They are the subordination of self to the welfare of others; the recognition of the claim which helplessness and ignorance make upon the stronger and more intelligent; the joy of creation and bestowal of life; the pity and sympathy which tend to make every woman the born foe of cruelty and injustice; and hope—i.e., the realization of the unseen—which foresees the adult in the infant, the future in the present.
All these are great moral tendencies, and they are necessarily involved in the mighty potentiality of maternity. They lay upon women the weighty responsibility of becoming more and more the moral guides in life’s journey. Women are called upon very specially to judge all practical action as right or wrong, and to exercise influence for this high morality in whatever direction it can be most powerfully exerted.
We see the indication of this providential inherited impulse to moral action, in the great and increasing devotion of women to the relief of social suffering and their sturdy opposition to wrong-doing, which form a distinguishing characteristic of our age. These spiritual mothers of the race are often more truly incarnations of the grand maternal life, than those who are technically mothers in the lower physical sense.
With sound intellectual growth the range of moral influence increases. But such sound growth can only take place under the guidance of moral principle; for moral perception becomes reason as the intellectual faculties grow, and reason is the true light for all. It is in this high moral life, enlarged by intelligence, that the ideal of womanhood lies. It is through the moral, guiding the intellectual, that the beneficial influence of woman in any new sphere of activity will be felt.
Thus, from their inherited tendencies, as well as from the existent individuality of their nature, women must seek a high moral standard as their ideal, and acknowledge the supremacy of right over every sphere of intellectual activity. The highest type of moral excellence which we can find in the age in which we live, the beneficence which it exerts, the means by which it has been attained, form so many landmarks to guide us in our search for the right.
This very important method of growth has been well stated by Huxley, that brave fighter in the past for freedom of thought. He has laid down this weighty principle, that ‘the past must be explained by the present.’
This principle is of very wide application.
What produces the noblest human creature now in our nineteenth century? What inspires hope? What sustains us most bravely to fight the battle of life? What makes life most worth living?
When we have ascertained these facts in the present, they will explain the past, and give the foundations of right for guidance in the future.
It is a noteworthy feature of the present day that some of our best men, witnessing the failure of so many panaceas for the intolerable evils that afflict society, are longing for that untried force—the action and co-operation of good women. ‘Our only hope is in women!’ is a cry that may sometimes be heard from the enlightened male conscience. But still more significant is the awakening of an increasing number of women themselves. They begin to realize that truth comes to us through imperfect human media, and is thus rendered imperfect; that every human teacher must be accepted for his suggestiveness only, not as absolute authority. Women are thus rising above the errors of the past, above blind acceptance of imperfect authority, and are earnestly striving to learn the will of the Creator, and walk solely according to what they themselves, diligently seeking, can learn of that Divine will.