Annie Besant by Annie Besant

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"'ADDRESS.

"'_We seek for Truth_.'

"'To D.M. Bennett.

"'In asking you to accept at the hands of the National Secular Society
of England this symbol of cordial sympathy and brotherly welcome, we
are but putting into act the motto of our Society. "We seek for Truth"
is our badge, and it is as Truthseeker that we do you homage to-night.
Without free speech no search for Truth is possible; without free
speech no discovery of Truth is useful; without free speech progress
is checked, and the nations no longer march forward towards the nobler
life which the future holds for man. Better a thousandfold abuse of
free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day; the
denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.

"'In your own country you have pleaded for free speech, and when,
under a wicked and an odious law, one of your fellow-citizens was
imprisoned for the publication of his opinions, you, not sharing the
opinions but faithful to liberty, sprang forward to defend in him the
principle of free speech which you claimed for yourself, and sold his
book while he lay in prison. For this act you were in turn arrested
and sent to jail, and the country which won its freedom by the aid of
Paine in the eighteenth century disgraced itself in the nineteenth by
the imprisonment of a heretic. The Republic of the United States
dishonoured herself, and not you, in Albany penitentiary. Two hundred
thousand of your countrymen pleaded for your release, but bigotry was
too strong. We sent you greeting in your captivity; we rejoiced when
the time came for your release. We offer you to-night our thanks and
our hope--thanks for the heroism which never flinched in the hour of
battle, hope for a more peaceful future, in which the memory of a past
pain may be a sacred heritage and not a regret.

"'Charles Bradlaugh, _President_.'

"Soldier of liberty, we give you this. Do in the future the same good
service that you have done in the past, and your reward shall be in
the love that true men shall bear to you."

That, however, which no force could compel me to do, which I refused
to threats of fine and prison, to separation from my children, to
social ostracism, and to insults and ignominy worse to bear than
death, I surrendered freely when all the struggle was over, and a
great part of society and of public opinion had adopted the view that
cost Mr. Bradlaugh and myself so dear. I may as well complete the
story here, so as not to have to refer to it again. I gave up
Neo-Malthusianism in April, 1891, its renunciation being part of the
outcome of two years' instruction from Mdme. H.P. Blavatsky, who
showed me that however justifiable Neo-Malthusianism might be while
man was regarded only as the most perfect outcome of physical
evolution, it was wholly incompatible with the view of man as a
spiritual being, whose material form and environment were the results
of his own mental activity. Why and how I embraced Theosophy, and
accepted H.P. Blavatsky as teacher, will soon be told in its proper
place. Here I am concerned only with the why and how of my
renunciation of the Neo-Malthusian teaching, for which I had fought so
hard and suffered so much.

When I built my life on the basis of Materialism I judged all actions
by their effect on human happiness in this world now and in future
generations, regarding man as an organism that lived on earth and
there perished, with activities confined to earth and limited by
physical laws. The object of life was the ultimate building-up of a
physically, mentally, morally perfect man by the cumulative effects of
heredity--mental and moral tendencies being regarded as the outcome of
material conditions, to be slowly but surely evolved by rational
selection and the transmission to offspring of qualities carefully
acquired by, and developed in, parents. The most characteristic note
of this serious and lofty Materialism had been struck by Professor W.
K. Clifford in his noble article on the "Ethics of Belief."

Taking this view of human duty in regard to the rational co-operation
with nature in the evolution of the human race, it became of the first
importance to rescue the control of the generation of offspring from
mere blind brute passion, and to transfer it to the reason and to the
intelligence; to impress on parents the sacredness of the parental
office, the tremendous responsibility of the exercise of the creative
function. And since, further, one of the most pressing problems for
solution in the older countries is that of poverty, the horrible slums
and dens into which are crowded and in which are festering families of
eight and ten children, whose parents are earning an uncertain 10s.,
12s., 15s., and 20s. a week; since an immediate palliative is wanted,
if popular risings impelled by starvation are to be avoided; since the
lives of men and women of the poorer classes, and of the worst paid
professional classes, are one long, heart-breaking struggle "to make
both ends meet and keep respectable"; since in the middle class
marriage is often avoided, or delayed till late in life, from the
dread of the large family, and late marriage is followed by its
shadow, the prevalence of vice and the moral and social ruin of
thousands of women; for these, and many other reasons, the teaching of
the duty of limiting the family within the means of subsistence is the
logical outcome of Materialism linked with the scientific view of
evolution, and with a knowledge of the physical law, by which
evolution is accelerated or retarded. Seeking to improve the physical
type, scientific Materialism, it seemed to me, must forbid parentage
to any but healthy married couples; it must restrict childbearing
within the limits consistent with the thorough health and physical
well-being of the mother; it must impose it as a duty never to bring
children into the world unless the conditions for their fair nurture
and development are present. Regarding it as hopeless, as well as
mischievous, to preach asceticism, and looking on the conjunction of
nominal celibacy with widespread prostitution as inevitable, from the
constitution of human nature, scientific Materialism--quite rationally
and logically--advises deliberate restriction of the production of
offspring, while sanctioning the exercise of the sexual instinct
within the limits imposed by temperance, the highest physical and
mental efficiency, the good order and dignity of society, and the
self-respect of the individual.

In all this there is nothing which for one moment implies approval of
licentiousness, profligacy, unbridled self-indulgence. On the
contrary, it is a well-considered and intellectually-defensible scheme
of human evolution, regarding all natural instincts as matters for
regulation, not for destruction, and seeking to develop the perfectly
healthy and well-balanced physical body as the necessary basis for the
healthy and well-balanced mind. If the premises of Materialism be
true, there is no answer to the Neo-Malthusian conclusions; for even
those Socialists who have bitterly opposed the promulgation of
Neo-Malthusianism--regarding it as a "red herring intended to draw the
attention of the proletariat away from the real cause of poverty, the
monopoly of land and capital by a class"--admit that when society is
built on the foundation of common property in all that is necessary
for the production of wealth, the time will come for the consideration
of the population question. Nor do I now see, any more than I saw
then, how any Materialist can rationally avoid the Neo-Malthusian
position. For if man be the outcome of purely physical causes, it is
with these that we must deal in guiding his future evolution. If he be
related but to terrestrial existence, he is but the loftiest organism
of earth; and, failing to see his past and his future, how should my
eyes not have been then blinded to the deep-lying causes of his
present woe? I brought a material cure to a disease which appeared to
me to be of material origin; but how when the evil came from a subtler
source, and its causes lay not on the material plane? How if the
remedy only set up new causes for a future evil, and, while
immediately a palliative, strengthened the disease itself, and ensured
its reappearance in the future? This was the view of the problem set
before me by H.P. Blavatsky when she unrolled the story of man, told
of his origin and his destiny, showed me the forces that went to the
making of man, and the true relation between his past, his present,
and his future.

For what is man in the light of Theosophy? He is a spiritual
intelligence, eternal and uncreate, treading a vast cycle of human
experience, born and reborn on earth millennium after millennium,
evolving slowly into the ideal man. He is not the product of matter,
but is encased in matter, and the forms of matter with which he
clothes himself are of his own making. For the intelligence and will
of man are creative forces--not creative _ex nihilo_, but creative as
is the brain of the painter--and these forces are exercised by man in
every act of thought. Thus he is ever creating round him
thought-forms, moulding subtlest matter into shape by these energies,
forms which persist as tangible realities when the body of the thinker
has long gone back to earth and air and water. When the time for
rebirth into this earth-life comes for the soul these thought-forms,
its own progeny, help to form the tenuous model into which the
molecules of physical matter are builded for the making of the body,
and matter is thus moulded for the new body in which the soul is to
dwell, on the lines laid down by the intelligent and volitional life
of the previous, or of many previous, incarnations. So does each man
create for himself in verity the form wherein he functions, and what
he is in his present is the inevitable outcome of his own creative
energies in his past. Applying this to the Neo-Malthusian theory, we
see in sexual love not only a passion which man has in common with the
brute, and which forms, at the present stage of evolution, a necessary
part of human nature, but an animal passion that may be trained and
purified into a human emotion, which may be used as one of the levers
in human progress, one of the factors in human growth. But, instead of
this, man in the past has made his intellect the servant of his
passions; the abnormal development of the sexual instinct in man--in
whom it is far greater and more continuous than in any brute--is due
to the mingling with it of the intellectual element, all sexual
thoughts, desires, and imaginations having created thought-forms,
which have been wrought into the human race, giving rise to a
continual demand, far beyond nature, and in marked contrast with the
temperance of normal animal life. Hence it has become one of the most
fruitful sources of human misery and human degradation, and the
satisfaction of its imperious cravings in civilised countries lies at
the root of our worst social evils. This excessive development has to
be fought against, and the instinct reduced within natural limits, and
this will certainly never be done by easy-going self-indulgence within
the marital relation any more than by self-indulgence outside it. By
none other road than that of self-control and self-denial can men and
women now set going the causes which will build for them brains and
bodies of a higher type for their future return to earth-life. They
have to hold this instinct in complete control, to transmute it from
passion into tender and self-denying affection, to develop the
intellectual at the expense of the animal, and thus to raise the whole
man to the human stage, in which every intellectual and physical
capacity shall subserve the purposes of the soul. From all this it
follows that Theosophists should sound the note of self-restraint
within marriage, and the gradual--for with the mass it cannot be
sudden--restriction of the sexual relation to the perpetuation of the
race.

Such was the bearing of Theosophical teaching on Neo-Malthusianism, as
laid before me by H.P. Blavatsky, and when I urged, out of my bitter
knowledge of the miseries endured by the poor, that it surely might,
for a time at least, be recommended as a palliative, as a defence in
the hands of a woman against intolerable oppression and enforced
suffering, she bade me look beyond the moment, and see how the
suffering must come back and back with every generation, unless we
sought to remove the roots of wrong. "I do not judge a woman," she
said, "who has resort to such means of defence in the midst of
circumstances so evil, and whose ignorance of the real causes of all
this misery is her excuse for snatching at any relief. But it is not
for you, an Occultist, to continue to teach a method which you now
know must tend to the perpetuation of the sorrow." I felt that she was
right, and though I shrank from the decision--for my heart somewhat
failed me at withdrawing from the knowledge of the poor, so far as I
could, a temporary palliative of evils which too often wreck their
lives and bring many to an early grave, worn old before even middle
age has touched them--yet the decision was made. I refused to reprint
the "Law of Population," or to sell the copyright, giving pain, as I
sadly knew, to all the brave and loyal friends who had so generously
stood by me in that long and bitter struggle, and who saw the results
of victory thrown away on grounds to them inadequate and mistaken!
Will it always be, I wonder, in man's climbing upward, that every step
must be set on his own heart and on the hearts of those he loves?

CHAPTER X.

AT WAR ALL ROUND.

Coming back to my work after my long and dangerous illness, I took up
again its thread, heartsick, but with courage unshaken, and I find
myself in the _National Reformer_ for September 15, 1878, saying in a
brief note of thanks that "neither the illness nor the trouble which
produced it has in any fashion lessened my determination to work for
the cause." In truth, I plunged into work with added vigour, for only
in that did I find any solace, but the pamphlets written at this time
against Christianity were marked with considerable bitterness, for it
was Christianity that had robbed me of my child, and I struck
mercilessly at it in return. In the political struggles of that time,
when the Beaconsfield Government was in full swing, with its policy of
annexation and aggression, I played my part with tongue and pen, and
my articles in defence of an honest and liberty-loving policy in
India, against the invasion of Afghanistan and other outrages, laid in
many an Indian heart a foundation of affection for me, and seem to me
now as a preparation for the work among Indians to which much of my
time and thought to-day are given. In November of this same year
(1878) I wrote a little book on "England, India, and Afghanistan" that
has brought me many a warm letter of thanks, and with this, the
carrying on of the suit against Mr. Besant before alluded to, two and
often three lectures every Sunday, to say nothing of the editorial
work on the _National Reformer_, the secretarial work on the
Malthusian League, and stray lectures during the week, my time was
fairly well filled. But I found that in my reading I developed a
tendency to let my thoughts wander from the subject in hand, and that
they would drift after my lost little one, so I resolved to fill up
the gaps in my scientific education, and to amuse myself by reading up
for some examinations; I thought it would serve as an absorbing form
of recreation from my other work, and would at the same time, by
making my knowledge exact, render me more useful as a speaker on
behalf of the causes to which my life was given.

At the opening of the new year (1879) I met for the first time a man
to whom I subsequently owed much in this department of work--Edward B.
Aveling, a D.Sc. of London University, and a marvellously able teacher
of scientific subjects, the very ablest, in fact, that I have ever
met. Clear and accurate in his knowledge, with a singular gift for
lucid exposition, enthusiastic in his love of science, and taking
vivid pleasure in imparting his knowledge to others, he was an ideal
teacher. This young man, in January, 1879, began writing under
initials for the _National Reformer_, and in February I became his
pupil, with the view of matriculating in June at the London
University, an object which was duly accomplished. And here let me say
to any one in mental trouble, that they might find an immense relief
in taking up some intellectual recreation of this kind; during that
spring, in addition to my ordinary work of writing, lecturing, and
editing--and the lecturing meant travelling from one end of England to
the other--I translated a fair-sized French volume, and had the
wear-and-tear of pleading my case for the custody of my daughter in
the Court of Appeal, as well as the case before the Master of the
Rolls; and I found it the very greatest relief to turn to algebra,
geometry, and physics, and forget the harassing legal struggles in
wrestling with formulae and problems. The full access I gained to my
children marked a step in the long battle of Freethinkers against
disabilities, for, as noted in the _National Reformer_ by Mr.
Bradlaugh, it was "won with a pleading unequalled in any case on
record for the boldness of its affirmation of Freethought," a pleading
of which he generously said that it deserved well of the party as "the
most powerful pleading for freedom of opinion to which it has ever
been our good fortune to listen."

In the London _Daily News_ some powerful letters of protest appeared,
one from Lord Harberton, in which he declared that "the Inquisition
acted on no other principle" than that applied to me; and a second
from Mr. Band, in which he sarcastically observed that "this Christian
community has for some time had the pleasure of seeing her Majesty's
courts repeatedly springing engines of torture upon a young mother--a
clergyman's wife who dared to disagree with his creed--and her evident
anguish, her long and expensive struggles to save her child, have
proved that so far as heretical mothers are concerned modern defenders
of the faith need not envy the past those persuasive instruments which
so long secured the unity of the Church. In making Mrs. Besant an
example, the Master of the Rolls and Lord Justice James have been
careful not to allow any of the effect to be lost by confusion of the
main point--the intellectual heresy--with side questions. There was a
Malthusian matter in the case, but the judges were very clear in
stating that without any reference whatever to that, they would
simply, on the ground of Mrs. Besant's 'religious, or anti-religious,
opinions,' take her child from her." The great provincial papers took
a similar tone, the _Manchester Examiner_ going so far as to say of
the ruling of the judges: "We do not say they have done so wrongly. We
only say that the effect of their judgment is cruel, and it shows that
the holding of unpopular opinions is, in the eye of the law, an
offence which, despite all we had thought to the contrary, may be
visited with the severest punishment a woman and a mother can be
possibly called on to bear." The outcome of all this long struggle and
of another case of sore injustice--in which Mrs. Agar-Ellis, a Roman
Catholic, was separated from her children by a judicial decision
obtained against her by her husband, a Protestant--was a change in the
law which had vested all power over the children in the hands of the
father, and from thenceforth the rights of the married mother were
recognised to a limited extent. A small side-fight was with the
National Sunday League, the president of which, Lord Thurlow, strongly
objected to me as one of the vice-presidents. Mr. P.A. Taylor and
others at once resigned their offices, and, on the calling of a
general meeting, Lord Thurlow was rejected as president. Mr. P.A.
Taylor was requested to assume the presidency, and the vice-presidents
who had resigned were, with myself, re-elected. Little battles of this
sort were a running accompaniment of graver struggles during all these
battling years.

And through all the struggles the organised strength of the
Freethought party grew, 650 new members being enrolled in the National
Secular Society in the year 1878-79, and in July, 1879, the public
adhesion of Dr. Edward B. Aveling brought into the ranks a pen of rare
force and power, and gave a strong impulse to the educational side of
our movement. I presided for him at his first lecture at the Hall of
Science on August 10, 1879, and he soon paid the penalty of his
boldness, finding himself, a few months later, dismissed from the
Chair of Comparative Anatomy at the London Hospital, though the Board
admitted that all his duties were discharged with punctuality and
ability. One of the first results of his adhesion was the
establishment of two classes under the Science and Art Department at
South Kensington, and these grew year after year, attended by numbers
of young men and women, till in 1883 we had thirteen classes in full
swing, as well as Latin, and London University Matriculation classes;
all these were taught by Dr. Aveling and pupils that he had trained. I
took advanced certificates, one in honours, and so became qualified as
a science teacher in eight different sciences, and Alice and Hypatia
Bradlaugh followed a similar course, so that winter after winter we
kept these classes going from September to the following May, from
1879 until the year 1888. In addition to these Miss Bradlaugh carried
on a choral union.

Personally I found that this study and teaching together with
attendance at classes held for teachers at South Kensington, the study
for passing the First B.Sc. and Prel. Sc. Examinations at London
University, and the study for the B.Sc. degree at London, at which I
failed in practical chemistry three times--a thing that puzzled me not
a little at the time, as I had passed a far more difficult practical
chemical examination for teachers at South Kensington--all this gave
me a knowledge of science that has stood me in good stead in my public
work. But even here theological and social hatred pursued me.

When Miss Bradlaugh and myself applied for permission to attend the
botany class at University College, we were refused, I for my sins,
and she only for being her father's daughter; when I had qualified as
teacher, I stood back from claiming recognition from the Department
for a year in order not to prejudice the claims of Mr. Bradlaugh's
daughters, and later, when I had been recognised, Sir Henry Tyler in
the House of Commons attacked the Education Department for accepting
me, and actually tried to prevent the Government grant being paid to
the Hall of Science Schools because Dr. Aveling, the Misses Bradlaugh,
and myself were unbelievers in Christianity. When I asked permission
to go to the Botanical Gardens in Regent's Park the curator refused
it, on the ground that his daughters studied there. On every side
repulse and insult, hard to struggle against, bitter to bear. It was
against difficulties of this kind on every side that we had to make
our way, handicapped in every effort by our heresy. Let our work be as
good as it might--and our Science School was exceptionally
successful--the subtle fragrance of heresy was everywhere
distinguishable, and when Mr. Bradlaugh and myself are blamed for
bitterness in our anti-Christian advocacy, this constant gnawing
annoyance and petty persecution should be taken into account. For him
it was especially trying, for he saw his daughters--girls of ability
and of high character, whose only crime was that they were
his--insulted, sneered at, slandered, continually put at a
disadvantage, because they were his children and loved and honoured
him beyond all others.

It was in October, 1879, that I first met Herbert Burrows, though I
did not become intimately acquainted with him till the Socialist
troubles of the autumn of 1887 drew us into a common stream of work.
He came as a delegate from the Tower Hamlets Radical Association to a
preliminary conference, called by Mr. Bradlaugh, at the Hall of
Science, on October 11th, to consider the advisability of holding a
great London Convention on Land Law Reform, to be attended by
delegates from all parts of the kingdom. He was appointed on the
Executive Committee with Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Mottershead, Mr. Nieass,
and others. The Convention was successfully held, and an advanced
platform of Land Law Reform adopted, used later by Mr. Bradlaugh as a
basis for some of the proposals he laid before Parliament.

CHAPTER XI.

MR. BRADLAUGH'S STRUGGLE.

And now dawned the year 1880, the memorable year in which commenced
Mr. Bradlaugh's long Parliamentary battle. After a long and bitter
struggle he was elected, with Mr. Labouchere, as member for
Northampton, at the general election, and so the prize so long fought
for was won. Shall I ever forget that election day, April 2, 1880? How
at four o'clock Mr. Bradlaugh came into the room at the "George",
where his daughters and I were sitting, flung himself into a chair
with, "There's nothing more to do; our last man is polled." Then the
waiting for the declaration through the long, weary hours of suspense,
till as the time drew near we knelt by the window listening--listening
to the hoarse murmur of the crowd, knowing that presently there would
be a roar of triumph or a howl of anger when the numbers were read out
from the steps of the Town Hall. And now silence sank, and we knew the
moment had come, and we held our breath, and then--a roar, a wild roar
of joy and exultation, cheer after cheer, ringing, throbbing, pealing,
and then the mighty surge of the crowd bringing him back, their member
at last, waving hats, handkerchiefs, a very madness of tumultuous
delight, and the shrill strains of "Bradlaugh for Northampton!" with a
ring of triumph in them they had never had before. And he, very grave,
somewhat shaken by the outpour of love and exultation, very silent,
feeling the weight of new responsibility more than the gladness of
victory. And then the next morning, as he left the town, the mass of
men and women, one sea of heads from hotel to station, every window
crowded, his colours waving everywhere, men fighting to get near him,
to touch him, women sobbing, the cries, "Our Charlie, our Charlie;
we've got you and we'll keep you." How they loved him, how they joyed
in the triumph won after twelve years of strife. Ah me! we thought the
struggle over, and it was only beginning; we thought our hero
victorious, and a fiercer, crueller fight lay in front. True, he was
to win that fight, but his life was to be the price of the winning;
victory for him was to be final, complete, but the laurel-wreath was
to fall upon a grave.

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