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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75874 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Note
+  Italic text displayed as: _italic_
+  Bold text displayed as: =bold=
+
+
+
+
+  PERSONAL RIGHTS:
+
+  A PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
+
+  Delivered to the
+
+  FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING
+
+  of the
+
+  PERSONAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION,
+
+  ON 6th JUNE, 1913,
+
+  by
+
+  MRS. MONA CAIRD.
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  THE PERSONAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION,
+  11, ABBEVILLE ROAD, LONDON, S.W.
+
+
+  Price: ONE PENNY.
+
+
+
+
+  PRINTED FOR THE PERSONAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION,
+  BY THE TOKIO PRINTING CO., READING & LONDON
+
+
+
+
+MRS. MONA CAIRD
+
+ON
+
+PERSONAL RIGHTS.
+
+
+LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—I used to feel some impatience with public
+speakers who spent half their speech in explaining how it was they had
+committed the indiscretion of making it, and how much more suitable for
+the post somebody else would have been.
+
+Those gentlemen now have my profoundest sympathy!
+
+I feel that I ought to spend not half, but my whole speech, in
+explaining why I have the temerity to address you tonight on this
+familiar subject, seeing that I never do speak in public, and that my
+feelings about taking the chair are very much like they would be about
+taking a cold plunge in the Atlantic in early spring.
+
+However, I can’t get rid of my deficiencies by enumerating them, so I
+must just throw myself on your mercy, asking you to regard this venture
+as a tribute of admiration and gratitude to our President and his
+supporters who have made so magnificent a defence of the Cause for so
+many thankless years. Also I have felt moved to accept the honour on
+account of the scarcity of wholehearted champions, especially—I regret
+to hear—among the sex which has always been deprived of personal rights.
+
+Perhaps that is just why they _are_ lacking in respect for them! And
+what a warning this is! The spirit of liberty, it would appear, can
+be starved to death. Society, having done its foolish best to destroy
+that spirit in half its members, expects the other half to retain it
+unimpaired—an obvious impossibility. For interaction of influence is
+incessant and universal between the two sexes.
+
+The career of women having depended not on right but on favour, they
+have learnt to care little for an abstract idea which has no bearing
+on their lives. Only the exceptional mind cares for that. But similar
+conditions would assuredly produce the same result in men. And—we are
+on our rapid way to similar conditions.
+
+Now, in a vast subject like this, which really touches the heart of
+everything that is vital and valuable in life, it is impossible, in
+twenty-five minutes to deal with it in any detail; and I propose
+tonight simply to dwell upon the perils with which we are all
+threatened, in consequence of the present trend of sentiment. For we
+have to try and make these perils obvious to the hearts as well as to
+the minds of our contemporaries, if there is to be any hope of checking
+the present downward tendencies.
+
+It is of little use merely _stating_ that it is perilous to try
+to purchase social benefits at the expense of individuals. To the
+majority, that seems the safest thing in the world; and, strange to
+say, the most just. The ancient idea of vicarious sacrifice is as
+rampant today as it was when the groves of ancient temples echoed with
+the cries of human victims, burnt on the altars, for the appeasement of
+the gods and the good of the community.
+
+The idea of _numbers_ enters largely into the popular idea of right and
+wrong—what I call arithmetical morality. Because 100 is ten times more
+than 10, it is assumed that ten _persons_ may justly be sacrificed for
+the sake of the 100. But that is to confuse mere nonsentient signs with
+living conscious beings; surely a strangely stupid proceeding. It is
+this deeply-rooted idea which we have to combat.
+
+First of all then, it must be noted, that, as a rule, the less liberty
+people enjoy, the less they value or respect it. The preoccupation
+will be not with liberty but with the best means of getting on without
+it. And the best way of doing that will be—or will seem to be—to force
+your own views as much as possible upon your neighbours—otherwise
+they will force theirs upon _you_. Mutually lacking in respect for
+liberty, there will be as many good reasons for attacking it in others
+as you have theories to enforce. And the same for them. The situation
+must obviously end in a stupendous tyranny of some kind: whether of
+king or oligarchy or State: and that of the State, being practically
+invulnerable, is the worst of all.
+
+I am far from thinking that the motive for aggression would always be
+self-interest. It would be less dangerous if it were. We all know the
+deadly tyranny of the thoroughly well-meaning person: the highly-moral
+person, for instance, who calls out for mediæval forms of punishment
+for especially reprobated crimes. As some philosopher said: “He must
+be an extraordinarily good man before he can safely be guided by his
+conscience.” I go farther, and say: “The extraordinarily good man must
+be trained for a lifetime by the Personal Rights Association before he
+can trust his conscience—and even then he had better not!”
+
+Of all human attributes, conscience, when backed by power over others,
+seems to be the most dangerous. Think what martyr-fires it has lighted,
+what torture-chambers it has furnished and kept busy! If we had only
+self-interest to deal with, we should not be troubled with the present
+ardent desire of increasing numbers of people, to further the interests
+of Society—of morals, medicine, science—even what are called the true
+interests of the individual himself, by progressive outrage against
+him. It is this eternal “good motive” that makes our reformers as
+irresistible as a swarm of locusts, and as destructive! The bravest of
+us flinch before Virtue on the war-path.
+
+Before they have done, our philanthropic locusts will have eaten off
+every green blade and leaf of human initiative, and will leave the
+Society which they so yearn to serve barren and blight-stricken,
+perhaps for centuries to come. Of what value to any one is such a
+Society? What in fact, _exists_, but individuals?
+
+And mark: there is no retracing our steps if we go too far in this
+direction. We are always assured that there would be a reaction against
+a too great restriction of the human spirit. But that is true only so
+long as the restriction is more or less a novelty and is _not_ too
+great. Directly it becomes really extreme, there is no reaction. We can
+see this in the innumerable nations of antiquity and of today which
+have remained stagnant for hundreds and hundreds of years. Lack of
+human rights tends progressively to stifle the spirit that would demand
+or respect them. Even in England, whose history is that of the struggle
+for liberty, we have seen how, in women, that spirit has been weakened.
+How then are we to hope—after a too deep descent to Avernus—for a
+return towards the light and inspiration of freedom? It is expecting a
+result without a cause—or rather in the teeth of one.
+
+Like Xerxes, stupidly confident, we burn our boats behind us. Or, more
+accurately, Nature burns them for us. She seems to say: “Very well;
+if you don’t want to give scope to original minds, you have only to
+make your social conditions accordingly—subordinate your individual
+ruthlessly to what you call ‘the common good’—and original minds will
+never trouble you again. Not only will your organization suppress them,
+but it will gradually destroy your power even to produce them. That
+will save _them_ an immensity of trouble, and prevent all hitches in
+your boring routine. If that’s what you want, it is easily yours.”
+
+But our reformers _don’t_ exactly want that. They like to have it
+both ways. They want a subservient, State-ridden community of highly
+individualized human beings, who—like the inmates of Barry’s Home for
+Geniuses—would initiate punctually and spontaneously to order—in the
+approved direction, of course. No fantastic unexpected nonsense would
+be tolerated for a moment!
+
+The old pathetic story of Midas, whose wish—granted by the gods—that
+everything he touched should turn to gold, seems vaguely symbolic
+of this eager desire to turn living, initiating individuals into
+subservient parts of a social Whole. It is possible to have a prayer
+too completely answered, as poor Midas found, when his best cook’s
+masterpieces became hard yellow metal under his teeth, till he starved
+amidst fabulous riches; while his heart was finally broken when his
+little daughter, running in to bid him good morning, was changed into a
+priceless golden statue. Like Midas, our reformers are short-sighted.
+Their eyes are so fixed on the Golden Age that they want to bring about
+for humanity, that they forget that they may be killing humanity in the
+process—the very spring and life-essence of the human material which
+they—meddling little amateur deities—are trying so hard to make after
+their own image.
+
+Our philanthropists will find when too late, that they have turned
+all that is living into hard, precious, valueless gold—the gold of a
+mechanical social order—if the gods are cruel enough to grant their
+foolish prayers!
+
+I do not say that the day of awakening would never come. To China
+and Japan for instance, it _has_ at last come—through _outside_ not
+internal causes, be it noted. But think of the spell-bound, horrible
+ages of night-mare-ridden sleep that went before!
+
+Once upon a time in old Japan, a man was not allowed to give his
+grandchild a doll measuring more than certain carefully prescribed
+dimensions. The paternal Powers deemed moderation in dolls to be
+desirable, and so curbed undue enthusiasm in grandparents by solemn
+legislative measures. It is claimed by its admirers that the system
+(whose nature we can gauge from this instance) worked admirably.
+Probably it did. So does a regularly-wound clock.
+
+As a matter of fact, the better the preposterous system worked, the
+more fatally it would strangle its victims. Now it is this fact which
+we all have to try to make clear to our opponents. Humanity growing
+fat and prosperous on banquets of immolated individuals would be about
+as disastrous a condition as one could well imagine. As a matter of
+fact “Humanity”—a mere abstract term used for convenience of speech—has
+been endowed by careless thinkers with a sort of divine self-existence;
+and, like most divine beings, this new deity demands sacrifices. For
+instance, the recent medical proposal to dissect criminals alive in the
+interests of the Community—another collective-term fetish—reveals, in
+typical form, the line of sentiment (I can scarcely call it thought)
+against which we have to contend. I do not say that the majority would
+not still be shocked at this proposal; but that is simply because it
+has not yet become familiar. Once it does become familiar, the horror
+will die away (think of the everyday atrocities which _have_ the public
+sanction) and then—as there is no principle of personal rights to stand
+between the proposed victim and the eager experimenter—the latter will
+be allowed to take his long-coveted prize. He is already permitted to
+take innocent, sentient creatures, on the plea of the public good; and
+it is only carrying out the theory to its logical conclusion, to take
+guilty ones for the same purpose. And on the same plea—like the lie,
+“an ever present help in time of trouble”—the ordinary citizen will
+probably follow, in due course. It is a question of time and sentiment,
+not of principle.
+
+Now is it quite impossible to awaken the public to the awful and
+innumerable dangers which confront us all, as soon as the protection
+of personal rights is withdrawn? Will not even this threat of human
+vivisection reveal our utter defencelessness?
+
+Can we not persuade our contemporaries to ask themselves if, for
+instance, the apostles of eugenics have shrunk from _any_ measure,
+however outrageous, which they thought promised the desired results?
+Provided the end is gained, the individual must pay the price. It seems
+to be thought unworthy of him to object. Thus he is placed at the
+mercy of every wind and tide of popular opinion, or, what is worse,
+at the mercy of the views of experts who naturally tend to think all
+things lawful which benefit their particular branch of knowledge. If
+vaccination is approved of, vaccinated the individual must be. If
+Science demands human vivisection, he must submit even to that outrage.
+On what principle, except that of personal rights, can the demand be
+refused? The outrage _might_ result in valuable knowledge. Again, if
+Society is obsessed by a crude and unproved theory of heredity, how
+are we to resist interference with our marriages, or being treated as
+hysterical, or feeble-minded, or degenerate, or insane? Genius and
+originality generally seem pathological to the majority; and what the
+end will be of this sort of old-Japanese system, considering its very
+vigorous beginning, is not cheering to prophesy.
+
+Unless its very absurdity causes a reaction before it is too late, we
+shall find ourselves in the current of an evolution backwards to the
+savage state, in which the individual is very like that foolish and
+much overrated insect, the bee, hopelessly submerged in the social hive.
+
+As originality is usually lodged in a peculiarly sensitive organism,
+delicately responsive to conditions, it would tend to atrophy, as
+plants do whose leaves and buds are persistently nipped off. No living
+thing can stand the process long. It is one of the shallowest of
+popular fallacies that genius always overcomes obstacles. It depends
+on the obstacles and the kind of genius; or, more accurately, on the
+ordinary qualities with which the genius happens to be accompanied. In
+itself, genius is a handicap, not an aid, to outward success.
+
+Now in the degenerating society which we are considering, its path
+of descent is easy to trace. Observe the increasing tragedy of the
+situation. As the strata of what I call Hive-heredity accumulate,
+there is always a deeper and deeper soil of Hive-instinct out of which
+each new generation has to spring. Is it not progressively unlikely,
+therefore, that “sports” would appear? And if they did appear, at
+lengthening intervals, would they not be handicapped by a strong
+Herd-instinct, impregnably seated in that reservoir of inborn impulse
+that we now call the “subconscious”?
+
+The more one dwells on this principle of ours, the more its essential
+truth and beauty and sanity is revealed. It is so gloriously universal
+in its scope! Just in so far as man or animal can enjoy rights or
+suffer wrongs, just so far we demand for him protection. We deem it
+absurd and irrelevant to ask questions as to his faith or his morals,
+or his “importance”; as to the number of his legs, or the nature of his
+covering. It is obviously enough that he can _feel_.
+
+We do not say: “He has no friends; let us make him suffer for our
+good.” We say: “He is in our hands; therefore we are his guardians to a
+man ... and woman!”
+
+And as a result of this loyalty to the least of our brethren, we should
+find—if we could but make it universal—that we had made impregnable our
+one line of defence against innumerable dangers and evils—our Chatalga
+lines, we might call them, of inalienable Personal Rights.
+
+And in strengthening these for the protection of the humblest as well
+as the greatest of our brethren, we render increasingly possible all
+that makes life interesting, dramatic, and truly worth the living:
+all adventures of the human spirit. A vista of possibilities is thus
+opened which promises an enrichment in all the relations of life, an
+enlargement of the range of consciousness, and therefore of progress,
+to which we can actually set no limits.
+
+Compare this with the unspeakable boredom of the hurdy-gurdy existence
+of a State-dominated community!
+
+Those who have been used all their lives to the atmosphere of
+civilization, often do not realize how easily it can be destroyed. The
+curious change that comes over educated persons who have lived long
+in the backwoods, gives a hint of my meaning. As a rule, the man—or
+woman—has in some way dwindled. The consciousness and comprehension
+have narrowed, the perceptions are poorer, slower, less human. The
+companioning element has almost gone, and one feels that the common
+meeting-ground of civilized humanity has shrivelled almost to nothing.
+And so one can but realize that a certain fine flower of the human
+spirit—which might be still further glorified and developed—can, on
+the other hand, be swiftly annihilated. Humanity, so to speak, loses
+its level, like a traveller who has mistaken his way, and walks down
+hill only to have to come up again, or else to resign himself to
+remaining on the plains—he who had set out for the mountains!
+
+Now, what if this be the reason that civilizations blossom only to
+decay? I utterly disbelieve in the facile and misleading analogy of the
+“social _organism_.”
+
+Societies do indeed change, but they do _not_ go through an
+exactly-repeated series of stages after the fashion of “organisms.”
+It is quite unproved that there is any inherent “principle of decay.”
+What, in fact, _is_ a principle of decay?
+
+Now, it seems probable that one cause of decay is just this perpetual
+losing of level. Like Penelope, humanity has always kept on undoing
+its own work, and beginning all over again. And so our civilizations
+naturally wither! And is this not, mainly, because we have never yet
+learnt a true love of Liberty? Suppose for a moment, a universal
+respect for it such as I have just been imagining: a society wherein
+there was a real passion for protecting and liberating and giving
+scope to the individual impulse and inspiration. Is it not almost
+certain that this incessant loss of level—this destruction of previous
+achievement would be avoided? And if it were—what is to prevent our
+Traveller reaching the Mountains he set out for?
+
+
+
+
+THE PERSONAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION.
+
+FOUNDED 14th MARCH, 1871.
+
+_OFFICES: 11, ABBEVILLE ROAD, LONDON, S.W._
+
+
+=President:=
+
+Mr. FRANKLIN THOMASSON, J.P., Ex-M.P.
+
+=Hon. Sec. and Treasurer=: Mr. J. H. LEVY.
+
+=Assistant Secretary=: Mrs. LORENZA GARREAU.
+
+=Bankers=: PARR’S BANK (CHARING CROSS BRANCH), LIMITED.
+
+
+=OBJECT OF THE ASSOCIATION.=
+
+The object of the Association is to uphold the principle of the perfect
+equality of all persons before the law in the exercise and enjoyment of
+their Individual Liberty within the widest practicable limits. It would
+maintain government just so far as, but no farther than, is necessary
+for the maintenance of the largest freedom; and, in applying this,
+would have equal regard to the liberty of all citizens.
+
+
+ =If you wish to join in this work, send a subscription to the Treasurer
+ of the Association, at the above address; and the _Individualist_ and
+ a copy of each of the pamphlets and leaflets issued by the Association
+ will be sent to you, as issued, by post. Do not miss the opportunity
+ of cooperating in this work—the breaking of the chains of oppression
+ and the liberation of all the forces which work for happiness and
+ human dignity.=
+
+ =Cheques and Postal Orders should be crossed Parr’s Bank, Charing Cross
+ Branch.=
+
+ =Further information with regard to the Association may be obtained
+ from=
+
+  =(Mrs.) LORENZA GARREAU,
+  _Assistant Secretary_.=
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Notes
+
+  pg 6 Changed: The old pathethic story of Midas
+            to: The old pathetic story of Midas
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75874 ***