make the danger less terribly imminent than it is at present, but I do
suggest that the women who are uppermost should face the fact that they
themselves are in danger because the lower prostitutes have no civil
rights, no trade union, no means of redressing the wrongs they suffer
from.
M. Brieux has written a play called _Les Avariés_, dealing with this
important subject in all its aspects. One incident is that of a young
girl on the streets who is infected by a man. She is furious and in
despair, but before she goes into hospital she, in her turn, revenges
herself on as many men as she can, for the wrong done to her by one.
Can we wonder that a woman who is treated as street walkers are treated
should feel this wild anti-social rage against the society that has
first made use of her and then treated her as an outcast?
It is becoming more and more difficult to say anything definite about
the moral standards of women. Thirty years ago the chorus-girl drank
champagne and “went to the bad,” now she drinks milk and marries a
peer. Girls with beauty are finding out that prudence pays exceedingly
well. On the other hand, we have girls with brains deliberately
resolving that they will not marry. They refuse to run the risk of
living with a man whose love has become a mere habit. They boldly say
that they do not care enough for love to perform its rites, unless they
are animated with the ardour of love. Passion served up with cold sauce
as in the Shaw-Barker school of sex revolts them. Enthusiastic love is
the only excuse in their eyes for going through the rather ungraceful
gestures of love.
Bloch has asked the question if we can ever do away with the menace
to public health which promiscuity entails? He seems to think from
the evidence of history and psychiatry that men certainly, and women
probably, are not naturally unitarian in their affections; therefore
the sooner we seriously wrestle with the realities and leave off hoping
for the “something to change nature,” the better. Above all, it is most
important for women to realize at once that the most innocent contact
with the unmentioned diseases--the contact, say, of a cut finger or a
chapped lip--is enough to endanger the health, unless it is attended to
at once.
As for the aspect of the prostitution question entailed in taking
money, the sale of virginity and so forth, it comes under the general
consideration whether it is right for any woman to become the property
of a man in exchange for money. A woman who loves does naturally become
the property of the man she loves for the time being. The wiser she
is, the less she will let him know it. The money bargain I cannot
help regarding as a device invented by unattractive men whom no woman
would voluntarily look at. Again, as to women whose love affairs are
numerous, I do not think they would care to practise promiscuity unless
they were intoxicated. On the other hand, I think most women are
capable of several love affairs. I said before that their love ebbed
and flowed with the sweep of a tide, while men’s love glittered and
dulled like the shaken silver of the waves; still, there are more tides
than one in many women’s experience. We cannot read the autobiographies
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries without observing that.
That love becomes very stale in time is a regrettable fact. Many women
distract their thoughts with work or amusements. But the greatest
amusement of all is flirtation. It is an amusement peculiarly fitted
to the English. In the Latin countries flirtation is admittedly not
only an amusement, but a vital part of women’s lives. It cannot be
denied that, after a time, a childless wife, or a wife who is not
absorbed in her children, begins to feel like a withered rose tree,
and a flirtation comes to her like springtime after winter. I do not
think it is often her sensual nature, but her emotional nature, that
makes a woman unfaithful to a husband of whom she has really been
passionately fond. Unfortunately there is a charm about the first
steps of a love affair, in the half-admissions and the uncertainties,
which it is almost impossible to feel after a year of married life.
The truth is that to feel a charm we must be in a state of emotional
exultation which is above the average exultations of daily life. The
great question for the race is what this feeling of charm means, and
whether it is of value to the race, and to be encouraged? Or even then
whether the destruction of our present fixed social arrangements is
too great a sacrifice to make for the vital improvement of mankind? In
the meantime, until this question of changing charm versus habitual
love can be settled, and the value of emotion as a factor in race
improvement be proved by careful inquiry into the experiences of the
parents of conspicuous children, I reiterate what I have said. Marrying
women owe it to themselves and to their children to do all they can to
make the conditions of prostitutes sanitary. Above all, they should
remember the green houses of Japan, and recognize that if women are
degraded it is generally because they have been treated with contempt,
and not because they are essentially any more contemptible than the
rest of us.
VI
BEAUTY AND MOTHERHOOD
“Americanism” is the word sometimes used by scientific men to imply
the terror of motherhood that is coming upon women. The old days when
Nelson said the two most beautiful things in the world were a ship in
full sail and a woman with child, are passed. Pain and the loss of
beauty mean something hauntingly horrible--something of a nightmare to
the modern highly strung, nervous woman. In America the question is
becoming one of national importance: as a matter of fact some women
are beginning to refuse motherhood, both there and in other parts of
the world. I do not see anything alarming in this. To me it means
that women will specialize in the future. When the unnatural economic
reasons for marriage have been removed, the natural desires of women
will be able to assert themselves. For centuries they have lied and
schemed and flattered men in order to wheedle a living out of them, and
it will take some time for the weaker sex to learn that it may really
tell the truth; to learn, indeed, that it is necessary for the good
of the race that it should tell the truth. When this is done it will
be perceived that women are divided into two distinct classes--those
that love men better than children, and those that love children better
than men. This is natural enough. In ordinary life we can see some
people prefer to associate with their inferiors, and some with their
superiors. At present the comparatively free life led by men make them
far better company, and therefore superior as a sex to women. They
do not talk as well as clever women, but their views are wide, and
as a rule they know something of the general facts of life. They are
merrier, too, and I have often thought, “It is not so much that men
must work and women must weep, but that men may laugh and women must
look shocked.”
But, as I was saying, some people prefer to look up, and others
prefer to look down on their companions. Some people, to put it more
pleasantly, like to care for and watch over others, while others want
to be cared for. So it comes about that some women do not really love
children. They may feel such a passion for a man that they long to be
the mother of his child, but that is a state of unusual exultation,
which in cold blood is repented later. On the other hand, the born
mothers--the women who really long for children, to whom it is a
terrible deprivation to live without children--are undoubtedly the
people who may best be entrusted with the future of the race.
I do not think that we shall ever get mankind to carry out the eugenic
ideal of careful breeding, but I do think we might come to a time when
the natural instinct of a woman for the fit father of her child will be
a very important factor in the arrangements made for the existence and
benefit of future generations.
We have such a lumber of useless old ethical codes to get rid of, and
such innumerable practical suggestions for race betterment, that we
hardly know where to begin. In the _Eugenic Review_ for October, 1909,
there is an excellent paper by Mr. Havelock Ellis, which explains a
newly discovered and harmless operation which can be performed without
making the slightest difference to an individual’s happiness. This
operation would prevent him or her from ever becoming a parent. It
is hoped that it may some day be used in cases where the heredity is
hopelessly bad. It would save a great deal of public expense in cases
where the dangerous person would otherwise have to be kept under
constant supervision. The great benefit of the discovery is that it
has none of the unfortunate effects which often follow from the
practice of more Eastern methods of sterilizing the unfit. Contact
with radium has also been found to lead to temporary sterility. But
although stamping out the worst class of disease and imbecility in one
generation would be a tremendous benefit, it is not the only remedy
proposed. The encouragement and training of fit men and women--I mean
the education in the laws of sexual health--would do a great deal to
save the next generations from many ills that are brought upon it by
the sheer ignorance of its parents. Here, again, we have to fight the
silly conspiracy of silence which leaves schoolboys and schoolgirls
to struggle through the early temptations of life without a word of
warning from responsible people who have studied the subject of sex.
There is no doubt that the world at present is full of motherly women
who have no chance of becoming mothers, and of unmotherly women who
have children that they do not want, or more children than they want.
It would be a great advance if these arrangements could be readjusted
by some slight change of public opinion, guided by the obvious facts of
heredity. For instance, it is a fact that some women are very fit to be
mothers, and are unattractive as wives. For others, attractive to men
as they often are, it is a sin to become mothers. A tuberculous woman
is apt to have a much larger family than a normally healthy woman,
and that tendency ought to be modified by surgical aid. Even these few
suggestions acted upon would help to make the world less full of pain
and sorrow.
But we are full of prejudices against these improvements. The old
marriage laws, the old ideas of right and wrong remain; religious
prejudice lasts far longer than religion; and the world moves on, and
everyone hears of improvements that might be made quite easily. But
nothing is done because of a public opinion which everyone supposes to
exist, but is really a bugbear invented by the Press on the strength of
a few letters from the sort of people who write letters of protest to
the public libraries. A hundred letters impress an editor, because he
forgets the millions of people who do not write letters, but pay all
the same.
One of the most serious facts which is alleged with regard to the
“Americanism” I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, is that the
nervous sensitiveness from which the women of the United States suffer
is caused by their education being too purely intellectual. Now this
is probably true. I remember one of the cleverest men I have ever met,
the late Professor York Powell, Regius Professor of Modern History at
Oxford, who was an encyclopædia of information, and could assimilate
the contents of a book in a phenomenally short time, told me that
he meant to paint up the words “Damn Intellect” over his mantelpiece
at Christ Church. Intellect has been said to be the result of man’s
struggle with material facts, very useful as far as material facts
go, but absurdly misleading when applied to the all-important side of
our natures which comes under the consideration of the psychologist.
The stuffing of one’s head with a lot of undigested knowledge for
purposes of examination is not only useless in after life, but really
damaging to the vital apparatus. I was myself educated in the colleges
of Miss Dorothea Beale and Miss Buss, and I know it took me quite six
years to get out of the shell my education had hardened around me. I
don’t suppose I should ever have spread my own wings if the beak of my
destiny had not been stronger than my overwhelming education, so that
it succeeded in hammering through that shell at last.
In the next chapter I hope to show in more detail how women might
be educated to deliberately cultivate their instincts, and use them
in conjunction with the practical intellect to increase the power
of intuitively understanding the consciousness of groups and crowds
of people. Above all, how they may learn by definitely guiding the
vegetative consciousness to increase the health and beauty of their
children.
VII
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
Intellect, then, is only a part of the life-consciousness. Henri
Bergson and William James have both agreed that the other parts deserve
our respect, and demand the attention of all practical people. They are
Instinctive Consciousness and Torpid Consciousness. Bergson, so well
known on the Continent, gives in _L’Evolution Créatrice_ a brilliant
outline of the relations of the intellectual, instinctive, and torpid
states. Briefly, he pictures vital consciousness as the centre from
which the three diverge in different radiations. The intellect which
covers an enormous field and can grapple successfully with the
superficial appearances we call facts, finds its present culmination
in mankind. The instinct which dawns in the consciousness as vision,
and deals only with one or two things, but knows them perfectly
through and through to their deepest causes, finds its culmination in
insects, especially in the elaborate societies of ants and bees. The
torpid state which, without external motion, like deep sleep, is most
creatively powerful, most enduring, and most in touch with the first
beginnings of organic life, finds its culmination in the vegetable
kingdom. The psychologists’ idea, then, for the practical future of
our race is that it should turn its attention to the cultivation of
these two modes of consciousness which have hitherto been lamentably
neglected in all schemes of education.
Bergson says that there are many questions the intellect can ask but
can never answer, which the instinct could answer, but, unprompted by
the intellect, would never ask.
The practical turn psychology has taken lately has a very deep
significance for women. For the adolescent girl and the woman
with child are the very types of the power of mysterious torpid
consciousness which is so little understood by the most learned men.
The ancients have believed that a mother’s impressions stamp themselves
on the child and determine its type. I mean, for instance, that a woman
surrounded by Burne-Jones’s pictures would be likely to have children
resembling that type. The whole matter is one of the deepest interest,
and one guiding principle stands out from all our uncertainties on
the subject, which is, that a woman with child should not use up her
vitality in other directions, that she should for the time being live
the life of a fruit tree, and nourish herself, and sun herself without
care and without intellectual distractions.
It is said that in deep sleep the creations of our imagination are
conceived; and that the state of impending motherhood should be one of
rest, and the quiet enjoyment of beauty and peace if it is to have a
good result.
I am not saying all women should be mothers, nor am I saying that
mothers should not have intellectual pleasures, but I do agree that
they should not have intellectual tasks, and above all that they should
be protected from worry, anxiety, and irritation. If the care of
mothers became a national question, I believe the saving in the care of
lunatics and unemployables and criminals would be incalculable.
The torpid consciousness is one which women who are to be mothers
should respect. I believe it is a state cultivated to a high degree by
the Eastern mystics, who have given us glimpses of the psychic powers
to which it can give birth. It is intimately connected with a control
over the emotional storms which affect most people and govern their
conduct. The Eastern sage does not starve his emotional nature, but
learns to direct it, while he is in a state of apparent torpor. So I
believe the wise mother might, if she gave herself the opportunity,
direct the future character of her child in the best sense of the word.
At present the torpid consciousness is hardly understood at all, but
the instinctive consciousness has been studied, although it is talked
of with a contempt it is far from deserving. I admit that to some
extent instinct is the enemy of civilization, but at the same time
civilization is the enemy of instinct.
The old matriarchal village community seems to be the ideal state of
an instinctive race of people. I do not say it is possible now, but it
certainly seems a good way of conducting affairs on a dignified basis
without the family unit.
Temperance with an occasional orgy is a prescription ordered for a
patient by a modern doctor, and that exactly describes the life of the
old matriarchal village. In the first place, it was situated near the
equator, and everyone could do without clothes. The village children
grew up together under the care of the elder men and women, with no
curiosity about the unseen. They worked in the fields and perhaps
hunted a little, but they all lived like brothers and sisters. They
had a central grove of sacred trees in their village, with a dancing
ground; the huts were round the grove, and then the belt of cultivated
land was called the “guardian serpent.” Beyond that was the jungle,
with paths leading to other villages. In the spring the Saturnalia was
celebrated, and the young men left their homes and visited the other
villages, scattered in the neighbourhood beyond the jungle-paths, to
celebrate the festival with song, wine, and dance. The orgy lasted a
few weeks, during the blossom time, when there was no work required at
home. It ended in a good deal of love-making, after which the young
men returned to their homes sobered, and ready to work in their own
villages for another year. Nine months later, when the weather made
it well to remain indoors, the children were born, and were called
the children of the sacred grove or the tree, and no one talked of
fathers. The men of the tribe cheerfully undertook the education of
the children, and maintained them on communal principles. It sounds
almost as socially elaborate as a hive, and the whole business appears
to have been carried out on purely instinctual lines. Perhaps I ought
to add that all can read for themselves about these matriarchal customs
in a book called _The Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times_, by J. F.
Hewitt, and in Tiele’s _Outline of the History of Ancient Religions_,
also in Risley’s _Tribes and Castes of Bengal_. The life was perhaps
too austerely virtuous for the majority of mankind, but it had its
advantages.
Instinct is an animal faculty cultivated by an outdoor life, which we
to a great extent have swamped in our all-pervading intellects. It
is a power of the consciousness which appears to act without effort,
and to increase its power as we decrease our mental struggles. Very
often when after fussing over a lost object or forgotten name we cease
to trouble ourselves, and employ our clamorous minds in some other
direction, the consciousness of the name or place appears like the sky
from which the clouds have cleared away. It is in the interplay between
intellect and instinct that the practical value of the new school of
psychology will be found. Our instincts need to be stimulated by the
curiosity of our intellects. We have an extraordinary and inexhaustible
power of inventing surprises for our intellect, both in our dreams
and in inventive states of meditation. Some people call these things
manifestations of the subconsciousness. I prefer to think of them as
manifestations of the long-neglected powers of the instinct. We know
that many insects who have never met their parents in their lives, yet
carry out their destinies as if they had received the most careful
personal instruction. The truth about instinct appears to be that it
is a race-consciousness--a kind of wireless telegraphy which can be
set in motion between sympathetic centres without passing through the
mental machinery at all. It almost seems as if our brains, our nervous
plexuses, and our glands[1] each had a manifest consciousness of their
own, and it is not until we can set in motion an interplay of the three
that we shall gain all we can, either from the intellect, the instinct,
or the torpid creative consciousness.
When women come in for their share of control in affairs, there is no
doubt we shall make further use of these more feminine aspects of vital
consciousness.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] As to the study of the functions of the glands, many interesting
discoveries have been mentioned in the medical journals during the last
few years.
VIII
THE IMAGINATIVE WOMAN
Now women can look at love from a great many points of view. If it were
not so, Byron would hardly have been justified when he said:
“Love is from men’s lives a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence.”
Women can look upon love as a physical act which enables them to
become mothers. They can look upon it as a sanctification or a means
of enjoyment. They can look upon it as a subject of scientific
curiosity, in which mood they logically compare facts and come
to sage conclusions. They can consider their own temperaments
and peculiarities, and take into account their personal bias and
characters, philosophically. Or they can use their imaginations
to alter all the conditions which life has imposed upon them, to
transcend all the limitations of incarnation, and, having passed beyond
philosophy, science, emotion, and experience, bathe in the love between
the fixed stars and comets rushing from the spaces beyond. They can
take dim legends and embroider them with rich details. In a word, the
imaginative woman from her childhood has known dreams of such rare
beauty that nothing life shows her is good enough. She passes from
disappointment to disappointment. She never finds in one place or one
person the wonder that description had made her see in her mind’s eye.
Thousands of less imaginative women long for the impossible. They
are fed on romantic stories and live in the more or less commonplace
imagination of the novelists or playwrights they patronize. Thousands
of tired men have this same love of vicarious sensation--anything
that lifts them out of the drab of their surroundings into a merry or
sentimental atmosphere is a relief.
Life seems hopeless to the middle-aged. Most of them once thought they
could put it right in a week if they had a free hand. They try, they
fail, they marry and spend the evening of their lives trying to destroy
the illusions of their children as quickly as possible, so that they
also may “settle down” to hard facts. To excuse himself a thinker will
say, “I know the dangers of cultivating the imagination; I know that
unless it is nipped in the bud this wild flower of the mind will twine
its tendrils round me, cover me with its shadows, intoxicate me with
its fragrance, and destroy reason and physical health.” In answer,
I admit there are dangers, but on the other hand if the possibly
evil weed is cultivated by wise gardeners, it may show itself at last
as the most splendid flower of the soul. The cultivator of flowers
that sterilizes the bud and diverts the life-force into creations of
elaborate beauty has found the physical side of the religious mystery
called the Coronation of the Virgin. The imaginative power that has
reached this point transmutes human nature, whether philosophic,
scientific, sensual, or physical, and it is then that the soul may
be said to have attained the regenerate state which makes for the
unnatural beauty we call perfection of culture.