It is possible for no one to acquire more than a limited amount of the results of culture, to form an entirely original judgment oftener than in a few isolated cases. But each one can learn to understand that it is a mark of culture not to pronounce judgment upon questions with which he is not conversant. Good taste prescribes that just as one refuses to wear false jewels if one possesses no real ones, so one should refrain from pronouncing judgment upon persons or questions upon which one has not formed an opinion through one's own impressions. When this honesty begins to be considered a mark of spiritual refinement, then will the culture of woman have made quite as great advance as when she learned to read. For next to the power to form decisions for one's self stands in culture value the ability to understand what opinions one does not possess and the courage to recognize one's delicacy.
Courage and truth—that is what women lack above all. And these are the qualities which they must cultivate if the feminine personality is to grow. This does not result because women devote themselves to study, be it ever so thorough, or to social tasks, be they ever so responsible. Both further the development of woman's personality in the measure only in which her own investigations, her own choice, make her means of culture and her work an organic part of herself. To develop woman's personality from within—that is the great woman question. To free woman from conventionality—that is the great aim of the emancipation of woman.
Such a conception of the woman question is for me the ideal conception of this present great movement. And ideality does not mean to adopt as the conception of life that which the majority considers ideal. Ideality means to live for the ideal, which has inflamed our consciousness and not to violate this consciousness by adapting it to such ideals as we feel with our whole soul are lower.
If it is true that "the lack of genius is the lack of courage," so then is it still more true in regard to the lack of personality. Here lies one of the reasons why individuality is less often found among women than among men. A man is more fully inflamed with his idea, the object of his work; he is more intense in that which he knows and which he wills. He becomes thus often—just as the child—more onesided, almost always more egoistic, but much more absolute than a woman in like position. She is rarely, except in love, wholly penetrated by that which occupies her. It is then easier for her to be considerate, to look about continuously upon all sides. She is more mobile, more quickly sensitive, more manysided and more supple than man, and therein lies her strength. But just as that of man, it is bought at the price of corresponding weakness. For equipoise is still so difficult in human nature that a good quality is often not the product of a multiplication, but is the remainder after a subtraction.
The man becomes thus especially creative through his greater courage to dare, his more intense power to will; the woman becomes the often anxious conservator. She cherishes with fidelity, not only the customs and memories of the home, but also society's traditional sentiments and conceptions of right. But this very conspicuous conservatism of the woman is exactly that which has obstructed the development of exceptional femininity.
The personal independence of man is hampered because he must work ordinarily in close association with others; whereby he is bound by party discipline and party spirit, by considerations for preferment or other interests.
The personality of woman on the other hand is more fettered by conventional conceptions of morality and a conventional ideal of woman. She will not distinguish the self-sacrifice which is of value from that which from all points of view is valueless. She does not rely upon her own instinct for right if this instinct deviates only a hair's breadth from the generally accepted idea. She pardons the one who sins against established conceptions of right, provided only he recognizes their validity; but she condemns the one who has acted contrary to this conception in sincere conviction, because his idea of right differs from that of the majority! She confounds in her judgment temperament and opinions, doctrine and life—a confusion which is the origin of all spiritual tyranny, of all social intolerance. Especially does this obtain in questions which concern the relation of the sexes. Every one who expresses an opinion at variance with the conventional ideal of morality has then incurred intrusive conclusions and blasting defamation of his private life. On the part of women then—if it is a question concerning a woman—it must all the more be accepted that it requires not only a glowing red belief but also a snow-white conscience to dare defy society in its most sensitive prejudices.
Conventionality of the woman attains its culminating point in the thoughtless and conscienceless repetition of others' words by which most women lower their spiritual level, distort, disfigure their character and eventually stultify their personality.
A woman who makes any pretensions to fineness, evinces this among other things, by avoiding all borrowed or sham luxury. She scorns spurious effects, tinsel, and disdains therefore in her dress and her home all artificial ornamentation.
But this same woman utters boldly counterfeited opinions and spurious judgments as her own. Even if she possesses it she dare not express a fresh, original opinion, a warm direct feeling. And her forgeries are then transmitted by other plagarists from circle to circle. Thus "Public Opinion" is formed upon the most delicate life problems, the most serious life work. Thus the most noble actions become dubious and the vilest calumnies positive authentic truths. Thus the air becomes congested with the grains of sand, under which a man's works of honor are buried.