X. THE HIGHER ANARCHY

 But there is a further fact; forgotten also because we moderns forget that there is a female point of view. The woman’s wisdom stands partly, not only for a wholesome¹ hesitation² about punishment, but even for a wholesome hesitation about absolute rules. There was something feminine and perversely³ true in that phrase of Wilde’s, that people should not be treated as the rule, but all of them as exceptions. Made by a man the remark was a little effeminate; for Wilde did lack the masculine power of dogma and of democratic cooperation. But if a woman had said it it would have been simply true; a woman does treat each person as a peculiar⁴ person. In other words, she stands for Anarchy⁵; a very ancient and arguable philosophy; not anarchy in the sense of having no customs in one’s life (which is inconceivable), but anarchy in the sense of having no rules for one’s mind. To her, almost certainly, are due all those working traditions that cannot be found in books, especially those of education; it was she who first gave a child a stuffed stocking for being good or stood him in the corner for being naughty. This unclassified knowledge is sometimes called rule of thumb and sometimes motherwit. The last phrase suggests the whole truth, for none ever called it fatherwit.

Now anarchy is only tact⁶ when it works badly. Tact is only anarchy when it works well. And we ought to realize that in one half of the world—the private house—it does work well. We modern men are perpetually forgetting that the case for clear rules and crude penalties is not self-evident, that there is a great deal to be said for the benevolent⁷ lawlessness of the autocrat⁸, especially on a small scale; in short, that government is only one side of life. The other half is called Society, in which women are admittedly dominant⁹. And they have always been ready to maintain that their kingdom is better governed than ours, because (in the logical and legal sense) it is not governed at all. “Whenever you have a real difficulty,” they say, “when a boy is bumptious¹⁰ or an aunt is stingy, when a silly girl will marry somebody, or a wicked man won’t marry somebody, all your lumbering¹¹ Roman Law and British Constitution come to a standstill. A snub from a duchess or a slanging from a fish-wife are much more likely to put things straight.” So, at least, rang the ancient female challenge down the ages until the recent female capitulation. So streamed the red standard of the higher anarchy until Miss Pankhurst hoisted¹² the white flag.

It must be remembered that the modern world has done deep treason to the eternal intellect by believing in the swing of the pendulum¹³. A man must be dead before he swings. It has substituted an idea of fatalistic alternation for the mediaeval freedom of the soul seeking truth. All modern thinkers are reactionaries¹⁴; for their thought is always a reaction from what went before. When you meet a modern man he is always coming from a place, not going to it. Thus, mankind has in nearly all places and periods seen that there is a soul and a body as plainly as that there is a sun and moon. But because a narrow Protestant sect¹⁵ called Materialists declared for a short time that there was no soul, another narrow Protestant sect called Christian¹⁶ Science is now maintaining that there is no body. Now just in the same way the unreasonable¹⁷ neglect of government by the Manchester School has produced, not a reasonable regard for government, but an unreasonable neglect of everything else. So that to hear people talk to-day one would fancy that every important human function must be organized and avenged¹⁸ by law; that all education must be state education, and all employment state employment; that everybody and everything must be brought to the foot of the august and prehistoric¹⁹ gibbet. But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory²⁰; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose. The huge fundamental function upon which all anthropology²¹ turns, that of sex and childbirth, has never been inside the political state, but always outside of it. The state concerned itself with the trivial question of killing²² people, but wisely left alone the whole business of getting them born. A Eugenist might indeed plausibly²³ say that the government is an absent-minded and inconsistent person who occupies himself with providing for the old age of people who have never been infants. I will not deal here in any detail with the fact that some Eugenists have in our time made the maniacal²⁴ answer that the police ought to control marriage and birth as they control labor²⁵ and death. Except for this inhuman²⁶ handful (with whom I regret to say I shall have to deal with later) all the Eugenists I know divide themselves into two sections: ingenious people who once meant this, and rather bewildered people who swear they never meant it—nor anything else. But if it be conceded (by a breezier estimate of men) that they do mostly desire marriage to remain free from government, it does not follow that they desire it to remain free from everything. If man does not control the marriage market by law, is it controlled at all? Surely the answer is broadly that man does not control the marriage market by law, but the woman does control it by sympathy and prejudice. There was until lately a law forbidding a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister; yet the thing happened constantly. There was no law forbidding a man to marry his deceased wife’s scullery-maid; yet it did not happen nearly so often. It did not happen because the marriage market is managed in the spirit and by the authority of women; and women are generally conservative where classes are concerned. It is the same with that system of exclusiveness by which ladies have so often contrived²⁷ (as by a process of elimination) to prevent marriages that they did not want and even sometimes procure²⁸ those they did. There is no need of the broad arrow and the fleur-de lis, the turnkey’s chains or the hangman’s halter. You need not strangle a man if you can silence him. The branded shoulder is less effective and final than the cold shoulder; and you need not trouble to lock a man in when you can lock him out.

The same, of course, is true of the colossal²⁹ architecture which we call infant education: an architecture reared wholly by women. Nothing can ever overcome that one enormous sex superiority, that even the male child is born closer to his mother than to his father. No one, staring at that frightful³⁰ female privilege, can quite believe in the equality of the sexes. Here and there we read of a girl brought up like a tom-boy; but every boy is brought up like a tame girl. The flesh and spirit of femininity surround him from the first like the four walls of a house; and even the vaguest or most brutal³¹ man has been womanized by being born. Man that is born of a woman has short days and full of misery³²; but nobody can picture the obscenity and bestial³³ tragedy that would belong to such a monster as man that was born of a man.

 

1 wholesome   

adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的

参考例句：

• In actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.实际上我喜欢做的事大都是有助于增进身体健康的。
• It is not wholesome to eat without washing your hands.不洗手吃饭是不卫生的。

2 hesitation   

n.犹豫，踌躇

参考例句：

• After a long hesitation, he told the truth at last.踌躇了半天，他终于直说了。
• There was a certain hesitation in her manner.她的态度有些犹豫不决。

3 perversely   

adv. 倔强地

参考例句：

• Intelligence in the mode of passion is always perversely. 受激情属性控制的智力，总是逆着活动的正确方向行事。
• She continue, perversely, to wear shoes that damaged her feet. 她偏偏穿那双挤脚的鞋。

4 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

5 anarchy   

n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• There would be anarchy if we had no police.要是没有警察，社会就会无法无天。
• The country was thrown into a state of anarchy.这国家那时一下子陷入无政府状态。

6 tact   

n.机敏，圆滑，得体

参考例句：

• She showed great tact in dealing with a tricky situation.她处理棘手的局面表现得十分老练。
• Tact is a valuable commodity.圆滑老练是很有用处的。

7 benevolent   

adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的

参考例句：

• His benevolent nature prevented him from refusing any beggar who accosted him.他乐善好施的本性使他不会拒绝走上前向他行乞的任何一个乞丐。
• He was a benevolent old man and he wouldn't hurt a fly.他是一个仁慈的老人，连只苍蝇都不愿伤害。

8 autocrat   

n.独裁者；专横的人

参考例句：

• He was an accomplished politician and a crafty autocrat.他是个有造诣的政治家，也是个狡黠的独裁者。
• The nobles tried to limit the powers of the autocrat without success.贵族企图限制专制君主的权力,但没有成功。

9 dominant   

adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因

参考例句：

• The British were formerly dominant in India.英国人从前统治印度。
• She was a dominant figure in the French film industry.她在法国电影界是个举足轻重的人物。

10 bumptious   

adj.傲慢的

参考例句：

• Some of these secular priests were ignorant,bumptious.那些俗里俗气的神父中有些人一窍不通，自以为是。
• His classmates called him a show-off because of his bumptious airs.由于他老是装出一副自以为是的架势，所以同学们就叫他“自大的夜郎”。

11 lumbering   

n.采伐林木

参考例句：

• Lumbering and, later, paper-making were carried out in smaller cities. 木材业和后来的造纸都由较小的城市经营。
• Lumbering is very important in some underdeveloped countries. 在一些不发达的国家，伐木业十分重要。

12 hoisted   

把…吊起，升起( hoist的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He hoisted himself onto a high stool. 他抬身坐上了一张高凳子。
• The sailors hoisted the cargo onto the deck. 水手们把货物吊到甲板上。

13 pendulum   

n.摆，钟摆

参考例句：

• The pendulum swung slowly to and fro.钟摆在慢慢地来回摆动。
• He accidentally found that the desk clock did not swing its pendulum.他无意中发现座钟不摇摆了。

14 reactionaries   

n.反动分子，反动派( reactionary的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The reactionaries are fierce in appearance but feeble in reality. 反动派看起来很强大，实际上十分虚弱。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• We definitely do not apply a policy of benevolence to the reactionaries. 我们对反动派决不施仁政。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

15 sect   

n.派别，宗教，学派，派系

参考例句：

• When he was sixteen he joined a religious sect.他16岁的时候加入了一个宗教教派。
• Each religious sect in the town had its own church.该城每一个宗教教派都有自己的教堂。

16 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

17 unreasonable   

adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的

参考例句：

• I know that they made the most unreasonable demands on you.我知道他们对你提出了最不合理的要求。
• They spend an unreasonable amount of money on clothes.他们花在衣服上的钱太多了。

18 avenged   

v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的过去式和过去分词 )；为…报复

参考例句：

• She avenged her mother's death upon the Nazi soldiers. 她惩处了纳粹士兵以报杀母之仇。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Indians avenged the burning of their village on〔upon〕 the settlers. 印第安人因为村庄被焚毁向拓居者们进行报复。 来自《简明英汉词典》

19 prehistoric   

adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的

参考例句：

• They have found prehistoric remains.他们发现了史前遗迹。
• It was rather like an exhibition of prehistoric electronic equipment.这儿倒像是在展览古老的电子设备。

20 compulsory   

n.强制的，必修的；规定的，义务的

参考例句：

• Is English a compulsory subject?英语是必修课吗？
• Compulsory schooling ends at sixteen.义务教育至16岁为止。

21 anthropology   

n.人类学

参考例句：

• I believe he has started reading up anthropology.我相信他已开始深入研究人类学。
• Social anthropology is centrally concerned with the diversity of culture.社会人类学主要关于文化多样性。

22 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

23 plausibly   

似真地

参考例句：

• The case was presented very plausibly. 案情的申述似很可信。
• He argued very plausibly for its acceptance. 他为使之认可辩解得头头是道。

24 maniacal   

adj.发疯的

参考例句：

• He was almost maniacal in his pursuit of sporting records.他近乎发疯般地追求着打破体育纪录。
• She is hunched forward over the wheel with a maniacal expression.她弓身伏在方向盘前，表情像疯了一样。

25 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

26 inhuman   

adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的

参考例句：

• We must unite the workers in fighting against inhuman conditions.我们必须使工人们团结起来反对那些难以忍受的工作条件。
• It was inhuman to refuse him permission to see his wife.不容许他去看自己的妻子是太不近人情了。

27 contrived   

adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的

参考例句：

• There was nothing contrived or calculated about what he said.他说的话里没有任何蓄意捏造的成分。
• The plot seems contrived.情节看起来不真实。

28 procure   

vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条

参考例句：

• Can you procure some specimens for me?你能替我弄到一些标本吗？
• I'll try my best to procure you that original French novel.我将尽全力给你搞到那本原版法国小说。

29 colossal   

adj.异常的，庞大的

参考例句：

• There has been a colossal waste of public money.一直存在巨大的公款浪费。
• Some of the tall buildings in that city are colossal.那座城市里的一些高层建筑很庞大。

30 frightful   

adj.可怕的；讨厌的

参考例句：

• How frightful to have a husband who snores!有一个发鼾声的丈夫多讨厌啊！
• We're having frightful weather these days.这几天天气坏极了。

31 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

32 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

33 bestial   

adj.残忍的；野蛮的

参考例句：

• The Roman gladiatorial contests were bestial amusements.罗马角斗是残忍的娱乐。
• A statement on Amman Radio spoke of bestial aggression and a horrible massacre. 安曼广播电台播放的一则声明提到了野蛮的侵略和骇人的大屠杀。