This latter reaction might also include a rebellion against the methods of industrial production, which exhaust the strength of mothers and children. For the objection of industrialism, that “it cannot exist without women,” falls to the ground in face of the fact that a race cannot exist without sound and moral mothers. And “moral” means, here, mothers capable and willing to bear sound children and to train children along moral lines. If, on the contrary, Europe and America adhere to the economic and ethical principles which prevent a number of able and willing women of this type from becoming mothers, and if numbers of other women who could be mothers continue unwilling to assume the burden of motherhood, then this problem will finally become the problem of a future for the European-American people.
The woman movement must now with resolute determination abandon the narrow, biased attitude, psychologically natural a generation ago when the zealots of feminism had no other standard of value for an idea, an investigation, or a book, than whether they advanced or did not advance the cause of woman; whether they proved or did not prove woman’s equality with man. For woman’s work, studies, and other accomplishments, no other standard was applied than that of equality with man’s work, man’s studies, and the accomplishments of man. In a word, the proposition was that woman should be enabled to perform at the same time the life-work of a woman and of a man!
It is through these hybrids that the feminine sex transgresses against the masculine. And this is one reason why our time is so filled with the tragic vicissitudes of women. Truly, every progressive person must agree with Goethe’s aphorism, “I love him whom the impossible lures.” For, thus allured, man has elevated his particular generation above the generation preceding. But in action every one must go down who is not imbued with the consciousness that whoever exceeds his limits is liable to tragic consequences, in the modern psychological view of the guilt attaching to one who undertakes more than his strength will allow.
But our time exhibits also other less convulsively strained conditions of the feminine soul and therefore also brighter fates for woman. It shows not infrequently wives united with their husbands, not only by the sympathy which the human personality of each inspires, but also by the erotic attraction which the sex character of each exercises. And they have both won thereby that unity through which all the best and highest powers of their being are liberated and elevated as by religion. And their parenthood will then be the highest expression of this religion.
Only religious natures are—in the deepest meaning of the word—loving or faithful or creative. It is the same soul which in one person reveals itself in ecstasy of belief, in a second in ardour of creation, in a third in a great erotic passion, in the fourth as parental love, in others again as love of country, as enthusiasm for freedom, desire for reform. At times one and the same soul, a woman’s or a man’s, is kindled by all these passions. But never has the same soul been able at the same time to feed all these passions in their highest potency. Whether it be God, a work, or a human being that the soul embraces with its entire devotion, the religious character of this devotion always evinces itself in increasing longing, an endless susceptibility, a more persistent search after means of expression, a continual service, an inexhaustible patience in waiting for reciprocal activity from the object of love. The religious strength of a feeling consists in this, that the soul in every work, every sorrow, every joy,—in a word, in every spiritual condition, every experience,—is, consciously as well as unconsciously, more closely united with God, with the work, with the beloved, until every finest fibre of one’s being reaches down to the profound depths which the object of love represents for the lover.
In this necessary condition of concentration of the spiritual life is found the truth of woman’s complaint that the man, absorbed by his work, “no longer loves her”; the truth of the experience that earthly love indisputably detracts from the love of God; the truth of the frequent experience of husband and wife that with children the wealth of their spiritual life together is in certain respects inevitably diminished; the truth of man’s fear that woman’s absorption in a life-work personally dear to her must to a certain degree detract from her devotion to the home; the truth of the experience that the office of mother often interferes with the development of woman’s intellectual power.
Only persons who distinguish themselves by what Heine called “exuberance of mental poverty,” or what I might call analogously an “abyss of superficiality,” have not experienced the severe and beautiful psychic truth of Jesus’ glorification of simplicity. The quiet harkening to the voice of God or to the inspiration of work or to the delicate vibrations of another soul, which daily, hourly, momentarily, are the conditions that enable the soul to live wholly in its belief, its work, its love, so that these feelings may grow stronger and the soul grow greater through these feelings—all this has “simplicity” as a condition; in a word, symmetrical unity, longing for completeness, inner poise, the swift emotion. Fidelity—to a belief, a work, a love—is no product of duty. It is a process of growth.
These are the conditions to which many modern women, womanly at heart but divided, restless, groping, attempting much, will not submit. They could even learn to reverence these conditions in the child for whom play is such sacred seriousness; but instead they transform the most sacred earnest into play.
Other women, on the contrary, are beginning to understand these conditions of growth and to comprehend that it was exactly the protected position of woman in the home, which has made it possible for her family feeling to acquire that depth which is to be attained only by concentration. But if this is no longer possible, then woman will love those that belong to her with less religious warmth. Nothing can better illustrate the difference still existing between man and woman in this respect, than the fact that most men would consider themselves unfortunate if their entire exercise of power were concentrated upon the family, while most women still feel themselves fortunate when they have been given the opportunity to exercise to the uttermost the tendency inherent in them. For most women love best personally and in propinquity, while the potency of love in man often seeks distant goals. Woman is happy in the degree to which she can bestow her love upon a person closely connected with her; if she cannot do that, then she may be useful, resigned, content, but never happy.[[11]] The very fact that woman’s strongest primitive instinct coincided with her greatest cultural office has been an essential factor in the harmony of her being.