CHAPTER VIII
DANGEROUS SEPARATION OF WOMEN INTO TWO ORDERS: FEMINISTS AND FEMININISTS
"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of Man."
I
Since women possess native gifts of highly-differentiated faculties and aptitudes, not only their greatest effectiveness, but, too, their well-being and happiness lie in finding highly-specialised and selective application for these, in Life, in Art, in Science, and in Industry.
Their rôle in every field of operation should be recognised as being wholly different from that of man, however; and their own natural view-points and special abilities should be fostered, accordingly, by suitable training; in order to fit them for the special departments for which they are essentially suited.
The charming artistry and fancies, spontaneous and full of delicate insight, feeling, and sense of line, which a woman puts into her illustrations of a child's Fairy-story, are art as true, for example, and if less great of achievement, are nevertheless as intrinsically valuable in The Scheme of Things as are the virile masterpieces of a Michael Angelo or Turner.
Few men attain the exquisite artistry in colour that even indifferent women-painters show. It is an expression, in mentality, of the biological fact that the colour-sense is naturally so highly developed in woman that Colour-blindness—comparatively common among men—is rare indeed in her.
On the other hand, woman is inherently weak in drawing. When she is trained, however, to draw with masculine strength and precision, she loses her natural freedom and delicacy of touch, her sensitive feeling for line, her exquisite colour-sense, her fertile fancy. Rosa Bonheur's horses are as strong in drawing as they are baldly deficient in sentiment. Men have painted horses bolder still in line, but nevertheless noble and beautiful in feeling.