you will make practical progress toward wiping out the curse of superstition.

Just so long as you sustain every institution of society but the church you are still its supporters. Back door supporters you can be called, but still you are upholding its power.

So long as the church controls sex she controls everything.

So long as you uphold the property system as it is; so long as you consent that woman's sex shall be the property of the husband, so long as you count honest statements connected with sex, whether in the bible or elsewhere, obscene, so long you are helping to perpetuate church power. For, as I have asserted and shall show in the next chapter, that sex is the basis of the power by which the church rules, and there is nothing she so much dreads as honest investigation of sex law independent of any arbitrary standard of morality.

The church, in the name of "The Lord Jesus Christ" lays claim to universal dominion. It does this openly, boldly and as something to glory in. That it should oppose that which tends to hinder or destroy its power is entirely natural; but, in taking steps to prevent that which is detrimental to itself it always puts forth a false claim, always seeks to impress upon the mind of the public that it is acting for the public good. And a large portion of the rank and file of its adherents believe this to be true.

In analyzing some of the things which have been and are being done, or are persistently worked for by church adherents, the object of this chapter is to see if we can find the true reason therefor. We know the claim, but we want to get behind the scenes and find the truth. The declared purpose of what is called the Comstock law, was that of preventing the scattering of obscene literature among the young. If said law could really be used to accomplish this and was directed toward that evil only, we might believe the object to be as stated, but when we find honest investigators of sex-law, those whose purpose is to purify society by giving it correct knowledge upon this all-important subject—when we find such earnest workers arrested and imprisoned under said law, we have cause to believe that the true reason for its enactment has not been given.

In order to find why the church opposes the open and honest investigation of sex we must notice first the fact that the church secures its adherents by appealing to the emotions instead of the reasoning faculties, and next we must find what relation sex life, sex desire sustains to the emotional nature, and when this is done we may be able to understand the real reason for the law which makes it dangerous to investigate sex independently of church theory.

That religion deals with the emotional nature is too evident to need proof, but the relation of sex to the emotions is not quite so clear; and yet a legislator, writing upon what is called "The age of consent' law, really strikes the key note. I find the following in the July Arena for 1895. A. C. Thompson says:

"In these days of enlightenment and civilization, religious instruction and moral training enter largely into the lives of children, thereby giving an early knowledge of good and evil; hence it not infrequently happens that when the first dawnings of sexual appetite make their appearance his natural desire, is under proper instruction, changed in character and becomes an acquired psychical habitude—religious emotion. For it is a fact and one capable of easy demonstration that there is a close relation between religious emotion and sexual desire—the natural desire and the acquired emotion taking the places of one another, on occasions unconsciously and without volitional effort on the part of those in whom the transformation takes place."

On the next page the same writer says:

This as taken from the product of the Professor's pen, together with comments on the same, was published some six years since, and now here comes our Kentucky legislator with testimony right in line. "Mesmeric force is simply sex magnetism." "Psychic force," "The secret of Spiritual mediumship." The sexual appetite changed in character, "becomes an acquired physical habitude—religious emotion."

What do all these mean if sex is not the basis of religion, or rather, the connecting link between this and another life, and a too close analysis of the foundation would tend to topple over the superstructure.

What does it mean but that it is through a knowledge of sex law that the priesthood here and their coadjutors in the unseen state of existence rule the people. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, then why should not the church seek through legal enactments to prevent the spread of sex knowledge.

Here, then, is a good and sufficient reason for the effort that secured the Comstock law. Again, it is a fact that no thinker will dispute that wherever there is action there is waste of some kind, that there is a something set free which corresponds to the nature of the action or emotion. It follows then, when sex desire is transformed into religious emotion that in the action upon the desire which transforms it, there is set free a fine element, a sex-aura, what becomes of it? Is it not appropriated by those who so stir emotion that it absorbs the desire?

Professor Coues says that mesmeric force is simply sex magnetism, but sex magnetism is life force and the question that needs to be solved is, does the magnetizer or hypnotist use his sex force as a vital, controlling power, or does he use it to attract that element from his subjects, thus controlling them by what is taken from them?

I have noticed that healers and hypnotists are gatherers and that all successful ministers are hypnotists; not consciously perhaps, but that does not change the fact. That some people possess remarkable power is not to be disputed, but, I think that a little investigation would show them to be natural magnets. I have long been aware that I must protect myself from healers if their healing power was directed toward another instead of myself, for if I became in any way interested I would soon find myself exhausted, would feel that strength, "virtue" had gone from me.

But my attention was more particularly drawn to this question by an experience of an aged lady who had been for many years a physician. There came to an adjoining town a man who could so hypnotize a subject that he would extract his own teeth if they needed extracting, and without pain. He would call a crowd around him and do this in any public place. In telling me her experience the lady said:

We had business over at S. while the man was there and when we were through we drove around to where he was and sat and watched his way of doing. Presently, and for the first time in my life, I fainted. In my interest in what he was doing I forgot myself and became so negative my strength was all drawn from me. I then understood how it was done; he drew force from the crowd and concentrated it upon the one he wished to affect.

Since listening to that lady's explanation I have observed more closely, and I am fully satisfied that hypnotists do not, as a rule, use their own vital force but control their subjects by drawing theirs to themselves. Take this thought and compare it with the power held by the priesthood over the people and what is the conclusion? Remember, please, that students of this question declare mesmeric force to be sex magnetism, psychic force, etc.

It is a demonstrated fact that the finer forces are the most powerful, if then, "sex desire is transformed into religious emotion" does it all become emotion? No, there is, there must be a fine force, an aura set free, and what becomes of it if not appropriated by those who thus stir the emotions religiously? It is not hard then, to see where the church gets her power, and that so long as she rules sex she rules everything. Once get an idea what an understanding of the principles of sex would be to the human family, how it would free them from all church dominance, and you will see why honest investigators of sex law are persecuted. It is a matter of self-preservation.

The young girl yearning for she knows not what, will in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, find perfect satisfaction in religious emotion.

What a thought is here! Exhaling the sex life through intense emotion as water is changed to steam by intense heat. But the water thus exhaled is not lost; no more is the sex life. Some years since I met a medium who said she had something to tell some one that spirits had told her about sex—told me they said they knew what to do with the viril—viril, the life of sex, yes, that is just what I am trying to show; they do know what to do, both with the aura of that which is mutually exhaled, (if not directed by the parties themselves) that which is exhaled in religious emotion, and that which is simply thrown away so far as the parties are concerned, because of a lack of mutual feeling. All this forms a reservoir of power, and it is now being used to build up and perpetuate this present order of things, this system of cannibalism in which the many are sacrificed to the few.

Some years since I listened to a powerful discourse from the lips of an entranced medium which purported to come from Thomas Paine. Had I not known that the laws of mind must be the same in all worlds, I should have looked upon the statements made as the vagaries of a diseased brain, but as death, so called, could not change individual characteristics, I felt that under such circumstances Thomas Paine would do as stated.

He said that when he was somewhat rested after entering spirit life, he heard a call from an advanced Congress of spirits. He did not want to go, but the call became so urgent he finally responded, and he found they were consulting as to how they could make a breach in the walls enclosing the great Catholic hierarchy there, and they wanted his advice. He so realized the importance of the undertaking that he volunteered his services. He then described the various steps taken, how he studied spiritual chemistry till he could mold the elements at will, how he then clothed himself in a robe of the Order and finally gained an entrance; but only what follows has any bearing on the subject under discussion.

The magnificence of the place was perfectly dazzling. The radiance of the one who was at the head of all this was such that one could not look steadily till accustomed to it. But he won the favor of this high official and was shown over all the territory occupied by the priesthood, and by others of high position. Finally, after a great deal of persistent effort, he obtained a glimpse of the abodes of the common people. Go, traverse the palace of the Czar of Russia, and then visit the homes of helpless poverty and you have the idea as far as the material plane can illustrate the condition.

The parallel is perfect only that is an octave higher. And why not? Why should not such earth conditions develop such spirit conditions? Where, do you ask, do those spirit dignitaries get all their magnificence? You forget that sex is creative—yes, creative, the cruder portion on the material plane only, but not all absorbed in building bodies. Strength is produced, and under the direction of intelligence material forms, all the product of sex, are molded into beauty and use. The intelligence there is not less, and church institutions there are controlled by the same spirit as here; personal authority and aggrandizement. Were this not so, why should there be need for a new "heaven" as well as a new earth?

Not only is the parallel between the conditions here and there perfect, but the methods which bring such conditions are paralleled. Here the magnificence which adorns the homes of the rich is drawn from the results of the toil of the poor, and that is why they are poor; and the honor they accord to those in high places only rivets their chains the tighter, for with all servile honor to another there goes a portion of our own life force to strengthen that other.

That is why I object to worship; and that is why the spiritual 'powers that be' are prompting such determined efforts on the part of their earth adherents to secure the observation of the Sabbath. If Sunday worship should cease and religious emotion be no longer manufactured it would have a similar effect upon the principalities and powers in that life that cutting off interest, rent, etc., would have here upon those who live from the toil of others. When the new order of life, both here and there, is ushered in, worship as practiced now will cease. The only helpful worship is that of men and women for each other.

But all spirits do not gather sex life for their own purposes, and this force can be changed into other than religious emotion. A friend of mine had a young son who contracted the habit of self-abuse. His health began to fail but she did not suspect the cause. There came a medium to her home and when entranced told her what the trouble was, proposing the development of mediumship as a remedy. The boy consented to sit in circles and soon became a fine medium. The desire to continue his habit disappeared, and he was well and happy.

But his grandmother, who was bitterly opposed to everything of the kind, determined to break it up, so she set the school children to ridiculing him, pointing their fingers at him, etc. It was more than the boy could endure; he gave up his mediumship, fell back into his old habit and died. The power which controlled that lad used his sex life to unfold his soul force, but against the interest of the church, and all the opposition to such use of sex that church spirits could bring to bear upon the grandmother was used to break him down.

We here quote our Kentucky legislator again, for what he says means so much.

The young girl, yearning for she knows not what, will in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, find perfect satisfaction in religious emotion.

I believe this to be in a measure true, at least for a time, but the transformed sex aura—the emotional steam is an over-wrought condition, which is certain to re-act, and the individual self-hood is thus weakened; while at the same time those who have gathered that emotionalized aura have obtained an undue influence over her, which is all right to those who believe the priest should rule. Yes, spirits both in the body and out, gather this sex—this psychic aura to increase the power of those who now hold the world in chains, and will till sex life is understood.

As to religious revivals, show me one in which the participants are all of one sex and I will concede that sex is not the basis of revivals. Show me a successful circle of Spiritualists sitting week after week, all men or all women, and I will concede that sex is not the connecting link between this and spirit life.

Show me that all growth from lower to higher, now and all through the ages, has not come through the law of sex, and I will concede that legal morality, that church measured morality is true morality. In a word, I maintain that we must have a new standard of morality, prove false to present standard, or cease to grow. That which health demands is moral.

There is one point in connection with sex viril, sex aura, that I must not fail to notice. Such as is evolved without the parties having a definite purpose in life beyond mere material success, and all that is evolved by those who have a purpose not antagonistic to the church, becomes in some degree a sustainer of church power, while such as is evolved by those who positively and intelligently oppose church claims cannot be thus appropriated, and in this lies one cause for the opposition to such workers. Any and every means that can safely be used to put them down will be resorted to. All that a man hath will he give for his life, and all that an institution hath will it use to perpetuate its life.

Anthony Comstock is a chosen medium for the church hierarchy in spirit life, and what is called the Comstock postal law is a deliberate plot of said hierarchy who, in conjunction with the church dignitaries of this life, seek to destroy all whose purpose is to bless humanity instead of churchanity. While caring nothing for the abuse of sex, but only that it be not diverted from their use, they cunningly made use of the general feeling against those who purposely pollute the minds of the young to get this postal law passed, but they have so worded it that with Christian Juries and a Christian Judge in the chair everything that is in opposition to Christianity could be pronounced "immoral" and thus the parties sending it through the mails be condemned. The law says:

"All obscene and immoral literature." "Oh but that will never be done," says the reader. Several things of which this has been said have already been done. Already a clairvoyant physician has been arrested for using the mails in connection with his business, the lords of the postal service deciding that the claim of diagnosing disease at a distance is a false one. The battle is on, and it is three sided.

It is not only between Christianity and the growing thought of the age, but between the gods of the East and that of the Christians, the latter claiming everything, while the former seem willing to divide the dominion over earth's inhabitants.

While the followers of Jesus have been busy in the East among the lower classes, the ideas of the educated classes there are making their way westward and finding lodgement in some of the best minds of this country. This gives us another religion to watch, for while this Eastern philosophy is a formidable opponent to Christian pretention, we have but to look into the condition of the masses there to see that Theosophy does not solve the problem of Humanity.

For further proof of our position, we have only to look at the hierarchies of wealth in this life, to note the preparations being made to crush any uprising of the people, to know, (the laws of mind being the same) that the same efforts are being made there to prevent all investigation of such questions as tend to free the people here from the law of authority; and the fact that sex is at the base of all life, that an understanding of its laws will enable people to so use their own creative forces as to build themselves up instead of using them carelessly, or allowing them to go out on the lines of worship to aid others in holding exalted positions at the foot of which they must bow as subjects. This of itself is sufficient to show why honest, true-hearted men and women are persecuted for investigating the laws that govern this universal life force.

Letters, experiences, histories, with comments on the same, will now follow.

The reader will please understand that though exact copies of what I have received, the following letters in no case bear the true name of the writer. I should use no names but for my own convenience in referring to the different ideas expressed. That the experiences given could be multiplied a millionfold, the worst still being left out of sight, is unquestionably true.

Civilization is one vast sepulcher of human souls, yes, I mean just that—souls—that part of ourselves which, connected with, permeated by sex life, becomes the center of the emotions and the channel through which the spirit, the real selfhood manifests in the flesh. The letters I here give have been received in reply to questions like the following:

"Dear Sir, or Madam: I am writing another book and I would like your opinion upon some points, first stating the following case:

"Some years since I met a lady who was living with her second husband, having a divorce from the first one. In speaking of the cause which made her leave the first husband, she said: 'He would go with other women and I always knew when as it gave me such a pain in my womb.'

" 'At the time, or afterward when he came to you,' I asked.

" 'At the time, I tested the matter again and again, telling him just when, and he could not deny it,' was her reply.

"Now, do you know of any such cases? I know of one more, not exactly like this, but similar. Also, will you please tell me what you think of the effect of mixed sex relations by the husband upon the nerves of a sensitive, finely organized woman, she not suspecting anything of the kind. Would it or would it not tend to make her irritable, nervous, unreasonable, she herself wondering why?

"Again: What do you think of the general effect of variety in sex relations? I do not mean public prostitution but such select variety as many free-lovers practice. For instance, suppose a woman who has a husband and children, a woman posing as a teacher of advanced ideas—suppose she goes from home, makes love to or accepts it from two men in the same building, as I have known to be done, she claiming it as her right, what is likely to be the effect upon the wives of those men, upon the men themselves, and eventually upon the woman? If you have any facts bearing upon variety relations please give them together with such suggestions as will aid in discovering the true law of sex association."

————

The reader will perceive from the above that while in search of truth for its own sake, I am really hoping to find evidence that variety in sex relations is not the path to the best results. Now to the letters.

The particular case I related and to which the doctor refers is where the wife and another, woman were friends. The wife took care of both families of children while the woman and the husband traveled and earned the money for their support. On the nights when the husband was at home with his wife the other woman would have spasms of the womb till it would take two or three to take care of her.

The learned and widely known doctor, without seeming to be aware of it has answered my question so far as the tendency of variety relations is concerned. He shows that it may be disintegrating to harmonious unions, for if a new relation will change the polarity and restore a broken circuit, it is liable to change the polarity and break relations that are rightly adjusted. The logic is unanswerable.

I am not now searching for that which will restore broken or partly broken attractions. I believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There are a great many things in the doctor's "change of polarity" case which are not known, things that should be fully understood before its real significance can be estimated.

First: Had the husband ever sexualized with another to so change the polarity that it needed to be changed back, or had he in the first place allowed his "strong attraction" to over-crowd the wife. There was a cause somewhere for her condition; what was it? Was her restoration permanent or only temporary, and did she continue to hold the relation with both men—all this and more needs to be known in order to a correct decision.

I am aware of the terrible mixed up condition of sex life; and I am also aware that we as a people are living far below our capabilities, far below the best in many other directions than that of sex, then so much the more need for asking the why and wherefore.

Another point: If a sexual polarity can be changed it can be pulled upon without being changed; and as we are sensitive beings, and as the nerves connected with the sex organs are the most sensitive of all, such pulling must cause intense suffering. Is not that the philosophy of what is called jealousy, of spasms of the womb, etc.

Yet again: The learned doctor did not read my question aright. In the case referred to it was not afterward when the husband came to the wife that she had the pain of which she complained, but at the very time he was having connection with another woman, and if such connection pulls upon the "polarity" but is not strong enough to break it that would be the time a very sensitive wife would feel it. But enough comment on this letter. The Dr. replies to a personal letter in a way that shows he is not pleased with my application of his "polarity" idea, but I do not see how, if his premises are correct, he is going to get away from the conclusions drawn. He writes as follows:

"What is it but jealousy?" I really wish the learned Doctor would give us a scientific diagnosis of jealousy or what is called such in connection with the love relations. If he can and will he will confer a very great favor upon many a poor mortal. He says, "what is it but jealousy," and I ask what is jealousy? Once, and some are ignorant enough to think the same now, once it was believed that hysteria was something to be laughed at. "What is the matter," would be asked of one who was suffering intensely, and a bystander would reply contemptuously, "Oh, it's nothing but hysterics."

It is now known to be a disease or weakness of the nerves. In most cases it is the unsatisfied sex nature transformed into a strength of emotion greater than the nerves can bear and intense agony is the result of the struggle. If sex feeling can be transformed into religious emotion it can be transformed into any other kind of emotion, for it is in fact the life of the emotional nature. Hysteria in religious revivals, hysteria connected with the love relations, both come from unsatisfied or over wrought sex life. It may be a mistake, this desire

It might be better if we could gather and move on and leave no intertwining fibre, but there are few who can do this, and the blending life which Swedenborg calls conjugial, or the perfect love, seems to be the ideal of the race, and when couples unite, if there is any of this blending it is natural that they should shrink from breaking the united tendrils in sunder even if there is not full adaptation. The idea that there should be a commission appointed by the state to pull people apart is fully as sensible as that the state should tie people together. It has no right to do either when considered from the standpoint of what should be instead of what is.

In the above, in the intertwining of one nature with or around another, is a hint of the root of jealousy, of the suffering caused by the wounding of those fibres. For a better understanding of the question at issue between the Doctor and myself, I will introduce another letter right here, one from a woman.

This letter surprised me exceedingly because the writer told so much that I could understand, and some things so like what I have myself experienced. I wish women could open their hearts to each other more fully. What a mine of thought would thus be opened up. While this letter seems to me to touch upon Doctor Taber's queries as I cannot find words to do, I will also give my views.

It seems to me that the reason for the difference of the feeling of the writer toward the two classes of men is very obvious. It is the difference between mere animal life and soul life. The physical, or mere animal phase of sex life when not permeated with the soul life of the human will admit of variety; the truly human relation, that in which the spirit blends, will not. Yet those who, having passed through the variety plane, have repudiated it, are called by those who are still satisfied with variety "selfish," "haven't grown," "fallen back."

Yes, if physicians would, or dare, tell what they know what a revelation it would be! But, as they will not and do not dare, the sacrifice upon the altar of ignorance continues unabated!

The lady evidently does not understand my position, or she would not have deemed it necessary to give me her idea of sex relations that have only legality behind them; but where she says of such relations "when indulged they are an offense to nature," I should say "endured" for there is no "indulgence in," but a shrinking from, and an endurance of an unwelcome relation, on the part of the woman. The man tries to obtain the satisfaction that only mutual desire can give, fails, and endures the effect afterward.

It needs not to say that such relations are destructive to body and soul, and the finer, the more highly developed, the more spiritual the parties, the keener the suffering, the more injurious the relation.

The question I am trying to solve is how to preserve mutual relations when once formed, and the reply involves the causes which tend to break them up. There are many men and women who are easily influenced—are psychologized. Such men and women may have formed mutual love relations that they would be very sorry to have broken up, but, becoming temporarily influenced by another party, and believing they have a right to respond, they do so, and by doing so are liable to take home an element which naturally destroys the sex love of the companion.

Had the party supposed there was danger of such a result nothing could have induced such a compliance with the temporary attraction. For the sake of the happiness of those who desire that their love relations should not needlessly be broken up is it not important that this question be understood?

Re-stating the question: Is there anything in mixed sex-magnetism—the magnetism of some other person mingled with that of the companion which tends, irrespective of the action of the mind, to destroy sex love even as alkali tends to neutralize or destroy acid. I do not ask if it is necessarily so, but is it not likely to be so?

If it is true that there may be—is quite likely to be such a result, and lovers learn that this is so, they will then be careful not to mingle sexually with others so long as they desire the continuation of the relation then held.

"But I am confident that jealousy was the power behind the throne. "

Here again jealousy is made to do service in explaining what is not understood.

What is jealousy? Is it not a diseased condition of the love nature caused by a violation of love's laws? Who violated those laws? Who turned the currents of her life—for love is life—awry? And yet the condition of the sufferer is made worse by unkindness. Inverted love currents—lines which pull and tug at the heart strings and yet will not break. Oh, the terrible suffering, and yet this agony is spoken of in terms of contempt. A jealous woman. It is one of the terms that have been used drive her back into herself, to hold her in subjection.

While a relation that is not mutually desired can never be justified the idea that mutual attraction always sanctions the sex act needs to be studied in all its bearings. Hypnotic drawing is sometimes mistaken for real attraction; we must not be ruled by feeling when the judgment does not sanction. A woman who divorced one husband and married again said to me not long since:

I did not want my first husband only when I was in his presence. I dreaded the marriage and cried like a child while making my wedding clothes, but as soon as I was with him it was all right. I now know I was simply psychologized. He wanted me and when where I was, controlled me.

At the time neither party understood it, but it was none the less true that it was not the mutuality which naturally blesses. I know of another where an intelligent lady, out of health and in trouble, fell temporarily under the psychological influence of a strong man and believed herself attracted. Very soon she saw his real character and then the re-action came. From that time on till the day of her death the very thought of that man was a horror to her.

I know of two others, both lovely women, who were psychologized into marriage, and the will which first controlled them continued to hold them. One of the men is dead. I shall not be sorry when I hear the other one is, for he is much older than the woman he calls his wife, and when he steps out she may possibly see a few days of comfort.

So while the lack of attraction makes a clear case against sex relations, attraction, or what seems to be such, needs to be well analyzed as to its real nature. Now another letter from Doctor Soule.

If the dear lady knows her facts no better than she knows I shall look upon her as "a sinner of sinners," she does not know them very well. She says she delayed her reply because she could not give me what I wanted. I wanted the truth. I presume she has given me the honest result of her observation and experience as a physician, and we shall never get at the bottom of this question of questions till we are not only permitted but induced to give what we know without fear of being condemned.

People are not necessarily sexual sinners because they do not live up to or believe in an established standard. When the causes of persistent evils are sought for, standards must be investigated if said causes cannot be otherwise reached. Standards are often set up which upon investigation prove to be false. New facts are likely to upset old theories, or will if we give them due weight, but this we are not always able to do because of deeply rooted prejudices.

The genuine seeker for truth must not allow prejudice to bear sway. It is the truth that I want no matter where it leads me. Still I see nothing in Doctor Soule's letters to militate against the dual ideal. In her concluding paragraph she only shows that nature had divorced parties who should no longer mate sexually but who remain together because of outside pressure. That those who no longer satisfy each other should not continue to live together as sex companions is a self-evident truth patent to all unprejudiced thinkers.

The question is not, should those remain together whom nature has divorced, but have they in their ignorance brought about nature's decree; have they by bringing in foreign elements divorced that which once blended in harmony? It is possible in some material combinations to form a union between two discordant substances by introducing a third, as in the case of water and oil, but their lack of union is inherent. They do not unite for a time and then separate because of satiety.

Alkali will combine with water and oil and we have soap as the result, which is neither of the three but something entirely different, but human beings do not, cannot so blend. Sex is creative either physically, mentally, or spiritually and when a union no longer creates in any one of these departments it is no longer of any use to either party. Men and women must continue to create in some line or death ensues. It needs not to be another human being that is created nor is bodily contact always necessary.

Now the question is, if the perfect union of one man with one woman in all three of the above departments of our life, be the ideal—if in such union there is generated health for body, soul and spirit, what steps are necessary to actualize this ideal, and what acts do, or may, retard such actualization? And further, have we a right to demand that people shall live, even the true ideal until it is reached by growth? Shall we continue to insist upon the semblance in the absence of the real, or shall we accept what is, and wait for growth to bring us what should be, doing the while, what we can to remove from the path all that tends to impede growth?

This last seems to me the better way, but before closing this chapter I will give another woman's ideas, not a physician, but widely known as a thinker.

In reference to "willing an indulgence" as spoken of above, I have a letter in my possession which I will give further on, in which the party speaks of having a mutual arrangement with another to "mentally project ourselves in the divine embrace." Several years ago I heard a man say that he had gone out in the spirit and held the sexual relation with a friend at a distance, and his wife remarked that her husband was controlled by so many different ones she never knew who was in bed with her.

These things seem strange but I believe them to be true. It is but a few months since I heard a lady tell of her physician visiting her in that way. She said: "I knew it was impossible for him to reach me in his physical body, besides he could not have come to me in body and sexualized without waking me. It was the culmination on my part which awoke me, and as I awoke I sensed him going from me. I charged him with it the next day and his reply was: 'I know it.' "

That "there are more things in heaven and earth than our philosophy has dreamed of," I find to be "o'er true." It is well, however, considering the plane that most men are on, that but few women are as sensitive as was the one whose experience is given by Lydra Dean, but that many women are thus more or less injured in health I do not in the least doubt.

The above was indeed a surprise to me. I had no recollection of ever having met the lady, but if she had been restored to health in the way S. S. L. stated I wanted to know the causes which led to her ill health and the outcome. I had simply her name and city—didn't know as I could reach her, but I did. In her remark about my experience, she mistakes. I gave her those instances I have given elsewhere, and the woman who was divorced, and the one who combined with the man and his wife were both as different in temperament from what I am as could well be possible. The first named is dead, and the other one is somewhere in Arizona, if living.

I give the above letter just as written because, under our present enslaved condition as women, it shows how much we are in the power of unprincipled men if we do not happen to please them, or if they want to blind a wife's eyes. I call her Goldena because, since I have learned who she is, my memory of her is like that of a rich, velvety flower with a golden center. But to her next letter, for of course I replied and asked an explanation.

So much for the woman who "was a physical wreck and expected to die any day but sexual commerce with strong men brought her back to health."

Her story does not give any such idea, but it makes my heart ache as I read it; and the most pitiful of all is, "And now, sister Lois, I do not believe you will respect me less for what I have written."

In that sentence is a covert pleading that I will not, a sort of confession that her self-respect has been terribly wounded. Poor golden oriole, as I remember her bright face! But she needs to learn with Helen Harlow that "no woman is ruined unless she thinks so." If all mediums would tell their experiences Goldena would not stand alone by considerable, even if publicity were given to hers. No, I do not mean to say that mediums are naturally more sensual than others, but as sensitives they are more likely to speak and act what others feel; they really carry the 'infirmities' of others in a greater degree than any other class of people.

When I was in her home Goldena lived far from where she is now, and soon after that they moved to a distant state and I had entirely lost track of them; when I wrote her I had no idea I was writing to one in whose home I had once been kindly cared for.

When her reply came I of course wrote and asked an explanation. I have a much better memory of her face than of her husband's, and at this distant date I do not remember talking with him on the sex question; I know I never called any woman "narrow, contracted, jealous" for not being willing to give her husband to the arms of another woman. As I see things, when the true law of life is learned such a thing will not be thought of.

As to Goldena's association with men, it was her right if she so chose; was it best is another question, but that she should feel forced into so doing to get bread while developing as a medium, that from then on she must feel the pangs of wounded self-respect is where the pity of it comes in. She was a victim of the development craze, of the idea that she must be passive, have no use for her will. Spirits who wanted to gather sex life for their own use took possession of her—made her their tool. I have before said that sex is the connecting link between this and spirit life, and if mediums would only tell what they know there would be no lack of evidence. But like the doctors, they are tongue-tied.

But with all her experience, the dear sister does not see the true use of sex. I am not in the least surprised that she is disgusted with the physical expression—that she should think genuine love does not need it. She has never had the soul love that, descending into the physical, makes it the culminating glory which gestates new life for body, soul and spirit; she has fed upon husks and prefers to starve to being fed thus any longer. Her hungry spirit will some day be fed; somewhere she will find a love that is holy—whole.

————

And now, permit me to say it is not a pleasant task to give such letters as that which is next in order but I called for experiences for a purpose, and to serve that purpose I must not hide what I find to be the real state of things. The man who writes me thus is a product of our so-called civilization. He and others are scattering far and wide the ideas embodied in that letter, and as I happen to know, boast of making it a business to teach girls sexual freedom, and from their standpoint of course. The only way to bring good out of evil is to hold it up to the light. Darkness breeds worms and gives voice to owls. We have had too much darkness thrown around the sex question.

I have given the exact meaning of Solomon's letter and nearly the exact words. In two or three places I have so changed a word or two as to take off some of the bare boldness, so to speak. But will the reader compare the last paragraph but one with what Lydra Dean says of getting into sex rapport through correspondence.

It may seem a strange thing that a man should say his wife would be more acceptable to him if she associated with other men, but he is not the only man I have known to feel thus, and he is talking what many men act, and from that standpoint of life, the most consistent party, for many men will visit public women, and then, if the wife has a lover, repudiate her.

I was talking with such a woman several years since, and she said: "I can't understand it; men will come and stay days with us, and then if the wife who is left all alone, turns to some one else, she is no longer good enough for them."

There is one thought comes in here, or a question to be asked, to-wit. Is it advisable to try to increase sex desire? If not, then here is an argument against variety that I have not seen used; but Solomon's statement that he is more acceptable to his wife after he has been with others (and I have heard this said before) is simply saying that he brings to her an element which stimulates her passion.

My idea is that a man has no business with a woman who does not respond to him when kindly treated and left to take her own time; that is, not crowded upon at first. Women should never be held to the purely sensuous, and that is one reason why she should be free, for in freedom she would naturally meet men upon the sensuous plane only to lead him up with her to the soul plane, which is the seat of the life giving love which all hunger for. The soul plane has its sex center near the heart, is the center of the affections. The intellectual sex center lies in the brain, and its product is brilliant but cold unless the physical life which is the stimulating force of the brain center, passes up to it by the way of the soul center, thus bringing warmth to blend with the light.

Solomon says: "I find the knowledge I now have is acceptable to her." In other words, he knows better how to treat a woman. The probability is that had he known this at first there never need to have been trouble between them. It is this ignorance that we are trying to educate out of people, but the "powers that be" are trying to prevent this, and hence the conflict between us.

The ignorance of the people is the basis upon which these powers are reared, and of course they do not like the undermining.

But there is one thing that Solomon says to which I wish to call attention. "I always see to it that she has full enjoyment." If all men would do this there would not be so many unwelcome children as now, for with such a result on the woman's part the chances of conception are many fold less.

I know I am talking plainly, but a subject of so much importance needs to clothed in language that can be understood, for when the lesson is rightly learned this blind, staggering, sensuous condition will be changed to one of self-conservation, respect and. power. When we once come to so understand sex law that no one can rob us of our sex life, we shall have become the triumphant conquerors of all evil. Another point, for my readers will say that I make variety work both ways, kill the wife's sex love and stimulate it. It does; it destroys it with some natures and stimulates it in others, but I do not regard either as a healthy, normal condition.

But before closing this chapter I will give another illustration of what Lydra says:

I think in this case it is because the man's mind is upon her. It is her he wants and not the woman he is with, and his strong desire projects his soul or astral body to her. In body he embraces the other one, in spirit he embraces her. Her astral body does not repel his, hence the result.

Doctor Dade's signature shows him to be a disciple of Stephen Pearl Andrews, a very intellectual man, but too full of himself, it seems to me, to understand woman's nature. He was another of those who have attempted to show woman her place in the economy of nature. When will man learn to take his hands off us and allow us to find our own place?

The Dr. asks as to the time the woman felt the pain. That is told in the statement made as plainly as words can tell it; yet I am asked over and over if this pain was felt at the very time the husband was with another woman or after it when he came to her? When would the magnetic lines that unite a sensitive, loving woman to her husband, be likely to be pulled upon, when he was with her, or when with another?

No, the formality of a divorce would not change the nature of the lady, but the cord when broken no longer pulls. When she ceased to have connection with the husband the pain ceased when he went elsewhere, but the law still held her, hence the divorce. Until that was granted the husband had the legal right to enforce his claim upon her person.

This woman was no sexual bigot, but intelligent and progressive above the average; a physician.

As to the second supposition of the Doctor's I can conceive of its being true only of men who are sexually like kept animals—men who live only for pleasure and are incapable of other enjoyment than of the physical senses.

That we have sex vampires, those who thrive on the magnetism they gather and appropriate, I am satisfied is true, and they are not all of the masculine gender either. Years ago I knew a magnetic and successful speaker who divorced one husband after another, with the exception of the last who committed suicide, this till she had the fifth one, each of the others having been depleted till comparatively useless in life. The last one, however, instead of giving her strength, depended upon her—drew from her. Her career as a successful speaker soon came to an end. In a few years she died, and soon after he suicided.

The fifth husband was a finely organized and fine looking man, younger than herself, who had never married, but from some cause had become impotent. She thought she could restore him, but she failed. Yet she loved him—loved, perhaps for the first time, with soul love; but the unsatisfied physical—unsatisfied where her love went—made her very unhappy. Having learned to love, relations where love was not but only physical passion, were no longer satisfactory.

Before this she had found that variety—for she lived it more or less—"increased physical and mental power."

Our Spiritualists will understand what the Doctor says about the woman who said she heard voices. There are many women who, being clairaudient and clairvoyant, not only hear what is said but see what is done. "Insane," or "jealous" is a very easy way of accounting for what one does not understand.

As to the last question, I favor the use of no language, no terms in private talk or correspondence that I would not use in public print.

I agree with what the Doctor says in the fourth paragraph of his letter, in reference to the present perverted state of society, but I do not wonder that it is perverted when a physician calling himself a reformer can recommend nude contact between males to generate force. Why not recommend Sodomy and done with it?

Still another point which I have overlooked. The Doctor says: "I do not think variety necessarily makes woman peevish and cross." My question was not understood, consequently the above is not a reply. I asked if the husband's variety did not tend to bring elements to a sensitive wife—one highly and finely organized, that irritated her nerves, making her peevish and unhappy when she had no idea, nor he neither, the cause of her condition. So much for the Pantarchican.

The Doctor evidently does not recognize the power of unseen forces—or what is termed the occult, as affecting every day life.

If a woman is almost or quite material in her development and has no outward sign of her husband's outside relations, or if she does not care for him, feeling as I once heard a very heartless woman express herself: "It is like the washing, the more of it that is put out the less I have of it to do," such women will not be affected by what they do not see or know of, but fine sensitive, womanly women who love their husbands must feel such things though not understanding the cause of their disturbed condition. So it seems to me.

And as investigators, is it best to pass too severe judgment upon persons; can we get the truth by so doing? There are good men and good women who from various causes have been led in to the "select variety" of sex life. That it is not the highest, best form I am well satisfied, but people will not be driven out of it. They must be convinced that there is a better; there must be good, substantial reasons given, and then time to re-adjust their lives to the true order.

Suppose a woman is married to a man who has become distasteful to her but for the sake of peace and her children she continues to submit to his claims, and yet at the same time loves another man and sexualizes with him also, which relation is it that makes her a prostitute, the legal or the illegal one? As I see things it is the legal one, and that the unwilling relation makes her equally so whether she associates with the man she loves or not.

But the case I gave the Doctor is not quite like the above supposition. It was that of a woman who scouts the idea of loving any man well enough to be unhappy without him, and who is ready to caress two men in one house when away from her legal mate, and to do this wherever her fancy leads, and though calling herself reformer, I am not surprised that the Doctor says prostitute. The next two letters are from members of the Social Science League.

For the benefit of such as do not understand the meaning of Dianism I will say it is a system of nude contact to exchange sex magnetism without waste; or, as Rachel Campbell would say, to exchange the life-force, the spirit of sex and preserve the husk. As to the cases named, one cannot judge from the mere facts; the causes which led thereto must be understood. In desperate conditions of physical health physicians often give, to restore the lost balance, that which if taken in health would make one sick.

In our investigations, temporary results, permanent results, best results all come in as a part of the discussion, and if the truth leads to universal mixture the honest seeker will follow. Dr. Taber's remark about the attitude of the mind, as expressed in his second letter, has much significance. If we favor or oppose a given course such feeling will inevitably affect the result.

I am no more in favor of Dianism than Social Science League is. Such disgust as he expresses is but the natural outcome of an unnatural method; still, it is barely possible, had he been prepossessed in its favor, that the result would have been different. A gentleman who was a varietist who was loved by one who did not believe in variety, once said to her after an absence of several weeks:

"I sexualized with no one while I was gone out of respect to your feelings, but I Dianized with one woman." "Oh," said she, in speaking of it afterward, "it disgusted me; I would as soon he had held the natural relation," and that is as I should feel under the same circumstances. Another League correspondent writes:

"It is the strangest thing that men are so bent on carrying out their ideas of variety that if there is a woman who is on that plane they will go miles to meet her, and some women think they are doing a big thing if they can make many conquests, but when it is all done it is ever unrest, ever craving and unsatisfied. It does not bring any permanent good, no peaceful, restful state of mind, but such is life with the great majority."

————

The lady who wrote the above has had much experience with that phase of life and knows what she is talking of.

I have never met the writer of the last letter but I know something of his first wife, and it always makes me sad to look at her. She seems to me like a magnificent but smothered glory. Could she have had a man who understood her—one who would have given her time to rest after her period of child bearing till the awakening of her spiritual sex nature, what a blessing she could have become to herself and others. Alas, how little is known of the laws of life!

————

This next letter I cannot bring myself to give in full as written; it revolts me, and yet the fault may be in me. I may not be free enough from educational prejudices and hereditary tendencies to investigate as I should. However, I will try to be just to the writer, even if I do put part of what he says in my own language.

I did not give an opinion, but wrote to find where I could obtain the book referred to, and received the following reply. I have not written him since. There is something about the whole matter so repellent to me that only the importance of the question under consideration prevented me from putting the first letter in the stove without a second reading. I have tried to reason with myself, have said: The health of that daughter was of too much account to have the mother shrink because of a fastidious feeling against having the same man treat her daughter who had treated herself, for it was simply magnetic treatment no matter what the method, yet I could not have done so.

Then I continue:—Well, if I feel thus upon a subject that I know to be of so much importance, what can be expected of those who do not see how much depends upon a correct knowledge of sex law.

The method of treatment proposed by the lady and acceded to by her friend, was simply the "Male Continence" advocated at the Oneida Community in New York when Mr. Noyes was living. However, I will make no more excuses for my feelings in this matter, but refer my readers to the letter and leave them to consider the facts there stated.

One thing is certain. People will search after knowledge in this direction, and far less evil will come from open investigation than from suppression.

————

This finishes what letters I think best to give. There are many points on which I should like to speak more fully but am at a loss just how to express just what I feel. I note, however, an almost entire absence of any recognition of the spiritual in sex. Some of the writers seem to advocate methods which not only tend to restore lost power but to increase the original capital. Doctors Taber and Dade both speak of increased pleasure through variety.

As I see things, this is a result to be feared. It seems to me analogous to stimulating trees to fruit bearing till, overtaxed, they cease bearing at all. Do not both men and women become impotent from this cause after a time. I am told that impotence is a torture to men, and if it comes from over-wrought action it seems to me it must be.

Others of the writers seem to have spiritual aspiration but think that to become spiritual they must get "above sex," grow away from it—this instead of so permeating the sex life with spirit as to satisfy, and thus take away all abnormal craving. In other words, permitting the spiritual to descend into sex and thus quenching the "raging thirst" with which many are tortured. The facts seem to those who give them, strong evidence in favor of variety. I do not so see them. They seem to me emergency measures to meet and overcome evils which are the result of ignorance and a false condition of society, justifiable, perhaps, under the circumstances but not to be desired.

Desperate diseases demand desperate remedies, but who would think of advocating such remedies as our normal food. When sex law is fully understood—when institutions are adapted to Humanity instead of as now the vain effort to adapt Humanity to institutions, I feel quite certain that there will be no cases that even seem to demand such remedies as are brought to light in those letters and in the personal experiences to follow.

I will give one experience right here as an illustration of what I mean by emergency measures. A lady who had always had a great deal of trouble with one of her children, said to a friend in my hearing:

"I do not know what you will think of such a confession, but at the time of his conception I did not want my husband but the hired man. I should have believed myself eternally lost had I yielded to that feeling, but had I known what I do now, I should have given my child a different father. I never was very deeply in love with my husband and a few years of life with him had made him almost, sometimes quite repulsive, and it has always seemed to me that this child had an involuntary controversy with me, a sort of spite for giving him the father I did."

Now suppose that at the time spoken of that mother could have foreseen the result of fathering another child by her husband, and also what the result would be should she accept the hired man, and had, in spite of her scruples, chosen the latter alternative, that would have been an emergency measure. The reader will perhaps say that my claim for woman involves the right of a woman to her choice.

Yes, but my demand calls for entirely different conditions from what we have to-day. Such freedom for woman as will bless the race will tolerate no such secrecy as deprives the child of understanding who its father is. Under the freedom I demand the element of dissimulation will not, per force of circumstances, be gestated into the very fibre of the child's being.

But enough of this now. The next chapter will reveal some strange things.

During the winter of —76 I stayed some weeks at Land's hotel in Sacramento, California, and while there a woman from somewhere up in the mountains came to the city on business and stopped several days at the same place. I got somewhat acquainted with her and she told me some strange things. She had become clairvoyant and clairaudient, could both see those who are called dead and hear them talk, and she said they were continually begging for sexual intercourse. I should have judged her insane on the sex question had I not known of different mediums who had made a similar claim.

She said she had been a Methodist, and some of those who thus beset her were her old class-leaders and class-mates, that the most filthy, obscene language she ever heard, they used. They seemed to have an idea that by some sex law they could, break through, (they called it) into matter again. She said they would scream, and curse, and swear they would break through, till their strength seemed exhausted. Their voices would grow fainter and fainter, till finally there was silence and she would have peace for a time.

This woman's statement made the greater impression upon my mind from the fact that I had read a short time before in one of Mrs. Woodhull's lectures that spiritualized sex aura was the element used in materialization, and it seemed to me that the spirits haunting this woman had gotten hold of the same idea, or a crude reflection of it, perhaps from the woman's brain, she having read the same thing I had.

But those spirits, having been taught that sex is only of the flesh, and that they must crucify the flesh, had of course very low ideas in connection with it, consequently could only use the language of the street or the brothel in their ignorant efforts to act upon the new idea. Will the reader compare what Goldena says with this woman's experiences and with Mrs.. Woodhull's statement. It looks as though a sex element was needed in the development of mediumship. Indeed, I have heard intelligent spiritualists say the same the past summer. They said it in connection with the experience of a lady the development of whose mediumship had come to a standstill, but when she married her power increased remarkably.

In "The Fountain of Life" a queer doctor is spoken of. That peculiar man, a healer who is mostly supported in his old age by those he has benefitted, once said on receiving a letter containing a ten dollar bill: "See what I get for raping a woman." On being questioned as to what he meant by such a remark as that, he said:

I have given the Doctor's statement in his own words as nearly as I can remember them. That he was controlled I do not doubt, for in the first place, a man in his senses would hardly have risked prison so recklessly, or perhaps lynching had the matter become publicly known. Again, I never heard of the man being called untruthful even by his enemies, and yet again, I have had too much testimony in regard to such matters from other mediums.

Some thirty-seven years ago I made the acquaintance of a gentleman and his wife, both mediums, who had a little boy about two years old. They both told me that they were both under control when he was begotten. Conscious, but controlled. I afterward became very much attached to the lady; indeed, she was for the time, my ideal woman, and though the years have drifted us apart she still holds a warm place in my heart.

Some two years after meeting these people I stayed a few weeks with a lady who married the second time under very peculiar circumstances. She had two little girls seven and nine years of age at the time of her husband's death, and a large house on her hands encumbered with debt. They were Universalists, he a minister, and the house had been built with the idea of establishing a school for young ladies. The lady herself was a refined, high minded, sensitive woman, and to have had scandal touch her and hers would have been terrible to her.

A wave of spiritual excitement struck the place; circles were held in the homes of her most intimate friends and she was induced to join in the investigation. She found that she was a writing medium, her hand being used independently of her brain. She was given the name of a man in Tennessee, a stranger, and told to write to him, state her case and await the result. She did so. The man came there, paid the debt, secured the property to her, and then married her. When I was there this man, legally the woman's husband, was at her home, though they did not lodge together and he stayed there but a small portion of his time. They had one child, a boy three years old and the story he told me was this:

"She has a companion in spirit life and so have I, and we never intended to live together as man and wife; never but the once have we had connection and then I was as much controlled as is the axe in the hands of the woodman."

"Why did you marry, if you did not intend to live together?" I asked.

"It was done for her protection. Spirits kept saying she was to bear another child and there were so many strange things happening she became very much alarmed lest something should occur to ruin her good name, so she went under legal cover."

Such was the story told me by the man, while the woman sat by with her sewing, and making an occasional remark, and the child playing about the room. I had heard the story from others in part, but the explanation then given made some things clear that I had not before understood.

In those days I had more belief in what is called the personal history of Jesus than I have now, and I used to wonder if that was not the way that he was begotten—if Mary and some priest in the temple were not both thus controlled. With the ideas then held, the most natural way of describing such an experience would be to call it the overshadowing power of the Highest. Mary's child was prophesied of, and so was the child of the woman who married for protection, but I notice that in the latter case the spirit, or angel had to use a human body to do the work, and why not in the former? But the reader will be asking: "What of those boys, are they making a mark in the world?"

I have entirely lost track of them; do not even know that they live.

About fifteen years ago I met with an interesting couple who seemed much attached to each other, but at times the man would be attacked with a peculiar kind of sickness in which he seemed all nerves, his head so sensitive that he had to have it entirely covered to keep the air from striking it, entirely unable to labor, and tortured with abnormal sex desire.

He and his wife were intelligent above the average and were both much interested in the sex problem, so talked freely with me on the subject. He said: "If people knew the real condition (he was sick then) they would say that excess in that direction had caused it, but the fact is I am not so troubled when I am well." They were in correspondence with a medium, a lady much older than themselves of whom they often spoke, and I said to them, you seem to think a great deal of Mrs. ——.

The wife replied: "We ought to; she saved Mark's life;" then in answer to my look of inquiry she continued: "he had been sick a long time and we did not expect he could live but a few weeks at best. Mrs. ——, came and treated him; one day she was controlled to meet him sexually. She cried about it, said I would despise her, etc. Why should I despise you for blessing him, I said, I do not expect to have him long and I am glad of anything that can give him any pleasure, but from then on he grew better, and for a long time he was well, I wish she was here now."

I said no more but did some thinking. But why give such things to the public, is the question asked, it is well enough for thinkers to know, but the masses are so likely to make bad use thereof.

The masses have been kept away from the water long enough; it is high time they learned to swim; they must learn to think or continue to be slaves and why fear giving them something to think about? But I must not forget to say that so far from being sensually organized, I never met a man who seemed more clean and pure in thought. He was more finely organized than his wife, and I have sometimes wondered if that had anything to do with his sickness.

A minister whose orthodox cloak is getting so thin that the light penetrates it, says there is no morality, there is no religion, it is science. That is what we want, the science of sex, the science of human needs, the science of nature's law, and whatever conflicts with these is immoral, is irreligious.

But before leaving this question of spirit control connected with sex I will go back nearly thirty years to a little village in the state of New York where I spent the Sabbath and spoke in the old Universalist church. Where I was entertained the man was a successful healer, had performed some remarkable cures; he was unconscious while treating his patients, and he told me, his wife being present, that on one occasion he used sex magnetism and never should have known what had happened had he not been told.

Coming nearer to the present time, there is a lady in an eastern city who within the last four years has type-written and sent out a few copies of a pamphlet on the subject of sex. She says that not being married she is not supposed to know anything about this question, but that she has a spirit husband who comes to her when she does not violate the law that makes it possible for him to come; no, the lady is not insane, for I often see her name in connection with the active workers in the field of reform.

This last case reminds me of a story told in the old Testament Apocrypha, which could usually be found in the large bible when I was young. A certain man had a daughter who had a familiar spirit, evil spirit, I think the book says, and when he gave her to some man as wife, when they went to the nuptial bed this spirit would kill him. Finally the spirit's power was broken and the girl could have a human husband. I hardly think there would be any such trouble in this modern case, for the lady would not be given away by her father; she would make her own choice and the spirit would have to abide by it.

But a word more about our healers. No, they are not "a lecherous class." The magnetism thrown off through their hands in their treatments tends to lessen, not increase passion, and those I have talked with say they prefer the mind free from everything of the kind. It is only when the condition of the patient demands it and the healer very easily controlled that, so far as I know, such cases of sex treatment have occurred. But mediums are not the only ones who understand the healing power of sex in some conditions of weakness. I have been told of healers being called into church families to treat frail, undeveloped girls thus, the parents having confidence in the man that he would not go beyond the magnetic phase, and preferring this to the death of their child.

Since commencing this chapter, a strange thing has occurred. I had no thought of touching Beecher's case, but kept feeling the presence of some one who seemed to want to say something to me. I invited a young lady friend, a medium but not for the public, to spend the evening with me. We had a successful sitting, the medium seeing, and giving the name of the only sister of Henry Ward's that I ever saw, and as she was twenty years ago. I never met her but the once, and in coming to me she would naturally think of that time, and thus stir the subtle ether in which clairvoyants see, in waves like as she then was, as she would live in that time while thinking of it. This is not miracle; it is "science."

I expressed my pleasure at meeting her again and asked if there was any particular thing she wished to say to me. She assured me of the great interest she took in my work and said she wanted me to speak of her brother Henry in connection with what I am now writing. I have not heard of this lady's transition, (Nov. 19—95) so do not know if she came in her astral body or as a spirit freed from the mortal form.

Now, as before said, I had not once thought of speaking of Mr. Beecher in connection with this work, but his experience is really in line with it. I well remember Mrs. Hooker telling me that her brother's domestic life had been one long martyrdom. She did not speak against Mrs. Beecher personally; each with a suitable companion might have been happy, but a dove would torture an eagle were they tied together.

I do not know as I can make my meaning clear as to the cause which led to the great social storm called "The Beecher scandal" but I will try.

In 1874 the writer of this declared sex, as the fountain of all life, to be also the fountain of all power. This declaration was published, not only in the paper then being issued from Battle Creek, Mich. but 1500 pamphlets of the same matter were sent out. In 1888, 1000 copies of another pamphlet were issued in which sex was declared to be re-generative as well as generative. It was averred that our young people should be taught that children are but the first fruits of sex use—that it is a refiner, a regenerator if we recognize the spiritual in the blending which thrills soul as well as body when soul is permitted to take part in the creative act.

The two pamphlets named are, with another, embodied in "The Occult Forces of Sex." I give these details, first, because it is pleasant to go back and trace the growth from then till now; next because the first steps of a great movement are not personal, but public property; and lastly, because they, with what Mrs. Woodhull and others said and did, show the condition of the mental atmosphere at the time, Beecher's experience being but a thunder clap presaging the storm which will drive mere legality out of sight in making way for the higher love life that is coming. Those were seed time days, and the lines,

is only another way of saying that the vibrations now coming to us from higher planes are intense with creative power, that the world is being impregnated with a higher life. Yes, that was seed time, and the green blades now begin to appear. Many are accepting the thought that the creative power of men and women is evolving to a higher plane where sex intercourse will be more of brain and soul than of the body, and a few are beginning to see what the writer has all along maintained, that to be a soul and brain association the bodily organs need not be left out.

The thought directs the use, kindling brain and soul into action, thus making the act whole—holy.

No sanction of church or state can make such an act more pure nor the lack of such sanction less so.

For nearly or quite half a century this truth has found lodgment in the brain of here and there a thinker, and Beecher stood where investigation became a necessity. He could not live on husks and give his people bread, and he must justify himself to himself which he could not do if he accepted law without love as his standard of right. He saw that legality had no right to come between mated, growing souls. He took that which was his by nature's law and said of her who had been a ministering life: "She is innocent of the great transgression."

He did not feel it transgression only when the old bore in upon him till he could not rise above its questionings. The world interpreted from the old standard, he from the new. He knew that legality could not touch the soul life no matter how much it might assume. Had the church, had public opinion left Beecher to manage his own private matters he could have remedied his mistaken choice years before. That was the wrong association, not the one the world condemned.

Oh, for the hammer of Thor to break in pieces the chains which legality has put upon growing souls!

Oh, that Beecher had been true to the light he saw! Weighed, and found wanting! Woman must do this work.

For some reason, people give me their confidence, tell me their experiences when I am least expecting it. Some years since a middle aged lady called at the office where I was working. I think she was canvassing for books at the time. We had some conversation and I found her quite radical in her ideas. In a few days she called again and I chanced to be alone. She then gave me facts in her history of which the public did not even dream. She said:

Nearly four years afterward I met this lady again. She called in company with another lady who was having some domestic trouble. She said to the other lady: "You should tell Mrs. Waisbrooker everything for you know she will make good use of it," but it was herself that attracted my attention, she looked so bright and happy. She seemed to have grown finer, more spiritual. Indeed, I never saw such a change in any one; her soul seemed to radiate light through her features. I asked a question about the man she had told me of, but in a way that she alone would know who was intended but she evaded a reply. Presently the other lady left, then she said:

What was the law that governed in this case? Why was she satisfied during the period of child bearing, then dissatisfied and sick when she came to the transition period, and why should another man, an entire stranger, so attract her when at that age if, as some claim, sex is only for the propagation of the race? I have quoted the following in another work, but it is very appropriate here.

Mrs. Farnham, in her "Woman and her Era," says that at the transition period women divide into three classes. In one class, when the periodical flow ceases that element is transferred to the masculine side of woman's nature, and she grows strong but coarse. In another class it seems to be lost, woman sinking down a helpless dependent. In the third, a small but increasing class, this power rises into the spiritual and woman grows beautifully old, finds her last days her best, most useful days.

That woman as a sex, is passing into a higher phase of life I cannot doubt, but this growth does not come from obedience to our stereotyped morality, but from the action of nature's law transferring the materially creative element of sex into psychic or soul life. As I read this woman's case, nature was trying to transmute the monthly flow into psychic, or soul growth but there was nothing in her husband's nature to aid that effort, so she was sinking down helpless; was sick and starved, for what she did not know, but when she met the man who could supply that need she was drawn to him as the starving are to food. It was not because of a lascivious nature, but a normal demand which she had a right to satisfy and all the legal enactments in the world could not make her act a wrong or impure one.

When there is a right understanding of this spiritual law in sex, when the young are taught to look beyond mere physical pleasure, then they will expect this awakening and prepare for it. This expectation will call out in the man's nature that which is needed, or if not, he will know that he can no longer hold the woman he has called wife; and in a true state of society, one which recognizes woman's right to herself, he will not be needed in the home as her protection.

First the natural or material, then the spiritual, and however much man may assume to lead in the first he cannot in the last; he must follow woman's lead, or they must part, or live in a death-in-life condition. But it is not true of all women, perhaps of but few, that the spiritual does not awake until the transition period. With many it unfolds with the first dawn of womanhood. It creates an ever-present demand for soul love, but receives a new and higher development at that period. In reference to wanting she knew not what, the difference between that lady and myself was that I did know, but it was first one thing and then another, and whatever it was, could I not get it I was sick. On the other hand, no matter what it might be, even to brandy, nor how much I might take when I felt that peculiar, insistent desire, it never injured me, not even that which would have made me sick at another time.

This feeling was Nature's call for what she needed in her work, one of her "emergency measures," and as much so in that lady's case as in mine; the fact of a different want does not change the principle. But the "majesty of the law" must be sustained and an arbitrary morality satisfied if half the race dies in consequence. "The law!" how busily its sustainers are engaged in straining out the smallest gnats, and how triumphantly the camels continue to escape!

That which follows was told by a lady who at the time it occurred lived in an eastern city, but when she related the story to me, was a practising physician in the far west. I had known her in the east and was glad to meet her again. We had both done some thinking in the time and had much to say to each other. Of what she told me during the little time we were together, but one thing made any particular impression. She said:

Lois, there is more to this sex question than most people suppose, but if we dared to tell what we know they would ostracise and starve us out. I had friend in the east who was a widow. Her husband had been a man of strong passions, but now she was alone. She lived in one of the suburbs and had to cross the river to reach the city. One day she came to me looking terribly distressed, and told me that as she was coming over the bridge she was seized with an intense sex desire, so much so that it was absolute torture and she did not know what to do. That was before I began to practice, and I supposed it a symptom of some disease with which she was attacked, and went with her to two or three physicians but all to no purpose. I became disgusted with what seemed to me their ignorance, and finally went to a medium near by. He seemed to understand and said, leave her with me, I will take care of her; so I went home and left her, knowing she must have relief in some way. When she came to me the next morning she looked like one glorified. I never saw such a change in so short a time. She told me they sexualized three times; once for the physical, once for the intellectual, and once for the spiritual. I never heard of her having any more such trouble.

I wish I could put into words the idea that I get a glimpse of in this case, but there has been so little thought in this direction that words seem to slip away from me when I try, even to think clearly upon it; I will say this, however: Looking upon that woman's experience in the light of the philosophy of modern Spiritualism, taking the ground that the death of the body does not change the nature of the individual, is it not possible it was the first time, after leaving his body, that the man had come into rapport with his wife, and in doing so had thrown his unsatisfied sex want upon her, and in an intensified state.

[Right here, a word about the often used phrase, "bodily appetites." The body has none. Appetite, passion, are terms that signify want, desire, not of the body, but of the life which, as far as is possible, expresses the self-hood that uses the body. Sex is an attribute of this self-hood, this indwelling I am, but our ignorance has been such that only that element of sex which is on a level with the flesh has been permitted to permeate and find expression through it; and thus the sex act has not been whole—holy, has been called lust. Please remember then, that though expressed through the body, the appetites and passions are not of body; and let not those who indulge in the flesh at the expense of the spirit flatter themselves that all such desires will cease with the death of the body for they will find themselves mistaken. We will now return to our widow.]

Is it not further possible that the man while here had regarded sex as purely of the flesh, and had thus no idea of any way of help except through the flesh, but when coming in contact with, and then using the medium's body to connect with his wife, the intelligence of that medium connected him also with the spiritual in sex, and that from then on, he was able as a spirit, to gather what was needed to satisfy his hungry spirit body, the soul, without making his wife suffer or controlling another through whom to meet her in the flesh? I do not say that this was so, for I do not know, but from facts that have come to me and hints, as it were, of thought gathered, I feel there is a truth somewhere in this line that needs fathoming.

One of our best thinkers says of certain stages of mental growth:

"He becomes a spiritual alchemist, and through the alembic of the divinity awakened within him is able to transmute the 'common and unclean' into the pure, the ideal, the God-like."

It seems to me that some such law of life as this writer expresses was brought into action in the case of that widow. I once received a letter from a lady who said she was pastor of a church in that city, and that letter contained a hint of the same idea. She told me of a girl who was in her home for awhile who had been sent to her from a magdalene home. She said for a time the girl seemed all right, then she began to be restless, and soon it was found that she was meeting men on the street and she had to be sent back to the home. The Rev. lady (as nearly as I can remember the words) then said she had sometimes wondered if there were not men who could cure such girls of that abnormal condition without risking parentage. I replied, told her I thought I understood her idea, and made some suggestions of a similar nature. I did not hear from her again.

As to the effect of unseen influences, I know something of that from personal experience. I am what is called a sympathetic medium; that is, I know by the feeling thrown upon me, what the relation of the unseen presence to the one they desire to reach. I will cite a few cases: Once while lecturing I met a gentleman who had lost his wife a few months before. Had I not known from previous experience what the feeling meant I should have believed that I had fallen desperately in love with that man. As it was I had to keep strict guard over myself to see that I made no unwise move. Stopping at the same place, I was much in his company the short time I remained. One day while listening to his talk of his wife, I said: "Permit me to tell you one thing your wife used to do, when you were sitting or lying down, as she passed you she would place her hand upon your forehead run it up into your hair, and then kiss you."

"Yes, often, often," was his reply.

Soon after I had occasion to go into the next room and he was lying on the sofa with his head near the door. As I passed him I put my hand upon his forehead, pushed it up into his hair, looked at him and smiled. "Yes, that's just the motion," he said—no, I did not kiss him, but it required will power to keep from doing so even though I knew the feeling did not originate with me, that when I left, which was the next day, he would be no more to me than any other stranger. Another case:

I once met a gentleman at a Convention, of whom I had heard my friends speak but had never seen till then. He too had lost his wife a short time before, and I think he came with the hope of hearing from her as he was not in the habit of attending those meetings. A circle was held and I was a little late; as I stepped into the room this man's wife met me. I did not see, but sensed her, and the conditions were such I consented to her wishes. She took me to her husband, seated me on the carpet at his feet, and laid my head, on his knee. The man bent over till his head rested on my shoulder and great, convulsive sobs shook his whole frame. "Oh," said he, as soon as he could speak "she has done that a thousand times."

I might relate much more, both of my own experience and that of others' but it is not needed to show that we are, or may become psychological subjects for invisible intelligences, and if they can control mediums for one thing they can for another if conditions are right for it. I did not cultivate, but rather discouraged in myself the phase of mediumship of which I have spoken, and at last refused entirely to be so influenced, because I found I was likely to be misunderstood and thus grieve others, as well as being injured myself. My final lesson was like this:

During my stay in one place I was much of the time at a home where there was a second wife, a sweet quiet little woman of deep feelings, and in my estimation, superior to her husband who was a chatty, sociable sort of man. I often felt the presence of his first wife while talking with him. Before I left the neighborhood the wife's health began to fail; had to call in the doctor. What was my surprise upon meeting the husband a year afterward, to be told that M's sickness was caused by her fear that I was drawing his affections from her, and he told me of some things I did of which I had not the least recollection. It all came from that phase of sympathetic mediumship which enabled his first wife to get near him, and he, sensing her presence without realizing what it was, made more response than he was aware of, and being so much under that influence, I would not note it as readily; but though a quarter of a century has passed, I never think of that little woman, and the suffering I thus unwittingly caused her, without a pang of regret.

Judging thus from personal experiences, my own and others', the supposition I have made as to the cause of that widow's sexual suffering at that particular time, and the philosophy of her relief, are not so far fetched as to be out of harmony with facts.

And just now there comes to my mind a story told nearly forty years ago; one that I paid less attention to then than I should to a reliable statement of the kind now. A lady whose word I had no reason to doubt, told me her deceased husband found a medium he could make entirely unconscious, and through him claimed the old relation: that she had yielded once or twice, but feeling it was not using the medium right she had refused to do so longer. Was she sure the man was unconscious? She claimed she was sure.

But in the face of all these things, with the failure of the ages behind us, with the fact of the astral body going out thus, with partial materialization, with absolute control, all defying legal power, the attempt to measure sex morality by an arbitrary standard, then trying to enforce it by law is the height of folly.

Investigation is what is needed.

————

I had intended with the above remarks to close the chapter, but there comes to me so vividly the memory of two experiences which so fully show that investigation and education are indeed what we need, that variety, select or otherwise, will yield to the light which shows the way to the keeping of the dual relation intact, I will give them here because of the lessons they teach.

A gentleman who was urging the benefits of variety, told me his experience as follows.

I listened till he said what he wished, then asked: "If you had known at first what you do now, and had so treated your wife that she had not failed you, and the thought of another woman had never come between you, would you not be happier now?"

"Indeed I should," was his quick response. There spoke the soul of the man; that reply scattered his argument for variety to the winds. I do not condemn him for remedying the results of his ignorance as best he could, but do urge open and full investigation, and such instruction for the young, that such mistakes may not occur—that man may not destroy his life-blessing by haste and excess. Earnest warning will not deter the investigating mind from trying to look into that which is hidden.

One of the most eloquent appeals to the young to live pure lives that I ever read, was wholly lacking in instruction and was more likely to excite curiosity than to restrain those for whom it was intended.

The writer painted in vivid colors the terrible results flowing from the violation of "God's holy law of purity," and citing a case of a young man wasted away with disease, till his bones turned to rottenness because "once, only once" he had broken "God's holy law of purity," and that he mourned because he had "hated instruction." The trouble, doubtless was, the poor fellow had not had instruction; he had only had warning, and when temptation came in the guise of a fascinating, but diseased woman, he readily fell into the snare. "Once, only once." A youth of ordinary intelligence would naturally ask why it was that Harry Hart did not suffer thus when he seduced, and forsook Maggie Jones, if one violation of the accepted standard produces such terrible results?

Children feel that the whole truth has not been told, that they are being deceived; they become not only curious but defiant. Such one-sided statements tend to create distrust of what is told them on that subject; they investigate secretly, and under bad influences, and thus society is cursed.

No, no, this is something that cannot be buried from sight like a dead animal, no matter how repulsive the details of its perversions may be; it is a living, an unquenchable fire, that as we deal with it, either refines or consumes.

Once it was told from the platform, and that the women who heard me, some of them at least, will never forgive me for owning to sex desire, I feel quite certain. One fine looking woman said to me, if they can't get above the sex question I shall stop coming to these meetings. When asked how high they would have to go to get above it, she didn't seem to know.

I met her again some six years after, and she had a son with her, a witling some sixteen or seventeen years old with the intelligence of a child of five. But to that experience: I have survived more than twenty years since the first telling, and think telling it again will hurt no one else.

The social question was up. Beecher, Woodhull, Tilton, were names upon every tongue. The frightened ones would not permit us to examine and calmly discuss; no, we must denounce or defend, and I lost sight of myself, told the experience for the sake of the lesson; and for that I tell it now.

I said that in my itinerating trips, speaking in school houses, court houses, halls, anywhere I could get a hearing, after awhile there come a feeling of exhaustion and intense sex desire; that it came unsought and would not be willed away. Continuing the experience I said I attended a two day meeting with this feeling, and being speaker and secretary had thrown me into the society of gentlemen whose range of intelligence made them companionable; when the meeting was over that sex feeling was all gone, and not a move had been made that Mother Grundy could have found fault with, had she been with me all the time.

It was a big lesson to me, and I thought it would be to others. The why of the feeling with which I had been tortured. My working force had all given out and Nature was calling for more; if it could not be gathered in a general way it must be manufactured (sex being creative) or I must suffer for lack of vital force. That experience taught me, when I found my forces going, to, as far as was possible, so relate myself to persons and conditions that I could gather what was needed without shocking myself or anyone else.

Since then I have blamed ministers who stumble, less, and pitied them more. If we could talk as freely of creative hunger, of the conditions that aggravate or quiet—as we can of stomach hunger, pitfalls might be avoided, and lives happily balanced that now go to ruin. And yet, it was a terrible thing! that telling of my experience! Such is present judgment. The future will reverse it. I can wait.

The following letters give a glimpse of the "under cover" working of society as it exists to-day. Occasionally, years ago, I used to meet the writer, and she was well spoken of. She certainly would not tell me such things of herself if they were not true. As to her friend's life, I see no reason why she should mis-state or exaggerate, and the fact that she give me her own name, while withholding that of her friend, shows her sense of honor.

There is food for much thought in this history so frankly given, in connection with the workings of variety. The first thing I will notice is what Mrs. Clinton says of never hearing sex vulgarity from the doctor. When I read that I stopped to think; I went over all that I have ever known of men who openly advocated the freedom of the affections, and I could not remember ever hearing a vulgar word or insinuation connected with sex, from any one of them. I know I should have remembered if I had heard any thing of the kind, for no one thing so completely disgusts me with either man or woman.

As to his association with other women, I think it was because he did not have his wife's love, could not win from her that which satisfied, so he sought elsewhere, but not to the extent of being willing to give her up, and the selfish mother in spirit life helped to hold her, being just as willing to sacrifice another mother's daughter to her son as many a selfish mother is here, in this life. But as I see things, when this sex question is fully understood, no man or woman can hold another as that woman was held.

As to the second case, it seems to me to prove that when only the physical life is stirred, variety does not trouble some natures; but when a deeper, a higher, closer union is desired, when nature is working to that end, then no third party is welcome. At that period that woman needed all her husband's love and devotion, and I think the very fact that the other woman would have had more consideration for her than he did had she known the wife's wish, only hurt her the worse.

Yet another point: When Mrs. Clinton speaks of always feeling her husband's presence when she held the sex relation, it made me wonder how much vicarious work is done, in that direction as well as others, for those who have gone over. Surely, nature protests loudly against people's dying, leaving the earth-body, till their work is done—the soul so ripened that it will have no need to return to gather through others.

Life, better, more perfect life is what is called for, and it can no where be found but in the right use of the life-fountain, sex. Only in an understanding of, and obedience to the law inhering in sex, all conditions and institutions being adapted to the possibility of such obedience.

Of course I replied to Mrs. Clinton's letter, and she gave me her friend's history as follows:

I may be mistaken, but I think I know who Mrs. Clinton's friend is, and if I am right, hers has indeed been a triumph.

The only drawback in my mind is that society is so cruel, so false, so unjust she cannot show others the path in which she has walked, the difficulties she has overcome without destroying herself. Could she do this, could she point to the abyss from whence she has climbed, could she uncover the path by which she made her way upward and say: Courage, my struggling sisters, then the fullness of the blessing of her triumph could shine out, but now it can do so only in part.

These letters, this confidence was a surprise, but not more so than many things I have been learning for the last twenty years. One thought strikes me when reading Mrs. C.'s account of her friend's course, and it is this: It will be asked why that friend could not live with her husband without children as well as with another man. There are two reasons why.

The first is, husbands as a rule, do not care what the results are so they are fully gratified. The other is, conception, the mere material phase which makes the child a child of lust, is more likely to take place when the woman does not respond than when she does. This, if nothing else should forever protect woman from an unwelcome embrace.

Further correspondence with Mrs. C. shows that she has profited by her experiences and is thinking deeply, and here I will make an extract from another letter in which she argues the question of conscience in connection with the violation of the legal sex code. She says:

In reply to the above question I unhesitatingly say: Yes, she can, if she is strong enough, virtuous enough to do so. In binding woman as he has, man has taken from her the very power that nature gave her for good. How many men would live low, degraded lives if they could know that by so doing they deprived themselves of all hope of woman's love?

The demand here made for woman's entire freedom will give her the power to always use her sex conscientiously and for the betterment of Humanity. Now the only conscience she can have in the matter is the educated one that she must submit to her husband—that she owes him wifely duty.

Several years since I met at one of the many camp meetings I have attended, a gentleman and lady whom I will call Mr. and Mrs. Caldern. The lady had a little girl about two years old, a bright, winsome little thing. They purchased copies of such of my books as I had with me, and soon after a younger, an unmarried man came up to whom I was introduced as Mr. Burns. He commenced looking over my books when Mrs. Caldern remarked:

"You don't need to buy those books, George, for we have just bought them."

The two gentlemen were very friendly. They were traveling and had taken in the camp on their route. Somehow, by one of those instincts or intuitions by which we know things without external evidence, I felt that the little girl belonged to the younger man. Still I refused to accept what I felt, and finding that Burns had been a member of the family for several years, I decided that the resemblance between the two was the result of a sort of psychic impression having been made upon the mother, she had transmitted the same to her child. I was the more inclined to this view from what I had heard a gentleman say some years before, of the difference between his eldest daughter and the other children:

She is like the elder who was on our circuit the year she was born (they were Methodist and he himself was a minister at the time of his marriage) but I know she does not belong to him for wife was three months along the first time she saw him, but after that he was often at our house and Mary not only looks but acts like him.

It was thus I reasoned in connection with Mrs. Caldern and her child, still I could not wholly rid myself of the first impression. About a year afterward I learned through a friend that Caldern and his wife had separated, Caldern going away and Burns remaining with the family which consisted of an older daughter and a son. The only reason given for this was that they, a company of them, were going into a co-operative society in a distant state, that Caldern would not go, and, the property being his wife's he could not control it so he had left in disgust.

I felt that all was not told but I made no comments, asked no questions. The colony proved a failure. Finally Mrs. Caldern, her two girls and Burns came to the very town in which I was living and then she told me her story. She said:

Such was the story she told me and there was that about her which made me feel she told the truth. They went away from the place soon after and I have lost track of them, so I do not know if they are together yet or not. One other thing that she told me it may be well to repeat as it has a bearing upon the question we are seeking to solve. Mr. Burns was a fine writer, a more than average intellectual man, and in speaking of the tie between them she said:

"I can't understand it, but when his brain gets weary and he cannot write, he will come to me and if I can take the time to take his head upon my breast, put my arms around him and hold him so for awhile, he can then study and write for hours, sometimes all night."

That woman had been prostituted in all the sex relations she had ever held till she met this man, and yet her relations with him were the only ones for which the world condemned her. Oh, purity, how thou art outraged! Oh, woman, how thou art enslaved! And how thou huggest thy chains lest the world should see thy wounds!

"But where is the use of uncovering these private histories," is the question asked; "so long as people refuse to obey God's laws so long will these things be and we cannot help it. People must obey or suffer the consequences."

Yes, genuine obedience to moral or physical law brings its certain results, but who was guilty in the case of this woman? Who or what was and is responsible for what she did that has brought her so much suffering? Ignorance of law—of the innate workings of that universal life which is personified as God. That father had been wrongly taught and he attempted to enforce what he called God's law when by his severity he crushed his child's power of self-assertion by those cruel blows because in defiance of his commands she obeyed the natural law of her own young life and sought such social pleasure as was her right.

In his eyes she had doubly disobeyed, doubly violated God's law, she had disobeyed her father and she had danced, but the facts of the case were he had no right to forbid her the natural and innocent pleasures of youth, and she really obeyed life's law—that life which is called God when she disobeyed that tyrannical command, but in this her moral sense was wounded because of her wrong teaching. She believed she did wrong in disobeying her father. She could not understand that disobedience to tyranny was really obedience to the great law of progress. She had a right to amusement, youthful, social life, a right to the pleasure such association affords, and though believing she was doing wrong the inherent claim to her natural right was too strong to be restrained even under the reproof of a wrongly educated conscience. She obeyed the true law as expressed through all young creatures—the love of sport, of playful social life. Thus the true God-law was obeyed in spite of prohibitory ignorance, but only temporarily, and at what a fearful cost to that poor child!

The father's ignorance violated his child's rights through arbitrary restraint. The young man violated the girl's right to herself, to intelligent mutuality and then the father violated the rights of both by forcing upon them an undesired legal tie, thus making the first great wrong perpetual. Marriage, a legal tie, was under the circumstances considered reparation. The curse of that kind of reparation will be felt in the coming generations. Those children born only of the flesh, and undesired at that, can ever rise only through great suffering, even if it be possible to overcome their heredity in this life. The mother's heart has already been wrung beyond the power of words to express by the waywardness of the daughter of that marriage, and what is to come remains to be seen.

But what of Burns' child, it will be asked. A bright child; one of considerable promise, but how can she be entirely truthful in her nature when the whole period of gestation was one of deception. The mother's starved nature asserted itself, but at what a price! Why, in the case of this outraged woman, child, rather, was marriage considered reparation?

Because only the physical quality of sex is recognized. Because a woman is considered ruined if she is thus possessed without legal sanction. In a word, from the cradle to the grave no woman belongs to herself. Oh, if woman could only see what this slavery means—how it curses the race, could see what freedom means—see that intelligently used it would become the gate-way to a perfected life, she would never rest till it was fully secured.

The last I knew of this couple they were still together, but the woman's life was a martyrdom. Their relation still unacknowledged, and, refusing to become a mother again under such conditions, she destroyed the foetus. He would not give her up and she was not strong enough to resist one whose touch so thrilled her, so her life speeds on under these sad conditions. My heart aches every time I think of her—the poor, wronged soul.

Do I justify her course? I do not condemn her, and mark you—proud ladies, who glory in being "chaste as ice," there is not one of you, but, with the same organization and under the same circumstances, would have done just as she has done. I pity her. I feel that she has been more sinned against than sinning, and I love her.

Were woman free and the conditions of society adjusted to that freedom, such things would never be. Unacknowledged relations would be unknown, while now the children whose legal and real father are not one and the same, would, were they all brought together, astonish by their number those who look only upon the surface of things. Evidence of woman's perfidy, do you say? Evidence that nature is stronger than statute law—evidence that some will take by stealth that which should be theirs by right.

Now don't be frightened into thinking that in freedom woman would run wild; don't picture what would be by comparing it with what now is, but remember this, now and always, when you think of freedom for woman: No woman would ever submit to an unwelcome embrace. Not only this, but as lovers would never insist, demand, as too many husbands do, no woman's sex life would be destroyed because rudely treated.

In the past woman has been obliged to submit, but things are changing. Woman is waking up to the fact that there is more to her selfhood than sex—that she was not created simply as an instrument of man's pleasure. If there is any truth in the words: "By their fruits ye shall know them," then the fruit of man's rule in sex forever condemns said rule.

I have recently been reading some of Mabel Collins' books, and in those eastern ideas are many things to be learned. Morial the Mahatma is the most perfect character picture of the Jewish Jehovah I have ever seen. "The ashes of the heart"—the death of all human loves, the most unquestioning obedience demanded; lies, hypocrisy, anything in the service of "The Master. "

Daphne will not violate her own sense of right in blind obedience. She defies and thus conquers, thus destroys the fearful monster. This is what woman must do in asserting her right to herself. She must defy the power that enslaves her, must refuse to be prostituted legally or illegally, and nature knows no prostitution but unwilling subjection.

Another book of Miss Collins' has Fleta as the central figure—Fleta who seeks to enter where woman has never yet gone—into the Order of the White Brotherhood, but fails because she has not cast out all human love. She says she has consumed her soul but not her heart. Fleta's mistake, as I see it, consists in trying to reach only the highest that man has attained. She does not seem to get even a glimpse of the possibility of there being a higher. Some woman will yet establish an Order of the Loyal Sisterhood—and with the determination of wrenching from man his usurped place of the highest—this by rising above him into her own true realm, that of Universal Motherhood. Oh, how much this world needs a Mother.

Such ascent will not demand the ashes of the heart but its divinest, pulsating life. Man seems to think that the path to purity lies through the crucifixion of sex and the tearing out from the heart of all human loves connected with and springing out of sex-relations. I mean such men as aspire to holiness, so-called, to such priestly place and power as allies them with the gods. But woman can see pure uses for sex and in the loyalty of her mother soul will yet make a path for herself that will not need sex crucifixion, but the exaltation of all the human till in perfect accord with the divine.

When this comes true such sad histories as that of my friend as related in the first part of this chapter, will be unknown. I am glad Fleta failed; am glad that she could not tear all human love from her heart and live. I thank the writer of "Blossoms and Fruit" for the suggestion here given, for in it there is hope for the hungry heart of the race. Yes, I am glad Fleta failed of reaching man's highest ideal, even as all women must fail who try to walk in man's paths instead of making one for themselves.

In the June Arena for —95 the editor, B. O. Flower, quotes from a lady physician who says that so many girls fall because being born of lust instead of love they inherit lustful desires, strong passional natures.

All are born of lust who were begotten by those who regard sex as simply of the flesh; that is, they are born with desire in the ascendancy, not subject to the control of the spiritual by a law of their nature, but must come into that condition through such suffering as brings growth.

Mankind do not love change. I mean such change as involves reconstruction. Were it not so pitiful it would be amusing to watch the efforts made to prevent the evils which are the natural, the inevitable result of the system under which we live. It cannot be done. If it could, if such evils could even be kept out of sight, there would never be reconstruction upon a higher basis.

Society to-day is a problem wrongly stated. The desired solution can never be reached till there is a restatement, and our reformers are going through experiences similar to one I had many years ago while teaching a district school. In a new edition of the arithmetic in use there had been added six pages of miscellaneous examples. I commenced solving them for I wanted to be certain that I could do so before the advanced class reached them. It would have been very humiliating to have to say to a pupil, I do not know, I cannot show you.

I found no difficulty with the exception of one problem. That I could not understand and I could find no one who did, for the superintendent of the county schools was as badly puzzled as myself. Having no idea of giving up beaten I stated, restated and kept at work, but all to no purpose. I could nearly get the solution but not quite; there was always a residue unaccounted for. Night after night I lay awake hour after hour, multiplying, dividing, subtracting, carrying each part in my head till, if all had been represented on my pillow, it would have been entirely covered in the morning.

One Sunday evening as I sat looking into the fire and thinking, not of the bible nor of a sermon but of that problem, all at once I saw the principle involved and then knew under what rule it came. I had no farther trouble. A correct statement and the solution was sure.

Is it not just possible that all the efforts of the past and present have hitherto failed to solve the social problem, to eliminate the social evil because the real nature and power of sex, never having been understood, we have all along been working upon a wrong statement of the principle involved, and is not that principle found in the demand for the unqualified freedom of woman, and the adjustment of all departments of society to harmonize with such freedom?

Taking things as in nature, we find that the rivulet bordered with flowers and meandering through grassy meadows, does not require a channel like unto that of the mighty river upon whose bosom ships may glide. There is as much difference between the volume and strength of people's sex natures as there is between the rivulet and the river. Both rivulet and river are of use, but neither would be if made to occupy the channel of the other, or perhaps an arbitrary, law prescribed channel suited to neither. Any one suggesting such a thing would be counted insane, but when it comes to the streams of sex life there is but one channel provided—legal marriage.

Both church and state say: "Flow through that channel or not at all," and even till now, the effort is made to abate the social evil by trying to hold everybody to the one measure. The social evil is but an overflow of unbalanced conditions. Give to woman the freedom here demanded for her, and she will find the balance. The woman who has not grown large enough to feel her chains cannot do this work, that of so balancing the life-forces as to heal the existing diseased condition, because not thinking "to the bottom of things; but woman is thinking the thoughts that bring growth, and when she has burst every bond we shall have no more "children of lust."

Perhaps no woman has hurled heavier missiles against the evils which prevail under the present system, has shown them up in more terrible colors than has Helen Gardener, but as far as I know, she has not said a word against the cast-iron standard. She does not seem to realize that "a society founded on the basis of property, and not on the basis of life, can never be other than the very thing she denounces."

These quoted words from a criticism by one of her friends is true of more than Helen Gardener.

But very few of those who cry out against the terrible evils which make one almost despair for the race, seem to realize that society with its present basis, "can never be other than the very thing it is." "The children of lust" are a part of the fruit of the tree under the shadow of which they sit, and on the roots of which they shrink from using the axe.

And yet it must be done; for until it is, until the basis of society rests upon life, upon its requirements, instead of as now upon property, we shall continue to have, not only children of lust, but of every tendency which in culmination, places men and women in prison, in some asylum, or finally to have their bodies carted to the potter's field, filled with rottenness that pollutes both soil and air; for, as the same writer says: "There is no medication which will do good when administered to mere results."

"Upon the basis of life." Is our standard of morality thus founded? Are the needs of life considered in its cast-iron code? The words of the ancient writer: "For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it, and the covering is narrower than that a man can wrap himself in it," are emphatically true of our moral requirements which, as they have been formulated with the idea of obedience to an impossible personality named God, have so hedged us round that the God-power within us finds small room for expansion if true to said requirements.

But Helen Gardener's admiring critic declares so much truth I must quote further. After expressing his appreciation of her fearless denunciation of wrong he tells her she has not "thought to the bottom of things," and then adds in reference to what he says must be done to reach existing evils:

Yes, upon the basis of life—of its needs; but the present structure is not based altogether upon property. There is the idea of what God wants—what God commands. Humanity has been laid at the feet of a supposed personality, and has hitherto been a perpetual sacrifice. If society is to be reconstructed upon the basis of life, creative life as existing in ourselves, must be recognized as of paramount importance, and if life is first, it follows as a logical sequence that all else must yield to life's needs. But to properly meet those needs we must understand them, must study life in its basic department, not from a pre-established standard which has hitherto failed, but we must find the principle involved, or the problem can never be solved.

In the same issue of The Arena from which we have quoted the editor condemns in unmeasured terms 'prostitution in marriage.' He is another who has not 'thought the question to the bottom.' An article against the misuse, the waste, the extravagance of those who hold the wealth of the country would be just as much heeded. Both the property system and the marriage system, as they now are, must go before prostitution, either in or out of marriage, will cease. The following article taken from "Foundation Principles" will give an idea of what I mean.

The Editress of that excellent Journal, Humanity and Health says:

"Ex-Judge Duffy has, we think, sounded the key note to a solution of the social evil. He says 'look to the factories. Underpaid labor of girls and women is responsible for the root of the evil.' Through ill-paid labor the responsibility of woman's degradation is again placed upon the man's shoulders. He says: 'The money spent in alleviating the condition of fallen women should be expended in helping destitute women and girls whom necessity and poverty would otherwise force upon the streets. It is a good scheme to lock the barn door before the horse is stolen.' In other words, prevention is better than cure. Again, 'How can a young girl who earns from three to four dollars a week, working from daylight till dark, resist temptation when so many inducements are held out to her by men who prey upon innocence.' To discover the source of the social evil, I would advise a visit to some of the factories where women and girls work for starvation wages!"

Neither "looking to the factories" nor to any other place where women work for "starvation wages" will give the "key note" to the social evil. The key note which produces this discord in society lies in the imperative need that men have for the finer, more spiritual sex element of woman.

I mean just what I say: Imperative need. This need is for that which will unfold intellectual and spiritual power. Men name it physical necessity, and by thus mis-naming it, fail of gaining what they are hungry for, because they do not understand what that hunger calls for. The following, taken from "The Occult Forces of Sex," but with a slight modification of the wording, will perhaps better express what I mean:

"Men hunger even till they devour woman, and yet they do not obtain because they do not know that spirit must gestate from matter food for the spirit body, the hunger of which is driving them to desperation. Not knowing this, they do not reach out from the spirit, but simply seek to consume the mere physical on the altar of unspiritualized desire."

Quoting still further from the argument for the refining, regenerative uses of sex, I take from pages 55 and 56 of the same work the next two paragraphs.

"In view of the law that leads to regeneration, it will be seen that all efforts to prevent conception are unnatural and, of course, deleterious; and the only way in which excess of population can be legitimately prevented, is for the parties to sex relations to respect the creative act by recognizing the spiritual therein, thus drawing to themselves spiritual elements to supply material waste, till the refining process takes them out of the propagative plane by placing them squarely in the road that leads to regeneration.

"Facts will be asked for in confirmation of this theory. They exist: but those who are spiritual enough to perceive the law and fortunate enough to be happily mated, by following it out will soon find that their own experiences are sufficient; and to give the experience of others to those who cannot trace this law, would be of but little use. However, this much may be said: The indications are that woman first reaches the plane from which she can give of the spirit to her companion, and he, having caught the spark of immortality, soon develops to the point from which he can return it to her. Is this the reason why man seeks woman so persistently, and then, oft times, turns against her so cruelly? Is it the unconscious power of that inner sense which feels what he must receive from woman but has not yet learned to know what it is? Is it not the mute language which says to the ears of those whose understanding is open?"—

I am starving—starving for that which will help me to grow toward life. I felt that I should find what I need in this woman. The attraction said "Yes," the facts said "No." She has deceived me and I hate her.

"More likely the attraction told the truth, and that the facts are of your own making. In your rude eagerness, you, no doubt, shut the door against yourself—crushed the germ which would have ripened into the bread of life for you."

Yes, I am fully satisfied that the true reason is here given as to why man seeks woman so persistently. He does feel—sense, what he must receive from woman, but has not learned to know what the feeling means; so he destroys woman because of his ignorance, and still seeks—unsatisfied, though scores go down to minister to his hunger.

Poor, starved ignorance! and yet such men sit in judgment upon women and imprison men who dare to speak the truth about the sex question. Oh, the pitiful degradation! With their impure ideas of sex they make all things impure!

A leading New York physician, in a lecture before the Anthropological Society in Feb. last, [93] after showing that sex exists in everything, says:

Always the same creative sex force, the omnipotent, omnipresent God-power, filling all space, permeating all substance, producing all life.

Of course its highest manifestation is in the human creative life, and the highest through the human lies in that blending of sex, soul, and intellect which tends to refine, elevate, spiritualize the parties to the union. But how can such results be expected where only the physical in sex is recognized, where creative desire is counted merely lust?

So I repeat: The key note to the social evil can be found in man's imperative need of that fine, spiritual sex element which only woman can give. But she must give freely; man cannot force it from her; it must go to him on the lines of love and intelligence.

This being true, the key note to that which will do away with the social evil lies in the direction of freedom and knowledge. Woman must be made so free that she need nevermore yield herself except from responsive love and desire, and man must become intelligent enough to know that only in willing, glad response, can he receive any real benefit.

We have somewhere about one hundred thousand so-called ministers of God in this country who are supposed to tell us of God and his law, but when we try to teach bottom truths, try to find and obey the inexorable laws through which this "omnipotent, omnipresent God-power" acts, we are "obscene" and must shut up, or be shut up.

A score of years of persistent effort, such as honest, earnest ministers put forth in their attempts to make people fear and obey God, and with only a tenth of the number employed in that line—a score of years devoted to studying and teaching the laws that govern this creative "God-power," sex, and equal efforts to secure conditions for its highest action, would do more for the race than has all the theological teachings the world has ever known.

————

"Imperative need." How many of our moralists recognize such a need as an existing fact! True, they talk of love as the true sanction for sex association, but how few perceive this great spiritual law of growth. Mr. Flower, and he is but one of many who do this, seems afraid that he will not be considered sound on the marriage question while denouncing prostitution within the marriage bond, for he says:

I yield to no man in my regard for the sacred relations of married life: the sanctity and purity of the home I believe to be essential to enduring civilization.

This because in daring to say that the woman who bears children to a man she loathes, because he happens to be her husband and she can do so and be accepted by society, is doing that society a greater wrong than does the girl who yields to her lover without the marriage bond, he seems to fear, as above said, that he will not be considered quite sound as to the necessity of marriage, and yet, in his closing paragraph he adds:

It is to emancipated womanhood that we must turn for that moral reformation which shall redeem the world. High and noble as woman has proved herself to be, we have not yet seen her at her best, for we have not seen her strong in the possession of justice and freedom. Indeed, with Gerald Massey we can say that as yet,

The gentleman does not seem to see that the woman he paints is the "free woman" to whose freedom all the conditions of society must be adjusted. He does not seem to see that such a woman can never be held by external bonds, and if she cannot thus be held why have them? As to the difference between the prostituted wife and the young girl, both are weak. The girl does what she does not believe to be right because too weak to resist the entreaties of the man she loves; the prostituted wife continues to endure because too weak to assert her right to herself. Neither of them belong to the class of women who will "give glory to the future race." It looks as if Mr. Flower was trying to clean out the old bottles for the new wine. Better break them.

Suppose we change the previous quotation; suppose we make him say:

I yield to no man in my regard for the sacredness of property rights; I believe the sanctity of such rights are essential to enduring civilization.

Would not such language indicate that he sustained the system while repudiating what he would thus designate its abuses? It certainly would, and yet the abuses, so-called, are not fungus upon the system but a legitimate outgrowth. Surely, he "has not thought the question to the bottom," or he is false to his deepest convictions, and this I cannot believe.

The marriage relation as regulated by statute and the property system belong together, and they must stand or fall together, but the sacredness of the family, her family, will be well guarded by the free woman. Nothing will be allowed to enter that can defile. Then there will be no children of lust for she will yield herself only where she loves and being both free and strong, she will give character to the child of her love.

Society to-day is the child of lust. The love element is a negative, not a controlling factor. The child of the bound woman cannot be heir with the child of the free woman. But the time is drawing nearer. Woman is growing stronger; she will yet burst her bonds, and then we shall more than "glimpse" the glory of the future race.*

————

[*I quote The Arena and Mr. Flower as its editor, because I consider it the leading Journal of the civilized world, so far as interesting thinkers who are struggling to eliminate the evils of the present system, and at the same time, gradually leading them toward the conviction of the absolute need of reconstruction. But whether the editor himself sees how far some of his demands take him is a question.]

B. O. Flower in discussing this question, says:

Nothing is so fatal as silence in the presence of immorality, for the hope of redemption lies in awakening the conscience of the people, but so long as the pulpit, the press and the rostrum avoid their discussion, so long as the facts are smothered, there can be no moral reformation.

The press cannot give the facts without risking prison, and the pulpit and rostrum can speak only at the risk of starvation. I wish I could find language to express the "why" of this but as it needs a volume to illustrate the point, I will only say this: The necessary conditions for a pure, healthy sexual life socially cannot be had till our property system is entirely changed and our ideas of sex morality cease to be based upon the arbitrary commands of a supposed personality called God.

Abnormal sexuality, as I see the law, is the result of the attempted enforcement of a false standard of morality, false from nature's standpoint, said false standard being founded upon commands said to have come from God and then crystalized into statute law as well as into public opinion. In a pamphlet now out of print in which an attempt is made to show up some of the evils of the personal God idea, I find the following in reference to the Jewish Jehovah, the writer taking the ground that he was and is but an earthly spirit with boundless ambition:

This spirit had learned that power-strong magnetic attraction and executive ability was always coupled with a strong sex life, and regarding man as superior, he looked upon woman as especially made to gratify man and bear children, so the first step toward the dominion sought was to formulate a sex morality that would keep woman in subjection, making her highest honor to consist in bearing children and being faithful to her husband.

This morality under the old Jewish law allowed men all the wives they chose, and while the later idea, as said to have been given by Jesus, is the dual relation toward which the race is tending, the morality of the Jewish God still prevails either openly or secretly. Those who have wealth can have as many victims as they choose. All the environments of society tend to sacrifice women, directly or indirectly, and in doing this man is a victim also, the victim of his own ignorance and love of power. The social evil has so far been the bane of the race, and the more it is condemned and still continued, the greater becomes the curse; and continued it will be so long as the present economic conditions exist and the present ideas of morality prevail.

Measure morality by human needs. Neither God nor Man has the right to say to one who has large demands sexually, you shall not meet those demands in a natural, normal way with those who desire you. The fact of such demand and the fact of a supply guarantees you that right so long as there is no intrusion upon others. But so long as we think such people low, and as far as it is in our power, make them think so too, so long will that which rightly used, would be an upbuilder, so long, with the low idea, will it be a destroyer. As before said, the more condemned the greater the curse.

Self-respect is an absolute requirement as a basis for a noble character. If sex is low, then sex desire is low, is something degrading whether controlled or not. One of the most conscientious women I ever knew said to me:

I came to womanhood with the idea that purity was without desire, and when my own nature awoke I despised myself because I could not subdue it. There was a constant war between my ideal and what I found to be true of myself, and that was what forced me to investigate this question. I could not live with facts and conscience continually at war. I must be reconciled to myself.

The conflict was between nature's facts and a false ideal. Had she been unable to so re-adjust her ideal as to be in harmony with the facts, her self-respect would have been so wounded that she, no doubt, would have lost her balance and gone down. No, I am not advocating immorality. I am trying to learn what true morality is. It is very easy to say that sex life should be regulated by a given standard, but no matter how imperative the say, nor how severe the condemnation for not obeying that say—the rules laid down—there has never yet been a power brought to bear, strong enough to enforce said rules.

The question to be solved then, is the why of this. Why is it that mankind will not obey? Is the fault in the race or is it in the standard. "The devilish intensity of sex desire." Shall man, shall a woman who is thus endowed be forced to endure this intensity which is torture, must their lives be one long struggle in order to please those who know little or nothing of such desires?

It never has been done. It never can be done. If one has a fine musical talent, if one is a natural artist, if one has wonderful mathematical or mechanical powers, there is no attempt to suppress or regulate by a mediocre standard, and a highly wrought sex life is just as natural, just as right, as is any other highly developed power.

"Oh, but the unregulated use of sex is a curse," says one. I am not talking of unregulated use, but of satisfying use. Woman is the natural regulator of this power, it is her right, one of which she has been deprived, one which must be accorded her, ere sex ceases to produce the social evil. The use of sex is not what produces the curse, but the attempt to gauge the sex life by a given standard, condemning all seeming surplus. Your thought, your condemnation, impinging upon and overcoming the thought of the one thus endowed, forces self-condemnation, because not strong enough to endure self-torture through self-denial, and that self-condemnation destroys the basis of character, makes the parties feel "What's the use of trying to be anybody?"

Let us look at a case or two by the way of illustration. Here is a woman with large mother love. A child is necessary, not only to her happiness but to health. She has a good home in her own right, and a good income; she is abundantly able to provide för one or more children, but man-made law says she may not become a mother unless she pledges her body to some man during life, and society says if she does she shall thenceforth be an outcast. She would make the pledge, she would marry, but the man who wishes to own her, or by whom she is willing to be owned does not come. But the life current is strong, and her mother love is strong, and at last she shocks society by obeying nature. She becomes a mother.

The world condemns. She is excluded from society. She feels debased, degraded, not from the effects of violated law, so far as nature is concerned, but from an educated standard. However, she does the best she can. She is satisfied with her child, feels that it is all her own, and is content to care for it.

Three, four years pass; society still rejects her, but nature again asserts her claims, and she once more becomes a mother.

Double condemnation is her portion now. Her relatives, who had partially forgiven the first offense, now cast her off utterly and persecution meets her on every side. Women forsake her and men crowd themselves upon her, till, in endeavoring to protect her person from an unwelcome embrace, she kills one of their number.

"Oh, what a wretch! A Prostitute and a murderer." No, she is neither. In becoming a mother she did not prostitute herself. Nature knows no prostitution for woman except, as before said, unwilling subjection, and every woman has the right to protect herself from intrusion, even to the death of the intruder if she cannot do so short of that.

It is so hard to make men understand that any woman can really belong to herself. She belongs to her parents or to the state, until the state can sell her to some man who will promise to take care of her for the use of her sex. Legally speaking, there are no free women. Those who are called such are supposed to be public property.

"Why can't I come here as well as Edwin," said a man some years since to a woman who dared to think for herself. The fact that she did not want him was a sufficient reason, even had Edwin gone there for the purpose he supposed, which was not true.

Such is the slavery of woman, a slavery, the root of which is to be found in the personal God idea. Yes, the first step of that personal God in seeking universal dominion was to "formulate a sex morality that would keep woman in subjection."

To this subjection, this false standard, I boldly charge all abnormal sexualism, some of the manifestations of which will now be given. It is not a desirable, but a much needed work, and feeling this I shall not shrink from possible consequences to myself. I learned when a child that

Perhaps the following from Lucifer, The Light Bearer (and surely we need a light to show up these dark places) whose editor is now in prison for publishing a letter denouncing a marital rape of the most cruel nature and at the same time stating in plain honest terms the disabilities of married women, will do to commence with. The article is somewhat long so will condense by throwing out not needed paragraphs. The writer says:

Unless endowed with the spirit of martyrdom they dare not.

"I charge this blood upon the Jo Cooks, the Howard Crosbys, the Charles Parkhursts, and the other obscenists who are stealthily teaching the worst features of Greek social life to an intellectual few, while obtaining laws to prevent its evils, and others more common, from being known to parents."

If our readers will turn to Chapter V, they will discern the reason of this—the subtlety—which seeks to control everything by controlling sex. The "intellectual few," in connection with the religious element, must rule the world. It is the hope of continued power, not an anxiety for the purity of the young, that is the "power behind the throne" urging on the persecution of honest students of sex for the sake of Humanity.

As another illustration of the prevailing abnormality, I will next take the following from my scrap book. These things are readily found if looked for, and sometimes they are thrust upon one:

This is the same doctor who said that a woman who held sex relations with two men, one hers legally, was a prostitute pure and simple, and he made some pretty strong assertions as to what he would do if it were his wife. I wonder what he would say if his wife should go with friends to see men dance nude.

Perhaps, as a sort of straw showing which way the current of sex life flows, the following little incident may be of use. Once at Omaha, Neb., when waiting for the train to start there came in an old lady whose remarks showed that she was from the country, and took a seat immediately in front of me, in which there sat another old lady.

"What, you here too," said the last comer in a tone of surprise.

"Yes, I have worked hard all summer and I thought I could afford a little trip."

"Well, how do you like Omaha?"

"Very much; it's a splendid city and there's lots of pretty boys here."

Oh, what a mistake! I think I must have been dreaming when I wrote the above! It was two men who thus conversed and one said to the other, there's lots of pretty girls here, and the response was, that's so.

I remember that at the time I reversed the sex of the parties in my thought to see how it would sound, and I have really written it out reversed in the above. Well, no harm is done as I have explained. I do not suppose they—the two old men—spent a thought on the gray haired woman sitting behind them, for it was "pretty girls" that attracted their attention. Men looking for pretty girls is the rule. Women looking for pretty boys is the far between exception. "The imperative need that man has for that which woman alone can give."

Let the reader go back to, and read again the article headed "The Key Note" and thus find why men are looking for pretty girls. Always seeking; never satisfied; because in their ignorance and love of power they try to seize, or wheedle from, or buy of woman that which can satisfy only when coming lovingly, intelligently, and from—an equal. The man of whom the doctor spoke as never wanting the same woman twice was a sex dyspeptic, forever unsatisfied because he did not know how to appropriate. Those of whom Mr. Stead talks in his "Pall Mall Gazette revelations" were of the same class. We give below, an extract from Mr. Stead's own account of his interview with a prominent London official:

Mr. Flower says in the same No. of The Arena from which we have been quoting: "The traffic in little girls may well thrill us with horror, but there are other crimes even more revolting. A Messalina or a Borgia is possible in any community where high ideals are eclipsed by base imagining. Here is a case in point taken from the New York Daily Recorder of Jan. 31—94."

"The story of these young women is almost too horrible for belief," said young Mayer. "They escaped from their own home by stealth. They were friends of my sister and that is how we came to learn of the indignities to which they were being subjected in their own home. The cause of humanity dictated that we should receive them here. Their condition when they came to us was pitiable, and the doctors who have visited them say that their present physical relapse is due to the want of food, which has been withheld from them in order that they might be reduced to subjection. This story, if it ever comes to light, will shock the people of this city as they were never shocked before."

What the particular form of abnormality it was that those young girls escaped from is left to conjecture, but I must again say that all efforts at arousing the public conscience in this direction will prove a failure till our standard of morality has been corrected. Science will yet demonstrate that this question of sex is more a question of health and personal rights than of morality.

There is a cause for whatever it was that drove those young ladies from home in the dead hours of the night, and we shall never get hold of such causes till there is a full and free field for investigation; and the effects will not cease, all sorts of perversion will prevail until the cause or causes are found and removed. We have hardly touched this abnormality subject, as yet; but will add no more now. When the letters are reached, for the publishing of which Mr. Harman and myself are prosecuted (persecuted), there will be room for more comments.

As already said, it is so hard for man to understand that a woman can belong to herself. The man who said, "Edwin comes here and why can't I," was a church member who had repudiated his membership, claiming to have become a Spiritualist. His idea of Spiritualism was soon made manifest to be a free field for his desires, and when he learned his mistake he went back to the church.

Right here another incident comes to my mind involving the slavery of woman. A Boston healer, Joseph Newman, who was called by those who knew him best "one of the white souls," was once telling me of one of his patients, the wife of a prominent church member who often came to him for treatment. She was disgusted with her husband. His claims upon her made her sick, but that husband (?) would not get her a thing no matter how much she needed it unless she would submit to his wishes, and then she would have to go to the doctor for treatment. After listening to his story I said:

"Doctor, what class of people who come to you for treatment give the most evidence of sex abuse?"

"Church members," he unhesitatingly replied, "and the radicals called Freelovers, the least."

Now why was this? If freedom is dangerous, if the prevailing idea of what freedom in sex matters means were true the Freelover would have given the most instead of the least evidence of the abuse of those functions. The why of it is: The thinker upon sex law, the one who knows that nature has her own laws of purity independent of "Thus saith the law, or thus saith the Lord," knows that he cannot violate that law with impunity. He does not measure his life by the legal but by the natural standard and he would as soon think of taking fire into his bosom as an unwilling woman.

But let us go back to the supposed case of the woman, illegally a mother, who kills a man in self-defense. She is either hung or imprisoned for life. The fact that she has dared to claim the right to herself in motherhood will bar her from sympathy. Community will act toward her in the same spirit manifested by the man who said, "why can't I come here as well as Edwin?" It will be denied in fact if not in words that she had the right to thus protect herself. She was an outcast. Her children are left unprotected; they become outcasts and all this is charged to the woman's depravity; is looked upon as the legitimate result of illegal relations.

No such thing. The woman only asserted her natural, inalienable right to motherhood. She had the means to care for her children and she wronged no one. That which occurred belongs to society, to the idea that human law can contravene natural right. That which occurred, or would be likely to occur under such circumstances as we have supposed, is due to the enslavement of woman.

I will now idealize a picture of freedom for woman as I see it. Allowing time for an entire change of status, but not yet time enough to do away with all the hereditary imperfection of the past. Woman is free; all men respect her inherent right to herself and all women sustain themselves and each other in that right. A woman accepts the man of her choice without asking either church or state. She becomes a mother; the father is glad and proud of the honor she has bestowed upon him.

Time passes, they are happy together, and after awhile another child is born. Again the years roll by, but in the end she finds she no longer desires him. She does not understand why but knows there is a cause somewhere. She tells him how she feels. "It is all right, Margaret," he replies, "I know that you must be true to yourself, know that unless your nature calls for me we can do each other no good."

They remain friends, each loving and caring for the children. At length she meets another man who stirs the life current. He responds and they become lovers. The first one does not feel wronged. He will be called by another when the time comes. The woman bears no more children. Their creative life goes to their mutual upbuilding. Their souls grow so strong that the inner, grander selfhood comes forth into the external, fills the physical with such glowing health that life is happiness.

But the time comes when this man is no longer desired. In telling him of this she says: "I have hoped, Richard, that our union might continue, for sometime, somewhere I shall find a perfect mate. I have so hoped it might be you but it seems not."

"Do not grieve, dear," he says. "I thank you for the honor, the happiness that has been mine with you, and if I cannot fill all your being it is not your fault. That which is unsatisfied has its rights and must call for them."

"But I am calling for no one else, Richard."

"Not consciously as yet, Margaret, but it will come. I am glad that we have met and loved for we have helped each other to grow toward the perfect state."

"Yes, I think we have, but so many of my sisters are making no change, have not from the first, I begin to fear there is a law of change and I want rest. The idea of continually changing is not a pleasant one."

"Yes, there may be a law of continued change for some, but were it the law of your being you would not feel as you do; that feeling shows that what you desire is for you, will come to you sometime. It takes a long time to outgrow the effect of ages of enslavement, and longer to round out great natures than it does small ones."

She smiled at this, and looking at him tenderly for a moment, said: "I should have been so glad if this relation could have continued. Perhaps when I have been alone awhile I shall turn back to you provided you do not find happiness elsewhere."

"I should be proud and happy, dear, if it should prove so," and the man turns away with something like a sigh. But he, like the other, knew too well that only as she came to him freely could there be a blessing between them, to make any plea in his own behalf. Understanding that it is not her wish, but nature's law, why use either persuasion or reproach?

We will now take a woman of quite a different organization. She has large sex love and no desire for motherhood. She is diffusive, can blend with different men, is attracted to men of like nature with herself; men who respect themselves and all women. This woman is free as well as the other. No one questions her right to herself. Those on the dual plane say: "We have not learned all of nature's secrets; there may be a use in this that we do not understand."

So she is not condemned, and not being crowded into lying or hypocrisy of any kind, she is truthful, honest, cleanly, kind, sympathetic, generous, all that goes to make up a lovely character, and never being held to an unwilling relation, she is healthy, happy, and diffuses happiness wherever she goes.

Through freedom the very air has become vitalized with the elements of a higher, purer sexual life, a life that so fills the social sphere that the cruel, torturing intensity of sex desire no longer exists. Sex disease is unknown. The social evil is changed into a social blessing, and progress is naturally assured. What are now called houses of prostitution would no longer prostitute, for all men would know as well as did Margaret's companions that unwilling submission would be a curse. All the conditions of society conformed to woman's freedom, there would be no yielding for the sake of money, nor from any other feeling than of attraction.

Man's need considered legitimate, those who had no companions could find in places that are now condemned but cannot be put down, such association as would bless both parties and injure no one. There would be no excess, no abuse, no drinking, and one by one, as fast as harmonious mates were found, would live the dual relation as truly and as purely as mated souls can. Thus the race would finally reach its ideal by having learned that only through the freedom of woman can it be attained.

Yes, I know such ideas are shocking. But which is worse, even to such as are shocked if they will be honest in their judgment, the condition I have supposed or what we now have? Remember, please, that what now is, the unsatisfied, the starved, the abused conditions of sex life fill the atmosphere with their own emanations just as truly as do stagnant pools, and foetid cellars, and susceptible persons take on sex fever as well as typhoid or malarial fever. Please remember that sodomy, and various other forms of this sex disease are fearfully extant and growing worse as our civilization intensifies in the various classes struggling for supremacy.

And please remember farther that all past efforts to suppress or regulate this disease of intense maddening desire, all appeals to reason, to conscience, to the law, or any other power has been an utter failure. As well appeal to the fever scorched patient who has become the victim of malarial swamps to keep cool. The forces must be balanced; there must be no malaria of decay in the sex atmosphere, and only woman can bring this balance, but to do so she must be free.

Right here I will repeat a short story to those who are so shocked at my statement that what are called houses of prostitution would prostitute no longer. I was once conversing with a gentleman of about sixty years of age who related the following experience. He said:

"When I was about twenty five I went one night while in Cincinnati to a house of prostitution"—

"What did you go there for!" I exclaimed in a sort of amazed tone. It did not once enter my head that he could visit such a place for the purpose for which they exist.

"For sexual intercourse," he quietly replied, and as I tried to swallow my blunder he continued: "When I entered the parlor there were two girls talking with gentlemen and a third sitting on a sofa with a book of poems in her hard. I went and sat down beside her, found she was reading a favorite author, talked about him and his writings awhile, then gave her a ten dollar bill and we went up stairs. She was a refined, intelligent girl, and I could see she shrank even while she assented.

"Once in her room she began telling me how she came to be there. Her people were wealthy, moved in the first circles of society. Her lover had betrayed her and her parents had cast her off. She knew nothing of work and there was nothing for her but prostitution. 'Had my child lived,' she said, 'and could I have supported it, I could have been happy even yet, but as it was, I must come here or drown myself and I had not quite the courage to do that; but this life is becoming so terrible to me I may do that yet. Were all who come here like you it would not be quite so bad, but'—

"Here she burst into tears. I took her in my arms, soothed her and we lay there and talked for hours, I losing all desire for other association. I was tempted to take her out of that and make her my wife, but I had a mother and sister to support and this girl knew nothing of work, so I resisted the temptation. A few days after that I saw a notice in the papers of the body of a young woman being found in the river. Somehow I could not get rid of the feeling that she was the one, so I went back and inquired for her. I was told that she was not there—that she had gone, they did not know where, but she had left her trunk. I no longer doubted her fate."

Please, poor shocked sister, note the soul sympathy developed between those two in that short acquaintance, and remember that in the freedom and mutual respect I have portrayed, there would be far more likelihood of finding such soul sympathy elsewhere than in such a house as my friend visited. The tendency of all such sympathy is to subdue all mere lustful feeling, as was the case with my friend. It was the fact of knowing that he possessed so much soul which called out the exclamation: "What did you go there for!"

There are many thinking men and women who will understand the illustrations of freedom for woman that I have given, for they see the evils of the present, and have also caught glimpses of the path that leads to full enfranchisement, know that the ideal of the race can be reached only by giving each organization its natural right to be itself. They see that ignorance of life's creative laws, and the slavery of woman, have produced a class of beings who cannot live the dual life, cannot live in perfect matehood till through many experiences they can grow into a condition in which such matehood is possible.

But, if by condemnation we make such experiences a curse instead of a blessing, we shall never be able to lead them, or to let them find for themselves the true path. One thing is certain: This path can never be brought into line with legal environments. No greater perversion of creative life can be possible than that which attempts to hold it to an arbitrary standard. As well attempt to erect a standard for the winds and the waves; as well attempt to regulate the stars in their courses as to attempt to hold human sex life to a given creed—to make it flow only in conventional channels. It never has been done; it never can be done, and I do not in the least hesitate in saying that the successful regulation of the sex relation according to set rules involving the ownership of woman's person, would have been far worse for the race than all the excesses and irregularities which have prevailed.

Yes, the latter have been very terrible, but less so than the successful rule of ignorance in the same field. I am told that every well-read Theosophist understands that the root-meaning of the words: God and Satan, is nothing more than the creative principle indicated by sex when rightfully or wrongfully used. The creative, the God-life becomes Satan or devil-life when abused. Now I ask in all sincerity if a living Devil is not better than a dead God?

In other words, is not a perverted life better than no life? When I look at the efforts that have been made to crush, debase, spit upon sex as something unholy, it seems to me that there are those who would gladly rule sex out of the Universe in order to purify it. Yes, a living power, even if perverted, is better than a dead one, for with life there is hope, hope that the perversion may be remedied, may get into the right channel; but in this case it must follow its own law to get there.

It may have to grow across lots, to undermine stone walls, but as sure as you and I live, this creative but perverted God-power will certainly find the true channel of action if it is allowed to heal its bruises in its own way and respect its selfhood in so doing. Sex has been a curse because of ignorance and the enslaved condition of woman. It will become an unmixed blessing when the sex that has the power to help or hurt the most, is free and intelligent.

But my shocked friend, the healing of the perversions of sex life which have cursed the race involve all I have portrayed as pertaining to woman's freedom. Be her nature diffusive or exclusive she must not be enslaved. One thing is certain, in freedom she will never accept what she does not want, hence the very atmosphere will no longer be filled with conflicting forces. If those who are shocked at the thought of such freedom for woman, can show us a better way, let them do so.

Notwithstanding the evils that ignorance and a false system of society have produced, woman, even in her enslavement has, through the law of love, gradually brought the race forward to a point where reorganization upon a higher, broader basis is beginning to be demanded. Thinkers see that there is no help under the present system of society, and seeing this, they are thinking, feeling, working for the new; and this has come through a law of woman's nature, the power of which she has as yet hardly caught a glimpse.

Much has been written by men, giving directions to woman during pregnancy, but results show that a child cannot be built as one would build a house. Students of heredity are beginning to learn that intellect is not the governing power in life's processes. In this grand laboratory of the soul, the intellect can only act as the servant of love. I say laboratory of the soul, because it is woman's psychic or soul nature—her love life, that rules here.

Woman's nature is finer than man's; what she loves, even to the garments she wears, are finer, more beautiful, and thus, through this love-law of her life she refines the race.

This in a general sense, but when it comes to the individual, it is what she loves or hates, wants or repels that makes its impression upon her child. If she follows a pursuit from a sense of duty, having at the same time a strong dislike to it, her child will be very likely to hate that pursuit; but if she does the same thing from a love of it without once thinking of it as a duty, or of its possible effect upon her child, then the child that is gestated in the atmosphere of that particular love will, most likely inherit the same feeling in an increased degree.

But this feeling, this love must be a positive, not a negative one. It must be strong enough to make its impress on the embryo. For long ages woman has been so subdued, so under the influence of the idea that wifely duty was woman's true sphere, there has been but slow progress, even though woman holds within herself the law of progress—this because she has been submissive in her loves. The Love-God has been, is being, crucified in the person of woman.

But the redeeming feature of the case is, woman has never loved her slavery. She has accepted it, often gladly, because it brought what she desired and could not, as conditions were, otherwise obtain, but she has never loved the submission, the duty part of her position which is the badge of her slavery, and because of this, the love of freedom has not died out of the race. Man, while demanding freedom for himself, fails to realize that wondrous soul-power of woman through which what freedom he has as yet gained has come to him; or rather, the desire for, and the power to win this much is his because, while he lay beneath his mother's heart she did not love her submissive place, but rebelled in feeling.

That feeling, organized in the child, is gradually pushing the race toward the desired goal, freedom.

If man realized this law of woman's life, he would accord to her entire freedom of person, knowing that only thus can the very root of tyranny be, so to speak, gestated out of existence. Here I must say what will shock an educated morality, but nature is stronger, more true to the law of growth than are educated standards that are not in harmony with nature's law.

Woman, not loving the bondage that makes her person the property of one who, having bound her legally, has made himself hateful to her, has in thousands of instances defied that slavery by secretly following her attractions, and the world is the better for it. The children thus born are of a higher type; they have better bodies and more soul than children born of a union in which there was unwilling submission on the mother's part, and only animal passion lust, on the fathers' side. True, there is the element of deception; but she has not loved the deception, has resorted to it as the only method possible under the conditions, and because of this the deception has not made so deep an impression as it otherwise would.

What can we conclude then, but that in the soul loves of woman lie the uplifting power of the race, whether that love be organized in a child or blended in the spiritual and intellectual aura set free through mutual sex relations in which woman's sense of fitness is not wounded; in which she honors, uplifts, glorifies both herself and her companion, all that is best, noblest in both being thus combined on the creative plane to produce an element of growth for each.

The man who has experienced the uplifting power of such a relation can never be induced to debase his manhood by debasing sex. But such uplifting, renewing, purifying relations can not exist in their fullness under any system which in the least binds or debases woman. She must be free to live her own love life, and to bring to it the highest, the best she can command from the universe of life.

A case in the July Arena of 1895 shows something of woman's power in maternity even under present conditions. In speaking of woman's love nature as the true source of her power in heredity, whatever wounds that love comes under the same law, hence the results as given in the story. The woman was disappointed in her husband and wept much during her first pregnancy. That child would stop in the midst of its play and begin to cry. When asked what was the matter she would say: "I's only tying."

During the gestation of the second child her husband would sometimes abuse her, and then he would want to make up and kiss and pet her. This was even more repulsive than the abuse. When that child was small, being attractive it was often caught up and kissed by visitors, but it would invariably cry out "I hate to be tissed, I hate to be tissed."

The reader will see that in both instances it was the mother's feeling, not her intellect, that made its impress upon the child. When intellect unites with feeling the result can, or may be modified, but when working against feeling the intellect, as connected with the law of heredity, can make little or no impression. When I hear men say that woman's place is in the home, and motherhood her work, I think:

"When you see to it that women have homes, and such conditions as will make motherhood a blessing to all concerned, then I will believe you mean what you say. How few of the people have a home. A hired place which one must leave at the will of another is not a home. Garrets, cellars, and rat riddled tenements furnish poor conditions for motherhood."

"Oh, we can't help the poverty of the people."

Then there is that in woman's soul which, when once aroused, will bring justice to all, even if your whole fabric has to be taken down till there is not one stone left upon another.

But I have not yet reached the point I desire to make. The mother before spoken of bore yet another child. During its gestation the poor woman, so disappointed and prostituted in that unloving relation, turned to literature for comfort. A neighbor loaned her Swedenborg's works which she read with avidity. "They seemed to carry me into a new world," she said. Giving the rest in her own words:

When that child came it was such a comfort to me. The coronal region was marvelously developed and she seemed to be a natural mystic. When quite young she evinced a passion for metaphysical thought and would eagerly listen to my reading works far deeper than could be comprehended by any other child I ever knew; she did not reach maturity however, falling a victim to the heroic treatment of a physician.

There is much to suggest thought in this story. It will affect people differently. The feeling it gives me is such that, could I inspire all women with it, man's rule over woman's person would be forever at an end. The idea that it is woman's duty to submit to a husband when every fibre of her being rebels is one that an incarnate devil ought to blush for, and yet women are told that such is God's command, and she is expected, not only to obey but to love such a being. Could assurance go farther! But the thought of that woman's position and of the forces which held her to it have again taken me away from my application.

Had that mother been free, and could she have had suitable conditions otherwise, that child would have needed no physician. She would have possessed a body so well balanced that her brain would have had ample support; but as it was, the power of woman in maternity is demonstrated. Woman is beginning to see, and to feel, all this, is beginning to feel that she cannot do good work under the conditions man has provided; and, feeling this, she will soon demand in such thunder tones, the conditions for perfect motherhood that man will be compelled to accord them—even to that freedom of person which I here, as the yet unrecognized mouthpiece of the sex, am demanding for her.

I have stated my belief that, other things being equal, the love of woman acting secretly was more likely to bring good results than are recognized but repulsive relations. The two stories which follow may help to show just what I mean. One of them, and which I have reason to believe true, has been spoken of before, but it is particularly applicable here. The other, whether true or not as to that particular statement the results are in harmony with nature's law, are what would be under the conditions.

An old lady, one of whose children had always given her a great deal of trouble, and for whom she was always trying to do, even after he had been many years married, said one day when he had been more than usually trying:

I don't know if it was myself, society, or what was wrong; I did what I thought was right, but had I followed my feelings instead of what I had been taught, I believe it would have been better for that boy. I did not want his father at the time he was begotten, but the hired man. I never cared very much for my husband; he was much older than myself, but taking a liking to me he set himself to win me and he succeeded. The longer I lived with him, the less I liked him, and at that time, as I have said, my feelings went toward the hired man. I thought I was very wicked, believed I should be eternally lost if I yielded to such a feeling, so the one I did not want became the father of my child. In spite of my love for him, and his for me, that child has always antagonized me; or rather, we antagonize each other. With the knowledge I now have, were I placed in such a position I should follow my attraction or refuse the sex relation altogether.

The other story which I heard first at least forty years ago, and have heard it at intervals ever since, was like this: A woman with a weak, drinking husband had reared a fine family of sons and daughters, that were a credit to themselves and to society. In after years, when the husband had died, a friend expressed surprise that she had raised so fine a family with such a father. Her reply was:

There is not one of them his. I saw right away what his weakness was. I decided to stay with him but resolved that he should father no child of mine, so I made my selection on the outside.

I once told this story to a party of ladies who seemed to feel that they were commissioned to watch for sex delinquencies, then asked which was best, that those children inherit the weakness of their reputed father, or that the mother should provide against such a result, and they straightway reported that I advocated such a course. I was not—advocating—anything but simply comparing evils; for surely, it was and is an evil. No woman living chooses deception in a case like that—because she loves the deception—and it surely, is not a pleasant thing to be always guarding a secret, and that which prevents human happiness is evil. But as to the least of the two evils, I think those children would be the best judges of that, there is a character in Shakspeare who answers for them.

When the young man finds that he must lose the inheritance because not the son of his reputed father, he looks at his own magnificent physique, and comparing it with the inferior form of the heir, tells him to take the inheritance for he needs it, expresses confidence in his ability to make his own way in the world, then adds,

No, I am not advocating anything but such freedom for woman as will do away with all deception. But the main lesson of the last story must not be lost sight of. With what is now known of woman's power in maternity it will be seen that the good heredity of those children was as much, or even more, due to the strength of character which enabled the mother to carry out such a purpose, and maintain her self-respect, as it was to the father she chose for them.

"To carry out her purpose and maintain her self-respect." Such women as that and the one whose story is next told are very rare. And yet, it is women with a purpose in harmony with creative love, that we need; for creative love intelligently applied becomes redeeming—regenerating love. The following letter was sent me by one of the world's thinkers, saying she found it among a friend's papers after his death. I am satisfied that the one who sent it to me was the one who first wrote it, as that friend was her lover and the letter was in her hand writing with the first part, and the signature gone.

Just think of it, please; think how this woman walked deliberately into what she had every reason to expect would be a living death, upheld by the power of unselfish love! She had lived a life of submissive torture to meet a husband's demands, and not a penny that she could call her own; had seen her babes die because they had not vitality enough to live—she had endured all this because she thought she must. She had been free long enough to, in a measure, recover her health, and for love's dear sake she could endure for a short time what she had endured for years with no such object in view; so she gave herself a willing sacrifice, but found that even in a brothel a lover was kinder than a husband.

If virtue means strength, she was the most virtuous woman I ever knew. The sacrifice attributed to Jesus is counted worthy of all honor, but I would rather die his death than yield myself to the desire of others and no response; but this was what she had experienced in her married life and she did not know there was anything else, did not suppose she could ever feel pleasure in such connection; and yet, for the love she bore her parents and her brother's wife and babes she faced the ordeal.

I feel like saying in the words of the ancient writer: "Many daughters have done virtuously but thou hast excelled them all." But mark: Going there with such a purpose they could drag her down. Even after the kinder treatment than her husband had ever accorded her, had waked up her sex nature she could not be dragged down. Winwood Reid writes of the "Martyrdom of Man," who will write "The Sacrifice of Woman?" She is evolving through sacrifice, but when she comes to the front the altar of sacrifice will then be consumed, for when woman is fully free it will no longer be needed.

But I have not yet expressed the idea I wish to convey. It is my full belief that women like the last two named, women strong enough to hold their own self-respect under such conditions, and at the same time violate conventional morality with a purpose for good, such women hold within themselves the power to overcome a bad heredity that might otherwise be inherited from the father. I believe that in freedom all women will develop this power, and through the action of this law all human needs will disappear. Under such conditions "the son of the bound woman" will, with all his imperfections, become an extinct species.

A word right here, lest I be misunderstood. I do not admire those women for what they did. Deception and such a sex life are very far from my ideal; but I do admire the motive which prompted them, and the power of the love which, not only carried them through but enabled them to maintain their self-respect in so doing. Those women had, as it were, to run the gauntlet, but they reached the goal unscathed. They did what they did as one would wade through filth to save another. The power of their souls was such that its living waters of love kept the filth from them. Such love, when free, will so cleanse away the filth, will put it forever out of existence. Love is Life. Love is God. Love, creative love, is the fountain of woman's power.

In a poem entitled "Love's Triumph," the following lines occur:

The heart of woman is all right, all warm with palpitating love, but it is walled around with conventionality, is covered over with the rocks of the false teaching which have made her a slave. Heavy blows must be struck, these false ideas must be drilled with sharp, diamond-pointed instruments. Women who have not caught a ray of the coming light, who have not felt its pulsings, will shriek out with fear, but never mind, when the light comes all will be well.

In The Arena of August 1895, the efforts being made to raise "The age of consent" law, is called "a battle for sound morality." Helen H. Gardener says of this "consent" law:

I have quoted the above, first to show that what an earnest admirer says of Mrs. Gardener's fearless denunciation of wrong, is true, to-wit., she has not thought "to the bottom of things," and next, to ask her if she really believes it possible to thus protect our young girls while the property system remains as it is, and woman enslaved as now? She says she does not believe that morals can be legislated into the people. How, then?

It must be educated into the people, if at all, and when the people are thus educated, so educated that all the machinery of society is made subservient to the needs of the people, then our young girls will need no state protection, for they will not only know how, but they will have the conditions needed to protect themselves.

When it can be shown that the state has really protected any class of people needing protection, then I shall begin to believe that the state can really do such work; not till then. The state protects itself by making the people subservient, and while, at tremendous cost to the people, it secures and punishes a few law-breakers, it, by its attempts to enforce an arbitrary morality, increases cunning and intrigue a thousand fold, for people will not be forced into state established morality; thus, these false methods of restraint only increase the evils they are intended to obviate.

"The state protect the children!" That's what Anthony Comstock claims to be doing, protects them by keeping knowledge from them; knowledge that children want, have a right to, and will have in some shape. Such knowledge, that of sex, its uses and abuses, if not openly and purely imparted, destroys the basis of a sound morality, makes it next to impossible, because of the false ideas covertly gathered.

The law is needed in the interest of public health, it is claimed. Very well; but what is health but morality? Whatever tends to the health of the individual or of the public, is moral, no matter what it is. Will those who are working to raise "the age of consent" admit that? If a woman's health, or even her life depended upon sex association and she dared to hold such relation outside of wedlock, how many of those women are there who have worked so earnestly in this "age of consent" matter, who would not ostracise her?

Take the demand made for woman that she should be entirely free, coupled with the well sustained statement that with such freedom, and all the institutions of society adjusted thereto, that all this sex disease with its train of epileptics, syphilitics, and all the others named, would disappear, will any of those women consider such a proposition for a moment?

What, woman free! woman dispose of her person as she pleases! Yes, and with such freedom there will be none but mutual and loving relations, and harmony is health. What's the matter, my sisters, are you afraid of yourselves? With all the conditions of society adjusted to such freedom, with no pressure upon you to yield yourselves against your own desire, are you afraid you would run wild, would abuse yourselves?

No, this "age of consent" battle has not been a battle for sound, but for false morality. They claim to be trying to save young girls "From that which they do not understand is in store for them, and from the social degradation which is also inevitable, and as cruel and relentless as the folds of a python."

Why not teach them to understand, and by being just, destroy the python? "No woman is ruined unless she thinks so." There is more help for woman in those few words than in all the protection the state can give. Such a spirit manifested by each and all who have felt the injustice of our laws and social customs in this respect, coupled with an intelligent and independent judgment as to what sound morality is, would soon cut the python in two.

"No woman is ruined unless she thinks so." Is there any morality in that sort of pythonism which will not let a woman rise because she has made a mistake, or because it is thought she has?

Morality; in what does it consist? What is the prevailing idea? Is it, does this or that harmonize with my health and happiness and the well being of my neighbor? Oh, no; but does some unseen personality say we may or may not, or does the state say we may or may not? Those who tell us of this unseen personality, and assume his right to rule, know no more of what he commands or forbids than we do, and the state has no moral right to restrain us so long as we injure no one.

The true standard of morality as to any act or course of action, rests upon its relation to, or effect upon the health and happiness of ourselves and others. That is, nature makes right action a blessing, while wrong action brings pain; any statute or custom which contravenes this natural law, is the result of ignorance, tyrannical usurpation, or both, and no so-called God is any more exempt from this indictment than are human laws and governments.

Tried by this standard our sex morality is not only utterly false but cruel. The following from the little sheet called Lucifer, and whose editor is unjustly imprisoned for the third time, is to the point. The writer says in reference to this question of morality,

Yes, our morality is a fabricated one, but hygiene cannot be a sound basis for it till the teachings are in accord with what would be for our health under right conditions, instead of being formulated, as is now too often the case, from results that have come from false conditions. Nature has no more use for an arbitrary or uniform standard in hygiene than she has in the matter of sex. The same writer, speaking of the efforts of a popular magazine in the direction of morality, very truthfully says,

Its chief mistake lies in its continued iteration as to "virtue," "fallen women," etc., etc., showing that while posing as a truth seeker, and a liberal it only accepts as right such manifestations of sex attraction as take place inside the marriage bond. If it held that such outside manifestation would bring down on the parties to it onerous pains and penalties, that would certainly be true. The distinction which should be but is not made, is as to the unwarrantableness of these same penalties. The outcry is kept up as to the sin of the act rather than as to the sin of the man made penalty, and in so doing, it places itself in line with those whose mistaken course is ever to keep things pure (?) as they were and are.

This is the same idea that I wish to express when I ask: "Why not teach her to understand, and by being just, destroy the python?" The question that is now asked is: "Does society, does the accepted code condemn?" The question asked by those who work for Humanity should be: "Is society right, is the accepted code of morality sound?" If not, it is the "python" that should be attacked, and not these methods by the means of which the unsuspecting are brought within reach of its crushing folds.

The state has temporized with the abnormally developed sex perversion and cravings of the dominant sex until the danger to the state and to society is very real and all-pervading.

Why Helen! you say that morals cannot be legislated into the people, do you think that abnormality, that of sex craving or of any other kind, can be legislated out of people! If, in your "battle for sound morality" you expect the law to give you substantial aid you are doomed to disappointment.

"The state has temporized." etc. That is, the very ones who are subject to this "abnormal" condition have "temporized." It is a well known fact that houses of prostitution in our capital cities reap their largest harvests when Legislatures are in session.

Were not the futile efforts at reform with present methods so pitiable, I should be amused at the ideas advanced; but the most pitiable of all is the ignorance manifested of the governing law of that most potent of all forces—sex.

If morality cannot be legislated into the people I again ask, how can a strong sexuality, abnormal or otherwise, be legislated out of them? There has been too much legislation in this direction already. It is my honest opinion that were all laws in reference to the matter abolished except such as protect woman from forcible intrusion, things would be much better than they now are, and with the freedom that I demand for woman even that would not be needed.

One writer says that one great difficulty in keeping girls from falling (?) is the fact that so many of them are born of lust instead of love. Here are two entirely unwarranted assumptions: First, that a woman of strong passions is necessarily born of lust; secondly, that being thus organized, if she refuses to bear the torture of sex hunger and exercises that function before the state says she may, she is, as a matter of course, a fallen woman. What is this power that thus claims dominion over both body and soul, and how long are we going to submit to it?

That many are born of lust is sadly true, but educate woman to her high prerogative, grant her self-ownership, and how many children of lust would there be? Not one, provided the institutions of society were adjusted to such self-ownership. In fact, there can be no true freedom for woman till institutions are thus adjusted. But, if there are so many girls born of lust what of the boys? The marriage bed in which there is no reciprocity is where the children of lust are begotten, children that are forever hungry for what was lacking at conception.

Yes, those lust-born children are always hungry for love, for something that does not form a part of their heredity. The morality that so places woman at man's mercy that she must yield when (as in the case related in another chapter as taken from The Arena) the man has so repelled her that his kisses were a torture, such a morality, so far from being "sound" is worse than the "filthy rags" spoken of in scripture. Small pox rags wouldn't half describe it. That woman whose husband's kisses had become disgusting, hateful to her, did not seem to think it possible that she could rebel. Oh, no. Had she refused "marital duty" the law which is invoked to protect (?) young girls but does not protect wives, would have given him a divorce, and probably the child, while she would have been thrust out from her home disgraced, if not helpless; generally both. There is no morality in the law or the system of society which makes woman dependent upon the individual man, and thus subject to his passions while raising children that the state will claim when it needs them—for its own protection—.

"The nation that will not provide for its mothers ought to perish," and it will, as have the nations of the past unless there is speedy change in the status of woman, of the mothers.

"A battle for sound morality." If people would study this question instead of presuming to enforce, or trying to, an arbitrary standard, they would know that "lust born children" have a right to themselves, would know that they must live their own lives, and will rise through their own experiences if permitted so to do, that the tendency of life is upward unless crushed downward; studying this question free from prejudice, they would no longer insist on conditions which necessitate more or less children of lust, but would secure to woman such freedom as would give us only love children.

That would be "sound morality."

But now the standard demands of women so born the same rule of action as of all others. Such must endure the torture of an active, unsatisfied demand, or violate the standard; if the latter, then church and state combine to crucify them in the name of morality. They, in turn visit innumerable evils upon society not one of which need be if a "fabricated morality" did not prevail. The world does not know because it does not seek to know that an excess of sex life rightly used, would evolve a spiritual element which would supply that which was lacking till, through the law of growth, all abnormality would cease. But with present methods, the greater the effort made to suppress that which seems abnormal in sex, the fiercer it burns. It must be lived out. That which has been sown must be reaped. There is no other help for it.

Morality must be measured by conditions, by needs and not by set rules. The following story was told me by one who knew the facts. A young girl living in the village where he resided was frail, sickly, and none of the resident physicians could do her any good. At length a magnetic healer came into the place and under his treatment she became well and strong. She married, and all was well till, by some means it came out that the doctor who cured her had used sex magnetism, and then—!

Well, the persecution was such the doctor had to leave, and the girl and her husband went also, to escape the ostracism that was meted out to them. The girl had been cured; that was true; but the code had been violated, and better she had died!!

Such is the verdict of what is called civilized society. Such is the code of a morality based upon the supposed, or perhaps real commands of some finite being speaking as God; a code that obeyed often ends in death, and if disobeyed, its ignorant, enslaved advocates make conditions more bitter than death. If hygiene be made the standard of a true morality, that which is healthy being moral, then those persecuted parties were far more moral than their persecutors.

The same is true of the mother and daughter cured by the same man, as related in one the letters of a former chapter. While confessing that I could not so overcome both my inherited and my educational repugnance as to do the same under similar circumstances, still, if results were as stated by the writer, they justify the course taken.

Sex relations, in and of themselves, have no more character in the human than in plants and animals. It is the estimate we place upon such relations, and the conditions under which they are held which decides their effects for good or evil. Such as are not acceptable to both parties are always immoral for they always generate discord and disease in a greater or less degree. Also, if either party fails to fully respect the other as an equal the relation is an immoral one so far as that party is concerned. Then if we violate our own moral sense it makes the act immoral. An animal has no moral sense to violate and the human who is merely animal belongs in the same category.

But "right thinking must precede right acting." If our moral sense has been wrongly educated we may violate both physical and psychical law an yet feel no guilt. A man feels no sense of moral wrong because of holding sex relations with his wife even though consent was wrung from her under pressure and the consequences to her are pain and suffering, I mean a man who measures his conduct by legal right. Neither does the woman have a sense of moral wrong in thus submitting against her own feelings. "Right thinking," a right understanding of nature's laws as to the need of reciprocity will change all this.

Again, the character of the sex act depends upon the self-respecting purpose of the parties as much as does any other act. I mean that the character of any act not in and of itself either good or bad, is decided by the motive that prompts it. If men and women believe that law alone can sanction this relation but allow the strength of their passional nature to overcome such belief, causes them to act contrary to their honest convictions, no matter if such convictions are erroneous, such men and women debase their moral natures, but such debasement does not result from the act but from the wrong thinking; and a large share of the degradation arising from illegal sex relations comes from this very fact, the wounded self-respect.

On the other hand, those who honestly repudiate external authority in sex matters, but who never violate their best judgment, who are honest and truthful to each other, who do not allow passion to rule at the expense of justice—such people are not and cannot be morally injured because of illegal association. In the discussion over the age of consent laws which is called "a battle for sound morality," J. E. Rowen, senator from Iowa, says:

The law permits a scoundrel matured in crime to rob a mere child of her virtue, of that which is to her of priceless value and by setting up the plea of 'consent' he escapes punishment which every principle of equity should inflict upon him. He goes free. What of his victim? Her life is ruined.

That such a man is destitute of any correct moral sense, I will admit, but not more so than that system of society which because of the wrong done to that child, allows her to be ruined. The ruin results from the social slavery which makes woman's person property, which demands legal sale before use, and such a standard is as far from "sound morality" as the east is from the west.

I am well aware of the outcry that will be made against the position I have taken, but if such freedom and such adjustment of society as are here demanded can possibly make things worse than they now are then it were better that the deluge become a fact of the present instead of a legend of the past.

"Not one family in ten can show a clean heredity, free from the poison of the vilest disease known to the race." Not one family in ten, and serious, thinking people trying to save a less than a tenth from becoming contaminated by such means as age of consent laws! The effort would indeed be laughable if it were not so pitiable. And this is the result of your present standard of legal morality! Is it not time that the standard was questioned!

And as to attempting to correct the evils of prostitution inside of the marriage bond, one might as well have attempted to prevent the abuse of the slave-holder's power inside of chattel slavery. As long as that institution existed any interference between master and slave was considered an impertinence. Just so it is between husband and wife, and so it will be so long as the wife is the husband's legal property.

The morality that makes woman's person subject to outside authority is a "fabricated morality," and never, till woman is wholly free, will the blood of the race be purged from the taint of "the vilest disease known to humanity." A. C. Thompkins, representative from Ky., tells one grand truth in his argument against a change in the "consent" laws when he says: "The experience of the entire world shows that no amount of legislation can command sexual morality." Permit me to add: The misdirected efforts of the entire world show that we have not yet learned what sexual morality is.

Over the signature of "A Lawyer," a party who writes against giving woman the ballot, makes the following unconscious admission of the purpose of the church in connection with marriage:

It might be well to inquire why it was that the Catholic church so early declared marriage to be a sacrament. The facts of history during the Roman Republic and the days of Caesar's, and the earlier years of the empire must have been well known to Roman Catholic ecclesiastics who have been always more or less politicians. They must have studied the causes of the decline and fall of the republic, and accepting fully the Biblical doctrine of marriage, they at once saw the vast power and influence which they and the church herself could acquire and wield through that principle and law, if it were ever acknowledged to be correct, and were accepted and obeyed. It gave to woman absolute protection; she accepted it and obeyed the church. It restrained the passions of man in public and private life through the wife and mother, and consequently controlled the husband; and he feared the church.

And they who rule in the church were men, the same as in our Legislatures, and know how to sympathize with man's passions, hence, the "absolute protection" it gave to woman was from every other man but her husband, but he was the absolute owner of her body, the one from whom there was no appeal only to the church, which, while reprimanding abuse, still enforced his claims. "He feareth the church." Fear was and is relied on as the ruling power—the weapon that personal authority always uses.

But when, years ago, I made the claim that so long as the church rules sex she rules everything I did not expect such confirmation from church quarters as I have since had. "A Lawyer" sustains the bible and tries to show from the bible what and where woman's place is, predicts dire ruin to civilization (?) if she is allowed to escape from it, and the Kentucky legislator who claims that sex desire may be transformed into religious emotion, practically says that woman is safe under church influence and no where else.

That the "obscenity law" is a church measure is a well known fact, and that it was passed at the closing session of a Congress whose record for drunken debauchery at that session was widely commented by the press is also a matter of history. Whether the influence of church agents, in order to secure such a law, had anything to do in bringing about that drunken condition is open to grave suspicion.

One thing is certain. Its bitter enforcement against so-called obscenity—against that which the true purpose of a law against lascivious literature would not touch unless there was a purpose behind the prosecution other than that claimed, has all along been manifest. Real obscenity, or such as the law was pretendedly framed for, in many cases has been left untouched, while honest investigators of sex law as existing in nature have been hurried to prison.

The cases of Bennett and Heywood being hounded to their death, are well known. That of Moses Harman commenced with the marriage question. Anger that he should sustain his daughter and her lover in their declared right to themselves—anger because their only marriage was self-marriage before witnesses, and that not according to church or state formula, caused the jailing of the parties and then a searching of the paper which Mr. Walker (his daughter's lover) and himself were publishing to see if they could not find something to base a charge of obscenity upon so as to imprison them. They selected the following, known as

And for publishing this letter, this evidence of what the law allows—yes, the law allows, for the law dictionary says there can be no rape in marriage, "once consent, always consent," for this, Moses Harman, a kind husband and father, a good neighbor and citizen, a gentleman, a scholar—a man against whose personal character nothing has been or can be said—for this Moses Harman spends his 65th birthday in prison, and is there at this writing—Dec. 27—95!!!

That letter—oh, yes! It tells of a horrible marital outrage; it portrays the status of woman in marriage, and—well—it really gives the name of that organ without the use of which the world would become depopulated—without the possession of which no one can vote—it is the voting qualification—gives, all else being equal, eligibility to the presidential chair—oh, crime of crimes to name it, and protest against its being used to "stab a woman to death!" Why, God Almighty made woman on purpose for its use! That is the bible version plainly put, and marriage was established to protect it in its rights.

Oh, it is terrible to call things by their right name, but still, it must be done. The pollutions and abuses of the very fountain of life cannot always remain hidden. There are fearless souls to-day as well as in the past. Mr. Harman so far from being intimidated published another letter, one from a physician, published it to show that there was need of just such investigation, need to call attention to the abuses of the source of human life. I have not a copy of what is called

but I find in "Lucifer" of date Aug. 5—92, what will give some idea of its nature:

"Our readers will please remember that it is the O'Neil letter for the publishing of which Mr. Harman is now in prison. The following from Monmouth, Ill., date July 25, will show that there is need of such revelations. Comstock and his clique are doing what the ostrich is said to do, are hiding their heads in the sand and imagining they are covered, or rather, they seem to think hiding is the best way to do—that if a vice, a crime is kept out of sight, it is all right, so these terrible perversions of sexual life can go on, and if found out, the party can be ostracised, but the crime must not be described in order that the young may be warned, and if one ventures to attempt such a thing prison is the result. The lady refers to the outrage upon community July 25, but if her husband had not forgotten the envelopes, I should not have had what was written the next day. This is the second case of the kind that has come to my knowledge since the O'Neil letter was published. Read the extract from our correspondent's letter, then I have something more to say:"

"And now, mothers, what do you think? Perhaps you do not yet understand? I was a grandmother before I heard of such a thing, and then only a plain statement could have made me comprehend the horrible fact, and for fifteen years I could not name it, even to a woman, but as I grow older I begin to see that silence is criminal.

"Human-germ cannibals; a worse cannibalism than the savages are guilty of-what do I mean? An egg is the germ of a future chicken.

"Did you ever dream that there are men who have a passion for human-germs, and that to obtain them they will take the most sacred portion of the bodies of our sons into their mouths, and by the warmth stimulate to unnatural action the sex life? This told in plain terms is the "obscenity" (?) of the O'Neil letter; it is for trying to save our sons from such 'sex-maniacs' by raising the note of warning that Moses Harman is now in prison. Were it my son, I would rather a man would murder him and drink his blood, than to pervert and destroy his manhood in that way, and yet that man 'standing high in community' is simply warned to leave town, is free to practice his mania in some other community, but Moses Harman is in prison.

"It is 'obscene' to open up to the world the vileness of sex perversion—to open it up for the purpose of pointing out the dangers to which our children are liable! Cover it up! Cover it up! Cover it up! Yes, hide these results of masculine lordship and woman's subjection! It is no wonder that you are ashamed of them! But, nevertheless the work will go on. You can stop the stars in their courses easier than you can turn the wheels of evolution backward. The clock of time has struck the hour for investigating the laws of sex life, and no amount of outcry will prevent it."

As has been said, Mr. Harman did not publish the O'Neil letter to show defiance to the law, but to show that just such investigation was needed. He had not yet caught sight of the idea that the very power of the church-personal-authority-God, with all the emoluments that thus accrue to the church as his representative, all depended upon the continued enslavement of woman and such perversion of sex as will prevent its higher uses.

He honestly thought that he had only to show the need of such investigation for the good of Humanity and he would be justified in what he had done, but Humanity has no show in this battle. Among other statements made in that letter was the story of a family—father and sons, who were human-germ cannibals and furnished each other with the unnatural stimulant. As to the other statements of that letter, the following from one who is well known as a thinker, and published in the same number of Lucifer as the above will give some idea of the balance of the

There is so much that could be given to show the need of opening up this question of questions, one knows hardly which to select. But that these abnormal manifestations are the results of the obstructed normal expression of sex is too evident to the thinking mind to be questioned, and that we should first so understand as to know what is normal, and then see to it that it is not obstructed, is, or should be self-evident to every careful thinker who has no preconceived theory to sustain.

Woman is the most important factor in the evolution of the race because of the fact that it marches into this life under her beating heart, and her feelings of hope, fear, aspiration, anger, love or hate are woven into its very life. The race can never be free so long as she is a subject, but that she be subject as to sex—that she should have children forced upon her because of such subjection is enough to clothe angelic spirits in the garb of demons were they obliged to be born into this life under such conditions.

The following, which was first published in a little paper edited by Helen Wilmans, gives a glimpse of what thousands of women feel but have not dared to say. It is headed:

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That letter does indeed present an "awful" picture of domestic misery, and if it was an isolated case or the ravings of a diseased brain, it would be quite a different matter but there is every reason to believe that a great many wives are as badly situated, or even worse. Cases have come to my knowledge where, after travail pains had commenced, the husband refused to go for the doctor till he had sexual satisfaction, and in one case, a personal friend, an intelligent girl was in travail, not yet having assumed the marriage bond, and the doctor proposed connection with her as a means of making birth easier.

Women are taught that it is a shame to them to tell these things, so they are silent or only whisper their woes into the ears of some sympathizing friend. One well authenticated case of the horror of a woman's being subject to a sex maniac came to my knowledge in connection with the publication of the O'Neil letter, a case in which, when the wife's condition was such that she could no longer endure the infliction of his passion he forced himself upon her unnaturally.

I was staying at the time with one of the sweetest women I ever met. Just before we sat down to dinner a boarder brought in Lucifer. It was always read the first thing. For some reason we had missed the copy containing the O'Neil letter but had heard of it and were anxious for the news, so one of us read aloud an article which spoke of that letter in a way that gave us to understand its nature. I noticed the lady of the house ate no dinner, and after the others had gone she told me the story of which I have just spoken, said the article read so reminded her of it she could not eat. Why, she continued, the babe from the time it was born would gag if they attempted to put anything into its mouth. They could not get enough down it to keep it alive. She did not say if the mother lived and I did not think to ask.

What a picture of domestic—no, I will not say happiness even in sarcasm; the misery portrayed is too vivid. It is such things as these that have come to me unsought which have made me think, think, think, even till I saw clearly that there was no help under our marriage system—a system which makes woman subject in the highest office of her being—till I saw that this system, together with its twin barbarism our economic system, must go down, before the high hopes of Humanity can be realized.

It has taken a great deal of study, a great deal of questioning to enable me to plant my feet firmly upon the rock of that truth which demands unqualified freedom for woman as to her person, and that all the institutions of society must be adjusted thereto, but I am now there—and to stay. I wish I could make women realize where marriage places them, and to help, some of them at least, toward such realization I will relate an occurrence of many years ago. I know it is not exactly conventional to tell such things to the public, but nature never hides her creative processes from nice eyes and ears, any more than she "tempers the winds to the shorn lamb" which was never yet known to be done.

When I was about thirty years of age my husband came in one day and said that Rose (our best cow) was in heat but he had no time to go elsewhere and thought he should turn our own animal in with her if he was but a year old.

"Why," I exclaimed, "he is her own calf!" He laughed at the idea of my thinking that could make any difference with animals and proceeded to do as he had said. Presently he called me to come and help him corner the cow as she rebelled. I did not like to go but knew he would be angry if I refused, so I did what I have never thought of since without a sense of degradation.

As to the poor animal, the expression of disgust and resentment that pervaded, not only her face, but the very attitude of her quivering body as she was thus forced to submit, stamped an ineffaceable picture upon my memory. Of one thing I have always been glad. So far as any profit to us was concerned nature avenged her. She cast her calf before the time, and was of but little use all that year.

Yes, I did what I have always regretted but, as you see, I was cornered too. The man that the law called my husband claimed the right to blame, to make things exceedingly unpleasant if I refused to aid him in outraging that poor animal's right to her choice. This fact of the past illustrates the condition of woman under our marriage and property systems. She is owned. She may have a good, kind, loving master, one who seldom or never makes her feel her chains, or he may be all suavity before the contract is sealed, but show the brute, the tyrant or both immediately after, or he may develop these traits gradually, but no matter how repulsive he becomes to her as a husband, she is cornered.

Church and state form the fence corner; public opinion, how to live, and what of her children? complete the enclosure, and what shall she do! Had that dumb animal understood her strength she could have demolished the fence, or turned and trampled us if we had not fled. Woman is beginning to sense her power, and when she fully wakes up to the fact of her inherent right to herself neither church nor state can hold her, and whatever else is in the way of her freedom will be forced to stand aside. Proper respect will then be had for sex, and, as a result, all forms of its abuse, obscenity laws with the rest, will disappear.

In treating further of the "obscenity law" I wish to state clearly my object in publishing the lawyer's letter, for which I was arrested, indicted, and am under bonds to appear for trial on charge of sending obscene literature through the United States mails.

If there was some kind of machinery in operation in connection with which thousands of men were employed, but from some cause unknown, every now and then there occurred a hiatus in the working of said machinery by means of which an arm or a leg of a worker was taken off, and parties should commence studying and writing about this imperfection of said machine with a view of remedying the defect, would it be in order for the crippled ones in different parts of the country to commence writing to said parties presenting their own particular injuries and asking what should be done in their cases, or for those who had so far escaped to write for instructions as to how they may continue to do so?

It certainly would not. The aforesaid parties are not studying broken limbs, nor how to avoid danger. They are studying how to do away with the danger, how to remedy the defect in the machine, and all attention to personal matters hinders the real work.

That we have a great social machine which is defective is self-evident, one that turns out multitudes of maimed and broken lives, and that a very large proportion of these wrecked lives are the results of ignorance and misdirection in connection with sex life is equally evident.

My object and that of my co-workers is to learn the why of all this—to find the principles which, applied, will prevent all social wrecking, and we cannot stop to direct individual lives. The personal application of said principles must be done by the parties themselves. But notwithstanding, many people pour the story of their wrecking into our ears, expecting us to tell them what to do. We do not object to listening to their sorrows, nor to the causes of their domestic wreckage as far as they understand them. We may thus gather lessons to aid our work, and we can feel a sympathy that will stimulate to greater effort in it, but when it comes to telling another what to do when, at the very best, we can know the conditions only in part, is a responsibility that, I at least, cannot think of taking.

Again, there is another class who seem to think that our demand for personal freedom as to the affections, means license, means that kind of life which knows little or nothing of affection, but is simply pleasure seeking. They seem to think we are demanding freedom that we may revel in sensual pleasure.

It was to oppose both of these ideas that I published the letter which caused my arrest. I wanted to say to him and all others: "I give no advice and write no private letters that I would not be willing to see in public print." I wished to say to him, and to every one who should read the letter, together with my reply thus publicly given: "We do not study this question of sex to see how much 'pleasure can be gotten out of it' and escape the consequences, nor to encourage double dealing. Stand by what you believe to be right or let it alone. Be what you seem, what you wish people to think you are. We are seeking for the principles which applied, will do away with all sex perversion; if you can help us here, all right, but we have no time to attend to your personal matters."

Yes, we could have said all this without publishing the letter, but not with as much effect, and I desired to wrest some help for my work from that which so annoyed me. I will now give

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What a sad condition! Love, longing and fear. What is the matter, my good sir, that you cannot adjust conditions so that you can fearlessly and openly take your loved one by the hand in the face of the whole world? Is it wise or just to "go on as you have begun," thus violating her sense of right? Should exposure follow, you, a man, can stand it, but where would she be in the eyes of community! Do you love her and yet would subject her, through her love for you, to such a risk! If you cannot stand by her now you could not then.

There is a principle involved in this matter others suffer in like manner. Their numbers are myriad, and it will take brave souls to strike off their chains. Do you want to secure the pleasure without the risk? You are not worthy of a love, or an association that you are not ready to defend. Come, now, by the difficulties and heartache of your case, I ask, I adjure you to stand up for your rights, and in doing so, help to pave the way for a freedom which will permit of purity in love. Do this or accept your lot as it is, and live true to it. You have no wife. No law, no statute of man can make a woman your wife whose person you repel. Which will you do, be brave, stand by your rights, or will you be a hypocrite, a sneak?

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Now what is there in all this to indicate a character so lost to all sense of right as to send out printed matter the purpose of which is to corrupt the people in the most vital functions of life? This is what I understand the purpose of the law to be—to prevent, as far as possible, the circulation of such books, pictures, etc., as are calculated to mislead ignorance and stimulate passion. My purpose is exactly in accord with the law, only as to a difference of opinion as to methods. It is education vs. repression.

But I want to analyze that reply a little. Some have understood me to advise the man to defy the law and live openly with the lady of his choice. I did not mean that. I saw no reason, if what he said was true, why he and his legal partner could not be divorced. It would certainly be better for them both. Then I thought of how many are similarly situated and it did seem to me that if they would all be true to themselves it would not take long to change all this for the better, and made an appeal that I should have known better than to have made to one who was so weak as to ask the advice of a stranger in a matter like that. The power to endure martyrdom comes from within one's own soul, not from outward influence.

And now as to education vs. repression. The protection of ignorance has proven to be no protection. The knowledge of the natural use of the sex organs cannot be kept from children and the question in dispute is: Shall they be kept in ignorance as far as is possible, being left to learn what they can secretly, or shall the subject be treated with the consideration it deserves, the idea of filth being entirely eliminated, while the dignity and glory of right use, and the terrible evils of its abuse are openly and fully taught? Which shall it be?

Upon the answer given depends much of the weal or woe of future generations. Comstock, McAfee, and Co., aided by the law, are determined upon suppression, upon the covering up process. Even parents must not be too scientifically explicit, must not call to their aid pictured illustrations of propagative use. That was one of the allegations against Mr. Heywood. "He showed his children obscene pictures." No pictured illustration in the hands of a parent, and used to teach his children the importance and sacredness of the creative act, is or can be obscene. The trouble is we have been so badly born and so falsely educated, that but few of us are pure enough to do so, for unless we really feel this sacredness ourselves we cannot impart that feeling to our children.

If the pictured illustration of an act is necessarily obscene what must the act itself be? If the creative act is of itself obscene, then we are all the result of obscenity, and that which is born of obscenity is, must be obscene. We are all in the same boat, and what's to be done about it!

Were parents to fully instruct their children, both verbally and by pictured illustrations, thus fortifying them against the wiles of the siren and the seducer, then the obscene picture vender's (obscene because gotten up and scattered with lascivious intent) work would be gone, and with it the need for the law if to prevent the circulation of such pictures and such literature was the real object in securing said law.

I am told that said letter is not fit for children to read. I did not send my paper to children, and if a sample copy chanced to fall into the hands of a parent who did not approve it could easily be destroyed, while the fact that it was mailed to parents was proof that I was not seeking to corrupt children. Another point: children when not taught by those in charge, get their knowledge from improper sources, and coin their own words to express their meaning.

Nearly forty years ago I taught a country school in a neighborhood where the children were somewhat backward in book learning. I took a class in the alphabet and brought them along to words of four letters when one day we came to the word, snag, and to my astonishment the boy to whom it came refused to pronounce it, while many of the children in different parts of the room tittered. Their looks and manner helped me to understand the meaning they attached to the harmless word and I talked to them as I then best knew how.

Had the scientific name of the organ they used that word to represent occurred in the order of their lessons not a child in school would have hesitated to pronounce it for they would not have known its meaning, and but few comparatively speaking, of our men and women know that Diana represents chastity, that Dianism means magnetic exchange between the sexes without coition. Children seldom hear the correct names for sex and its relations, but coin words of their own or pick up the language of the street, all of which should not be, and need not be were the young openly and properly instructed on this as upon other subjects; and the lack of such instruction in the past gives us many a wrecked home to-day. But, as the lawyer's letter is counted obscene, I propose to analyze it somewhat.

"Married to a woman who has proven uncongenial and with whom I cannot cohabit."

Nothing obscene in that plain statement of what is true of many a couple, true as to the lack of conjugal happiness, if not exactly in the same way.

Now there is a cause for this state of things, and if human happiness is worth anything that cause should be found and removed. But how can it be removed unless investigated by talking, writing giving experiences, comparing note, or whatever else tends to the end sought. How can we reach the great public to create a sentiment which will find, then take hold to remove this cause of so much misery, unless our work of agitation, of research, can be publicly done?

It might be well to hear that wife's story, to ask that man how he came to enter into such a marital relation—was the relation congenial at first—if not what did he do, or what did she do to destroy that congeniality? Such conditions freely investigated might prevent a world of misery to the parties themselves, and to coming generations. "Oh, but you mustn't, its obscene!" is the cry raised.

But this lawyer has a lady friend who "has starved for sex food." Well, what is there obscene in that outspoken truth? Let the thousands of women living in isolation be encouraged to tell the truth and see what they would say. May we not tell the truth that we may find the equalizing law which will do away with this "starved" condition, in both sexes, without any violation of the law of purity?

"We have a few times experienced the benefit," etc. "We were made for each other and for no other, and we need that exchange of sexual vitality which can only be had by unrestricted intercourse," etc.

Well, what of all that? Is there, or is there not a benefit in the mutual blending of sex magnetism. If not why do physicians say what I once heard one, a good, conscientious man, say to a frail, delicate lady:

"You would be better married," then, after a pause as if weighing the import of his words, he added slowly, "if you didn't have too much marriage." Alas! he knew too well what a risk marriage is! Still, that risk does not disprove the benefit to be received from mutual, loving sex exchange; indeed, nature would be infinitely false to bestow upon the sexes so strong a desire for each other if there was not a mutual blessing in such exchange. I find no obscenity in the man's straight forward statements, but I do find a picture of the conditions under which thousands, yes, millions are suffering, and my heart aches when I think of the misery and consequent demoralization because thereof.

"I contend that our relations are and would be pure and right according to the true law of nature."

So says the lawyer, and so would I say but for the deception, the fear, the underhanded planning which generates just that kind of occult but potent force, even till the whole mental atmosphere becomes a reservoir for the elements on which cowardice and treachery feed, this till truth and honor disappear.

"She enjoys the new experience," etc. In this sentence it seemed to me he was trying to give the strongest possible reason to win from me the advice he wished. It was as if he had said: "Can't you see how necessary we are to each other? Can't you see the difference between a woman sexually dead and one who is alive!"

Yes, men like reciprocity, and did they know how to use creative life, how to treat women rightly, or were not men and women both so ignorant as to destroy their marital happiness, men need not suffer for lack of such response as would satisfy the hunger of their now starved souls or astral bodies; starved till they think and live obscenely, but it must be covered up, kept secret, then no harm will be done.

Can foetid cellars be kept from permeating and poisoning the atmosphere because shut from the light?

Your health inspectors, those whose work it is to keep things physically clean, will find such places and demand that they be cleansed, even if one does have to close the nostrils to exclude the stench. But our moral inspectors will not permit us to turn our light upon the great, filthy moral cellar that underlies the structure called society. They would preserve the morals of the young by keeping this mass of corruption out of sight. Oh, alas for the blindness that refuses to investigate this most vital of all questions!

Because of lack of knowledge here the land is filled with sexual abortions—half—yes, less than half made up specimens of what should be a grand humanity—and will be when sex law is rightly understood and obeyed—when woman is the owner of herself. We shall then have no insane asylums filled with such as cannot stand the strain of life's struggle—then we shall have none born who are deaf, blind or idiotic, and none will be found whom it will be necessary to confine inside stone walls.

Yes, I assert it, and future generations will sustain me; not one of these wrecks of society—not one of those in the various asylums—not a criminal in prison (or out) not one of them have been rightly conceived and gestated. Indeed! none of us are a tithe of what we might have been had the full tide of creative life—of soul and spirit as well as of the flesh, entered into that which gave us being here. Because of this lack, because physical pleasure was the dominating factor, we are all under the dominion of the flesh.

Painfully conscious of this—conscious of the poverty of my own make up, with an unceasing heartache for the imperfections of one who drew his life from mine—now when the remembrance of my own ignorance and its results stimulates me to do my utmost to arouse people to the importance of this question of questions, now when my head is whitening for the tomb, I am arrested, am under bonds, am liable to go to prison.

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Much of what has been used in this chapter was written soon after my arrest Aug, 2—94. The matter is not yet settled (Jan. 6—96) and I am still under bonds. What the outcome will be remains to be seen.

I would like to have those who read the offending letter to write and tell me if they think it "too obscene to be spread upon the records of the court."

Such is the charge recorded against me by the Grand (?) Jury in the indictment in which I am charged with sending obscene literature through the U. S. mails. Twelve men (not a woman there) thus state, the most of them, no doubt, young enough to be my sons. Of the many letters I have received from women in reference to this charge I select two; one from a widely known and highly esteemed lady older than myself, the other a middle aged lady, a successful physician. In reply to the question the latter asks I would say I know of no one here who would do such a thing.

Now what is the leading incentive to this persecution? Do they believe me to be a lewd woman, and that my object is to corrupt the people? They know better. I find in "The Prodigal Daughter" by Rachel Campbell, issued by "Our New Humanity" Pub. Co., Topeka, Kan., a correct reply to my question which I will quote here.

It is not honest thought and honorable opposition with which we have to deal. Organized oppression is well aware of our aim and purpose to effectually overthrow and destroy every form of tyranny and injustice, and to break every yoke and fetter that cripples the growth and hinders the happiness of humanity. The aristocracy of religion has joined hands with the aristocracy of wealth and their united powers are used to influence legislation and procure the enactment of such laws as will enable them under the pretense of guarding good morals, to persecute reformers, forbid agitation, stifle inquiry, the more effectually to smother all freedom either of thought, speech or action.

The above very clear indictment replies to my question and applies to my case. I will now leave what is personal to myself, which would have been left out entirely but for what is due to history and to show the real animus of the prosecution.

The greatest, the most important of all the reasons to be given for the full emancipation of woman is touched upon in the second chapter of this work, but it needs further elaboration. So far as the logic of facts and the inevitable results of natural law are concerned, I have certainly given substantial evidence in support of my claim for woman—for her right to her own person under any and all circumstances; but there is another and a still greater reason for making this demand. This, as I have said, has already been touched upon, but, though seeing clearly the law involved, the depending result is so great, and language so weak, I am almost overwhelmed by the thought of the task before me.

The fact that with woman in full possession of herself, sex disease would be unknown is justification enough for the demand made, but when I tell you that the redemption of our bodies and the final resurrection of the so-called dead depends upon such freedom you have a right to demand good and sufficient reasons for such a statement.

I will try to give such; yet, but for the discoveries of modern science in the realm of the finer forces of nature, no matter how clearly I might see this to be true I could take no step to show it to others, for I should have nothing to work with, no demonstrated point from which to start to prove the unknown by the known. But when it has been found that something cannot come from nothing, that an idea must have a root somewhere, that the finer, the invisible forces are the most powerful, we then have a basis for our reasoning.

Taking as a starting point the postulate that any and all prevailing ideas, no matter how much perverted in their application, or how much narrowed down by our ignorance—taking the ground that they are all rooted in truth, we are forced to conclude that there is a meaning in that text of scripture which says: "We wait for the redemption of our bodies." And we must concede that the idea of a resurrection has a basis in truth.

We find also in the light of modern research that there is, there can be no such thing as miracle. It follows then that the redemption and resurrection spoken of must come through the action of natural law if at all. We know too that if we understand a law and apply its principles we command the result. We have also another term, regeneration, to consider.

Before entering upon our direct line of argument we will say that there are two distinct lines of thought manifest in connection with the sentiment expressed in the words: "Nearer, my God, to thee," one of which is to grow away from earth and earth conditions, and ascend to the realm of pure being—to be lost in God. With this class of thinkers the appetites, passions, hopes, desires which naturally belong to this state of existence must be held in check, subordinated, crucified, in order to get nearer to the source of Being. The idea of this class of thinkers is thus expressed by a writer in the May Arena for 1895.

"Displacing a material with a spiritual consciousness naturally ensures progress. It is practically the Christ-mind in humanity."

The other idea would be expressed thus:

"Permeating a material with a spiritual consciousness naturally assures progress. It is practically the God-mind in Humanity."

It is to this idea that we owe the hope of conquering death, the hope of perfected, of regenerated bodies, of a perfected race.

The former idea stimulates to the effort to grow toward the source of Being by climbing individually up through and out of prevailing conditions. The latter idea is to so change the conditions that the tabernacle Being shall descend and dwell with us. As I see things, the idea of displacing the material with the spiritual is a mistaken one. It is the Christ idea so far as crucifixion is concerned; but by displacing, putting aside the human we do not redeem it from corruption. We must let go of Christ and develop God—within ourselves—must not think of displacing the material to give place to spirit, but of permeating and glorifying it in a perfect union.

In such union the veritable God-Man becomes a reality, but if the material expression of human sex life is repudiated to give place to spirit, then the human is practically castrated, is sacrificed to spirit—to the divine, thus leaving no human agency through which to create divinity on the human plane. When we fail to connect sex with the spiritual we leave unconnected the one link that can give us a Divine Humanity. To attain to this demands creative power.

With these principles before us we will now see if we can make our claim good—to-wit. that the redemption of our bodies—their regeneration, and the resurrection of the so-called dead depends upon the full freedom of woman and an adaptation of all the conditions of society to the highest use of such freedom; and I will add: men can never be really free till their mothers are.

Commencing with the word, regeneration, what is its simplest, most natural meaning? To generate over of course; to re-make, to re-build, to re-generate, but how is this last to be done? Through the legitimate action of natural law. There are no miracles. How does generation come? By blending the sex life of male and female. Can there be regenerating, generating anew without uniting the same two elements or forces that entered into generation? Certainly not, but why need regenerating? Because that which gives enduring power, the spiritual, entered into our generation only as a negative factor—was not recognized.

In other words, the development of the race is, and has been such that there was no receptivity for the broader, higher life-force. We have not been awake to such possibilities, therefore have not secreted in the germ the elements of a perfect unfolding. Again, not realizing that we had anything to do in the matter other than to follow blindly the reproductive impulse and "take what God sent," we have made no preparation for the best results, and seeing the imperfection, disease and death that everywhere prevail, have decided that this world is at best but "a vale of tears," so, thinking to lay up "treasure in heaven" we have been sending the best of ourselves to the unseen life. No wonder that we need regenerating, making over, but how is it to be done?

Christians claim that Jesus brought life and immortality to light. If so, it was by indicating the possibility of so perfecting body and soul as to put them beyond the power of death, for long before his advent all nations and tribes having any spiritual development recognized continued life after the death of the body. But, while this idea is really found in the New Testament it has never been interpreted by the principles of natural law. It is the fear of death that we have tried to overcome, instead of death itself.

We have not recognized the creative fire of our own lives as being fed from the flame of life eternal, and thus the fountain from which to draw our most effectual aid in overcoming inherited imperfection, but have actually counted it impure, and by our thought have made it so. The assumption is that Jesus lived a celibate life. It is but an assumption. There is no evidence in the record to that effect, and the fact that nothing is said of his taking a wife does not prove him a celibate. He was begotten outside of marriage and if his father paid no attention to marriage why should he? I am taking the record as it reads, not vouching for its truthfulness, but if there is any truth in it he was loved by many women, and if he did not in return, love some of them, as men love, he was less (not more) than human.

Jesus gave a hint of the superiority of free, loving relations to enslaved ones when he said, publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you; but, the question not what Jesus said, but what is the law involved in regeneration? As a man thinketh so is he, is the first principle to be thoroughly understood in this matter. If men and women think they must go to church to save their souls they will be quite likely to go. If they think there is a devil to catch them they are sure to be looking for one. If they think hate and revenge, they will be quite likely to live them. If they think they must prepare for death they weave around themselves the atmosphere of death, breathe it in from day to day.

In thinking sex low, what they create in its use is low, and if it be other human beings, only through suffering can they develop those higher qualities that should have been theirs at birth, and then we, in our ignorance of causes glorify suffering. Yes, low ideas of sex create an atmosphere of degradation, because, acting as a vibratory force upon the elements about us, each well defined idea stamps its image upon our individual spheres; thus low thoughts of our creative life clothe us in their own likeness morally and spiritually, and so far as the body we have inherited can be thus changed, we take on their likeness physically.

We know what the race thought has been and is, in connection with the body, know that it is and has, been doomed to death. With the fountain of life under bonds, the mothers of the race in subjection and the full belief that disease and death are inevitable, how can we expect anything better than we have!

Our first step then, toward regeneration is a firm belief in its possibility. We must turn our thought, our whole mental attitude toward renewing life. The next thing is an entire change in our estimate of sex. It must no longer be to us an impure, a disgusting, an "obscene" thing, but as pure and sweet as the lips we love, as sacred as the sweet forms of our babies that have been begotten in love, as holy as the memory of a mother's love.

With such thoughts of sex, it can never be abused to our degradation. With such thoughts of sex we make its emanations creative of newer, purer life continually, for not only in the close embrace, but in the indirect exchange that is the result of our general social life there will be created the elements of life in the place of, as now, the elements of disease and death.

But in generation, the direct embrace is necessary, what then of regeneration? It is continually being demonstrated that the union of the two elements in the germ will produce a new being, but we have never dreamed that this life-force might be exchanged, as it were, and each become to the other a fountain of renewing life.

We are told that the sex life can be absorbed or re-absorbed as brain and soul food. In absorption that which would ripen as a germ is not secreted, and when the will power succeeds in doing this, it is practically unsexing one's self. In re-absorption after secretion it may become food for the brain but not creative life. I say it may, not that it will or does thus become brain food, for I am in doubt on this point.

I cannot see how matter, after being separated from the general circulation, and thus sexized, can be re-absorbed other than an element of discord, disease, unless vitalized by the blending life of its opposite.

But—and right here is the pivot upon which the question turns—if it can be thus vitalized and then can be returned into the general circulation, it seems to me that it would thus naturally become a regenerating power, become the hidden manna of life. Such exchange would not necessitate culminating waste; it would be what is spoken of in scripture as, the seed remaining with, or in us.

As I sense the power of the spiritual, sense what it must be when blended in a complete union with matter in the creative life of the human, I feel like saying: This is the "mystery of godliness" or God-likeness for which the whole creation groans and travails.

Now I want my readers to stop right here and think—I want them to ask themselves if there can come a complete union of spirit with matter other than in the recognition of the spiritual in sex, thus permitting spirit through creative agency to combine with matter till the balance is attained, the at-one-ment to which the ages have aspired, completed; and further, as matter which is chemically antagonistic refuses to blend though fused in the same crucible, I would ask them to carefully consider the question as to whether there can be such union in undesired human sex relations as will help us to attain to a regenerated life, and yet farther, if, with man's aggressive nature, it is possible for woman to avoid undesired, or to obtain desired relations except in a very limited degree, unless the conditions of the demand I make are secured to her?

If the positions taken are correct, and I feel certain they cannot be shown not to be, then the first part of my claim is proven; regeneration does depend upon the freedom of woman.

The next claim is that the resurrection of the so-called dead depends upon woman's full freedom. The redemption of our bodies from dissolution is included in what has been said upon regeneration; their redemption after dissolution is what is called the resurrection, a re-clothing of the spirit in matter, not the same atoms of matter, but the same in kind.

Now, right here I want to submit another proposition to the reader. By what law are living bodies formed? Is there, can there found in all the realms of matter a body pervaded with life that sex has not been the attracting power which drew from matter the body which clothes that life?

If not, have we any reason to expect that there ever will be a material body through which life can manifest that has not sex as its central attracting force? Again I would urge that there are no miracles, that natural law or method governs all things, and always. The conclusion then is legitimate; if there is to be a resurrected body it must be the result of a union of the same two forces which combined in the formation of the first body. It will yet be found that the bible will mean much more to us with a natural than with a supernatural interpretation, that the researches of modern science among the finer forces of nature lead to conclusions that are in harmony with the cabalistic meaning of sex as expressed in that book; thus that which was hidden is made known and science becomes the real revelator.

"The redemption of our bodies." Why not? Is nature, in the temporary materializations which occur, making an effort in a direction she cannot go? Are these manifestations the result of a sort of blind man's bluff on the part of spirit clowns who are playing with nature's forces for their own amusement?

No, they are the result of the earnest efforts of a class of spirits who would master the secret of sex and control matter at will. The sphere of the medium is the matrix or womb; spiritualized sex aura the condensing or attracting element that thus temporarily assumes a material garb. Having accomplished this much will they be likely to rest content without further effort? Hardly. Having found what it is that has aided them so far, they will demand whence it comes, how produced and what hinders its perfection and abundance? Spiritualized sex aura is of more value in the evolutionary unfolding of the race than all the gold and diamonds of earth, and to woman as a manifestation of the Infinite Mother Soul, is given the power to gestate and bring forth this potent aura as far as she has the conditions, and the fullness of conditions can only come with a fullness of freedom.

When, in freedom, our atmosphere becomes so vitalized with spiritualized sex aura that materialization can be perfected, the resurrection an achieved act, then those to whom this earth belongs as a final possession can triumph over death and sing the conqueror's song. Others may grow (?) away from matter as fast as possible, and ascending to the realm of pure being, rest there till the desire to return to a sphere of action arouses them, when on some other planet they may achieve an inheritance.

As to my last statement, there is of course, there can be no proof other than as each soul senses for itself the analogies of the universe, but that sex is creative wherever the two elements or forces blend, be it on the physical, intellectual or spiritual plane, a close observer will readily see; and that the female is the gestator of visible forms of life is unquestioned and I see no reason why the law should change when it comes to the finer forces eliminated by the invisible blending of these universal life factors. It is also an undisputed fact that antagonistic elements will not blend no matter how close the contact.

It follows then that I have proven my claim, or, that there is no such thing as regeneration, or as a resurrection; for, if at all, sex must be their basis and their actualization dependent upon that which woman can gestate only in freedom.

But, if there is such a law of growth in sex, its perversion is not only proportionally disastrous but a natural result of ignorance and repression instead of intelligent direction. To try and make clear the idea I wish to express, I will relate a fact in connection with the development of the Negro race. Our Kentucky legislator in his article on "the age of consent" law, as published in the "Arena" from which we have before quoted, says that the Negro in his native state is not sensual, but on coming in contact with civilization they become very much so.

Why? There is a cause for this change and what is it? This increase of sex desire when brought in contact with civilization has a meaning not even suspected by those who do not recognize the fact that all growth is rooted in sex. I do not mean the unfolding of that which was combined in conception and gestation; such unfolding needs only the conditions under which the life was started. I mean growth toward a higher grade of life. All such growth needs and must gather, at least the sex aura of the higher grade.

The Negro in his native state is, comparatively speaking, complete. The atmosphere in which he moves contains that which corresponds to just what he is and nothing more; but when he comes in contact with civilization the sex emanations of a higher grade of life fill the atmosphere he breathes, permeate his being, but mark—if there was no latent element in his nature in harmony with the higher grade, no power of attaining to it, there would be no response in his sex nature. Thus his susceptibility is really the measure of his possibilities.

Of course he does not understand this, neither does the white man, but if the latter will take a gauge of those of that race who have become adjusted to the higher level, I think he will find no more of the sensual than before they came under the influence of civilization, certainly not more than in the white race.

But suppose this race, so susceptible of cultivation, had been thrown into this atmosphere of civilization in a state of blindness; suppose them deaf also, would not the vibrations of this higher grade atmosphere stir their sex natures all the same, and what would be the natural result?

Right here a question: Does any one know of any such sexual abnormalism among the lower races in their natural state as is to be found with us? I have never heard even a hint of such a thing as sodomy, germ-cannibalism, or any other form of sex perversion among them. Like the animals, they are natural in their sex life, or at least I have yet to find evidence to the contrary; but, if the Negro had been brought in contact with civilization in the way I have supposed, with no perception of from whence that which so stirred him came, and no avenue of growth, I opine it would not be long before such perversions, and perhaps worse, would be developed.

Now, please mark the point: The white race has come in contact with the atmosphere of a higher growth. They feel the more intense vibrations of that sphere of spirit life which, if permitted to blend with our life-force, would take us into that higher grade, but we, for the most part, are blind and deaf to spiritual things; and yet, in the quickened vibrations of the spiritual that "set the flesh on fire," we struggle and stagger, "reel to and fro" with hunger for that which will open up to us this higher life—yes—civilization itself is reeling and staggering for the want of its renewing power; still we know no more what it means than the Negro knows what his quickened sex life means, and yet the immeasurable horror of the abnormal sex practices resulting from ignorance and the maddening hunger of starving souls, are but the measure of its power for good when rightly directed, which it never can be except in such freedom for woman as I demand.

Thus, not only all that I have previously named, but the fate of nations, the question as to whether they shall continue to rise to a certain height and then slip from the ladder of progress and go down as the nations hitherto have done, or whether some one nation shall be able to take the next step and go on, thus opening the way for all others. All this depends upon woman's sexual freedom. The nations have gone as far as they can with man in the lead and woman a sexual slave.

I know of no greater reasons that can be given in behalf of woman's freedom than those already given. If I did, I should try and present them, for the travail of the ages is upon my soul.

My Sisters:—In making my appeal to you, it is my wish first to strip off the glamour that is thrown around us—to show just the position we occupy.

The biers of the dead are often covered with the sweetest of flowers, but their fragrance does not bring back to life the still forms lying beneath. We have been adorned with the flowers of song and story but such adornment does not break, it only hides our chains. Born into these chains, grown under such discipline as will fit us to them, many of us do not feel their pressure more than we think is necessary for our good, till we begin to grow from within instead of being shaped from without, but still the hideous fact remains that as women we are slaves.

It is true, as human beings irrespective of sex we have many rights in common with men, rights that they have secured to us, but when it comes to sex we are slaves. Church and state own and dispose of us through their agents the priest, the legislator, and the judge. These three are the trinity that rule us for the benefit of said owners. This trinity practically says to us:

"You have no sex. It is not and never can be yours. It was created for our use and you but hold it in trust. We decree it shall not be used only under the legal conditions that we have made, for the good of church and state demand such regulation. You must first pledge your body to the use of some man during life. This done, it is your wifely duty to submit to the desires of your legal lord at all times; you must bear all the children possible for your owners, church and state. They will dispose of those children as they see best, you have nothing to do with that; it is yours to bear, and care for till wanted.

"If you are submissive in all this and teach your daughters to be the same, then you will have the reward of being called good and virtuous women, and a good name is more precious than rubies. But if you rebel, if you play the harlot—well—we will visit you, we will crowd ourselves upon you, will shut you out from all other means of support, will drink up your life as fast as possible, then have your bodies carted to the Potter's field."

Is not the picture true to nature—to the position we occupy as women? I need not ask you if you have thought upon this for I know that you have. You dare not whisper your questionings, many of you, but you have them all the same; and now, you who dare read, you dare listen, ask me what you shall do.

It would be easier to tell you what not to do, but permit me to ask what you are willing to pay for freedom? Can you give up the reward of submission, of slavery, "a character" from your masters? Are you willing to accept self-approval in the place of a good name from others if you can have but one? Until you can do this—until you are strong enough to take and maintain your freedom you have not grown to a fitness for it. Our first work then, is to learn our own worth, to learn the value of self-approval.

A lady who was asked her views of the command to love our neighbor as ourselves, replied:

"We have not half learned how to love ourselves yet." It is equally true that we as women have not yet half learned how to value ourselves. When we do—when we demand and maintain our right to our own bodies, we shall then command what we now plead for, and concede our convictions to obtain, to-wit., the respect, the approval of others.

Who are these who claim the right to control us? The fruit of our bodies. Shall we then permit that which has come forth from between our feet to rise up and claim to be our head!

Again I ask: Who are these who claim the right to make laws for us and then imprison us if we do not interpret and obey from their standpoint? Our children, every one of whom has nestled beneath some woman's heart, has gathered body and brain from the very fibres of her life. Yes, our children.

Why do they do so—these, our men-children? Is it because they are naturally so very bad?

Oh, no; they have great, kind hearts, but their heads are so out of tune, so filled with false ideas (ours are not much better off) that their hearts have little chance to act. No, they are not deliberately bad, but they have been wrongly taught. In their conflict with untamed nature it has taken physical strength to overcome the obstacles with which they had to contend, so they deified a God of force, a personal God who gave out commands which must be obeyed or the consequences would be fearful.

Oh, no, don't condemn these our children, but pity them that they are under the rule of force and fear, for they have known no better way. The time has come however, for us to teach them better, and if we do not the blame is ours. They, our children, cannot free us. We must free ourselves; and they, seeing and feeling that our power is not of force, nor of fear, but begotten of the spiritual and born of love, will glory in their mothers.

The first thing then is a due appreciation of ourselves as mothers of the race, of the scientific fact that as we are intelligent, well situated and free, so will the race be, that as we are antagonized, ruled, wronged, outraged, dependent, submissive to wrong, so will the race be. The crushed condition of millions of our children, the cellars, the garrets, the rat-riddled tenements they are forced to inhabit, the prisons, the asylums, the many thousands of our daughters who are disease contaminating and disease rotting because not allowed the control of their own bodies—because of the fact that as woman is—as she is free or bound, so must the race be.

Right here I wish to emphasise the claim made in the early part of this work, to-wit., if there was no ownership of sex, if woman was free from all outside pressure she would receive the sex embrace only when desired, and from whom desired, hence there would be no conflict of feeling, no conflict of sex life. All would be harmony in the creative sphere, and, as harmony is health, there would be such thing known as sex disease. Another claim—No child of an intelligent, free, satisfied and happy mother will ever become a drunkard, or a criminal in any true sense of the term; neither will the children of such mothers be born idiotic or become insane.

What we now have is but the natural result of our enslaved condition as

Yes, men are equipped for this life through us, their bodies and brains are from us, and if inferior, it is because we are held as inferior; are they discordant, it is because the very air we breathe is filled with the elements of discord, and so through all; we have furnished the material from ourselves and the fruit bears the character of what we have been forced to be.

We are not our very selves, never have been. Look about you my sisters, and see what you can find that bears the stamp of woman's individuality. Is it religion? No; that is masculine, both man and God. Is it morality? No; that is masculine, every plank fitted to man's supremacy and personal God authority backed by fear and force. Is it in government, commerce, in any institution of human interest? No, no, no. All is from man's standpoint and our opinion is not even asked for. They have, in the name of God, laid upon us commands that cannot be obeyed, then preached total depravity, helplessness and Jesus.

They have given us a system of society that it is impossible to harmonize, then attempted to enforce their ideals with prison, torture, the hangman's rope and armies standing ready to deal in wholesale death.

And what is woman's part in all this? To cover with flowers of tenderness and charity some of the hideous features of man's attempt to serve heaven with hell's weapons, of man's attempt to bring order out of chaos with the motive powers of force and fear. It never has been done; it never can be done, and woman at the helm of such a system as we now have would make worse work than man has done.

No, there is no part of our present system of society that bears the impress of woman's individuality. She is active, is becoming more so, but everywhere, in all places, man either takes the lead or his methods are copied. We have no organized body of women working from methods of independent thinking. They step into places that hitherto only man has filled, but they adopt his methods, study his books, or write books involving the same principles; they do this and think they are making progress, but in it all, they have not begun to look for themselves.

We have so long measured ourselves by man's measure that the self-centered power of the true woman-soul is as yet hidden. This we must find.

I am well aware it is no easy thing to step out from inherited tendencies and educated methods and think for one's self, but this is what we must do, and it will take big thinking ere we can place ourselves where we by right belong. Giving a little personal experience to illustrate: I fairly trembled at what seemed my own audacity when I gathered the courage to declare that the same law which condemned a Catholic for burning a Protestant, or a Protestant for hanging a Quaker condemned Elijah, the prophet of the bible God, for his wholesale slaughter of the prophets of Baal; but the principle was correctly applied. Every question of right and wrong must be decided upon its own merits. That which injures or in any way wrongs another cannot be made right because of any command coming from any God, or from any government.

Judging by such a standard, is it right that man should enslave woman as he does as to her sex? Supposing the Jewish story of creation to be true, what right has any God to create woman and then make her subject to her sons, and the sex slave of her husband? What does the law of heredity say of the natural result of woman's submission?

Man's religion has put us, as mothers, in a dependent position, thus making our sons the subservient tools of those in power, ready, at their command to shoot down a common brotherhood, filling the land with widows and orphans? What for, why such carnage? To preserve a nation's honor! Ah, a duelist's code of honor! If our sons may not shoot their own enemies, what right has government to demand that they shoot its enemies? Oh, but England will resume her old sway if we do not protect ourselves! Not if the mothers there set themselves to teaching their sons not to fight. War will never cease till woman finds herself. The spiritual power of the awakened woman-soul would quench the spirit of war as water quenches fire.

My Sisters: let us call on this inner self-hood to help us to examine every institution of society in the light of truth free from the bias of previous teaching to find if there is any portion of the present system based upon the principle of love. What do we find? Force, force everywhere the ruling power; force imprisons, maims, kills, while love stands by helplessly weeping, and waiting if perchance she may soothe the sufferers. Talk of Jesus on the cross, call out the emotions to the utmost, thou masculine representative of a masculine God and thou feminine reflection of man, but know that your system of force is the real, ever present cross on which the true Christ, the true God-love—Mother love, is continually crucified, and has been in all the past.

Now my sisters: in view of all this, in view of all the efforts that have been, and are being made by good men and women to remedy the evils of this system based upon force and their utter failure, what shall we do? Shall we struggle for place and power under such a system—one in which one class can not be bettered without injuring another class—one that can not give us health without starving the doctors—that cannot give us peace and order without starving the lawyers—that cannot give to woman employment without leaving men idle and converting them into tramps—a system that, as a whole, cannot be made better—shall we ask for the ballot, shall we struggle for place and power under such a system, one that holds the mothers of the race in subjection and robs them of what should be theirs because of the importance of their work, shall we continue to struggle with the difficulties of such a system, or shall we repudiate it and demand that life be based on love?

My sisters: let us counsel together; let us unite as a Loyal Sisterhood, loyal to ourselves, and to coming generations. They are coming, coming from the great unknown, and what reception shall they have?

Shall prisons open for them, shall asylums hide their broken minds, shall cellars and garrets be their shelter, or hunger drive them to desperation—shall the Potter's field receive their abused and disease-rotted bodies, shall grape-shot and cannon mow them down like grass, or shall the hangman's rope choke them out of life?

All this, and more, must be the fate of millions of them unless we gestate a new system to take the place of the one that now robs and ruins.

My sisters: what shall we do, rise to the dignity of our work, or continue to occupy a place in the social structure subservient to our sons? I for one, demand for woman the right to her own body, and a system of society based on love instead of force, and now I will wait to hear from others.