Anthony M. Ludovici

“ If he is right in concluding that the population he sees about him—the people who are regarded as well and healthy, not the people who crowd our hospitals, asylums, and homes for cripples and incurables!—are largely sub-normal, or sub-human, in the sense that they are neither complete bodily nor capable of functioning without artificial aids; if, moreover, he is right in thinking that they do not seem to be much perturbed about their sub-humanity, he may wish to know the nature of the atmosphere in which their thoughts and ideals are formed. ”

“ If our values had not for scores of generations turned us away from strict standards concerning the body, it is inconceivable that we should have become what we are; it is inconceivable that this atmosphere of toleration and indifference towards bodily defects should have become so universal. A nation ultimately becomes the image of its values. The values are the die, the nation is the coin. ”

“ Now this view, tacitly held or openly professed by the bulk of modern mankind to-day, would be all very well, and would justify a certain modicum of optimistic contentment, if we could act and think, and continue to reproduce our kind in a desirable form, independently of our bodies. But, unfortunately for the modern man, this is impossible. Not only that, but a good many of life’s joys—some of its greatest and most lasting—are connected precisely with the reproduction of our kind, with the maintenance of our bodily efficiency, and with happy functioning. ”

“ No food will be made for weeks, stores will be on the point of being depleted, and panic will reign everywhere; when suddenly a few of the leading women will perceive with apocalyptic clarity not only that the superfluity of men has become a burden on the community and a menace to the food of the children, but also that the reduction of their numbers to the barest minimum indispensable for the purposes of fertilization would be a twofold boon—it would relieve the food-crisis both for the moment and possibly also for the future, and obviate for ever the danger of a masculine or slave rising. ”

“ We shall try to forget the Great War, which at present tempts us to think highly of ourselves; and we shall endeavour to understand that to limit the notion of masculinity to proficiency in sports and bravery in war is to overlook a whole catalogue of masculine virtues without which degeneration can hardly fail to overtake us in spite of all our games and our feats of arms. This limitation of the idea of manliness to proficiency in sport and bravery in war is acceptable to women, because it makes for a breed of men who are easily led and still more easily misled ”

“ But, before woman is sound enough in body and mind to give birth to this new breed of masculine sons, and to rear them herself, she will undergo many transformations, and learn to look at life from a very different standpoint. In the first place she will regenerate her own body before it is too late, and recover the ease, if not the ecstasy of old, in all her functions. She will learn to despise herself if she wears glasses, if she has false or bad teeth, if she cannot function without scientific aids, and if she cannot suckle her child. ”

“ Helped by her men of science, she will apply herself to the task of discovering that mode of life and that diet which will restore to her normal and easy functioning in her digestive system; that mode of life and diet during gestation which will restore to her the joy of childbirth—a joy that has probably not been known to mankind for thousands of years—and, without losing heart over her initial failures, she will persevere until the necessary discoveries are made. ”

“ For man’s degeneracy in itself contributes an added woe to woman’s impaired physical life, by depriving her of the very extra-corporeal equipment (supplied by Nature herself in this case) for the urgent needs of her body. Or, if it does not altogether deprive her of this equipment, it gives it to her in a form so atonic, fireless, and un-ideal that the misery of modern women, even when they are married, is very great. Hence, we believe, the huge development of the modern novel, the demand for which has been created almost entirely by the female population. ”

“ The moment physiological serenity goes, the moment a function ceases to be a pleasure, the body becomes the most tyrannical and insistent pleader against Life. It constantly sets the most formidable question-mark against the value of Life. ”

“ At all events, this much we may say without impropriety—that, as fast as Puritanism and bodily imperfections together have conspired to cast a slur on sex by converting the congress of the human couple from an experience of magic beauty into an ordeal of both painful embarrassment and actual pain, not only have a certain number of women begun to think that conception without congress would be a god-send, but a scientific technique, which realizes this desideratum, has also been brought to ever greater efficiency. ”

“ Instinctively we feel and intellectually we know that Nature makes the wisest provision for her needs. When, therefore, we see one of our babies at the dugs of a goat, our sense of fitness is shocked: even our practical utilitarian prejudices receive a blow. We know instantly that the baby cannot have been meant to take that milk, because it is a nobler creature than the goat and its body has tasks and feats to perform with its food which the kid has not. ”

“ Where physiological depravity is a matter of custom, however, it very soon ceases, as we know, to be regarded as depravity; and mating, love-making, and procreation quickly become possible in spite of it. That is why it is more important to alter our values than to promote Eugenic legislation. For, if our values are altered and physiological depravity is no longer condoned, Eugenic legislation will become unnecessary, and will be anticipated by the taste of the people; whereas, if our body-despising values remain intact, Eugenic legislation will always be fighting an up-hill fight. ”

“ Impaired physical efficiency has turned so many of the joys and beauties of the natural life to pain and horror that there is no longer that certainty which Manu felt about the desirability of motherhood for women. And, even when motherhood is not regarded as a greatly over-rated pleasure, the mates by means of whom motherhood can be experienced are, as a rule, such poor shadows of men that the whole of Manu’s attitude has begun to be discredited. ”

“ Although doctors and commercial corporations repeatedly protest that breast-feeding is best, they are quite ready in the same breath to admit that artificial feeding can be made “as good as mother’s milk”; and no one is in the least perturbed when he hears that his own child or that millions of other babies are being hand-fed. We have even read the work of one English doctor who smugly proclaims that we shall improve on Nature in this matter!
Thus, once again, while flagrant abnormalities are becoming the rule amongst us, science hastens to set our minds at rest by a shower of artificial aids ”

“ Why does Feminism act with a conscience so clean and a conviction so profound of its rectitude?—Because, behind it, it feels the support of the body-despising values, which tell it that Puritanism is right, that sex-equality is at last a fact owing to the marked degeneration of man, and that man, as the traditional enemy of female “virtue,” is the enemy par excellence. ”

“ Can it be wondered at, therefore, that modern mankind as a whole are beginning to suspect that the joie de vivre is grossly over-rated? Can it be wondered at that the bulk of mankind are beginning to feel that life can well be lived without love? ”

“ While we ourselves, however, steadily recede along the scale of quality, our environmental conditions, our tools, our means, acquire ever greater perfection.
The onus of evolution has, as it were, been transferred from our own shoulders to the shoulders of our environment. Blinded by the dazzling achievements of the mechanical and other sciences, we still speak about ourselves as if it were we, as living organisms, who were continuing to evolve. But, truth to tell, it is nothing of the sort. Even in the sphere of intellectual powers, we are miserably below standards already achieved. ”

“ Surely it would be better to allow every woman to have half a husband, if she wants to, and remain respectable, than to give half the women a whole husband and the others no share in a husband at all. ”

“ Gradually it will dawn upon a few independent and rebellious spirits that to have attempted to live like spirits before the spirit-world was reached, to have attempted to extinguish the joys and thrills of the body and to taste of the interests of angels, before having shuffled off this mortal coil—in fact to have planned and organized an æsthetic phenomenon such as life without retaining its æsthetic side, was a tragic and utterly brutal blunder. ”

“ Above all, it has that huge brain to develop, which the kid has not. Can it be possible that Nature could have overlooked that? The human brain is not only larger at birth than that of any other animal, but its rate of growth is also greater. Is it conceivable that Nature could have made no special provision for that?
Hence our sense of degradation and revolt—feelings which somehow are not provoked when the milk reaches us in a bright glass-bottle, or in a nice clean tin covered with printed matter—because all the degrading side of it is then hidden from our view. ”

“ To the bulk of unobservant and unthinking mankind, this state of affairs is largely hidden; because, while science increases the efficiency of our extra-corporeal equipment, it has also, pari passu with our degeneration, provided us with the means of keeping our corporeal equipment going. Almost as fast as we have wanted them, the sciences of chemistry and of medicine have given us the means of replacing lost parts of our bodies, and of supplementing failing functions. A whole sphere of activity—indeed a whole world of interests and ingenuity—has been created by modern physical degeneracy. ”

“ Since our aim should be the recovery of our belief in the value of life and love, by improving our bodily functions, we cannot halt at any difficulty in the way of our success. But success means not only contesting the sway of the body-despising values, but also fighting the Conservatism and prejudices of a great profession, which, while it has great power to-day, can hardly fail to identify its best interests with a perpetuation and aggravation of our present physical disabilities. ”

“ A healthily functioning body can be forgotten. Thanks to its serenity, its muteness in efficiency, it allows its owner to indulge in every variety of spiritual exercise.
While, therefore, we accuse the values which for centuries have cast a slur on life and the human body of being the cause of modern decadence, we do not thereby proclaim ourselves either irreligious or materialistic; for, let those who would too hastily presume both our irreligiosity and materialism remember that there are other religions besides that which first created the body-despising values to which we allude. ”

“ The most difficult feature connected with the task of suppressing our body-despising values is the duty it enjoins on each individual not only of condemning his neighbour but also of condemning himself, if he is physiologically depraved; but this each of us will learn to do. We shall feel the shame of bodily defects once more, and strive unremittingly to recover bodies complete anatomically beautiful, and no longer defective functionally. Even at the risk of great immediate suffering, we shall learn to eschew artificial aids of all kinds, and regard it as beneath our dignity to use them. ”

“ Having attained this end, while we may still continue to deplore the results we see about us, we can no longer wonder at them. Indeed, we should marvel if, in such an atmosphere, we had failed to degenerate, or ceased from degenerating. The wonder is, not that we have become a nation of decadents and crocks, but that it should have taken all this time to make us such a nation. ”

“ Abnormal, crippled, defective, incurable, and undesirable people will no longer be allowed to grow up. Their uselessness and their danger as a burden and an eye-sore will be recognized. The old belief in the extreme sacredness of every human creature, irrespective of bodily and mental perfection, will vanish, in order to make way for a valuation based on quality of mind and body. This gradual elimination of the undesirable dregs of humanity with all the physiological botchedness they stand for, will clear the air, and relieve coming generations of many heavy burdens. ”

“ But the most serious aspect of the spinster and embittered wife question, from the standpoint of the nation’s life, is the compensation which, consciously or unconsciously, these unmated women and revolted wives, particularly the wealthy and leisured ones, seek for their thwarted instincts. The mother’s fostering care never having been experienced, its joys and thrills are sought along other channels. The lust of exercising power becomes a consuming passion, and its owner is usually quite indifferent as to the means she uses to express it. ”

“ What we can expect, however, when once the forces of Feminism are completely organized, is a systematic intensification of all the tendencies that have culminated in the modern Women’s Movement.
The hostility to man and the jealousy of happy and passionate youth, felt by all disaffected women, whether spinsters or wives, is sure to lead to every effort being made to lure girls more and more from bodily happiness. We can, therefore, expect an increasing emancipation of girls and women from domestic arts and duties, together with an aggravation of our present vices regarding foods. ”

“ Perhaps I am prejudiced, but to me you seem very hard on the medical profession. With the present idiotic system of paying the doctor better for illness than for health the wonder is, not that we doctors have so many faults, but that we have so few. In a saner age we shall get a retaining fee for keeping each person or group of persons well, and so, in order to avoid excessive work, if for no higher motive, we shall aim at preventing disease rather than at alleviating it. ”

“ What is there left for active anti-Feminists to do? Now that women have the vote and that they sit in Parliament, now that they have practically the whole of the Press behind them, their battle is surely won, and anti-Feminism is a lost cause! Obviously, however, if anti-Feminism means resisting the further development of Feminism, to prevent it from culminating in some or all of the changes outlined in the previous chapter; if it means a struggle to maintain the natural relations of the sexes, together with the normal functioning of male and female in reproduction ”

“ To wear glasses is not as good as to be without them. Neither is the face or the expression of one who always wears glasses as attractive as the face and the expression of one who does not. To a mother, the hand-feeding of her infant child is not the unforgettable experience that breast-feeding is. And, in the deepest and most rapturous transports of love, where a large proportion of the ecstasy depends upon the bodily savouriness and sweetness of the couple involved, natural and normal physiological equipment is of paramount importance. ”