Normally, she is the child of Nature, in whom (because she is the mother of the human child, who shapes to the maternal model) Nature is unfolding the type of our Perfecting Humanity. She should remain, therefore, more or less in the native and spontaneously fructifying state conducive to evolutionary unfoldment. When she adapts as closely to concrete conditions as it is imperative for man to do, not only does she exhaust the potential fertility indispensable to the further evolution and growth of racial faculty, but her powers lose that mode of flux which enables them to tide to higher levels.
While man stands for Civilisation, woman stands for Nature. Generatrix of Life, she is instinct with vital impulses. And when these are not expended, as is normal, in the creation of and ministration to living and beloved beings, they generate warped, erratic and chaotic aberrations. Because, no matter to what degree she may acquire masculine characteristics and aptitudes, she remains, at core, a creature of instinct; not of reason. As a creature of instinct she is invaluable to life—because Life is moulded upon instinct. But instinct and rationalism function on different planes of mentality. To over-develop rationalism in her is to quench emotionalism in her, and the higher illumination of her Supra-conscious faculties; thus rendering her the prey of smouldering subconscious impulses which burst fitfully and mischievously into flame.
For Progress, man must be always the leading half and controller in politics and civic affairs. These are his province. His sex stands for permanence and conformity—and, accordingly, for uniformity. And uniformity is the model for Civilisation, making as it does for justice and the common good.
Woman's non-conformability adapts her admirably to the personal relations of life, but not to the political. Man builds institutions and administers them by more or less rigid impersonal rule. Woman transforms them into homes, and humanises them by individual concessions and exceptions.
So the two are supplement and complement in the public as in the natural sphere. But their respective rôles are contrary in every mode and issue. Man's conformity, political and civic, is continually leavened by the element of non-conformity and change he inherits from his mother, with her other Woman-traits. But in him, her spontaneity and impulse are so intelligised and stabilised by his masculine rationalism and bent for order that, in place of operating emotionally and spasmodically, they become tempered and restrained. Under his administration, material advance proceeds slowly, but surely and securely. His masculine intelligence and sense of responsibility cause him to adjust the maternal evolutionary impulses,—which he inherits as reformatory and revolutionary impulses—to the exigencies of practicability, and the requirements of circumstance.
VI
There is no more difficult, or possibly mischievous, person than a strong and clever woman whose over-developed masculine energies and abilities are controlled neither by a man's reason and sense of responsibility, nor by a woman's natural disabilities, affections and restraints. She is sometimes prodigiously clever; adding to her male talents a woman's fertility, versatility, adaptability, complexity and intuitiveness. And yet with all their gifts, such women accomplish little but harm—alike to themselves and others.
Erratic, fickle, irrepressible, they are perpetually flying off at tangents. Now they are one thing too much. Now they are the opposite—in an equal extreme.
Medleys of contradictions and perversities, they are no sooner repressed in one direction, or become fatigued by the monotony of any single line of action, than they burst forth in some other. Their abnormal mentality and energy, allied to their innate impulsiveness and craving for change, impel them to break loose from those bonds of affection, of tradition and of aspiration, which are woman's safeguards. There is in the nature of most women, this dangerous quicksand of irresponsibility, which may, in crises, topple and submerge the soundest structure of education and of habit builded over it. This is seen in the abandon and anarchy of the sex in riots and in revolutions.
Such women rebels become increasingly a law unto themselves, and see no reason why all others should not do likewise. They lack the masculine grip of concrete principles to recognise that general lawlessness and individual liberty cannot co-exist. Because where every man is free to do as he pleases, no man is free to do as he pleases, owing to some other man's abuse of his liberty encroaching on that of his neighbours.