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Man
is without any doubt the most
interesting fool there is.
Also the most eccentric. He
hasn't a single written law,
in his Bible or out of it,
which has any but just one
purpose and intention
-- to limit or defeat the law of God.
He
can seldom take a plain fact
and get any but a wrong meaning
out of it. He cannot help this;
it is the way the confusion
he calls his mind is constructed.
Consider the things he concedes,
and the curious conclusions
he draws from them.
For
instance, he concedes that
God made man. Made him without
man's desire of privity.
This
seems to plainly and indisputably
make God, and God alone, responsible
for man's acts. But man denies
this.
He
concedes that God has made
the angels perfect, without
blemish, and immune from pain
and death, and that he could
have been similarly kind to
man if he had wanted to, but
denies that he was under any
moral obligation to do it.
He
concedes that man has no moral
right to visit the child of
his begetting with wanton cruelties,
painful diseases and death,
but refuses to limit God's
privileges in this sort with
the children of his begetting.
The
Bible and man's statutes forbid
murder, adultery, fornication,
lying, treachery, robbery,
oppression and other crimes,
but contend that God is free
of these laws and has a right
to break them when he will.
He
concedes that God gives to
each man his temperament, his
disposition, at birth; he concedes
that man cannot by any process
change this temperament, but
must remain always under its
dominion. Yet if it be full
of dreadful passions, in one
man's case, and barren of them
in another man's, it is right
and rational to punish the
one for his crimes, and reward
the other for abstaining from
crime.
There
-- let us consider these curiosities.
Temperament
(Disposition)
Take
two extremes of temperament
-- the goat and the tortoise.
Neither
of these creatures makes its
own temperament, but is born
with it, like man, and can
no more change it than can
man.
Temperament
is the law of God written in
the heart of every creature
by God's own hand, and must be
obeyed, and will be obeyed
in spite of all restricting
or forbidding statutes, let
them emanate whence they may.
Very
well, lust is the dominant
feature of the goat's temperament,
the law of God is in its heart,
and it must obey it and will obey
it the whole day long in the
rutting season, without stopping
to eat or drink. If the Bible
said to the goat, "Thou shalt
not fornicate, thou shalt not
commit adultery," even Man
-- sap-headed man -- would
recognize the foolishness of
the prohibition, and would
grant that the goat ought not
to be punished for obeying
the law of his Maker. Yet he
thinks it right and just that
man should be put under the
prohibition. All men. All alike.
On
its face this is stupid, for,
by temperament, which is the real
law of God, many men are
goats and can't help committing
adultery when they get a chance;
whereas there are numbers of
men who, by temperament, can
keep their purity and let an
opportunity go by if the woman
lacks in attractiveness. But
the Bible doesn't allow adultery
at all, whether a person can
help it or not. It allows no
distinction between goat and
tortoise -- the excitable goat,
the emotional goat, that has
to have some adultery every
day or fade and die; and the
tortoise, that cold calm puritan,
that takes a treat only once
in two years and then goes
to sleep in the midst of it
and doesn't wake up for sixty
days. No lady goat is safe
from criminal assault, even
on the Sabbath Day, when there
is a gentleman goat within
three miles to leeward of her
and nothing in the way but
a fence fourteen feet high,
whereas neither the gentleman
tortoise nor the lady tortoise
is ever hungry enough for solemn
joys of fornication to be willing
to break the Sabbath to get
them. Now according to man's
curious reasoning, the goat
has earned punishment, and
the tortoise praise.
"Thou
shalt not commit adultery" is
a command which makes no distinction
between the following persons.
They are all required to obey
it:
Children
at birth.
Children
in the cradle.
School
children.
Youths
and maidens.
Fresh
adults.
Older
ones.
Men
and women of 40.
Of
50.
Of
60.
Of
70.
Of
80.
Of
90.
Of
100.
The
command does not distribute
its burden equally, and cannot.
It
is not hard upon the three
sets of children.
It
is hard -- harder -- still
harder upon the next three
sets -- cruelly hard.
It
is blessedly softened to the
next three sets.
It
has now done all the damage
it can, and might as well be
put out of commission. Yet
with comical imbecility it
is continued, and the four
remaining estates are put under
its crushing ban. Poor old
wrecks, they couldn't disobey
if they tried. And think --
because they holily refrain
from adulterating each other,
they get praise for it! Which
is nonsense; for even the Bible
knows enough to know that if
the oldest veteran there could
get his lost heyday back again
for an hour he would cast that
commandment to the winds and
ruin the first woman he came
across, even though she were
an entire stranger.
It
is as I have said: every statute
in the Bible and in the law-books
is an attempt to defeat a law
of God -- in other words an
unalterable and indestructible
law of nature. These people's
God has shown them by a million
acts that he respects none
of the Bible's statutes. He
breaks every one of the himself,
adultery and all.
The
law of God, as quite plainly
expressed in woman's construction
is this: There shall be no
limit put upon your intercourse
with the other sex sexually,
at any time of life.
The
law of God, as quite plainly
expressed in man's construction
is this: During your entire
life you shall be under inflexible
limits and restrictions, sexually.
During
twenty-three days in every
month (in absence of pregnancy)
from the time a woman is seven
years old till she dies of
old age, she is ready for action,
and competent. As competent
as the candlestick is to receive
the candle. Competent every
day, competent every night.
Also she wants that
candle -- yearns for it, longs
for it, hankers after it, as
commanded by the law of God
in her heart.
But
man is only briefly competent;
and only then in the moderate
measure applicable to the word
in his sex's case. He
is competent from the age of
sixteen or seventeen thence-forward
for thirty-five years. After
fifty his performance is of
poor quality, the intervals
between are wide, and its satisfactions
of no great value to either
party; whereas his great-grandmother
is as good as new. There is
nothing the matter with her
plant. Her candlestick is as
firm as ever, whereas his candle
is increasingly softened and
weakened by the weather of
age, as the years go by, until
at last it can no longer stand,
and is mournfully laid to rest
in the hope of a blessed resurrection
which is never to come.
By
the woman's make, her plant
has to be out of service three
days in the month, and during
a part of her pregnancy. These
are times of discomfort, often
of suffering. For fair and
just compensation she has the
high privilege of unlimited
adultery all the other days
of her life.
That
is the law of God, as revealed
in her make. What becomes of
this high privilege? Does she
live in free enjoyment of it?
No. Nowhere in the whole world.
She is robbed of it everywhere.
Who does this? Man. Man's statutes
-- if the Bible is the
Word of God.
Now
there you have a sample of
man's "reasoning powers," as
he calls them. He observes
certain facts. For instance,
that in all his life he never
sees the day that he can satisfy
one woman; also, that no woman
ever sees the day that she
can't overwork, and defeat,
and put out of commission any
ten masculine plants that can
be put to bed to her.[**]
He puts those strikingly suggestive
and luminous facts together,
and from them draws this astonishing
conclusion: The Creator intended
the woman to be restricted
to one man.
So
he concretes that singular
conclusion into law,
for good and all.
And
he does it without consulting
the woman, although she has
a thousand times more at stake
in the matter than he has.
His procreative competency
is limited to an average of
a hundred exercises per year
for fifty years, hers is good
for three thousand a year for
that whole time -- and as many
years longer as she may live.
Thus his life interest in the
matter is five thousand refreshments,
while hers is a hundred and
fifty thousand; yet instead
of fairly and honorably leaving
the making of the law to the
person who has an overwhelming
interest at stake in it, this
immeasurable hog, who has nothing
at stake in it worth considering,
makes it himself!
You
have heretofore found out,
by my teachings, that man is
a fool; you are now aware that
woman is a damned fool.
Now
if you or any other really
intelligent person were arranging
the fairness and justices between
man and woman, you would give
the man one-fiftieth interest
in one woman, and the woman
a harem. Now wouldn't you?
Necessarily. I give you my
word, this creature with the
decrepit candle has arranged
it exactly the other way. Solomon,
who was one of the Deity's
favorites, had a copulation
cabinet composed of seven hundred
wives and three hundred concubines.
To save his life he could not
have kept two of these young
creatures satisfactorily refreshed,
even if he had had fifteen
experts to help him. Necessarily
almost the entire thousand
had to go hungry years and
years on a stretch. Conceive
of a man hardhearted enough
to look daily upon all that
suffering and not be moved
to mitigate it. He even wantonly
added a sharp pang to that
pathetic misery; for he kept
within those women's sight,
always, stalwart watchmen whose
splendid masculine forms made
the poor lassies' mouths water
but who hadn't anything to
solace a candlestick with,
these gentry being eunuchs.
A eunuch is a person whose
candle has been put out. [***]By
art.
From
time to time, as I go along,
I will take up a Biblical statute
and show you that it always
violates a law of God, and
then is imported into the lawbooks
of the nations, where it continues
its violations. But those things
will keep; there is no hurry.
**NOTE: In the Sandwich Islands
in 1866 a buxom royal princess
died. Occupying a place of
distinguished honor at her
funeral were thirty-six splendidly
built young native men. In
a laudatory song which celebrated
the various merits, achievements
and accomplishments of the
late princess those thirty-six
stallions were called her harem,
and the song said it had been
her pride and boast that she
kept the whole of them busy,
and that several times it had
happened that more than one
of them had been able to charge
overtime. [M.T.]
***NOTE: I purpose publishing
these Letters here in the
world
before I return to you. Two
editions. One, unedited,
for Bible readers and their
children; the other, expurgated,
for persons of refinement.
[M.T.]
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