VI

It is now advisable to consider attentively the statement that creative

women need new and independent moral values since conventional morality

expresses a man’s standpoint rather than a woman’s. If the latter

part of this statement can be proved, that conventional morality is

necessarily masculine, then the first part must inevitably be accepted.

It has already been postulated that women derive their greatest

strength from unconscious life and are concerned with growth. Their

energies and interests turn spontaneously towards the living human

beings upon whom their influence is exerted. This influence, because

it is largely unconscious, is not rational but emotional; when it is

directed positively towards other people it is best described as love.

Creative love is the fundamental attribute of womanhood, as perhaps

creative thought is of manhood. Its aim is to foster harmony and

strength in the individual.

Woman thus sees humanity as a collection of individuals of whom no two

are identical, growing separately like trees in a common direction,

expressing in visible forms, each of which is significant, a common

unseen life. If one may use a rough symbolism, women see humanity in

vertical lines, while men see it in horizontal strata. The perfection

of each individual is women’s business, and the combination of

individuals into social systems is man’s business. These two aspects

of life are necessarily continuous and inseparable: the difference

between them here, as throughout, is one of emphasis. Women emphasise

the wholeness of the individual in himself; men, the relation of the

individual to his neighbours. It follows that women cannot disregard

or eliminate anything which manifests itself in the life of the

individual. Man resembles a tree only by analogy; he cannot be lopped

of his branches; he can achieve strength and harmony only by carrying

everything with him. Nothing is accidental or superfluous in his

behaviour; virtues and vices are alike significant. From this point of

view whatever prevents the harmony of the complete individual is bad;

but it cannot be cut off, it must be fused into the whole, if possible.

Woman therefore cannot shirk any issue or turn from the investigation

of any human impulse, whatever its nature. She believes in the

significance and continuity of all that life which passes into human

consciousness, and to her goodness and badness are relative terms,

depending on the nature of the immediate problem. Thus she cannot

believe in original sin, although she recognises mistakes. Man, on

the other hand, believes in the significance of his systems which cut

across life horizontally, and he desires to fit the individual into his

patterns. Whatever disrupts his patterns is bad and must be cut off.

This condition naturally is uniform in its operation, and therefore

badness is a constant quantity, something definite which can be written

down in a code of prohibitions. Nonconformity with the law is original

sin, and arouses his indignation. But as there are many systems, each

system has its own code of offences and penalties, and each casts out

its own offenders. The Church excommunicates them, the State imprisons

them, Society boycotts them, professional bodies expel them; they are

dishonoured and ignored, thrust out of the system whose stability they

threaten. We penetrate to the very heart of the difference between men

and women when we observe that the outcast, whose individuality is

formally denied by his fellows, remains none the less an individual to

the women who love him. Obviously a morality which satisfies the one

point of view does not satisfy the other.

The morality honoured by men is thus a morality designed to preserve

the systems which men create. Because it upholds the values of

consciously organised life it distrusts the impulses of unconscious

life, which it calls original sin, or personifies as a devil. Less

civilised and more impulsive races are easily suspected of being direct

agents of the devil, as are also the adherents of rival or opposing

systems. Women, because they are natural supporters of spontaneous

action, are particularly to be distrusted, and masculine morality,

as we have seen, imposes a still more stringent code on women than

on men. So it happened that Eve, a creative woman vindicating the

importance of individual moral values and of an individual conscience

that should make each man the equal of God, was necessarily abhorrent

to an organised theology. So in the United States it happens that the

earnest business man regards negroes and Socialists as public dangers;

and in exactly the same way in Scotland the earnest Calvinist believes

that Roman Catholics are damned. The follower of a systematic morality

has always a black list. Each system produces its own code of offences

for nonconformity, and its moral standards are therefore valid only for

itself: they are not necessarily religious or universal.

In such a morality the individual is considered only as one who

conforms or does not conform to the code required, never as an

individual in himself. Further, because it distrusts the spontaneity of

unconscious impulses, systematic morality believes that all individuals

are bad in their hearts, that they are good only when they are

afraid to be bad, and that penalties for badness must be sufficiently

grievous to frighten them. Thus systematic morality depends upon fear

of punishment. The kind of punishment imposed has only an arbitrary

relation to the nature of the offence committed, and no relation at

all to the psychological problems in which the offender is involved:

it is designed merely to make him suffer, and, if he persists in

offending, to remove him. The public school imposes its two hundred

or its four hundred “lines” or so many strokes with the birch, or

resorts to expulsion; the State fines varying sums, or imprisons for

varying periods, or resorts to capital punishment; the business firm

reprimands, or fines, or resorts to dismissal. In each case the system

and the code which supports it are more important than the life of the

individual. Morality of this kind, when it is perfectly developed, is

quite impersonal; its abstract impersonality is revered by men as an

ideal, which they call Justice.

This systematic morality with its impersonal judgments, its definite

codes, its uniformly graded punishments, and its unquestioning

repudiation of the offender is a logical pendant to the systems which

men create. It is precisely what is usually called conventional

morality, and it is essentially masculine in its attitude to the

individual. Women, if they are to create free and harmonious

individuals, cannot sacrifice an individual to a code; they cannot

agree that goodness is only the fear of punishment; they cannot believe

in the efficacy of external punishment, and they cannot permit the

offender to be cut off. To the creative woman an offender is a question

which she must try to answer. Her morality must be psychological rather

than punitive, personal rather than impersonal, and fundamentally

religious. It is clear that many actions which systematic morality

considers bad must appear good to the creative woman, and inversely

what she considers good must often be condemned by systematic morality.

Women must therefore create their own independent moral values. It may

be objected that if each woman creates her own morality the result will

be confusion. This objection, however, arises out of a misapprehension.

It is not the business of women to condemn or to punish, or to exact

conformity with any definite code of conduct: it is their business to

understand the processes at work in the human soul and to help each

individual to the fullest and most harmonious expression of his powers.

There will always be enough men in the world to secure the existence

of systematic morality; any confusion produced by the action of women

will be only the rich confusion of life itself. Besides, creative love

is not mere sympathy or even affection; if women cannot sacrifice

an individual to a code they are equally unable to sacrifice their

intuitions about the human race to an individual. Creative love demands

a high discipline from those who would exercise it.