says Platen, thus touching an aspect of ancient German sentiment, which has also found expression in the sanctum aut providum of Tacitus. Ovid, Byron, Börne, and Rousseau, have also described the wonderful and mysterious influence of woman’s nature, fundamentally different from that of man. Most beautifully has it been described by Theodor Mundt in the following magnificent passage of his book on Charlotte Stieglitz:
“The most secret elements of woman’s nature, in association with the magic mystery of her organization, indicate the existence in her of peculiar and deep-lying creative ideas, and in this wonderful riddle of love we find the sympathetic of the entire universe expressed. The sympathetic, which attracts and binds forces, the silent music in the innermost being of the world’s soul, by means of which the stars, the suns, bodies, spirits, are compelled to move in this eternal, changeable rhythm, and in this continuous opposition—is the feminine of the universe. This is the eternal feminine, of which Goethe says that it draws us heavenward. Therefore there is nothing deeper, more gentle, more unsearchable, than a woman’s heart. All-movable, it extends into that wonderful distance of existence, and hears with fine nerves the most hidden elements of existence. Touched and shaken by every sound, like a spiritual harp, the most hidden aspects of nature and of life often evoke in its strings prophetic oscillations. The feminine is something common to all life, the most gentle psyche of existence, and hence the fine connexion of the feminine nature with the general organizations, operations, and world forces; hence the mysterious force of attraction which exercises itself in such a magic manner as the true pole of sex, as though each one only in, and with, the true feminine could first find peace.... The ancients made a remarkable use of this idea of a common feminine element in human nature, inasmuch as by the name they gave to the pupil of the eye they expressed the idea that a young girl was to be found in every man’s eye. Young girls (pupillæ, κοραι)—these formed the centre of the human eye, as Winkelmann points out; and is it possible to describe the eye more aptly and distinctively, this radiant chiaroscuro of the hidden basis of the soul, than by ascribing femininity to it—femininity, which rises from that hidden basis of the soul as an Anadyomene rises from the deep?”
Nietzsche speaks also of the “veil” of beautiful possibilities with which woman is covered, and which makes the charm of her life. This undefinable spiritual emanation, this dark, irrational element in woman, led von Hippel to coin the clever phrase that woman is a comma, man a full-stop. “With man, you know where you are—you have come to an end; but with woman, there is something more to be expected.” From this inward nature of woman there proceed immense results: the feminine essence is a civilizing factor of the first rank; were woman wanting, civilization would be non-existent. Very beautifully has the great Buckle drawn attention to the indispensability of woman for the spiritual progress of mankind. He remarks that men, the slaves of experience and of fact, have only the women to thank for the fact that their slavery has not become much more complete and more narrowing. Women’s way of thinking, their spiritual care, their intercourse, their influence, diffuse themselves unnoticed through the whole of society, and take their place throughout its entire structure. By means of this influence, more than by any other cause, we men have been conducted, says Buckle, to a completely thought-out world.
This obscure, wonderful nature of woman has, however, its shadowy side. Upon it depends that primitive, deeply-rooted antipathy of the sexes, which is due to their profound heterogeneity, to the impossibility that they can ever really understand one another. Herein lie the roots of the brutal enslavement of woman by man in the course of history; of the belief in witchcraft; of contempt for women, and the continued renewal of theoretical misogyny. The victory of sexual love over this contrast is often apparent only. Leopardi, and Theophile Gautier (in “Mademoiselle de Maupin”), have shown how little woman understands the inner nature of man; how little man understands woman has been poetically described by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.
For this reason, true love is an understanding of the contrasted natures, a solution of the riddle. “Être aimé, c’est être compris,” says Delphine de Girardin.
What significance for the so-called “woman’s question” has the determination of the existence of psychical sexual differences? We answer: The nature of woman, completely developed in all her peculiarities, and enriched throughout her being by all the spiritual elements of our times adequate to her being, ensures her an equal share in civilization and in the progress of humanity.
Complete equality between man and woman is impossible. But are all sides of woman’s nature as yet adequately worked upon, fully developed? Is not the civilized woman of the future still to be created? The true nucleus of the woman’s movement is, I conceive, to be found in the emancipation of woman from the dominion of pure sensuality, and from the not less disastrous dominion of masculine spiritual arrogance. Have we men really any right to pride ourselves to such a degree upon our knowledge and intelligence? Should we without woman have advanced anything like so far?
A glance at the beginnings of human civilization should teach us a little modesty, for there we see that woman was equal, if not superior, to man in productive, poietic activity. Gradually only, in the progress of civilization, man supplanted woman, and monopolized all spheres of productive activity, whilst woman was limited more and more to domestic occupations. According to Karl Bücher, to women were originally allotted all the labours connected with the obtaining and subsequent utilization of vegetable materials, also the provision of the apparatus and vessels necessary for this purpose; to man, on the other hand, were allotted the chase, fishing, herding, and the provision of weapons and tools. Thus woman was engaged in threshing and grinding the grain, in baking bread, in the preparation of food and drink, in the making of pots, and in spinning. Since these occupations are largely conducted in a rhythmical manner, and the women worked together in the fields or in their huts, while the men hunted singly in the forests, it resulted that women were the first creators of poetry and music.
“Not,” writes Bücher, “upon the steep summits of society did poetry originate; it sprung rather from the depths of the pure strong soul of the people. Women have striven to produce it; and as civilized man owes to woman’s work much the best of his possessions, so also are her thought and her poetry interwoven in the spiritual treasure handed down from generation to generation. To follow the traces of woman’s poetry farther, in the intellectual life of the people, would be a valuable exercise. Although these traces have to a large extent disappeared, during the subsequent period of man’s poetic activity, which appears to have gained predominance in proportion as men monopolized the labours of material production, still, in a number of races the influence of woman’s poetry can be followed for a long way into the literary period.”
To a large extent men first learned from women the elements of the various handicrafts. For instance, as Mason says, primeval woman gave her “ulu”[27] to the saddler, and taught him the mode of preparing leather. Women were the first discoverers of numerous industries and handicrafts. The further development of these in later times was the work of men; men alone understood how to differentiate their work, while from the first it was inevitable that motherhood should greatly limit the working powers of woman.