Is sentiment a badge of servitude to error?
Let me now examine the more profound reasons based on the nature of women’s sentimental proclivities. In general, it is said that women are dominated not by reason but by sentiment. They respond quickly to a call made in the name of pity or of charity, and not so quickly to one made in the name of equity. But is sentiment the exclusive possession of religions? And are there not also men of sentiment as well as men of thought? And are the first on that account condemned to a life of error while the second live in the presence of the truth?
Women and mysticism.
But it is insisted that in women sentiment naturally tends toward mysticism. Among the Greeks, Spencer says, the women were more accessible than the men to religious excitation.[92] It may be replied that the greatest mystics have not been women. St. Theresas have been much less numerous than men like Plotinus (it was Plotinus who first gave the word ἔκστασις its current sense), Porphyry, Iamblicus, Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Bonaventure, Gerson, Richard de Saint Victor, Eckhart, Tauler, Swedenborg. Mysticism develops in proportion to the restriction of the individual’s activity. Women’s life, which is less active than that of men, allows more space for the development of mystic impulses and exercises of piety. But activity cures the diseases of contemplation, in especial of vain and empty contemplation in which only average and ignorant minds can take delight. Woman’s religious activity will diminish in proportion as a wider field of activity is opened up to her, and in proportion as an intellectual and æsthetic education is supplied to her and she becomes interested in all the human questions and realities of this world. It has been desired even to render political life accessible to woman, to restore to her the rights which have hitherto been denied her. M. Secrétan has recently advocated this measure, which was formerly advocated by John Stuart Mill. To do so at the present moment would be to hand over politics directly to the priesthood, who at present control women. But when by gradual degrees women’s religious emancipation shall have been completed, it is possible that a certain political emancipation may be the natural consequence of it. Her civil emancipation in any event is only a matter of time. The equality of women before the law is a necessary consequence of democratic ideas. When they shall be forced thus to occupy themselves more actively in the affairs of this world the new employment of their energy will protect them more and more from mystical tendencies.
If an opportunity be given them to influence society they will no doubt exercise it philanthropically. Well, pity is one of the most powerful derivatives of mysticism. Even among religious orders it has been remarked how much less exalted the devotion of the members of the philanthropic orders is than of those who restrict themselves to sterile meditation in the cloister.
Female moral sentiment.
If mysticism is no more truly indispensable to women than to men, can it be maintained that their moral sentiment is incapable of subsistence apart from some religion? Is women’s moral power less than that of men, and is it only in religion that they can find the additional increment of strength of which they are in need? Resistance to physical or moral pain supplies a sufficiently exact measure of power. Well, women show in maternity, with all its consequences, in pregnancy, in childbirth, in nursing, accompanied as it is by continual watchfulness and care, a patience of physical pain which is perhaps greater than anything that the average man is capable of. Just so in respect to patience of moral pain: women may suffer much from poverty, and sadness follows the flying needle, but love and pity are the great sources of restraint. As the sphere of her intelligence widens, a large field will be supplied for the exercise of women’s power of love which is so highly developed. The genuine remedy for every kind of suffering is increased activity of mind, which means increased instruction. Action is always an anodyne of pain. Therein lies the explanation of the power of charity to calm personal suffering, which is always in some degree egoistic. The best way to console one’s self, for women and men alike, will always be to minister to someone else; hope revives in a heart which gives hope to others. Pains become gentle as they become fertile in beneficence, and productivity is an appeasement.
Best side of female levity.
And finally, by way of compensation, there are other respects in which women would suffer perhaps less than men from the disappearance of religious beliefs. Women live more completely in the present than men do, they are somewhat bird-like in their composition, and forget the tempest the instant it is passed. Women laugh as easily as they cry, and their laughter soon dries their tears: they are to be forgiven for at least one aspect of this divine levity. Moreover they have their household, all the tender and practical preoccupations of life, which absorb them more completely, heart and soul, than men. A woman’s happiness is probably complete the instant she believes herself to be beautiful and feels that she is loved; a man’s happiness is a much more complex product and contains a much larger number of intellectual elements. Women live more wholly within the limits of their own generation than men, and experience a sort of contemporary immortality in the hearts of those they love.
Modesty and love.