remarkable harmony between her sexual ethics and the conception that
underlies Sir Francis Galton's scientific eugenics. In setting forth the
latest aspects of his view of eugenics before the Sociological Society,
Galton asserted that the improvement of the race, in harmony with
scientific knowledge, would come about by a new religious movement, and
he gave reasons to show why such an expectation is not unreasonable; in
the past men have obeyed the most difficult marriage rules in response
to what they believed to be supernatural commands, and there is no
ground for supposing that the real demands of the welfare of the race,
founded on exact knowledge, will prove less effective in calling out an
inspiring religious emotion. Writing probably at the same time, Ellen
Key, in her essay entitled _Love and Ethics_, set forth precisely the
same conception, though not from the scientific but from the emotional
standpoint. From the outset she places the sexual question on a basis
which brings it into line with Galton's eugenics. The problem used to be
concerned, she remarks, with the insistence of society on a rigid
marriage form, in conflict with the demand of the individual to gratify
his desires in any manner that seemed good to him, while now it becomes
a question of harmonizing the claims of the improvement of the race with
the claims of the individual to happiness in love. She points out that
on this aspect real harmony becomes more possible. Regard for the
ennoblement of the race serves as a bridge from a chaos of conflicting
tendencies to a truer conception of love, and "love must become on a
higher plane what it was in primitive days--a religion." She compares
the growth of the conception of the vital value of love to the modern
growth of the conception of the value of health as against the medieval
indifference to hygiene. It is inevitable that Ellen Key, approaching
the question from the emotional side, should lay less stress than Galton
on the importance of scientific investigation in heredity, and insist
mainly on the value of sound instincts, unfettered by false and
artificial constraints, and taught to realize that the physical and the
psychic aspects of life are alike "divine."
It would obviously be premature to express either approval or
disapproval of the conceptions of sexual morality which Ellen Key has
developed with such fervour and insight. It scarcely seems probable that
the methods of sexual union, put forward as an alternative to celibacy
by some of the adherents of the new movement, are likely to become
widely popular, even if legalized in an increasing number of countries.
I have elsewhere given reasons to believe that the path of progress lies
mainly in the direction of a reform of the present institution of
marriage.[67] The need of such reform is pressing, and there are many
signs that it is being recognized. We can scarcely doubt that the
advocates of these alternative methods of sexual union will do good by
stimulating the champions of marriage to increased activity in the
reform of that institution. In such matters a certain amount of
competition sometimes has a remarkably vivifying effect.
We may be sure that women, whose interests are so much at stake in this
matter, and who tend to look at it in a practical rather than in a legal
and theological spirit, will exert a powerful influence when they have
acquired the ability to enforce that influence by the vote. This is
significantly indicated by an inquiry held in England during 1910 by the
Women's Co-operative Guild. A number of women who had held official
positions in the Guild were asked (among other questions) whether or not
they were in favour of divorce by mutual consent. Of 94 representative
women conversant with affairs who were thus consulted, as many as 82
deliberately recorded their opinion in favour of divorce by mutual
consent, and only 12 were against that highly important marriage reform.
It is probably unnecessary to discuss the opinions of other leaders in
this movement, though there are several, such as Frau Grete Meisel-Hess,
whose views deserve study. It will be sufficiently clear in what way
this Teutonic movement differs from that Anglo-Saxon woman's rights'
movement with which we have long been familiar. These German women fully
recognize that women are entitled to the same human rights as men, and
that until such rights are attained "feminism" still has a proper task
to achieve. But women must use their strength in the sphere for which
their own nature fits them. Even though millions of women are enabled to
do the work which men could do better the gain for mankind is nil. To
put women to do men's work is (Ellen Key has declared) as foolish as to
set a Beethoven or a Wagner to do engine-driving.
It has probably excited surprise in the minds of some who have been
impressed by the magnitude and vitality of this movement that it should
have manifested itself in Germany rather than in England, which is the
original home of movements for women's emancipation, or in America,
where they have reached their fullest developments. This, however,
ceases to be surprising when we realize the special qualities of the
Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic temperaments and the special conditions under
which the two movements arose. The Anglo-Saxon movement was a special
application to women of the general French movement for the logical
assertion of abstract human rights. That special application was not
ardently taken up in France itself, though first proclaimed by French
pioneers,[68] partly perhaps because such one-sided applications make
little appeal to the French mind, and mainly, no doubt, because women
throughout the eighteenth century enjoyed such high social
consideration and exerted so much influence that they were not impelled
to rise in any rebellious protest. But when the seed was brought over to
England, especially in the representative form of Mary Wollstonecraft's
_Vindication of the Rights of Women_, it fell in virgin soil which
proved highly favourable to its development. This special application
escaped the general condemnation which the Revolution had brought upon
French ideas. Women in England were beginning to awaken to ideas,--as
women in Germany are now,--and the more energetic and intelligent among
them eagerly seized upon conceptions which furnished food for their
activities. In large measure they have achieved their aims, and even
woman's suffrage has been secured here and there, without producing any
notable revolution in human affairs. The Anglo-Saxon conception of
feminine progress--beneficial as it has undoubtedly been in many
respects--makes little impression in Germany, partly because it fails to
appeal to the emotional Teutonic temperament, and partly because the
established type of German life and civilization offers very small scope
for its development. When Miss Susan Anthony, the veteran pioneer of
woman's movements in the United States, was presented to the German
Empress she expressed a hope that the Emperor would soon confer the
suffrage on German women; it is recorded that the Empress smiled, and
probably most German women smiled with her. At the present time,
however, there is an extraordinary amount of intellectual activity in
Germany, a widespread and massive activity. For the first time,
moreover, it has reached women, who are taking it up with characteristic
Teutonic thoroughness. But they are not imitating the methods of their
Anglo-Saxon sisters; they are going to work their own way. They are
spending very little energy in waving the red flag before the fortresses
of male monopoly. They are following an emotional influence which,
strangely enough, it may seem to some, finds more support from the
biological and medical side than the Anglo-Saxon movement has always
been able to win. From the time of Aristophanes downwards, whenever they
have demonstrated before the masculine citadels, women have always been
roughly bidden to go home. And now, here in Germany, where of all
countries that advice has been most freely and persistently given, women
are adopting new tactics: they have gone home. "Yes, it is true," they
say in effect, "the home is our sphere. Love and marriage, the bearing
and the training of children--that is our world. And we intend to lay
down the laws of our world."
FOOTNOTES:
[52] In 1787 Condorcet declared (_Lettres d'un Bourgeois de New Haven_,
Lettre II) that women ought to have absolutely the same rights as men,
and he repeated the same statement emphatically in 1790, in an article
"Sur l'Admission des Femmes au Droit de Cité," published in the _Journal
de la Société de 1789_. It must be added that Condorcet was not a
democrat, and neither to men nor to women would he grant the vote unless
they were proprietors.
[53] Léopold Lacour has given a full and reliable account of Olympe de
Gouges (who was born at Montauban in 1755) in his _Trois Femmes de la
Révolution_, 1900.
[54] It is noteworthy that the Empire had even a depressing effect on the
physical activities of women. The eighteenth-century woman in France,
although she was not athletic in the modern sense, enjoyed a free life
in the open air and was fond of physical exercises. During the
Directoire this tendency became very pronounced; women wore the
scantiest of garments, were out of doors in all weathers, cultivated
healthy appetites, and enjoyed the best of health. But with the
establishment of the Empire these wholesome fashions were discarded, and
women cultivated new ideals of fragile refinement indoors. (This
evolution has been traced by Dr. Lucien Nars, _L'Hygiène_, September,
1911.)
[55] Concerning the rise and progress of this movement in England much
information is sympathetically and vivaciously set forth in W. Lyon
Blease's _Emancipation of English Women_ (1910), a book, however, which
makes no claim to be judicial or impartial; the author regards
"unregulated male egoism" as the source of the difficulties in the way
of women's suffrage.
[56] Thus, in 1911 the National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage took
an impartial poll of the women voters on the municipal register in
several large constituencies, by sending a reply-paid postcard to ask
whether or not they favoured the extension to women of the Parliamentary
franchise. Only 5579 were in favour of it; 18,850 were against; 12,621
did not take the trouble to answer, and it was claimed, probably with
reason, that a majority of these were not in favour of the vote.
[57] It must not be too hastily assumed. Unless we go back to ancient
plots of the Guy Fawkes type (now only imitated by self-styled
anarchists), the leaders of movements of political reform have rarely,
if ever, organized outbursts of violence; such violence, when it
occurred, has been the spontaneous and unpremeditated act of a mob.
[58] _Revue de l'Ecole d'Anthropologie_, February, 1909, p. 50.
[59] O. Schrader, _Reallexicon_, Art. "Keuschheit." He considers that
Tacitus merely shows that German women were usually chaste after
marriage. A few centuries later, Lea points out, Salvianus, while
praising the barbarians generally for their chastity, makes an exception
in the case of the Alemanni. (See also Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the
Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," pp. 382-4.)
[60] Thus Kaan, anticipating Krafft-Ebing, published a _Psychopathia
Sexualis_, in 1844, and Casper, in 1852, was the first medical authority
to point out that sexual inversion is sometimes due to a congenital
psychic condition.
[61] Both Forel's and Bloch's books have become well known through
translations in England and America. Dr. Bloch is also the author of an
extremely erudite and thorough history of syphilis, which has gone far
to demonstrate that this disease was introduced into Europe from America
on the first discovery of the New World at the end of the fifteenth
century.
[62] This attitude is plainly reflected even in many books written by
men; I may mention, for instance, Frenssen's well-known novel
_Hilligenlei_ (_Holyland_).
[63] In most countries illegitimacy is decreasing; in Germany it is
steadily increasing, alike in rural and urban districts. Illegitimate
births are, however, more numerous in the cities than in the country. Of
the constituent states of the German Empire, the illegitimate birth-rate
is lowest in Prussia, highest in Saxony and Bavaria. In Munich 27 per
cent of the births are illegitimate. (The facts are clearly brought out
in an article by Dr. Arthur Grünspan in the _Berliner Tagblatt_ for
January 6, 1911, reproduced in _Die Neue Generation_, July, 1911.) Thus,
in Prussia, while the total births between 1903 and 1908,
notwithstanding a great increase in the population, have only increased
2.6 per cent, the illegitimate births have increased as much as 11.1 per
cent. The increase is marked in nearly all the German States. It is
specially marked in Saxony; here the proportion of illegitimate births
to the total number of births was, in 1903, 12.51 per cent, and in 1908
it had already risen to 14.40 per cent. In Berlin it is most marked;
here it began in 1891, when there were nearly 47,000 legitimate births;
by 1909, however, the legitimate births had fallen to 38,000, a decrease
of 19.4 per cent. But illegitimate births rose during the same period
from nearly 7000 to over 9000, an increase of 35 per cent. The
proportion of illegitimate births to the total births is now over 20 per
cent, so that to every four legitimate children there is rather more
than one illegitimate child. It may be said that this is merely due to
an increasing proportion of unmarried women. That, however, is not the
case. The marriage-rate is on the whole rising, and the average age of
women at marriage is becoming lower rather than higher. Grünspan
considers that this increase in illegitimacy is likely to continue, and
he is inclined to attribute it less to economic than to
social-psychological causes.
[64] I have discussed this point in _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_,
Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chap. XII.
[65] It is remarkable that in early times in Spain the laws recognized
concubinage (_barragania_) as almost equal to marriage, and as
conferring equal rights on the child, even on the sons of the clergy,
who could thus inherit from their fathers by right of the privileges
accorded to the concubine or _barragana_. _Barragania_, however, was not
real marriage, and in many regions it could be contracted by married men
(R. Altamira, _Historia de España y de la Civilazacion Española_, Vol.
I, pp. 644 et seq.).
[66] "La femme libre," in quest of whom the young Saint-Simonians
preached a crusade, must be a woman of reflection and intellect who,
having meditated on the fate of her "sisters," knowing the wants of
women, and having sounded those feminine capacities which man has never
completely penetrated, shall give forth the confession of her sex,
without restriction or reserve, in such a manner as to furnish the
indispensable elements for formulating the rights and duties of woman.
Saint Simon had asked Madame de Staël to undertake this rôle, but she
failed to respond. When George Sand published her first novels, one
Guéroult was commissioned to ascertain if the author of _Lélia_ would
undertake this important service. He found a badly dressed woman who was
using her talents to gain a living, but was by no means anxious to
become the high priestess of a new religion. Even after his
disappointment Enfantin looked eagerly forward to the publication of
George Sand's _Histoire de ma Vie_, hoping that at last the great
revelation was coming, and he was again disillusioned. But before this
Emile Barrault had arisen and declared that in the East, in the solitude
of the harem, "la femme libre" would be found in the person of some
odalisque. The "mission of the mother" was formed, and with Barrault at
the head it set out for Constantinople. All were dressed in white as an
indication of the vow of chastity they had taken before leaving Paris,
and on the road they begged in the name of the Mother. They arrived at
Constantinople and preached the faith of Saint-Simon to the Turks in
French. But "la femme libre" seemed as far off as ever, and they
resolved to go to Rotourma in Oceana, there to establish the religion of
Saint-Simon and a perfect Government which might serve as a model to the
States of Europe. First, however, they felt it a duty to make certain
that the Mother was not hiding somewhere in Russia, and they went
therefore to Odessa, but the Governor, who was wanting in sympathy,
speedily turned them out, and having realized that Rotourma was some
distance off, the mission broke up, most of the members going to Egypt
to rejoin Enfantin, whom the Arabs, struck by his beauty, had called
_Abu-l-dhunieh_, the Father of the World. (This account of the movement
is based on that given by Maxime du Camp, in his _Souvenirs
Littéraires_)
[67] _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to
Society," chap. X.
[68] It is worth noting that a Frenchwoman has been called "the mother of
modern feminism." Marie de Gournay, who died in 1645 at the age of
eighty, is best known as the adopted daughter of Montaigne, for whom she
cherished an enthusiastic reverence, becoming the first editor of his
essays. Her short essay, _Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes_, was written
in 1622. See e.g. M. Schiff, _La Fille d'Alliance de Montaigne_.
IV
THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN IN RELATION TO ROMANTIC LOVE
The Absence of Romantic Love in Classic Civilization--Marriage as a
Duty--The Rise of Romantic Love in the Roman Empire--The Influence
of Christianity--The Attitude of Chivalry--The Troubadours--The
Courts of Love--The Influence of the Renaissance--Conventional
Chivalry and Modern Civilization--The Woman Movement--The Modern
Woman's Equality of Rights and Responsibilities excludes
Chivalry--New Forms of Romantic Love still remain possible--Love as
the Inspiration of Social Hygiene.
What will be the ultimate effect of the woman's movement, now slowly but
surely taking place among us, upon romantic love? That is really a
serious question, and it is much more complex than many of those who are
prepared to answer it off-hand may be willing to admit.
It must be remembered that romantic love has not been a constant
accompaniment of human relationships, even in civilization. It is true
that various peoples very low down in the scale possess romantic
love-songs, often, it appears, written by the women. But the classic
civilizations of Greece and Rome in their most robust and brilliant
periods knew little or nothing of romantic love in connection with
normal sexual relationships culminating in marriage. Classic antiquity
reveals a high degree of conjugal devotion, and of domestic affection,
at all events in Rome, but the right of the woman to follow the
inspirations of her own heart, and the idealization and worship of the
woman by the man, were not only scarcely known but, so far as they were
known, reprehended or condemned. Ovid, in the opinion of some,
represents a new movement in Rome. We are apt to regard Ovid as, in
erotic matters, the representative of a set of immoral Roman
voluptuaries. That view probably requires considerable modification.
Ovid was not indeed a champion of morality, but there is no good reason
to suppose that, before he appeared, the rather stern Roman mind had yet
conceived those refinements and courtesies which he set forth in such
charming detail. If we take a wide survey of his work, we may perhaps
regard Ovid as the pioneer of a chivalrous attitude towards women and of
a romantic conception of love not only new in Rome but of significance
for Europe generally. Ovid was a powerful factor in the Renaissance
movement, and not least in England, where his influence on Shakespeare
and some others of the Elizabethans cannot easily be overrated.[69]
For the ordinary classic mind, Greek or Roman, marriage was intended for
the end of building up the family, and the family was consecrated to the
State. The fulfilment of so exalted a function involved a certain
austere dignity which excluded wayward inclination or passionate
emotion. These might indeed occur between a man and a woman outside
marriage, but putting aside the very limited phenomena of Athenian
hetairism, they were too shameful to be idealized. Some trace of this
classic attitude may be said to persist even to-day among the so-called
Latin nations, notably in the French tradition (now dying out) of
treating marriage as a relationship to be arranged, not by the two
parties themselves, but by their parents and guardians; Montaigne,
attached as he was to maxims of Roman antiquity, was not very alien from
the ordinary French attitude of his time when he declared that, since we
do not marry so much for our own sakes as for the sake of posterity and
the race, marriage is too sacred a process to be mixed with amorous
extravagance.[70] There is something to be said for that point of view
which is nowadays too often forgotten, but it certainly fails to cover
the whole of the ground.
It is not only in the West that a contemptuous attitude towards the
romantic and erotic side of life has prevailed at some of the most
vigorous moments of civilization. It is also found in the East. In
Japan, for instance, even at the present day, romantic love, as a
reputable element of ordinary life, is unknown or disapproved; its
existence is not recognized in the schools, and the European novels that
celebrate it are scarcely understood.[71]
The development of modern romantic love in connection with marriage
seems to be found in the late Greek world under the Roman Empire.[72]
That is commonly called a period of decadence. In a certain limited
sense it was. Greece had become subjugated to Rome. Rome herself had
lost her military spirit and was losing her political power. But the
fighting instinct, and even the ruling spirit, are not synonymous with
civilization. The "decline and fall" of empires by no means necessarily
involves the decay of civilization. It is now generally realized that
the later Roman Empire was not, as was once thought, an age of social
and moral degeneration.[73] The State indeed was dissolving, but the
individual was evolving. The age which produced a Plutarch--for fifteen
hundred years one of the great inspiring forces of the world--was the
reverse of a corrupt age. The life of the home and the life of the soul
were alike developing. The home was becoming more complex, more
intimate, more elevated. The soul was being turned in on itself to
discover new and joyous secrets: the secret of the love of Nature, the
secret of mystic religion, and, not least, the secret of romantic love.
When Christianity finally conquered the Roman world its task very
largely lay in taking over and developing those three secrets already
discovered by Paganism.
It was inevitable, however, that in developing these new forms of the
emotional life, the ascetic bent of Christianity should make itself
felt. It was not possible for Christianity to cast its halo around the
natural sexual life, but it was possible to refine and exalt that life,
to lift it into a spiritual sphere. Neither woman the sweetheart nor
woman the mother were in ordinary life glorified by the Church; they
were only tolerated. But on a higher than natural plane they were
surrounded by a halo and raised to the highest pedestal of reverence and
even worship. The Virgin was exalted, Bride and Bridegroom became terms
of mystical import, and the Holy Mother received the adoring love of all
Christendom. Even in the actual relations of men and women, quite early
in the history of Christianity, we sometimes find men and women
cultivating relationships which excluded that earthly union the Church
looked down on, but yet involved the most tender and intimate physical
affection. Many charming stories of such relationships are found in the
lives of the saints, and sometimes they existed even within the
marriage bond.[74] Christianity led to the use of ideas and terms
borrowed from earthly love in a different and symbolic sense. But the
undesigned result was that a new force and beauty were added to those
ideas and terms, however applied, and also that many emotions were thus
cultivated which became capable of re-inforcing earthly human love. In
this way it happened that, though Christianity rejected the ideal of
romantic love in its natural associations, it indirectly prepared the
way for a loftier and deeper realization of that love.