Victoria Claflin Woodhull ( 1838 - 1927) was a feminist reformer, clairvoyant, stock broker, sex symbol and free-love advocate of the 19th century. As the better known Susan B. Anthony cast her vote in the 1872 presidential election, Woodhull was standing as a presidential candidate (the first woman to do so), but couldn't vote for herself since she was imprisoned on charges of indecency. On May 10, 1872 Woodhull became the first woman nominated for President of the United States.
MOST of the ideas which permeate our social, religious, and political institutions of to-day arise from misconceptions of the human body. These institutions which are the outcome of civilization define laws to regulate and control the actions of human beings; and yet, the proper understanding of the growth and development of man individually was, and is, considered of secondary importance in adjusting these laws. My philosophy has been on the lines of Aristotle, "The nature of everything is best seen in its smallest portions."
I take up this book and call your attention to it. You perhaps will say, "Oh, that is the old Bible, worn threadbare long ago. We do not wish to be fed with its dry husks. We want living food and drink." Well, that is what I am going to give you.
Excerpt from the Introduction:
My efforts were for the individual or ontogenic development of humanity as the only basis upon which to frame any laws--that by understanding and giving the proper attention to this the quality of the whole must of necessity ultimately reach a higher standard. And as the influence of woman is vital, no advance could be made until the co-operation of woman was properly understood and insisted upon as essential to any ideal society, to any true realization of religion, to any perfect government. Active not passive aid is what I demanded from woman. She must be appreciated as the architect of the human race. Men are what their mothers make them. Their intelligence or ignorance has the power to teach them to revere or desecrate womanhood. Night after night throughout the United States I pleaded for the intellectual emancipation and the redemption of womanhood from sexual slavery--
Yes! it is an old book, a very old book. There are very few books extant that can compare with it, on the score of age, at least. Some parts of it were written over three thousand years ago; and all of it more than eighteen hundred years ago. Yes! an old book. And yet everybody seems to have one about the house. What is the matter with the old book? Why do people cling to it with such tenacity? Can any of those who have, laid it, on the shelf as worthless answer these questions? Why do they not burn it, so that it shall no longer cumber the house?
This was a mystery to me for many years; but it is so no longer. I know the reason for its hold upon the people. It contains that, though clad in mystery, which acts upon the soul like a potent spell; like a magnet, which it is indeed. Had it no value, or had its value been wholly extracted; were there no truth in it unrevealed, it had long since ceased to exert any influence whatever over anybody. Books that are exhausted of their truth by its being transferred to the minds of the people, lose their force and die. And this is the reason that, Task you to search its hidden mystery with me; to cast aside preconceived ideas of its meaning; to commence to read it as if it were for the first time.
Religion and science admit there was an original cause which set up in matter the motion that ultimated in man. The latter examines into the various works that preceded his appearance, and discovers that he came is a result of them all; indeed, that, except, they had first, existed, he could never have lived; that the omission of a single progressive step in the creative plan would have defeated the work. But science goes further than this. It not only asserts that man was the last link in a long chain of development, but it also maintains that, when the creation once began, there was no power residing anywhere that could have interposed its edicts to stay the progress, or defeat the final production of man; that he was a necessary product of creation, as fruit is of the tree, and that all the
designs and purposes of the moving power were contained in and exhausted by his creation; that is, that as a fruit of the creative plan, man was the highest possibility of the universe.
Paperback, 5 x 8, 200+ pages