Anonymous
Gynecocracy
Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not inapplicable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is of bad books, that they, to a discreet and judicious reader, serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate… Good and Evil, we know in the field of this world, grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is the doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil- that is to say, of knowing Good by Evil. As, therefore, the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose — what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider Vice, with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true war-faring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race when that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness: which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser (whom I dare to be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas) describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his Palmer through the Cave of Mammon and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity, than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason?
Liberty of the Press
VOLUME ONE
CHAPTER 1
By this time I am thirty years of age, and well aware of it.
Home-staying youths, some poet or wiseacre has said, have ever homely wit. Whether I have a homely wit or indeed any wit, I do not know. I have never endeavoured to form an opinion, deeming the question not to be one into which I could hope to enquire impartially; in fact, not one for my personal judgment. But though I have been a home-staying youth, I have had experiences; experiences of the world, that is to say, of woman, whom I regard as a complete epitome of the world-and if anyone, home-stayer or otherwise, has had experience of her in all her moods and whims, and has passed through all the psychological and physical gymnastics by which her varying caprices and lusts can conduct his soul, his passions, and his senses, and still preserves a homely wit, he must be an arrant duffer!
For Woman is a complete education.
By my own experience, I have reason to respect the petticoat and chemise, the drawers and long stockings, the high-heeled boots and tight corsets-and what they contain — and to believe that good may accrue to a young man by being disciplined by a smart girl. This may be thought a very peculiar view.
To give one instance, a young man of my acquaintance was sent at nine years of age to a fashionable preparatory school for Eton, and was expelled eighteen months afterwards. It was considered futile to send him to another school. Three tutors successively resigned on the ground that he was altogether incorrigible. At a loss what to do, his guardians enquired in all directions, and answered innumerable advertisements of persons professing to devote themselves to the reformation of backward and refractory boys, until, at last, it was suggested by a friend of the family, who had had some German anthropological experiences, that the lad should be taken in hand by a lady. The idea was astounding! A great, rough, strong boy of fifteen who had defied the discipline of private schools and tutors, and of specialists who devoted themselves to such characters, would never yield to a lady. The friend, a person of position and reputation, pledged herself that he would be completely broken in; she had known similar cases in which the plan she advocated had proved successful beyond all possible expectations. After protracted discussion, her suggestions were adopted. A pension was quickly found, The Grafin von- stipulated that the lad should be left absolutely under her control for two years, and at the end of that period he turned out a model of docility and obedience, courtesy, and chivalry, and with remarkable intellectual development and self-possession. His friends acknowledged with wonder and gratitude the marvellous transformation which the pretty demure German Countess had wrought. Naturally, they were curious to ascertain by what magic she had worked this miracle. I do not know whether they succeeded in learning; probably not, as they were English; but having been through the same kind of discipline myself, I possessed the key. When we met, we accordingly compared notes, and he confessed that the magic was wholly feminine. She had impressed him with the subtle and subduing influence of sex, under which he was perpetually kept. She, as I guessed, employed not tutors but maids, who, notwithstanding his age, treated him in all respects as a child. She used female clothing-first a girl's, then a young lady's-and made the use of masculine habiliments, or even the desire for them, an offence of the deepest dye. She subjugated his rude male propensities to her softening womanly influence, to which he was compelled to do perpetual homage. She punished rebellion in the most ignominious manner, with the birch; and the same sharp instructor was used to brighten his wits, teach him his lessons, and enforce her precepts. I remember he made a particular complaint of the fact that, to his shame and disgrace, he was usually punished before girls. This he felt acutely. He described his feelings to me upon the first occasion of his shocking exposure to a bevy of laughing girls. He was held down across an ottoman by a couple of buxom country lasses. The mere narrative made my blood boil and electrified me. He detailed his efforts to repress all expression of his sufferings, in which they revelled and gloried; how he writhed; how, by degrees, his fortitude vanished through stress of pain, whilst consciousness of the youth and sex of his beholders maddened him; how, ultimately, as the cutting strokes administered by the white round arm of a woman continued to fall with cruel regularity, he was obliged to abandon himself absolutely and helplessly. He could no longer withstand the sense of abject humiliation, the necessity for yielding unreservedly to his fair mistress. He spoke of the subjugation and the galling nature of the conviction that they had, despite himself, thoroughly mastered him. But, he added, he could have held out against a man; what sapped his strength was not so much the torture of the punishment as the sorcery of gender. It was the triumph of the petticoat. He could at last have grovelled on the ground before these fair but relentless conquerors, and have begged their permission to breathe.
Enough, however, of his experiences. In the following chapters I purpose narrating my own adventures of like kind.