s Paine gave evidences of a lack of mental equipoise. We find
scattered throughout his works the most brilliant, irrefutable, and
logical truths side by side with the most inane, illogical, and stolid
crudities. Among other men of genius who showed signs of degeneration we
may include Alexander Stevens, Joel Hart, Adams, Train, Breckenridge,
Webster, Blaine, Van Buren, Houston, Grant, Hawthorne, Bartholow, Walt
Whitman. We must not confound genius and talent--the two are widely
different. Genius is essentially original and spontaneous, while talent
is to some extent acquired. Genius is a _quasi_ abnormality, and one for
which the world should be devoutly grateful. _Psychos_, in the case of
genius, is not uniformly developed, one part, being more favored than
the others, absorbs and uses more than its share of that element,
whatsoever it be, which goes to make up intellectuality, hence the less
favored or less acquisitive parts show degeneration.

THE EFFECT OF FEMALE SUFFRAGE ON POSTERITY.

_The greatest, best, and highest law of higher civilization is that
which declares that man should strive to benefit, not himself
alone, but his posterity._

I. THE ORIGIN OF THE MATRIARCHATE.

In the very beginning woman was, by function, a mother; by virtue of her
surroundings, a housewife. Man was then, as now, the active, dominant
factor in those affairs outside the immediate pale of the fireside. Life
was collective; "communal was the habitation, and communal the wives
with the children; the men pursued the same prey, and devoured it
together after the manner of wolves; all felt, all thought, all acted in
concert." Primitive men were like their simian ancestors, which never
paired, and which roamed through the forest in bands and troops. This
collectivism is plainly noticeable in certain races of primitive folks
which are yet in existence, notably the autochthons of the Aleutian
Islands. Huddled together in their communal _kachims_, naked, without
any thought of immodesty, men, women, and children share the same fire
and eat from the same pot. They recognize no immorality in the fact of
the father cohabiting with his daughter--one of them naively remarking
to Langsdorf, who reproached him for having committed this crime: "Why
not? the otters do it!" Later in life the men and women mate; but even
then there is no sanctity in the marriage tie, for the Aleutian will
freely offer his wife to the stranger wi