{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_34267/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_34267","id":"gutenberg_34267","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34267","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Gender & Sexuality Studies","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Women -- Social and moral questions"],"text":"Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive/American Libraries.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n THE MORALITY OF WOMAN\n AND OTHER ESSAYS\n\n AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE SWEDISH\n OF\n ELLEN KEY\n BY\n MAMAH BOUTON BORTHWICK\n\n [Illustration]\n\n THE RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR CO.\n FINE ARTS BUILDING\n CHICAGO\n\n\n COPYRIGHT, 1911\n BY\n THE RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR CO.\n CHICAGO\n\n\n\n\n CONTENTS\n\n\n THE MORALITY OF WOMAN      page 5\n THE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE     \"  39\n THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN      \"  51\n\n\n\n\nTHE MORALITY OF WOMAN\n\n(TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH)\n\n\n    \"The law condemns to be hung those who counterfeit banknotes;\n    a measure necessary for the public welfare. But he who\n    counterfeits love, that is to say: he who, for a thousand\n    other reasons but not for love, unites himself to one whom\n    he does not love and creates thus a family circle unworthy\n    of that name--does not he indeed commit a crime whose extent\n    and incalculable results in the present and in the future,\n    disseminate far more terrible unhappiness than the\n    counterfeiting of millions of banknotes!\"\n\n                                              C. J. L. ALMQUIST.\n\nThe simplest formula for the new conception of morality, which is\nbeginning to be opposed to moral dogma still esteemed by all society,\nbut especially by women, might be summed up in these words:\n\nLove is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral\nwithout love.\n\nThe customary objection to this tenet is that those who propose it\nforget all other ethical duties and legitimate feelings in order to make\nthe sex relationship the center of existence, and love the sole decisive\npoint of view in questions concerning this relationship. But if we\nexcept the struggle for existence--which indeed must be called not a\nrelationship of life but a condition of life--what then can be more\ncentral for man, than a condition decreed by the laws of earthly\nlife--the cause of his own origin? Can one imagine a moment which\npenetrates more deeply his whole being?\n\nThat many men live content without the happiness of love, that others\nafter they attain it seek a new end for their activity, proves nothing\nagainst the truth of the experience that for men in general the erotic\nrelation between man and woman becomes the deepest life determining\nfactor, whether negatively, because they are deprived of this relation\nor because they formed it unhappily; or positively, because they have\nfound therein the fullness of life.\n\nThe depreciation for mankind of the significance of the sex relation and\nof the significance of love in the sex relation brings into it all the\nimmorality still imposed by conventionalism as morality.\n\nWe no longer consider, as in our mother's youth, ignorance of the side\nof life which concerns the propagation of the race the essential\ncondition of womanly purity. But the conventional idea of purity still\nmaintains that the untouched condition of the senses belongs to this\nconception. And it would be right, if the distinction were made between\npurity and chastity. Purity is the new-fallen snow which can be melted\nor sullied; chastity is steel tempered in the fire by white heat. For\nchastity is only developed together with complete love; this not only\nexcludes equally all partition among several but also makes a separation\nbetween the demands of the heart and the senses impossible. The essence\nof chastity is, according to George Sand's profound words: \"to be able\nnever to betray the soul with the senses nor the senses with the soul\"\n(\"de ne pouvoir jamais tromper ni l'ame avec les sens ni les sens avec\nl'ame\"). And as absolute consecration is its distinctive mark, so is it\nalso its demand. This alone is the chastity which must characterize the\nfamily life and form in the future the basis of foundation for the\nhappiness of the people.\n\nLiterature was, therefore, wholly justified when in the name of nature\nit attacked the hyperidealistic subtlety which raised the love of the\nheart to the highest rank and made that of the senses the lowest; and\nwhen it desired that the woman should not only know what complete love\nwas but that she should also when she loved desire that completeness.\n\nBecause from time to time powerful voices were raised, like George\nSand's or Almquist's, calling without consideration not only that\nmarriage immoral which was consummated without mutual love but also that\nmarriage immoral which was continued without mutual love--a purer\nconsciousness has awakened in questions regarding the conditions of the\ngenesis of the unborn race and elevated the conditions of the personal\ndignity of man and woman. So eventually it will come to pass that no\nfinely sensitive woman will become a mother except through mutual love;\nthat this motherhood sanctioned legally or not so sanctioned shall be\nconsidered the only true motherhood, and every other motherhood untrue.\nThus will mankind awaken to such a feeling of the \"Sanctity of the\ngeneration,\" and to such an understanding of the conditions of the\nhealth, strength and beauty of the race, that every marriage which has\nits source in worldly or merely sensual motives, or in reasons of\nprudence or in a feeling of duty shall be considered as Almquist calls\nit: \"A criminal counterfeiting of the highest values of life.\" And the\nsame criminal counterfeit obtains in every married life which is\ncontinued under the compulsion, the distaste or the resignation of one\nof the two. Man will be penetrated with the consciousness that the whole\nethical conception which now in and with marriage gives to a husband or\na wife rights over the personality of the other, is a crude survival of\nthe lower periods of culture; that everything which is exchanged between\nhusband and wife in their life together, can only be the free gift of\nlove, can never be demanded by one or the other as a right. Man will\nunderstand that when one can no longer continue the life in love then\nthis life must cease; that all vows binding forever the life of feeling\nare a violence of one's personality, since one cannot be held\naccountable for the transformation of one's feeling. Even though this\nnew moral ideal should in the beginning dissolve many untrue marriages\nand thus cause much suffering, yet all this suffering is necessary. It\nbelongs to the attainment of the new erotic ethics which will uplift man\nand woman in that sphere where now the spirit of slavery and of\nobtuseness under a holy name degrade them; where social convention\nsanctions prostitution alongside monogamy, and vouchsafes to the seducer\nbut not to the seduced, social esteem, calling the unmarried woman\nruined who in love has become a mother, but the married woman\nrespectable who without love gives children to the man who has bought\nher!\n\nThe erotic-ethical consciousness of mankind cannot be uplifted until the\nnew idea of morality with all its consequences is clearly established.\n\nThis ideal has two types of adversary. One is the adherent of the\nconventional morality; the other the supporter of the transitory union\nto which the name of \"free love\" is erroneously applied.\n\nThose of the first type demand quite the same morality for the man as\nfor the woman. They assert that celibacy for either sex brings with it\nserious difficulties. They maintain that the social feeling of duty, not\nmutual love, must be the ground of conjugal fidelity. They call \"pure\nlove\" love untouched by all that which they call \"sensuality.\"\n\nThese same moral dogmas in recent years have manifested themselves in\nthe effort to quench all fire, whiten all burning red coals, and drape\nall nudity in literature and art. The supporters of this dogma\ncertainly understand--since, to begin at the beginning they have surely\nglanced into the Bible and Homer--that the undertaking would be too vast\nwere it to extend to classic literature. But all the more ardently they\nhave directed their zeal against modern literature and art. And if they\ndo not encounter energetic opposition the fig leaf will soon among us\nalso attest the fall of taste and of the soul.\n\n\"Free love\" has also its fanatics who are guilty of quite as crass\nexcess. They have no conception of soulful and true devotion, which they\nconsider an absurdity or a conventionality under which human nature\ncannot bow without hypocrisy. For since experience shows that lifelong\nlove is frequently an illusion, so, they say, one must not begin by\nexpecting it! The so-called Bohemians have shown as great monomania in\ntheir rotation around this one point, the right of the senses, as have\nthe zealots of traditional morality in their rotation around their\npoint, the suppression of the senses. The extreme result of both would\nbe retrogression to a lower degree of culture; in one case to the\nasceticism of the Middle Ages, in the other to the promiscuity of the\nsavage. Both forget the reality of life. On the one side they ignore\nthis reality in their absolute demands without consideration of\ntemperament or circumstances; in their assertion of the unqualified\nmoral superiority of woman and in depreciation of the significance of\nlove for the full harmony of man and woman. On the other side they\nignore this reality when they try to make woman as unrestrained morally\nas man has hitherto been; when they forget all the suffering of the new\ngeneration born and reared in such an unrestrained existence; when they\nlearn nothing of the nature of woman from the many younger and older\nwomen who live solitary and yet sound and useful lives in the deep\nconviction that, since they have not found the great, mutual love, which\ndecides existence, any union with a man would be degrading and unhappy.\nDevelopment has, because of multifarious influences made entirety and\ncontinuity in love a greater life necessity for the woman of culture in\ngeneral than for the man of the same intellectual level. A man,\ntherefore, ordinarily dissolves an erotic relation without bitterness\nwhen he has ceased to love, while a woman, even after her love has\nceased, often suffers because the relationship has not endured a\nlifetime.\n\nIt is this ever increasing peremptory demand for erotic completeness of\nthe woman of developed individuality of the present time, which causes\nher always to wish to more fervently cherish the personality of the man\nas entirely as it is her happiness and her pride to be able to give her\nown. It is this demand for entirety which, among Germanic peoples, at\nleast, makes woman neither desirous nor psychologically fitted for the\nso-called \"free love.\" This is evidently to be concluded from the\nvicissitudes of those who have tried it.\n\n\"Free love\" is moreover quite as senseless an expression as \"legal\nlove.\" Because no external command can call love into being or repress\nit; it is in this sense always free, yet as are all feelings, it is\nbound by certain psychological laws. If not, then it does not deserve\nthe name of love. It is with love as with the human face: though the\nindividual varieties are infinite, yet there are certain general\ncharacteristic features which make all these different faces human\nfaces, all these different feelings human love. And in every time there\nis a type for both, which is recognized as nobler than the others.\n\nThis noblest type of love has been portrayed by a Danish writer,[A] who\nendeavored to show that a conception of life founded upon evolution need\nnot lead to laxity in sexual relations. He shows how the erotic feeling,\nas all other feelings, has been developed from an incoherent,\nindeterminate and indefinite condition to one more coherent, determinate\nand differentiated, and so from a simple instinct for reproduction of\nthe species has been finally transformed to an entirely personal, inner\nlove. The highest type of this love is that which exists between a man\nand a woman of the same moral and intellectual level; which demands of\nnecessity reciprocal love in order to be perfected, and can therefore be\ncontented with no other kind of reciprocal love than a corresponding\nerotic love. This perfect love includes the yearning desire of both\nlovers to become entirely one being, to free each other and to develop\neach other to the greatest perfection. If love is perfected and\nconsummated thus by the life together, then can it be given to only one\nand only once in a lifetime. This thought of the Danish writer is\nexpressed with the concise brevity of the poet, by Bjornson, when he\nsays of the sensation \"feeling oneself doubled\" in the beloved one:\n\"_That_ is love, all else is not love.\" This feeling which liberates,\nconserves and deepens the personality, which is the inspiration to noble\ndeeds and works of genius, is the opposite of the ephemeral, merely\nsensual love, which enslaves, dissipates and lessens the personality.\n\n  [A] See Viggo Drewsen: \"En Livsanskuelse grundet paa Elskow\" (\"A\n      Conception of Life Founded upon Love\") and \"Forholdet mellem\n      Maud og Kvinde belyst gjennem Udviklingshypothesen.\" (\"The\n      Relation between Man and Woman in the Light of the Hypothesis\n      of Evolution.\")\n\nIt is only the great love which has a higher right than all other\nfeelings and which can establish its right in a life.\n\nHe who considers this love decisive for the morality of such an erotic\nunion cannot believe that external ties are necessary to give ethical\nvalue to this union. Social considerations, prudence and feeling for\nothers can indeed in certain cases make the legal bond desirable. But it\ncan just as little give increased consecration to real love, as it can\ngive any consecration whatever to a relation in which this content is\nlacking. And even if it would be too dogmatic to establish just the\nhighest type of love as ethical norm for all relations between man and\nwoman, since life proves that the highest love is still as rare as the\nhighest beauty, yet it is on the contrary not premature to assert that\nthis love, legally sanctioned or not, is moral, and that where it is\nlacking on either side, a moral ground is furnished for the dissolution\nof the relationship. The ever clearer consciousness that love can\ndispense with marriage yet marriage cannot dispense with love, is\nalready partially recognized in modern society, by the facility of\ndivorce. And it is only a question of time when the law which gives to\none person the power to constrain the other to remain with him against\nhis will, will be abrogated, so contrary is this possibility to that\ndeveloped conception of the freedom of love--which is not at all the\nsame as so-called \"free love!\"\n\nIt is not historically true that it was, as has been asserted, some\ncertain conception of morality, some certain form of concluding or\ndissolving marriage which, in the last analysis, has been a decisive\nfactor in the progress or decadence of peoples. Among the Jews as among\nthe Greeks, among the Romans as among our Germanic forefathers, at the\nmost flourishing period, there existed many laws and customs which were\nconsidered moral that the present time considers immoral. The decisive\nthing for the sound life of these peoples was, that that which they\nconsidered right had sovereign power to bind them: the faithfulness to\nthe conception of duty more than the content of conception determines\nthe moral soundness of a people. Society is in danger, not when the\nideals are raised but when they are lost. But a very highly developed\nhistorical sense is necessary to see at the same time the connection and\nthe difference between dissolution and reorganization. Moreover it is\nnecessary to have the large view of the essentials of life which\ndistinguishes the true poet, the view which Sophocles possessed when he\nlet his Antigone follow the higher law of affection and commit a\nviolation of the law which--according to the conception of that\ntime--would lead to general license if it remained unpunished. The new\nideal of marriage is now being formed in and through all the many\nliterary and personal dissensions in which it constitutes the theme.\nYes, it is formed also in the midst of all the conflicts of life for\nwhich marriage gives so much occasion. It is true there are now married\npeople who separate because from the very beginning they considered\nfidelity impossible and so did not even strive for it. But many other\ndivorces have far more complex, psychological reasons. When two people\nare married young, personal development takes often entirely opposite\ndirections; if they have married in more mature years, then their\nindividual differences, already strongly marked from the beginning, make\nthe problem of common life together difficult of solution. The strongly\ndeveloped sensibility of the modern individual to disposition, nuances,\nvariations of humor, makes a lack of sympathy still more unendurable; a\ntrue sympathy a far greater source of joy. The whole multiplicity of\npsycho-physical influences and impressions which the members of a family\nexercise upon one another for pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and\nvariance, harmony and discord, are now in all relationships, but above\nall in marriage, felt with greatest intensity. It is in those natures\nmost individually developed, most refined, for whom the nuances of the\nmarried life, not its simple primal colors, signify happiness or\nunhappiness.\n\nTo this general delicacy of feeling there is added especially the\nheightened sensibility of woman to the discord between that which she\nexpected in marriage and that which in reality it offered her, because\nthe union often lacked the freedom, the understanding which her\nsympathetic feeling now craves. This lack of harmony is inevitable since\nthe forms of marriage have not even approximately undergone the\ntransformation which would correspond to the individual development of\nthe two beings, of the woman especially, whom it unites. But while all\nthese reasons, cursorily indicated here, contribute their part in the\nincreased number of divorces, the life of finer feeling creates, on the\nother hand, an ever more intimate married life. There are married people\nwho have pledged each other at marriage full freedom to dissolve the\nunion when either of them so wished, and others who have never given\nlegal form to their marriage yet realize fully and richly love in\n\"sorrow and in joy,\" in sympathetic work together, in reciprocal, true\ndevotion. There have been, on the other hand, champions of so-called\n\"free love\" who were themselves by nature such pronounced believers in\nonly one marriage that their life was wrecked when the one to whom they\nhad bound themselves applied to their own case their own theories. It is\nalways the character which ultimately decides. Character can make the\nradical theorist a moral paragon and the pillar of society resting upon\nconservative ground a reed of passion; it can make the advocate of\negoism sublimely devoted and the apostle of Christianity deeply egoistic\nin his love.\n\nSo many men, so many souls; so many souls, so many destinies. And to\nwish to apply to this whole, complex, manifold, incalculable erotic\nlife, with its unfathomable depths, an immutable ethical standard, when\njudging the relationship between man and woman, and to make this\nstandard decisive also for the ethical value of the personality in other\nrespects--is quite as naive as the attempt of a child to draw up in his\nlittle bucket the wonderful depth of the vast storm-driven sea.\n\nLove, as life, will fortunately remain an eternal mystery which no\nscience will be able to penetrate and which reason cannot rule. Our only\nhope for the future is that man, endowed with a more delicate sense,\nwill listen to the secrets of his own life. A more highly developed and\ndifferentiated soul life will give him a surer instinct or a keener\npower of analysis which will prevent him from confounding a passing\nsentiment of sympathy, need of tenderness or satisfaction of vanity with\na love which decides existence. Now, on the contrary, many believe that\na wave of admiration, of gratitude, or of pity is the whole sea; that\nthe reflection of the fire of another is the holy fire itself!\n\nNo one can with certainty predict the final result of the profound\nrevolution of the feeling and of the customs which is now taking place.\nBut one thing appears certain: the danger to the future of mankind can\nscarcely be that the new ideal will result in general license. Rather it\nwill lead to so individual, differentiated and refined love that erotic\nhappiness will be increasingly difficult to find and the idealists of\nlove will more frequently prefer celibacy to a compromise with their\ngreater demands for sympathetic love.\n\nThe occasional experience, often only the dream of such a love, sensible\nto the finest shades of the soul, to the most delicate vibrations of the\nsenses--of a love which is an all comprehensive tenderness, an all\nembracing intimacy--has already raised the erotic demands and the erotic\nexistence of thousands of men and women to a sphere of more infinite\nlonging, more fervid chastity than that of their contemporaries. It is\nthis experience or this dream which has already begun to assume form in\nthe art and literature of the present time. It is true the extreme\ndiscord between the peculiar character of man and of woman has long been\nthe favorite theme, especially in modern literature. But among the wild,\ndiscordant tones a new leitmotiv resounds which will swell and rise and\nfill the void with a harmony, still but faintly divined.\n\nOne of the conditions that this harmony become as perfect as possible\nis that woman in life as in literature shall begin to be more honest and\nman more eager to listen when she reveals to him something of her own\nnature. Men have desired and justly that women should learn from their\nconfessions in regard to the conflict between man and woman. But woman\nbecause of the conventional conception of womanly purity has been\nintimidated from conceding to man a deep insight into her erotic life\nexperiences.\n\nOnly when women begin to tell the truth about themselves will literature\nuniversally illuminate the still unknown depths of woman's erotic\ntemperament. To the present time it has been almost exclusively men\npoets who have made revelations about women. The nearer these poets have\napproached life, the more surely have they seen the highest expression\nof the eternal feminine as the great women poets also saw it: in erotic\nlove and in mother love. And it was the completeness of her consecration\nwhich was in their eyes a woman's supreme chastity.\n\nIt is the great poets who have taught and have continued to teach youth\nto revere the \"all powerful Eros.\"\n\nThis is the only \"morality\" which has a future. Only by conforming to\nthis shall we gradually succeed in preventing the erotic feeling from\nappearing sometimes as a brutal instinct or marriage from being founded\nupon a fleeting attraction.\n\nAn ideal of negative purity--even incarnated in the person of\nJesus--cannot inflame youth and therefore cannot in the long run protect\nhim. That alone which has the power not only to restrain but also to\ntransform the brutal instinct is a conception of the existence of a\nhigher feeling which belongs to the same sphere of life as the instinct\nitself.\n\nTo burn the ideal of a great love into the soul of youth in letters of\nfire--that is to give him a real moral strength. Thus there springs up\nin man the ineradicable, invincible instinct that an erotic relation can\nexist only as the expression of a reciprocal all comprehensive love.\nThus will youth learn to consider the love-marriage as the central life\nrelation, the center of life, and he will be inflamed with the desire to\ndevelop and to conserve body and soul for the entrance into this most\nholy thing in nature, wherein man and woman find their happiness in\ncreating a new race for happiness. Thus will young men and women in\nincreasing numbers understand that their own happiness, as well as that\nof the coming generation will be the greater the more completely they\ncan give their personality to love. Boys and girls, young men and\nmaidens, men and women by coeducation, by joint labor and comradeship\nwill develop in one another that mutual understanding which will remove\nthe enmity between the sexes, in which modern individualization--and the\ntherewith increasing demands of the personality--has so far found its\nexpression.\n\nThe usages of individual homes will be differentiated, instead of as now\nmaintaining the same conventional forms for all families. After some\ngenerations so educated, under the influence of relationships thus\narranged, we shall see marriages such as even now not a few are seen,\nin which not observation of a duty but liberty itself is the pledge that\nassures fidelity. Then will love be cherished as the most delicate, most\nprecious thing in life; then will egoism and unselfishness attain a\nperfect harmony, because the husband and wife find happiness only in\nassuring the happiness of the other. That is the union which the\nNorwegian poet defines when he calls true marriage \"a yearning quest\nafter each other, an energetic cultivation, assertion of the\npersonality, in order to be able to give one's personality; an ever\nincreasing intimacy of understanding of each other; a union which the\nwhole course of life will make more profound.\"\n\nSo prepared, the absolute human ideal will become perhaps a living\nreality; not as an isolated man, not as an isolated woman, but as a man\nand a woman who shall give to mankind a new religion--that of happiness.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMany indeed still doubt that marriage can become this highest form of\nexistence in life, in which the surrender of the ego and the\nself-seeking of the ego reach a perfect harmony. It is asserted that\nthis ideal condition can be attained perhaps by exceptional people, but\nnever by ordinary people, and that the morality of the latter can be\nkept sound only by legal and social restraint.\n\nMy belief, however, is that, just as the Children of Israel followed the\npillar of fire, so ordinary men follow at a distance exceptional men,\nand in this way mankind as a whole advances. Ordinary men are just now\ndetermined upon certain conceptions which at the end of the previous\ncentury were not conclusive even for exceptional people. The marriage of\nreason, for example, is already considered ignoble by many. The\nauthority of the parents is very seldom in evidence either to coerce the\nchildren into a marriage without love or to restrain them from it. Even\nthe superficial erotic emotion of our day is serious in comparison with\nthe shallow and frivolous or vulgar and cruel gallantry of the\neighteenth century. In the geological deposits of legislation and still\nmore in those of literature we can study these risings of the levels of\nthe erotic sentiments. So we are thereby convinced that the demands and\nconflicts of the exceptional men become gradually those of the ordinary\nmen also, even though the ordinary men are always some generations\nbehind the men who are stirred by new emotions, new conflicts, when the\nmany have reached the problems which some decades before occupied only\nthe few.\n\nCertainly it may, under present imperfect conditions, often be a duty\nnot to destroy the outward form of marriage for the sake of the\nchildren. But by no means can this duty be preached as universally\nbinding. Only the individual himself can in each separate case determine\nthe dissolution best, both for the children and for the married couple\nthemselves, of a marriage which has fallen asunder within. When we\nconsider the development in its entirety, the sooner people cease to\nsanction the present marriage the more fortunate it will be; for the\nsooner will the transformation be forced upon us by which marriage will\nmaintain its permanence only from within. Only then will man be wholly\nable to have the experiences and to find the new, delicate means by\nwhich fidelity can be strengthened and happiness assured. But man will\nnot seek this expedient so long as he can rely upon the power of legal\nright and social opinion to hold together that which love does not\nunify.\n\nThe ever increasing individualization of love indicates that\nmono-marriage will doubtless remain the form of erotic union between man\nand woman. But this rule will have, in the future, as in the past, many\nexceptions, since the feelings can change. The conflicts which will thus\narise will bring suffering as a consequence, but not the bitterness nor\nthe contention which the property sense in marriage now so often\noccasions. The deep consciousness that love belongs not to the sphere of\nduty but only to that of freedom will cause the one who has lost the\nlove of the other to feel the same resignation before the inevitable,\nas if he were separated from the other by death.\n\nAnd in cases where the individual is not capable of this resignation,\nthen the law as well as custom shall make it impossible for the one to\nhold back the other against his will. Each of the twain shall be master\nof his own person and of his property, of his work and of his mode of\nlife; the union shall in each especial case be arranged by the agreement\nof the individuals, and the law shall decide only the rights and duties\nof the husband and wife in regard to the children.\n\nWhen in this way it shall come to pass that neither the husband nor wife\nshall have in outward sense, in external things, anything to gain or to\nlose by the consummation or dissolution of marriage, then only the\nerotic problem appears in all its seriousness.\n\nMany mistakes, many caricatures, many tragic failures will naturally be\nthe result of freedom. Great waves have great combers. A new principle\ncannot be put into effect without bringing with it new mistakes. But we\nmay, however, be convinced that the laws of life--to which belongs the\nlaw that suffering follows the misuse of freedom--will finally be able\nto bring everything within its right limits. Nothing indeed has\noccasioned more suffering as an indirect consequence than Christianity,\nand although Jesus knew that, yet he did not hesitate to give to mankind\nthis new creative force which destroyed in order to create. But it is\nabove all His ideality which His present followers lack, the great\nideality which dares to believe in the might of the spirit rather than\nthat of the form.\n\nIt is, therefore, quite natural that these Christians, the upholders of\nsociety, oppose the new ideal of morality with vain apprehensions. They\nbelieve that a woman whose conscious aim is \"Self-assertion in\nself-surrender\" will forfeit the immediate, fresh originality in this\nsurrender. They believe marriage must be destroyed when the support of\nits development is no longer bond and injunction, but is its own vital\nforce. They believe morality will lose in the struggle if youth learns\nto consider the love between man and woman as the central condition of\nlife. These, and a hundred similar apprehensions have all one and the\nsame source.\n\nThis source is the Christian conception of life which has displaced the\ngreat, sound, strong conviction of antiquity of the holiness of nature.\nMary was the \"Virgin Mother;\" Jesus, celibate. Paul regarded marriage as\nthe lesser of two evils. Thus man first learned to regard the unmarried\nstate as the higher and the married as the lower state. The result of\nthe Christian conception of life then was that the sex relation was\nregarded in and for itself as unholy, human nature in and for itself as\nbase and the earthly demand for happiness as the greatest egotism.\n\nTherefore the Christian conception of life is now, since it has\naccomplished its great task of culture, the development of altruism--an\nobstacle to the unified conception out of which the happiness of mankind\nwill finally develop.\n\nNo one who thinks or feels deeply dreams that this happiness can be\neasily achieved. The consistent belief of monism in human nature can\nonly gradually leaven life. And until then suffering will be for the\nmajority the first result of freedom. Even for the few, to whom the\nrelationships have already given happiness, must this be incomplete in\nthe measure in which they feel sympathy with all the suffering about\nthem. But above all is happiness rare because the genius for happiness\nis still so rare, is indeed on the whole the rarest genius. To possess\nit means to approach life with the humility of a beggar, but to treat it\nwith the proud generosity of a prince; to bring to its totality the deep\nunderstanding of a great poet and to each of its moments the abandonment\nand ingenuousness of a child; it means to be able to enjoy wholly each\npresent, immediate, joy and yet to be able to give up the incidental joy\nfor the enduring one.\n\nHappiness lies so far from man; but he must begin by daring to will it.\nIt is this courage which Christianity broke down when it directed the\nsoul from the earth to eternity and gave to renunciation the highest\nplace among ethical values. Through the _Revaluation of all Values_,\nwhich is now going on, happiness will receive this Place.\n\nHe who contends for the deepest of all ideas, Spinosa's idea, that \"Joy\nis perfection,\" contends with certainty of victory, however solitary he\nmay stand, however much of his heart's blood may be shed in the strife.\n\nWe live still in our inmost soul only by that for which we die. And all\nfor which we have died will live when the time shall come in which all\nwe ourselves have suffered signifies nothing for us, yet that for which\nwe have suffered signifies everything for others.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE\n\n\nThere are phrases which charm like a song, and one of these phrases is:\n\"The Woman of the Future.\"\n\nThis sings for me in the verse of a poet and a seer, whose name now\nshines with the radiance of the morning star, although during his\nlifetime it was sullied with defamation as that of an atheist and\ndestroyer of society--because the luminous path of his thoughts appeared\nto the prejudices of his contemporaries as a blinding flash of\nlightning. His poet's vision revealed to him a new time in which women\nwould be\n\n  \"... frank, beautiful and kind\n  As the free heaven, which rains fresh light and dew\n  On the wide earth\n  From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;\n  Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,\n  Looking emotions once they feared to feel,\n  And changed to all which once they dared not be\n  Yet being now, made earth like heaven.\"\n\nThis beautiful profile of the woman of the future, which Shelley has\ntraced, floats before me when I attempt here to draw her portrait in\nmore precise outlines.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe storm and stress period of woman and the new social and\npsychological formations thereby entailed must, indeed, extend far into\nthe twentieth century. This period of conflict will cease only when\nwoman within and out of marriage shall have received legal equality with\nman. It will cease when such a transformation of society shall have come\nto pass that the present rivalry between the sexes shall be ended in a\nmanner advantageous to both and when finally the work of earning a\nlivelihood as well as care of the household shall have received such\nform that it will weigh less heavily than now upon the woman.\n\nToward the end of the twentieth century only could the type of the\nnineteenth century woman have reached its culmination and a new type of\nwoman begin to appear.\n\nMy ideal picture of the woman of the future, and when one paints an\nideal one does not need to limit one's imagination, is that she will be\na being of profound contrasts which have attained harmony. She will\nappear as a great multiplicity and a complete unity; a rich plenitude\nand a perfect simplicity; a thoroughly educated creature of culture and\nan original spontaneous nature; a strongly marked human individuality\nand a complete manifestation of most profound womanliness. This woman\nwill understand the spirit of a scientific work, of an exact search\nafter truth, of free, independent thought, of artistic creation. She\nwill comprehend the necessity of the laws of nature and of the progress\nof evolution; she will possess the feeling of solidarity and regard for\nthe interests of society. Because she will know more and think more\nclearly than the woman of the present, she will be more just; because\nshe will be stronger, she will be better; because she will be wiser, she\nwill be also more gentle. She will be able to see things in the ensemble\nand in their connection with each other; she will lose thereby certain\nprejudices which are still called virtues. Nevertheless she will remain\nthe one who forms customs. But she will not seek her support in social\nconvention; she will find it in the laws of her own being. She will have\nthe courage to think her own thoughts and to investigate the new\nthoughts of her time. She will dare to experience and to acknowledge\nfeelings which she now suppresses or conceals. Her full liberty of\naction and the complete development of her personality will render\npossible intrepid efforts for life, an energetic striving after an\nexistence which shall conform to her own ego. And such an existence she\nwill be able also to find with surer instinct than now. She will\nunderstand how to work with more intensity, to rest with more intensity\nand with more intensity to delight in all immediate, simple sources of\njoy than the woman of the present is able to do. Thus in the new woman\nthe feeling of life will be enhanced, her experience will be more\nprofound; her soul life, her demands for beauty, her senses will be more\ndeveloped and refined. She will be more sensitive, more delicately\nvibratory; she will therefore be able to be more profoundly happy and\nalso to suffer more keenly than the woman of our time.\n\nThus the woman of the twentieth century will give new value to the life\nof society and to art, to science and to literature. But her greatest\ncultural significance remains, however, by means of the enigmatic, the\ninstinctive, the intuitive and the impulsive in her own being to protect\nmankind from the dangers of excessive culture. In face of knowledge she\nwill maintain the rights of the unknowable; in face of logic, feeling;\nin face of reality, possibilities; and in face of analysis, intuition.\nWoman will above all further the growth of the soul, man that of the\nintelligence; she will extend the sphere of intuition, he that of\nreason; she will realize tenderness, he justice; she will triumph by\naudacity, he by courage.\n\nThe woman of the future will not only have learned much, she will also\nhave forgotten much--especially the feminine as well as anti-feminine\nfollies of the present time.\n\nWith her whole being she will desire the happiness of love. She will be\nchaste, not because she is cold, but because she is passionate. She will\nbe reserved, not because she is bloodless but because she is full\nblooded. She will be soulful and therefore she will be sensuous; she\nwill be proud and therefore she will be true. She will demand a great\nlove, because she herself can give a still greater. The erotic problem,\nbecause of her refined idealism, will be extremely complicated and often\nalmost insoluble. Therefore the happiness which she will give and\nexperience will be richer, more profound and enduring than anything\nwhich up to the present time has been called happiness. Many traits\nwhich belong to the wife and mother of today will probably be lacking in\nthe woman of the future. She will remain always the beloved, the\nsweetheart, and only so will she become a mother. She will devote her\nfinest and strongest forces to the difficult and beautiful art of being\nat the same time the beloved and the mother; her religious cult will be\nto create the supreme happiness of life. Because she will know and value\nthe psychical and physical conditions of health and beauty she will\nchoose the father of her children with clearer vision and deeper feeling\nof responsibility than at present; she will bear and rear sound and\nbeautiful beings and she herself will possess greater attraction and\nlonger youth than the woman of the present. She will charm all her life,\nbecause she will always beautify existence. But she will please only\nbecause, at every age, she will be wholly herself; and her imperishable\nyouth, her most perfect beauty, she will reveal solely to him whom she\nloves. She will know that the charm of the soul is the most profound;\nand out of the plenitude of her being she will create the eternal\nrenewal of this charm, always unexpected and in infinitely nuanced\nexpressions of her personal grace. By her mere presence she will remove\nthe constraint of form and custom and will create varying expressions,\nelevated by her own nobility, for the family life, the public life and\nfor society. She will probably speak less than the woman of the present\ntime, but her silence and her smile will be more eloquent. She will give\nherself always directly and always with moderation, different and always\nconstant, spontaneous and always exquisite. Her being will pour forth,\nbrimming free and fresh, like the surge of the mountain torrent, but\nlike this, dominated by a certain inner rhythm. However far she allows\nherself to go--in ecstasy of joy, in passion of tenderness, in delirium\nof happiness or in the frenzy of grief--yet she will never lose herself.\nShe will be a multiplicity of women and yet always one, whether she\nplays and smiles or suffers and smiles; whether she beams with health or\nbleeds with mortal wounds; whether she be imbued with and radiate\nrepose or nervous intensity, joy or tears, sun or night, coolness or\nardor.\n\nThe woman of the future exists already in man's dreams of women, and\nwoman fashions herself according to the dreams of man. The modern man's\nideal of woman is not the masculine woman, but the revelation of the\n\"eternal feminine\" developed in all directions. This new type of woman\nhas already gleamed forth here and there, not only in our time but in\ncenturies passed. In the Middle Ages she wrote the letters of Heloise;\nin the Renaissance, Leonardo painted her as Mona Lisa; and in the\neighteenth century she held the salon of Mlle. Lespinasse. In our\ncentury she wrote the love sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; she\nappeared upon the stage as Eleonora Duse--and as in a precious stone her\nbeing is crystallized by the poet's words with which Rahel's personality\nwas epitomized: \"calm yet emotionally vivid.\"[B]\n\n  [B] Footnote from French translation:--The reference here is to\n      Rahel de Varnhagen. The citation is taken from the \"Hyperion\"\n      of Holderlin, a German poet of whom mention is made apropos\n      of Nietzsche, upon whom he had great influence.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN\n\n\nConventionality is the tacit agreement to set appearance before reality,\nform before content, subordination before principal. Its field in\ncertain measure is \"vogue\" changing according to the idea of beauty of\neach new season. In deeper sense, however, a part of the sphere of\nconventionality coincides always with that of law and custom, and with\nthe conception of the amount of self-control and self-sacrifice which\nevery individual must impose upon himself for the common life with\nothers. The further the evolution of humanity advances, the fewer are\nthe fields to which the power of society over the thought, belief, mode\nof life and manner of work of the individual is restricted. More and\nmore prevalent becomes the conviction that all those forms of\nexpression of the individual which do not interfere with the rights of\nothers must be free. A great part of the work of culture of each new\ngeneration has consisted and still consists in clearing away great\nmasses of conceptions of right dried up into conventionalism, dead\nrubbish which prevents the new germs from sprouting. In every period\nstrong voices are heard which desire freedom from the prevailing\ncustoms, and right of choice for the individual conscience and\ntemperament. In this ever-continuous struggle it is important to\ndistinguish what are really still living conceptions of right from\nfactitious conceptions, which form only a conventional obstacle to a\nmore beautiful freedom, a deeper truth, a greater originality, a richer\nlife content.\n\nYet it is not only old conventionalism which needs to be rooted out. In\nevery faction, in every social circle are soon formed lifeless\ncollections of prejudices, paltry motives, dependent customs. It is\nalways the women among whom conventionalism reaches its acme. For\nconservatism, that deep significant instinct of woman, becomes also\noften a prop of conventionality. Women are as yet seldom sufficiently\ndeveloped personally to distinguish, in that which they wish to cherish,\nthe appearance from the reality, the form from the content; or if they\ndo distinguish, they have as yet rarely the courage to choose the\ncontent and reality if the majority have declared for form and\nappearance!\n\nIn the literature of the last ten years and in part also among women\nthere prevails, however, a strong opposition to conventionality. This\nopposition has been directed especially against the archaic ideal of\nwoman, according to which renunciation is still considered the highest\nattribute of woman; and against the antiquated conception of morality\nwhich regarded love without marriage as immoral, but any marriage, even\nwithout love, as moral.\n\nThe women who adopted the new ideal--which a Norwegian poet strikingly\ndefined as \"Self-assertion in self-surrender.\" \"Affirmation of self in\ngiving of self\"--encounter now on the part of the modern woman's-rights\nadvocates the same kind of conventional objection as in the fifties and\nsixties was directed against the then new ideal of the earlier woman\nmovement.\n\nThe older emancipation movement advanced along the first line in the\neffort to establish the right of woman as a human being; that is, to\ngive to woman the same rights as to man. The present movement purposes\nto assert the right of woman as an individuality; the absolute right to\nbelieve, to feel, to think and to act in her own way, if it does not\ninterfere with the rights of others. Since the first end was a general\none, the movement could in great part be made effective by collective\nwork in attaining that end; the exposition of the independence of the\nindividuality of woman, on the contrary, must be the personal concern of\neach single individual. This those women do not understand who still are\nworking ever for the first end--the rights of woman as a human being.\nThey do not understand that every woman must receive, not merely her\nuniversal rights, as a member of the body politic, but also her entire\nindividual rights as the possessor of a definite personality. The right\nto establish an ego independent of, and perhaps entirely at variance\nwith, theories and ideals is at heart the point of struggle between the\none or the other individual woman and the women representatives of the\nearlier era of the woman question.\n\nThe discovery that each personality is a new world--which in Shakespeare\nfound its Columbus, a Columbus after whom new mariners immediately\nundertook new conquests--this discovery of literature has as yet only\npartially penetrated the universal consciousness, as a truth of\nexperience. But the fact that it has made a beginning, that the\nconventional, inflexible conception of the nature of man and of the\nproblems resulting therefrom is giving place to a relative and\nindividual conception--this is above all to be ascribed to the thinkers\nand poets, in whom the conventional has its deadliest foe; the\nrecreative poets whose characteristic is deep appreciation of all primal\nforces of existence, of all essential elements of life. For although\nconventionalism in the form of the echo springs up also around genius,\nyet the creative genius itself is always a protest against\nconventionality in which any selfjustified life or art--conception has\nperished.\n\nThe poet who here in the North shattered with a blow the archaic\nconventional ideal of woman who sacrificed herself in all circumstances,\nwas Ibsen when he sent Nora out away from her husband and children in\norder to fulfill the duties toward herself; when by means of \"Ghosts\" he\netched into the moral consciousness the idea that a woman's fidelity to\nher own personality is more significant for the welfare of others as\nwell as of herself than her fidelity to conventional conceptions of\nmorality.\n\nAnd Ibsen has always been the annunciator of the freedom under one's own\nresponsibility which is the key to individualism. Long has man listened,\nonly in part has he understood. And no consciousness is in this respect\nmore hermetically sealed than that of certain woman's rights advocates!\nThat all women should have the same rights as men, this is all that they\nmean in their talk about the freeing of the woman's personality. They\nforget that the right to be what she wishes entails often for the woman,\nas for the man, the obligation to suppress that which she really is by\nnature and feeling. They forget that the personality has deeper claims\nthan the right to work. They overlook the infinite variety of shades of\nfeeling, thought and character which caused the demand of solidarity in\nopinions and actions, among the women active in the woman question, to\ndegenerate into suppression of woman's individuality. Certainly it is\ntrue that united action is still necessary in order that woman may\nobtain the rights which she still lacks. But all compulsory mobilized\naction is here more dangerous than elsewhere; because for the advance of\nthe woman question in the deepest sense it is essential precisely that\nthe different feminine individualities show their useful faculties as\nfreely as possible in the different fields of activity.\n\nThe conventionality which is a menace in the woman question betrays\nitself, not only in exaggerated demands for solidarity, but also in the\nmode of treating the objections of the opposition. It reveals itself in\nthe lack of comprehension of the fact that the woman question,\nparticularly in what concerns the labor field, now intersects on all\nsides the path of the social question. It especially evinces itself in\nthe inability to understand how the woman question, as it advances in\nits evolution, becomes more complex, and how thereby, ever greater\ndifficulties arise in taking an absolute position in the questions\nconnected with it.\n\nIt is necessary that woman's opportunities for culture be multiplied.\nBut do all these measures of culture develop also the personality? Have\nwe not met the finest, most original, most charming natures among\nunlettered dames of seventy and eighty years, or among such women as\nnever had a systematic education? It is right that the wages of women\nshould be increased; but will the labor value of women increase in\nproportion? Can we even desire that the majority of these women bent\nover their desks shall devote a live interest to their work, when their\nsole essential being would first find expression only when bent over a\ncradle? It is well also for girls of wealth to wish to have a vocation.\nBut is it also good if they, because they can be satisfied with a\nsmaller wage, take away the work from poor girls and men, often more\ncompetent, who have to live entirely by the fruits of their work, and\nmust therefore demand larger wages?\n\nSo long as these and many other questions remain unanswered, there is\ntoday quite as much that is conventional in rejoicing unreservedly over\nthe many girls who become students or leave the home, where they are\nvery much needed, for outside work, as there was in our grandmother's\ntime in wishing to limit the province of woman to the kitchen, the\nnursery and the drawing room.\n\nIt is not yet known whether woman, through the competition for bread,\nwill develop physiologically and psychologically to greater health and\nharmony. Woman is a new subject for research, and only centuries of full\nfreedom in choice of labor and in personal development can furnish\nmaterial for well grounded conclusions. Many signs, however, point to\nthis:--that an ineffaceable, deep-rooted psychological difference due to\nphysical peculiarities will always exist between man and woman, which\nprobably will always keep her by preference active in the sphere of the\nfamily, while he probably will remain active in other spheres of\nculture. But with a perfect equality with man and a full personal\ndevelopment, woman can have a significance for culture in its entirety\nand for the direction of society which we can still scarcely divine.\n\nThe conventional points of view, just mentioned in considering the woman\nquestion, retard the development of woman's individuality above all\nbecause they overlook the diversity of nature and the complexity of the\nproblem. The conventional conception of self-renunciation as the highest\nexpression of womanhood is still continually the greatest obstacle to\nthe achievement of woman's personality. To be able to perish for a loved\nbeing with joy is one of the beautiful inalienable priviliges of woman\nnature. But by considering this under all circumstances as ideal, woman\nhas thus retarded not only her own development but also that of man. If\nwe compare marriages of older generations with those of the younger, the\nmen of the latter show great advance in regard to considerate tenderness\nand sympathetic understanding toward their wives--wives who have on the\nother hand a personal life more complete and with other demands than\nformerly. Both have thus gained since women have begun to practice the\nself-renunciation of self-assertion! Because for every self-sacrificing\nwoman nature it is infinitely harder to take her due than to sacrifice\nit.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nConventional womanhood will ever have its strongest support in\neducation.\n\nThe individuality of a child is seldom repressed in the inconsiderate\nand brutal manner of former times. But by attrition it is effaced. In\nthe olden times the children enjoyed a certain freedom in the nursery\nwhere the expression of life, manifestation of joy, pleasure and\ndispleasure, sympathy and antipathy of the growing personality was not\ncontinually moderated. Now the children are continually with the parents\nand these accustom them to a certain exacting restraint. The children\nwish to be entertained; they cannot play of their own initiative, for\nthey lose the desire that originates in the freedom of the creative\nphantasy. Neither children nor parents possess themselves in peace. In\nthe continual association the children are worn out by commands so\nvaried and numerous that obedience cannot be maintained. They do not,\ntherefore, learn the discipline necessary for the development of their\npersonality--to subordinate the unessential life expressions to the\nessential and to dominate even over these last--a culture of the fallow\nchild ground which must begin early in order to become a second nature.\n\nAnd this happens only when the educator knows clearly what he will\nadhere to as essential in the development of the child, and when\naccording to that he establishes his commands and prohibitions, which\nmust be few in number but as immutable as the laws of nature, and if\nviolated must bring upon the child, not artificial punishment, but the\ninevitable results of the act itself. So can man by fixed practice form\nthe child of nature into a man of culture, who out of consideration for\nhimself and for others curbs his tendencies which are inimical to\nsociety, without, however, suppressing his personality. For outside the\nfield of immutable laws, children ought not to be constrained or coerced\nagainst their nature and their disposition, against their healthy egoism\nand against their especial tastes.\n\nNow many mothers by their own effacement of self develop an unjustified\negoism of the child, but desire in other respects a self-control, a\ncircumspection, a moderation and discretion such as a whole life has not\nordinarily been able to inculcate in the mother herself. Out of this\nsoft clay, which is material for an individuality, parents, servants and\nteachers mold a society being, sometimes a social being, but never a\nhuman being.\n\nThis modeling is called education. And a part of the earliest education\nmust, as I have just shown, truly consist in that of molding. But after\nthe first years of life the aim of education should be to prevent all\nmolding and on the contrary to assure the freedom or development of the\nsingle force which, considered in the light of the whole, makes it\nsignificant for mankind that new generations succeed those which have\ndisappeared--the force of a new personality.\n\nEvery child is a new world, a world into which not even the tenderest\nlove can wholly penetrate. However openly the clear eyes meet ours,\nhowever confidingly the soft hand is laid in ours, this tender being\nwill perhaps one day deplore the suffering of his childhood, because we\ntreated him according to the assumption that children are replicas, not\noriginals; not new, wonderful personalities. It is true the child in\ncertain measure is a repetition of the child nature of all times, but at\nthe same time, and this in a far higher degree, an absolutely new\nsynthesis of soul qualities, with new possibilities for sorrow and joy,\nstrength and weakness.\n\nThis new being will, upon his own responsibility, at his own risk, live\nthis terrifyingly earnest life. What creative force, new inceptions, he\nwill be able to bring to it; what elasticity he will possess under the\nblows of destiny, what power to give and to receive happiness--all\ndepends, outside of nature itself, in essential degree upon the\neducator's method of treating this individual child nature.\n\nGoethe long ago lamented that education aspired to make Philistines out\nof personalities. And this is now much worse since education has become\npedagogical, without at the same time becoming psychological.\n\nOnly he who treats the feelings, will and rights of a child with quite\nthe same consideration as those of a grown person, and who never allows\nthe personality of a child to feel other limitations than those of\nnature itself, or the consideration, based upon good grounds, for the\nchild's own welfare or that of others--only he possesses the first\nrequisite principle of real education. Education must assuredly be a\nliberating of the personality from the domination of its own passions.\nBut it must never strive to exterminate passion itself, which is the\ninnermost power of the personality and which cannot exist without the\ncoexisting danger of a corresponding fault. To subdue the possible fault\nin each spiritual inclination by eliciting through love the\ncorresponding good in the same inclination--this alone is individual\neducation. It is an extremely slow education, in which immediate\ninterference signifies little, the spiritual atmosphere of the home, its\nmode of life and its ideals signify on the contrary almost everything.\nThe educator must above all understand how to wait: to reckon all\neffects in the light of the future, not of the present.\n\nThe educator believes often that he spares the child future suffering\nwhen he \"opposes his onesidedness,\" as it is called. He does not reflect\nthat in the effort to force the child in a direction contrary to that in\nwhich his personality evinces itself, he merely succeeds in diminishing\nhis nature; yes, often merely in retaining the weakness in the quality,\nnot the corresponding strength!\n\nBut ordinarily it is indeed no such principle, but only the old\nthoughtlessly maintained ideal of self-renunciation which is decisive.\nWe repress the child's joy of discovery and check the spirit of\nenterprise; wound his extremely sensitive sense of beauty; exercise\nforce over his most personal possessions, his tokens of tenderness;\ncombat his aversions and quench his enthusiasm. Amid such attacks upon\ntheir individual being, their feelings and their inclinations most\nchildren, but especially girls, grow up. It is therefore not surprising\nthat when grown they seldom look back upon their childhood as a happy\ntime.\n\nAn intense feeling of life, a sense of plenitude, entirety, of the\ncomplete development of the powers of the potentialities--this\nconstitutes happiness. Children have more possibilities of happiness\nthan adults, for they can experience this feeling of joy of life more\nundividedly and immediately. They should utilize these possibilities of\nhappiness while the parents have partial power over their life. Soon\nenough must they on their own initiative attempt, accomplish, bleed; and\nherein no one of all the influences of education has even approximately\nthe significance of this: that the individual be not overtrained, that\nhe have still strength enough to live. That means: to suffer his own\nsorrow, to enjoy his own happiness, to perform his own work, to think\nhis own thoughts, to be able to devote himself absolutely and\nentirely--the sole condition of being able to work, to love and to die.\n\nIt is a deep psychological truth that the kingdom of heaven belongs to\nthe children. For no one attains the highest that life offers in any\nother way than by simplicity, unworldliness and the power of devoting\nhis whole being without reserve to his object. This is the strength of\nthe child nature. If a mother by education has preserved this holy\nstrength and developed it to a conscious power, then she has given to\nmankind not only a new being but a new personality.\n\nBut the education in the family, just as in the school, is tending in\nthe opposite direction. The destruction of the personality is therefore\nthe great evil of the time.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nYet man is fortunately a vigorous organism. And those, whose personality\nhas been bowed or repressed by education, could raise themselves again\nand create freedom for their development if they were aware of the value\nof this freedom.\n\nFew beings and so likewise few women can be exceptional. But if only a\nfew are destined for a great personality, yet nevertheless most can, in\nspite of the errors of education, develop a certain degree of\npersonality, if they are deeply, earnestly concerned in it.\n\nFor everything is interrelated. No one lives unpunished by a second\nhand. We cannot advance intellectually by borrowing, without becoming\nalso morally less scrupulous. We are today unjust to a book, a picture,\na drama, because we pronounce judgment upon it according to the words of\nothers, or because we do not dare to show the pleasure it gives us, in\ncase the critic has not granted us permission to be pleased, or because\nwe feign indignation we do not feel, but which others require of us in\nthe name of taste or morality. Tomorrow, in the same way, we shall be\nunjust or dishonest to man, or to our own feeling--an injustice or a\ndishonesty which can have influence over the destiny of a whole life.\n\nThe sum of spiritual riches, of spiritual utilities, is thereby\ndiminished if we do not cede to the whole what is most essentially ours.\nThat which is really our own may be great or small, rich or\ninsignificant--if we ourselves have felt or thought it, it is more\nsignificant to others than that which we merely repeat, even if our\nauthority be the highest. And in those cases where we must rely upon\nauthorities, we still can put a certain personality into our choice and\nhonesty in acknowledging our indebtedness, by confessing that we have\nborrowed our judgment we can put honesty and originality into this\ndependence.\n\nIt is possible for no one to acquire more than a limited amount of the\nresults of culture, to form an entirely original judgment oftener than\nin a few isolated cases. But each one can learn to understand that it is\na mark of culture not to pronounce judgment upon questions with which he\nis not conversant. Good taste prescribes that just as one refuses to\nwear false jewels if one possesses no real ones, so one should refrain\nfrom pronouncing judgment upon persons or questions upon which one has\nnot formed an opinion through one's own impressions. When this honesty\nbegins to be considered a mark of spiritual refinement, then will the\nculture of woman have made quite as great advance as when she learned to\nread. For next to the power to form decisions for one's self stands in\nculture value the ability to understand what opinions one does not\npossess and the courage to recognize one's delicacy.\n\nCourage and truth--that is what women lack above all. And these are the\nqualities which they must cultivate if the feminine personality is to\ngrow. This does not result because women devote themselves to study, be\nit ever so thorough, or to social tasks, be they ever so responsible.\nBoth further the development of woman's personality in the measure only\nin which her own investigations, her own choice, make her means of\nculture and her work an organic part of herself. To develop woman's\npersonality from within--that is the great woman question. To free woman\nfrom conventionality--that is the great aim of the emancipation of\nwoman.\n\nSuch a conception of the woman question is for me the ideal conception\nof this present great movement. And ideality does not mean to adopt as\nthe conception of life that which the majority considers ideal. Ideality\nmeans to live for the ideal, which has inflamed our consciousness and\nnot to violate this consciousness by adapting it to such ideals as we\nfeel with our whole soul are lower.\n\nIf it is true that \"the lack of genius is the lack of courage,\" so then\nis it still more true in regard to the lack of personality. Here lies\none of the reasons why individuality is less often found among women\nthan among men. A man is more fully inflamed with his idea, the object\nof his work; he is more intense in that which he knows and which he\nwills. He becomes thus often--just as the child--more onesided, almost\nalways more egoistic, but much more absolute than a woman in like\nposition. She is rarely, except in love, wholly penetrated by that which\noccupies her. It is then easier for her to be considerate, to look about\ncontinuously upon all sides. She is more mobile, more quickly sensitive,\nmore manysided and more supple than man, and therein lies her strength.\nBut just as that of man, it is bought at the price of corresponding\nweakness. For equipoise is still so difficult in human nature that a\ngood quality is often not the product of a multiplication, but is the\nremainder after a subtraction.\n\nThe man becomes thus especially creative through his greater courage to\ndare, his more intense power to will; the woman becomes the often\nanxious conservator. She cherishes with fidelity, not only the customs\nand memories of the home, but also society's traditional sentiments and\nconceptions of right. But this very conspicuous conservatism of the\nwoman is exactly that which has obstructed the development of\nexceptional femininity.\n\nThe personal independence of man is hampered because he must work\nordinarily in close association with others; whereby he is bound by\nparty discipline and party spirit, by considerations for preferment or\nother interests.\n\nThe personality of woman on the other hand is more fettered by\nconventional conceptions of morality and a conventional ideal of woman.\nShe will not distinguish the self-sacrifice which is of value from that\nwhich from all points of view is valueless. She does not rely upon her\nown instinct for right if this instinct deviates only a hair's breadth\nfrom the generally accepted idea. She pardons the one who sins against\nestablished conceptions of right, provided only he recognizes their\nvalidity; but she condemns the one who has acted contrary to this\nconception in sincere conviction, because his idea of right differs from\nthat of the majority! She confounds in her judgment temperament and\nopinions, doctrine and life--a confusion which is the origin of all\nspiritual tyranny, of all social intolerance. Especially does this\nobtain in questions which concern the relation of the sexes. Every one\nwho expresses an opinion at variance with the conventional ideal of\nmorality has then incurred intrusive conclusions and blasting defamation\nof his private life. On the part of women then--if it is a question\nconcerning a woman--it must all the more be accepted that it requires\nnot only a glowing red belief but also a snow-white conscience to dare\ndefy society in its most sensitive prejudices.\n\nConventionality of the woman attains its culminating point in the\nthoughtless and conscienceless repetition of others' words by which most\nwomen lower their spiritual level, distort, disfigure their character\nand eventually stultify their personality.\n\nA woman who makes any pretensions to fineness, evinces this among other\nthings, by avoiding all borrowed or sham luxury. She scorns spurious\neffects, tinsel, and disdains therefore in her dress and her home all\nartificial ornamentation.\n\nBut this same woman utters boldly counterfeited opinions and spurious\njudgments as her own. Even if she possesses it she dare not express a\nfresh, original opinion, a warm direct feeling. And her forgeries are\nthen transmitted by other plagarists from circle to circle. Thus \"Public\nOpinion\" is formed upon the most delicate life problems, the most\nserious life work. Thus the most noble actions become dubious and the\nvilest calumnies positive authentic truths. Thus the air becomes\ncongested with the grains of sand, under which a man's works of honor\nare buried.\n\nBut a work or a renown which has been interred can be exhumed. It is the\nblind re-echoers of others' words, themselves, who must at length\ndisappear forever.","title":"The Morality of Woman, and Other Essays","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":11693}