CK No doubt castration is a severe penalty for any human being. But degeneracy itself is the penalty for the violation of biological laws, and the eradication of degeneracy is no more than the satisfaction of the law of talion and the restoration of the moral equilibrium. Society has a right to make use of these measures of defense to free itself of the degenerates, and nothing short than depriving them of the capability of procreation will do the work.

This right does not mean that it is the duty of the State to make search for inoffensive degenerates to satisfy the law of talion. In the interest of personal liberty, it would be very dangerous to give society the right to pick up inoffensive men and women on the streets, declare them imbeciles and sterilize or castrate them. This would throw the doors wide open to abuse. Only those who place themselves or are placed under society’s protection, either in asylums or in prisons, and have thus become society’s wards should be subjected to the rules and regulations of society.

CL The brutality of Nietzsche’s philosophy has never attracted normal people, even if they had the assurance that the offspring of the brutal mating will turn out to be supermen. This assurance can not be given. The lessons of history teach just the contrary. The artificial breeding of the Spartan warrior led to the sterility of every progress of culture, science, art or commerce, while the chaotic panmixia of Athens did not prevent this town of only thirty thousand inhabitants, two-thirds of them slaves, to become the spiritual centre of Greece and the teacher of untold future generations in art and science. But for Athens and its panmixia, Sparta’s history would have remained unwritten and its people buried in oblivion, like many another nation that is known by name only. The most vaunted Spartan vigor has not left the least sign of a monument, chiseled, written, carved, or stained, to record Sparta’s very existence. Sparta’s vigor was the vigor of the bull or the elephant.

CM Even at the time of Shakespeare this fact was well known. The poet’s advice is: “Let still the woman take an elder than herself; so wears to him, so sways she level in her husband’s heart.”

CN Premature union means loss for the child, says Ellen Key; it may arrest in their growth countless excellent forces. Woman’s nature does not attain its full spiritual maturity before about the age of thirty.

CO During pregnancy the prone position is the one least injurious to the child. In the later months, it is sometimes the only position possible.

CP Brehem reports that in the Sudan the woman stands in initu, bends over and places her hands on her knees.

Among the Kamtschadals maritus maritaque jacent in lateribus.

Some of the Australian tribes exercent compressionem in a squatting position.

CQ The question of frequency was a matter of solicitude to many ancient legislators. Zoroaster requires as the minimum frequency to secure a sufficient gratification mulieri una congressio nono quoque die; Solon three times a month; Mohammed requires once a week, otherwise the woman shall have cause for divorce.

CR Among young married people it is often the wife who is more exacting than the husband. The sensations are entirely new to her and she demands their repetition so often till the male erections fail to perform their part.

CS The mental faculties suffer most under excesses. The Talmud says that the brain dries up through excesses in venere and masturbation. The symptoms of cerebrasthenia e abusu sexuali, says Hegar, is pressure in the head, inability to do continuous mental work and to concentrate one’s thoughts, which involuntarily continue to stray upon the sexual sphere, lack of mental energy, hypochondria and insomnia.

The eyes of the patients are disturbed by light. They fear light in such a degree that reading after a short time has to be interrupted. Mooren reports the case of an American lady who, manu stupri causa from her early youth, could not even stand the lustre of another person’s eye.

Weber found that, excessive congressus, especially in the female sex, has an unfavorable influence upon the organ of hearing. The accompanying symptoms are pains in the vertebral column, in the region of the last pectoral and the first lumbar vertebrae.

Mackenzie says that excesses in venere may lead to inflammations of the nasal mucous membrane, to epistaxis and to abnormal sensations of smelling.

CT This explains why so many middle-aged men have no other aim in life except to make money and spend it on frivolities, and why so many women turn their minds to mere fads and sheer inanities; whose minds harbor only one thought, dress, and who worship only one divinity—the goddess of fashion.

CU The young bride entering the bridal chamber a pure virgin, says Ribbing, is not prepared for the things to come as is her husband. In any case, she somewhat fears the changed conditions and surroundings.

CV Even among barbarians women were taboo and considered unclean during the catamenial period. Concarnatio was strictly prohibited. The Mosaic law declares the menstruating woman unclean for seven days. Likewise the man, qui comprimebat a menstruating woman, was considered unclean for seven days.

CW A confinement, says Freund, is a menstruation in which a perfectly developed ovum is expelled.

CX Trousseau says, conjugal congressus is not injurious to nurse and nursling, provided it is regulated by great moderation.

CY Garnier consulit ut manus mariti voluptarie titillet mammas et alias rotundas partes mulieris. These caresses convey to the spirits of both mates the most vivid excitation, which hasten and induce ejaculation. Ovid gives the same advice.

It is known that Vanswieten gave the following advice to Empress Maria Theresia who was childless in the beginning of her married life. “Ego vero censeo, vulvam Sanctissimae Majestatis ante coitum diutius esse titillandam.”

CZ Hensen (Physiologie der Zeugung) concludes from statistics compiled from 284 cases wherein the day concarnationis was known, that the greatest number of conceptions follows the act practised in the days immediately after menstruation. The chances of conception following the act practised during menstruation are increased the nearer the catamenial period is approaching its end. The number of conceptions after the act practised before menstruation, Hensen found to be the smallest.

DA In a general way Hesiod advises never to practise concarnatio on the return home from a funeral, but rather after having enjoyed a good comedy, for the semen transfers cheerfulness as well as sorrow and other affections to the offspring. For the same reason concubitus should be avoided when in a state of intoxication. Diogenes said to a stupid boy: “My son, thy father was drunk when thy mother conceived thee.”

DB Noirot found that the healthiest and strongest children are those conceived in the spring, the time of the rejuvenation of nature.

Oettinger found that liaisons produce an abnormally large proportion of females, incestuous unions of males.

Westermark says that among exogamous peoples the female birth rate is often excessively high.

DC Soranus goes so far as to claim that conception cannot ensue if initus is not desired and longed for by the woman. Just as the man can have no ejaculation, or rather erection, without desire, so is conception impossible without it in the woman. Just as food, taken without appetite or with disgust, will not be properly digested, so the sperma can not be received by the womb, if inclination and lust are wanting during concarnatio.

This opinion is not borne out by experience, for we find that pregnancy does take place after concarnatio while the woman is in a natural or hypnotic sleep, in a chloroformed state, in drunkenness and in rape. These facts prove that pregnancy may follow concarnatio where the woman did not experience the least degree of libido.

But even if conception be possible without libido, the lack of the latter is a great impediment to impregnation.

DD Roubaud says that, initus interruptus causes in the woman voluptuous excitation without allowing the reception of the spermatic fluid into the organs. The desire and the copulative-voluptuousness awaken the sensibility of the womb and prepare it to receive the normal excitation of the sperma. If its arrival fails, the uterine sensibility, awakened by the erotic sensibility, reacts upon the mobility in a confused manner and causes unsuitable and irregular motions. If these manoeuvres are often repeated the woman eventually becomes a nervous wreck.

DE E. Kraus (Centralblatt f. Gynaecol., 1911, p. 747) found that all chemicals which are recommended for the prevention of conception prove themselves extremely unreliable in the practice. His experiments with 4 per cent. boric acid, 0.8 per cent. citric acid, etc., on hares and rabbits failed entirely.

For this reason, namely, that there is no anti-conceptional device in existence which affords real security against pregnancy, there arose recently certain sociologists and physicians in Europe who demand the abrogation of the laws contra abortionem.

The Pirogoff medical society in Russia demands the legalization abortionis.

Hans Gross (Gross Archiv, Vol. 12, p. 345) says that in his opinion the time is not far away when abortion will not be punished any longer.

Ed. v. Liszt (Die kriminelle Fruchtabtreibung, Zürich, 1910) says, the punishment for committing abortion should only take place after the pregnancy has advanced to a certain point. The possibility of recognizing the human form or of distinguishing the sex of the embryo or the capability of motion should mark the point in question. The moment, after which abortion would be punished, would thus coincide with the end of the second month.

Such proposals can only be made in countries where Roman law is in force. From the point of view of the Roman law the embryo is “pars viscerum mulieris.” Hence if she has a right to remove any part of her body, she may also remove her embryo. No law denies a man his right to have his healthy appendix removed even against the advice of his surgeons, if he thinks it may bother him later on. Hence if the woman thinks that carrying her embryo to term will subject her and her child to great hardships, she has a right to have it removed.

But in our free country, under Anglo-Saxon law, nobody has a right over his own body. Suicide is a crime. A woman has no right to remove a part of her bowels. She and her body belong to the State.

For the same reason sterilization or castration for prevention of conception must be considered criminal according to the philosophy of our laws. The operation for the permanent destruction of the faculty of propagation is nothing less than a partial homicide. For it destroys the individual’s growth in the infinite. Hence the physician who performs the operation of sterilization to prevent conception in a perfectly healthy person is guilty of a crime, just as the homicide committed, in the interest of euthanasia, upon the victim’s request, is a criminal offense.

DF In their natural sexual life, men live at a loss, hence are more katabolic, i. e., the changes in consequence of their sexual activity are disruptive. Women, living at a profit, are more anabolic, i. e., the male sperma absorbed by her organs serve for constructive processes. But erethism of any kind, in both male and female, represents a katabolic crisis.

DG In a treatise on the science of sex-attraction, such as this, the author is of the opinion, that the much-mooted question about the double standard of sexual morality of the two sexes ought to be thoroughly discussed.

In human affairs there is no effect without its adequate cause. Codified law, custom and ethics, the three determiners and regulators of human conduct, have all their reasons. If there is a double standard of sex-morality there must be a reason for it. What is this reason? Is this reason still extant? Is there still any justification for the existence of the double moral standard? Have not any other reasons arisen for a change of this double standard?

In modern times law and ethics do not know of any double standard of sex-morality. In no civilized country do the laws punish any voluntary sexual misconduct but adultery, and in the latter the prohibition is for men and women alike. Ethics, on the other hand, allows sexual relations in marriage only, and then mostly for the purpose of propagation. Even such a radical as Zola says: “Si l’enfant n’est pas au bout, l’amour n’est qu’une saleté inutile.” But as far as custom is concerned there is no question of the existence of a double standard of sex-morality. Even the most violent, rabid free-lover will resent any allegations of a dissolute character in his mother, while he will listen with perfect equanimity to narrations of the fast life of his father. Whence comes this difference, which seems to be ingrained in the heart of every man and woman? What is the cause of this phenomenon?

The answer that men with the power in their hands have sexually enslaved womankind, shows not only ignorance of history and biology (no species could survive for any length of time without the harmonious coöperation of the two sexes. Where the female of the species is actually kept subject to the male, where she is treated with cruelty by him, or where the male neglects to protect and take loving care of the female, the species has no survival power and dies), but also poor logic. If the double standard of morality were not due to racial evolution, if it could have been changed without hurting the race, sensual men would have changed it long ago, because it is against these men’s interest to have all women live in strict chastity. An unchaste man needs an unchaste female partner. If all women—prostitutes included, sic!—were chaste, where on earth could he get his partner? Hence the assertion, frequently found, especially in feministic literature, that men-made laws sexually enslaved women, is entirely illogical.

In fact, among the culture-nations laws against unchastity never existed. Even the Bible has only laws against adultery. The adulteress and her paramour were both stoned (Deuteron. xxii, 24), but the sexual relations of the unmarried woman with any man were entirely ignored by the law. Even rape was no criminal offense—the father of the girl had only a civil action against the rapist (Deuteron. xxii, 28). Such laws would just suit sensual men. It is in their interest that all women except their own wives should lead dissolute lives. But it is in the interest of the married woman, where adultery is prohibited, that all other women should be strictly chaste, so that her husband would be compelled to be faithful to her. Hence it is custom (and in matters of custom woman rules supreme) that dictates chastity. The punishment of a woman’s false step is social ostracism, decreed by women themselves, not by men-made laws. The men-made laws, on the contrary, strike men harder than women. The punishment of the woman’s misconduct in marriage is loss of husband and children, while the man loses wife and children and has to pay her alimony, during her natural life, in the bargain. Yet the fallacy is repeated again and again about men wishing to enslave their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters.

But why does custom punish woman’s misconduct and why not man’s? Why does the Biblical law discriminate between men and women in regard to adultery? A married woman’s adultery is punished with death, while the law is silent about the married man’s adultery with a single woman. Why this discrimination that is as old as history? Was there a justification for the double standard, and should not the twentieth century change the double into a single standard? If changed, should men become as chaste as women or should womankind be pulled down into the gutter of sensuality to meet the demands of men?

The majority of mankind—women included—believes in the justification of the double standard of sex-morality for the two sexes. Men are thought to have greater erotic needs than women.

Recently there arose a new spirit in the domain of sex-morality which demands a single standard for both sexes. The societies for moral prophylaxis demand that men should become as chaste as women. In this way the social evil and its satellites, the venereal diseases, would disappear. On the other hand, the radicals have raised a unanimous revolt against self-control in the domain of chastity for either sex. These new moralists preach the right of men and women to the fulfillment of every instinct, every impulse, every dream in all its fullness. This is proclaimed as the new standard of sex-morality. But in truth this subjugation of the individual to the instincts is a complete denial of morality. For morality is the arrest of the instincts by the intellect.

In this part of our treatise the author will try to find the reason for the double standard of sexual morality for the two sexes. Why since the dawn of history the married woman was kept to a rigorous chastity. How the chastity of the single woman has developed as a corollary of the law of adultery, and he will thoroughly discuss the reasons why the double standard of morality is at present utterly without justification.

DH The parallel points in both creeds dealing with social justice are among others the following:

DI Socialism applies the same tactics towards Christianity, as Christianity used towards Judaism. Christianity borrowed Israel’s greatest Book, the Bible, written from the first chapter of Genesis to the last of Revelations, at different times in different languages, but always by the sons of Israel, appropriated the moral tenets of these Jewish prophets and rabbis (Jesus is often addressed by the title rabbi in the New Testament) and repudiated the descendants of these Jewish thinkers. Christianity, for generations, deprived these descendants of the enjoyment of these human rights, their ancestors have woven for mankind, and accused them of forming an element destructive of social peace, in whose great Book social peace and justice were first preached. The Hammurabi codex, which in regard to civil and criminal statutes shows a certain parallelism with the Pentateuch, is far inferior to these books in the multitude of social laws.

DJ If you meet with your neighbor on the sidewalk push him into the middle of the road and let him be mangled by the passing vehicles. Then you have made a long stride forward toward the perfect man. If you do not do it to him he will do it to you. Only the stronger has a right to survive, so that a perfect aristocracy may arise. But while this doctrine of the survival of the strongest was with Nietzsche only a philosophical dream, the prototype of the Superman, which is “Push forward; overcome obstacles; take wherever you can find; grasp and do not let go; live your own life fully, it is all you have; let others look out for themselves,” has always been in existence since time immemorial.

DK The spirit of this intoxication of work is shown in phrases such as this: “Women deteriorated to the point where she was unfitted to do a fair share of the world’s work.” Is work a privilege or a necessity? Who is the power that has decreed this share of the world’s work? Do animals in freedom work? By the way, the alleged deterioration which presupposes a transmission from mother to daughter, with the exclusion of her son, is a biological impossibility. If the deterioration has become a unit-character, the mother must transmit half of it to her son and half to her daughter, so that boy and girl are still born equal. The only way such deterioration could be transmitted from mother to daughter—who inherits half the good qualities of her father to balance this deterioration—is that it has become a sex-unit-character, like the female breasts, hair or skin, which is contrary to all the teachings of biology. Even Lamarck would never claim that such an acquired characteristic as deterioration for work could be transmitted from mother to daughter with the exclusion of her son. On the other hand, if deterioration is not a unit-character transmissible to the son, it cannot be transmitted to the daughter either.

DL When the sweet-sixteen is punished by her mother for flirting with boys, then her personality has been violated.

DM This voluptuous sensuality is given naturally the poetical name of love, with which it really has nothing in common except the final sex-expression and its desire.

DN The psychic bulwark, says Ch. v. Ehrenfels, against the horrors of the thought of death and against the terrors of existence can only be raised by man when he puts himself into a certain relation to the metaphysical riddles of the universe, into a relation to the contrast between the fleeting and eternal, between the movable and immovable, between the finite and the infinite. The ethical values of individual conduct may be thus characterized as those which are awakened in man, when he places himself, with his wishes and actions, before the tribunal of the eternal and inscrutable. Individual moral conduct, in contrast to social morality which is determined by the moral imperative and ethical relative values, is in this way regulated by the perennial threats of the inevitable appearance of death.

To escape from this thought the morality of love recommends the plunge into the whirl of sensual life. But at the approach of death man sees that the transitory intoxication of the senses is also pure vanity. For it is almost axiomatic among thinking men that the only way to acquire the ability to look upon the terrors of existence and the fleetingness of life with equanimity and consolation is to put their labors in such a direction, where there is hope for the continuation of their works beyond the individual existence far into the infinite, such as the artist hopes of his art, the scientist of his science, and the creative genius of his creation.

DO Even Homer, the happy, life-enjoying Greek poet, expresses the same pessimism (Iliad ix, 318).

“The same fate awaits him who remains home and him who risks his life in the war for his country; in the same estimation are held the coward and the brave. They both die in the same way, the idler and he who has accomplished ever so much in life.”

The greatest rhapsody of pessimism is found in the Bible, in Ecclesiastes. The quintessence of the royal preacher’s philosophy is, “All is vanity.” “One generation passes away, the other comes, without aim or end, purpose or intent.” Here is the sun, speeding through the heavens, for which purpose or intent?

“The sun riseth and the sun sets and hasteth to the same place, where it rose”; without aim or end. Here is the wind blowing furiously a gale, to which purpose or intent?

“The wind goes to the south and turns to the north, it whirls about continually and returns again according to his circuit,” without aim or end. Here is the river, the torrent rushing down a precipice, to which purpose or intent? “All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full, unto the place from whence the rivers came, thither they return again”; without aim or end. All things turn in a circuit without aim or end, purpose or intent. All is vanity and vexation of the spirit.

“What happens to the fool, so it happens to the wise. There is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool forever. How dieth the wise man? As the fool. In the days to come shall all be forgotten” (ii, 15, 16).

Then the preacher turned, in search for a definite purpose in life, to different philosophies of human conduct, he becomes in turn a work-worshipper, love-worshipper, pleasure-worshipper; and what did he find? “There is nothing good in the things God has created but for a man to rejoice” (iii, 12). Thus it appears to him that the philosophy of pleasure is the only purpose in life. But a little later he finds that also this philosophy is of no profit. “But a man has no preeminence above the beast; for all is vanity” (iii, 19).

Then comes a passage which shows how pessimism blinds the keenest observer. “There is one alone, he has neither child nor brother, yet is there no end of all his labor, neither is his eye satisfied with riches, neither says he, for whom do I labor? This also is vanity” (iv, 8).

Now, this fact of the lonely man working for the future without apparent purpose, ought to have given the philosopher a hint, that there must be something behind this will to labor without aim or end. “Arbores serit agricola quarum fructibus nunquam fruetur.” But pessimist as our philosopher is, he returns to his philosophy. “This also is vanity.”

DP Jagadis Chandra Bose (The Modern Review, Calcutta, 1914) succeeded in establishing the perfect parallelism between animal and plant. He found that all plants are sensitive and that in certain of them are tissues which beat spontaneously like the heart-beat of the animal. Response to electric stimulus, too, is identical in the plant and in the animal. In short, the life of the plant is the life of the animal in almost all its incidents, only in less degree.

DQ In nature the individual counts for nothing, the race for everything. Nature is pitiless in the destruction of individuals. Thousands of animal lives are consumed to feed one lion throughout its life, millions of plant lives to feed one ox. In nature the individual is as ruthlessly sacrificed as in war. In this respect war is more in harmony with the designs of nature than peace.

In peace all the manifestations of life are individualistic. Eating, drinking, sleeping, and amusing one’s self are all actions in the interest of the preservation of the individual. Even the impulse of the preservation of the kind, or of propagation, is in the last analysis individualistic in nature. It is the aspiration to save at least one part of the individual from general annihilation. The child is the part of the parents which survives after the parents’ death. All the activities of man, even the noblest, partake of a certain egoistic element. The mother in sacrificing her life to save her child is unconsciously merely sacrificing the older part in order to save the younger part, of herself. But when the very existence of the individual is in jeopardy, when life itself is at stake, then all ideals centering in altruism are cast aside, and the Satanic cynic grins, muttering the Biblical verses:

But all egoistic tendencies are silent in war. Here the individual is merely an insignificant little wheel in the huge war-machine. Here the individual counts for nothing, the nation for everything, the individual must perish that the nation may flourish ever after. Now, what is the modern nation, but an idea, what is the monarch in western countries or the flag, but a symbol? Men live as happy, as content, as free in London, Brussels, Paris, or Berlin. Ostend, e. g., would not materially change its mode of life, whether it is Belgian, French, British, or German. (The semi-Asiatic Russia naturally forms an exception. Anyone who has lived near the German-Russian frontier and has observed the sunny German village with its clean paved streets, lined with pretty large-windowed brick houses, all supplied with the modern urban comforts, where tidiness and cleanliness, light and well-being, happiness and prosperity dwell; and compared with this sunshine, only a hundred yards away, on the Russian side, has seen the dirty, streetless Russian village, with its windowless, straw-roofed, low, wooden shanties where man and beast live under one roof in squalor, filth, poverty and misery—and here it is where real civilization reveals itself, not in the borrowed, French mannerism in the palace of Petrograd—will not doubt for one moment that there is a vast difference between the life under a semi-Asiatic civilization and that under western civilizations. At this corner of the world, war is utilitarian as among the barbarians in ancient times. Here the Teutonic civilization is in war against the slavery of the knout.) But what are the western nations fighting for? They are fighting for an ideal; here men give their lives for a symbol.

Herein lies the chief service of war. (War is also calling out men’s higher virtues, such as love and devotion to the fatherland, sympathy with one’s compatriots, display of sacrifice, return to simple life, etc.) It is the creator of the highest idealism, which is capable of the supreme sacrifice, life itself. Such high idealism is found only among the warlike nations of the world throughout human history. These same warlike nations, the Hebrews (the Bible is replete of war-narratives), the Greeks, the Romans and the Teutons, have also built up the higher civilizations. Only those absorbed in the category of the ideal, in the enthusiasm of humanity, can be seized by the great ecstatic impulsion to war. The vulgar, the ignorant, the selfish, engrossed in their own small affairs and engulfed in the mire of utilitarianism, for whom the only meaning, worth and work of life is barter, have no conception of the highest sacrifice, which is life, and can not comprehend the meaning of war, nor do they ever contribute to the ideal edifice of a higher civilization.

DR The author will follow here the discoveries of Morgan as described in his “Ancient Society.”

Morgan divides the human history into three periods—savagery, barbarism and civilization. He then subdivides the first two epochs into three stages each.

In the lower stage of savagery man lived on trees and in caves. His food consisted of fruits, thus being compelled to live in warm climates where his food was always to be had. In this stage men lived in a kind of monogamy.

The middle stage of savagery begins with the discovery of fire. Fish was added to man’s food. In this way men were able to move in hordes in colder climates.

The upper stage of savagery dates back from the invention of the bow wherewith man could hunt his prey.

The lower stage of barbarism begins with introduction of pottery, the middle stage with the introduction of agriculture and the upper stage with the discovery of metals. The last is the stage wherein the Homeric Greeks live.

Simultaneously with humanity’s advance from the lower to the higher stages, the relations of the sexes also changed.

DS Punalua is an Indian word for uncle. In this family the children do not know their father, but they know the brother of their mother. The uncle is thus the relative who looks after the special interests of his sister’s children within the clan.

DT Many scholars differentiate between endogamous and exogamous tribes. But Morgan has shown that Endogamy and Exogamy are only two different stages, that in the course of evolution every human tribe has passed through the endogamous and exogamous stages. The Bible knows yet the exogamous stage. “Therefore, shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife” (Genesis ii, 24). This shows that exogamy lasted into the stage of the pairing family. In the patriarchic family of the Bible, it is the woman who leaves her clan and joins that of her husband. The same is the case among the Homeric Greeks (Ilias vi, 29).

DU Homer often describes such gifts. Meleager is offered by the Aetolians fifty acres of land, if he agreed to fight the Kouretes (Ilias ix, 578).

DV The transition from the matriarchate to the patriarchate has been dramatized in the Orestea of Aeschylus.

Apollo proclaims:

The Erinnyes thereupon lament: