Conventionality is the tacit agreement to set appearance before reality,
form before content, subordination before principal. Its field in
certain measure is "vogue" changing according to the idea of beauty of
each new season. In deeper sense, however, a part of the sphere of
conventionality coincides always with that of law and custom, and with
the conception of the amount of self-control and self-sacrifice which
every individual must impose upon himself for the common life with
others. The further the evolution of humanity advances, the fewer are
the fields to which the power of society over the thought, belief, mode
of life and manner of work of the individual is restricted. More and
more prevalent becomes the conviction that all those forms of
expression of the individual which do not interfere with the rights of
others must be free. A great part of the work of culture of each new
generation has consisted and still consists in clearing away great
masses of conceptions of right dried up into conventionalism, dead
rubbish which prevents the new germs from sprouting. In every period
strong voices are heard which desire freedom from the prevailing
customs, and right of choice for the individual conscience and
temperament. In this ever-continuous struggle it is important to
distinguish what are really still living conceptions of right from
factitious conceptions, which form only a conventional obstacle to a
more beautiful freedom, a deeper truth, a greater originality, a richer
life content.
Yet it is not only old conventionalism which needs to be rooted out. In
every faction, in every social circle are soon formed lifeless
collections of prejudices, paltry motives, dependent customs. It is
always the women among whom conventionalism reaches its acme. For
conservatism, that deep significant instinct of woman, becomes also
often a prop of conventionality. Women are as yet seldom sufficiently
developed personally to distinguish, in that which they wish to cherish,
the appearance from the reality, the form from the content; or if they
do distinguish, they have as yet rarely the courage to choose the
content and reality if the majority have declared for form and
appearance!
In the literature of the last ten years and in part also among women
there prevails, however, a strong opposition to conventionality. This
opposition has been directed especially against the archaic ideal of
woman, according to which renunciation is still considered the highest
attribute of woman; and against the antiquated conception of morality
which regarded love without marriage as immoral, but any marriage, even
without love, as moral.
The women who adopted the new ideal--which a Norwegian poet strikingly
defined as "Self-assertion in self-surrender." "Affirmation of self in
giving of self"--encounter now on the part of the modern woman's-rights
advocates the same kind of conventional objection as in the fifties and
sixties was directed against the then new ideal of the earlier woman
movement.
The older emancipation movement advanced along the first line in the
effort to establish the right of woman as a human being; that is, to
give to woman the same rights as to man. The present movement purposes
to assert the right of woman as an individuality; the absolute right to
believe, to feel, to think and to act in her own way, if it does not
interfere with the rights of others. Since the first end was a general
one, the movement could in great part be made effective by collective
work in attaining that end; the exposition of the independence of the
individuality of woman, on the contrary, must be the personal concern of
each single individual. This those women do not understand who still are
working ever for the first end--the rights of woman as a human being.
They do not understand that every woman must receive, not merely her
universal rights, as a member of the body politic, but also her entire
individual rights as the possessor of a definite personality. The right
to establish an ego independent of, and perhaps entirely at variance
with, theories and ideals is at heart the point of struggle between the
one or the other individual woman and the women representatives of the
earlier era of the woman question.
The discovery that each personality is a new world--which in Shakespeare
found its Columbus, a Columbus after whom new mariners immediately
undertook new conquests--this discovery of literature has as yet only
partially penetrated the universal consciousness, as a truth of
experience. But the fact that it has made a beginning, that the
conventional, inflexible conception of the nature of man and of the
problems resulting therefrom is giving place to a relative and
individual conception--this is above all to be ascribed to the thinkers
and poets, in whom the conventional has its deadliest foe; the
recreative poets whose characteristic is deep appreciation of all primal
forces of existence, of all essential elements of life. For although
conventionalism in the form of the echo springs up also around genius,
yet the creative genius itself is always a protest against
conventionality in which any selfjustified life or art--conception has
perished.
The poet who here in the North shattered with a blow the archaic
conventional ideal of woman who sacrificed herself in all circumstances,
was Ibsen when he sent Nora out away from her husband and children in
order to fulfill the duties toward herself; when by means of "Ghosts" he
etched into the moral consciousness the idea that a woman's fidelity to
her own personality is more significant for the welfare of others as
well as of herself than her fidelity to conventional conceptions of
morality.
And Ibsen has always been the annunciator of the freedom under one's own
responsibility which is the key to individualism. Long has man listened,
only in part has he understood. And no consciousness is in this respect
more hermetically sealed than that of certain woman's rights advocates!
That all women should have the same rights as men, this is all that they
mean in their talk about the freeing of the woman's personality. They
forget that the right to be what she wishes entails often for the woman,
as for the man, the obligation to suppress that which she really is by
nature and feeling. They forget that the personality has deeper claims
than the right to work. They overlook the infinite variety of shades of
feeling, thought and character which caused the demand of solidarity in
opinions and actions, among the women active in the woman question, to
degenerate into suppression of woman's individuality. Certainly it is
true that united action is still necessary in order that woman may
obtain the rights which she still lacks. But all compulsory mobilized
action is here more dangerous than elsewhere; because for the advance of
the woman question in the deepest sense it is essential precisely that
the different feminine individualities show their useful faculties as
freely as possible in the different fields of activity.
The conventionality which is a menace in the woman question betrays
itself, not only in exaggerated demands for solidarity, but also in the
mode of treating the objections of the opposition. It reveals itself in
the lack of comprehension of the fact that the woman question,
particularly in what concerns the labor field, now intersects on all
sides the path of the social question. It especially evinces itself in
the inability to understand how the woman question, as it advances in
its evolution, becomes more complex, and how thereby, ever greater
difficulties arise in taking an absolute position in the questions
connected with it.
It is necessary that woman's opportunities for culture be multiplied.
But do all these measures of culture develop also the personality? Have
we not met the finest, most original, most charming natures among
unlettered dames of seventy and eighty years, or among such women as
never had a systematic education? It is right that the wages of women
should be increased; but will the labor value of women increase in
proportion? Can we even desire that the majority of these women bent
over their desks shall devote a live interest to their work, when their
sole essential being would first find expression only when bent over a
cradle? It is well also for girls of wealth to wish to have a vocation.
But is it also good if they, because they can be satisfied with a
smaller wage, take away the work from poor girls and men, often more
competent, who have to live entirely by the fruits of their work, and
must therefore demand larger wages?
So long as these and many other questions remain unanswered, there is
today quite as much that is conventional in rejoicing unreservedly over
the many girls who become students or leave the home, where they are
very much needed, for outside work, as there was in our grandmother's
time in wishing to limit the province of woman to the kitchen, the
nursery and the drawing room.
It is not yet known whether woman, through the competition for bread,
will develop physiologically and psychologically to greater health and
harmony. Woman is a new subject for research, and only centuries of full
freedom in choice of labor and in personal development can furnish
material for well grounded conclusions. Many signs, however, point to
this:--that an ineffaceable, deep-rooted psychological difference due to
physical peculiarities will always exist between man and woman, which
probably will always keep her by preference active in the sphere of the
family, while he probably will remain active in other spheres of
culture. But with a perfect equality with man and a full personal
development, woman can have a significance for culture in its entirety
and for the direction of society which we can still scarcely divine.
The conventional points of view, just mentioned in considering the woman
question, retard the development of woman's individuality above all
because they overlook the diversity of nature and the complexity of the
problem. The conventional conception of self-renunciation as the highest
expression of womanhood is still continually the greatest obstacle to
the achievement of woman's personality. To be able to perish for a loved
being with joy is one of the beautiful inalienable priviliges of woman
nature. But by considering this under all circumstances as ideal, woman
has thus retarded not only her own development but also that of man. If
we compare marriages of older generations with those of the younger, the
men of the latter show great advance in regard to considerate tenderness
and sympathetic understanding toward their wives--wives who have on the
other hand a personal life more complete and with other demands than
formerly. Both have thus gained since women have begun to practice the
self-renunciation of self-assertion! Because for every self-sacrificing
woman nature it is infinitely harder to take her due than to sacrifice
it.
* * * * *
Conventional womanhood will ever have its strongest support in
education.
The individuality of a child is seldom repressed in the inconsiderate
and brutal manner of former times. But by attrition it is effaced. In
the olden times the children enjoyed a certain freedom in the nursery
where the expression of life, manifestation of joy, pleasure and
displeasure, sympathy and antipathy of the growing personality was not
continually moderated. Now the children are continually with the parents
and these accustom them to a certain exacting restraint. The children
wish to be entertained; they cannot play of their own initiative, for
they lose the desire that originates in the freedom of the creative
phantasy. Neither children nor parents possess themselves in peace. In
the continual association the children are worn out by commands so
varied and numerous that obedience cannot be maintained. They do not,
therefore, learn the discipline necessary for the development of their
personality--to subordinate the unessential life expressions to the
essential and to dominate even over these last--a culture of the fallow
child ground which must begin early in order to become a second nature.
And this happens only when the educator knows clearly what he will
adhere to as essential in the development of the child, and when
according to that he establishes his commands and prohibitions, which
must be few in number but as immutable as the laws of nature, and if
violated must bring upon the child, not artificial punishment, but the
inevitable results of the act itself. So can man by fixed practice form
the child of nature into a man of culture, who out of consideration for
himself and for others curbs his tendencies which are inimical to
society, without, however, suppressing his personality. For outside the
field of immutable laws, children ought not to be constrained or coerced
against their nature and their disposition, against their healthy egoism
and against their especial tastes.
Now many mothers by their own effacement of self develop an unjustified
egoism of the child, but desire in other respects a self-control, a
circumspection, a moderation and discretion such as a whole life has not
ordinarily been able to inculcate in the mother herself. Out of this
soft clay, which is material for an individuality, parents, servants and
teachers mold a society being, sometimes a social being, but never a
human being.
This modeling is called education. And a part of the earliest education
must, as I have just shown, truly consist in that of molding. But after
the first years of life the aim of education should be to prevent all
molding and on the contrary to assure the freedom or development of the
single force which, considered in the light of the whole, makes it
significant for mankind that new generations succeed those which have
disappeared--the force of a new personality.
Every child is a new world, a world into which not even the tenderest
love can wholly penetrate. However openly the clear eyes meet ours,
however confidingly the soft hand is laid in ours, this tender being
will perhaps one day deplore the suffering of his childhood, because we
treated him according to the assumption that children are replicas, not
originals; not new, wonderful personalities. It is true the child in
certain measure is a repetition of the child nature of all times, but at
the same time, and this in a far higher degree, an absolutely new
synthesis of soul qualities, with new possibilities for sorrow and joy,
strength and weakness.
This new being will, upon his own responsibility, at his own risk, live
this terrifyingly earnest life. What creative force, new inceptions, he
will be able to bring to it; what elasticity he will possess under the
blows of destiny, what power to give and to receive happiness--all
depends, outside of nature itself, in essential degree upon the
educator's method of treating this individual child nature.
Goethe long ago lamented that education aspired to make Philistines out
of personalities. And this is now much worse since education has become
pedagogical, without at the same time becoming psychological.
Only he who treats the feelings, will and rights of a child with quite
the same consideration as those of a grown person, and who never allows
the personality of a child to feel other limitations than those of
nature itself, or the consideration, based upon good grounds, for the
child's own welfare or that of others--only he possesses the first
requisite principle of real education. Education must assuredly be a
liberating of the personality from the domination of its own passions.
But it must never strive to exterminate passion itself, which is the
innermost power of the personality and which cannot exist without the
coexisting danger of a corresponding fault. To subdue the possible fault
in each spiritual inclination by eliciting through love the
corresponding good in the same inclination--this alone is individual
education. It is an extremely slow education, in which immediate
interference signifies little, the spiritual atmosphere of the home, its
mode of life and its ideals signify on the contrary almost everything.
The educator must above all understand how to wait: to reckon all
effects in the light of the future, not of the present.
The educator believes often that he spares the child future suffering
when he "opposes his onesidedness," as it is called. He does not reflect
that in the effort to force the child in a direction contrary to that in
which his personality evinces itself, he merely succeeds in diminishing
his nature; yes, often merely in retaining the weakness in the quality,
not the corresponding strength!
But ordinarily it is indeed no such principle, but only the old
thoughtlessly maintained ideal of self-renunciation which is decisive.
We repress the child's joy of discovery and check the spirit of
enterprise; wound his extremely sensitive sense of beauty; exercise
force over his most personal possessions, his tokens of tenderness;
combat his aversions and quench his enthusiasm. Amid such attacks upon
their individual being, their feelings and their inclinations most
children, but especially girls, grow up. It is therefore not surprising
that when grown they seldom look back upon their childhood as a happy
time.
An intense feeling of life, a sense of plenitude, entirety, of the
complete development of the powers of the potentialities--this
constitutes happiness. Children have more possibilities of happiness
than adults, for they can experience this feeling of joy of life more
undividedly and immediately. They should utilize these possibilities of
happiness while the parents have partial power over their life. Soon
enough must they on their own initiative attempt, accomplish, bleed; and
herein no one of all the influences of education has even approximately
the significance of this: that the individual be not overtrained, that
he have still strength enough to live. That means: to suffer his own
sorrow, to enjoy his own happiness, to perform his own work, to think
his own thoughts, to be able to devote himself absolutely and
entirely--the sole condition of being able to work, to love and to die.
It is a deep psychological truth that the kingdom of heaven belongs to
the children. For no one attains the highest that life offers in any
other way than by simplicity, unworldliness and the power of devoting
his whole being without reserve to his object. This is the strength of
the child nature. If a mother by education has preserved this holy
strength and developed it to a conscious power, then she has given to
mankind not only a new being but a new personality.
But the education in the family, just as in the school, is tending in
the opposite direction. The destruction of the personality is therefore
the great evil of the time.
* * * * *
Yet man is fortunately a vigorous organism. And those, whose personality
has been bowed or repressed by education, could raise themselves again
and create freedom for their development if they were aware of the value
of this freedom.
Few beings and so likewise few women can be exceptional. But if only a
few are destined for a great personality, yet nevertheless most can, in
spite of the errors of education, develop a certain degree of
personality, if they are deeply, earnestly concerned in it.
For everything is interrelated. No one lives unpunished by a second
hand. We cannot advance intellectually by borrowing, without becoming
also morally less scrupulous. We are today unjust to a book, a picture,
a drama, because we pronounce judgment upon it according to the words of
others, or because we do not dare to show the pleasure it gives us, in
case the critic has not granted us permission to be pleased, or because
we feign indignation we do not feel, but which others require of us in
the name of taste or morality. Tomorrow, in the same way, we shall be
unjust or dishonest to man, or to our own feeling--an injustice or a
dishonesty which can have influence over the destiny of a whole life.
The sum of spiritual riches, of spiritual utilities, is thereby
diminished if we do not cede to the whole what is most essentially ours.
That which is really our own may be great or small, rich or
insignificant--if we ourselves have felt or thought it, it is more
significant to others than that which we merely repeat, even if our
authority be the highest. And in those cases where we must rely upon
authorities, we still can put a certain personality into our choice and
honesty in acknowledging our indebtedness, by confessing that we have
borrowed our judgment we can put honesty and originality into this
dependence.
It is possible for no one to acquire more than a limited amount of the
results of culture, to form an entirely original judgment oftener than
in a few isolated cases. But each one can learn to understand that it is
a mark of culture not to pronounce judgment upon questions with which he
is not conversant. Good taste prescribes that just as one refuses to
wear false jewels if one possesses no real ones, so one should refrain
from pronouncing judgment upon persons or questions upon which one has
not formed an opinion through one's own impressions. When this honesty
begins to be considered a mark of spiritual refinement, then will the
culture of woman have made quite as great advance as when she learned to
read. For next to the power to form decisions for one's self stands in
culture value the ability to understand what opinions one does not
possess and the courage to recognize one's delicacy.
Courage and truth--that is what women lack above all. And these are the
qualities which they must cultivate if the feminine personality is to
grow. This does not result because women devote themselves to study, be
it ever so thorough, or to social tasks, be they ever so responsible.
Both further the development of woman's personality in the measure only
in which her own investigations, her own choice, make her means of
culture and her work an organic part of herself. To develop woman's
personality from within--that is the great woman question. To free woman
from conventionality--that is the great aim of the emancipation of
woman.
Such a conception of the woman question is for me the ideal conception
of this present great movement. And ideality does not mean to adopt as
the conception of life that which the majority considers ideal. Ideality
means to live for the ideal, which has inflamed our consciousness and
not to violate this consciousness by adapting it to such ideals as we
feel with our whole soul are lower.
If it is true that "the lack of genius is the lack of courage," so then
is it still more true in regard to the lack of personality. Here lies
one of the reasons why individuality is less often found among women
than among men. A man is more fully inflamed with his idea, the object
of his work; he is more intense in that which he knows and which he
wills. He becomes thus often--just as the child--more onesided, almost
always more egoistic, but much more absolute than a woman in like
position. She is rarely, except in love, wholly penetrated by that which
occupies her. It is then easier for her to be considerate, to look about
continuously upon all sides. She is more mobile, more quickly sensitive,
more manysided and more supple than man, and therein lies her strength.
But just as that of man, it is bought at the price of corresponding
weakness. For equipoise is still so difficult in human nature that a
good quality is often not the product of a multiplication, but is the
remainder after a subtraction.
The man becomes thus especially creative through his greater courage to
dare, his more intense power to will; the woman becomes the often
anxious conservator. She cherishes with fidelity, not only the customs
and memories of the home, but also society's traditional sentiments and
conceptions of right. But this very conspicuous conservatism of the
woman is exactly that which has obstructed the development of
exceptional femininity.
The personal independence of man is hampered because he must work
ordinarily in close association with others; whereby he is bound by
party discipline and party spirit, by considerations for preferment or
other interests.
The personality of woman on the other hand is more fettered by
conventional conceptions of morality and a conventional ideal of woman.
She will not distinguish the self-sacrifice which is of value from that
which from all points of view is valueless. She does not rely upon her
own instinct for right if this instinct deviates only a hair's breadth
from the generally accepted idea. She pardons the one who sins against
established conceptions of right, provided only he recognizes their
validity; but she condemns the one who has acted contrary to this
conception in sincere conviction, because his idea of right differs from
that of the majority! She confounds in her judgment temperament and
opinions, doctrine and life--a confusion which is the origin of all
spiritual tyranny, of all social intolerance. Especially does this
obtain in questions which concern the relation of the sexes. Every one
who expresses an opinion at variance with the conventional ideal of
morality has then incurred intrusive conclusions and blasting defamation
of his private life. On the part of women then--if it is a question
concerning a woman--it must all the more be accepted that it requires
not only a glowing red belief but also a snow-white conscience to dare
defy society in its most sensitive prejudices.
Conventionality of the woman attains its culminating point in the
thoughtless and conscienceless repetition of others' words by which most
women lower their spiritual level, distort, disfigure their character
and eventually stultify their personality.
A woman who makes any pretensions to fineness, evinces this among other
things, by avoiding all borrowed or sham luxury. She scorns spurious
effects, tinsel, and disdains therefore in her dress and her home all
artificial ornamentation.
But this same woman utters boldly counterfeited opinions and spurious
judgments as her own. Even if she possesses it she dare not express a
fresh, original opinion, a warm direct feeling. And her forgeries are
then transmitted by other plagarists from circle to circle. Thus "Public
Opinion" is formed upon the most delicate life problems, the most
serious life work. Thus the most noble actions become dubious and the
vilest calumnies positive authentic truths. Thus the air becomes
congested with the grains of sand, under which a man's works of honor
are buried.
But a work or a renown which has been interred can be exhumed. It is the
blind re-echoers of others' words, themselves, who must at length
disappear forever.