CHAPTER XII.

A BORROWED CHAPTER AND COMMENTS.

"In the Midst of Wolves," by Edward W. Chamberlain, and given to the people through the Arena, is one of the best efforts to enlighten the world that I have read for many a day. It is so good that I herewith copy it in full for the readers of my book to peruse at leasure:

Prof. Andrew D. White, in his Warfare of Science' has shown how at every step scientific progress has been resister by bigoted intolerance. He has proven from history that no department of science has been free from inquisition and no beneficent result of scientific inquiry has ever reached the masses of mankind until the obstacles raised by Phariseeism have been overcome.

"Because of this opposition, the most important science has remained neglected. Plato said: Know thyself.' And Christ taught: Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment ? And it has been the dream of many reformers, as it was the ideal of Sir Thomas Moore, that as much painstaking should be devoted to raising good men as was bestowed upon breeding good animals. Yet the knowledge of man's life development and reproductive possibilities is to-day very meagre, and intolerance stands threatening research.

"This condition is curiously exemplified in the fact that

while the United States, by its Department of Agriculture, disseminates information on the reproductive organs and functions of the horse, a Kansas editor, the venerable Moses Harmon, for mailing very similar language, on a similar topic, but relating to the human species, was on a conviction of obscenity,' in a federal court, sentenced to five years in imprisonment. So it is that man promulgates recklessly with regard to social development, and as a result humanity is cursed with all sorts of abnormalities and perversions.

"Hospitals flourish, insane asylums are swarming, prisons are over-crowded, suicides shock us daily, prostitutes throng the streets and greed saps nation's integrity.

"The deformed, the weak, the vicious, confront us at every turn. Society is one vast conglomeration of vain-glory and misery, cant and vice, debauchery and scandal, and the Pharasee keeps up his grim struggle to appear respectacle, crying "I am holier than thou," until overtaken by exposure, his hypocritical brethren, rejoicing in his calamity, turn and rend him, as the starving pack devour the wounded wolf. Still from humanity goes up the lamentable cry, emphasized by Tolstoi in his Kreutzer Sonata,'' If I had only known—if timely knowledge had not been withheld from me.' And still beneficient science that would spread a saving knowledge is thwarted by ignorant prejudice. The depraved usurp the function of moral censors, and wield a terrorism as appalling as that of witchcraft days, and even the classical learning of centuries is proscribed. But within the last generation men have shown a determination to gain this self-knowledge of which they have been defrauded. Professor Agassiz says, the time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few—when it must be woven into the cominon life of the world, and a new role of reformers has arisen to withstand the monopoly of learning, and to defeat the obstacles to the spread of vital truth.

"Kansas is the early battle-ground of this crusade, as it

was of the anti-slavery agitation; for the authorities there, not content with outraging Moses Harmon, have persecuted a woman seventy years of age, whose efforts to enlighten her fellows deserve the highest commendation. Mrs. Louis Waisbrooker, who for years has been an earnest, sincere, devoted worker, is now arrested on a charge of mailing ob. scene matter. Neither her age, or her sex, her purity of soul, her nobility of purpose, nor a long life of worthy work avails to save her from the stroke of the assassins who, as usual in such cases, misrepresent her as a wanton, frivolous, impure woman. Like Moses Harmon, Mrs. Waisbrooker has advocated the purest and most ample discussion of vital subjects, and it is for this she is attacked. She too, a sufferer from ignorance, takes up the plaint of the Kreutzer Sonata,' and with unbounded love for humanity. and unequaled devotion to the best interests of her race, determines to throw the light of truth into the dark places of the earth. In a circular issued since her arrest she says:

"Did man properly use creative life, properly treat woman, or were not both sexes so ignorant as to destroy their own marital happiness, men need never suffer from a lack of such response as would satisfy the hunger of their starved spirits or astral bodies-starved till they think and live obscenity; but it must be covered up, kept sacred, then no harm will be done. Can fetid cellars be kept from permeating and poisoning the atmosphere of the whole house because shut out from the light? Your health inspector, he whose work it is to keep things physically clean, will find such places and demand that they be cleansed, even if one does have to hold the nose while doing so. But our moral inspectors will not let us turn our light upon the great, filthy moral cellar that underlies the structure called society. They think to preserve the morals of the young by keeping this putrid mass of moral corruption out of sight. Alas, for the blindness that refuses to investigate this most vital of all questions, even till the land is filled with deformed specimens of what should be a grand humanity—and will be

when sex law is rightly understood and obeyed. We shall then have no insane asylums filled with such as cannot stand the strain of life's struggle-then there will be none born who are only fit inmates of idiotic asylums, no blind, no deaf and dumb, and none will be found whom it will be necessary to imprison. Yes, I assert it, and future generations will sustain me-not one of all these wrecks of society -not one of those in the various asylums-not one in your prisons, who have been put there for real crime-not one of them has been rightly conceived and gestated.

:6

'Indeed, none of us are a tithe of what we might have been had the full tide of creative power entered into that which gave us being. I mean, had there been such a reverence for the creative act, that soul forces had entered into the blending as a positive, controlling factor. Because of this lack-because physical pleasure was the dominating factor-we are all born under the dominion of the flesh instead of the spirit. Painfully conscious of the poverty of my own make-up, and with an unceasing heartache because of the imperfections of one who drew his life from minenow, when the remembrance of my own ignorance and its results stimulates to do my utinost to arouse people to the importance of this question of questions; now, when my head is whitening for the tomb, some poor, obscure-minded man or woman marks my paper and sends it to those pure men at Washington. And I am arrested, am under bonds, and liable to go to prison.'

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think.

Well, the sun still shines, and the people will still No lewd woman would or could make such an appeal. Her determination to free her race from the shackles of ignorance has made Mrs. Waisbrooker a victim of persecution. It is the old warfare of science. Whenever a woman speaks what she feels, and feels consistent with God's great plan, it has crushed her under its juggernaut wheel, She is not thoughtless nor mercenary. She has acted from a sincere desire to spread a knowledge which will lead to

more general understanding, to better conditions, better living, and a better humanity.

"Deeply impressed with the necessity of her work, the dignity of her purpose, and the grandeur of her self-sacrifice, I bespeak for her the sympathy and support of the Arena's readers in her resistance to this assault of the inquisition. To the patriot who sees an inquisitorial censorship enforcing its law to silence arguments not otherwise answerable and restricting freedom of opinion and expression on American soil; to the scientist who sees investigation suppressed; to the humanitarian who sees the noblest efforts to enlighten mankind thwarted by licentious authority.

"To all men who love their fellows, this appeal will not be made in vain."

Whoever has taken it upon himself to blackmail Mrs. Waisbrooker, and destroy her good name, had better be in some other business; for as sure as destiny follows the human family that man will surely pay for his damnable work before his life is ended on this earth.

Good deeds rarely ever go unrewarded, and bad men sooner or later come to a bad ending. Mrs. Waisbrooker is a medium, and is surrounded by a host of good spirits. What she has said and written she has been inspired to do, and she will not go unrewarded. Her thoughts upon the physical growth of the human family are of a high order, and the time is not far distant when the world will be ready to accept them, and try to make them practical.

Mrs. Waisbrooker was born in advance of her time-she is a pioneer. She has been called into the field of action long before the world was ready to receive her. Like Jesus, her doctrines are new, and like Him she must be persecuted. If she dies in the good cause, let her go; she has done her duty. She can not die but once, and her persecution, and even her death, will be a good advertisement for the advanced thoughts she has given to the world. Death can knock only once at our door, and when it comes let us give it a grand welcome.