21
THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS
One day at Chapel, neither the Abbot nor the Dakotan appeared. The Columbian had left us. I looked up to see two young girls and another there. One of the papers brought in that day was upon the joining of two rivers. Where they came together was a whirlpool, a tremendous vortex that hushed all surrounding Nature. In the lowlands that lay about the place of that mighty meeting, a deep verdure came, for the winds carried the spray from the vortex. Nature loved the sounds of that pouring together. From the whirlpool, where two met, one great river emerged, white-maned with rapids for a way—then broad and pure and still, so that only birds and poets could hear the harmony deep as life. From time to time it gave forth its tributaries, yet seemingly was undiminished. Always on, always one, carrying all, making all pure, through the silent places, past the great mountains—to the sea.
It was not until I had read of this mating of waters that I realised the slightly different conditions in the Chapel, the young men not being there.
... The strangest humility stole over me. It had become the life-theme—to bring a breath from the open splendour of the future to the matings of men and women. I have never been able to understand how anything can be expected of men, if women are not great. I have never been able to understand how men and women can take each other as a matter of course. Most of all, I have been unable to understand how women can accept the man-idea of things.
The great killing in Europe was brought about because women have accepted the man-idea of life. Women are in this sense immediately responsible for the war, because they have not been true to the limitless potentialities of their being. Still from the very hour when man realised his greater bodily strength, continual pressures have fallen upon woman to break her dream. The Hebrew Scriptures show best the processes that have been brought to bear upon women—from the establishment of the patriarchal idea to the final going down into Egypt.
It is in the nature of women to please men, but they have not been allowed through the centuries to please men in their own way. Man wanted to be pleased according to his idea—and women, in accepting that, have prostituted themselves. Men have united with submissive women to bring forth children farther and farther from the dream. Man's idea is possession; that which is possessed is not free. Man's thought is to make woman conform to his ideas; and that which conforms, at once betrays the first law of the growth to greatness—that of being true to one's self.