On the other hand it is fine and eminently sane and in harmony with the laws of spiritual growth, when the strong shall help the weak to reach a goal which is thus, in his own peculiar direction, really attainable by him. Neither paganism nor Christianity has created the most beautiful strength; it is a union of both. It has found its most perfect expression in art in Donatello’s St. George, in Michelangelo’s David: youths, whose victorious power conceals compassion and whose compassion embraces even the conquered: symbols of strength which has become kind, of kindness which has become strong. If a mother has seen this expression upon the face of her son or her daughter then she can address to life the words of Simeon: “Now let thy servant depart in peace for mine eyes have seen thy glory.” For the glory of life is the harmony between its two fundamental powers—conquest and devotion: self-assertion and self-sacrifice. In every new phase of the ethical development of mankind the cultural problem is this harmony and the cultural profit is not the per-dominance of one of the two but the perfected synthesis of both.
This problem has now become actual, through the woman movement, for the feminine half of mankind, after the unconditional spirit of sacrifice has obtained for centuries as the indispensable attribute of womanliness. In the first stage of the woman movement the majority of the “emancipated” were still determined by their spirit of sacrifice, which they aspired to combine with their outside professional work. This generation lived beyond its strength. The younger generation of to-day does not believe that God gives unlimited strength. For they have seen that those who live unceasingly beyond their strength finally have no strength left, either for others or for themselves. And they know that in the long run one can live only upon his own resources and these must be conserved and renewed in order to suffice. But this knowledge makes the problem, which in the course of days and years appears in manifold different forms, only more difficult of solution: the problem to find the right choice in the collision between family duties, duties toward oneself and duties toward society; the choice which shall bring with it the essential enhancement of life.
The conflict is thus solved by some feminists: everything called family ties and family feeling is referred to the “impersonal” instinctive life, while our “personality” expresses itself in intellectual activity, in study, in creation, in universally human ends, in social activity, etc. And since the principle of emancipation is certainly the freeing of the “personality,” it follows from this idea, in connection with this definition of the personality, that the liberated personality must place the obligations of the intellectual life absolutely above those of the family life; the outside professional work above the work in the home. In a word, the earlier definition of womanliness ignored the universal human element, the present definition of personality ignores the womanly element in woman’s being. The last solution of the problem is quite as one-sided as the first.
The “principle of personality,” as it has just been described is entertained especially in America. In Europe there are still women who reflect deeply upon their own being and—who have a depth over which they may meditate! These women have not yet succeeded in simplifying the problem which is the central one of their life. They know that not only do instincts, impulses of the will, feelings, form the strongest part of the individual character which nature has given them, but also that this part determines their thinking and creating power—their whole conscious existence. They know that their character receives its peculiarities through the development which they themselves accord to one or another side of their individual temperament. In one personality the intellectual life will predominate, in another the emotional: in one the ethical, in another the æsthetic motive. The personality becomes harmonious only when no essential motive is lacking, when all attain a certain degree of development, a harmony which is as yet only so won that no motive receives its greatest possible development. Such a harmony has long been the especial characteristic of the most beautiful womanhood, while the most significant men have ordinarily achieved their superior strength in one direction, at the cost of harmony in the whole. If now women believe that they can achieve the strength of men without, for that reason, being obliged to sacrifice something of their harmony, then they believe their sex capable of possibilities which thus far have been granted rarely and then only to the exceptional in both sexes. What experience shows is: the greater harmony of single women in a limited existence as compared with the lack of harmony in the lives of daughters, owing to the irreconcilable problems which their richer existence brings with it. For these problems must be solved, at one time, by sacrifice of intellectual, at another, by sacrifice of emotional values. In every case, the sacrifice leaves behind it, not the joyful peace of fulfilled duty, but the gnawing unrest of a duty still ever unfulfilled. Every woman who has a heart knows it is at least quite as important a part of her personality as her passion for science perhaps. If for example she is obliged to surrender to another the loving service of a sick father in order to pursue scientific researches, then her heart is quite as certainly in the sick-room as, in case of the opposite choice, her thoughts would have been in the laboratory. By calling one factor “instinct” and the other “personality,” nothing is in reality gained. Theorising ladies can easily write—the paper is forbearing. But human nature is of flesh and blood. And therefore thousands of women grapple to-day with tormenting questions:—When we women shall belong entirely to industrial work and to the social life, who then is left for the work of love? Only paid hands. What becomes then of the warmth in human life when such a division of labour is established that kindness becomes a profession, and the rest of us shall be exempt from its practice because our “Personality” has more important fields for the exercise of its strength? What does it signify to live for society when we come to the service of society with chilled hearts? If the warmth is to be preserved then we must have leisure for love in private life, a right to love, peace and means for love. Only thus can our hearts remain warm for the social life. Can the whole really profit if we sacrifice unconditionally that part of the whole which is nearest us? Can our feeling of solidarity increase toward mankind when we pass by exactly those people to whom we could, by our deeds, really show our sympathetic fellow-feeling?
The woman whose instinct life is still strong and sound, whose personality has its roots deep in life—which means not social life alone—she also understands how to determine what life in its deepest import purposes with her; she knows how she serves it best, whether by remaining in a position where she fulfils her personal obligations as part of a family or by seeking another position where she fulfils this obligation as a member of society.
It is true the erroneous idea still prevails in many homes that the daughter must willingly sacrifice her social task for the family, a sacrifice which the family would never even wish on the part of a son. But the assurance that the daughter could have made another choice instils in the family, unconsciously, a new conception of her sacrifice, and gives to herself the courage to assume a position in the home other than that she held at the time when no choice remained to her. If the total of efficacious daughterly love of to-day and earlier times be estimated, this total would not prove less now. But it is now given rather in a great sum; earlier, on the contrary, in many small coins. Because of the professional work of the daughter, there are now often lacking in the home the ready obliging young hands whose help father and brother so willingly engrossed; the cheerful comforter, the admiring listener. But in a great hour the daughter or sister gives now often a hundred times more in deep, personal understanding. One draws a false conclusion when one thinks that the more closely a family holds together the more it signifies a corresponding unity and devotion. The young act in submission because they permit themselves to be cowed by the family authority which like a steam-roller passed over their wills and their hearts. But the indignation that they experienced in their innermost hearts, the criticism which they exercised among one another, were not less bitter than that which they to-day openly utter.
The home life of fifty years ago was a school of diplomacy; it especially served to oppose cunning to the father’s authority, and the mother often taught the children to use this weapon of weakness. Now the father does not wish to make himself ridiculous by saying: “I forbid you,” for the daughter answers: “Well, then, I will wait until I am twenty-one.” The threat, “I disinherit you,” recoils from the determination of the daughter, “I can work.” Only in a distant province, in a little town, or among the “upper ten thousand” of a large city, where the daughters still often receive a “general education,” which does not fit them to earn their living, are they occupied all day without the feeling of having worked. They serve at five o’clock teas, embroider for charity bazaars, etc. But they also experience the power of the spirit of the time strongly enough to know that they lead a selfish life but not a life of self. The lower the scale of riches the more housework do the daughters have to perform. But as a result of the patriarchal organisation of labour they still perform this without their own responsibility, without the joy of independence, without regular unoccupied time and without one penny at their disposal!
Even in these circles however the spirit of the time is active; such a daughter leads now in every case a life of much richer content than some decades ago, when even though middle-aged she was still treated as ignorant innocence and must allow herself to be extolled to every possible marriage candidate. She suffers when she sees her mother as the submissive wife, whose continual according smile has graven lines of humility about her mouth, whose continually pacifying tone has made her voice whining. She suffers when the father cuts short a diversity of opinion with the words, “You have heard what I said—That will do.” She suffers when her brothers find her “insufferably important” or declare her new ideas “crazy.” But exactly these new ideas about the right and freedom of woman, which she encounters everywhere, have given a dignity to her own being which has its influence even without words. On the other hand, the fact that the fathers lose one legal right after another over the feminine members of the family has its effect, so that they gradually change their tone, the clenched fist falls less and less frequently upon the table, the disdain is silenced, and even in the provinces the family life is changing more and more from the despotic political constitution to the democratic, where each one maintains his position by virtue of his own personality. There are still men it is true, who wish to confine “woman’s sphere” to the four “C’s”—“Cooking, clothing, children, church.” But there is no one who now insists that “a girl cannot learn Mathematics,” or that it is “unwomanly to pore over books”—sayings which were still often heard fifty years ago. Certainly there are still men who accept the cherishing thoughtful care on the part of the women members of the family as obvious homage. But the men are becoming more and more numerous who receive these womanly acts of tenderness with waking joy. Daughters and sisters of earlier times have pardoned the vices of their fathers and brothers seven and seventy times; those of the present throw away the fragments of trust and love which have been irrevocably shattered. The assurance that the daughters and sisters could do nothing else except pardon, since they were dependent upon their tormentors, often made the fathers and brothers of earlier times grossly inconsiderate. The men of to-day will be refined by the necessity of showing consideration and justice to their daughters and sisters if they wish to enjoy their presence in the home. Fathers and brothers have, in a word, gained quite as much spiritually through the loss of their power to oppress as the daughters and sisters have gained in being no longer oppressed. And this experience will be repeated in marriage when man and wife shall be absolutely free and equal.
CHAPTER V
THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON MEN AND WOMEN IN GENERAL
In their struggle for freedom for the same opportunities of study, for the same fields of work, the same citizenship as man, women have encountered all possible opposition, from that of the Pope, who recently pronounced the most positive condemnation of the whole movement for the emancipation of woman, and that of Parliament, to the rough pranks of students. Man’s attempt to define the boundaries of “woman’s natural sphere” continues always. The woman physician, for example, had to struggle, in her student years, against prejudice in the dissecting room, and, in her practice, against the professional jealousy of men. The history of emancipation has much shameful conduct on the part of man toward woman to record. Great reluctance to recognise the results of woman’s work is still common. When this work, in literature and art for instance, is compared with man’s, the comparison is made not for the purpose of getting a finer understanding of woman’s peculiar characteristics, but only to disparage it. The energy which men of the present time not infrequently lack they cannot endure to recognise in women, who often possess it in high degree. In the Romance countries, self-supporting working women are always looked upon as a special caste—a caste into which a man does not marry however high respect he pays, theoretically, to “les vierges fortes.”