Those secret societies, Nihilist or whatever else they may be called, whose aim is the subversion of all existing institutions, find their recruits chiefly among the discontented, those whose hopes have been dashed to the ground, whose lives have been failures. If to this quality of conscious failure be added a nature enthusiastic and dreamy, the very readiest material for the dangerous conspirator is presented. There are many men of this class in every civilized nation, and the ranks of the fraternities are full of them. As education spreads there will be still more; for the means of satisfying the ambitions and wants that education brings cannot increase in anything like proportion to those ever-multiplying wants.
And if this be so with men, how much more is it so with women? women the dependant, whose happiness in life so much hangs on marriage, and of whom so many must be condemned to lives of single misery—women the dreamers, the emotional, and for whose ambitions there is no field.
How many tens of thousands there must be that gnaw out their hearts in lives wasted and objectless, despised of men and happier sisters?
Such women are ready to follow any crazed visionary.
It is a necessity of a woman's nature to cling to the companionship of a Man, to lean on the stronger sex. Woman too must have a God, a religion. Without these her womanhood has not been perfected.
A Man can stand alone, self-reliant. He can know no God, have no religion and yet not be over bad and certainly not unhappy. His life-work is enough religion for him. But a woman who has no religion, is on the way to becoming a fiend; she is an unnatural monster. Weak, unstable, she has no strength, no honour, no goodness by herself.
Woman's goodness is as a delicate flower which, when brought into the foul air of the city, withers and dies at once. Man's goodness is of hardier growth. The Soul of Man can be soiled and yet remain half-angelic; but the Angel in Woman spreads its wings and goes off altogether when contamination comes, and straightway she is possessed of a devil.
For these reasons the Woman that has no God, no love for which to sacrifice herself, is better than a man for the purpose of a secret society.
Again, a Woman is more thorough-going than a Man. If she throws herself into a conspiracy, she throws her whole self. Weaker in nature than Man she is yet stronger, for the whole of that nature is concentrated on one object. The larger nature of a Man is divided among many objects. He has a mind that grasps many things together. If he is a lover he is not wholly a lover as a Woman would be. He still thinks of his business, of a hundred matters. He is selfish and wise; but a Woman in her love or hate is possessed by the emotion and can think of nothing else. As a conspirator a Man is not wholly a conspirator; he weighs the result to himself, to his family; he looks far ahead and around and behind; he reasons, so is more timid than the Woman. She as a conspirator is nothing else; she cannot consider all sides of a question; if she be won over by some wild Nihilistic theory or other mad scheme, she becomes a monomaniac; no arguments unfavourable to it can in the least prevail with her. She is blind to obstacles, reckless of consequences; so she is braver and more ready to act than Man, crueller more ruthless in the execution of her schemes.
In Paris in revolution time, when the people come down to the streets, it is the Women that urge on the men to their mad excesses; it will ever be so.