824 The American Naturalist. [September, 
purity would be lost in a day or a year, or a hundred years for ` 
that matter; yet, there would come a time when the morality 
of to-day would be utterly lost, and society would sink into 
some such state of existence as we now find en evidence among 
the Nairs. In support of this proposition I have only to in- 
stance the doctrines promulgated by some of the most ad- 
vanced advocates of equal rights. The “free love” of.some 
advanced women, I take it, is but the free choice doctrine in 
vogue among the Nairs and kindred races of people. 
John Noyes, of the Oneida Community, where equal rights 
were observed, preached the same doctrines. It is true that 
these people are degenerate individuals, psychical atavists; 
yet, they faithfully foreshadow in their own persons that which 
would be common to all men and women at some time in the 
future, if equal rights were allowed and carried out in their 
entirety. 
This is an era of luxury, and it is an universally acknow- 
ledged fact that luxury is one of the prime factors in the pro- 
duction of degeneration. We see forms and phases of degener- 
ation thickly scattered throughout all circles of society, in the 
plays which we see performed in our theatres, and in the 
books and papers published daily throughout the land. The 
greater portion of the clientele of the alienist is made up of 
women who are suffering with neurotic troubles, generally, of 
a psychopathic nature. The number of Viragints, gynandrists, 
androgynes, and other female psycho-sexual aberrants is very 
large indeed. 
It is folly to deny the fact that the right of female suffrage 
will make no change in the environment of woman. The New 
Woman glories in the fact that the era which she hopes to in- 
augurate will introduce her into a new world. Not satisfied 
with the liberty she now enjoys, and which is proving to be 
exceedingly harmful to her in more ways than one, she longs 
for more freedom, a broader field of action. If nature provided 
men and women with inexhaustible supplies of nervous energy, 
they might set aside physical laws and burn the candle at both 
ends without any fear of its being burned up. Nature fur- 
nishes each individual with just so much nervous force and no 
