>V;OF-CAIIFO/?^ ^^AavaaiH^"^ ^^•Aavnani'^'^ \WEUNIVER5/^ ^lOSANCElfj-^ < ' O ■^/iaaAiNniWv aWEI)NIVER% .VlOSANCElfx> %a3AiNn-3\^^ ^ILIBRARYQ^ ^tlIBRARYQ<- o %a3AiNn]i\v ^^ ^WEUNIVER% v^lOSANCElfx^ ^OFCALIF0% ^■^ommv^ ^^mwrn-i^ .^OFCAllFOfiU^ CD -sySlLIBRARYi?^^ ^v^UIBRARYac^ c:>^>-V-;-:_^-";^ '^:lOSANCElfj> o %a3AiNn-3W'^ ^lOSANCElfj> o ^<9Aav}iani^ ^- ^lOSANCElfj-^ O %a3AIN(l-3WV o -^l•llBRARY^/^ •-3 i 1/-^ ^ -s^tllBRARYQ^ ^TilJONVSOl^ '^/5a3AINn-3WV^ ^OJUVDJO"^ ^OFCALIFO/?^ ^OFCAIIFO/?^ >&AavaaiH^ ^OAavaaii-^^"^ .N\llIBRARY/7^ ^>^UIBRARY^/ , ^WEUNtVERS'/A .v\lOSANCElfx> '^mum^'^ %a3AIN(l-3WV -,^lllBRARYQc^ -j^UIBRARYQc^ SO ^tfOJIWOJO'^ \WEIIN1VER5'// %13DNVSm^ 'Or o -n ' V o ^lOSANCElfx^ o ^s^OF-CAllFO/?^^ %a3AiNa3Wv* ^ "^/^asAiNn^wv -v^llIBRARY^^ %JI1VJJ0^ LIFO/?^ ^OF CAIIFO/?^ 1SWEUNIVER% o %a3AINn-3WV^ <^^l•llBRARY. .vin^ANriiffv -vVTllRPARVA THE MORALITY OF WOMAN THE MORALITY OF WOMAN AND OTHER ESSAYS AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE SWEDISH OF ELLEN KEY BY MAMAH'BOUTON BORTHWICK THE RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR CO. FINE ARTS BUILDING CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1911 BY THE RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR CO. CHICAGO A > .—. ) ) CONTENTS THE MORALITY OF WOMAN . . page 5 THE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE . "39 THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN . "51 1714408 1 THE MORALITY OF WOMAN (TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH) ^'The law condemns to be hung those who counterfeit banknotes; a measure necessary for the public welfare. But he who coun- terfeits love, that is to say: he who, for a thousand other reasons but not for love, unites himself to one whom he- does not love and creates thus a family circle unworthy of that name — does not he indeed commit a crime whose extent and incalculable results in the present and in the future, disseminate far more terrible unhappiness than the counterfeiting of mil- lions of banknotes!'^ C. J. L. Almquist. THE simplest formula for the new conception of morality, which is beginning to be opposed to moral dogma still esteemed by all society, but especially by women, might be summed up in these words: Love is moral even without legal mar- riage, but marriage is immoral without love. 1 The customary objection to this tenet is that those who propose it forget all other ethical duties and legitimate feelings in order to make the sex relationship the center of existence, and love the sole decisive point of view in questions con- cerning this relationship. But if we except the struggle for existence — which indeed must be called not a relationship of life but a condition of life — what then can be more central for man, than a condi- tion decreed by the laws of earthly life — the cause of his own origin? Can one imagine a moment which penetrates more deeply his whole being? That many men live content without the happiness of love, that others after they attain it seek a new end for their activity, proves nothing against the truth of the experience that for men in general the erotic relation between man and woman becomes the deepest life determin- ing factor, whether negatively, because they are deprived of this relation or because they formed it unhappily; or posi- tively, because they have found therein the fullness of life. The depreciation for mankind of the significance of the sex relation and of the significance of love in the sex relation brings into it all the immorality still imposed by conventionalism as morality. We no longer consider, as in our mother's youth, ignorance of the side of life which concerns the propagation of the race the essential condition of womanly purity. But the conventional idea of purity still maintains that the untouched condition of the senses belongs to this con- ception. And it would be right, if the distinction were made between purity and chastity. * Purity is the new-fallen snow which can be melted or sullied; chastity is steel tempered in the fire by white heat. \ For chastity is only developed together with complete love ; this not only excludes equally all partition among several but also makes a separation between the de- mands of the heart and the senses impos- sible. The essence of chastity is, accord- ing to George Sand's profound words : "to be able never to betray the soul with the senses nor the senses with the soul" ("de ne pouvoir jamais tromper ni Tame avec les sens ni les sens avec Tame"). And as absolute consecration is its distinctive mark, so is it also its demand. This alone is the chastity v^hich must characterize the family life and form in the future the basis of foundation for the happiness of the people. Literature v^as, therefore, w^holly jus- tified w^hen in the name of nature it attacked the hyperidealistic subtlety w^hich raised the love of the heart to the highest rank and made that of the senses the low^est; and v^hen it desired that the woman should not only know what com- plete love was but that she should also when she loved desire that completeness. Because from time to time powerful voices were raised, like George Sand's or Almquist's, calling without consideration not only that marriage immoral which was consummated without mutual love but also that marriage immoral which was con- tinued without mutual love — a purer con- sciousness has awakened in questions regarding the conditions of the genesis of the unborn race and elevated the con- ditions of the personal dignity of man and woman. So eventually it will come to pass that no finely sensitive woman will become a mother except through mutual love; that this motherhood sanctioned legally or not so sanctioned shall be con- sidered the only true motherhood, and every other motherhood untrue. Thus will mankind awaken to such a feeling of the "Sanctity of the generation," and to such an understanding of the conditions of the health, strength and beauty of the race, that every marriage which has its source in worldly or merely sensual motives, or in reasons of prudence or in a feeling of duty shall be considered as Alm- quist calls it: "A criminal counterfeiting of the highest values of life." And the same criminal counterfeit obtains in every married life which is continued under the compulsion, the distaste or the resignation of one of the two. Man will be penetrated with the consciousness that the whole ethical conception which now in and with marriage gives to a husband or a wife rights over the personahty of the other, is a crude survival of the lower periods of culture; that everything w^hich is ex- changed between husband and wife in their life together, can only be the free gift of love, can never be demanded by one or the other as a right. Man will understand that when one can no longer continue the life in love then this life must cease; that all vows binding forever the life of feeling are a violence of one's personality, since one cannot be held accountable for the transformation of one's feeling. Even though this new moral ideal should in the beginning dissolve many untrue mar- riages and thus cause much suffering, yet all this suffering is necessary. It belongs to the attainment of the new erotic ethics which will uplift man and woman in that sphere where now the spirit of slavery and of obtuseness under a holy name degrade them; where social convention sanctions prostitution alongside monogamy, and vouchsafes to the seducer but not to the seduced, social esteem, calling the unmar- ried woman ruined who in love has ID become a mother, but the married woman respectable who without love gives chil- dren to the man who has bought her! The erotic-ethical consciousness of man- kind cannot be uplifted until the new idea of morality with all its consequences is clearly established. This ideal has two types of adversary. One is the adherent of the conventional morality; the other the supporter of the transitory union to which the name of "free love" is erroneously applied. Those of the first type demand quite the same morality for the man as for the woman. They assert that celibacy for either sex brings with it serious difficul- ties. They maintain that the social feel- ing of duty, not mutual love, must be the ground of conjugal fidelity. They call "pure love" love untouched by all that which they call "sensuality." These same moral dogmas in recent years have manifested themselves in the effort to quench all fire, whiten all burning red coals, and drape all nudity in literature and art. The supporters of this dogma 11 certainly understand — since, to begin at ^ the beginning they have surely glanced into the Bible and Homer — that the undertaking would be too vast were it to extend to classic literature. But all the more ardently they have directed their zeal against modern literature and art. And if they do not encounter energetic opposition the fig leaf will soon among us also attest the fall of taste and of the soul. "Free love" has also its fanatics who are guilty of quite as crass excess. They have no conception of soulful and true devotion, which they consider an absurdity or a con- ventionality under which human nature cannot bow without hypocrisy. For since experience shows that lifelong love is fre- quently an illusion, so, they say, one must not begin by expecting it ! The so-called Bohemians have shown as great mono- mania in their rotation around this one point, the right of the senses, as have the zealots of traditional morality in their rotation around their point, the suppres- sion of the senses. The extreme result of both would be retrogression to a lower degree of culture ; in one case to the asceti- cism of the Middle Ages, in the other to the promiscuity of the savage. Both for- get the reality of life. On the one side they ignore this reality in their absolute demands without consideration of tem- perament or circumstances; in their asser- tion of the unqualified moral superiority of woman and in depreciation of the signifi- cance of love for the full harmony of man and woman. On the other side they ignore this reality when they try to make woman as unrestrained morally as man has hith- erto been ; when they forget all the suffer- ing of the new generation born and reared in such an unrestrained existence; when they learn nothing of the nature of woman from the many younger and older women who live solitary and yet sound and useful lives in the deep conviction that, since they have not found the great, mutual love, which decides existence, any union with a man would be degrading and unhappy. Development has, because of multifarious influences made entirety and continuity in love a greater life necessity 13 for the woman of culture in general than for the man of the same intellectual level. A man, therefore, ordinarily dissolves an erotic relation without bitterness when he has ceased to love, while a woman, even after her love has ceased, often suffers because the relationship has not endured a lifetime. It is this ever increasing peremptory- demand for erotic completeness of the woman of developed individuality of the present time, which causes her always to wish to more fervently cherish the person- ality of the man as entirely as it is her happiness and her pride to be able to give her own. It is this demand for entirety which, among Germanic peoples, at least, makes woman neither desirous nor psy- chologically fitted for the so-called "free love." This is evidently to be concluded from the vicissitudes of those who have tried it. "Free love" is moreover quite as sense- less an expression as "legal love." Because no external command can call love into being or repress it; it is in this sense 14 always free, yet as are all feelings, it is bound by certain psychological laws. If not, then it does not deserve the name of love. It is with love as with the human face: though the individual varieties are infinite, yet there are certain general char- acteristic features which make all these different faces human faces, all these dif- ferent feelings human love. And in every time there is a type for both, which is rec- ognized as nobler than the others. This noblest type of love has been por- trayed by a Danish writer,* who endeav- ored to show that a conception of life founded upon evolution need not lead to laxity in sexual relations. He shows how the erotic feeling, as all other feelings, has been developed from an incoherent, inde- terminate and indefinite condition to one more coherent, determinate and differen- tiated, and so from a simple instinct for reproduction of the species has been finally *See Viggo Drewsen: "En Livsanskuelse grundet paa Elskow" ("A Conception of Life Founded upon Love") and "Forholdet mellem Maud og Kvinde belyst gjennem Udviklingshypothesen." ("The Relation be- tween Man and Woman in the Light of the Hypothesis of Evolution.") 15 transformed to an entirely personal, inner love. The highest type of this love is that w^hich exists between a man and a w^oman of the same moral and intellectual level; which demands of necessity reciprocal love in order to be perfected, and can therefore be contented with no other kind of reciprocal love than a corresponding erotic love. This perfect love includes the yearning desire of both lovers to become entirely one being, to free each other and to develop each other to the greatest per- fection. If love is perfected and consum- mated thus by the life together, then can it be given to only one and only once in a lifetime. This thought of the Danish writer is expressed with the concise brev- ity of the poet, by Bjornson, when he says of the sensation "feeling oneself doubled" in the beloved one: ''That is love, all else is not love." This feeling which liberates, conserves and deepens the personality, which is the inspiration to noble deeds and works of genius, is the opposite of the ephemeral, merely sensual love, which enslaves, dissipates and lessens the per- sonality. 16 It is only the great love which has a higher right than all other feelings and which can establish its right in a life. He who considers this love decisive for the morality of such an erotic union can- not believe that external ties are necessary to give ethical value to this union. Social considerations, prudence and feeling for others can indeed in certain cases make the legal bond desirable. But it can just as little give increased consecration to real love, as it can give any consecration what- ever to a relation in which this content is lacking. And even if it would be too dog- matic to establish just the highest type of love as ethical norm for all relations between man and woman, since life proves that the highest love is still as rare as the highest beauty, yet it is on the contrary not premature to assert that this love, legally sanctioned or not, is moral, and that where it is lacking on either side, a moral ground is furnished for the disso- lution of the relationship. The ever clearer consciousness that love can dispense with marriage yet marriage cannot dispense 17 with love, is already partially recognized in modern society, by the facility of divorce. And it is only a question of time when the law which gives to one person the power to constrain the other to remain with him against his will, will be abro- gated, so contrary is this possibility to that developed conception of the freedom of love — which is not at all the same as so-called "free love!" It is not historically true that it was, as has been asserted, some certain conception of morality, some certain form of conclud- ing or dissolving marriage which, in the last analysis, has been a decisive factor in the progress or decadence of peoples. Among the Jews as among the Greeks, among the Romans as among our Ger- manic forefathers, at the most flourishing period, there existed many laws and cus- toms which were considered moral that the present time considers immoral. The decisive thing for the sound life of these peoples was, that that which they consid- ered right had sovereign power to bind them: the faithfulness to the conception of 18 duty more than the content of conception determines the moral soundness of a peo- ple. Society is in danger, not when the ideals are raised but when they are lost. But a very highly developed historical sense is necessary to see at the same time the connection and the difference between dissolution and reorganization. More- over it is necessary to have the large view of the essentials of life which distinguishes the true poet, the view which Sophocles possessed when he let his Antigone follow the higher law of affection and commit a violation of the law which — according to the conception of that time — would lead to general license if it remained unpun- ished. The new ideal of marriage is now being formed in and through all the many literary and personal dissensions in which it constitutes the theme. Yes, it is formed also in the midst of all the conflicts of life for which marriage gives so much occasion. It is true there are now married people who separate because from the very begin- ning they considered fidelity impossible and so did not even strive for it. But 19 many other divorces have far more com- plex, psychological reasons. When tw^o people are married young, personal devel- opment takes often entirely opposite directions; if they have married in more mature years, then their individual differ- ences, already strongly marked from the beginning, make the problem of common life together difficult of solution. The strongly developed sensibility of the mod- ern individual to disposition, nuances, variations of humor, makes a lack of sym- pathy still more unendurable; a true sym- pathy a far greater source of joy. The whole multiplicity of psycho-physical influences and impressions which the members of a family exercise upon one another for pleasure and displeasure, sym- pathy and variance, harmony and discord, are now in all relationships, but above all in marriage, felt with greatest intensity. It is in those natures most individually devel- oped, most refined, for whom the nuances of the married life, not its simple primal colors, signify happiness or unhappiness. To this general delicacy of feeling there 20 is added especially the heightened sensi- bility of woman to the discord between that which she expected in marriage and that which in reality it offered her, because the union often lacked the freedom, the understanding which her sympathetic feeling now craves. This lack of harmony is inevitable since the forms of marriage have not even approximately undergone the transformation which would corre- spond to the individual development of the two beings, of the woman especially, whom it unites. But while all these rea- sons, cursorily indicated here, contribute their part in the increased number of divorces, the life of finer feeling creates, on the other hand, an ever more intimate married life. There are married people who have pledged each other at marriage full freedom to dissolve the union when either of them so wished, and others who have never given legal form to their mar- riage yet realize fully and richly love in "sorrow and in joy," in sympathetic work together, in reciprocal, true devotion. There have been, on the other hand, cham- 21 pions of so-called "free love" who were themselves by nature such pronounced believers in only one marriage that their life was wrecked when the one to whom they had bound themselves applied to their own case their own theories. It is always the character which ultimately decides. Character can make the radical theorist a moral paragon and the pillar of society resting upon conservative ground a reed of passion; it can make the advocate of egoism sublimely devoted and the apostle of Christianity deeply egoistic in his love. So many men, so many souls; so many souls, so many destinies. And to wish to apply to this whole, complex, manifold, incalculable erotic life, with its unfathom- able depths, an immutable ethical stand- ard, when judging the relationship between man and woman, and to make this standard decisive also for the ethical value of the personality in other respects — is quite as naive as the attempt of a child to draw up in his little bucket the wonderful depth of the vast storm-driven sea. 22 Love, as life, will fortunately remain an eternal mystery which no science will be able to penetrate and which reason cannot rule. Our only hope for the future is that man, endowed with a more delicate sense, will listen to the secrets of his own life. A more highly developed and differentiated soul life will give him a surer instinct or a keener power of analysis which will pre- vent him from confounding a passing sen- timent of sympathy, need of tenderness or satisfaction of vanity with a love which decides existence. Now, on the contrary, many believe that a wave of admiration, of gratitude, or of pity is the whole sea; that the reflection of the fire of another is the holy fire itself! No one can with certainty predict the final result of the profound revolution of the feeling and of the customs which is now taking place. But one thing appears certain : the danger to the future of man- kind can scarcely be that the new ideal will result in general license. Rather it will lead to so individual, differentiated and refined love that erotic happiness will be 23 increasingly difficult to find and the ideal- ists of love will more frequently prefer celibacy to a compromise with their greater demands for sympathetic love. The occasional experience, often only the dream of such a love, sensible to the finest shades of the soul, to the most deli- cate vibrations of the senses — of a love which is an all comprehensive tenderness, an all embracing intimacy — has already raised the erotic demands and the erotic existence of thousands of men and women to a sphere of more infinite longing, more fervid chastity than that of their contem- poraries. It is this experience or this dream which has already begun to assume form in the art and literature of the pres- ent time. It is true the extreme discord between the peculiar character of man and of woman has long been the favorite theme, especially in modern literature. But among the wild, discordant tones a new leitmotiv resounds which will swell and rise and fill the void with a harmony, still but faintly divined. One of the conditions that this harmony 24 become as perfect as possible is that woman in life as in literature shall begin to be more honest and man more eager to listen when she reveals to him something of her own nature. Men have desired and justly that women should learn from their confessions in regard to the conflict between man and woman. But woman because of the conventional conception of womanly purity has been intimidated from conceding to man a deep insight into her erotic life experiences. Only when women begin to tell the truth about themselves will literature uni- versally illuminate the still unknown depths of woman's erotic temperament. To the present time it has been almost exclusively men poets who have made revelations about women. The nearer these poets have approached life, the more surely have they seen the highest expres- sion of the eternal feminine as the great women poets also saw it: in erotic love and in mother love. And it was the com- pleteness of her consecration which was in their eyes a woman's supreme chastity. 25 It is the great poets who have taught and have continued to teach youth to revere the ''all powerful Eros." This is the only "morality" which has a future. Only by conforming to this shall we gradually succeed in preventing the erotic feeling from appearing sometimes as a brutal instinct or marriage from being founded upon a fleeting attraction. An ideal of negative purity — even incarnated in the person of Jesus — can- not inflame youth and therefore cannot in the long run protect him. That alone which has the power not only to restrain but also to transform the brutal instinct is a conception of the existence of a higher feeling which belongs to the same sphere of life as the instinct itself. To burn the ideal of a great love into the soul of youth in letters of fire — that is to give him a real moral strength. Thus there springs up in man the ineradicable, invincible instinct that an erotic relation can exist only as the expression of a recip- rocal all comprehensive love. Thus will youth learn to consider the love-marriage 26 as the central life relation, the center of life, and he will be inflamed with the desire to develop and to conserve body and soul for the entrance into this most holy thing in nature, wherein man and woman find their happiness in creating a new race for happiness. Thus will young men and women in increasing numbers understand that their own happiness, as well as that of the coming generation will be the greater the more completely they can give their personality to love. Boys and girls, young men and maidens, men and women by coeducation, by joint labor and com- radeship will develop in one another that mutual understanding which will remove the enmity between the sexes, in which modern individualization — and the there- with increasing demands of the person- ality — has so far found its expression. The usages of individual homes will be differentiated, instead of as now main- taining the same conventional forms for all families. After some generations so educated, under the influence of relation- ships thus arranged, we shall see mar- 27 in which not observation of a duty but Hb- erty itself is the pledge that assures fidel- ity. Then will love be cherished as the most delicate, most precious thing in life; then will egoism and unselfishness attain a perfect harmony, because the husband and wife find happiness only in assuring the happiness of the other. That is the union which the Norwegian poet defines when he calls true marriage "a yearning quest after each other, an energetic culti- vation, assertion of the personality, in order to be able to give one's personality; an ever increasing intimacy of under- standing of each other; a union which the whole course of life will make more pro- found." So prepared, the absolute human ideal will become perhaps a living reality; not as an isolated man, not as an isolated woman, but as a man and a woman who shall give to mankind a new religion — that of happiness. * * * * Many indeed still doubt that marriage 28 can become this highest form of existence in life, in which the surrender of the ego and the self-seeking of the ego reach a per- fect harmony. It is asserted that this ideal condition can be attained perhaps by exceptional people, but never by ordinary people, and that the morality of the latter can be kept sound only by legal and social restraint. My belief, however, is that, just as the Children of Israel followed the pillar of fire, so ordinary men follow at a distance exceptional men, and in this way mankind as a whole advances. Ordinary men are just now determined upon certain concep- tions which at the end of the previous cen- tury were not conclusive even for excep- tional people. The marriage of reason, for example, is already considered ignoble by many. The authority of the parents is very seldom in evidence either to coerce the children into a marriage without love or to restrain them from it. Even the superficial erotic emotion of our day is serious in comparison with the shallow and frivolous or vulgar and cruel gallantry 29 of the eighteenth century. In the geolog- ical deposits of legislation and still more in those of literature we can study these risings of the levels of the erotic senti- ments. So we are thereby convinced that the demands and conflicts of the excep- tional men become gradually those of the ordinary men also, even though the ordi- nary men are always some generations behind the men who are stirred by new emotions, new conflicts, when the many have reached the problems which some decades before occupied only the few. Certainly it may, under present imper- fect conditions, often be a duty not to destroy the outward form of marriage for the sake of the children. But by no means can this duty be preached as universally binding. Only the individual himself can in each separate case determine the disso- lution best, both for the children and for the married couple themselves, of a mar- riage which has fallen asunder within. When we consider the development in its entirety, the sooner people cease to sanc- tion the present marriage the more fortu- 30 nate it will be; for the sooner will the transformation be forced upon us by which marriage will maintain its perma- nence only from within. Only then will man be wholly able to have the experi- ences and to find the new, delicate means by which fidelity can be strengthened and happiness assured. But man will not seek this expedient so long as he can rely upon the power of legal right and social opinion to hold together that which love does not unify. The ever increasing individualization of love indicates that mono-marriage will doubtless remain the form of erotic union between man and woman. But this rule will have, in the future, as in the past, many exceptions, since the feelings can change. The conflicts which will thus arise will bring suffering as a consequence, but not the bitterness nor the contention which the property sense in marriage now so often occasions. The deep conscious- ness that love belongs not to the sphere of duty but only to that of freedom will cause the one who has lost the love of the other 31 to feel the same resignation before the inevitable, as if he were separated from the other by death. And in cases where the individual is not capable of this resignation, then the law as well as custom shall make it impossible for the one to hold back the other against his will. Each of the twain shall be mas- ter of his own person and of his property, of his work and of his mode of life; the union shall in each especial case be arranged by the agreement of the individ- uals, and the law shall decide only the rights and duties of the husband and wife in regard to the children. When in this way it shall come to pass that neither the husband nor wife shall have in outward sense, in external things, anything to gain or to lose by the consum- mation or dissolution of marriage, then only the erotic problem appears in all its seriousness. Many mistakes, many caricatures, many tragic failures will naturally be the result of freedom. Great waves have great combers. A new principle cannot be put 32' into effect without bringing with it new mistakes. But we may, however, be con- vinced that the laws of Hfe — to which belongs the law that suffering follows the misuse of freedom — will finally be able to bring everything within its right limits. Nothing indeed has occasioned more suf- fering as an indirect consequence than Christianity, and although Jesus knew that, yet he did not hesitate to give to mankind this new creative force which destroyed in order to create. But it is above all His ideality which His present followers lack, the great ideality which dares to believe in the might of the spirit rather than that of the form. It is, therefore, quite natural that these Christians, the upholders of society, oppose the new ideal of morality with vain apprehensions. They believe that a woman whose conscious aim is "Self- assertion in self-surrender" will forfeit the immediate, fresh originality in this sur- render. They believe marriage must be destroyed when the support of its devel- opment is no longer bond and injunction, 33 but is its own vital force. They believe morality v^ill lose in the struggle if youth learns to consider the love between man and woman as the central condition of life. These, and a hundred similar appre- hensions have all one and the same source. This source is the Christian conception of life which has displaced the great, sound, strong conviction of antiquity of the holiness of nature. Mary was the "Virgin Mother;" Jesus, celibate. Paul regarded marriage as the lesser of two evils. Thus man first learned to regard the unmarried state as the higher and the married as the lower state. The result of the Christian conception of life then was that the sex relation was regarded in and for itself as unholy, human nature in and for itself as base and the earthly demand for happiness as the greatest egotism. Therefore the Christian conception of life is now, since it has accomplished its great task of culture, the development of altruism — an obstacle to the unified con- ception out of which the happiness of man- kind will finally develop. 34 No one who thinks or feels deeply dreams that this happiness can be easily achieved. The consistent belief of monism in human nature can only gradually leaven life. And until then suffering will be for the majority the first result of free- dom. Even for the few, to whom the rela- tionships have already given happiness, must this be incomplete in the measure in which they feel sympathy with all the suf- fering about them. But above all is hap- piness rare because the genius for happi- ness is still so rare, is indeed on the whole the rarest genius. To possess it means to approach life with the humiHty of a beg- gar, but to treat it with the proud gener- osity of a prince; to bring to its totality the deep understanding of a great poet and to each of its moments the abandon- ment and ingenuousness of a child; it means to be able to enjoy wholly each present, immediate, joy and yet to be able to give up the incidental joy for the endur- ing one. Happiness lies so far from man ; but he must begin by daring to will it. It is this 35 courage which Christianity broke down when it directed the soul from the earth to eternity and gave to renunciation the highest place among ethical values. Through the Revaluation of all Values, which is now going on, happiness will receive this place. He who contends for the deepest of all ideas, Spinosa's idea, that "J^^Y is perfec- tion," contends with certainty of victory, however solitary he may stand, however much of his heart's blood may be shed in the strife. We live still in our inmost soul only by that for which we die. And all for which we have died will live when the time shall come in which all we ourselves have suffered signifies nothing for us, yet that for which we have suffered signifies every- thing for others. 36 THE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE THE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE THERE are phrases which charm like a song, and one of these phrases is: "The Woman of the Future." This sings for me in the verse of a poet and a seer, whose name now shines with the radiance of the morn- ing star, although during his lifetime it was sullied with defamation as that of an atheist and destroyer of society — because the luminous path of his thoughts appeared to the prejudices of his contemporaries as a blinding flash of lightning. His poet's vision revealed to him a new time in which women would be "... frank, beautiful and kind As the free heaven, which rains fresh light and dew On the wide earth 39 From custom's evil taint exempt and pure; Speaking the wisdom once they could not think, Looking emotions once they feared to feel, And changed to all which once they dared not be Yet being now, made earth like heaven." This beautiful profile of the woman of the future, which Shelley has traced, floats before me when I attempt here to draw her portrait in more precise outlines. 5ii * * ^ The storm and stress period of woman and the new social and psychological for- mations thereby entailed must, indeed, extend far into the twentieth century. This period of conflict will cease only when woman within and out of marriage shall have received legal equality with man. It will cease when such a transfor- mation of society shall have come to pass that the present rivalry between the sexes shall be ended in a manner advantageous to both and when finally the work of earn- ing a livelihood as well as care of the household shall have received such form 40 that it will weigh less heavily than now upon the woman. Toward the end of the twentieth cen- tury only could the type of the nineteenth century woman have reached its culmina- tion and a new type of woman begin to appear. My ideal picture of the woman of the future, and when one paints an ideal one does not need to limit one's imagination, is that she will be a being of profound con- trasts which have attained harmony. She will appear as a great multiplicity and a complete unity; a rich plenitude and a per- fect simplicity; a thoroughly educated creature of culture and an original sponta- neous nature; a strongly marked human individuality and a complete manifesta- tion of most profound womanliness, j This woman will understand the spirit of a scientific work, of an exact search after truth, of free, independent thought, of artistic creation. She will comprehend the necessity of the laws of nature and of the progress of evolution ; she will possess the feeling of solidarity and regard for the 41 interests of society. Because she will know more and think more clearly than the woman of the present, she will be more just; because she will be stronger, she will be better; because she will be wiser, she will be also more gentle. She will be able to see things in the ensemble and in their connection with each other; she will lose thereby certain prejudices which are still called virtues. Nevertheless she will remain the one who forms customs. But she will not seek her support in social con- vention ; she will find it in the laws of her own being. She will have the courage to think her own thoughts and to investigate the new thoughts of her time. She will dare to experience and to ackowledge feel- ings which she now suppresses or con- ceals. Her full liberty of action and the complete development of her personality will render possible intrepid efforts for life, an energetic striving after an exist- ence which shall conform to her own ego. And such an existence she will be able also to find with surer instinct than now. She will understand how to work with more 42 intensity, to rest with more intensity and with more intensity to dehght in all imme- diate, simple sources of joy than the woman of the present is able to do. Thus in the new woman the feeling of life will be enhanced, her experience will be more profound; her soul life, her demands for beauty, her senses will be more developed and refined. She will be more sensitive, more delicately vibratory; she will there- fore be able to be more profoundly happy and also to suffer more keenly than the woman of our time. Thus the woman of the twentieth cen- tury will give new value to the life of society and to art, to science and to litera- ture. But her greatest cultural signifi- cance remains, however, by means of the enigmatic, the instinctive, the intuitive and the impulsive in her own being to pro- tect mankind from the dangers of exces- sive culture. In face of knowledge she will maintain the rights of the unknowable ; in face of logic, feeling; in face of reality, possibilities; and in face of analysis, intui- tion. Woman will above all further the 43 growth of the soul, man that of the intelli- gence ; she will extend the sphere of intui- tion, he that of reason; she will realize tenderness, he justice; she will triumph by audacity, he by courage. The woman of the future will not only have learned much, she will also have for- gotten much — especially the feminine as well as anti-feminine follies of the present time. With her whole being she will desire the happiness of love. She will be chaste, not because she is cold, but because she is pas- sionate. She will be reserved, not because she is bloodless but because she is full blooded. She will be soulful and therefore she will be sensuous; she will be proud and therefore she will be true. She will demand a great love, because she herself can give a still greater. The erotic problem, because of her refined idealism, will be extremely complicated and often almost insoluble. Therefore the happiness which she will give and experience will be richer, more profound and enduring than anything which up to the present time has been called happiness. Many traits which belong to the wife and mother of today- will probably be lacking in the woman of the future. She will remain always the beloved, the sweetheart, and only so will she become a mother. She will devote her finest and strongest forces to the diffi- cult and beautiful art of being at the same time the beloved and the mother; her religious cult will be to create the supreme happiness of life. Because she will know and value the psychical and physical con- ditions of health and beauty she will choose the father of her children with clearer vision and deeper feeling of respon- sibility than at present; she will bear and rear sound and beautiful beings and she herself will possess greater attraction and longer youth than the woman of the pres- ent. She will charm all her life, because she will always beautify existence. But she will please only because, at every age, she will be wholly herself; and her imperish- able youth, her most perfect beauty, she will reveal solely to him whom she loves. She will know that the charm of the soul 45 is the most profound; and out of the pleni- tude of her being she will create the eter- nal renewal of this charm, always unex- pected and in infinitely nuanced expres- sions of her personal grace. By her mere presence she will remove the constraint of form and custom and will create vary- ing expressions, elevated by her own nobility, for the family life, the public life and for society. She will probably speak less than the woman of the present time, but her silence and her smile will be more eloquent. She will give herself always directly and always with moderation, dif- ferent and always constant, spontaneous and always exquisite. Her being will pour forth, brimming free and fresh, like the surge of the mountain torrent, but like this, dominated by a certain inner rhythm. However far she allows herself to go — in ecstasy of joy, in passion of tenderness, in delirium of happiness or in the frenzy of grief — yet she will never lose herself. She will be a multiplicity of women and yet always one, whether she plays and smiles or suffers and smiles; whether she beams with health or bleeds with mortal 46 wounds ; whether she be imbued with and radiate repose or nervous intensity, joy or tears, sun or night, coolness or ardor. The woman of the future exists already in man's dreams of women, and woman fashions herself according to the dreams of man. The modern man's ideal of woman is not the masculine woman, but the revelation of the "eternal feminine" developed in all directions. This new type of woman has already gleamed forth here and there, not only in our time but in cen- turies passed. In the Middle Ages she wrote the letters of Heloise ; in the Renais- sance, Leonardo painted her as Mona Lisa; and in the eighteenth century she held the salon of Mile. Lespinasse. In our century she wrote the love sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; she appeared upon the stage as Eleonora Duse — and as in a precious stone her being is crystal- lized by the poet's words with which Rahel's personality was epitomized: "calm yet emotionally vivid.* ♦Footnote from French translation: — The reference here is to Rahel de Varnhagen. The citation is taken from the "Hyperion" of Holderlin, a German poet of whom mention is made apropos of Nietzsche, upon whom he had great influence. 47 THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN CONVENTIONALITY is the tacit agreement to set ap- pearance before reality, form before content, subordina- tion before principal. Its field in certain measure is 'Vogue" chang- ing according to the idea of beauty of each new season. In deeper sense, however, a part of the sphere of conventionality coin- cides always with that of law and custom, and with the conception of the amount of self-control and self-sacrifice which every individual must impose upon himself for the common life with others. The further the evolution of humanity advances, the fewer are the fields to which the power of society over the thought, belief, mode of life and manner of work of the individual is restricted. More and more prevalent 51 becomes the conviction that all those forms of expression of the individual w^hich do not interfere with the rights of others must be free. A great part of the w^ork of culture of each new generation has consisted and still consists in clear- ing away great masses of conceptions of right dried up into conventionalism, dead rubbish which prevents the new germs from sprouting. In every period strong voices are heard which desire freedom from the prevailing customs, and right of choice for the individual conscience and temperament. In this ever-continuous struggle it is important to distinguish what are really still living conceptions of right from factitious conceptions, which form only a conventional obstacle to a more beautiful freedom, a deeper truth, a greater originality, a richer life content. Yet it is not only old conventionalism which needs to be rooted out. In every faction, in every social circle are soon formed lifeless collections of prejudices, paltry motives, dependent customs. It is always the women among whom conven- 52 tionalism reaches its acme. For conserva- tism, that deep significant instinct of woman, becomes also often a prop of con- ventionaHty. Women are as yet seldom sufficiently developed personally to dis- tinguish, in that which they wish to cher- ish, the appearance from the reahty, the form from the content; or if they do dis- tinguish, they have as yet rarely the cour- age to choose the content and reality if the majority have declared for form and appearance! In the literature of the last ten years and in part also among women there prevails, however, a strong opposition to conven- tionality. This opposition has been di- rected especially against the archaic ideal of woman, according to which renuncia- tion is still considered the highest attri- bute of woman ; and against the antiquated conception of morality which regarded love without marriage as immoral, but any marriage, even without love, as moral. The women who adopted the new ideal — which a Norwegian poet strikingly de- fined as "Self-assertion in self-surrender." 53 "Affirmation of self in giving of self" — encounter now on the part of the modern woman's-rights advocates the same kind of conventional objection as in the fifties and sixties v^as directed against the then new ideal of the earlier woman movement. The older emancipation movement ad- vanced along the first line in the effort to establish the right of woman as a human being; that is, to give to woman the same rights as to man. The present movement purposes to assert the right of woman as an individuality; the absolute right to be- lieve, to feel, to think and to act in her own way, if it does not interfere with the rights of others. Since the first end was a gen- eral one, the movement could in great part be made effective by collective work in attaining that end; the exposition of the independence of the individuality of woman, on the contrary, must be the per- sonal concern of each single individual. This those women do not understand who still are working ever for the first end — the rights of woman as a human being. They do not understand that every woman 54 must receive, not merely her universal rights, as a member of the body politic, but also her entire individual rights as the possessor of a definite personality. The right to establish an ego independent of, and perhaps entirely at variance with, the- ories and ideals is at heart the point of struggle between the one or the other indi- vidual woman and the women representa- tives of the earlier era of the woman ques- tion. The discovery that each personality is a new world — which in Shakespeare found its Columbus, a Columbus after whom new mariners immediately under- took new conquests — this discovery of literature has as yet only partially pene- trated the universal consciousness, as a truth of experience. But the fact that it has made a beginning, that the conven- tional, inflexible conception of the nature of man and of the problems resulting therefrom is giving place to a relative and individual conception — this is above all to be ascribed to the thinkers and poets, in whom the conventional has its deadliest 55 foe; the recreative poets whose character- istic is deep appreciation of all primal forces of existence, of all essential ele- ments of life. For although convention- alism in the form of the echo springs up also around genius, yet the creative genius itself is always a protest against conven- tionality in which any selfjustified life or art — conception has perished. The poet who here in the North shat- tered with a blow the archaic conventional ideal of woman who sacrificed herself in all circumstances, was Ibsen when he sent Nora out away from her husband and children in order to fulfill the duties toward herself; when by means of **Ghosts" he etched into the moral con- sciousness the idea that a woman's fidelity to her own personality is more significant for the welfare of others as well as of her- self than her fidelity to conventional con- ceptions of morality. And Ibsen has always been the annun- ciator of the freedom under one's own re- sponsibility which is the key to individu- alism. Long has man listened, only in 56 part has he understood. And no con- sciousness is in this respect more hermet- ically sealed than that of certain woman's rights advocates! That all women should have the same rights as men, this is all that they mean in their talk about the free- ing of the woman's personality. They forget that the right to be what she wishes entails often for the woman, as for the man, the obligation to suppress that which she really is by nature and feeling. They forget that the personality has deeper claims than the right to work. They over- look the infinite variety of shades of feel- ing, thought and character which caused the demand of solidarity in opinions and actions, among the women active in the woman question, to degenerate into sup- pression of woman's individuality. Cer- tainly it is true that united action is still necessary in order that woman may ob- tain the rights which she still lacks. But all compulsory mobilized action is here more dangerous than elsewhere ; because for the advance of the woman question in the deepest sense it is essential precisely 57 that the different feminine individuaUties show their useful faculties as freely as possible in the different fields of activity. The conventionality which is a menace in the woman question betrays itself, not only in exaggerated demands for solidar- ity, but also in the mode of treating the objections of the opposition. It reveals itself in the lack of comprehension of the fact that the woman question, particularly in what concerns the labor field, now inter- sects on all sides the path of the social question. It especially evinces itself in the inability to understand how the woman question, as it advances in its evolution, becomes more complex, and how thereby, ever greater difficulties arise in taking an absolute position in the questions con- nected with it. It is necessary that woman's opportu- nities for culture be multiplied. But do all these measures of culture develop also the personality? Have we not met the finest, most original, most charming natures among unlettered dames of sev- enty and eighty years, or among such 58 I women as never had a systematic educa- tion? It is right that the wages of women should be increased; but will the labor value of women increase in proportion? Can we even desire that the majority of these women bent over their desks shall devote a live interest to their work, when their sole essential being would first find expression only when bent over a cradle? It is well also for girls of wealth to wish to have a vocation. But is it also good if they, because they can be satisfied with a smaller wage, take away the work from poor girls and men, often more compe- tent, who have to live entirely by the fruits of their work, and must therefore demand larger wages? So long as these and many other ques- tions remain unanswered, there is today quite as much that is conventional in re- joicing unreservedly over the many girls who become students or leave the home, where they are very much needed, for out- side work, as there was in our grandmoth- er's time in wishing to limit the province of woman to the kitchen, the nursery and the drawing room. 59 It is not yet known whether woman, through the competition for bread, will develop physiologically and psychologic- ally to greater health and harmony. Woman is a new subject for research, and only centuries of full freedom in choice of labor and in personal development can furnish material for well grounded con- clusions. Many signs, however, point to this: — that an ineffaceable, deep-rooted psychological difference due to physical peculiarities will always exist between man and woman, which probably will al- ways keep her by preference active in the sphere of the family, while he probably will remain active in other spheres of cul- ture. But with a perfect equality with man and a full personal development, woman can have a significance for culture in its entirety and for the direction of soci- ety which we can still scarcely divine. The conventional points of view, just mentioned in considering the woman question, retard the development of woman's individuality above all because they overlook the diversity of nature and 60 the complexity of the problem. The con- ventional conception of self-renunciation as the highest expression of womanhood is still continually the greatest obstacle to the achievement of woman's personality. To be able to perish for a loved being with joy is one of the beautiful inalienable privi- liges of woman nature. But by consider- ing this under all circumstances as ideal, woman has thus retarded not only her own development but also that of man. If we compare marriages of older genera- tions with those of the younger, the men of the latter show great advance in regard to considerate tenderness and sympathetic understanding toward their wives — wives who have on the other hand a per- sonal life more complete and with other demands than formerly. Both have thus gained since women have begun to prac- tice the self-renunciation of self-assertion ! Because for every self-sacrificing woman nature it is infinitely harder to take her due than to sacrifice it. * * * * Conventional womanhood will ever 61 have its strongest support in education. The individuahty of a child is seldom repressed in the inconsiderate and brutal manner of former times. But by attrition it is effaced. In the olden times the chil- dren enjoyed a certain freedom in the nursery where the expression of life, mani- festation of joy, pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy of the growing personality was not continually moder- ated. Now the children are continually with the parents and these accustom them to a certain exacting restraint. The chil- dren wish to be entertained; they cannot play of their own initiative, for they lose the desire that originates in the freedom of the creative phantasy. Neither chil- dren nor parents possess themselves in peace. In the continual association the children are worn out by commands so varied and numerous that obedience can- not be maintained. They do not, there- fore, learn the discipline necessary for the development of their personality — to subordinate the unessential life express- ions to the essential and to dominate even 62 over these last — a culture of the fallow- child ground which must begin early in order to become a second nature. And this happens only when the edu- cator knows clearly what he will adhere to as essential in the development of the child, and when according to that he es- tablishes his commands and prohibitions, which must be few in number but as im- mutable as the laws of nature, and if violated must bring upon the child, not artificial punishment, but the inevitable results of the act itself. So can man by fixed practice form the child of nature into a man of culture, who out of consideration for himself and for others curbs his ten- dencies which are inimical to society, without, however, suppressing his person- ality. / For outside the field of immutable laws, children ought not to be constrained or coerced against their nature and their disposition, against their healthy egoism and against their especial tastes. Now many mothers by their own efface- ment of self develop an unjustified egoism of the child, but desire in other respects a 63 self-control, a circumspection, a modera- tion and discretion such as a whole life has not ordinarily been able to inculcate in the mother herself. Out of this soft clay, which is material for an individual- ity, parents, servants and teachers mold a society being, sometimes a social being, but never a human being. This modeling is called education. And a part of the earliest education must, as I have just shown, truly consist in that of molding. But after the first years of life the aim of education should be to prevent all molding and on the contrary to assure the freedom or development of the single force which, considered in the light of the whole, makes it significant for mankind that new generations succeed those which have disappeared — the force of a new personality. Every child is a new world, a world into which not even the tenderest love can wholly penetrate. However openly the clear eyes meet ours, however confidingly the soft hand is laid in ours, this tender being will perhaps one day deplore the 64 suffering of his childhood, because we treated him according to the assumption that children are replicas, not originals; not new, wonderful personalities. It is true the child in certain measure is a repe- tition of the child nature of all times, but at the same time, and this in a far higher degree, an absolutely new synthesis of soul qualities, with new possibiUties for sorrow and joy, strength and weakness. This new being will, upon his own re- sponsibility, at his own risk, live this terri- fyingly earnest life. What creative force, new inceptions, he will be able to bring to it; what elasticity he will possess under the blows of destiny, what power to give and to receive happiness — all depends, outside of nature itself, in essential degree upon the educator's method of treating this individual child nature. Goethe long ago lamented that educa- tion aspired to make Philistines out of personalities. And this is now much worse since education has become peda- gogical, without at the same time becom- ing psychological. 65 Only he who treats the feelings, will and rights of a child with quite the same consideration as those of a grown person, and who never allows the personality of a child to feel other limitations than those of nature itself, or the consideration, based upon good grounds, for the child's own welfare or that of others — only he pos- sesses the first requisite principle of real education. Education must assuredly be a liberating of the personality from the domination of its own passions. But it must never strive to exterminate passion itself, which is the innermost power of the personality and which cannot exist with- out the coexisting danger of a correspond- ing fault. To subdue the possible fault in each spiritual inclination by eliciting through love the corresponding good in the same inclination — this alone is indi- vidual education. It is an extremely slow education, in which immediate interfer- ence signifies little, the spiritual atmo- sphere of the home, its mode of life and its ideals signify on the contrary almost everything. The educator must above all 66 understand how to wait: to reckon all ef- fects in the light of the future, not of the present. \ The educator believes often that he spares the child future suffering when he "opposes his onesidedness," as it is called. He does not reflect that in the effort to force the child in a direction contrary to that in which his personality evinces itself, he merely succeeds in diminishing his na- ture; yes, often merely in retaining the weakness in the quality, not the corre- sponding strength! But ordinarily it is indeed no such prin- ciple, but only the old thoughtlessly main- tained ideal of self-renunciation which is decisive. We repress the child's joy of discovery and check the spirit of enter- prise; wound his extremely sensitive sense of beauty; exercise force over his most personal possessions, his tokens of tend- erness; combat his aversions and quench his enthusiasm. Amid such attacks upon their individual being, their feelings and their inclinations most children, but espe- cially girls, grow up. It is therefore not 67 surprising that when grown they seldom look back upon their childhood as a happy time. An intense feeling of life, a sense of plenitude, entirety, of the complete devel- opment of the powers of the potentialities — this constitutes happiness. Children have more possibilities of happiness than adults, for they can experience this feeling of joy of life more undividedly and immedi- ately. They should utilize these possibili- ties of happiness while the parents have partial power over their life. Soon enough must they on their own initiative attempt, accomplish, bleed; and herein no one of all the influences of education has even approximately the significance of this: that the individual be not overtrained, that he have still strength enough to live. That means: to suffer his own sorrow, to enjoy his own happiness, to perform his own work, to think his own thoughts, to be able to devote himself absolutely and entirely — the sole condition of being able to work, to love and to die. It is a deep psychological truth that the 68 »> kingdom of heaven belongs to the chil- dren. For no one attains the highest that life offers in any other way than by sim- plicity, unworldliness and the power of devoting his whole being without reserve to his object. This is the strength of the child nature. If a mother by education has preserved this holy strength and de- veloped it to a conscious power, then she has given to mankind not only a new being but a new personality. But the education in the family, just as in the school, is tending in the opposite direction. The destruction of the person- ality is therefore the great evil of the time. * * * * Yet man is fortunately a vigorous or- ganism. And those, whose personality has been bowed or repressed by education, could raise themselves again and create freedom for their development if they were aware of the value of this freedom. Few beings and so likewise few women can be exceptional. But if only a few are destined for a great personality, yet never- theless most can, in spite of the errors 69 of education, develop a certain degree of personality, if they are deeply, earnestly concerned in it. For everything is interrelated. No one lives unpunished by a second hand. We cannot advance intellectually by borrow- ing, without becoming also morally less scrupulous. We are today unjust to a book, a picture, a drama, because we pro- nounce judgment upon it according to the words of others, or because we do not dare to show the pleasure it gives us, in case the critic has not granted us permission to be pleased, or because we feign indigna- tion we do not feel, but which others re- quire of us in the name of taste or moral- ity. Tomorrow, in the same way, we shall be unjust or dishonest to man, or to our own feeling — an injustice or a dishonesty which can have influence over the destiny of a whole life. The sum of spiritual riches, of spiritual utilities, is thereby diminished if we do not cede to the whole what is most essen- tially ours. That which is really our own may be great or small, rich or insignificant 70 — if we ourselves have felt or thought it, it is more significant to others than that w^hich we merely repeat, even if our au- thority be the highest. And in those cases where we must rely upon authorities, we still can put a certain personality into our choice and honesty in acknowledging our indebtedness, by confessing that we have borrowed our judgment we can put hon- esty and originality into this dependence. It is possible for no one to acquire more than a limited amount of the results of culture, to form an entirely original judg- ment oftener than in a few isolated cases. But each one can learn to understand that it is a mark of culture not to pronounce judgment upon questions with which he is not conversant. Good taste prescribes that just as one refuses to wear false jew- els if one possesses no real ones, so one should refrain from pronouncing judg- ment upon persons or questions upon which one has not formed an opinion through one's own impressions. When this honesty begins to be considered a mark of spiritual refinement, then will the 71 culture of woman have made quite as great advance as when she learned to read. For next to the power to form decisions for one's self stands in culture value the ability to understand what opinions one does not possess and the courage to rec- ognize one's delicacy. Courage and truth — that is what women lack above all. And these are the qualities which they must cultivate if the feminine personality is to grow. This does not result because women devote themselves to study, be it ever so thor- ough, or to social tasks, be they ever so responsible. Both further the develop- ment of woman's personality in the meas- ure only in which her own investigations, her own choice, make her means of culture and her work an organic part of herself. To develop woman's personality from within — that is the great woman ques- tion. To free woman from conventional- ity — that is the great aim of the emanci- pation of woman. Such a conception of the woman ques- tion is for me the ideal conception of this 72 present great movement. And ideality does not mean to adopt as the conception of life that which the majority considers ideal. Ideality means to live for the ideal, which has inflamed our consciousness and not to violate this consciousness by adapt- ing it to such ideals as we feel with our whole soul are lower. If it is true that "the lack of genius is the lack of courage," so then is it still more true in regard to the lack of personality. Here lies one of the reasons why individu- ality is less often found among women than among men. A man is more fully in- flamed with his idea, the object of his work; he is more intense in that which he knows and which he wills. He becomes thus often — just as the child — more one- sided, almost always more egoistic, but much more absolute than a woman in like position. She is rarely, except in love, wholly penetrated by that which occupies her. It is then easier for her to be consid- erate, to look about continuously upon all sides. She is more mobile, more quickly sensitive, more manysided and more sup- 73 pie than man, and therein lies her strength. But just as that of man, it is bought at the price of corresponding weakness. For equipoise is still so difficult in human nature that a good quality is often not the product of a multiplication, but is the remainder after a subtraction. The man becomes thus especially crea- tive through his greater courage to dare, his more intense power to will; the woman becomes the often anxious conservator. She cherishes with fidelity, not only the customs and memories of the home, but also society's traditional sentiments and conceptions of right. But this very con- spicuous conservatism of the woman is exactly that which has obstructed the de- velopment of exceptional femininity. The personal independence of man is hampered because he must work ordi- narily in close association with others; whereby he is bound by party discipline and party spirit, by considerations for preferment or other interests. The personality of woman on the other hand is more fettered by conventional con- 74 ceptions of morality and a conventional ideal of woman. She will not distinguish the self-sacrifice which is of value from that which from all points of view is value- less. She does not rely upon her own in- stinct for right if this instinct deviates only a hair's breadth from the generally accepted idea. She pardons the one who sins against established conceptions of right, provided only he recognizes their validity; but she condemns the one who has acted contrary to this conception in sincere conviction, because his idea of right differs from that of the majority! She confounds in her judgment tempera- ment and opinions, doctrine and life — a confusion which is the origin of all spir- itual tyranny, of all social intolerance. Especially does this obtain in questions which concern the relation of the sexes. Every one who expresses an opinion at variance with the conventional ideal of morality has then incurred intrusive con- clusions and blasting defamation of his private life. On the part of women then — if it is a question concerning a woman — it 75 must all the more be accepted that it requires not only a glowing red belief but also a snow-white conscience to dare defy society in its most sensitive prejudices. Conventionality of the woman attains its culminating point in the thoughtless and conscienceless repetition of others' words by which most women lower their spiritual level, distort, disfigure their char- acter and eventually stultify their person- ality. A woman who makes any pretensions to fineness, evinces this among other things, by avoiding all borrowed or sham luxury. She scorns spurious effects, tin- sel, and disdains therefore in her dress and her home all artificial ornamentation. But this same woman utters boldly counterfeited opinions and spurious judg- ments as her own. Even if she possesses it she dare not express a fresh, original opinion, a warm direct feeling. And her forgeries are then transmitted by other plagarists from circle to circle. Thus "Public Opinion" is formed upon the most delicate life problems, the most serious 76 life work. Thus the most noble actions become dubious and the vilest calumnies positive authentic truths. Thus the air becomes congested with the grains of sand, under which a man's works of honor are buried. But a work or a renown which has been interred can be exhumed. It is the blind re-echoers of others' words, themselves, who must at length disappear forever. 17 I(> 'WVI^f tlMII J|B ^^^OFCAIIFO/?^ ^0FCAIIF0% i ^ •< 'ill I J^. 1^ — I ft \I oo ^ ^ ^ V M^ ' ' ' =o OQ ^^AavjiaiH^'^ ^ -,^IUBRARYQ^ ^^^tllBRARYQr ^ ^^AavaaiH^ .^MEUNIVER% ^lOSANGElfju o ^c^Aavaaii-^" ^^Aavaan-^^ ^.OFCA1IFO% CSC IV /W\ S "^^^Aavaaii-^ -saM-IIBRARYQc, -.>MIIBRARYQ^, ,^\^E•UNIVERS■/A ovlOSANCElfj> .^Wt•UNlVER5/A CO 3 1158 0lS'o894' '^^ ^ •sm^ "^/jaaAiNrt-awv -s^lllBRARYQr \\\[yNlVER% mii^i ^lOSANCElfx^ o ^OFCAIIFO% %a3AiNn3WV >0AHvaaiii^ UC SOUTHERN Rf GIOPJAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 980 350 3 "Jii^^NY-SOl^^ I .M:\mmih ^lOSANCElfj^ o ^ A;^lOSANCElfj^ i# >&Aavaaiii^ o "^/jajAiNft-aivv -5^illBRARYQ<^ /3jo^ ^jojiivj-jo"^ &Aavaaii# ^OFCAIIFO/?^ ^^Aavaaii^ ^WEUNIVER5/A ARYQr ^lllBRARYOc, AWEUNIVERS/^ ^10SANCEI% <^,^l•ltBRARyQc siiii^^igitiiii