Religion is the feminine element in human nature. Science is the
masculine. One accepts, the other inquires; one believes, the other
proves; one loves the old, the other the new; one submits, the other
dares; one is conservative, and the other progressive.
I say this with no disrespect to women. Evolution has made them what
they are, and evolution will remake them. Nor do I slight the noble band
of advanced women, the vanguard of their sex, who have shed a lustre on
our century. I merely take a convenient metaphor, which crystallises
a profound truth, though fully conscious of its shortcomings and
exclusions.
Woman is still the citadel of religion. Thither the priest flies from
the attacks of scepticism. There he finds an inviolable refuge. The
mother, the wife, the sister, shield him and his creed; and their white
arms and soft eyes are a better guard than all the weapons in the armory
of his faith. His are the coward's tactics, but all creatures--even
priests--plead the necessity of living, and have the artful instinct of
self-preservation.
Religious by inheritance and training, woman rears her children for the
Church. Spiritual as well as bodily perils shake her prophetic soul as
she peers into the future through the eyes of the child upon her knee.
She whispers of God with accents of awe, that fall solemnly on the
little one's mind. She trains the knee to bend, the hands to meet in
prayer, and the eyes to look upward. She wields the mighty spell of
love, and peoples the air of life with phantoms. Infantile logic knows
those dear lips cannot lie, and all is truth for all is love. Alas!
the lesson has to come that the logic is faulty, that goodness may be
leagued with lies, that a twisted brain may top the sweetest heart.
But long ere the lesson is learnt--if it _is_ learnt--the mischief has
been wrought. The child has been moulded for the priest, and is duly
burnished with catechisms and stamped with dogmas. And how often, when
the strong mind grows and bursts its bonds, when the mental eyes wax
strong and see the falsehood, the mother's hand, through the child's
training, plucks the life back from the fulfilment of its promise. How
often, also, when the vigorous manhood has swept aside all illusions,
there comes at length the hour of lassitude, and as the mother's voice
steals through the caverns of memory the spectres of faith are startled
from their repose.
Priests are always warning men against deserting the creed of their
mothers. And even a _savant_, like Professor Gazzia, who writes on
Giordano Bruno, knows the trick of touching this facile cord of the
human heart. Speaking of Bruno's philosophy, he says: "I call it plainly
the Negation of God, of that God, I mean, of whom I first heard _at my
mother's knee_."
But Freethinking mothers--and happily there are such--will use their
power more wisely; and, above all, will not shrink from their duty. They
have the fashioning of the young life--a transcendent privilege, with
an awful responsibility. They will see that love nurtures the affections
without suborning the intellect; that the young mind is encouraged to
think, instead of being stuffed with conclusions; and they will some day
find their exceeding rich reward. Their children, trained in the school
of self-respect and toleration, will be wiser than the pupils of faith;
and the bonds of love will be all the tenderer and stronger for the
perception that the free individuality of the child's life was never
sacrificed to the parent's authority.