COLLECTIVE MOTHERLINESS
At a Scandinavian meeting on the woman’s question, a cantata was sung
which proclaimed that the human race under the supremacy of man had
stumbled in darkness and crime. But the race was now to be newly born
from the soul of woman, the sunrise would scatter the darkness of
night, and the advent of the Messiah was certain.
That men during the period of their ascendancy had nevertheless
produced a few trifles—for example, religions and laws, sciences and
arts, discoveries and inventions—that the darkness of their night was
thus at least illumined by a Milky Way, all this her majesty Woman was
pleased to forget.
If man were sufficiently vindictive to set about finding out what
woman has accomplished in the course of ages to justify her towering
self-esteem—or in other words to justify her challenging the
comparison with these works of man—then he would find only one thing.
When nature formed the instinct of the race, woman remoulded it as
love; when necessity made the dwelling, woman transformed it into the
home. Her great contribution to culture is thus affection.
And this work is in truth great enough to counterbalance man’s
contribution—but not to make it worthless.
Fortunately we hear less and less about man’s “tyranny” having robbed
woman of the chance of also proving her powers within his sphere of
activity. It is more and more recognised that in the struggle for
existence necessity decreed that woman’s social work should take the
form of home work. The same necessity has now—in the main—liberated
the powers that were confined in home work, although woman has never,
at any time, been excluded from the use of her mental gifts. Such use
was, however, obviously an occasional one, so long as the total of her
activity belonged to another sphere.
It is from the point of view of their now emancipated personality that
women—and many men on their behalf—demand the right of employing
these personally-human powers in social work. They point in particular
to the neglect of the State in that sphere of duty, which is already
theirs in the home, namely, that of protecting and improving the
existence of the young and of the weak. And men are beginning to see
that, the more fixedly society is organised, the more indispensable
will be the co-operation between all its parts, if the social organism
is really to fulfil its purpose, the welfare of all; they see that the
new forms both of State help and self-help, which are now being sought
after with increasing consciousness of purpose, cannot be adjusted
to actual needs unless woman is able to co-operate with man in every
department and take part in the legislation which is to decide the
welfare of herself and of her child.
But that the organisation of society has now progressed so far that man
is beginning to look for woman’s help, must not be taken by women as a
reason for putting the whole blame for the slow development of society
on men. This slowness results in an equal degree from the hitherto
existing nature of woman and of man, from the limitations of both,
and from their both being bound by the laws of development. Progress
towards higher conditions depends in an equal degree on transformations
in the nature of both, the ideals of both, the means and aims of
both in the furtherance of culture. The very beginning of these
transformations is the education women give to the new generation,
which is afterwards to make the laws, to arrange the work, and to
determine consumption according to the needs they bring with them into
life and the virtues they have learned to love at home.
Our time is probably more conscious of its own shortcomings than any
other. But nothing is more revolting to one’s sense of justice than
when this consciousness takes the form of women’s megalomania as
regards their own omnipotence for altering the course of the world.
Following on nature’s rough division of the race, nature and
civilisation in conjunction have produced a finer one, that of creator
on the one side and material on the other. Next to being one’s self
a creator, it is a great thing to be worthy material in a creator’s
hand. And enhancement of culture in a spiritual as well as a material
sense is brought about by the creators’ success in dealing with their
material. When that material is human, this means that the creators—or
leaders—are successful in converting the rest into real collaborators
with will and judgment of their own. Flocks driven on by shepherds, or
masses of humanity led by one no more remarkable than themselves, have
never had lasting effects on the course of civilisation. Such effects
only follow when a creator fires the multitude with the enthusiasm of
new aims, or teaches them to ennoble the means by which they may attain
ends worthy of aspiration.
Thus, if women are to give the development of society a direction
wholly different from that which man has given it, this will depend on
the appearance among women of leaders who shall point the way to higher
aims and employ purer means.
But what gives us reason to expect this of women? The reason cannot
be sought elsewhere than within the sphere of their own creations,
love, motherliness, the home, domestic economy. If it can be shown
that women have brought all these to the full perfection of which they
are capable, then there will really be good reason to believe in their
miraculous power in the organisation of society.
But even if we fully admit the hindrances which man’s ordering of
society, his legislation, his nature have placed in the way of
women—is there a single thoughtful woman who can maintain that she
herself, or that women in general, have nevertheless done all that
they could within their own special sphere; that they have used to the
utmost the opportunities they have possessed? What conscientious woman
does not perceive that the majority still bungle the great discoveries
of their sex, by the way in which they act as guardians and educators
of children, as lovers, wives, makers of homes, housekeepers! In
every department they lack art and science, clearness of view and
circumspection. Frequently they do not possess the first conditions for
intensifying and refining a happy love; that of bearing and bringing up
worthy children; that of attaining the greatest sum of material comfort
for the members of the family with the least expenditure of force and
of means; that of arranging the spiritual balance-sheet so that the
highest possible enhancement of life will be the net profit. Exactly as
the majority of men only slowly and partially receive and transmit the
thoughts, the works of beauty, the discoveries that their leaders bring
them, so also do women slowly and partially receive the leading ideas
in their sphere.
There must then be something, not only in man’s nature but in woman’s
also, which hinders perfection and delays progress.
If such be the case—and the supposition need not be considered too
bold—then also we may perhaps wonder whether mankind would really have
progressed so far, if women had had the lead during past centuries.
And if we have ventured thus far, we may also be bold enough to ask:
whether these same women—who have been so far from perfecting their
own work—when they come to take part in the organisation of society,
will immediately perfect what man has bungled; twist the sword into
a ploughshare and bring about the Messianic kingdom, where peace and
righteousness shall kiss one another.
It is not until she has renounced all communion with the glorification
of woman and the assertion of woman’s superiority, that a woman with a
sense of intellectual propriety can occupy herself with the question of
the social work of her sex.
Those who conduct the woman’s movement form in every country a “right”
and a “left,” each with an extreme wing.
The particular cult of the right is woman as an ideal being. In
addition, its dogmas include Christianity, monogamy, and the rest of
the existing arrangements of society. It seeks to place woman on an
equal footing with man within the old forms. To the extremists of this
group, duty, labour, and utility are the great words of life; love and
beauty do not come within the scope either of woman’s rights or of her
obligations. To whitewash the stains on the existing social edifice; to
give themselves more space by building out a wing on the right—this
is their chief concern; the main building itself they would preserve
unaltered.
The left has also its deities—but “woman” is not one of them. Its view
of life is radical; that is to say, evolutionist and social. It seeks
to reform the existing institution of marriage by a new morality, and
existing society by a higher organisation, which will express a deeper
sense of solidarity. It thus looks at the rights and liberty of woman
and of man in connection with the welfare of the whole community. From
this point of view, it regards woman’s freedom to love and right to
motherhood as of equal importance with her right to vote and liberty to
work.
Here, however, a difference comes in between this and the extreme left,
which would give woman complete personal freedom of movement by leaving
the children in charge of the State.
Thus the extreme wing of the old feminism meets that of the new on this
point, that to both woman’s activity is an end in itself to the extent
that her right is independent of whether this activity raises or
lowers the vital efficiency of the whole organism.
In everything else the opposition is diametrical, except on the plane
where all the groups meet: in the demand for woman’s juridical and
political equality with man.
Those who demand political rights for woman in return for her liability
to taxation and her cares as a mother, have a well-founded claim.
But the position becomes still stronger when the claim is based upon
the need of society that every member of it should co-operate to
further the satisfaction of his own requirements. For modern society
corresponds more and more to the idea of an organism increasing in
complexity, every part of which becomes more and more important to the
whole, determines more and more by its needs and powers the welfare or
failure of the whole, and itself receives more and more profit or harm
from the condition of the whole organism.
Society means human beings—men, women, and children, dead, living,
and unborn—neither more nor yet less; human beings banded together in
order thus the higher to enhance the life of the individual and of all.
This combination takes at first simple, then more and more complicated
forms of organisation: simple, so long as their needs are so, since
only his needs move man to organise. An increasing civilisation means
a more and more perfect satisfaction of increasingly complicated
and higher needs. But as it is our needs that set us in motion, any
hindrance of movement will also produce immediate suffering through our
not being able to get rid of the cause of our displeasure; and indirect
suffering through our losing the sense of pleasure that movement might
have brought.
When the aim of society is seen to be that each of its members shall
employ and develop his powers to the highest possible extent for
the highest possible ends, then it will no longer be in abstract
constructions of constitutional law, but rather in the laws of human
life, that the criteria of social well-being will be sought.
The order of society must then favour the life-enhancement of the
individual; the limitation of individual liberty must favour the
life-enhancement of the whole—this will be to the evolutionist the
motive for now extending, now limiting, the freedom of movement of the
individual.
The parallelism with the human organism is evident. The formation and
activity of the individual cells determine the structure of the whole;
the degree in which their needs are satisfied determines the well-being
of the organism. The total vital needs of the organism limit the cells’
expansion of force and self-determination, for without the health of
the whole organism the cells would also languish.
Every powerful movement of society—and the demand for women’s
suffrage is already such a one—is brought about by the will of many
individuals to modify society in some respect, in order better to
satisfy their own needs and therewith those of the whole community.
Such a movement is always opposed in the beginning from the point of
view of the agreement, equilibrium, and health of the community. And
since a transformation in a society never occurs uniformly in time or
degree; since the need of new forms is thus for a long time not widely
spread, the conservatives, as a rule, are right at the beginning of
their opposition; they are right even until the transformation has been
taking place so long that the health of the whole organism demands that
the class of society, religious body, or group of opinion in question
should be given the freedom of activity without which it is ill at
ease; for the uneasiness of many injures all. Conservatism is thus
finally in the wrong by reason of the ever-repeated experience, that
when the vital force is increased in any important organ, it is also
increased in the whole organism.
Woman’s suffrage ought above all to be demanded from the point of view
of the social value, and consequent right to freedom of movement, of
woman’s powers. Its opponents answer: “We never thought of disputing
either one or the other. Woman has already the same power as man in
degree, though not in kind, just as truly as the heart is an organ
equally essential to life as the brain. But the whole organism would
go under, if the heart insisted on usurping the functions of the
brain. Woman has become the organ of the emotions in human life—but
the emotions cannot have a leading mission in public affairs. In that
field woman must either be untrue to herself or lose her significance.
It would be an immense loss to civilisation if she were forced into the
paths of masculine egoism, instead of putting her whole strength into
the rearing of future men. Thus new generations of great-minded and
far-seeing men would reform society in accordance with woman’s ideals,
and woman would not lose her ideals in party strife, where the chief
thing is victory by any means and the end is lost sight of.” “If,” it
was thus said by a thoughtful young working woman,—“if the child saw
both its father and mother striving for power, with all the hardness
and relentlessness this implies, then idealism would soon become
extinct, whereas, on the other hand, women, by unequivocally making the
highest ideal demands upon fathers and brothers, husbands and sons,
could bring about by degrees an ideal condition of things.”
This view, which gives to woman the function of one central organ in
the social organism and to man the other, does not, however, correspond
to the reality. Just as the individual is determined from head to foot
by his sex, so also is society from top to bottom bi-sexual; every
function of government affects, therefore, all women just as much as
all men. At present, however, only the latter possess the power of
directly remedying what hinders and furthering what enhances their
life, through also taking part in the functions by which they are
affected.
Since every “cell,” which indirectly or directly makes up the
social organism, is male or female, it is unthinkable that a higher
organisation of society would not finally of necessity manifest this
its bi-sexual character. Like the family—the first “State”—it
is probable that the final State will appear as a unity combining
the male and female principles. Or, in other words, it will be a
“State-marriage,” not as hitherto merely a State-celibacy! Simply by
performing the functions themselves, instead of allowing the male
cells to do so on their behalf, the female cells may now as members
of society experience their highest possible life-enhancement.
So long as women were content to let men represent them, woman’s
non-enfranchisement did not disturb the well-being of the organism.
Now, on the other hand, the disturbance has set in and can be removed
only by change. But what the health of the organism demands in the
highest degree, is that—when the female cells begin to perform their
social functions—they should preserve their sexual character, for
otherwise no higher form of development would be attained. Not the
male sex, but the government of society may with truth be likened to
its brain, as representation may be compared with its nervous system.
The society of the present day suffers from one-sided paralysis, so
long as half of it is excluded from the possibility of making known
its needs through the nervous system. And society suffers from this
condition just as much as the body would from a corresponding state.
We can best see this by observing that society where the whole body
is paralysed and only the head acts, namely Russia. There only the
wounds bear witness that the organism as a whole is alive. But all
the societies of Europe now include within themselves a Russia, that
part of the community which Camilla Collet rightly called “the Camp of
Silence.” From the same inner necessity that prompted a number of the
men in those countries whose condition once was like that of Russia to
shake off the care of a parental government and take upon themselves
the liberty of making known their own needs, of themselves deciding
the conditions for their well-being, must women—and the labouring
classes—win this right. This does not mean that the female half will
work more perfectly or with less danger than the male. But it means
that the whole organism will work more, will fare better, and will
be developed to a higher condition. Those at present in possession
are challenged by women as by working men, when they assert that they
fully secure the interests of the unrepresented and direct their forces
satisfactorily. And it may not be they, contented as they are with
their power and with themselves, but the discontented that we should
listen to, if higher conditions are to be attained.
To these general considerations must be added, in the case of the
smaller nations, this: that the more alive and thoroughly active the
whole social body is, the more power of resistance it will possess in
the struggle for its existence. Those nations, in which every person
can protect his own interests in and with those of the community,
will—other conditions being equal—surpass the others, as an army of
athletes would overcome one of invalids.
Society is confronted by tasks of increasing complexity. A force
hitherto unused, that of woman, now become socially conscious, offers
its co-operation in dealing with them.
All thinking persons desire new conditions with growing earnestness.
But new conditions do not arise, as the socialist is far too willing
to believe, through new external relations alone; nor through new
ideas and discoveries, as the man of science with his bias is too apt
to think. New conditions arise above all through new human beings,
new souls, new emotions. Only these form new plans of life, new modes
of action; only these revalue the objects which are then pursued day
by day by innumerable individuals. A new idea becomes feeling and
motive power, at first with one individual, then with a few, then with
many, and finally with all. He who has been able to witness this with
regard to any particular idea, knows that it comes about as in the
spring, when first a solitary birch-tree on the sunny side unfolds
its golden-green banner: then the veil of yellow, reddish-brown, and
green is drawn closer and closer over the grey, till finally all the
tree-tops are rounded and full, all colours subdued to one shade,
and one scarcely remembers what it was like in the play of shifting
colours, when the wild cherry gleamed white among the green, the
dandelions spread themselves in wild profusion among the grass, the
lilies of the valley peeped out from the sheath of their leaves, and
the cuckoo called in the summer.
Emotions are the sap which rises when the human landscape thus changes
colour and form. Therefore no profound spiritual transformation has
ever taken place unless women have taken part in it. It is upon this
great power of woman, already indirectly effective, that we may with
reason base the hope of her direct exertion of force becoming even more
effective—if with it she preserves her womanly character.
Precisely as the stricter sexual morality made woman’s love more
soulful—till she can now claim love’s freedom, since she has a new
contribution to make therewith—so the hindering of woman’s external
activity dammed up her emotional life. Under the division of labour
into a “manly” and a “womanly” field, woman’s peculiar character became
more established; her feeling became intensified in the direction in
which she is now ready to use it in the immediate service of humanity.
Tenderness distinguishes her whole way of thinking and feeling, of
wishing and working. Thus has she reached that dissimilarity to man,
which she must now maintain in a public capacity.
It is as natural as it is fortunate that woman should come forward with
her claims to participation in social duties and social rights just in
our time, when the idea of interconnection, the sense of solidarity,
has become increasingly conscious in every nation, as well as between
the nations. For a clearer idea of interconnection will have the effect
of saving woman from a number of man’s mistakes; a profounder sense of
solidarity from a number of woman’s weaknesses—while the best traits
of the womanly character will be invaluable for intensifying the sense
of solidarity. The man and woman of the present day have become more
sensitive to their own sufferings, and this is the first condition for
becoming more sensitive to those of others. But now the problem is also
really to intensify and to refine the feeling for others to such a
degree that the social organism will no longer be able to endure that
any of its members should suffer a hindrance to life in any avoidable
way. It is in this respect that woman’s deeper sensitiveness, her
richer tenderness, are given their great mission. It is true that—as
was remarked in connection with the evolution of love—it is becoming
more and more impossible to speak of “man” or “woman” in general, since
individualisation makes each sex more and more dissimilar within
itself, while development makes them more and more mutually alike.
Average women and average men have more understanding than feeling. But
when feeling is found in a man, it is more violent and more transitory,
whereas it is more intimate and more effective in a woman. The majority
of men as of women seldom think. But when man and woman think, man’s
method is, as a rule, that of deduction and analysis, woman’s that of
intuition and synthesis. She unites instinct and reflection as the poet
does: the thought of both forms a connected line of light only in the
way that a row of lamps seen in perspective does so. Her actions—like
his poems—have the unconscious purpose of inspiration.
These general characteristics are reversed, it is true, in many
individual cases. It is thus certain that the most conspicuous
revelations of Christian charity have occurred in men. This, however,
does not alter the fact that “the milk of human kindness” flows more
richly in women than in the majority of men.
This superiority is the natural result of motherliness, which has
gradually been developed in the female sex into immediate feeling for
all that is weak and in want of help, all that is budding and growing.
But it follows from this that if woman, by her participation in public
life, is to provide a great, new, progressive element—then not only
must she not lose the power of sympathy she already possesses; she
must, on the contrary, intensify and extend it. Motherliness is not
to be found in all those who are already mothers, and we have arrived
indeed at the strange position that—while man is beginning to see
how much society needs the motherly feeling—a number of women are no
longer willing to become mothers, since their personal development
and civil occupation would thus be interfered with. Nothing is more
necessary than that woman should be intellectually educated for her new
social mission. But if meanwhile she loses her womanly character, then
she will come to the social mission like a farmer with a complete set
of agricultural implements but no seed.
In all private activity the individuality is the best seed, while, on
the other hand, in the social field women will probably for a long
time be most valuable owing to their universal-womanly character;
for unfortunately it is still true in public life that individuality
is frequently a hindrance to co-operation, which takes place rather
through partisanship in interests and views than through the working
together of diverging characters. It is only in rare cases that a
non-party man has the chance of interposing in a decision. At present,
woman may be able to influence society not as a single personality,
but rather as a new and powerful principle, a great contribution of a
hitherto unemployed element. Doubtless individual women—through mental
superiority, intellectual development, strength of will, and powers
of work—will bring a great increase of general human value to social
work. But it will nevertheless be upon the difference in kind between
the nature of man and woman that we must base our hope that women’s
participation in the work of society will have far-reaching results.
When women think themselves able to accomplish what the whole aggregate
of man’s courage, genius, devotion, self-sacrifice, and idealism has
hitherto not been able to do; when in every difference of opinion on
man’s and woman’s nature they attribute to him every feminine failing
in addition to his own, while claiming for themselves all man’s merits,
then one can be certain only about woman’s superfluity for the time
being.
Woman’s right to participate in public life would, however, be in a bad
way, if she could not bring to it something really indispensable, new,
and peculiar to herself.
This new thing is her idealism and enthusiasm, however finely and
easily they may blaze up, since woman is so much more inflammable than
man, so much more eager to translate her enthusiasm into action.
For only such an enthusiast and idealist is of account who can carry
the flame of his zeal in his bare hand, in spite of burns, keep it
alight in spite of gusts of wind, and thus step by step come nearer his
ideal. But such enthusiasts and idealists—whether male or female—are
rare, much rarer than genius. They are the wine and the salt of life,
whereas the virtues that the majority can show are only the daily bread
on the table of society.
If then we look at the majority, the sense of justice in man and the
feeling of tenderness in woman may be the greatest virtues. This does
not mean that men do not both submit to and commit immense injustices,
or women immense cruelties. But it means that the feeling which has
been the strongest motive power in man’s public actions—in revolts
and in revolutions—is the sense of justice, while the feeling of
tenderness sets a hundred women in motion for one that is moved by an
outraged sense of justice. Nothing is more common than to hear even
from the lips of a boy the words: “It served him right”; while from a
girl we should hear: “I’m sorry for him anyhow!”
It is the masculine feeling alone which has decided the structure of
society. Not until woman’s feeling has the same scope as man’s; not
until each can counterbalance what is extreme in the other—his what
is too weak in hers, hers what is too hard in his—will society in its
fatherliness and motherliness really provide for the rightful needs of
all its children.
Someone has maintained that the social brain in the course of ages
has developed more than the individual: by thinking and feeling more
in common, the capacity has also been increased of finding means for
furthering the common weal.
It is probable that women’s brains will show their efficiency above
all in finding means of enhancing and preserving life, which has so
much greater significance for woman than for man; for every life has
cost some woman infinitely more than any man; every mangled body on the
field of battle or of labour has once made some woman happy with its
child’s smile, and leaves some woman in tears.
But in order thus to become inventive, women must remain what they
now are: passionate in the force of their love, rapidly vibrating;
otherwise they will not counterbalance the partialities of man in
the work of civilisation. There are perhaps no more remarkable pages
in J. S. Mill’s book, _On the Subjection of Women_, than those in
which he maintains the faculty of woman—guided by her individual
observation—for intuitively finding a general truth and, unfettered
by theorising, for unhesitatingly and clear-sightedly applying it in
a particular case. Woman, he says, keeps to reality, while man loses
himself in abstractions; she sees what a decision will mean in an
individual case, while he loses sight of this in face of the general
truths he has abstracted from reality, which he tries to force into
abstraction. These qualities of woman make her more unflinching, more
rapid, and more immediate in her actions, while at the same time her
more intimate and passionate feeling gives her more perseverance and
patience in the face of trouble, disappointment, and suffering.
And this opinion of Mill is confirmed by that of Ibsen, whose
fundamental view of woman is precisely that she becomes stronger in
self-assertion and tenacity of purpose when it is a question of values
of personality, but at the same time more devoted and self-sacrificing
in the personal sphere. He regards her as less fettered by religious or
social dogmas, but with greater piety and a deeper sense of community
than man; he sees in her more unity between thought and action, a surer
grasp of life and more courage to live it. In a word: he thinks that
woman more often is something, because she has not tried to be it;
that she more often attempts the unreasonable, because she cannot be
satisfied with the possible.
Thus woman became, not more perfect, but—fortunately for the fulness
of life—different, when first life differentiated the natural function
of mother and father; made them into separate beings, neither being
superior or inferior to the other, merely incomparable. It is this
differentiation which must continue—not least in politics; for
otherwise women’s votes would only double the poll, without altering
the result, and their participation in politics would thus only be a
waste of their precious powers.
Thus even in public life woman must preserve the belief in miracles,
the courage of apparent foolhardiness which her love gives her; that
courage of which the most beautiful images are already to be found in
national legends. What private life has taught her, she must now teach
in turn to public life.
This is the most difficult of all tasks; for here she must preserve
the sudden anger or enthusiasm of her feeling, but purge it of
arbitrariness and injustice. She must trust to her feeling’s
unconscious sureness of direction, but secure it against the risks of
foolhardiness. She must allow her feeling its mobility, but free it
from the connection with caprice and untrustworthiness. She must keep
her eyes for the individual, but yet be capable of lifting them to the
universal.
To be able to do all this, woman must be willing to learn of man where
he is the stronger, without letting man’s scorn of womanly weaknesses
or his pretensions to superiority mislead her into seeking a kind of
strength which cannot be hers; for she could thus lose only what is
already her own.
Unfortunately, all the signs are not favourable to the hope that woman
will pass through academies and carry on the service of the State
without injury to her rapidity of view, delicacy of observation,
and liberality of soul. “The conclusions of science,” “the laws of
history,” “the demands of social security,” “the opportunity of
compromise,” and all the other things that men pile up in the way of
reform, are also alarming to woman’s courage, make her too ask for
proofs instead of feeling strong in her intuition.
In the university, the government department, and the business office
the soul of woman also may run the risk of becoming tied by red tape,
officially dry, amenable to public injustice, sober in the face of
enthusiasm. Such official and business women will be as apprehensive
as men of being suspected to be dreamers and agitators; they will be
as logical in proving the unreasonableness of those who think for the
future. In a word: when women bear men’s burdens they will also get
their bent backs; when they earn their bread in the general field
of work, their hands will also be hardened. But we may hope—and
everything depends upon this hope—that woman will attain her social
power before she has yet lost her special characteristics, and that
she will then give her whole mind to bringing about new conditions, in
which she will be able to keep her hands soft and her attitude upright.
If this hope fails, then woman’s entrance into public life will not
change, for a thousand years to come, its tendency to put safety before
boldness; to allow prudence to chill enthusiasm, facts to clip the
wings of inspiration, and practical considerations to quench ideas. The
demands of humane feeling will continue to be blunted by the sharing of
responsibility among many; nay, we shall even see woman uniting herself
with the majority in curing the madness of idealists or—if this is
impossible—in rendering them harmless.
It is thus not by hymns of praise in honour of her sex, but by great
and inexorable claims on herself and on all other women, that each
individual woman can best co-operate in the education of her sex for
public life. Only the spiritual education that each one gives herself
will prevent in the political field false estimates of value and a
confused sense of justice; for in truth political life in this respect
gives nothing to him who has nothing; on the contrary, it is there, if
anywhere, that the words of the Bible are applicable: from him that
hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Public life in
itself widens neither the view nor the heart of anyone; of this our
parish and district councils, our municipalities and our parliament
give sufficient evidence.
It is not only want of education, but in an equal degree
half-education, that has the peculiar shady side; and such is the
education still provided for the majority by school and high-school:
ability to pass examinations without formation of personality,
specialised knowledge without spiritual culture. The sign of this
half-education is that it swallows up the individuality and makes the
instincts shallow.
This evil will above all be fraught with danger to woman’s peculiar
gift, intuition. The whole existing plan of education aims at rendering
more acute the characteristics of man, and is successful therein,
so that he is strong though one-sided in his half-education. Woman,
on the other hand, becomes weak in hers, since it detracts from her
characteristics without giving her, however, those of man. We often
find in an unlettered woman an instinct for essentiality which the
half-educated have lost or to which at least they no longer dare
to trust themselves. And, above all, this is true of the qualities
essential to woman herself. Thus women who are working in the service
of the community often show their resentment of the gladdening power
of other, young and attractive, women even within the sphere of
social activity. Only the form and contents of the long catechism
could convince them of a young girl’s seriousness. Whether these
beauty-haters belong to the pietists of Christianity or to those of the
woman’s movement, they are agreed in the opinion that the attractive
woman is also the less valuable, and that men show their lack of
discernment in so easily allowing themselves to be charmed by her.
Man’s sense is, however, not so far wrong, even though he often takes
appearance for reality. For what man looks for above all in woman—and
loves most deeply, when he finds it—is the joy of goodness. It is this
which is made visible in all real charm and gains its rightful victory;
and only when women possess this joy of goodness and know how to
communicate some of its charm to public life, will their participation
in the latter tend to beautify it.
In judging of the position of affairs at the present moment we
ought to remember that it is not only mothers-in-law but also
daughters-in-law, not only the mistress of the house but also the
cook, who would receive the franchise. But none of these groups seems
inclined to regard the others as at present endowed with the greatest
imaginable perfections—in private life! It may not, therefore, be too
presumptuous if an outside observer should wonder whether it will be
given to them to exhibit greater perfections in political life.
In a word, we must remember that developed women are not more numerous
in proportion to the undeveloped than the former kind of men are to the
latter. The same or other prejudices, self-interests, and stupidities,
which on the part of men delay progress, will also stand in its way
on the part of women. Just as one now sees herds of male “electoral
cattle” in the wrong place, so will one see crowds of electoral
hens—and the wrong place does not mean either the right or the left,
but the place to which one is driven without personal choice and where
one nevertheless remains without a feeling of shame.
Woman will, however, have the advantage of being able to learn from
man’s mistakes, and she learns more quickly than he. But only the power
of being one’s self active where one has the responsibility, and the
right of deciding where one is to act, are educative. Developed women
will naturally exhibit one-sidedness, like developed men; not until
each sex comes forward with its own peculiarities will legislation
and administration become universal. But universality is not yet
connection. Whether one strums with one finger or with all ten on an
instrument, this does not make music. Not until each finger does its
work—and can play together with the others—does harmony result,
whether one is speaking of instrumental or of social music.
Before social politics have replaced the politics of self-interest and
class instinct, it is probable that the vital forces of many will be
wasted, and among them those of many women, if in the meantime women
enter political life. But neither the argument that women are too good,
nor that they are too immature, will weigh heavily in keeping them from
political work; for they will hasten development in the degree in which
they preserve their worth; they will attain the maturity they lack in
the degree in which they participate in development. Only by being used
can tools be gradually adapted and perfected for what they have to do;
only by performing its functions does the organ become developed for
its purpose. And to this must be added the equally weighty argument
that the women even now necessary for development are, no more than the
men, to be found on one side only of a dividing line of money or birth
or education. Only the great democratic principle—equal possibilities
for all—involves in spite of its defects the best prospect of the
right man or the right woman arriving in the right place. It is more
important to the community that one man or woman through right of
election or eligibility should reach the prominent position for which
nature intended them, than that a hundred others should make mistakes
as electors. Even if women are at first on the side of reaction—and in
Sweden this would certainly be the case—their direct influence would
nevertheless be less dangerous than their indirect and irresponsible
influence is now; for there would be a possibility of their being
convinced by public life that, as long as a dominant social and
economical group maintains the conditions which make innumerable other
members of society the victims of militarism and industrialism, of
prostitution and alcoholism—so long will all social work be casting
seed into the snow. But even if women did not allow themselves to be
convinced, but only became a support to those at present in power, this
still ought not to be a hindrance to their enfranchisement. Just as
nothing makes us more persevering than working for justice, so there is
no better evidence of the purity of our own claims than when we adhere
to them in spite of our knowledge that their attainment will for a long
time be to the advantage, not of ourselves, but of our opponents.
Everyone with eyes to see is more and more clearly aware that in our
time new paths must be found. Women too are more and more frequently
among those who see this, although the majority of women, by their
ignorance, their lack of understanding, their petty aims, still place
obstacles in the way of the pioneer work of their male kinsmen and
fellow-workers.
But even among women fully conscious of the importance of social
questions, there is little perception of their significance. This
perception must be raised, but, above all, the idea of collective
motherliness must be intensified, by fundamentally distinguishing it
from that of benevolence. The latter may be justified in the individual
case. But all social work, which is directed to the whole community,
must aim at attaining so far in _right_-thinking that all _well_-doing
may disappear. Collective motherliness must act more as an eternal
subterranean fire and less as the soaring but soon burnt-out flame of
a sacrifice. It is not enough that the instinct of mutual help and
sympathy is more immediate in woman than in man. Just as affection is
not sufficient for the care of children, if insight into the vital laws
of the body and soul is lacking, so also do women need an understanding
of the biology and psychology of society in order to fulfil their
individual tasks in national economy, and to understand the problems
which are summed up under the name of social organisation.
Only thus can sympathy with the victims of society lead women to an
ever stronger opposition to the system which permits these sacrifices.
They must thus begin—and that very soon—by obtaining power to
restrict this, at any rate where it applies to the bringing-up of
children and the education of the young; to places where women work
or are brought to justice; where the sick and aged are cared for;
where laws are made for all these. The majority of women—who are
still on Christian ground—preach at the best charity as the duty of
the favoured and patience as that of the unfortunate. But no more
than the individual mother will be satisfied with charity for her own
child, but will have full justice—which implies full possibilities
of development, full satisfaction of wholesome needs, full employment
of personal powers—even so will collective motherliness refuse to be
satisfied with less on behalf of any child of the community.
Not until the idea of poor-law relief is exchanged for that of
self-help, aided by society but without sacrifice of pride, not until
charity is exchanged for justice, patience for assertion of rights,
will there be a prospect for the many of an existence compatible
with human dignity. We need not fear that the virtues of charity and
patience will therefore disappear: everyone will doubtless have only
too much daily use for them—not only towards God, but towards himself
and his neighbour.
But as regards the life of the community their time is gone by—or at
least will be so, in proportion as the belief in a fatherly providence
above is exchanged for a knowledge of the power of human providence
upon earth. When women’s brains and hearts begin to exercise this
providence in such a way that their views of life and their social work
no longer conflict with one another, then and not till then will these
brains and hearts become a reforming force.
Now, for instance, the majority of women are afraid of socialism, as
to which however only one opinion should prevail: that as a party
policy in the near future it is the most indispensable motive power
of development, while as a principle—when cleared of the mutually
conflicting dogmas of different schools—in its widest meaning it
expresses the ever firmer coalescence of society into an ever more
intimate unity, in which the sincere assurance of the old hymn, “the
good of one, the good of all,” will gradually be realised in and
through the whole organisation of society. When this has made the
fine image of the suffering of every member through that of one come
true—then will the social State be attained.
The fear of socialism now hinders the leading women of the upper
classes from supporting the others in conflicts which can result only
in the victory of the cause they themselves wish to further. They are
alarmed at the mere word _claims_, behind which they see the great
hosts of the labouring classes streaming on with their red flags. They
therefore prefer to speak of the duty of voting rather than of the
right to vote. They hope it may be possible to carry on politics as
peacefully as a college of teachers, that a public meeting may be as
amenable to discipline as a school class. But this lack of a sense of
proportion misses both the end and the means.
Women are thus desirous—and with full reason—of abolishing
prostitution. But the first condition is a wholesale raising—for at
least fifty per cent. a doubling—of the present wages of working women
and shop assistants. This increase can take place only by means of
trade-unions, and then strikes will be necessary. But the Christian
champions of the woman’s movement have a horror of both these things.
The latter desire—and with full reason—to stop the abuse of
intoxicating liquors. But they do not see that this is not to be
brought about by prohibitions and tea-meetings; that only by better
opportunities and an increased appetite for the joys of home comfort,
education, beauty, and nature can the intoxication of life take the
place of the intoxication of alcohol. But these enhanced possibilities
of life will result only from the stubbornly waged class-war, of which
Christian women in general disapprove.
A number of women wish to abolish war. But the same women are not able
in education to renounce those kinds of forcible methods which keep
alive crude passions and low ideas of justice; they still believe
that the souls of children are to be cleansed like mats, by beating.
It is in vain that all the most eminent educationalists, as well as
many of the foremost criminologists of our time, have again and again
condemned corporal punishment—which one of the greatest contemporary
authorities on jurisprudence has called the “fruitless bloodshed”
of the centuries—since experience has incontrovertibly shown that
physical fear never produces morality in the true sense of the term.
Women, however, continue to lighten their work in the nursery by
employing fear. In other words, they themselves practise—and train
their children in—acts of violence, such as correspond in the life of
nations to the wars these very women wish to abolish.
These examples might be multiplied. They do not prove that woman is
more ignorant or more inconsistent than man in her social activity.
But they prove that women, like men, will be of very little value in
their public capacity, so long as they follow the methods of piece-work
rather than of continuity.
To begin with, therefore, it would seem that individual women, and not
the majority of the sex, will represent that collective motherliness
which is to be at the same time far-seeing and warm-hearted. And these
women can no more expect to go on from one victory to another, than
can individual men. Those who—with their souls glowing against all
injustice, their hearts warm and anxious with sympathy—enter into
cold reality, must be prepared to experience what has been the lot of
innumerable reformers in thought and action among the other sex: that
they have won the best for themselves—martyrdom; but not the best
for society—victory. And it is a poor consolation that it is often
the best who become martyrs and the next best who are victorious. The
former are those who throw themselves into the fight, urged by justice
or love of humanity or passion for liberty—without asking themselves
whether they will conquer, or at least without knowing what will be the
answer to this question. The latter again are usually those who within
themselves have answered it in the affirmative; for this conviction of
success gives them the power of arraying an army behind them, and the
courage to inspire it.
The precursors among women will also find out how unspeakably difficult
it is to aristocratise the democracy, which does not mean simply
cleaner hands and better manners, but purer actions and finer thoughts.
And if they retain their sensitiveness—as they must—the leading women
will thus have to suffer not only from their own wounds, but from the
shame of seeing so many of their own sex as incapable as the men of
sacrificing their own advantage—or the imaginary advantages of their
country—when humanity and justice demand it. And it will be the fate
of these women—as of so many men before them—that the pure will, the
rich personality, which cannot bend, will be forced to break.
Everyone who has had anything to do with politics must have seen
something of these tragedies in which a noble heart is broken piece by
piece, and know how cruel these bloodless struggles really are.
Will the best women endure to witness such tragedies? Will they endure
to see how year by year politics and the press—indirectly, if not
directly, under the sway of financial interest—succeed in producing
the greatest possible number of half-measures and the greatest possible
amount of stagnation, accompanied by inevitable self-surrender on the
part of the best, and unconditional self-satisfaction on the part of
the others? Will they endure seeing how in questions of culture, where
selfishness can mean nothing, omniscient stupidity decides the great
vital interests of the nation?
A gathering of people on great national festivals can together feel
and act more greatly than each individual for himself. But in the
everyday life of nations the individual is often better than he becomes
in co-operation with others. What collective stupidity, collective
cowardice, and collective untruthfulness together produce without shame
in public life, would cause almost everyone who makes up the mass
to hesitate in his private life. To rescue the effectiveness of the
private conscience—but at the same time to preserve the power of the
collective conscience for great moments—this should be the great task
of political morality.
Women must be prepared to find that their participation in public life
will cost them, not only various unjustified prejudices, but also many
hardships. They must, moreover, understand that it will take much time
away from their home; for the whole thing is not so simple as merely
handing in one’s voting-paper, reading the leading article instead of
the feuilleton, and going to an election meeting instead of to supper.
If one hands in a voting-paper without knowing how one has voted,
one’s participation is of no great importance. If one wants to know
how one is voting, this involves the sacrifice of time; and when once
one has begun to take part in public affairs, one is often forced by
circumstances further and further into their vortex.
Fathers of families, who “take up” politics, are even now the despair
of those families. And what if mothers of families begin likewise?
This is the kernel of the question. As mother of a family the woman
who takes part in politics must make her choice between an outward
direction of her activities which will be unfortunate for the home and
children and a lack of independence which will be personally painful to
her. She can sacrifice her private pleasures, not her private duties.
But it is this latter temptation which will present itself to the woman
of the poorer classes. The wife of a working man wants to go to an
election meeting with her husband—but what of the little children?
There is no servant. The neighbour’s wife? She too wants to go to the
meeting. The crèche? It is closed in the evening, for its manageress
also takes an interest in public affairs! There is therefore no way out
of it but that the wife must be content with her husband’s judgment.
In the suffrage question—as always when it was a question of woman’s
rights—attention has been too one-sidedly directed to the point of
view of the unmarried woman of the upper class. But these are so far
from being the most important that we might rather assert that a
mother of the working class, who—with all the trouble and privations
this involves for her—has cared well for her children both bodily
and spiritually, has made a happy home for them and her husband and
therewithal has acquired for herself education and insight in social
questions, affords so extraordinary a social power, that the most just
of proportional suffrage methods would be to give her—and all other
mothers of remarkable children—a double vote.
We are here again faced by the difficulty already pointed out: that
it is precisely the most excellent women, the most indispensable for
the task, who will have to choose between the duties of collective
motherliness and those of motherhood, as well as between the latter and
those of individual development. During her children’s earlier years no
mother can well fulfil both these motherly calls. She will be forced to
acknowledge that, if anyone could be said to cross the river to fetch
water—and with one of the Danaids’ pitchers at that—then it would be
one who should set aside her children for her social mission.
Here and there we already meet one or another of these strong, proud,
and beautiful mothers of the twentieth century, who have lost nothing
of their full-blooded womanliness, but rather doubled it through a
personal quality which year by year embraces the kernel of their being
more closely.
Human being and woman, citizen and personality—less than this the
social mother of the future cannot be. She has destroyed all bridges
which might take her back to the womanly ideal of older times: the
powerful but narrow-minded housekeeper, the thoughtlessly devoted
wife. But at the same time she has nothing in common with the
short-sighted woman’s rights woman, who takes pride in being a restless
working-machine or a specialist rewarded by diplomas but otherwise
half-educated.
She has learned something from the older as well as from the new type.
But she resembles neither, for only completeness of life is to her the
meaning of life.
Many a little girl, leaning over her history book, must have been
indignant at the way humanity used to be reckoned in past times: so
many men—“besides women and children”!
It was long before women began to be counted at all, and they are still
only half-counted. Children are still under “besides.” But some day we
may perhaps have come so far in our feeling for what is coming on, that
we shall invert the order and reckon “so many children—besides women
and men.” We shall then give evidence in our treatment of children of
our reverence for these profoundly wise and mysterious beings, whom
we never fathom. We shall see behind the figure of every child the
infinite line of past generations, before it the equally endless ranks
of those to come. We shall remember in our actions that the child is
the sum of these dead ones, the hope of those unborn. We shall let the
child reveal itself and receive its revelations with a discretion at
present unsuspected.
The tragedies of the childish soul are still waiting for their
Shakespeare, although the child is already appearing in literature as
never before. And here, as ever, literature is the precursor of the
great movement of liberty which shall bring the children’s declaration
of rights and make an end of the spiritual and bodily ill-treatment of
children, which must appear to the future as monstrous as negro slavery
does to us. It may be that children too will have their right to vote,
as well as their own representatives in the legislature and in the
courts of law.[6]
It should be the collective mothers who would thus finally liberate
the children of society. It will then be seen that the octave of the
child’s soul was just as indispensable as that of woman or man, in
order that the great harmony of humanity might be complete.
When this happens the third kingdom will have arrived, whose Messiah
the age now awaits. But it is not in the lap of collective motherliness
that he will be borne.
Again and again saviours will be born to humanity. But always of some
young woman with forehead pure as a lily and deep eyes. And Bethlehem
will always be there, where a young mother kneels in prayer by her
child’s cradle.