第21章

She spreadeth out her hand to the poor:

Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, She is not afraid of the snow for her household, For all her household are clothed with scarlet.

She maketh herself carpets of tapestry;

Her clothing is fine and purple.

Her husband is known in the gates, When he sitteth among the elders of the land, She maketh linen garments and selleth them, And delivereth girdles unto the merchant.

Strength and dignity are her clothing;

And she laugheth at the time to come.

She openeth her mouth with wisdom, And the law of kindness is on her tongue, She looketh well to the ways of her household, And eateth not the bread of idleness.

Her children rise up and call her blessed, Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, Many daughters have done virtuously, But thou excellest them all, Give her the fruit of her hand, And let her works praise her in the gate."In the East today the same story has wearisomely written itself: in China, where the present vitality and power of the most ancient of existing civilisations may be measured accurately by the length of its woman's shoes; in Turkish harems, where one of the noblest dominant Aryan races the world has yet produced, is being slowly suffocated in the arms of a parasite womanhood, and might, indeed, along ago have been obliterated, had not a certain virility and strength been continually reinfused into it through the persons of purchased wives, who in early childhood and youth had been themselves active labouring peasants.Everywhere, in the past as in the present, the parasitism of the female heralds the decay of a nation or class, and as invariably indicates disease as the pustules of smallpox upon the skin indicate the existence of a purulent virus in the system.

We are, indeed, far from asserting that the civilisations of the past which have decayed, have decayed alone through the parasitism of their females.

Vast, far-reaching social phenomena have invariably causes and reactions immeasurably too complex to be summed up under one so simple a term.

Behind the phenomenon of female parasitism has always lain another and yet larger social phenomenon; it has invariably been preceded, as we have seen, by the subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, either as slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the excessive labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation of unearned wealth in the hands of the dominant class or race.It has invariably been by feeding on this wealth, the result of forced or ill-paid labour, that the female of the dominant race or class has in the past lost her activity and has come to exist purely through the passive performance of her sexual functions.Without slaves or subject classes to perform the crude physical labours of life and produce superfluous wealth, the parasitism of the female would, in the past, have been an impossibility.

There is, therefore, a profound truth in that universal saw which states that the decay of the great nations and civilisations of the past has resulted from the enervation caused by excessive wealth and luxury; and there is a further, and if possible more profound, truth underlying the statement that their destruction has ultimately been the result of the enervation of the entire race, male and female.

But when we come further to inquire how, exactly, this process of decay took place, we shall find that the part which the parasitism of the female has played has been fundamental.The mere use of any of the material products of labour, which we term wealth, can never in itself produce that decay, physical or mental, which precedes the downfall of great civilised nations.The eating of salmon at ten shillings a pound can in itself no more debilitate and corrupt the moral, intellectual, and physical constitution of the man consuming it, than it could enervate his naked forefathers who speared it in their rivers for food; the fact that an individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a worm, can no more deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than were it made of sheep's wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces, faring delicately, and clad in silks, and surrounded by the noblest products of literature and plastic art, so those palaces, viands, garments, and products of art were the result of their own labours, could never be enervated by them.The debilitating effect of wealth sets in at that point exactly (and never before) at which the supply of material necessaries and comforts, and of aesthetic enjoyments, clogs the individuality, causing it to rest satisfied in the mere passive possession of the results of the labour of others, without feeling any necessity or desire for further productive activity of its own.(Of the other deleterious effects of unearned wealth on the individual or class possessing it, such as its power of lessening human sympathy, &c., &c., we do not now speak, as while ultimately and indirectly, undoubtedly, tending to disintegrate a society, they do not necessarily and immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point we are here considering.)The exact material condition at which this point will be reached will vary, not only with the race and the age, but with the individual.A Marcus Aurelius in a palace of gold and marble was able to retain his simplicity and virility as completely as though he had lived in a cow-herd's hut;while on the other hand, it is quite possible for the wife of a savage chief who has but four slaves to bring her her corn and milk and spread her skins in the sun, to become almost as purely parasitic as the most delicately pampered female of fashion in ancient Rome, or modern Paris, London, or New York; while the exact amount of unearned material wealth which will emasculate individuals in the same society, will vary exactly as their intellectual and moral fibre and natural activity are strong or weak.