This is why men and women cannot be in perfect accord, so long as honesty, taken in the widest sense, is not the same for both. Based upon respect for what is fair, just and good, honesty has essentially no sex. Whether strict or comparative, it does not imply a different moral law for individuals of different natures.
This primordial question has always been treated too lightly, though it has been the source of continual misunderstanding, especially in matrimonial questions.
How many examples one could give of want of scruple violating the idea of honesty and responsibility!
How many sins, grave in themselves, are committed by men in power, knowing themselves safe from the arm of the law; how many actions, unpunishable, yet which are an outrage upon the liberty of others, a breach of respect for human nature, and an injury to society!
How many men sacrifice, for the sake of ambition, their country’s vital interests, and incur no censure save that of powerless public opinion!
The orator who, in a moment of national excitement, throws his visionary dreams and interested lies broadcast into the press; the leader who, in full consciousness of his abominable work, deceives the people; the perjured politician who denies his convictions to attain promotion, should all have their honour called in question. To such as these, as to others, woman owes respect and obedience, without the option of comparing her own honour, based on imperative duty, with that of these empty talkers and tub-orators.
It is true that, on the other hand, a woman may, without censure, give out that her dearest friend’s husband is making love to her—that she may thus, by a word, destroy a home’s peace—without any pangs of conscience, and without the man attacked being able to call her to account.
In the relations between men and women some solution should be found by which both may be placed on equal ground as regards morality and responsibility. In this way loss of esteem between them would be avoided, and the value of each enhanced.
But, to obtain such a result, tolerance and the principle of harmony must first be taught; men must become less selfish, and women learn that their life is not only a work of love but a work of reason. Social rights must be equalised in the light of conscience and moral responsibility. In fact, thorough sincerity must bring about loyalty both in business and private affairs, creating a moral atmosphere in which forgery, fraud, plagiarism, the lie that corrupts the soul of a people, all the monstrous growths of our modern society, can no longer exist. Then honesty, from being comparative, will become supreme, incumbent equally upon man and woman, bound no longer only by social, but by moral ties.