Much of good we have given. How could an ideal so tender, so beautiful, so high of purpose, fail of righting a thousand wrongs?
How could those sweet, foolish tears fail to water the hard soil of life and cause a thousand lovely flowers of goodness and gentleness to bloom? That we have not solved the riddle of the Sphinx, that we have not found the secret of happiness, is hardly cause for wonder or shame. Neither will our successors find it, but it is interesting to speculate as to what clue they will use to guide them in the search. It is plain that our ideals, our formulæ, are being cast aside as inadequate, but the new century is coming in with no programme as yet announced. It is thoughtful, silent; it avoids our drums and shoutings and vociferous over-confidence.
What will be its Time-Spirit, since ours plainly will not serve? Will the wage-earners shear the bourgeoisie of their privileges as we shore the nobles a century ago—or will liberty sell herself to authority again in return for protection against the dry hopelessness of socialism, or the turmoil of anarchy? Or will the new generation evolve some new thought, undreamed of as yet—some new and happier guess at the great central truth at which we forever grasp and which forever melts and eludes?
February 11.
The Abdication of Man.
In the midst of all these excursions and alarums of war, and preparation for war, a sudden and great silence has fallen upon the everlasting discussion of the relations of the sexes. Before the stern realities of that final and bloody argument of Republics, as well as of Kings, further dissection of the Women Question has been deferred. The most vociferous of the "unquiet sex" have been regarding respectfully the sudden transformation of the plain, unromantic man who went patiently to business every morning in a cable car, and sat on a stool at a desk, or weighed tea, or measured ribbon, into a hero ready to face violent annihilations before which even her imagination recoils. The grim realisms of life and death have made the realism of such erstwhile burning dramas as The Doll House shrink into the triviality of a drama fit only for wooden puppets. Sudden and violent readjustments of ideas are apt to be brought about when human relations are jarred into their true place by the thunder of cannon. War legitimatizes man's claim to superiority. When the sword is drawn he is forced to again mount that ancient seat of rule from which he has only recently been evicted; or rather from which he has himself stepped down. The democracy of sex at once becomes ridiculous—the old feudal relation reasserts itself.
It is interesting to note that there has not been one feminine voice raised to protest against the situation. The entire sex, as represented in this country, has, as one woman, fallen simply and gladly into the old place of nurse, of binder of wounds, of soother and helpmeet. Not one has claimed the woman's equal right to face villainous saltpetre, or risk dismemberment by harbour mines.
I believe this to be because woman prefers this old relation. I believe that if man were willing she would always maintain it; that it depends upon him whether she returns to it permanently or not. I believe that her modern attitude is not of her own choosing—that man has thrust that attitude upon her. For the oldest of all empires is that of man; no royal house is so ancient as his. The Emperors of Japan are parvenus of the vulgarest modernity in comparison, and the claims of long descent of every sovereign in Europe shrivel into absurdity beside the magnificent antiquity of this potentate. Since the very beginning of things, when our hairy progenitor fought for mastery with the megatherium, and scratched pictorial epics upon his victim's bones, the House of Man has reigned and ruled, descending in an unbroken line from father to son in direct male descent. His legitimacy was always beyond dispute; his divine right to rule was not even questioned, and was buttressed against possible criticism not only by the universal concurrence of all religious and philosophic opinion, but by the joyful loyalty of the whole body of his female subjects. Moses and Zoroaster, St. Paul and Plato all bore witness to his supremacy, and the jury of women brought in a unanimous verdict in his favour without calling for testimony.
Women yet living can recall a day when they forgot their pain for joy that a man-child—heir to that famous line of kings—was born into the world. They can remember a time when their own greatest claim to consideration rested upon the fact that they were capable of perpetuating the royal race. They recollect a period when even from his cradle the boy was set apart to be served with that special reverence reserved for those whose brows are bound with the sacred circlet of sovereignty—when a particular divinity did hedge even the meanest male; a tenfold essence being shed about all those who were of the House of Aaron.