{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_60840/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_60840","id":"gutenberg_60840","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60840","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Gender & Sexuality Studies","Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Sociology","Feminism","Women -- Social and moral questions"],"text":"_By Ellen Key_\n\n\n                       The Century of the Child\n                       The Education of the Child\n                       Love and Marriage\n                       The Woman Movement\n\n\n\n\n                           The Woman Movement\n\n\n                                   By\n                               Ellen Key\n\n                               Author of\n         \u201cThe Century of the Child,\u201d \u201cLove and Marriage,\u201d etc.\n\n                             Translated by\n                      Mamah Bouton Borthwick, A.M.\n\n                        With an Introduction by\n                             Havelock Ellis\n\n\n                          G. P. Putnam\u2019s Sons\n                          New York and London\n                        The Knickerbocker Press\n                                  1912\n\n\n\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1912\n                                   BY\n                          G. P. PUTNAM\u2019S SONS\n\n\n                   The Knickerbocker Press, New York\n\n\n\n\n  Es gibt kein Vergangenes das man zur\u00fccksehnen d\u00fcrfte; es gibt nur\n  ein ewig Neues, das sich aus den erweiterten Elementen des\n  Vergangenen gestaltet, und die echte Sehnsucht muss stets productiv\n  sein, ein neues, besseres Erschaffen.\u2014GOETHE.\n\n\u201c_There is no past that we need long to return to, there is only the\neternally new which is formed out of enlarged elements of the past; and\nour genuine longing must always be productive, for a new and better\ncreation._\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                                PREFACE\n\n\nThe literature upon the right and the worth of woman, beginning as early\nas the 15th century, has in recent times increased so enormously that a\ncomplete collection would require a whole library building. In these\nwritings are represented all classes, from tables of statistics to comic\npapers. Not only both sexes but almost all stages of life have\ncontributed to it. By immersing oneself in this literature, especially\nin its belletristic and polemic portions, one could find rich material\nfor the illumination of that sphere to which the publisher limited my\nwork: the indication of the new spiritual conditions, transformations,\nand reciprocal results which the woman movement has effected. Historic,\nscientific, political, economic, juridical, sociological, and\ntheological points of view must, therefore, be practically set aside.\nBut even for my task, limited to the psychological sphere, time,\nstrength, and inclination are wanting to bury myself in this literature.\nI must, therefore, confine myself to giving chiefly my own observations.\n\nIt is more than fifty years ago that I read _Hertha_, Sweden\u2019s first\n\u201cfeministic\u201d (dealing with the woman question) novel, and listened to\nthe numerous contentions concerning it. With ever keener personal\ninterest I have since followed the operations of the woman\nmovement\u2014above all, the new psychic conditions, types, and forms of\nactivities which the woman movement has evoked; I have also given\nconsideration to the new possibilities and new difficulties resulting\ntherefrom for individuals and for society.\n\nThe limited compass of this little book prevents me from substantiating\nmy assertions by means of parallels with earlier times, comparisons\nwhich might illuminate certain spiritual transformations and new\nformations. My comparisons of the present with the past do not go\nfarther back than my own memory reaches. And these touch, moreover, in\nwhat concerns the past, principally upon Swedish conditions; while my\nimpressions of the present were gathered throughout Europe. I have\nconsidered, however, that I could summarise both in a comprehensive\npicture. For although the women of Sweden a generation ago possessed\nrights for which the women in many countries are still struggling\nto-day, yet the woman movement in the last decade has advanced so\nrapidly that the conditions have in great measure been equalised.\nIndeed, some of the grey-haired champions of the woman movement have\nseen one after another of their demands fulfilled in this new\ncentury\u2014demands which in the fifties and sixties, in many countries even\nin the seventies and eighties, were publicly and privately derided even\nin the very person of these champions. And among peoples who even ten\nyears ago were unaffected by the emancipation of women, for example the\nChinese and the Turks, it is already progressing. It amounts to this,\nthat even if national peculiarities in character and in laws occasion\ndifferences in the curve which the woman movement describes in the\ndifferent countries, yet everywhere the movement has had the same\ncauses, must follow the same main direction, and\u2014sooner or later\u2014must\nhave the same effects.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn _Hertha_, the book containing the tenets of the Swedish woman\nmovement, the demand is made for woman\u2019s \u201cfreedom and future, and a home\nfor her spiritual life\u201d; the desire is expressed that women should\n\u201cpreserve the character of their own nature, and not be uniformly\nmoulded, not be led by a string as if they had not a soul of their own\nto show them the way.\u201d There must be \u201cvital air for woman\u2019s soul and a\nshare in life\u2019s riches.\u201d It is to be lamented that \u201cwoman\u2019s spiritual\ntalent must be a field that lies fallow,\u201d that the law \u201cdenies her free\nagency in seeking happiness.\u201d The prerogative is demanded that \u201cwoman in\nnoble self-conscious joy shall succeed in feeling what she is able to do\nnow and what she is capable of attaining\u201d; that she shall be free to\n\u201caspire to the heights her youthful strength and consciousness point out\nto her\u201d; that she may \u201cbe fully herself and be able to exercise an\nuplifting, ennobling influence upon the man\u201d to whom she says: \u201cAll that\nis mine shall be thine and thereby the portion of each shall be\ndoubled.\u201d\n\nEven if all fields are made accessible to them, \u201cGod\u2019s law in their\nnature will always lead the majority of women to the home, to the\nintimacy of the family life, to motherhood and the duties of rearing\nchildren\u2014but with a higher consciousness.\u201d That women shall be citizens\nsignifies that they shall become \u201chuman beings in whom the life of the\nheart predominates.\u201d\n\nThis picture of the future, which has already become a reality in many\nrespects, was sketched at a time when innumerable women were still\ncompelled to experience that \u201cthere is no heavier burden than life\u2019s\nemptiness,\u201d and when it was true of every woman, \u201cdark is her way,\ngloomy her future, narrow her lot.\u201d\n\nBut because that _which is_, is always considered by the masses as that\nwhich _ought to be_, \u201cwhatever is, is right,\u201d so the writer who painted\nthe picture was called \u201cdangerous,\u201d \u201ca disintegrator of society,\u201d \u201cmad,\u201d\n\u201cridiculous\u201d! \u201cMademoiselle Bremer\u2019s\u201d name possessed then quite a\ndifferent intonation from that of Fredrika Bremer now; it caused strife\nbetween the sexes; it was hated by some and derided by others.\n\nI should like to advise young women of the present time to read\n_Hertha_; they will thus obtain a criterion for the progress which has\ntaken place during the last half century and also a clear view of the\ncharacter of the opposition which the present desire for progress\nencounters.\n\n                                                              ELLEN KEY.\n\n October 1, 1909.\n\n\n\n\n                              INTRODUCTION\n\n\nThere can be little doubt that at the present moment what is called the\n\u201cWoman\u2019s Movement\u201d is entering a critical period of its development. A\ndiscussion of its present problems and its present difficulties by one\nof the most advanced leaders in that movement thus appears at the right\ntime and deserves our most serious attention.\n\nThe early promulgators of the Woman\u2019s Movement, a century or more ago,\nrightly regarded it as an extremely large and comprehensive movement\naffecting the whole of life. They were anxious to secure for women\nadequate opportunities for free human development, to the same extent\nthat men possess such opportunities, but they laid no special stress on\nthe abolition of any single disability or group of disabilities, whether\nas regards education, occupation, marriage, property, or political\nenfranchisement. They were people of wide and sound intelligence; they\nnever imagined that any single isolated reform would prove a cheap\npanacea for all the evils they wished to correct; they looked for a slow\nreform along the whole line. They held that such reform would enrich and\nenlarge the entire field of human life, not for women only, but for the\nhuman race generally. Such, indeed, is the spirit which still inspires\nthe wisest and most far-seeing champions of that Movement. It is only\nnecessary to mention Olive Schreiner\u2019s _Woman and Labour_.\n\nWhen, however, the era of actual practical reform began, it was obvious\nthat a certain amount of concentration became necessary. Education was,\nreasonably enough, usually the first point for concentration, and\ngradually, without any undue friction, the education of girls was, so\nfar as possible, raised to a level not so very different from that of\nboys. This first great stage in the Woman\u2019s Movement inevitably led on\nto the second stage, which lay in a struggle, not this time always\nwithout a certain amount of friction, to secure the entry of these now\neducated women to avocations and professions previously monopolised by\nthe men who had alone been trained to fill them. This second stage is\nnow largely completed, and at the present time there are very few\nvocations and professions in civilised lands, even in so conservative\nand slowly moving a land as England, which women are not entitled to\nexercise equally with men. Concomitantly with this movement,\nhowever,\u2014and beginning indeed, very much earlier, and altogether apart\nfrom any conscious \u201cmovement\u201d at all,\u2014there was a tendency to change the\nlaws in a direction more favourable to women and their personal rights,\nespecially as regards marriage and property. These legal reforms were\neffected by Parliaments of men, elected exclusively by men, and for the\nmost part they were effected without any very strong pressure from\nwomen. It had, however, long been claimed that women themselves ought to\nhave some part in making the laws by which they are governed, and at\nthis stage, towards the middle of the last century, the demand for\nwomen\u2019s parliamentary suffrage began to be urgently raised. Here,\nhowever, the difficulties naturally proved very much greater than they\nwere in the introduction of a higher level of education for women, or\neven in the opening up to them of hitherto monopolised occupations. In\nnew countries, and sometimes in small old countries, these difficulties\ncould be overcome. But in large and old countries, of stable and complex\nconstitution, it was very far from easy to readjust the ancient\nmachinery in accordance with the new demands. The difficulty by no means\nlay in any unwillingness on the part of the masculine politicians in\npossession; on the contrary, it is a notable fact, often overlooked,\nthat, in England especially, there have for at least half a century been\na considerable proportion of eminent statesmen as well as of the\nordinary rank and file of members of Parliament who are in favour of\ngranting the suffrage to women, a much larger proportion, probably, than\nwould be found favourable to this claim in any other section of the\ncommunity. That, indeed,\u2014apart from the delay involved by ancient\nconstitutional methods,\u2014has been the main difficulty. Neither among the\nmasculine electors nor among their womenfolk has there been any\nconsuming desire to achieve women\u2019s suffrage.\n\nThe result has been a certain tendency in the Woman\u2019s Movement to\ndiverge in two different directions. On the one hand, are those who,\nrecognising that all evolution is slow, are content to await patiently\nthe inevitable moment when the political enfranchisement of women will\nbecome possible, in the meanwhile working towards women\u2019s causes in\nother fields equally essential and sometimes more important. On the\nother hand, a small but energetic, sometimes even violent, section of\nthe women engaged in this movement concentrated altogether on the\nsuffrage. The germs of this divergence may be noted even thirty years\nback when we find Miss Cobbe declaring that woman\u2019s suffrage is \u201cthe\ncrown and completion of all progress in woman\u2019s movements,\u201d while Mrs.\nCady Stanton, perhaps more wisely, stated that it was merely a vestibule\nto progress. In recent years the difference has become accentuated,\nsometimes even into an acute opposition, between those who maintain that\nthe one and only thing essential, and that immediately and at all costs,\neven at the cost of arresting and putting back the progress of women in\nall other directions, is the parliamentary suffrage, and on the other\nhand, those who hold that the suffrage, however necessary, is still only\na single point, and that the woman\u2019s movement is far wider and, above\nall, far deeper than any mere political reform.\n\nIt is at this stage that Ellen Key comes before us with her book on _The\nWoman\u2019s Movement_, first published in Swedish in 1909, and now presented\nto the reader in English. As Ellen Key views the Woman\u2019s Movement, it\ncertainly includes all that those who struggle for votes for women are\nfighting for; she is unable to see, as she puts it, why a woman\u2019s hands\nneed be more soiled by a ballot paper than by a cooking recipe. But she\nis far indeed from the well-intentioned but ignorant fanatics who fancy\nthat the vote is the alpha and the omega of Feminism; and still less is\nshe in sympathy with those who consider that its importance is so\nsupreme as to justify violence and robbery, a sort of sex war on mankind\ngenerally, and the casting in the mud of all those things which it has\nbeen the gradual task of civilisation to achieve, not for men only but\nfor women. The Woman\u2019s Movement, as Ellen Key sees it, includes the\ndemand for the vote, but it looks upon the vote merely as a reasonable\ncondition for attaining far wider and more fundamental ends. She is of\nopinion that the Woman\u2019s Movement will progress less by an increased\naptitude to claim rights than by an increased power of self-development,\nthat it is not by what they can seize, but by what they are, that women,\nor for the matter of that men, finally count. She regards the task of\nwomen as constructive rather than destructive; they are the architects\nof the future humanity, and she holds that this is a task that can only\nbe carried out side by side with men, not because man\u2019s work and woman\u2019s\nwork is, or should be, identical, but because each supplements and aids\nthe other, and whatever gives greater strength and freedom to one sex\nequally fortifies and liberates the other sex.\n\nCertainly we may not all agree with Ellen Key at every point, nor always\naccept her interpretation of the great movement of which she is so\nnotable a pioneer. The breadth of her sympathies may sometimes seem to\nlead to an impracticable eclecticism, and, in the rejection of narrow\nand trivial aims, she may too sanguinely demand an impossible harmony of\nopposing ideals. But if this is an error it is surely an error on the\nright side. She has not put forward this book as a manifesto of the\nadvanced guard of the Woman\u2019s Movement, but merely as the reflections of\nan individual woman who, for nearly half a century, has pondered, felt,\nstudied, observed this movement in many parts of the world. But it would\nnot be easy to find a book in which the claims of Feminism\u2014in the\nlargest modern sense\u2014are more reasonably and temperately set forth.\n\n[Signature: _Havelock Ellis._]\n\nLONDON, May 1, 1912.\n\n\n\n\n                                CONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                    PAGE\n\n INTRODUCTION                                                          1\n\n CHAPTER\n\n       I THE EXTERNAL RESULTS OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT                   23\n\n      II THE INNER RESULTS OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT                      58\n\n     III THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN QUESTION UPON SINGLE WOMEN        71\n\n      IV THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON THE DAUGHTERS       89\n\n       V THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON MEN AND WOMEN IN   111\n           GENERAL\n\n      VI THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON MARRIAGE           139\n\n     VII THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON MOTHERHOOD         169\n\n\n\n\n                           The Woman Movement\n\n\n\n\n                              INTRODUCTION\n\n\nThe first \u201cwoman movement\u201d was Eve\u2019s gesture when she reached for the\nfruit of the Tree of Knowledge\u2014a movement symbolic of the entire\nsubsequent woman\u2019s movement of the world. For the will to pass beyond\nestablished bounds has constantly been the motive of her conscious as\nwell as of her subconscious quest. Every generation has called this\ntransgression, this passing beyond the bounds, a \u201cfall of man,\u201d the\n\u201coriginal sin,\u201d a crime against God\u2019s express command, a crime against\nthe nature of woman as prescribed for her for all time.\n\nAnd yet from the beginning women have appeared who have passed far\nbeyond the established boundaries set for their sex by their era and\nupheld by their own people. They have demonstrated that limitations thus\nprescribed do not always coincide with what is considered by the\nmajority to be the \u201cnature\u201d of woman. At one time a woman has manifested\nthe \u201cmasculine\u201d characteristics of a ruler or has performed a\n\u201cmasculine\u201d deed; at another time she has distinguished herself in\n\u201cmasculine\u201d learning or art, or again has dared to love without the\npermission of law and custom. In a word the individual woman, when her\nhead or her heart was strong enough, has always shown the possibilities\nof the development of personal power. But she has had in that effort\nonly her own strength and her own will upon which to rely; she has\nneither been urged on by the spirit of her time (_Zeitgeist_) nor been\nemulated by the masses. Exceptional women have sometimes been glorified\nby their contemporaries and by posterity as \u201cwonders of nature\u201d;\nsometimes been cited as \u201cwarning examples.\u201d Seen in connection with the\nworld\u2019s woman movement all these instances, where a bond was broken by\nwoman\u2019s power of mind or creative gift, by a heart or a conscience, are\nparts of what can be called the \u201cprehistoric\u201d woman movement. This\nmovement for personal freedom formed no step in that phase of the\ndevelopment which possesses a conscious purpose, but was merely\nsporadic. Even so the participation was long nameless which women took\nin the great struggles for freedom where, without consideration for the\n\u201cnature\u201d of woman, they dared bleed upon the arena and scaffold, ascend\nthe pyre, and be raised upon the gibbet. Very rarely did these women\nmartyrs alter immediately men\u2019s\u2014or even women\u2019s\u2014conception of woman\u2019s\n\u201cbeing.\u201d But just as many perfumes are dissipated only after centuries,\nso there are also deeds whose indirect results persist through\ncenturies.\n\nMost significant, however, upon the whole in the \u201cprehistoric\u201d woman\nmovement, are innumerable women whose souls found expression only in the\nstrong, quiet acts of every day life but yet remained living and\ngrowing. As a reason for the \u201censlavement\u201d of woman by man, the\nprimitive division of labour is still occasionally cited. This division\nof labour made war and the chase man\u2019s task and so developed in him\ncourage, energy, and daring, while the woman remained the \u201cbeast of\nburden.\u201d But we forget that, in this labour arrangement, the handicraft\nand husbandry which woman practised at that time made her, to perhaps a\nhigher degree than man, the conservator of civilisation and probably\ndeveloped her psychic power in more comprehensive manner than his.\n\nEven after this division of labour ceased there remained\u2014and remain\nstill in innumerable country households\u2014in and through many of the\nimportant and difficult tasks of the mother of the house, numerous\npossibilities for spiritual development. And exactly in this respect\nindustrial work robs the woman of much.\n\nBy the side of these innumerable nameless women who, century after\ncentury, in and through the material work of culture which they\nperformed, increased their psychic power, we must remember all the\nunnamed women who with flower-like quiet mien turned their souls to the\nlight.\n\nAntique sepulchres and Tanagra figures tell us more about the\nharmonious, refined corporeality of the Hellenic woman than the famous\nstatues of Aphrodite or Athena. In like manner it is not the illustrious\nbut the nameless women who most clearly reveal the will of the woman\nsoul, in antiquity, for light and life.\n\nNumbers of Greek women were disciples of the philosophers, some even\nwere their inspiration. Generally courtesans, these women represented\nthe \u201cemancipation\u201d of that time from the servile condition of the\nlegitimate married women and also showed that women already longed to\nshare in the interests of men and to acquire their culture. History has\npreserved also words and deeds of wives and mothers of the past which\nshow that these also at times attained \u201cmasculine\u201d greatness of soul and\ncivic virtue. Pythias and Sibyls, Vestals and Valas, are other witnesses\nthat the power of woman\u2019s soul was active and recognised long before\nChristianity. Even among the purely primitive races there were found\u2014and\nare found\u2014cases in which woman in power and rights was placed, not only\non an equality with man, but even above him. And if, on the one hand,\nthe rigid exactions which men from the earliest time have fixed upon the\nwife\u2019s fidelity\u2014while they themselves had full freedom for\npromiscuity\u2014show that the wife was considered as the property of the\nhusband, so, on the other hand, this very conception was a means of\nelevating and refining the soul life of woman. For the self-control\nwhich she had to impose upon herself deepened her feeling for a devotion\nwhich embraced only one, the man to whom she belonged. Nothing would be\nmore superficial than to estimate the real position of woman, among any\nspecial people, only by what we know of their laws. It is as if one, in\na few centuries from now, should judge the actual position of the modern\nEuropean wife by referring it to the wretched marriage laws which now\nobtain. They forget the deep gulf between law and custom who declare\nthat marriage devotion, veneration for the sanctity of the home, esteem\nfor the spiritual being of the wife first arose as a result of\nChristianity.\n\nIt is significant enough for the freeing of woman that Jesus raised the\npersonal worth of _all_ mankind through His teaching that\u2014whoever or\nwhatever the person in outer respects may be\u2014every soul possesses an\neternal value comprised, as it were, in God\u2019s love; significant enough\nthat Jesus Himself, because of this point of view, treated every woman,\neven the sinner, with kindness and respect. Because of the increasing\nuncertainty concerning the real ideals of Jesus, one is compelled to\nassume that\u2014just as Veronica\u2019s handkerchief preserved the imprint of\nJesus\u2019 outer image\u2014the manner of life of the oldest Christian\ncommunities has preserved the imprint of His teaching. It is significant\nof their doctrines that in these communities women and men stood side by\nside in the same faith, in the same hope, in the same exercise of love,\nand in the same martyrdom. Here was \u201cneither man nor woman,\u201d but all\nwere one in the hope of the speedy second coming of Jesus to establish\nGod\u2019s Kingdom.\n\nBut the more this hope faded, the more the Pagan-Jewish conception of\nwoman again made itself felt. It is true the Church sought to place man\nand woman on an equality in regard to certain marriage duties and\nrights; to uphold on both sides the sanctity of marriage; to protect\nwomen and children against despotism. It is true the Church strove to\ncounteract crude sensuality, utilising, among other things, an emphasis\nof celibacy as the expression of the highest spirituality.\n\nBut, on the other hand, the doctrine of this Church became the greatest\nobstacle to the elevation of woman, because it lessened the reverence\nfor her mission as a being of sex. Marriage, the only recognised ends of\nwhich were the prevention of unchastity and the propagation of the race,\nwas looked upon as an inferior condition in comparison with pure\nvirginity. And the more this ideal of chastity was extolled, the more\nwoman was degraded and considered the most grievous temptation of man in\nhis striving after higher sanctity. Before God, so man taught, man and\nwoman were truly equal; but not in human relationships or qualities;\nyes, and man has gone in this direction even to the point of debating\nthe question in church councils, as to whether woman really had a soul\nor not!\n\nBut when the Church revered pure virginity in the person of the Mother\nof Jesus, it was woman in highest form\u2014as happy or suffering mother\u2014that\nthe Church unconsciously glorified. In the statues and altar pieces of\nthe cathedral man worships, in the likeness of Mary, the purest and\nnoblest womanhood. The virtues especially extolled by the Church were\nalso those in which Mary in particular and woman in general had\npre-eminence. By all these impressions a soul condition was created in\nwhich the heart penetrated by religious ecstasy, must, of psychological\nnecessity, devote itself to the earthly manifestations of this same pure\nwomanhood. Generally this devotion was only an ecstatic cult, an\nadoration from afar of an ideal, inspiring deeds or poetry. Sometimes\nthis ecstasy fused the being of man and woman in the sensuous-soulful\nunity of great love. But when neither was the case, yet the adoration of\nknights and minnesingers increased the esteem of man for woman and the\nesteem of woman for herself. It also contributed to the esteem of man\nfor woman that, as the men were always obliged to stand in arms, they\ncould rarely acquire the learning which the priests\u2014and through them the\nwives and daughters of the castles\u2014acquired. The superiority of woman in\nthis respect had a refining influence upon manners and customs and upon\nthe general culture of the time. Often through a number of women\nauditors the poem of a minnesinger first became famous. When in Mainz\none sees Heinrich Frauenlob\u2019s tombstone, one comprehends, through the\nsoulful noble lines, how mourning women bore him to the grave, as the\nlittle bas-relief at the base of the stone represents. Their sympathy\nmade him their singer and his sympathy revealed, to their time and to\nthemselves, their own being. Woman\u2019s ideal of love became through poetry\nand courts of love the ideal also of the most cultured men. We see here\na movement of the time which women already half consciously effected by\ntheir life of feeling and their culture. The authority which the wife\nexercised as lady of the manor during the absence, often of many years\u2019\nduration, of her husband gave her increased power to disseminate about\nher that finer culture which she herself had gained. But when the lords\nof the manor returned and again assumed power, then indeed at times\nstrange thoughts might have come to their wives, while they fixed their\nglance, under the great arched eyelids, upon the missal or the romance\nof chivalry or, with long tapering fingers, moved the chessmen or played\nthe harp, or while they bent the slender white neck over the embroidery\nframe or the lace-pillow upon which they wrought veritable marvels of\nhandicraft. Perhaps even then there stirred under many a brow the\npresentiment of a time in which the relationship between man and woman\nwould be different. Such thoughts must have arisen also in the\nmanor-houses when the men began to arrogate to themselves one handicraft\nafter another, occupations which in earlier times the daughters once\nlearned from their fathers, at whose side they sometimes even entered\nthe guild. Could even the nun\u2019s veil prevent such thoughts from rising\nbetween the white temples of some of the women who\u2014suffering or\nsuperfluous outside in the world\u2014had found refuge in the cloister? Here\nwas accomplished most peacefully the \u201cemancipation,\u201d of that time, of\nthe intellectual and artistic gifts of woman, for whom religion and the\nlife of the cloister had always employment. And if the soul of a nun was\ngreater and richer than usual, then might it indeed have happened that\nshe devoted herself to meditation, in a quandary as to whether all of\nGod\u2019s purposes for the gifts of her soul were truly fulfilled. And this\nthe more intently since even then many women outside the cloister\u2014women\nwhose religious inspiration directed their genius to great ends\u2014outside\nin the world, exercised a powerful influence upon the thought as upon\nthe events of their time and, after death as saints, retained power over\nsouls. Our Birgitta, for example, possessed herself of a great part of\n\u201cwoman\u2019s rights.\u201d\n\nSo significant had the psychic power of woman shown itself to be in the\nMiddle Ages that already in the early Renaissance it brought forth a\nnumber of \u201cfeminist\u201d writers, both women and men. And in the height of\nthe Renaissance there was quite an \u201cemancipation\u201d literature, about\nwomen and by women. This literature increased during the following\ncenturies. Famous men emphasised the importance of a higher education of\nwoman; some, as early as the beginning of the 16th century, claimed the\nabsolute superiority of woman in all things. Greater freedom, education,\nand rights, in one or another respect, were demanded by men as well as\nwomen \u201cfeminists.\u201d This literature purposed less, however, to alter some\ngiven conditions than, by means of examples of famous women of\nantiquity, to demonstrate the personal right and the social gain of what\nalready obtained without hindrance, although with the disapproval of\nmany:\u2014that numbers of women had appeared who in classic culture, in the\npractice of learned professions, in political or religious, intellectual\nor \u00e6sthetic interests, stood beside the men of Humanism, the\nRenaissance, and the Reformation.\n\nThe ideal of the time, the fully developed human personality of marked\nindividuality, determined the conduct of life of women exactly as that\nof men. Both sexes cherished the life value which the original,\nisolated, individual personality signified for other such personalities.\nBoth sexes appropriated to themselves the right to choose that which was\nharmonious with their own natures, that which soul or sense, thought or\nfeeling, desired. It followed from this conception that women sought to\nattain the highest degree of the beauty and grace of their own sex and\nat the same time to cultivate what \u201cmanly\u201d courage or genius nature had\ngiven them\u2014attributes which men valued in them next to their purely\nwomanly qualities.\n\nBut at this time it was not the _work_ of woman which had the great\ncultural significance, but the human essence of her being reflected in\n_the works of men_. In antiquity woman exhibited the manly qualities of\ngreatness of soul and civic virtue; in the Middle Ages she revealed the\nsame faculty as man for saintliness and exercise of love; in the\nRenaissance she manifested the same ability as man to mould her own\npersonality into a living work of art. If the spirit of equality between\nthe sexes, which prevailed in the Renaissance, had further directed the\nprogress of development, a \u201cwoman movement\u201d would never have arisen,\nbecause its ends, which are to-day still contended for, would have been\nattained one after another, at the appointed time, as natural fruits of\nthe florescence of the Renaissance.\n\nAs it is, this florescence acquired only very slight _immediate_\ninfluence upon the emancipation of woman\u2014and the farther North one goes\nthe slighter it becomes. The periods of the Counter-Reformation, of the\nReligious Wars and of the new Orthodoxy, on the contrary, had as result\nan enormous retrogression in the position of woman.\n\nThe \u201cDeliverance of the Flesh,\u201d which was accomplished by the verdict of\nProtestantism upon the life of the cloister, and by its support of\nmarriage, had little in common with the deep feeling for the right and\nbeauty of corporeality by which the Renaissance, intoxicated with life,\nbecame the era of the great renascence of art. Luther\u2019s conception of\nthe sex life, as \u201csanctified\u201d by marriage, was so crassly utilitarian\nthat it again dragged woman down from that high level upon which the\nfinest life of feeling and culture of the Middle Ages and of the\nRenaissance had placed her.\n\nAs matron of the household, woman retained her authority. The rational,\ncommon-sense marriage was the one most conformable to this literal\ndoctrine of Luther, and the most usual. To the man who had chosen her,\nthe wife bore children by the dozen and threescore. The Church gave her\nsoul nourishment. If a woman occasionally sought to exercise her\nspiritual gifts in a \u201cworldly\u201d direction, she needed powerful\nprotection, else she ran the danger of being burned as a witch!\n\nYet in spite of all, even this period produced not a few women who\nprocured for themselves the learning after which they thirsted, who\nsucceeded in keeping their souls alive, in finding springs in the midst\nof the stony wastes of the desert. The more, however, the different\nbranches of learning developed, and especially as Latin became the\nlanguage of the learned, the more difficult it became for women to force\ntheir way to these springs, sealed for the majority of their sex. For a\nclassical education became more and more infrequently extended to the\ndaughter, for whom even the ability to read and write was considered a\ntemptation to deviation from the path of virtue.[1]\n\nThat women in time of persecution adhered to the new doctrine with warm\nbelief and suffered for it with the whole strength of their souls, that\nin time of war they managed house and estate with power and\nunderstanding, altered in no respect, at the time, woman\u2019s social or\nmarriage position. Man was woman\u2019s sovereign master and therefore a good\nbit nearer God than she. In marriage woman was considered, according to\nthe bishop\u2019s word, \u201cman\u2019s chattel,\u201d outside of marriage as a tool of the\ndevil. But however deeply the soul of woman was oppressed at this time,\nyet it still lived and endowed sons, in whom the strong but unexercised\nendowments of the mother became genius; it endowed daughters, who\nsecretly procured sustenance for their souls and who in turn transmitted\ntheir rebellious spirit to a daughter or granddaughter.\n\nWhen at the end of the period of Orthodoxy and Absolutism, the great\nfundamental principle of Protestantism, the principle of personality,\nonce more made headway, one of the most characteristic expressions of\nthis reaction is that, in England, Milton wrote upon the right of\ndivorce and Defoe upon the right of woman to the development and\nexercise of her mental powers. Among others who demanded greater\neducation for women were Comenius in Germany and F\u00e9nelon in France. It\nwas not in the former country that woman, so long oppressed, first won\nher great cultural influence. That happened in the land where women had\nnever wholly lost it. In France, in the age of enlightenment, it was the\nsalons created by women that determined the European spirit of the time.\nLetters and memoirs indicate sufficiently the influence of woman\u2014in good\nas well as in bad sense\u2014in politics and literature, manners, customs,\nand taste. Women transform indirectly the political, philosophic, and\nscientific style. For they demand that every subject be treated in a\nmanner easily comprehensible and agreeable to them. A number of writings\nappeared which aimed to make it easy for \u201cwomen folk\u201d also \u201cto be freed\nthrough the reason.\u201d\n\nSince it was the approval of women which determined fame, men were only\ntoo eager to fulfil their expressed demands. Women disseminated the\nideas of men in wide circles, partly by buying their writings in great\nnumbers and distributing them, partly also by social life. Never has\nwoman more perfectly accomplished the important task of adjusting\nculture values. The art of conversation, developed to the highest\nperfection, was, it is true, often only a game of battledore and\nshuttlecock with ideas. But it performed at the same time, and in more\nelegant and more effective manner, a great part of the office of\nto-day\u2019s Press. The political leader, art and literary criticism, gossip\n(_causerie_), the \u201cportrait gallery\u201d of contemporaries\u2014all this was\ngathered from clever discourse. Through their art of conversation the\nwomen became\u2014next to the philosophers and statesmen who in this or that\nsalon were the leading spirits\u2014the intellectual leaders of the time;\nthey created \u201cenlightened opinion,\u201d they co-operated finally in the\nRevolution. The mistresses of these salons scarcely felt the need of an\nemancipation of woman; for they had for themselves as many possibilities\nof culture, of development of their powers, of the exercise of their\nfaculties, as even they themselves could wish. The intellectual\ncuriosity, which coveted learning, and the cultural interest of these\nwomen penetrated in wider circles, and a result of this general\nawakening was the Woman\u2019s Lyceum founded in Paris in 1786, among the\nstudents of which were found, some years later, enthusiastic supporters\nof the Revolution.\n\nAlso among the German peoples there appeared, in the age of\nenlightenment, women with literary and scientific interest; some with\nextraordinary gifts which they also exercised. But for the most part\nwomen and men under more clumsy social forms, so-called \u201cAcademies\u201d and\n\u201cSocieties,\u201d engaged in their \u201clearned pastime\u201d; and nowhere, except in\nthe person of some ruler, did woman attain in Europe, in the age of\nenlightenment, an influence which can be compared to that of the French\nwomen.\n\nIn the midst of the period of rococo elegance and gallantry, of reason\nand esprit, came the great regeneration, the second Renaissance\u2014the\nRevival of Feeling. This occurred first in the field of religion,\nthrough the pietistic movement of the time. Later it was Rousseau who,\nin connection with religion, nature, love, motherhood, became the\nliberator of feeling, and together with him were the English\n\u201csentimental\u201d poets and the German poetry, which reached its culminating\npoint in Goethe. Literature, the Theatre, and Art came more and more to\nthe front and, by that means, women acquired greater possibilities of\nbecoming acquainted with, understanding, and loving the richest culture\nof the time.\n\nAnd with this Revival of Feeling, personal freedom, individual\ncharacter, became again the great life value. Women who wish to give\nexpression to their feeling in their life now become more numerous:\nwomen who are conscious that their being buries many unsatisfied\ndemands, not only in connection with the right of culture of their\nnatural character, but also in connection with the right, in private\nlife and in society, to give expression to this natural character. Men\nare continually in intellectual interchange with women, giving as well\nas receiving; woman nature is esteemed with ever finer comprehension.\n\nSince feelings determine thoughts\u2014for the thought always goes in the\ndirection in which the feeling says happiness is to be found\u2014so it is\nnatural that, in the second half of the 18th century, the idea of\nfreedom is the ideal which kindles the soul of increasing numbers of\nwomen. _The emancipation of the individual_ is the tale within the tale,\nfrom the Renaissance up to the struggles of the Reformation for freedom\nof conscience, freedom of learning, freedom of investigation, and\nfreedom of thought. Then finally came the struggle for constitutionally\nprotected civic freedom. In America as early as 1776 the demand for the\nenfranchisement of women was raised, because they had taken part in the\nstruggle for freedom with such great enthusiasm and constancy. With the\nsame passion they threw themselves into the struggle in France for the\n\u201cRights of Man.\u201d But both times they had to learn to their sorrow that\n\u201cfellow-citizen\u201d and \u201cman\u201d were terms which as yet referred only to men.\nThat a woman during the French Revolution proclaimed \u201cWomen\u2019s Rights,\u201d\nthat women discussed these questions as well as questions of education\nand other vital questions, with ardour, had as little immediate effect\nas the attempt at that time to enforce the right of the fourth estate.\nThese sorely oppressed movements, of women and of working men, dominate\nthe 19th century and now at the beginning of the 20th have every reason\nfor assurance of victory.\n\nIn the 17th and 18th centuries men and women writers appeared in\ndifferent countries to demonstrate and establish the worth and right of\nwoman as \u201cman.\u201d Indirectly inspired by the great women of the earlier\ncenturies, they were immediately influenced by woman\u2019s political and\ncultural exercise of power in the 18th century. Especially notable are\nthe arguments which were advanced in the 90\u2019s of the 18th century by\nwriters manifestly uninfluenced by one another\u2014the Swede, Thorild, in\n_The Natural Nobility of Womankind_; the German, Hippel; the Frenchman,\nCondorcet; the English woman, Mary Wollstonecraft. All insist that\ndifference in sex can form no obstacle to placing woman on an equality\nwith man in the family and in society; that she shall have the same\nright as man to education and free agency. The men writers emphasised\nmore her individual human right, as \u201cman,\u201d and the advantage to society;\nthe women writers more the mother\u2019s need of culture and her right to it,\nin order to be able to rear and protect her children better. But all\nfour ideas are, at heart, determined by the same point of view which the\ngreat philosopher of evolution thus formulated later: _the fundamental\ncondition for social equilibrium is the same as for human happiness and\nlies in the law of equal freedom_. And this means that every one\u2014without\nregard to difference between sex and sex, man and man\u2014must have the\nright and the opportunity to develop and exercise his own capacities.\nFor no one to-day can undertake so certain a valuation of talents that\nthis valuation could justify society in restricting, a priori, the right\nof a single one of its members _to develop_ his capacities, even though\nthese capacities might take such a direction, later, that society would\nbe compelled to limit their _exercise_.\n\nSpencer arrived by the deductive method at the same demand Romanticism\nreached earlier by the intuitive method. Romanticism recognised that in\nthe measure in which the individual is unusual he must be also\nunintelligible, for he shows to the majority only his surface; his\ninnermost soul only to those in harmony with him. Even in the family\ncircle the individual often remains therefore undiscovered. How much\nmore then must society, composed for the most part of Philistines,\noutrage the individual if it concedes rights to one category, to one\nsex, to one class, and not to the other!\n\nAnd from this point of view the Romanticists drew for women also the\nlogical conclusion of individualism. They pointed out that the sex\ncharacter, carried _to the extreme_, furnished neither the highest\nmasculine nor the highest feminine type; that each sex must develop in\nitself both noble human _universality_ and individual _peculiarity_. And\nthis the great woman personalities did who shared the destiny of the\nRomanticists. They were thereby fully and wholly able to share also the\nintellectual life of their husbands. Love became thus a unity of souls.\nThe romantic ideal of love was expressed in _La Nouvelle H\u00e9loise_, in\nGoethe\u2019s letters to Charlotte von Stein, in Rahel, in Mme. de Sta\u00ebl. It\nwas found in the first half of the 19th century in many great women; for\nexample, George Sand, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Camilla Collett. It\nappeared in Shelley and in the Swedish poet Almquist, in Stuart Mill and\nRobert Browning, also in certain French and German poets and thinkers.\nThis ideal has now been for some centuries the ideal of most women and\nof not a few men of feeling.\n\nBut since a truly psychic unity is possible only between two beings who\nare, in outer as in inner sense, _free_, exactly for this reason,\n\u201cromantic love\u201d has as consequence the demand for the emancipation of\nwoman.\n\nThe love of Romanticism, which has been caricatured to the extent that\nit signified only moonshine, ecstasy, sonnets, and wife barter, had its\nreal essence in the desire for completeness of soul in love. This was,\nin a new form, the ideal of the courts of love. But since completeness\nof soul means that all the powers of the soul can freely and fully\npenetrate and elevate one another, so the first requisite for that\nsoulful love was that _woman\u2019s_ thinking as well as her feeling, her\nimagination as well as her will, her desire for power, as well as her\nconscience, be freed from the shackles imposed upon them from without,\nin order to be strengthened and purified. The second stipulation was\nthat _man\u2019s_ inner, spiritual life be freed from the deteriorating\nresults of the prerogatives and prejudices accorded to and maintained by\nhis sex.\n\nA new ideal in the relationship between husband and wife, between mother\nand child; the demand of the feminine individuality for the right to\nfree cultivation of her powers and to self-direction; the need of new\nfields for this exercise of her power after industrialism began to usurp\none branch of domestic work after another\u2014these are the fundamental\nreasons for what is called the middle-class woman movement. The\nmiddle-class woman\u2014because of the increasing surplus of women, because\nof the continually greater variety of economic conditions and the\ndecrease in marriage for this and other reasons\u2014was to an ever greater\nextent constrained to self-maintenance. Thus the _economic_ reason for\nthe woman movement, not only in the labouring class but also in the\nmiddle class, became the most effective influence operating in the\n_widest_ circles, although the reasons mentioned previously were the\nfirst and deepest causes.\n\nAnd herewith we stand at the beginning of the woman movement, become\n_conscious of its purpose_.\n\nBut this movement would be a stream without sources if the \u201canonymous\u201d\nmovements indicated here with the greatest brevity had not preceded, if\nin the grey morning of time the endless procession had not begun in\nwhich women now nameless for us walked at the head, each with an amphor\u00e6\nupon her shoulder\u2014amphor\u00e6 which they filled at any fountain of life.\nBefore these nameless women vanished on the horizon, each, like a water\nnymph of antiquity, lowered the brim of her urn to the earth, which thus\nwas traversed by innumerable interlacing rills. And all these\u2014even if by\nthe most circuitous route\u2014have augmented by some drops the mighty stream\nnow called the woman movement.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n               THE EXTERNAL RESULTS OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT\n\n\nThe history of the woman movement, conscious of its purpose, does not\nfall within the compass of this book. But as foundation for later\njudgments, it is necessary to take a short retrospective glance over the\nessential results which the woman movement has attained in the struggle\nfor woman\u2019s equality with man in the right to general culture,\nprofessional education, and work, as well as in the sphere of family and\nof civil status. These several demands for equality were voiced, as\nearly as 1848, in a powerful and man-indicting plea by the American\nwomen in their \u201cDeclaration of Sentiments.\u201d But in 1905 the program for\nGermany\u2019s \u201cAllgemein Frauenverein,\u201d as well as many both conservative\nand radical resolutions for women congresses in different countries,\nshow how far removed Europe and, in many respects, America also, still\nare from the desires expressed in the year 1848.\n\nIf the humble utterance of women, \u201cWe can with justice demand nothing of\nlife except a work and a duty,\u201d be conclusive, then life has already\nconceded to the demands of woman in rich measure. The woman movement and\nthe self-interest of the employers have made accessible to her a number\nof new fields of labour, without mentioning those which fifty years ago\nwere the only ones \u201cproper\u201d for women of the middle class\u2014those of\nteacher, lady companion, and \u201clady\u2019s help.\u201d The woman movement and man\u2019s\nincreasing recognition of woman\u2019s need of general education and\nprofessional qualification have created a large number of educational\ninstitutions. But in regard to the right of work, the acquisitions are\nbut insignificant if this right be defined as _the opportunity for that\nwork which one prefers and for which one is best fitted_. Women have\nnow, for example, in many countries the right to pass the same\nexaminations as men, but in many cases not the right to the offices\nwhich these examinations open to men. The profession to which women have\nfound a comparatively easy entrance, that of physician, is widely\nextended among women in Europe as well as in America. That a dwelling\nwas denied to the first woman physician because her profession was\nconsidered \u201cimproper\u201d for a woman, sounds now like a fable. Everywhere\nnow are women nurses, teachers of gymnastics, dentists, apothecaries,\nand midwives. In America there are even many women ministers and it\nsounds likewise wholly fabulous to say that the first of these was\nliterally stoned. Women judges also have been appointed in America. In\nEurope there are none to my knowledge and no women preachers. And yet\nthe woman pastor would often be, especially for women and children, a\nbetter minister than the clergyman; for them also the woman judge might\noften surpass the man in penetration and understanding. The profession\nof law, open to women in many countries, is as yet little practised by\nthem in Europe. And yet as advocate, police officer, and prison\nattendant, the female official would be of special service for her own\nsex as well as for children and young people of both sexes. But in every\nfield where the living reality of flesh and blood has to be compressed\ninto legal paragraphs, mankind must be more or less mistreated. And\nsince even masculine jurists of feeling suffer under this conviction,\nthe reason for the fact that this career, in which woman could be of\ninfinitely great service to humanity, has thus far attracted her little,\nmay be sought in feminine sensitiveness.\n\nAll the more numerous are the women who have devoted themselves to the\ntask most akin to motherhood, the profession of teacher. Unfortunately\nnot always the inner call but the prestige of the position has\ndetermined the choice. Millions of women are now employed as teachers in\nall possible types of schools, from kindergartens to training schools,\nfrom infant schools to boys\u2019 colleges. Even in universities, although in\nEurope very rarely it is true, women occupy chairs of learning. In the\nfield of popular education, women are zealously active as lecturers,\nlibrarians, leaders of evening classes, and in similar work.\n\nWith every decade, woman\u2019s powers have attained their right more fully\nand in fields where it now seems incredible that men could, and still\npartly do, insist upon getting along without them. I refer to the\nassociations and institutions connected with prison supervision and\nreformatories; with schools and children\u2019s homes; care of the poor and\nthe sick; health and factory inspection. Slowly but surely the woman\nmovement has prepared a place here for the mother of society beside the\nfather of society who in these domains is often very awkward or quite\nhelpless. Alone, or together with men, women have organised milk\ndistribution and cr\u00e8ches, housekeeping schools, school food-kitchens,\npeople\u2019s food-kitchens, people\u2019s polyclinics, sanitariums and\nrest-homes, vacation colonies, homes for sick and neglected children,\netc. Many kinds of homes for working women, old people\u2019s homes, rescue\nhomes, institutions for the protection of mothers and children,\nemployment bureaus, legal redress, and other forms of social relief are\nconnected, indirectly if not directly, with the woman movement. Great\nwomen agitators on their part set thousands of women into action, as for\nexample, Harriet Beecher Stowe, agitating against negro slavery,\nJosephine Butler against prostitution, Frances Willard against\nintemperance, and Bertha von Suttner against war.\n\nAnd yet in spite of the fabulous amount of time, strength, and money\nwhich the associations and organisations thus created have cost in\ndonations of time and money, this social relief work is only the oil and\nwine of the Samaritan for the wounds of society. As long as brigand\nhands drag mothers and children into factories; as long as armies cost\nmuch more than schools; as long as dwelling conditions in the cities are\nfor many people worse than those for domestic animals in the country; as\nlong as alcohol and syphilis brand the new generation\u2014so long woman\u2019s\ndevotion remains powerless.\n\nAnd this conviction has urged women to transform their social work from\nan often injudicious \u201cChristian\u201d compassion into an organised charity in\norder to anticipate and prevent need and to facilitate self-help. But\nalso in this new phase of their philanthropic work many women of the\nmiddle class are arriving at an understanding of the necessity of a\nsocial reform in accordance with socialistic demands. A larger number of\nwomen join the suffragist movement, less owing to individual demands for\nrights than out of despair over the hopeless social work to which their\nfeeling of solidarity still impels them. For without suffrage (this they\nexperience every day) their work of relief is like seed sown in a\nmorass.\n\nA by-product of the social relief work is that many single women have\nfound, in voluntary social work, an occupation and often also, in\nremunerative social work, a livelihood; in both cases through service in\nwhich certain feminine qualities can be of value.\n\nYes, exactly in the above mentioned fields of work, which so often bring\nthe modern woman in contact with the finest and most delicate as well as\nwith the coarsest and hardest sides of life; which place her before\nconflicts of the most exceptional as well as of the most universally\nhuman kind\u2014there woman has nothing _new_ to give except her\nmotherliness. That means protecting tenderness, gentle patience, glad\nreadiness to help, the interest embracing each one in particular, the\nfine and quick vibration in contact with the feelings of others which\nwe, in a word, call \u201ctact.\u201d If, however, a woman has not been endowed\nwith motherliness, or has none remaining, then she reverts to impersonal\ndevotion to duty, hard formalism, dry routine; then all the talk about\nthe _social_ significance of woman\u2019s entrance into the field of medicine\nor jurisprudence or the ministry or social work remains only empty\nphrases. In all these spheres a good man is much more valuable than a\nhard woman. And that woman\u2019s hands can be rough, woman\u2019s eyes cold,\nwoman\u2019s soul base or cruel\u2014this many suffering and crushed, sorrowing\nand sinful, small and defenceless have already experienced. If woman is\nto keep her superiority as the alleviator of the suffering of others,\nthe protector of others, solicitous for the welfare of others, then she\nmust not only acquire certain universal human qualities in which man is\noften superior to her; she must also carefully guard and cultivate the\nbest capacities which her sex gained in and through the hundred thousand\nyears\u2019 activity as that half of mankind which created the home and\nreared the children.\n\nAlthough the woman movement has multiplied and extended the social\nrelief work of woman in innumerable directions, still it has not yet\nopened to her the field in which formerly deaconesses, and much earlier\nstill nuns, were engaged. But what is new as result of the woman\nmovement is that more and more single _cultured_ women now devote\nthemselves to the occupations of governess, nurse, midwife, and kindred\ncallings; as well as that more special training is demanded for these\nvocations to which women turned earlier with downright criminal\ncarelessness.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nSimultaneously with the need of the middle-class woman for new fields of\nwork, came the extraordinarily rapid development of commerce and\nbusiness, which occasioned the need of new working forces. Feminine\nhonesty, orderliness, and devotion to duty\u2014alas, also her modest demands\nof compensation\u2014made the state as well as private employers favourably\ndisposed to employ women in increasingly greater numbers in the\ndifferent branches of commerce: in the post-office, railroads,\ntelegraph, telephone, as also in banks, counting houses, agencies or\nstores, as secretaries, stenographers, and clerks. In cases where the\nwife or daughter was the husband\u2019s or father\u2019s assistant such work then\nreceived a personal interest, and what woman\u2019s labour in this form can\nsignify for national wealth can be seen in France especially. But as a\nrule no real joy in work could illuminate the days and years of the\ngeneration of women who in all these vocations have grown gray and at\nbest have been pensioned. Nevertheless, in these offices one always sees\nfresh faces bending over the desk to fade away in their turn.\n\nLack of courage or means often deters the European woman from more\nindependent business activity, and this in spite of increasing freedom\nto choose her occupation, in spite of brilliant examples of successful\nundertakings of women, in photography, hotel or boarding-house\nmanagement, dress-making, etc. In America, on the contrary, there is no\nmasculine occupation, from that of butcher and executioner to real\nestate speculator and stock-exchange gambler that women have not\npractised.\n\nBut while the women of the older generation were thankful if only they\nsucceeded in obtaining \u201ca work and a duty,\u201d however monotonous and\nwearing it might be, the will of the younger generation for a\n_pleasurable_ labour has fortunately increased. Partly alone, partly\nco-operatively, women began to venture into the applied arts, handwork,\nfarming, or kindred work. And since corresponding special training\nschools quickly arise to meet the awakening of the desire for a\nvocation, we can hope for good results for these, as yet rare,\nenterprising spirits. For special education is, in our time, the\nessential condition of success, especially in agriculture, where the\nwomen often succeeded without other help than their personal efficiency\nand the \u201cfarmer\u2019s customary practice.\u201d\n\nSince I know America only at second hand I have no claim to a final\njudgment regarding the influence of business life and modern methods of\nproduction upon the soul life of woman. In the women who have succeeded\nin securing affluence through commercial life one finds probably the\nsame antichristian effects of this life as among men. Recently in\nAmerica a number of men and women endeavoured to live for fourteen days,\nas Christ would have lived. The decision of most of those who were\nengaged in business life was that either they must cease to follow in\nthe footsteps of Christ\u2014or must resign their positions. And since, with\ndue consideration for the number of woman employers in America, many of\nthese experiences must surely have been made under feminine supervision,\nthe experiment does not lack a certain significance for the forming of a\njudgment in the direction referred to.\n\nThe zeal of women\u2019s rights advocates to open to women all of man\u2019s\nfields of labour, and not only this but to prove that these fields are\n_as well adapted_ to woman as man\u2014this zeal has unfortunately had as\nresult that the woman movement has turned the aptitude of many women in\na wrong direction and has fettered a great amount of woman\u2019s misused\nworking power to thankless or galling tasks. But, on the other hand, how\nthe woman movement has elevated woman\u2019s work, since it has raised the\nstandard of qualification in many fields and increased the feeling of\nresponsibility in all! How it has increased the honour of work and the\ncapacity for organisation, developed the judgment, stimulated the will\npower, strengthened the courage! It has awakened innumerable slumbering\ntalents, given freedom of action to innumerable shackled powers. And\nthus it has transformed hosts of women of the upper class, formerly the\nmost useless burden of earth, into productive members of society,\ninstead of mere consumers; made them self-supporting instead of\ndependent, joyful instead of weary of life.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe woman movement of the lower classes is socialistic. It has increased\nin extent and significance in the same measure in which the working\nwoman has given up farming, housework, and domestic service for\nindustry.\n\nThis woman movement also worked in two directions. The older program\nreads: \u201cFull equality of woman with man.\u201d In the \u201cstate of the future\u201d\nboth sexes shall have the same duty of work and the same protection of\nwork, while the children are reared in state institutions.\n\nThe movement in the other direction purposes to win back the wife to the\nhusband, the mother to the children, and, thereby, the home to all. The\nold or right wing of the middle-class woman movement, as well as the\nolder direction of socialism just mentioned, still uphold, with\narguments of the old liberalism, the \u201cindividual freedom\u201d of the working\nwoman against all protecting \u201cexceptional laws.\u201d Increasing numbers of\nthe more radical\u2014that means in this connection more social\u2014feminists of\nthe upper class, however, stand side by side with the less dogmatic\ntrend of socialism in its supreme struggle for the protection of the\nmother.\n\nIn the socialistic woman movement, both efforts for freedom were\ninterwoven\u2014that of the working men and that of women\u2014checked during the\nFrench Revolution but soon after revived as the two great forces of the\nnew century. In this intertwining of the woman question with the labour\nquestion is found the explanation of the fact that socialists\ncharacterise the woman question as an _economic_ question solely; while\nin reality the woman question, _historically_, manifestly began as an\nadvocacy of the human right and worth of woman; and that too before any\ngreat industry appeared on the horizon. As long as the man was the one\nwho, outside the home, was producer and provider, and the woman the one\nwho, within the home, managed and perfected the raw material, no\n_economic_ woman question could arise, but on the other hand exactly a\nquestion of _woman\u2019s rights_. For, as some writers demonstrated, as\nearly as the 18th century it was absurd, if woman\u2019s work in the home was\nso valuable and so faithfully performed, that it should not secure in\nconsequence corresponding rights. And exactly because the middle-class\nwoman movement tried to uphold and defend the right and the freedom of\nwomen in the compass of the old society, this movement became, and must\nstill often be, a struggle of women against men. The socialistic woman\nmovement is on the other hand merely a factor in a _joint struggle of\nmen and women against the old society and for a new condition_. The\nstruggle here cannot be sex against sex, but class against class. Each\nof these woman movements has been partly right, each has partly\nmisunderstood the other. Only in recent times has a convergence between\nthe middle class and the socialistic woman movements been accomplished\nfor the attainment of a number of common ends; for example, the\nprotection of the mother, mentioned above, and especially the franchise.\nThis convergence has dissolved the prejudice on both sides. In both\nquarters they begin to understand the power and aim of the other\nmovement.\n\nSocialism and the woman movement are two mighty streams which drag along\nwith them great parts of the firm formations which they touch. But if\none wishes to be just toward both, one must not forget that in this way\nnew lands are created.\n\nThe socialistic women on their part, as speakers, agitators,\njournalists, members of special associations, have stood in rank and\nfile beside the men as true comrades, and the middle-class women have\nmuch to learn from the feeling of solidarity of the women socialists.\nThe masculine comrades have not always _in practice_ substantiated the\nprinciple of equality, for even the socialist is first man and then\ncomrade; but _in theory_ he has generally supported it.\n\nThrough socialism, feminism has penetrated to the masses. What the\nmiddle-class woman movement would have needed another century to effect,\nsocialism has accomplished in a few decades. Nothing shows better than\nits fear of socialists how blindly prejudiced was the right wing of\nmiddle-class feminism. And nothing so clearly elucidates in what stage\nof feminism the upper-class movement was than its obstinate adherence to\n\u201cthe principle of personal freedom\u201d in face of the atrocious actual\nconditions which resulted from the \u201cfreedom of work\u201d of the women\nfactory hands.\n\nI will here recall only in brief the progress of the economic woman\nmovement in the class of factory workers. When machines transformed the\nwhole method of production and a host of women no longer found\nsufficient occupation in the home, while at the same time the\npossibilities of marriage decreased because of the surplus of women and\nalso for other reasons, the middle-class women looked about them for new\nfields of labour. The great industries in return looked about them for\nmore \u201chands.\u201d And since, with the machine, female hands were quite as\nserviceable as male\u2014with a new machine it was possible to replace thirty\nmen with one woman\u2014and since in addition they were cheaper, then began\nthat exodus of women from the home into the factory, the results of\nwhich we are now experiencing.\n\nWhen the mother is absent from the home, then there is lacking the\ncohering, supervising, warming force, and the home deteriorates and\nfalls to pieces; the children are neglected, the husband suffers; the\nstreet takes possession of the children, the alehouse of the men.\nMoreover, the women work often for starvation wages, whereby less comes\ninto the home than is lost by the absence and incapacity of the mother.\nIn the middle classes daughters and wives, entirely or partly supported\nin the home, could be satisfied with smaller wages and have thus become\nthe competitors of men and women wholly self-supporting. For the same\nreason wives working in these industries have often become the\ncompetitors of men, children again the competitors of women, and married\nwomen the competitors of unmarried.\n\nIn woman, so long secluded in the sphere of the family, the social\nfeeling of solidarity has been very slowly awakened. Therefore,\norganisation which could prevent the competition just mentioned has only\nin the last decade made great progress everywhere among working women.\nIn the middle-class vocations this is almost entirely lacking. Among the\nworking women slowness of organisation is natural, for the more wretched\ntheir position was, the more difficult was it for them to organise. But\namong middle-class women the reason was partly their individualism,\npartly their anti-socialism, partly the lack of feeling of solidarity\njust referred to.\n\nHome work for profit and pleasure in one\u2019s own family or in service of\nthe applied arts has become a means for the \u201csweat system,\u201d the facts of\nwhich belong to the darkest side of modern working life. These facts\nalone would be sufficient to prove that _working women_ have little to\ngain from the luxury of the rich, an assertion with which luxury often\nvindicates itself. There is still for the women working at home as well\nas for the women working in the factory, beside their professional work,\nalso the duty of caring for the children and managing the home. However\ninsufficient this may be yet it still claims a great part of their\nalready meagre leisure; and the more tender and conscientious the\nmothers are, the more they wear themselves out, and the sooner must\nsociety, after night-watching, lack of light and hunger have ruined\nthem, maintain them as infirm or paupers. The life of these women passed\nin the factory often from childhood has made them moreover, generation\nafter generation, more unfitted for household work. What does it profit\nto attempt to remedy the evil by housekeeping schools and instruction in\nthe care of children? For where time and strength are lacking the home\nhas lost its right.\n\nWhat can be expected of women who three or four days after confinement\nmust again stand at the machine, who are compelled to leave their\nchildren behind them, shut in at home, exposed to all conceivable\naccidents? What can be expected of mothers, who have become mothers\nagainst their will,\u2014mothers of children, who because of the conditions\nof their parents\u2019 work have become scrofulous, rickety, idiotic\u2014children\nwho contract degeneration of the liver because the harassed, ignorant\nmother quieted them with brandy, ill-treated them,\u2014herself a physical\nand psychic ruin who spreads destruction about her!\n\nThe feminists are accustomed to rage over the custom which formerly\ncondemned the Indian widows to be burned upon the funeral pyre\u2014a custom\nwhich is only an innocent sport in comparison with the woman slavery\nwhich Europe has even brought to a system and which the woman movement\nlong ignored.\n\nTo these general facts, which apply also to women employed in hard\nagricultural labour, there is also added an entirely new series of evils\nassociated with occupations dangerous to health\u2014for example those in\nwhich lead, quicksilver, phosphorus or tobacco poison the workers,[2] or\nthose branches of work where inhaling dust at the weaving loom or in\nspinning, breathing gas and coal smoke, exposed to heat, smoke and damp,\nthey contract tuberculosis and other diseases; to say nothing of the\nphysical and moral misery in which miners and stevedores live. But the\nworst begins only when the women are to become mothers. Either the\nembryo is killed by an abortion, intentional or caused by the\noccupation; or it comes into the world dead or sick or crippled; or it\ndies in the first weeks or wastes away under artificial nourishment\u2014in\nEngland for example only one out of eight children is nursed. The\nmothers either cannot or will not. Next to the labour conditions,\nalcohol plays the greatest part in this indirect massacre of infants.\n\nIf one turns from the women engaged in industrial work to the servant\nclass, then female drudgery reaches perhaps its height among the girls\nemployed in bars, caf\u00e9s, and similar establishments. What physical and\npsychic results this work entails can be divined from the fact that, in\nEngland, half of all women suicides are such waitresses under 30 years\nof age. That family servant girls are allowed to sleep in closets and to\nwork far beyond the present customary factory time; that in the class of\nsaleswomen, especially in cigar shops, the longest working hours\ntogether with the most paltry starvation wages are found\u2014all this, as\nevery one knows, is the fundamental reason why the path is so short from\nall these occupations to the lowest\u2014to prostitution. The servant girl\ncorrupted by the master of the house, the half-starved, overworked shop\ngirl, the night-watching cigar worker, and many, many others are found\nhere as sacrifices of a shameless exploitation. Herewith we stand before\nthat \u201cwoman question\u201d in which both elementary instincts have united for\nthat captivity of woman from which the woman movement has found no means\nof emancipation; against which the means sought in these and other\nquarters prove fruitless. For only a radical transformation of society\nand sexual ethics can here provide a remedy.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nEvery one in face of these facts, touched upon thus superficially, must\nbe astounded that women could oppose laws for the protection of women.\nFortunately these progress-impeding emancipation women had no influence\nwhen, in England and other countries, certain night work began to be\nprohibited to women, their working hours limited, certain employments\nbarred out, and a time of rest assured to the woman recently confined.\nStill very small steps only, but in the right direction. At the same\ntime the organisation of working women advances so that by labour unions\nand strikes here and there they have succeeded in enforcing better\nwages, shorter working hours, and better labour conditions. And so long\nas the woman movement of the upper classes has no solidarity with that\nof the lower, the female factory inspector can accomplish very little,\nas a result of the fear of the working women to give facts and the\nadroitness of the employers in veiling these. But if women of the upper\nclass begin to compete with the slave-driving, sweat-system employers\nthrough _well-organised co-operative enterprises_, especially for the\nrevival of artistic handwork, whereby a profitable work is made for\nmothers at home under good working conditions; and if they boycott all\nshops where the working hours of the women exceed the due measure, while\ntheir wages are below the standard; then the woman movement would be\nable to hasten certain reforms in the field of industry, just as so many\nmistresses of girls\u2019 private schools have hastened the reform of public\nschools: they simply availed themselves of the improvements arising from\nfeminine initiative.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe married woman as family provider beside the man, often also in place\nof the man, but always however _subservient to the man\u2019s dominion_\u2014this\nis the worst form of woman slavery our time has created. The woman\nmovement purposes indeed to make the wife \u201cof age,\u201d in every respect,\nand free from the husband\u2019s guardianship. But within the woman movement\nall are not yet entirely agreed that _the work of the mother outside the\nhome_ in and for itself is an evil. Attempts are indeed being made to\nalter the conditions which are most to blame for the deterioration of\nmothers and children. But a large faction in the woman movement wishes\nstill, as was said, to cling to the _immediately_ remunerative work of\nthe mother and remedy the resulting lack of home by social institutions\nfor care of children, housekeeping, etc.\n\nOn this side, the following arguments are heard: woman becomes free only\nwhen she can wholly support herself and can devote herself to her work\nunhampered by duties toward husband and children; only through the\nreciprocal social obligation of work and the complete individual freedom\nof both sexes can the present conflicts between the labour of man and\nwoman, between individual happiness and the common weal, finally cease.\n\nLike every canalisation or drainage of the mighty river system of the\nlife of human feeling, this program is direct and conclusive. One may\neasily understand that masculine brains, dominated by a passion for\nlogic, could devise it; but if we hear it advocated by multitudes of\nwomen, then we recognise how harassed by the fourfold burden of family\nprovider, child bearer, child educator, and housekeeper the poor women\nmust be who can smilingly assent to the foregoing picture of the future.\n\nAnd yet there is another possible ideal of the future which can be\nrealised as soon as production is determined, no longer by private\ncapitalistic interests, but by social-political interests. Women will\nthen be employed in industrial fields of work where their powers are _as\nproductive as possible_ with the least possible loss in time and\nstrength; above all in those fields where the work requires no _long_\npreparation and the dexterity does not suffer by _interruptions_. Before\nthe years in which the _occupation is motherhood_, and after these\nyears, woman can still be always remunerated by an economic wage; during\nthe years on the contrary in which motherhood is the vocation, she can\nbe remunerated _by the state_. It is only necessary that women and men\n_will_ a new order whereby in the future we attain the following\nconditions:\n\nA _Society_, in which the welfare of the new generation is the centre to\nwhich all social-political plans, at heart, are aiming.\n\n_Children_ born of parents whose souls and bodies are qualified and\nprepared for a worthy parenthood and who can thus create for their\nchildren sound and beautiful conditions of life.\n\n_Mothers_ won back to the husbands, the children, the homes, but under\nsuch circumstances that _as free human personalities they perform the\nmost important work of society_: the bearing and rearing of children.\n\n_Fathers_ with time and leisure to share with the mothers the task of\neducation and to share with them and the children the joys of the home\nlife, as well as of the remainder of existence.\n\nThis ideal of the future state takes in my imagination the form of a\nvaried Italian garden with a wide outlook upon the great sea. The other\nideal of the future, on the contrary, is to me like a coal mine wherein\nall spiritual and social vegetation is petrified so that it now serves\nonly as motive-power for machines.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nNothing more effectively proves how rife with reactions\u2014and for that\nreason how hidden\u2014is the power of development, than to realise that the\nunorganized, inorganic socialistic ideal of the future, just mentioned,\nis the logical sequence of the woman movement if one draws the extreme\nconclusion from its fundamental idea\u2014the right of woman to individual,\nfree development of her powers. It is consistent historically that in\nAmerica, where the movement for the right and freedom of woman has been\nmost widely successful, many middle-class women have resolutely drawn\nthese extreme conclusions of emancipation. Quite as psychologically\nlogical is it, that at a time when the uncomplicated soul life and life\ndemands of the masses still form the most important factors in the\nshaping of the ideal of the future, the socialistic women, from their\ndifferent point of view, have arrived at like ideals. But fortunately\nthere are in women, as in the masses, still great tracts of \u201cnew ground\u201d\nwhere new soul conditions will germinate, and in due time, new ideals\nwill flower. Groups of men can at times forget mankind in dwelling upon\nthemselves. But mankind in its entirety has never yet lost the instinct\nfor the conditions of self-preservation and the higher development of\nthe race. I will come back later to the psychological phase of the\nquestion. I touch upon it here only as the social program of the future.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nA new field which the woman movement has opened up to woman is the\nscientific field. For the fact that as early as the Renaissance some\nItalian women occupied chairs of academic instruction, that in the 17th\nand 18th centuries some women devoted themselves seriously to classic\nstudies or the exact sciences\u2014all that was only exceptional. And the\nwomen who since the beginning of the woman movement have distinguished\nthemselves by great services in science are still exceptional. But in\nmany places, sometimes as assistants of their husbands or of other men,\nwomen now perform good scientific work in different lines. Many women\nare also active in the sphere of invention, without a single woman\u2019s\nname having been thus far connected with an _epoch-making_ invention.\n\nEspecially where constructive ability is necessary, women have as yet\nnot been eminent; they have created neither a philosophical system nor a\nnew religion, neither a great musical work nor a monumental building,\nneither a classic drama nor an epic. On the other hand, the exact\nsciences, which would be considered a priori as little adapted to women,\nfor example mathematics, astronomy, and physics, are exactly those in\nwhich thus far they have most distinguished themselves. This contains a\nwarning against too precipitate conclusions about the intellectual life\nof woman. Not until several generations of women\u2014with the same\nprivileges of education as man, with the same encouragement from home\nand society\u2014have exercised their faculty for discovery and their\ninventive and creative faculties can we really know whether the present\ninferiority of woman in this respect is a provision of nature or not;\nwhether her genius was only hampered in its expression or whether, as I\nbelieve, it is ordinarily of a different kind from that of man.\n\nIn art there are several fields which the woman movement did not need to\nopen for the first time to woman: dramatic art, music, and the dance.\nIndirectly, however, the woman movement has transformed the position of\nwomen occupied in these lines by increasing the respect for all good\nwork of woman and raising the requirements for woman\u2019s education in\ngeneral. The woman movement has also exercised an immediate influence\nupon certain artists of the present time. Thus Eleanora Duse said to me\nthat her most cherished desire has been to represent and interpret the\nnew types of women, although the dramatists of to-day have rarely given\nher the material she desired wherewith to create characters by which she\ncould reveal the soul of the new woman and elevate man\u2019s, as well as\nwoman\u2019s own, ideal of woman.\n\nIn the dance, women have been, especially in America, creative in\nconnection with its forms and have been thereby also revelations of the\nnew spiritual life of woman which has found expression in these forms.\nGreat women singers, through Wagner\u2019s operas and ballad-singing, have\ngiven voice to the primeval yearning of the woman soul, as that yearning\nnow assumes form in the new woman. And in interpretations at the hands\nof great pianists or violinists, not one classic musical work failed to\nfurnish similar revelations.\n\nThe very finest effects of the woman movement\u2014mere shades of feeling\nwhich cannot be enumerated nor discussed\u2014have reached our present time\nthrough lines, movement, rhythm, cadence, through the timbre of a voice,\nthe gesture of a hand, the glance of an eye, the tone of a violin. And\nthese effects have been secured without any disturbance of the\nreceptivity by strife over the precedence of woman or of man. In other\nspheres, susceptibility to the effects of art creations by woman is\nstill often dulled by this strife. In the above named fields, long\nbefore the beginning of the woman movement, conscious of its purpose,\nwomen without arguments have convinced the world of the complete\nequality of woman with man. And all these women, conquering through\nbeauty in one form or another, have done more for the woman movement\nthan it has done for them. Certainly the woman movement both directly\nand indirectly has had its share in opening to women musical as well as\nother art academies and schools of applied arts, but academies have a\ndoubtful value and the smaller the value, the more gifted the student.\nThe new right has thus become dangerous to the independence of real\ngifts and, with all possibilities of education thus opened wide, there\ncomes a temptation for fancied talents to pass beyond their bounds. This\ndanger, as far as the plastic arts are concerned, has found more and\nmore its counterpoise in the schools of applied art, by which many women\nhave been directed to the decorative professions, from house and garden\narchitecture to fashion designing and holiday decorations.\n\nBut in the field of the applied arts, as well as of the plastic arts and\nof music, the facility afforded by the modern conditions of training and\nof public careers has instigated many women, who before had exercised\ntheir little talent only for the pleasure of the home or society\ncircles, to exhibit and appear publicly to the detriment both of the\nhome circles and, alas, also of art!\n\nThe works of art by women, which humanity could not lose without really\nbecoming poorer, have been created, thus far, neither in the sphere of\nmusic nor of plastic art; they all belong to literature. And this sphere\nthe woman movement has not opened to woman; ever since the days of\nSappho and of Corinna, women have attained fame as writers.\n\nIn letters and memoirs not originally designed for publication, next to\nthat in the field of romance and the novel, occasionally also in the\nlyric, the feminine character has found thus far its fullest and finest\nexpression. In all these fields women have produced works which have\nbeen placed by men, not it is true beside the _greatest_ works of\nmasculine genius in the same domain, yet beside eminent works of men. As\nintermediary of the works of others, woman has not in our time, as in\nthe period of enlightenment or in the circle of Goethe, her greatest\nsignificance through conversations and letters but through the\nprinting-press. The modern woman, however, as essayist and biographer,\nas translator and collector, is a valuable intermediary of culture. She\nis also unfortunately a menace to culture, not so much because of the\ninferior works which she produces, for these, like the similar works of\nmen, soon sink into oblivion. The real danger lies in the fact that\nwomen in great multitudes increase the number of those journalists who\nlack intellectual as well as ethical culture, which should be an\nimperative condition in that field of work. But this profession is now,\non the contrary, the one into which the amateur may most easily force an\nentrance without special training and without professional reputation.\nThe result is that men and women who lack both can pull down, in their\njournals, the real work and essential character of serious people,\nwithout the remotest conception or the faintest comprehension of either.\nOn the other hand these cliques of coffee-house people crown one another\nas kings and queens\u2014for a day! The press-breed carries on in leaflets\nits flirtation as well as its vengeance. The knife which the child of\nnature thrusts into a rival\u2019s breast is now transformed into the pen\nwith which the reviewer stabs a competitor\u2019s latest work. In a word\nwomen now furnish to the Press work, occasionally excellent, frequently\nmediocre, all too often worthless. Their womanly characteristics make it\nfeasible more frequently for them than for men to adopt more completely\nthe rituals of the temple service of the deity of the Press\u2014the Public.\nThis \u201cwomanliness\u201d evinces itself, especially, in the ability \u201cto grip\nthe fleeting moment by its fluttering locks\u201d and also to anticipate when\nthat moment\u2019s locks are false and so the grasp prove profitless.\n\nWhile hosts of women have turned to journalism, they are seldom found in\nthe fields to which the woman movement should have directed them: in the\nfield of sociological and psychological research. Nearly all significant\nworks upon the normal, the abnormal, the criminal psychic life of\nchildren, young people and women have been written by men. They have\nunfortunately treated the feminine spiritual life in \u201cscientific\u201d works\nalso, in which the author dares speak of \u201cwoman\u201d even though he knows\nnothing of her except what his own happy or unhappy experiences in a\nmother or sister, wife or sweetheart, have taught him.\n\nThe slight title of men to their \u201cscientific method\u201d when they venture\nupon the terra incognita which the soul of woman still is for them,\nexplains why they extol, as \u201cscientific,\u201d works of women about women\nwhich are quite as superficial as those of men themselves. With a few\nexceptions, it is not the physiological-psychological books written by\nwomen about women which have really taught the present something new\nabout womankind in general and the new woman in particular. No, in the\nform of romances, of lyrics or in voluntary confessions, woman has\ncontributed the most valuable documents about her sex: on the one hand\nthose which indicate the transformations which the woman movement has\noccasioned in woman\u2019s nature, on the other hand those which demonstrate\nthe extent to which her fundamental nature has remained unchanged, even\nthough this elementary material exhibits many more facets in the modern\nwoman than in the woman of any previous time; facets resulting from the\nmanifold contacts and frictions with life to which woman now exposes\nherself or is exposed.\n\nFrom a literary point of view, these books of confession have seldom\na value which could be compared with that of the, in outer sense,\nobjective, classic works which talented women writers of the present\nhave produced. Often, however, one of these confessions, in which\nthe writer has candidly given her own history, has been of real\nliterary value. But even when the works contain mendacities and\nself-extenuations, crass injustice toward men or toward other women,\nas revelations of the modern woman soul they are more valuable for\nthe future than the clarified, artistically perfect works of women,\nmentioned above. For the truth about woman in the century of the\nwoman is found only in the impassioned books in which the hard\nstruggles for freedom, work, right, or fame are recited; or in those\nworks impassioned in another way, in which the soul or the blood or\nboth cry out their yearning, ever unappeased, in spite of freedom\nand work, right and fame. What we may _to-day_ rightly protest\nagainst in these books is their recklessness which may _in the\nfuture_ be regarded as their greatest value.\n\nBecause, up to the present time, the most exquisite as well as the most\nhorrifying women characters in literature have been created by men, many\nmen think that they understand women better than women do themselves.\nAnd to this extent men are right\u2014that women attain their most sublime\nheights and reach their deepest degradation in and through love. But\naside from that, women have a much clearer insight and, for that reason,\na much more intelligent idea of one another than man has of woman. When\naccordingly a woman speaks not only of herself but also of another\nwoman\u2014sometimes also of children\u2014we feel already that \u201cthe eternal\nfeminine\u201d (_das Ewig-Weibliche_) in literature can create a feminine\nart, in the best meaning of the word. For the present we hope, and with\ngood reason, that art as well as science will not appear as either\nmasculine or feminine but reveal a complete human personality. But this\ndoes not mean that this personality has fused the masculine and feminine\nqualities into a common humanity and thus enervated it. No, it means\nthat, in such a being, masculine and feminine traits exist side by side\nand assert themselves alternately or harmoniously in all their strength.\nIn the rank of talent, one may find feminine men and masculine women; in\nthat of genius, never. There each one guards fully and completely the\ncharacter of his own sex in addition to the finest attributes of the\nother sex. The distinctively masculine or distinctively feminine\nattributes characterising an _earlier_ culture epoch are on the contrary\noften lacking in these greatest men and women of their time. In other\nwords they lack exactly those attributes, hyper-masculine or\nhyper-feminine, by which men and women, not abreast of the times in\ntheir development, please each other and the masses, in literature as\nwell as in life.\n\nIn the woman-literature, directly evoked by the woman movement, we can\nread the whole gamut of the feminine nature, from the feminine in the\nhighest sense to the feminine in the worst sense. This literature shows\nhow unthinkingly and defenceless certain women have plunged into the\nstruggle, how rationally and well equipped other women have fought it\nout. The impartiality of this judgment can be proven by the admission\nthat in the first-named class I have not infrequently found adherents;\nin the latter class, opponents.\n\nThe woman movement itself, partly in lectures and in literary activity,\npartly by means of office-routine and work of organisation, has become a\nnew _field of labour_ for women. Even in this field it is found that\nmany are called but few are chosen. But when\u2014except after defeat\u2014was an\narmy ever seen without baggage?\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the field of _family right_, the woman movement has achieved,\ndirectly and indirectly, great improvements in the legal position of the\n_unmarried_ woman. The nearest proof is my own country. This has, within\na period of from seventy to eighty years, granted to the sister the same\nright of inheritance as to the brother; declared the unmarried woman at\nher majority at the same age as man, a majority which was also expanded\nlater through the suspension of the right of guardianship on the part of\nthe husband, existing for married women. The marriageable age of woman\nwas postponed to 17 years. Gradually woman has been placed on an\nequality with man to carry on trade and industry; she has acquired the\nright to hold certain public offices, although many still remain closed\nto her. The married woman on the contrary is still always a minor; if no\nmarriage settlement is made the husband has the right to dispose of the\nwife\u2019s property; he has control of their common possessions; he can\nrestrict her freedom of work; he has authority over the children. A few\nsmall progressive steps may nevertheless be pointed out: certain\nreinforcements of the effectiveness of the marriage contract; the right\nto her wages accorded to the wife; certain reforms in regard to the\ndivision of property and divorce; some improvements in the position of\nchildren born out of wedlock. In other countries also like reforms have\nbeen accomplished, directly, through masculine initiative; indirectly,\nthrough the influence of the woman movement. But everywhere family right\nis still founded upon the principles of paternal right, supremacy of the\nhusband over the wife, indissolubility of marriage or solubility under\ngreater or less difficulties.\n\nIn regard to citizenship I draw my examples also from the land I know\nbest. In Sweden, women have long since participated in the choice of\npastor; for about fifty years they have possessed municipal franchise;\nlater in certain cases they have attained also municipal eligibility,\nfor example, to the school board, board of charities, and now finally to\nthe town council. Still others could be cited. In other countries women\nhave sometimes more sometimes less civic right; only in a few countries\nhave they won _political_ franchise; in a single one, Finland, also\npolitical eligibility.\n\nIn the sphere of family right, as well as civic right, the woman\nmovement has then much more remaining to conquer than it has thus far\nwon. But I am convinced that the little girls I see down below in the\ngarden playing \u201cmother and child\u201d will possess all the rights due the\nwife, the mother, and the citizen.\n\nThe woman movement, in its present form, has accomplished its task if it\nhas procured for every woman the _legal_ right to develop and practise\nher individual characteristics unhindered because of her sex. But after\nthis emancipation of the woman as a _human being_ and a citizen, there\nremains her emancipation as a _woman_. And here no transformation of\nforms of thought and feeling, of manners and customs, attainable by any\nlegal provisions or paragraphs, avail. The present woman movement has\ncreated and still continues to create the social _conditions_ for this\nlast emancipation. But it will not approve such far extending results of\nits own work. It desires the same _rights_ but also the same duties for\nall women. If a single woman uses the freedom, which the woman movement\nhas procured for her as a member of society, to fashion her individual\nlife according to the deepest demands of her being, then the old guard\ntrembles before the outcome of the battle for freedom in which it fought\nso valiantly.\n\nBut nothing is more certain than that the feminine personality, whether\nher innermost desire be spiritual creative instinct, erotic happiness,\nmaternal bliss, or universal human goodness, will acquire ever new forms\nof expression: forms of expression which the once liberal, now more\nconservative feminists and the modern socialistic feminists partly do\nnot divine and partly\u2014divining\u2014deplore! For the present even the\n\u201cemancipated\u201d woman follows as a rule the paths which social custom has\nmarked out for her sex, as well as the cultural ideas which have been,\nthus far, those of man. But if, in the coming thousand years, a\n_feminine_ culture shall really supplement the masculine, then this will\nbe exactly in the measure in which women have the courage to create and\nto act as most feminists now do not even dare think. Then it will be\nevident that _all_ social movements of the present time, especially the\nwoman movement and socialism, are only the work of the path finder for\nthe masculine and feminine superman or, if you prefer the older\nexpression, _complete man_.\n\nLike other \u201cold guards,\u201d the veterans of feminism will not surrender\nbut will fall upon the field of battle. The little girls there below\nwill one day celebrate their memory. For through their struggles the\nway became free for youth, the way which leads out to the wide sea\nwhere perhaps shipwreck awaits the one who ventures out into the\ndarkness with her fragile skiff. But many will brave the voyage and\nbide their fate, strong, proud, and composed as the maiden in\nSchwind\u2019s _Wasserfahrt_\u2014that splendid symbol of the woman of the\nfuture.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER II\n                THE INNER RESULTS OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT\n\n\nIf I now start out to consider the woman soul as it has developed itself\nunder the influence of all the circumstances mentioned above, perhaps\nmany will expect a theory about the character of the feminine soul life.\nBut, at present, when the greatest problems of psychology are in\nrevolution and undecided, such a theory would be as scientifically\nimpossible as aphorisms are unanswerable. Likewise, conclusions, based\nupon experience, concerning the psychic peculiarity of woman would be in\nthis chaotic transition period, superficial, if they attempted to be\nabsolute. Only _one_ decided opinion about the spiritual life of woman I\ncannot\u2014in consequence of my monistic-evolutionary conception of the\nspiritual and physical life\u2014refrain from expressing. This opinion is\nthat, in the one hundred thousand years at least in which woman has\npractised the physical maternal functions, the spiritual attributes\n_essential_ for motherhood must have been so strongly developed by her\nthat this development has had, and still has always, as a result a\npronounced difference between the feminine and masculine soul\u2014that is to\nsay, everywhere where the soul, as well as the body of a woman, is\nadapted and desirous of motherhood\u2014a fitness and readiness which can\nstill be called the _normal_ condition. The spiritual qualities which\nmaternity required have become the attributes of \u201cwomanliness,\u201d the\nqualities which paternity required, have become the attributes of\n\u201cmanliness.\u201d This difference has become quite as significant for the\nfunctional fitness of both sexes for the perpetuation and development of\nthe race, as for the wealth of life of each new generation. The\nobliteration or retention of this difference is therefore a vital\nquestion for mankind.\n\nFiguratively expressed, this seems to me the process: from a common root\nof universal human spiritual life issue two stems which can again unite\nin their blossoming. The ramification has necessarily involved a\ndivision of labour in two equally important spheres. From this point of\nview I give, in the following, my opinion of the value of the influence\nof the woman movement upon the spiritual life of woman.\n\nWe all know that life expresses itself as movement, that movement brings\nwith it change, transformation; that this can mean quite as well\ndisintegration as higher organisation.\n\nThe woman movement is the most significant of all movements for freedom\nin the world\u2019s history. The question whether this movement leads mankind\nin a higher or lower direction is the most serious question of the time.\nThose who assert unconditionally the former or the latter have uttered a\npremature judgment. The question must be formulated thus:\n\n(_a_) Has the woman movement brought to mankind a higher degree of vital\nforce, a greater faculty for self-preservation, a more complete\norganisation, by which the more simple forms have become more finely\ncomplex, the more uniform have become richer, more diverse; the\nincoherent have attained a more perfect unity? Or has the woman movement\ncalled forth an activity which represses life? degrades, scatters, and\nreduces the powers to uniformity, in society and in mankind?\n\n(_b_) Is woman\u2019s spiritual life now in general above the level at which\nit was in the beginning of the woman movement? Have modern women finer\nperceptions, deeper feelings, clearer ideas, a firmer will, richer\nassociation of ideas? Do their spiritual faculties so work together that\nthey mutually enhance instead of hinder one another? In a word is the\nmodern woman more soulful than the woman of any other time?\n\n(_c_) Is the body of the modern woman, at all stages of life, stronger,\nmore healthy, and more beautiful than that of the woman of the previous\ncentury, when the woman movement began in real earnest in Europe?\n\n(_d_) Does the modern woman perform in more perfect manner than the\nwoman of that time, the physical and psychic functions of motherhood?\n\nIf the question be put thus then the _objective_ investigator must\nanswer to all\u2014\u201c_Yes and No_.\u201d\n\nBut if this investigator is an evolutionist, then he knows that the\nprogress of every social evolution is like that which womankind is now\nexperiencing. We see first, how, in any given sphere of society, where\nthose engaged therein have attained a pure, instinctive certainty in\ntheir actions through laws and customs, the individuals oppressed by\nthese laws and customs must rebel against the limits, drawn from\nwithout, for the development and exercise of their powers. This revolt\noccasions at first a stage of anarchy in which everything seems to\ncollapse\u2014while in the previous conserving epoch \u201ccrystallisation\u201d\nfurnished the vital danger! But after such an anarchistic stage there\ncomes infallibly the constructive stage, where _a part of the old is\norganised, incorporated, into the new_. But this acts no longer as\ninstinctive impulse. No, mankind has become conscious anew of these\nvalues of law and custom; they have been recognised by the thought,\nencompassed by feeling, sanctioned by the will as still always\nindispensable, in another and higher form it is true than that against\nwhich the individuals rebelled. But just as the leaves which once grew\ngreen above in the summer light, gradually become one with the earth, so\nthe motives of the new customs sink gradually down into the unknown; man\nacts again with instinctive certainty and uniformity\u2014until the new\nperiod of stagnation evokes a new rebellion and achievement of\nindividualism.\n\nThe woman movement finds itself now at a point where it is about to pass\nfrom the dynamic stage to a static stage. Exactly at this point a survey\nbegins to be possible; and it is also necessary for every one who\nbelieves that the ideal, as well as the practical direction of the woman\nmovement, in future, must be influenced by the knowledge gained about\nthe effect of the movement, thus far, upon the uplifting of the life of\nmankind.\n\nEvery great achievement of individualism is as inconsiderate as the\nspring tide and must be, in order to have strength for its task. The\nwoman movement was so also. But it encountered two other great ideas of\nthe time, Socialism and Evolutionism, and in consequence the woman\nmovement was obliged to modify gradually its conception of the feminine\nindividual and of her position in existence.\n\nOn the one hand, as has been already shown, man has had to understand\nthat \u201copen competition\u201d and \u201cindividual initiative\u201d are not absolute\npolitical-economic truths. On the other hand, the defender of women\u2019s\nrights has been forced to understand more and more that woman\u2019s soul is\nno unchangeable value which must remain the same however much the\nspheres have changed toward which this spiritual life directed itself\nand from which it received its impression. While feminists fifty years\nago scorned the objection that \u201cwomanliness\u201d would be lost in business\nlife or in politics, now the evolutionist mind in thinking women\nunderstands that all human soul life is subject to the law of change;\nthat just as indisputably as the soul life of man is changed by\ndifferent vocations and surroundings, so that of woman also must be\nchanged. The feminists founded their dogma that the woman movement can\n_only benefit_ woman, man, the child, the family, society, mankind upon\nthe conviction of the _stability_ of \u201ctrue womanliness.\u201d\n\nAnd if the woman movement had not had this religious certainty of\nbelief, how could it have withstood the mass of prejudice and stupidity\nwhich it encountered in its own, as well as in the other sex? The woman\nmovement has conquered because it was self-intoxicated.\n\nAnd quite naturally! After a stability of centuries, during which the\nposition of woman was altered only in and with the general progress of\nculture, women finally recognised that they could accelerate their own\nprogress and with it also the somewhat snail-like course of universal\nhuman culture. And so woman asserted herself and increased her motion.\nThe faster this movement became, the more was she seized by the\nintoxication which always accompanies every vigorous physical or psychic\nmovement. And when has a movement of the time advanced more rapidly?\n\nFolk-migrations, crusades, slave rebellions, revolutions have led a\nrace, a class, a group, beyond certain geographical or social\nboundaries. The emancipation of women has shifted and extended the\nlimits of the freedom of movement of _half mankind_. No wonder that the\nextent of the movement _in and for itself_ was advanced as proof of the\ninfallibility of its direction. All points of departure, the natural\nright of man, individual freedom, social necessity\u2014all led out into the\nsun, which, in society as in nature, should radiate over woman as well\nas over man; they led up onto the summit where man and woman both should\nbreathe the air of the heights. All obstacles which were raised with the\nhelp of arguments such as, \u201cthe nature of woman,\u201d \u201cthe welfare of the\nfamily,\u201d \u201cthe idea of society,\u201d \u201cthe purpose of God\u201d\u2014all proved\ntemporary. And of necessity\u2014for the innermost law of life, the law of\ndevelopment, of life enhancement, carried the movement forward. When it\nbegan, the Biblical expression about the wind was quoted, \u201cMan knows not\nwhence it comes nor whither it goes.\u201d Now all know it. Now the spirit of\nthe time speaks with \u201cfeminist\u201d voice. The ideas of emancipation \u201care in\nthe air,\u201d like bacilli, by which only savages are thus far wholly\nuntouched.\n\nThere are now no great movements of the time whose path does not run\nparallel with or cut across the woman movement. Every new generation is\ninvoluntarily and unconsciously drawn along with it. The ends already\nattained seem to the present age obvious; the ends, for which man is\nstill struggling to-day, will appear equally obvious to the future. The\nwoman movement is now a power with which even its most bitter\nadversaries must reckon. And this force has so quickly attained\nprominence exactly as a result of fanaticism. Just as the White and the\nBlue Nile mingle their waters in the main stream, so in every great\ncurrent of time enthusiasm is mingled with fanaticism. And it is the\nlatter which bears the most fruit, for it gives power of growth to the\npassions of the majority, good as well as bad.\n\nEvery great idea begins with great promulgators. The promulgator who has\nthe spirit does not hold to the letter. And the woman movement which was\nspirit began also with women and men who did not follow the call of the\nspirit of the time; no, who from lonely heights sent out their awakening\ncall _to_ the time. Men who give their age new ideals have always\nreligious natures. This means, according to a good definition, that they\nare \u201cindividualists in their being, social in their action.\u201d\n\nSuch natures burn, above all, with the passion to find themselves. Then\nthey burn with the passion to sacrifice themselves in order to help\nothers, whose suffering or wrongs they feel as deeply as if they were\ntheir own. No one who passively endures an injustice against himself has\nthe material in him to struggle for the rights of others. The one who\npatiently forbears becomes an accessory to the injustice done to others.\nHe who resists the injustice which he himself meets can open up the way\nto a higher right for others. Such path-finders were the first apostles\nof the emancipation of women. They consecrated to this task a faith\nwhich required no proof, a faith which saw visions and heard melodies of\nthe glorious future that their victory would prepare for mankind. They\nemanated neither from scientific investigations, nor from systems of\npolitical economy, nor from philosophic evidence, nor theories of\npolitical science. They flung themselves into the struggle with\ninadequate weapons, without plan of campaign, just as do all impelled by\nthe spirit. But such a method always evokes later dissension among the\ndisciples. Sects are formed, gradually a church is crystallised, an\northodoxy, a papacy, and an inquisition. This course is physically\nnecessary as long as mankind is still in greatest part a mass. A Paul\nmore \u201cChristian\u201d than Christ and a Luther more \u201cPaulist\u201d than Paul are\nmet also in the woman movement.\n\nThis has now, among most people of culture, passed beyond the stage of\nthe great apostles and martyrs and heralds. The movement has reached the\npoint where certain typical manifestations, certain conventional forms\ntestify that the masses\u2014which stoned the prophets\u2014have now, since the\nideas of the woman movement have become truisms, banalities, the\nfashion, appropriated them to themselves and endeavour to transform them\nto their image and adapt them to their needs.\n\nAgain and again the old tale repeats itself: the trolls steal the\nweapons of the gods but they cannot use them. Again and again there is\noccasion to deplore the fact that the autocrat of genius, whether he\nrule over a people or a kingdom of ideas, has heirs, heirs who diminish\nhis work. Again and again it must be recognised that no spiritual\nformation vanishes at one blow. The servile mind, intrigue, pettiness,\ndelusion\u2014all that, from which the great spirits of the woman movement\nhoped to \u201cemancipate\u201d woman\u2014could not suddenly vanish out of the world.\nAnd since all this must go somewhere it finally finds room in the woman\nmovement itself!\n\nBut on the other side\u2014since after all everything has another side\u2014it\nmust be admitted that the levelling and conserving tendency of the\naverage person is of real value at the stage _when an idea begins to be\ntransformed into law and custom_.\n\nThose who can work only in crowds receive their significance _exactly\nbecause of their collective work_. They push aside the \u201cindividual\nemancipation\u201d which they do not need for their own part, since they have\nno individuality to emancipate. But by diligent and efficient work they\nsucceed in securing certain results, which are the common cause of all.\nSo the Philistines make for themselves a footstool of that which was a\nstumbling-block for their congenial souls in the previous generation.\nFrom this height they look down upon the new truth of _their_ time. And\nthose who perceive and uphold this new truth turn aside from the great\nuniformed army which now advances safely where the little vanguard has\npreviously and laboriously opened up the way. Those who turn aside will\nform the new vanguard when it comes to achieving, in the spirit of the\nfirst apostle, the emancipation not only of _women in the mass_, but of\n_each individual woman_. When the present work of the woman movement for\njoint, common ends shall no longer be necessary, because one end after\nanother has been attained, then comes the task of the present \u201cradical\u201d\nfeminism: the accomplishment of \u201cemancipation\u201d by leading it up to those\nfree heights which already the path-finders are endeavouring to attain,\nthe heights where every feminine individuality can choose her own path\nof life, perhaps at variance with all others; can choose it in freedom,\nanswerable only to her own conscience. Although this summary grouping\nhistorically as well as psychologically corresponds approximately to the\npast, present, and future of the woman movement, yet there are so many\nramifications of the three groups into one another, that the woman\nmovement now exhibits a tangled confusion in which every exact\ndemarcation is impossible.\n\nWhoever lives to witness it will see the course of progress just\ndescribed\u2014for which the modern labour movement offers quite as good\nmaterial for observation as the woman movement\u2014repeat itself in the next\ngreat emancipation movement. I mean the movement for the right and\nfreedom of the _child_, which will be the unconditional result of the\nvictory of the woman and labour movements. This idea is still in the\nmorning-clear hour of inspiration. But from the cry, \u201cAway with the\nchild destroying home training,\u201d we can hear that the troop of\nPhilistines will appear by afternoon upon the scene, to adopt the idea\ninto their midst!\n\nBy means of the comparison with socialism, I have endeavoured to\nemphasise that the woman movement\u2019s formation of dogmas and its\ndoctrinary fanaticism are not effects of the peculiarity of the\n_feminine_ mind. These phenomena are typical of every movement of the\ntime thus far observed. They are essential above all because a new\nbelief without dogma and without ritual is for the masses a sword\nwithout a hilt: it offers nothing tangible, nothing whereby the masses\ncan come into relation with the idea.\n\nThat certain feminists still believe that the woman movement has\nadvanced just as the exodus of the Children of Israel out of the land of\nbondage, that is to say, under God\u2019s special protection against\nwandering astray; that they stigmatise as \u201ctreason\u201d and \u201cdefection\u201d the\nassertion that this movement was determined by the same psychological\nand sociological laws as every other movement for freedom\u2014this shows to\nhow high a degree many leaders of the woman movement lack elementary\npsychological and sociological conceptions. This deficiency is, however,\nbeing continually remedied. And in the generation which now advances,\ndogmatic fanaticism has well nigh vanished, but pure enthusiasm is\npreserved.\n\nWe can thus expect from this generation a clearer understanding of the\nnecessary _social_ repressions which the woman movement has now\nsufficient strength to impose upon itself without forfeiting thereby its\ncharacter of a _movement for freedom_. As such it cannot and dare not\ncease until it has attained _all_ its ends. As long as the law treats\nwomen as one race, men as another, _there is a woman question_. Not\nuntil man and woman, equal and united, work together for mankind will\nthe woman movement belong to the past.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III\n         THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN QUESTION UPON SINGLE WOMEN\n\n\nThe following comparisons between the life of women, especially their\nspiritual life of about fifty years ago and their life as it has shaped\nitself under the influence of the woman movement, have been arranged in\n_descending_ scale. They begin with that phase of women\u2019s life in which\nthis influence was most favourable from the point of view of life\nenhancement, namely with the life of _unmarried_ women.\n\nYou will find to-day, among women seventy or eighty years of age, one or\nanother type of that fine culture which the gifted single woman, in\ncomfortable circumstances, could attain in the previous century. Her\nhome, especially if it was an estate in the country, became a cultural\nfireside which radiated light and heat for relatives and friends. The\nlesser gifted disseminated, each according to her nature, comfort or\ndiscomfort, yet could in extremity at least be sure of the homage of\ntheir future heirs. Toward those dependent upon them, these women were\nsometimes kind, sometimes indifferent, sometimes hard: the feeling of\nsocial responsibility was an unknown idea to them. The _penniless_\nsingle women, on the contrary, were found either in one of the\n\u201crespectable\u201d positions which, however, brought with them a multitude of\nhumiliations: as governess, companion, housekeeper\u2014in Germany also as\nmaid of honour at one of the numerous small courts\u2014or in some charitable\ninstitution for gentle folks, an asylum for _pauvres honteuses_; but\nmost frequently in the corner of the home of a relative. This corner was\nat times the warmest and most confidential in the whole house, that\ncorner which the children sought for stories and sweetmeats; the youth,\nto find an embrace in which he could pour forth his grief, an ear which\nlistened to his most beautiful dreams. But it happened more frequently\nthat the \u201caunt\u201d looked upon as a \u201cnecessary evil\u201d was in reality that\nvery thing. Humiliated and embittered, she became ingenious in making\nthose about her suffer for her afflictions. Before they became\nhopelessly old, the \u201caunts\u201d were the laughing stock of the young through\ntheir efforts, in the eleventh hour, to reach the \u201cpeaceful haven of\nmatrimony\u201d; and they themselves looked with envious eyes upon the good\nfortune of the young. We meet the unmarried woman of that time at her\nbest as trusty servant who shared the cares, the joys, and the sorrows\nof the family and, in her garret chamber, of which she could be certain\nto the day of her death, she looked back upon a rich life lived\nvicariously. Not infrequently, she rejected a marriage proposal in order\nto stay with her beloved master and mistress to whom she knew she was\nindispensable. The superfluous women previously mentioned would have\nthrown themselves into the arms of Beelzebub had he come as suitor. When\nthe years passed, when neither their desire for activity nor the thirst\nof the heart nor of the senses was quenched, then not infrequently\ninsanity conjured up for these lonely women a life-content for which\nthey had longed in vain. To-day, however, we have for the position which\nthe expression, \u201ca forsaken old maid,\u201d betokens an entirely new type:\n\u201cthe glorified spinster,\u201d as the joyous, active, independent unmarried\nwoman is called by the people among whom she first became a reality.\nAmong these women, independent through their work, useful to society,\nthat older type is still occasionally found perhaps, a survival of the\ntime when emancipation was rather generally interpreted as freedom for\nmasculinity. The \u201cman-woman\u201d in masculine attire, with weapons of\ndefence against man in one hand and a cigarette in the other, her soul\nfilled with mad ambition for her own sex and, as representative of her\nentire sex, with hatred toward the other, was however always rare. Now,\nshe has almost entirely vanished, except alas, the cigarette. But she\nsmokes it now often with\u2014masculine friends! She follows in her mode of\nlife, as in her dress, the law of good taste\u2014not to offend; she\nendeavours, if only with a flower or two, to give a glimmer of cosy\ncomfort to her place of work. This comfort, which often comes into the\npublic life with woman is perhaps the reason why many men, who first\nlooked with indignation upon feminine fellow-workmen, would now miss\nthem. The more personal the culture of these women becomes, the more\nthey endeavour, according to their time and means, to express their\npersonality in the lines and colours of their dress and in the\narrangement of their room. Those best situated often succeed, toward the\nend of their working days, in winning their own little home which they\nperhaps share with a friend, or they join a co-operative enterprise and\ncan thus raise their standard of living. The same women who, at\ntwenty-five, scornfully declared that they \u201cwould never bury their head\nin a sauce-pan,\u201d are now, at fifty, consciously aware of the\nsignificance of the table for the activity of the brain; indeed they are\nnow quite as proud if they have prepared a good dish as they were in\ntheir youth when they passed a fine examination!\n\nIt is not to be wondered at that the emancipated women, exactly as all\nrecently emancipated masculine classes and races, at first groped\ninsecurely after a new form. The astonishing thing, on the contrary, is\nthat women adapted themselves so quickly to the new circumstances; that\nthe transition period furnished so few grotesque types; that the present\nshows so many harmonious types, each in her own way. This harmony of\nsingle women is no mere form. It has its inner counterpart in the\nsatisfaction with their existence, an existence in accord with their\ndesires. The psychology was not exhaustive which saw in feminism only a\n\u201cspinster question,\u201d a question of the unmarried woman, springing from\nthe surplus of women and the increasing difficulty or disinclination of\nmen to contract marriage\u2014a question therefore for the ugly, not for the\nbeautiful; for the unmarried, not for the married; for the poor, not for\nthe rich. For a great number of beautiful women prefer to remain\nunmarried; a great number of rich desire to work; a great number of\nmarried women are zealous suffragists. Fifty years ago, we saw the most\nclever women idealise an ape into a god; now, the modern, intelligent\nworking girl, when she looks about her for her ideal, exercises a lively\ncriticism. She often flirts with one who exhibits some phase of the\nideal, but she has too clear an understanding and too much to do to\n_imagine_ a great feeling for one who is unworthy. So it often happens\nthat youth has passed without such a feeling having stirred her. And she\nenters without deep regret the age when ambition and desire for power\nbecome her life stimulants. From these women of predominating mind and\nwill is formed more and more what Ferrero calls \u201cThe third sex,\u201d\nMaudsley, \u201cThe sexless ant\u201d: energetic, clever, happy in their work,\ncool, but sound; in private life, in the zeal of everyday work, often\negoistic but willing to make sacrifices in face of social exigencies.\n\nSo a great part of the fifty-year-old women form an exception since they\nwith true instinct have remained unmarried. For in the same degree that\ntheir metallic being is well adapted to the machinery of society, it is\nlittle qualified to make a home for husband and children. They do not\ndepreciate however the value of this task, unless they be fanatic\nfeminists. In that event they reproach the women who wish to marry with\n\u201cbetraying the woman cause\u201d; they demand at times, as imperative loyalty\ntoward this cause, that their friends shall protest against the present\nmarriage laws at least by the form of their marriage alliance if not\neven by not marrying at all. Their theory of equality has at times been\ncarried so far that\u2014as recently happened in France\u2014they advocate women\u2019s\nperforming also masculine military service.\n\nBut in spite of their aridity and inflexibility of principle how much\nmore human are even these feminists than the \u201cill-natured\u201d aunts of\nearlier times who became ill-natured exactly because their temperament\nwas of the kind mentioned above, but who could find no sphere of\noperation for their passionate longing for activity. One or another was\nperhaps burning with ambition. For there are women as well as men who\ncan live only as pagan gods, in the blaze and perfume of sacrificial\nfires. In their youth these ambitious natures could be satisfied by\ntriumphs in social life. But later the passion became a fire in a powder\ncask and occasioned incessant explosions. Now it is the electric motive\npower for an activity of general utility. The \u201caunts\u201d of the earlier\ntime who felt themselves always overlooked and injured are most easily\nrecognised again in the literary and artistic field to which daily bread\nor ambition now urges many women, who endeavour to compensate by\nenergetic work for the talent which nature denied them. Since these\nwomen are ordinarily not people of understanding but of feeling, they\nmust in a double sense be dissatisfied with a life which in addition is,\nin most cases, still filled with economic cares and the humiliations\narising therefrom. And yet in spite of all, how much richer is their\nlife to-day than it would have been fifty years ago when they would have\nbeen obliged to sit and draw their needles through interminable pieces\nof handwork, after ugly patterns and for unnecessary uses, or to compose\nsentimental birthday verses for persons whom they abominated.\n\nYet there are always those women natures who, in the past, had the\nqualifications for a real \u201cdear aunt,\u201d who gently calmed the conflicts\nand filled the gaps in the home of which they had become members. The\nmost tender and sensitive of these modern women, who, rain or shine,\nyear in year out, hasten to and from a work indifferent to them at\nheart, not infrequently breathe a sigh of longing for those times when,\nas \u201caunts,\u201d they could have received and imparted warmth in a home. But\nthen again there come moments when they know how to value the\nindependence which puts them in a position to give help where otherwise\nthere would be none; when for example they can send a nephew to college,\nor a friend to a sanatarium, or provide their mother with a nurse, which\nthey themselves can not be.\n\nThis kind of single woman fulfills more or less the office of family\nprovider just as she also is always ready with word and deed in circles\nof friends and comrades. These women are so engrossed that the time of\nlove, sometimes love itself, passes them by without their observing it.\nTheir youth flees and they feel with sadness that their woman\u2019s life is\nunlived. But they persuade themselves that they have had enough in their\nwork, that many little joys can take the place of great happiness. And\nthey believe this as truly as the infant believes he is satisfied when\nhe sucks his own thumb. But some of these women acknowledge perhaps,\nwhen they have passed the fifties, that they were often tempted to call\nout to the first best man, \u201cGive me a child.\u201d Sometimes it happens that\nin their last youth they appease their mother longing by adopting a\nfoster child; sometimes they still this longing by a child of their own,\nfrom a love relation or a marriage. This late and uncertain happiness is\noften made possible exactly through their work. And then, if not\nearlier, they bless this work which gives them the economic possibility,\nand thereby also the courage, for this hazardous adventure.\n\nMore frequent than these are the cases however where single women, who\nhave passed their first youth, find in friendship for another woman a\nvalve for their, in great part, unused feelings. In some natures this\nfriendship will be jealous and exacting, in others true and devoted. I\nwish to emphasise that I speak here of entirely _natural spiritual\nconditions_. There is to-day much talk about \u201cSapphic\u201d women; and it is\neven possible that they exist in that impure form which men imagine. I\nhave never met them, presumably because we rarely meet in life those\nwith whom no fibre of our being has any affinity. But I have often\nobserved that the spiritually refined women of our time, just as\nformerly the spiritually refined men of Hellas, find most easily in\ntheir own sex the qualities which set their spiritual life in the finest\nvibration of admiration, inspiration, sympathy and adoration.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe fundamental types of single women depicted here\u2014the person of\nintellect and the person of feeling\u2014are found everywhere. The former\naccording to current opinion already predominate in America; in Europe,\nit seems to me, the latter still prevail. That the main classes include\ninnumerable varieties, it is needless to say. There are for example the\nnumerous, quite ordinary, family girls who would be happy if they could\ngive up their independence in order to enjoy the protection of their\nparents\u2019 or their own home. And the same obtains also with the quite as\nancient type of woman, Undine, who\u2014soulless and cold\u2014enslaves all men.\nIf she is in any civic vocation, she knows how to get the smallest\namount of work for herself and, in case she is engaged in the artistic\nfield, the best possible criticism. Conscience is an acquaintance which\nshe has never made and she is also of the opinion that everything\nagreeable is permitted to her; she simply slides past anything\ndisagreeable. Although work belongs to these disagreeable things, she\ncontinues it until she has found means to place her \u201cqualities\u201d in the\nmost advantageous manner upon the matrimonial market.\n\nThe diametrical antithesis of this curvilinear type is the rectilinear.\nIt has, just as the preceding type, existed at all times. It is the\nwoman who really never demanded anything of life but \u201ca work and a duty\u201d\nand finds both in abundance in all positions of life. She is found year\nin year out at her desk, in appropriate working garb, free from all\n\u00e6sthetics; proud \u201cif she never has needed to miss a day\u201d; proud that she\nnever has come late. On the contrary she never _goes_ on time. For she\nhas so grown into the business or the office that she takes everything\nupon herself that is required without murmuring, as a well-disciplined\nsoldier in the ranks of the grey working army; thankful, in addition, if\nher long working cares yield her a little life annuity or pension for\nher old age. This type is found principally among women over\nfifty\u2014fortunately. For this class of women which the pre-feministic\ncircumstances created, have, by their \u201cfrugality\u201d carried almost to the\nverge of criminality, by their humble, conscientious servitude, lowered\nthe wages of their colleagues who are more full of life. These latter\nhave begun work in the hope that it finally will \u201cfree\u201d them; that is,\nwill give them something of that for which their innermost being longs,\nnot only their daily bread\u2014a bread which sickness or a turn of affairs\nmoreover can take from them at any time. And perhaps they never succeed\neven in having their own room where they at least could have repose!\nUnderpaid, overworked, tired to death, who can wonder if these women\nhave lost, if they ever possessed them, the essential characteristics of\n\u201cwomanhood\u201d\u2014active kindness, repose even in movement, charming\ngentleness? The Icelandic poet of yore already knew that \u201cFew become\nfair through wounds.\u201d These women must put all their strength into their\nwork and into the effort to conceal their underpayment by \u201crespectable\u201d\nclothing, or else lose their positions. In everything else they must\neconomise to the utmost and perhaps in addition be laughed at because of\ntheir economy. They succeed, often admirably, in maintaining themselves\nin proud fair struggle, in rejecting \u201cerotic\u201d perquisites to add to\ntheir income and in fulfilling conscientiously the requirements of their\nwork. Yet to do this with lively interest, with preserved spiritual\nelasticity, with quiet amiability\u2014for this their strength does not\nsuffice, exhausted by insufficient nourishment, insufficient sleep,\nstill more insufficient recreation, and strained daily to the utmost.\nTheir nervousness finds vent in either hard or hysterical expression and\nthe public, annoyed by their ill-humour, divines little of the tragedies\nenacted in offices, business houses, caf\u00e9s or similar places. If a\nsuicide concludes the tragedy, the public shudders for a moment and\u2014all\ngoes on as before.\n\nThus \u201cemancipation\u201d presents itself in reality for millions of women. To\nwhat extent the middle-class woman movement is indirectly to blame for\nthis fact has already been emphasised.\n\nThe essential reason is however the prevailing economic condition of\nsociety. By the uninterrupted fever of competition and the accumulation\nof riches, it dries up the soul and robs it of goodness as well as of\njoy. When the great, beautiful, eternal sources of joy are exhausted,\nthe life stimulus is sought in exclusively physical pleasures, which are\nalways made more exciting in order to be able to arouse still, in the\nlanguid nervous system, feelings of desire. Moreover, there is the\nneurosis and weariness of life of the overworked, of those continually\nquaking about their material safety, of those who _could_ be revived by\nthe noble and simple joys of life, to which those jaded with riches are\nalready not susceptible; but for all these millions and millions such\njoys are not accessible because hunger for profit depresses wages. If in\naddition to that we take into account the increasing suffering of the\nbest because of the ever developing feeling of solidarity; and if\nfinally we consider that women, who through the protection of the home\ncould preserve something of warmth-irradiating energy, are now in\nincreasing numbers driven out of the home, then we have some of the\nreasons which\u2014in higher degree than the religious and philosophic\nreasons which _also_ exist\u2014contribute to the joylessness of our time.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nA contribution to the meagre stock of good fortune of the present time\nis furnished however by the joy of life among young girls working under\nfavourable conditions. Among them we meet a new soul condition, which\ncould be designated, as briefly as possible, as _covetousness_ of\neverything which can promote their personal development and a beautiful\n_liberality_ with what is thus won. They can gratify their energetic\ndesire for self-development by sport, travel, books, art and other means\nof culture; their freedom of action between working hours is not\nrestricted by private duties. They can utilise their leisure time and\ntheir income as they please: for recreation, pleasure, social\nintercourse, social work or private, charitable activity. No father nor\nhusband encroaches upon their free agency. And so dear does this liberty\nbecome to them through the manifold joys which it furnishes, that these\nyoung girls, in constantly increasing numbers, refuse to relinquish\ntheir individual independence for the sake of a marriage which, even\npresupposing the happiest love, always means a restriction of the\nfreedom of movement that they enjoyed while single. And since the modern\nwoman knows that, in the sphere of spiritual values, nothing can be\nattained without sacrifice, she prefers to keep free agency and to\nsacrifice love. If she chooses in the opposite direction, the task of\nadaptation will be the more difficult, the longer and the more intensely\nshe has enjoyed freedom. The modern young girl, if she deigns to bestow\nher hand upon a man, not infrequently has her pretty head so crammed\nfull of principles of equality that she sometimes (frequently in\nAmerica), by written contract establishes her independence to the\nsmallest detail, which sometimes includes separate apartments and the\nprohibition that either of the contracting parties shall have the key to\nthe apartment of the other.\n\nThere are many varieties of the new type of woman. There is for instance\nthe tom-boy, the \u201cgamin,\u201d who for her life cannot give up the right to\nmad pranks and mischievous jokes. There is the girl consumed with\nambition, who sacrifices all other values in order to attain the goal of\nher ambition in art or science. There is the fanatically altruistic\ngirl, who considers the work for mankind so important that she feels she\nhas not the right to an \u201cegoistic\u201d love happiness. There is the ascetic\nethereal girl, who looks upon marriage and child-bearing as animal\nfunctions, unworthy of a spiritual being, but above all as\n_unbeautiful_. And for many of these modern, \u00e6sthetically refined,\nnervously sensitive young girls the \u00e6sthetic point of view is decisive.\nAll love the work which permits them to live according to their ideals.\nStill it often happens that Ovidian metamorphoses take place: that the\nyoung girl sees the cloud or the swan transformed into a god, upon whose\naltar she sacrifices, with joy, her free agency and everything else\nwhich only a few weeks earlier she cherished as her holy of holies. The\nmen who view this process with a smile, think that the anti-erotic\nideals were only a new weapon of defence in the eternal war between the\nsexes. But these men often learn how mistaken they were when they\nthemselves become participators in the war. They meet women so proud, so\nsensitive regarding their independence, so merciless in their strength,\nso easily wounded in their instincts, so zealous to devote themselves to\ntheir personal task, so determined to preserve their freedom, that\nerotic harmony seldom can be realised. Yes, these women often repudiate\nlove only because it becomes a bond to their freedom, a hindrance to\ntheir work, a force for the bending of their will to another\u2019s will.\n\nThe women, womanly in their innermost depths, who really feel free only\nwhen they give themselves wholly, are becoming continually more rare.\nBut where such a wholly devoted woman still exists, she is the highest\ntype of woman which any period has produced. Especially if she springs\nfrom a family of old culture. She has then, combined in her personality,\nthe best of tradition and the best of the revolution evoked by the woman\nmovement. The fibres of her being absorb their nourishment with\ninstinctive certainty out of the fruitful soil which pride, devotion to\nduty, family love, requirements of culture and refinement of form, for\nmany generations, have created. But her conscious soul-life flowers in\nthe sun of the present; she thinks new thoughts and has new aims. Just\nas little as she disavows her desire for love, so little does she desire\nlove under other conditions than those of spiritual unity and human\nequality. If she meets the man who can give her this and if she loves\nhim, then he can be more certain than the man of any other time that he\nis really loved, that no ulterior motive obscures the devotion of this\nfree woman. He has seen her susceptible to all the riches of life; has\nseen her assist in social tasks, perform the duty of every day joyful in\nher work, proud of her independence attained through her work. He knows\nthat just as she is she would have continued to be if he had not entered\ninto her life. How different is this girl from the one of earlier times,\nwho was driven by the emptiness of her life into continual love affairs,\nwhich could not lead to a marriage nor exist in a marriage that\npossessed nothing of love!\n\nThis most beautiful new type of woman approaches spiritually the\naforementioned type of single, aged women, who because of their economic\nindependence found time for a fine personal culture. These followed not\ninfrequently in their youth, from a distance it is true, but with joyous\nsympathy, the progress of the woman movement. They shook their heads\nlater over its extremes. With new joy they regard the young girls just\ndescribed, in whom they find a more universal development than in\nthemselves, because these young girls have been developed through active\nconsumption of power which was spared to the older women, although they\nmust have summoned much _passive_ energy in order to maintain their\npersonality against convention. The young girls find often in these\nolder women a fine understanding, which they richly reciprocate. Such\nterms of friendship are the most beautiful which the present has to\noffer: they resemble the meeting of the morning and evening red in the\nbright midsummer nights of the North.\n\nNo time could have been so rich in exquisite feminine personalities, at\nall ages and in all stages of life, as ours. We must not draw our\nconclusions regarding the abundance of such women, in the older culture\nepochs, from the illustrious names of women which incessantly recur in\nthe pictures of the earlier times\u2014like stage soldiers\u2014until they give\nthe illusion of a great host.\n\nBut exquisite women are even to-day exceptional. The Martha type rather\nthan the Mary type predominates. This is due on one hand to decreasing\npiety, on the other hand to the kind of working and society life. Fifty\nyears ago single women were often spiritually petrified, now more often\nthey cannot succeed in settling into any form. Their existence, turned\noutwardly, widens their sphere of interest but makes their soul-life\nshallow. Restlessness is most unfavourable to the \u201cdevelopment of the\npersonality,\u201d which was however the goal of the emancipation of woman.\nThis development is delayed most of all perhaps by the lack of personal\ncontact with other personalities, of immediate, intimate human\nconnections. This can, from no point of view, be supplied by the society\nor club life in which single women are to-day absorbed.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IV\n         THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON THE DAUGHTERS\n\n\nAs late as sixty or seventy years ago, the daughters of good families\nhad still few points of contact with life outside the four walls of the\nhome. From the hands of nurse-maids they went into those of the\ngoverness, and after confirmation, studies were at an end. If it was a\ncultured home then reading aloud or music was often practised, whereby\nit is true no \u201cspecific education\u201d qualifying them for examinations was\nattained, but frequently a fine universal human culture. There was\nalways employment in the house for the zeal for work. The great presses\nwere filled with linen which was not infrequently spun and woven by the\ndaughters; in the autumn they assembled for sausage-making and candle\ndipping; later, for Christmas baking and roasting; in summer endless\nrows of glasses of preserves were set in the store-room. Before\nChristmas, night after night, Christmas presents were made; after\nChristmas, night after night, they danced. At these balls those in outer\nrespects uncomely, received a foretaste of that waiting which must fill\ntheir life for many long years: would the invitation to the dance\u2014or the\nwooing respectively\u2014come or not? Every man whose shadow merely fell upon\nthe scene, was immediately considered from the point of view of a\nsuitor. As the years went by the girl, who before twenty-five years of\nage was considered an \u201cold maid,\u201d saw how the glance of the father and\nthe brothers became gloomy, yes, she could even hear how \u201cunfortunate\u201d\nshe was. If such a daughter lived in a home poor in books\u2014and most of\nthem were\u2014then she could not even procure a book she wished. For the\ndaughters worked year in year out without wages, in case they did not\nreceive meagrely doled out pin-money which only through great ingenuity\nsufficed for their toilette. All year long there were christenings and\nbirthday celebrations; in summer games were played, where it was\npossible riding parties arranged, in winter sleighing parties were\norganised. Other physical exercise was considered superfluous. The young\ngirls were averse to going to a neighbouring estate if it lay a mile\naway; and during the week to take a long walk for pleasure or sit down\nwith a book, which had been borrowed, would be considered simply as\nidling away one\u2019s time. In summer a cold bath was permissible\u2014a warm\nbath was used only in cases of sickness\u2014but swimming was considered so\nunwomanly, that whoever had learned it must keep it secret. Rowing,\ntobogganing and skating were, even if permitted in the country, yet half\nin discredit as \u201cmasculine.\u201d\n\nWhen grandfather related an heroic deed of some ancestress whose proud\ncountenance shone out among the family portraits, then the daughter of\nsuch a family must have asked herself why this deed was lauded while\neverything \u201cmanly\u201d was forbidden her.\n\nThe days and years went by at the embroidery frame or netting needles,\namid continuous chatter about the family and neighbours, amid eternal\nfriction and in disputing back and forth over mere trifles. The confined\nnervous force sought an outlet, and in an existence where each\none\u2014according to the first paragraph of family rights\u2014interfered in the\ngreatest as in the smallest concerns of all the others, there was always\nplenty of material about which to become irritated and excited.\n\nIn the country, life was, however, fuller and fresher than in the city\nwhere the young girl had less to do and never dared go out alone; yes,\nwhere a walk was considered so superfluous, that the mother of the great\nSwedish feminist Fredrika Bremer advised her daughters to jump up and\ndown behind a chair when they insisted that they needed exercise!\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe relation to the parents, even if the principle of unswerving and\nmute obedience was not wholly carried out, was ordinarily a reverential\nalienation. Neither side knew the inner life of the other. The\ntemperament of the mother determined the everyday domestic comforts, the\nwill of the father the external occurrences of life, from the trip to\nthe ball to marriage. The daughter whose inclination corresponded with\nthe will of the father considered herself fortunate. The one married\nagainst her will wept, but obeyed. As an almost fabulous occurrence it\nwas related of one or another girl that she dared to say \u201cNo\u201d before the\nmarriage altar; cases were not unusual in which daughters received a box\non the ear and were confined to their room until they accepted the\nbridegroom whom the father had chosen. Even if a mother, moved by the\nrecollections of her own youth, attempted to support a daughter it\nrarely succeeded. For the power of the father rested quite as heavily\nupon the wife. But the worst however was to water myrtle year after\nyear, without ever being able to cut it for a bridal wreath. Even she,\nwho in her heart loved another, found it therefore often wisest to give\nher consent to an acceptable suitor. Only the one whose dowry was valued\nat a \u201cton of gold\u201d\u2014or who also was a celebrated beauty\u2014could run the\nrisk of declining a courtship; yes, she could permit herself to occasion\nit only to decline it. The more suitors she could recount, the prouder\nshe was; such a beauty even embroidered around her bridal gown the\nmonograms of all her earlier wooers.\n\nThe unmarried remained behind in an environment where the idea prevailed\nthat \u201cwoman\u2019s politics are her toilettes, her republic is her household\nand literature belongs to her trinkets.\u201d The talented daughter sewed the\nfine starched shirts in which her stupid brother went to the academy and\nsighed therewith: \u201cAh, if one only were a man.\u201d\n\nWhen the income of the house was small, she increased it perhaps by\nembroidery, sold in deepest secrecy; for it was a disgrace for a girl of\ngood family to work for money. For her rebellious thoughts she had\nperhaps a girl friend to whom she could pour out her heart\u2014or a sister.\nBut it often fared with sisters growing old together, just as it must\nfare with North-pole explorers wintering together, that those holding\ntogether of necessity finally loathe one another from the bottom of\ntheir hearts. And yet the sisters were most fortunate who could grow old\nand die in their childhood home and were not compelled to become old\nhousehold fixtures in the home of relatives.\n\nNot infrequently this last fate was their portion because a father, a\nbrother or a guardian out of personal, economical self-interest\nprevented their marriage, or a brother through debt or studies had\ndefrauded them of their inheritance.\n\nIt was not the woman movement but the religious movement, beginning\namong the Northern peoples almost simultaneously with it, called in\nSweden \u201cL\u00e4seri\u201d (\u201cReading\u201d) that was the first spiritual emancipation\nfor the old or young unmarried girls\u2014likewise for wives who longed for a\ndeeper content. Because they took seriously the Bible doctrine that one\nshould disregard the commands of the family in order to follow Christ,\nthe home gradually became accustomed to one of the feminine members\u2019\ngoing her own way. Often amid great struggles. For the \u201cReader\u201d was more\nor less considered as insane; the father was ashamed of her, the mother\nmourned over her, the brothers laughed at her. But nothing could hinder\nthose strong in their faith from following the inner voice. And so these\nwomen, without knowing it themselves, were a bridge to that emancipation\nof women to which they themselves later\u2014Bible in hand\u2014were often an\nobstacle.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe movement _could_ not however be prevented. And now\u2014how is it now in\nthe family? Already the ten-year-old talks about what she is sometime\ngoing to be. Now, the sisters go with the brothers to school or to the\nacademy and share their intellectual interests as well as their life of\nsport. Now, the fathers and mothers sit at home often alone, for the\ndaughters belong to that host of self-supporting girls who can gratify\nthe parents by short visits only. Alas, these visits are not always an\nunclouded joy. There are collisions between the old and the young often\nover seeming bagatelles. But a feather shows which way the wind blows\nand the parents observe that, in the spiritual being of the daughter,\nthe wind blows from an entirely different direction from theirs. The\ndaughter, on the other hand, thinks that perfect calm prevails in the\nbeing of her parents; she wishes to raise the dust. The mother pleads\nher cause in dry and offended manner, the daughter in superior and\nimpetuous words. Accustomed to her freedom, she encounters again at home\ncontrol over her commissions and omissions, attempts upon her privacy\nfrom which she had been freed by leaving home. And they separate again\neach with a sigh that they \u201chave had so little of one another.\u201d In other\ncases\u2014when the parents have followed the times and the daughters\nunderstand that not only children but also parents must be educated with\ntenderness\u2014then the visits to the parents\u2019 home become on both sides\nelevating episodes in their lives. The daughters repose in the parental\ntenderness, which they have only now learned to value when they compare\nit with their customary loneliness. The parents confide to the daughter\ntheir cares which she sometimes can effectively lighten, and they revive\nwith her spiritual interests which they themselves had to lay aside.\nThrough her own working life the daughter has gained an entirely new\nrespect for her parents. Through her independence of parental authority\nshe has now gained a frankness, which makes a real interchange of ideas\npossible. They discover that they can have something reciprocal for one\nanother. The father, who perhaps at first sighed when the young faces\nvanished out of the home, now admits that it would have been foolish if\nthe whole troop of girls had continued here at home and so had stood\nthere at his demise, empty-handed, without professional training. The\nmother, who had helped them persuade the father, smiles, when he insists\nthat he \u201cwould not exchange his capable girls for boys.\u201d And he is not\nat all afraid that the daughters could not marry if they would; he\nremembered indeed how his contemporaries declared that they \u201cwould never\nlook at a girl student, a Blue stocking,\u201d and yet so many of these were\nnow happily married to\u2014girl students.\n\nBeside these results of the independence of the daughters which elevate\nlife for all sides, there are opposite cases; when, for example, a\nsingle daughter _without_ outer economic compulsion or inner personal\nnecessity, impelled only by the current of the time, leaves a home where\nher contribution of work could be significant, in order to follow a\nvocation outside. The results are often of doubtful value, not only from\na social point of view but also from that of the family and herself,\nwhen the daughter remains at home but carries on a work outside. This\ncomes partly because they are contented with less pay and thus lower the\nwages of those who support themselves entirely; partly because they\nover-exert themselves. In those cases where several daughters can share\nwith one another the domestic duties, no over-exertion results perhaps.\nBut when a single daughter combines an exacting professional work with\nquite as exacting household duties, then she is exhausted by her double\ntask; then she feels the burden, not the joy, of work. For all\nprofessional working girls who remain at home, have moreover in\naddition, even under the most favorable circumstances, the spiritual\nstrain of turning from work back again to the gregarious demands of the\nhome, as well as to the many different attractions and repulsions,\nantipathies and sympathies which determine the deviations in temperature\nof the home; the strain of respecting the sensibilities which must be\nspared or of paying attention to the domestic demands which must be\nrefused, if the work is not to suffer from lack of rest and time for\npreparation. All this can be so nerve racking that the young girl is\nseized with an irresistible longing for a little home of her own, where\nshe would be mistress of her leisure time, and could see her own\nfriends\u2014not alone those of her family,\u2014where she could join those who\nheld the same views, where she, in a word, would live her life according\nto the dictates of her personal demands. If she can, she often does\nthis. For to-day young girls _live to apply_ the principle of the woman\nmovement\u2014individualism. The older women\u2019s rights advocates desired, it\nis true, that woman should be allowed to \u201cdevelop her gifts,\u201d but she\nshould \u201cadminister\u201d them for the benefit of others; they desired that\nshe should receive _new rights_ from law and custom, but that she should\nseek always in _law and custom support and security for her action_. The\nyoung women\u2019s rights advocates, on the other hand, believe that their\nown growth, just as that of animals and trees, is intended above all for\nself-development, that in their own character the direction for their\ngrowth is specified, and that they have not the right to confine\nthemselves by circumstances or subject themselves to influences by which\nthey know they hinder the development of their powers, according to\ntheir individual natures. The more refined the feeling of personality\nbecomes, the more exactly these young people understand how to choose\nwhat is essential for them and to repudiate what is a hindrance. But\nbefore they attain this certainty they evince often an unnecessary lack\nof consideration, and the family is often right when it speaks of the\negoism of youth. They find no opportunity for helping father or mother\nnor for participation in the elders\u2019 interests. The whole family is\nrarely assembled even at meal-time; the daughters as well as the sons\nrush off to lectures, work, sport, clubs. The mother who sees how\noccupied the daughters are has not the heart to add to their work or to\nthwart them in their pleasures; thus she allows the selfishness of the\nyoung creatures to increase to the point where she herself in\nindignation begins\u2014seasonably and unseasonably\u2014to react against it. The\nyoung girl answers her mother\u2019s reproof then with the complaint that,\n\u201cMamma does not understand\u201d her and that she is \u201cbehind her time.\u201d\nEspecially the young examination-champions distinguish themselves by\ntheir arrogance in the family as in the club, where they look down upon\nthe older ladies who have not passed examinations just as they do upon\ntheir own mother.\n\nIt fares best in the families, and they are even now numerous, where the\nmother herself has studied or worked outside the home and therefore\nknows what domestic services she may or may not require; where she\nherself personally understands the intellectual occupation of the young\npeople and has preserved her own youthfulness, so that she becomes not\ninfrequently the real friend of her daughters and sons. If the mother,\non the contrary, was one of the many who, at the beginning of the woman\nmovement, sacrificed her own talent to the wishes of her family or the\ndemands of the home, in spite of the possibilities for its development\nmade accessible to her at that time, then she has often absolutely no\ncomprehension of the egoism of her daughter. She herself had acted so\nentirely differently! Or she understands fully that in her daughters as\nwell as in her sons she views the attainment of a new conception of\nlife, with all its Storm and Stress, which the spring-times in the life\nof mankind bring with them\u2014an attainment in which, to her sorrow, she\ncould not take part in her youth.\n\nAt such spring-times youth is not, as the parents hoped, sunlight and\nthe twittering of birds in the home; but March storms and April clouds.\nThe parents feel themselves at first swept out, superfluous,\ndisillusioned. They are angered but rejuvenated, thanks to all the new\npoints of view that youth makes valid. Yes, father and mother sometimes\ncould live through a second youth if their own contemporaries did not\ndepress their buoyancy by their disapproving astonishment and the\nchildren by their cool rejection of the comradeship of their parents.\nBut in spite of this twofold opposition, there are now fathers and\nmothers who are able to enjoy the riches of life quite as youthfully as\nand more deeply than their children; while the parents of earlier times,\nespecially the mother, forever stagnated as early as forty. More and\nmore frequently we find mothers who, like their daughters, lead a\nspiritually rich and emotional life, who have so preserved their\nphysical youthfulness and who possess moreover through experience and\nself-culture so refined a soul-life, that, in regard to the impression\nthey make, they are not infrequently the rivals of their daughters. They\nare already revelations of that type of woman which, in token of\nemancipation, has found the equilibrium between the old devoted ideal\nand the new self-assertive ideal. They view life from a height which\ngives them a survey also over the essential, in questions concerning\ntheir own children. Even if these become something other than the\nmothers wish, these mothers are so penetrated with the idea of\nindividualism that they let the children follow their own course.\n\nModern fathers rarely find so happy a home as it once could be with a\nbevy of daughters always at hand. But they find the home richer in\ncontent, often also freer from petty dissensions. For in the measure in\nwhich _each_ member of the family desires his right and his freedom, do\nall gradually learn to respect those of others. If the parents consider\nwith dignity _their_ right and _their_ freedom, then a reciprocal\nconsideration results after the boldness which youth evinces under the\nfirst influence of the intoxication of freedom. Youth, at first so proud\nand strong in their assurance of bringing new ideal values to life,\nbegin themselves to experience how the world treats these; and what they\nonce called their parents\u2019 prejudice appears to them now often in a new\nlight. Their self-assertion becomes a product of culture, out of a raw\nmaterial. The manifestations of their individualism become continually\nmore discreet, more controlled, but at the same time more essential and\nmore effective. When then the young people have found _their_ way and\nthe parents endeavour to turn them aside to the main road\u2014which they\ncall the way of wisdom or of duty\u2014then certainly and with right the\nyoung people put themselves on the defensive.\n\nEven a devoted daughter cannot bring to the home to-day as undivided a\nheart as formerly. But this gift was earlier a matter of course, so to\nspeak, a natural result of the conditions. But if to-day a girl\nsacrifices a talent to filial duty, then it is an infinitely greater\npersonal sacrifice; a real choice. And if she does not make the\nsacrifice, it is not in the least always on the ground of egoism. It\nhappens often in conviction that the unconditional demand of\nChristianity that the strong must have consideration for the weak, makes\nthese latter often egoists and tyrants; that the strong, who are more\nsignificant for the whole, are thus rendered inefficient.\n\nIf a troop of athletic boys continually conformed to the level of the\nweakest, then all would remain upon a lower plane, and the weak find no\nincentive to seek _their_ triumphs in another sphere.\n\nOn the other hand it is fine and eminently sane and in harmony with the\nlaws of spiritual growth, when the strong shall help the weak to reach a\ngoal which is thus, in his own peculiar direction, really attainable by\nhim. Neither paganism nor Christianity has created the most _beautiful_\nstrength; it is a union of both. It has found its most perfect\nexpression in art in Donatello\u2019s St. George, in Michelangelo\u2019s David:\nyouths, whose victorious power conceals compassion and whose compassion\nembraces even the conquered: symbols of strength which has become kind,\nof kindness which has become strong. If a mother has seen this\nexpression upon the face of her son or her daughter then she can address\nto life the words of Simeon: \u201cNow let thy servant depart in peace for\nmine eyes have seen thy glory.\u201d For the glory of life is the harmony\nbetween its two fundamental powers\u2014conquest and devotion: self-assertion\nand self-sacrifice. In every new phase of the ethical development of\nmankind the cultural problem is this harmony and the cultural profit is\nnot the per-dominance of one of the two but the perfected synthesis of\nboth.\n\nThis problem has now become actual, through the woman movement, for the\nfeminine half of mankind, after the _unconditional_ spirit of sacrifice\nhas obtained for centuries as the indispensable attribute of\nwomanliness. In the first stage of the woman movement the majority of\nthe \u201cemancipated\u201d were still determined by their spirit of sacrifice,\nwhich they aspired to combine with their outside professional work. This\ngeneration lived _beyond its strength_. The younger generation of to-day\ndoes not believe that God gives unlimited strength. For they have seen\nthat those who live unceasingly beyond their strength finally have no\nstrength left, either for others or for themselves. And they know that\nin the long run one can live only upon his own resources and these must\nbe conserved and renewed in order to suffice. But this knowledge makes\nthe problem, which in the course of days and years appears in manifold\ndifferent forms, only more difficult of solution: the problem to find\nthe right choice in the collision between family duties, duties toward\noneself and duties toward society; the choice which shall bring with it\nthe essential enhancement of life.\n\nThe conflict is thus solved by some feminists: everything called family\nties and family feeling is referred to the \u201cimpersonal\u201d instinctive\nlife, while our \u201cpersonality\u201d expresses itself in intellectual activity,\nin study, in creation, in universally human ends, in social activity,\netc. And since the principle of emancipation is certainly the freeing of\nthe \u201cpersonality,\u201d it follows from this idea, in connection with _this\ndefinition of the personality_, that the liberated personality must\nplace the obligations of the intellectual life absolutely above those of\nthe family life; the outside professional work above the work in the\nhome. In a word, the earlier definition of _womanliness_ ignored the\n_universal human_ element, the present definition of _personality_\nignores the _womanly_ element in woman\u2019s being. The last solution of the\nproblem is quite as one-sided as the first.\n\nThe \u201cprinciple of personality,\u201d as it has just been described is\nentertained especially in America. In Europe there are still women who\nreflect deeply upon their own being and\u2014who have a depth over which they\nmay meditate! These women have not yet succeeded in simplifying the\nproblem which is the central one of their life. They know that not only\ndo instincts, impulses of the will, feelings, form the strongest part of\nthe individual character which nature has given them, but also that this\npart determines their thinking and creating power\u2014their whole conscious\nexistence. They know that their character receives its peculiarities\nthrough the development which they themselves accord to one or another\nside of their individual temperament. In one personality the\nintellectual life will predominate, in another the emotional: in one the\nethical, in another the \u00e6sthetic motive. The personality becomes\nharmonious only when no essential motive is lacking, when all attain a\ncertain degree of development, a harmony which is as yet only so won\nthat no motive receives its _greatest possible development_. Such a\nharmony has long been the especial characteristic of the most beautiful\nwomanhood, while the most significant men have ordinarily achieved their\nsuperior strength in _one_ direction, at the cost of harmony in the\nwhole. If now women believe that they can achieve the strength of men\nwithout, for that reason, being obliged to sacrifice something of their\nharmony, then they believe their sex capable of possibilities which thus\nfar have been granted rarely and then only to the exceptional in both\nsexes. What experience shows is: the greater harmony of single women in\na _limited_ existence as compared with the lack of harmony in the lives\nof daughters, owing to the irreconcilable problems which their _richer_\nexistence brings with it. For these problems must be solved, at one\ntime, by sacrifice of intellectual, at another, by sacrifice of\nemotional values. In every case, the sacrifice leaves behind it, not the\njoyful peace of fulfilled duty, but the gnawing unrest of a duty still\never unfulfilled. Every woman who has a heart knows it is at least quite\nas important a part of her personality as her passion for science\nperhaps. If for example she is obliged to surrender to another the\nloving service of a sick father in order to pursue scientific\nresearches, then her heart is quite as certainly in the sick-room as, in\ncase of the opposite choice, her thoughts would have been in the\nlaboratory. By calling one factor \u201cinstinct\u201d and the other\n\u201cpersonality,\u201d nothing is in reality gained. Theorising ladies can\neasily write\u2014the paper is forbearing. But human nature is of flesh and\nblood. And therefore thousands of women grapple to-day with tormenting\nquestions:\u2014When we women shall belong entirely to industrial work and to\nthe social life, who then is left for the work of love? Only paid hands.\nWhat becomes then of the warmth in human life when such a division of\nlabour is established that kindness becomes a profession, and the rest\nof us shall be exempt from its practice because our \u201cPersonality\u201d has\nmore important fields for the exercise of its strength? What does it\nsignify to live for society when we come to the service of society with\nchilled hearts? If the warmth is to be preserved then we must have\nleisure for love in private life, a right to love, peace and means for\nlove. Only thus can our hearts remain warm for the social life. Can the\nwhole really profit if we sacrifice unconditionally that part of the\nwhole which is nearest us? Can our feeling of solidarity increase toward\nmankind when we pass by exactly those people to whom we could, by our\ndeeds, really show our sympathetic fellow-feeling?\n\nThe woman whose instinct life is still strong and sound, whose\npersonality has its roots deep in life\u2014which means not social life\nalone\u2014she also understands how to determine what life in its deepest\nimport purposes with her; she knows how she serves it best, whether by\nremaining in a position where she fulfils her personal obligations as\npart of a family or by seeking another position where she fulfils this\nobligation as a member of society.\n\nIt is true the erroneous idea still prevails in many homes that the\ndaughter must willingly sacrifice her social task for the family, a\nsacrifice which the family would never even wish on the part of a son.\nBut the assurance that the daughter _could_ have made another choice\ninstils in the family, unconsciously, a new conception of her sacrifice,\nand gives to herself the courage to assume a position in the home other\nthan that she held at the time when no choice remained to her. If the\ntotal of efficacious daughterly love of to-day and earlier times be\nestimated, this total would not prove less now. But it is now given\nrather in a great sum; earlier, on the contrary, in many small coins.\nBecause of the professional work of the daughter, there are now often\nlacking in the home the ready obliging young hands whose help father and\nbrother so willingly engrossed; the cheerful comforter, the admiring\nlistener. But in a great hour the daughter or sister gives now often a\nhundred times more in deep, personal understanding. One draws a false\nconclusion when one thinks that the more closely a family holds together\nthe more it signifies a corresponding unity and devotion. The young act\nin submission because they permit themselves to be cowed by the family\nauthority which like a steam-roller passed over their wills and their\nhearts. But the indignation that they experienced in their innermost\nhearts, the criticism which they exercised among one another, were not\nless bitter than that which they to-day openly utter.\n\nThe home life of fifty years ago was a school of diplomacy; it\nespecially served to oppose cunning to the father\u2019s authority, and the\nmother often taught the children to use this weapon of weakness. Now the\nfather does not wish to make himself ridiculous by saying: \u201cI forbid\nyou,\u201d for the daughter answers: \u201cWell, then, I will wait until I am\ntwenty-one.\u201d The threat, \u201cI disinherit you,\u201d recoils from the\ndetermination of the daughter, \u201cI can work.\u201d Only in a distant province,\nin a little town, or among the \u201cupper ten thousand\u201d of a large city,\nwhere the daughters still often receive a \u201cgeneral education,\u201d which\ndoes not fit them to earn their living, are they occupied all day\nwithout the feeling of having worked. They serve at five o\u2019clock teas,\nembroider for charity bazaars, etc. But they also experience the power\nof the spirit of the time strongly enough to know that they lead a\nselfish life but not a life of self. The lower the scale of riches the\nmore housework do the daughters have to perform. But as a result of the\npatriarchal organisation of labour they still perform this without their\nown responsibility, without the joy of independence, without regular\nunoccupied time and without one penny at their disposal!\n\nEven in these circles however the spirit of the time is active; such a\ndaughter leads now in every case a life of much richer content than some\ndecades ago, when even though middle-aged she was still treated as\nignorant innocence and must allow herself to be extolled to every\npossible marriage candidate. She suffers when she sees her mother as the\nsubmissive wife, whose continual according smile has graven lines of\nhumility about her mouth, whose continually pacifying tone has made her\nvoice whining. She suffers when the father cuts short a diversity of\nopinion with the words, \u201cYou have heard what I said\u2014That will do.\u201d She\nsuffers when her brothers find her \u201cinsufferably important\u201d or declare\nher new ideas \u201ccrazy.\u201d But exactly these new ideas about the right and\nfreedom of woman, which she encounters everywhere, have given a dignity\nto her own being which has its influence even without words. On the\nother hand, the fact that the fathers lose one legal right after another\nover the feminine members of the family has its effect, so that they\ngradually change their tone, the clenched fist falls less and less\nfrequently upon the table, the disdain is silenced, and even in the\nprovinces the family life is changing more and more from the despotic\npolitical constitution to the democratic, where each one maintains his\nposition by virtue of his own personality. There are still men it is\ntrue, who wish to confine \u201cwoman\u2019s sphere\u201d to the four \u201cC\u2019s\u201d\u2014\u201cCooking,\nclothing, children, church.\u201d But there is no one who now insists that \u201ca\ngirl _cannot_ learn Mathematics,\u201d or that it is \u201cunwomanly to pore over\nbooks\u201d\u2014sayings which were still often heard fifty years ago. Certainly\nthere are still men who accept the cherishing thoughtful care on the\npart of the women members of the family as obvious homage. But the men\nare becoming more and more numerous who receive these womanly acts of\ntenderness with waking joy. Daughters and sisters of earlier times have\npardoned the vices of their fathers and brothers seven and seventy\ntimes; those of the present throw away the fragments of trust and love\nwhich have been irrevocably shattered. The assurance that the daughters\nand sisters could do nothing else except pardon, since they were\ndependent upon their tormentors, often made the fathers and brothers of\nearlier times grossly inconsiderate. The men of to-day will be refined\nby the necessity of showing consideration and justice to their daughters\nand sisters if they wish to enjoy their presence in the home. Fathers\nand brothers have, in a word, gained quite as much spiritually through\nthe loss of their power to oppress as the daughters and sisters have\ngained in being no longer oppressed. And this experience will be\nrepeated in marriage when man and wife shall be absolutely free and\nequal.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER V\n   THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON MEN AND WOMEN IN GENERAL\n\n\nIn their struggle for freedom for the same opportunities of study, for\nthe same fields of work, the same citizenship as man, women have\nencountered all possible opposition, from that of the Pope, who recently\npronounced the most positive condemnation of the whole movement for the\nemancipation of woman, and that of Parliament, to the rough pranks of\nstudents. Man\u2019s attempt to define the boundaries of \u201cwoman\u2019s natural\nsphere\u201d continues always. The woman physician, for example, had to\nstruggle, in her student years, against prejudice in the dissecting\nroom, and, in her practice, against the professional jealousy of men.\nThe history of emancipation has much shameful conduct on the part of man\ntoward woman to record. Great reluctance to recognise the results of\nwoman\u2019s work is still common. When this work, in literature and art for\ninstance, is compared with man\u2019s, the comparison is made not for the\npurpose of getting a finer understanding of woman\u2019s peculiar\ncharacteristics, but only to disparage it. The energy which men of the\npresent time not infrequently lack they cannot endure to recognise in\nwomen, who often possess it in high degree. In the Romance countries,\nself-supporting working women are always looked upon as a special\ncaste\u2014a caste into which a man does not marry however high respect he\npays, theoretically, to \u201cles vierges fortes.\u201d\n\nAnd yet how different\u2014and more beautiful\u2014are the present relations\nbetween men and women in general, especially among the Germanic peoples.\nA friendly comradeship prevails among the young men and women studying\nat the university, in art academies, music schools, business colleges,\netc. In the North, this comradeship often continues from the primary\nschools, through the grades to the university, with results advantageous\nto both sexes. Especially in the years under twenty, this comradeship\nhas a significance which cannot be overestimated. Girls, who were,\nearlier, confined to a narrow, uninteresting, joyless family circle, now\noften find in the circle of masculine and feminine comrades their share\nof the joy of youth without which life has no springtime. Youths who\nformerly had known no other young women than those with whom they should\nnever have come in contact, now learn to know soulful, pure-minded\ngirls, and this gives them a new conception of woman. Both sexes now\nexperience together the joys of youth in such fresh and significant\nforms as folk-dancing, sport, etc. They have opportunity for stimulating\ninterchange of ideas in a great circle, and quiet discussion with a few\ncongenial friends. During the last twenty or thirty years, young men and\nyoung women have again begun to discover one another spiritually,\ndiscoveries which since the days of romanticism have been made only\nthrough the stained glass of literature. In the romantic period, men and\nwomen exercised reciprocally upon one another a humanising influence. A\nlike influence again obtains at the present time, but upon a much\nbroader basis. The men and women of romanticism formed a group bound\ntogether only by spiritual relationship, in which the women aspired to\nthe culture of the men and shared their intellectual interests, while\nthe men promoted the women\u2019s \u201cdesire for men\u2019s culture, art, knowledge,\nand distinction\u201d (_Geluste nach der M\u00e4nner Bildung, Kunst, Weisheit und\nEhre._\u2014Schleiermacher). Now, young people studying in different fields\nexert a mutual humanising influence and thereby learn to know one\nanother from the side of intelligence as well as from that of character\nand disposition. Thus are dispelled certain illusions and conceptions\nalmost forced upon them through which both sexes in the years of\nadolescence once regarded each other. Men as well as women obtain a\nfiner criterion for the conception of \u201cwomanliness\u201d and of \u201cmanliness\u201d;\nboth discover the innumerable shadings which these conceptions conceal;\nboth recognise that the sexes can meet not only upon the erotic plane,\nbut upon a plane that is universally human; finally, both learn that the\nmore perfect and complete human beings they become, the more they have\nto thank one another for it.\n\nComprehension in erotic relations is most difficult because, there,\nwomen are far in advance of men. Woman\u2019s ideal of love, however, is\nbecoming more and more the ideal of young men. Young girls, on their\nside, are beginning to understand better the sexual nature of men. The\nwhole world in which man received his culture, won his victories,\nsuffered his defeats, is no longer _terra incognita_ to women; they have\nlost the blind reverence or the blind hostility with which they formerly\nregarded the doings and dealings of men. Men, on the other hand, are\nlearning that the domestic labours for the comfort of the family, which\nthey have thus far regarded as the sole duty of woman, cannot engross\nher whole soul, that domesticity leaves many wishes unfulfilled. So both\nsexes have begun, each on its own side, to build a bridge across the\nchasm which law and custom had dug between them. The young still ponder\nover the enigmatical antitheses in their natures, yet they find they\nhave very much that is human in common with one another. In comradeship,\nhowever, that \u201cchivalry\u201d vanishes, which among other things consisted in\nthe ideal that the young men had always to bear all the burdens and\nduties. Now as a rule, the girl carries her own knapsack on excursions\nand pays her share of the expenses. But if she really needs help, the\nyouth is quite as ready as before to grant it to her, just as she also\non her part is ready to assist according to her strength: honest\nfriendship has replaced rapturous chivalry. This friendly comradeship\noften satisfies the young man\u2019s need of feminine kindness and enjoyment\nin those dangerous years when, as a young man said, \u201cThree fourths of\nthe life of a youth, conscious and unconscious, is sex life.\u201d And\nnothing can more effectually prevent him from degrading himself than\naccess to a circle where in quiet and freedom he meets young girls,\nwithout an indelicate, intruding family surveillance, interfering and\nasking him about his \u201cintentions.\u201d If between two such comrades an\nerotic feeling finally develops, even if the wooing takes place in a\nlaboratory instead of a romantic arbour, the possibilities always exist,\nin the golden haze of love, of making mistakes. But both have, however,\nhad opportunities of seeing each other in many character-illuminating\nsituations; they have observed each other, not only with their own eyes,\nbut also through the more critical glasses of the comrade circle. On the\nother hand, it often happens that discussions and interchange of letters\nconjure up a congeniality which exists only in opinions and temperament,\nnot in nature. It is fortunate when this is discovered in time.\nOtherwise bitter conflicts may be the result, should a strong individual\nnature wish to mould the other after himself or after his ideal of man\nor woman. For that anyone loves the individuality of another without\nillusions is still very rarely the case. It now happens somewhat more\nfrequently, since young people in comradeship learn to know mutually\ntheir ideals and dreams, as well in erotic as in universally human\naspects. But if these ideals and dreams do give a hint of character,\ncomradeship brings a true knowledge of character only when it also\noffers an opportunity of seeing others _act_; not only of _hearing_ them\nspeak of themselves. Such analyses of one\u2019s own soul or the soul of\nothers in the atmosphere of tea and cigarettes, music and poetry, give\nthe \u201cinteresting\u201d masculine or feminine parasites opportunity to ensnare\na victim, who is then intellectually or erotically, often even\neconomically, sucked dry.\n\nBut even if such an interchange of ideas really enriched all, it can be\ncarried to excess and become deleterious to energy for work, directness,\nand idealism. However beneficial may be the honesty of to-day in sexual\nquestions, the discussion of the instincts of life which has now become\na commonplace is also dangerous. These discussions are fraught with the\nsame danger to the roots of human life as is a continual digging up of\nthe roots of a plant to see how it is growing.\n\nThe earlier a marriage can be consummated, the less is the danger of\nfreshness being lost in this way; the greater the prospect that man and\nwife will grow close together, just as do the man and wife of the\npeople, through the difficulty of the common struggle for existence. But\nif this struggle becomes easier before youth has entirely passed, then\nthere enters often into the life of the man a crisis which the practised\nFrench call \u201cLa maladie de quarante ans\u201d: the need of the man for a new\nerotic experience. While those on a lower erotic plane, to-day as at all\ntimes, seek this in transient secret alliances, it leads those on a\nhigher level in our time to the most tragic of all separations, where\nthe man\u2014after decades of the most intimate life together, of the most\nfaithful work together, of mutual understanding\u2014drives the wife out of\nthe home in order to bring in a young wife who has never been to him,\nperhaps never can be to him, a fellow fighter and helper, as the\nrepudiated wife was, but who has for him the charm of the mystery which\nthe maiden had for the man before the days of co\u00ebducation, sexual\ndiscussions, comradeship, and dress-reform!\n\nWomen students now escape the earlier danger of the daughter of the\nfamily, falling in love out of lack of occupation. They have not the\ntime, often also not the means to permit themselves erotic dreams. There\nare among them many poor girls who dare lose no single semester, for\nthey must hasten to earn their livelihood. Moreover, such a girl knows\nthat if she should yield to the need for tenderness, for support, that\nis so strong in her, the same fate could happen to her as to this or\nthat fellow student who after a short happiness was left alone when the\nlover found a good match. And she was left behind not only in her sorrow\nbut also in her work. And the more a yearning girl buries herself in her\nstudies, the more science or art unlock their riches to her, the\nhappier, more full of life she feels herself in spite of loneliness,\nscanty means, and shabby dress.\n\nAmong women students there are also many of the cerebral type, mentioned\nabove, women who need tenderness neither in the form of friendship nor\nof love; yes, who fear in both a bond for their \u201cfree individuality.\u201d\nThese take part in sports, discuss, jest, with their fellow men\nstudents, openhearted and unconcerned, without thinking whether they\nplease or not. All these young girls now go about with perfect freedom;\neven in the Romance countries, a young woman can now go alone with her\nbag of books or her racquet. For in circles where study has not yet\nexercised its freeing influence, sport has brought this about.\n\nIn America, student life, because of the early entrance of the men into\nthe professions, becomes more a one-sided, feminine comrade life. There,\nthe women have to develop their arts of the toilet for each other, whom\nthey find more interesting, more worthy of pleasing than the masculine\nsex. Even in Europe, feminine comradeship in the student years is at\ntimes most intimate. For a friendship between a young girl and a young\nman often ends with love\u2014on one side. Or in an intimate circle A has\nfallen in love with B, but B with C, etc. Such eventualities the wise\ngirl will avoid for they can bring both suffering and obstruction to her\nwork. With women comrades, she has, without this risk, an interchange of\nideas which promotes study, deepens culture, opens up new views, and\ngives to all new impulses. There exists, at least at the present time, a\ndifference between the masculine and feminine method of inquiry, of\nsolving problems, of apprehending ideas, which results in the fact that\ncomradeship between women cannot take the place of comradeship between\nmen and women. It is, however, for deep and beautiful natures often\nimpossible at the beginning of life to be capable, in a spiritual sense,\nof more than a single friendship with their own sex; for each new\nspiritual contact becomes a new and difficult problem. For such men or\nwomen a friendship with a comrade of their own sex is often the richest\nadvantage of their student time. Often a student in good circumstances\nfinds her joy in taking care of some lonely comrades. They find at her\napartments, in a friendly welcome, a few flowers and pictures, a\nteakettle, a fireplace, that feeling of homely warmth for which the\nshivering students have longed,\u2014a longing which has often driven a\nlonely, impressionable youth from the dreary students\u2019 room to \u201crough\npleasures.\u201d Now when he leaves the little comrade circle, his sweetest\nmemories of home, his finest dreams, vibrate in him. And the timid girl\ngoes in the certainty that there is another girl who is concerned about\nher wretched fate.\n\nIn such a quiet as also in a more lively comrade life both sexes learn\nto know not only each other but also different classes and, in certain\nEuropean universities, the several nations. It is not unusual for nine\nor ten races to be found represented in one small group of comrades.\nLife thus becomes everywhere enriched by strong manifestations or fine\nshades of congeniality; spiritual attractions and repulsions cross one\nanother; inspiring or restraining impressions radiate in all directions.\nIt would be quite as impossible to estimate the fructifying influence of\nsuch a friendly intercourse as to measure the life which comes into\nexistence on a spring day filled with the sigh of the wind, the\nfluttering of butterflies, and humming of bees.\n\nIn such a circle of comrades, devotion and capacity for sacrifice are\npast belief, especially in the nation where \u201cthe girls wear short hair\nand the young men long hair,\u201d as a wag characterised the young Russians\nstudying abroad. That a couple of Russian girls, for a whole winter,\npossessed together but a single pair of shoes and so could never go out\nat the same time, is one of the innumerable small and great expressions\nof the feeling of solidarity among the poorest students of the\nuniversity.\n\nWhen the comrade life assumed the form exclusively of coffee-house\nvisits, then the women had to revolt against it. But they often, alas,\nallowed themselves to be carried with the stream. Because the\ncoffee-house life at first really gave a certain polish to the\nintelligence, it could for a short time have its justification. But when\na blade is worn out, the artist of life should cease grinding; if on the\ncontrary he allows the grindstone to go on continually, then at last he\nhas only the haft in his hand. Formerly, it was only the young men but\nnow even the girls wear out thus their weapons or tools before they ever\nuse them seriously.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe darkest side of co\u00ebducational life has been that women could\ndemonstrate their equal capability with men in no other way than by the\nsame courses and examinations as those of the men. The eagerness of\nwomen to prove their like proficiency with men in study and in sport has\noften had disastrous physical results. These are continually becoming\nmore infrequent, thanks to the decreasing prudery in regard to the\nsexual functions and to the increasing hygienic conscience. The\nintellectual results, however, continue to exist and are disastrous\nalike for both sexes; but because of the ambition and conscientiousness\nof girls, perhaps still more disastrous for them. The examinations which\nthey pass are often dearly bought. This was not noticed in the\nbeginning, when a woman doctor was still looked at with wonder as a\nnoteworthy product of culture, and regarded herself also with wonder.\nTruly she had sacrificed to grinding and cramming for examinations a\nmultitude of youthful joys, but she had, as was thought, won in this way\nmuch greater values. This, however, is not always really the case.\nEthically, the conscientious girl is certainly above the boy who, not\ninfrequently in the unconscious instinct of self-preservation, idles\naway his time. But the mental strength of the latter may frequently be\nbetter preserved in any determined direction. Girls, conscientious and\nzealous in their work, have filled their heads full of lessons to which\nthe coming examination and not their own choice has urged them. What is\nthus crammed in is not assimilated and consequently has not promoted\nspiritual or mental growth. But it has taken up room and has thereby\nimpaired the intellectual freedom of motion and compelled the natural\nindividuality to compress itself so that it is long before the space\nconditions in the brain permit it to extend again\u2014in case it is not\nsimply choked by all the chaotic mass that has been absorbed. How many\nyoung girls have come to the university or to the art academy full of\nthirst for knowledge and energy for work! But after a few years they\nfeel the disgust of surfeit, unless they have found a teacher who has\nbeen to them a leader to the essentials in science or in art. Then their\njoy in study could really be as rich as they had once dreamed it\u2014yes, as\nperhaps even their grandmothers had dreamed it when they had to content\nthemselves with their little text-books written for \u201cgirls.\u201d Many young\ngirls maintain to-day, through some teacher or some masculine comrade,\nthat spiritual development which only an exceptional relationship\nbetween a father and daughter, a brother and sister, could give in\nearlier times.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen men and women can study together, then the relationship later\nbetween masculine and feminine fellow-workmen will, as a rule, be better\nthan when the sexes work independently in the student days. It is true\nmasculine competitors still have recourse to the weapon of spreading\nreports of the incapacity of their feminine competitors\u2014at times\nhonestly convinced of it themselves. The same weapon is of course turned\nalso against masculine competitors. Yet there it is a question of the\n_individual_, while in regard to women, the _sex_ is often the only\nproof the man thinks he need assign for the inferiority of their work.\nIt can be said, however, upon the whole, that the relationship between\nmen and women professional colleagues exhibits the same good side as the\ncommon student life, although naturally to a lesser degree. The joint\nwork does not often leave much time for significant interchange of\nideas, and after working hours each usually longs for new faces. The\ninfluence of joint labour is often limited to the refining effect that\nthe presence of one sex exercises upon the other. Small services are\nmutually rendered and each worker learns also to respect the\nachievements of the other; or one is provoked because the work which\nshould have been dispatched by the other now falls to his share!\n\nIf the woman performs the same work as the man, then she is often\nindignant because she must do it for smaller compensation than he. All\ntoo easily, the feminists forget that this injustice is equalised if a\nman who wishes to establish a family cannot obtain a post which he seeks\nbecause a woman retains it who can be satisfied with a smaller wage\nsince she remains in her parents\u2019 home. For this disparity, raising\nbitterness on both sides, there is no remedy under the present economic\nsystem. Feminists can _demand_ the same compensation, but working women\nwill not obtain it so long as the supply of workers is to the demand as\none hundred to one in the professional occupations to which women flock.\nIn vain underpaid women will call to the agitators of the woman\nmovement, \u201cHelp us to obtain endurable conditions of life.\u201d The only\nhonest answer is, \u201cHelp one another, just as the working men have helped\none another, by union and solidarity!\u201d\n\nThe competition of the sexes in the labour field is only indirectly\nconnected with the woman movement; it is a part of the social question\nand will therefore only be touched upon here.\n\nThe hostility which the competition between the sexes has evoked\nis a factor in the social war; and if\u2014_by reason of this\ncompetition_\u2014marriage decreases, then such competition is a form\nof social danger. If the cause is sought in the woman movement,\nthen the question is begged completely, because the women with\nsufficient income _to be able_ to live at home without industrial\nwork, after the loss of a husband or a father, are constantly\nbecoming more rare. There is the additional fact that in many\npositions where man and woman have equal salary, the woman is\npreferred because of her greater honesty and faithfulness to duty.\nFurther it must be emphasised that, even in middle-class\nvocations, women with increasing frequency earn their _whole_\nlivelihood, not merely a supplementary remuneration, when if they\ndid not thus work they would be a burden to some man and so\nperhaps prevent him from marrying. Many of these women would wish\nnothing better than to enjoy the warmth of \u201cthe domestic hearth\u201d\nto which men in theory relegate them; but since no man offers this\nwarmth, they must at least be allowed to procure fuel for their\nlonely hearth fire.\n\nWhen men declare that \u201cthe only duty which has life value for a woman is\nto be man\u2019s helpmeet,\u201d then they ought not to forget that this task is\nmore and more rarely assigned to a woman, because men prefer to do\nwithout her aid, and even find a richer life in bachelorhood than in\nmarriage. They should not dare to forget also that a great number of men\ndisinclined or disqualified for work compel their sisters, daughters,\nwives, to undertake the task of family provider, and these women also\nmust forego being, \u201cin the quiet of the home, man\u2019s helpmeet.\u201d\n\nHowever weak the feminist logic often may be, it is not so weak as the\nanti-feminist logic of man. Masculine vacuity has found there an arena\nwhere it performs the most incredible gymnastics. The hysteria of\nliterary fanatics, the crude lordly instincts of the mediocre man, the\nirritation of the masculine good-for-nothing at the increasing ability\nof women, the rage, confounding cause and effect, over the competition\nof women\u2014these are some of the reasons for the present antagonism\nbetween men and women. The deepest reason is this: the more woman is\ncompelled to maintain the struggle for existence under the same social\nconditions as those under which men have been thus far compelled to\nstruggle, the more she loses that character by which she gives happiness\nto man and receives it from him. A diminished erotic attraction is\nfrequently the result, not of the work of women, but of their work under\nsuch conditions that the drudging, worn-out women comrades finally\nappear to their masculine colleagues only as \u201csexless ants.\u201d Sometimes\nthey really exhibit that obliteration of all characteristic marks of sex\nwhich Meunier has indicated to us in his _Woman Miner_, a great\nthought-inspiring work of art.\n\nMany a woman of the present time, deeply feminine, suffers under this\ncompulsory neutralising of her womanly being. Others again consider this\na path to complete humanity.\n\nBut the complete personality is only that man or woman who has\ncultivated and exercised the strength which he or she as a human being\npossessed without having neutralised thereby the characteristic of sex.\nIt is tragic when nature herself creates deviations from normal\nsexuality, but criminal when the ideas of the time weaken sound\ninstincts and inculcate unsound ones. It is not woman nature but the\ndenatured woman who is beginning to grow through the ultra-feminism\nwhich looks down upon woman\u2019s normal sexual duty as only a low, animal\nfunction.\n\nThat sound men abominate this tendency is justifiable. On the other\nhand, it is unwarrantable to confuse a variation of feminism with the\nwoman movement in its entirety, a movement which includes in itself a\ngreat earnest desire to work for the welfare of both mothers and\nchildren. As a manifestation of womanliness in its most complete,\nperfect form, many men still elect the woman whose entire life-content\nconsists in the cult of her own beauty, a cult whose attendant\nphenomenon is the \u00e6sthetic culture which raises the temple about the\naltar. Under this perfect and apparently inspired form there is,\nhowever, rarely anything to be found of that which the man seeks: the\nlonging and the power of true womanhood to give happiness by erotic and\nmotherly devotion. Such women, like those cerebral women engrossed by\ntheir studies and their work, allow a real love to pass them by; men are\nonly sacrificial servants of the cult, and the high priest is chosen not\nupon the ground of motives of feeling. This type is said to be more\ncommon in America than in Europe. But it existed thousands of years ago\non the Tiber as well as on the Nile. That Cleopatra in the language of\nfeminism now speaks of the \u201cright of the personality,\u201d and means thereby\nher right to represent no other value in life than that of the white\npeacock and the black orchid\u2014the value of rarity\u2014that does not make her\na \u201cproduct of the woman movement.\u201d\n\nBut certain men characterise a woman thus, if they have been deceived in\nher: a psychology which equals in value that of the feminist when she\nspeaks of man as the \u201coppressor,\u201d the \u201ccorrupter,\u201d\u2014without noting that\nthe world is full of poor men corrupted or tormented by women! Amid such\nmutual accusations, just or unjust\u2014whereby _gifted_ men maintain\ngeneralisations about \u201cwoman\u2019s\u201d being which are quite as ingenuous as\nthose which _silly_ women propose about \u201cman\u2019s\u201d being\u2014the sexes, in the\ndays of the woman movement, have been almost as much alienated from each\nother as drawn together. The estrangement has taken place in the erotic\nfield and through labour competition; the reconciliation has been\neffected\u2014leaving out co\u00ebducation\u2014by common industry and the social\nactivity of both sexes.\n\nThe middle-class women of Europe have still so little share in the\ncontrol of production that one cannot determine whether or not they have\neven awakened to the understanding that the fundamental condition of a\nuniversal life-enhancing issue of the woman movement must be new social\nconditions. One cannot yet predicate anything at all in regard to their\ndesires to promote more humane labour conditions and a more just\ndistribution of profit. Under the system now prevailing they must, like\nmen, either conform to it or be destroyed economically. It is even so in\npublic offices and similar fields of labour. Just as so many young men\ndo, at the beginning of their career, a great number of women attempt to\nabolish the abuses and mitigate the formalism. But they meet such\nobstacles that, like the young men, they are obliged to abandon the\neffort; or they are compelled to give up the position whereby they win\ntheir scanty bread.\n\nIn this way, principally, the work of women in the sphere of charitable\nactivity has given to men the opportunity for a correct valuation of the\nsocial working power of woman. Men have then in a wider sphere than that\nof the family circle, so often overlooked by them, learned to appreciate\nfeminine enthusiasm and capacity for organisation, energy and devotion,\ninitiative and endurance. Innumerable men\u2014from the soldiers up, who in\nthe hospitals of the Crimea literally kissed Florence Nightingale\u2019s\nshadow on the floor of the hospital ward\u2014have learned in the last half\ncentury that life has become more kindly for them since social\nmotherliness has obtained for itself a certain elbow-room. The more\nwomen lose their present fear of appearing, in co\u00f6peration with men,\n\u201cwomanly\u201d impulsive, savage in face of injustice and cruelty, the more\nwill they signify in that joint work where, at least to-day, they still\nhave a more fortunate hand\u2014the hand of the mother.\n\nAnd since a single fact is more convincing than a thousand words, so the\nfacts gained in the social activity of woman have won, in later years,\nmany men supporters of woman suffrage. The arguments derived from\nabstract right\u2014however obvious they may be for every tax-paying,\nlaw-abiding woman\u2014go to the rear to make way for the argument of \u201csocial\nutility.\u201d\n\nNot only women themselves but men also refer now to what women have\naccomplished when they are allowed to work in the service of society;\nthey point to the reforms which were retarded or bungled because women\nhad no immediate influence there where appropriations were granted and\nlaws were enacted.\n\nEspecially significant for the reconciliation of the sexes is the joint\nsocial work of young people. The temperance cause or the education of\nthe masses or socialism now brings together a host of young men and\ngirls, who learn thereby that the social as well as the private life of\nlabour gains in strength and wealth if men and women participate in it\ntogether.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe men who fear political life for woman are, however, right. Just as\nthis life has injured the best qualities in the manhood of many men, so\nwill it impair the womanhood of many women. Neither the spiritual\npersonality of woman nor of man, nor even their secondary physical sex\ncharacteristics can withstand the influences of their private _milieu_,\nof their private labour conditions. Why should women better resist the\ninfluences of the public life? When the man is compelled, in political\nwork for the state, to neglect in the highest degree the foundation of\nthe state\u2014the home\u2014how should women be able to do otherwise than the\nsame thing? The political work of both can benefit the home _in general_\nbut _their own_ home must always suffer for it, for a time at least.\nWomen will learn, as so many men have already learned, that the fresh\nenthusiasm, the unexhausted optimism with which they entered the\npolitical life soon vanish before party pressure, general prejudice,\nopportunism, and the demands of compromise. And just as now so many men\nfor these reasons withdraw from Parliament, many women will do likewise\nwhen they learn that what they can accomplish there with the\ncharacteristics peculiar to them, is so insignificant that it does not\ncompensate for the injury which ensues because these characteristics are\nmissing in the home.\n\nIf the eligibility of woman is really to benefit society, then the right\nof resignation must be unconditioned for mothers, and they themselves\nmust understand that the parliamentary mandate is incompatible with\nmotherhood so long as the children are still in the home; in like manner\nduring the same period, the franchise of the mother of a family must not\nresult in rushing into electioneering. The ballot in and of itself does\nnot injure the fineness of a woman\u2019s hand any more than a cooking\nreceipt.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nBecause woman\u2019s motherhood must be preserved, if she is to bring to the\nsocial organism a really _new_ factor, so she must always continue to be\nfound and to work in private life, in order to be, meanwhile, useful in\npublic life. The genius of social reform which women will develop can\ncomplement that of man only if this genius is of a new order; if it\noriginates thoughts which bring new points of view to the social\nproblems, wills which seek new means, souls which aspire to new ends.\nWomen could, if they received their full civic right before they lost\ntheir intuitive and instinctive power through masculinisation, effect\nthe progress of culture as, for example, the entrance of the Germans\ninfluenced the antique world.\n\nThe sooner woman receives her political franchise, the more, on the\nwhole, can be expected from it. The generation which has now fought the\nfight for suffrage is wholly conscious of the reforms that await woman\nfor their final realisation. And this generation of women would\nintroduce into the political life a new, fresh current. In any event, we\ncan hope to secure from women new impulses and better organisation in\npolitical life, as has already been the case in social life. But every\nnew generation of parliamentary women, who together with the men have\nbeen \u201cpolitically trained,\u201d would have\u2014as long as the present economic\nconditions obtain\u2014continually greater economic interests to advocate\n\u201cparliamentarily,\u201d and would also for other reasons evince the same\nparliamentary maladies as the men evince now. And as little as evil men\nlose their evil characteristics because of the franchise, quite as\nlittle will bad women lose theirs. The entrance of women into politics\ncannot therefore\u2014as certain feminists maintain\u2014signify the victory of\nthe noble over the ignoble. But it signifies a great increase in noble\nas well as ignoble powers hitherto inactive in political life, which in\nthe wider sphere that they there maintain oppose one another, now\nconquering, now yielding. Men and women _together_, however, will be\nable to enact more humane laws than men alone can enact. Questions\nconcerning women and children can be treated with deeper seriousness by\nmen and women _together_ than is now the case. Men and women _together_\nwill consider the social life from more significant points of view than\ncan one sex alone. Government consisting of men and women _together_\nwill be more profound than heretofore. No one who has observed the\neffects of masculine and feminine co\u00f6peration in fields already\nmentioned can doubt this. Who can deny that with the civic right of\nwoman her feeling of social responsibility will increase and that her\nhorizon will widen? And therewith her value as wife and mother of men\nwill also increase? But she will increase in value for the men closely\nconnected with her as well as in social respects. The woman of earlier\ntimes, for all of whom society might go to pieces if only _her_ home and\nfamily prospered, was only in a restricted sense man\u2019s help. In certain\ngreat crises she usually betrayed him simply because she wholly lacked\nthe social feeling.\n\nObviously, the female member of Parliament cannot confine herself solely\nto questions which concern the protection of the weaker and the\neducation of the new race. The more women concentrate upon the cause of\njustice against power, and of public spirit against self-interest, the\nmore advantageous it will be for her herself and for the public life.\nBut concentration is, unfortunately, exactly what modern parliamentarism\ndoes not promote; what it does promote is disintegration.\n\nWoman has, however, where she has entered into parliamentary life as\nelector and eligible, shown thus far exactly this tendency toward\nconcentration. She has worked for moral, temperance, and hygienic\nquestions; for questions concerning schools and education of the masses;\nfor mother and child protection; reform of marriage laws, and kindred\nsubjects. What thinking man can maintain that all this does not belong\nto \u201cwoman\u2019s sphere\u201d or can say that these and similar social interests\nhave been sufficiently attended to by an exclusively masculine\ngovernment? Already the opposite danger appears in certain social\nspheres: an exclusively \u201cfeminine government.\u201d\n\nIn the present forms of public life, however, much feminine power will\nwithout doubt be wasted. Only when man, upon a higher plane, has created\na new kind of representation \u201cof the people,\u201d where professional\ninterests in every sphere are represented, can the highest vocation of\nwoman\u2014motherhood\u2014come into its rights.\n\nIt belongs to the necessary course of historical development that women\nalso go through the stage of party-power politics in order together with\nman to reach the stage of social politics and finally that of culture\npolitics.\n\nBut women cannot wait until this development has been attained; they\nmust accomplish it together with man. Just as the best masculine powers\nsooner or later must be concentrated to transform increasingly untenable\nparliamentary conditions, so the best feminine powers will also work in\nthe same direction, especially if the will becomes intense in mothers\nnot only to awaken in their children the social spirit, but also to\ncreate for them better social conditions.\n\nIn later years, the movement for the suffrage of woman has not only\nfilled the world with suffrage societies but the agitation has even\nachieved popular representation in eighteen European countries, in the\nlegislative assemblies of a number of American States, in Australasia,\nin legislative assemblies in Canada and in the Philippines. In Iceland\nas well as in Italy, in Japan as in South Africa, the movement is in\nprogress, and whoever thinks it will not attain its goal is politically\nblind.\n\nWhen anti-feminist men prophesy that men will love their mothers,\nsisters, wives, and daughters less when pitted against them as political\nopponents or competitors, they prophesy certainly in many cases the\ntruth. Politics have already estranged fathers from sons, brothers from\nbrothers. But this demonstrates only either that the personal feelings\nwere weaker than the political passions or that these latter have\ndestroyed the attributes which made the personality lovable. But if men\nare really able to love and women remain lovable, even as political\npersonalities, then a man will not cease to love a woman, even if she\nvotes for a different congressional candidate! Such prophecies have not\nbeen verified in other spheres from which men sought to intimidate women\nby similar warnings. For woman retains her power over man. if she\nretains her womanly charm, created out of peace, harmony, and kindness.\nNot that _of which_ a woman speaks, not that _for which_ she works,\ndetermines man\u2019s feeling and conduct; but _how_ she does it. A woman may\ncharm a man by a political speech, and drive him away by her table talk.\nA poor working woman can, without a word, induce the same man to give\nher his seat in a street car who the next minute can be brutal to an\nassuming and incapable fellow workwoman. In a word, what a woman makes\nof her rights and what they make of her\u2014that alone determines the\nmeasure of veneration, sympathy, love, which she may expect from a man.\n\nThat women have lost their equilibrium cannot be denied. How could it be\notherwise? Not only have they in the last half century experienced,\ntogether with man, Naturalism and the New Romantic movement,\nNeo-Kantianism, the Higher Criticism, Bismarck and Bebel, Darwin and\nSpencer, Wagner and Nietzsche, Ibsen and Tolstoi, Haeckel and von\nHartmann, and still many, many more, but they themselves in dizzy haste\nhave been hurled out of their position in society, protected by the\nfamily, which they had occupied for centuries. It is obvious that at the\npresent moment the spiritual mobility of women must be greater than\ntheir harmony; that the raw culture material which they possess must be\nricher than that which they can utilise; their life experiences more\nsignificant than their art of life. The modern woman must appear for the\npresent less symmetrical, more uncertain, than man\u2019s ideal woman in\nearlier times. But enduring cultural progress cannot be measured by\ncomparison with the ideal figures of the poetry or of the life of\nearlier times. It must be estimated according to the _average type_ in a\ncertain period. And the average woman of our time is, in the fullest\nsignificance of the word, more full of vitality and adaptability, more\nindividually developed, more beneficial socially, than the average woman\nof fifty years ago. With the freedom of movement the social feeling has\nincreased; with the participation in universal human culture, the\nrichness of content: the spiritual life has become more complex, and the\npossibilities of expression of this new soul-life, more numerous.\n\nBut since the average man, in the meantime, has undergone no comparable\ndevelopment, he is estranged, has lost his bearings, and consequently\nrepudiates a movement which, directly and indirectly, makes such great\ndemands for the development of his own higher spiritual qualities.\nHeretofore men could force women to endure undue interference, and so\nhave deprived them of the education wherein the possible consequences of\naction are considered at the same time with the thought of the action.\nBut the woman movement has now raised a partition between the sexes such\nas is found in the aquarium where it becomes necessary to teach the pike\nto allow the carp, also, to live: every time the pike makes a dash at\nthe carp he strikes his head against the obstruction, until the motive\nof repression becomes so strong that the glass wall can be taken away\nand both carp and pike live together in peace.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER VI\n           THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON MARRIAGE\n\n\nCertain feminists believe that the woman movement has accomplished such\nmeagre results in regard to the reorganisation of family right for the\nsole reason that men, who once created the right for their own\nadvantage, still cling to the injustice out of egoism. These feminists\nforget that the family is the social form of life in which tradition has\nthe greatest power. It speaks here with the voice of the blood; it works\nthrough our deepest instincts, our strongest needs of life, our\ninnermost feelings, as these have developed through many thousands of\nyears under the influences which were exercised in and through the\nfamily. To accomplish in this sphere not only reforms upon paper but\nalso vigorous modifications\u2014that is, new laws and customs which are\nrooted in new spiritual conditions of the people as a whole\u2014is more\nnecessary than that man grant women a share in legislation. Innumerable\nindividual human vicissitudes must be experienced and repeated in new\nforms, entering finally into the universal consciousness, before such\nspiritual soil can be formed. The man became and remained the head of\nthe family because all experiences and social factors once made this\narrangement most advantageous for father, mother, and children. Woman\nwill be able to realise her new ideas in regard to love-life and\nmother-right to the degree in which she demonstrates, not only in speech\nand writing but also in vigorous daily living, that these ideals surpass\nin vital effect those which now obtain.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the last half century, among the Germanic peoples, however, the\nfamily life has already undergone essential transformations, while the\nRomantic world still continues to exhibit features which in the first\nhalf of the 19th century were typical even among these peoples.\nMarriages are arranged by the father, divorce is considered either a sin\nor a shame, the paternal power is still absolute, the homogeneous\nrelationship among all the members of the family\u2014in joy and sorrow\u2014is\ninviolable. The feeling of the son for the mother, bordering almost upon\nMadonna worship, and the passion of the father for their little\nchildren, must, however, always have been more characteristic of the\nRomance peoples than of the Germans.\n\nAmong the latter the attainment of individualism, first in the sphere of\nlegislation, still more in that of customs, most of all in that of mode\nof thought and feeling, has altered the position of the individual in\nthe family. While the family exhibited fifty years ago a tightly closed\nunity, in which women had only slight significance, now the wife as well\nas the husband, mother as well as father, daughter as well as son,\nassert their personality, not only _in_ the family, but often even\n_against_ the family. Wives draw the arguments for their self assertion\nmost frequently from the principles of the woman movement.\n\nTruly, in the course of the century, many married women have succeeded\nin finding expression for their significant universal human or feminine\nattributes in marriage, and thus have ennobled it. But the\nself-conscious effort to elevate the position of the wife began\nsimultaneously with the demand that no human right could be denied to a\nwoman upon the ground of her sex, whether within or without marriage.\n\nIndividualism has already made personal love, instead of family\ninterest, decisive for the consummation of a marriage. In the name of\nher personality as of her work, woman desires with ever greater right\nfull majority and legal equality with man in marriage. Against\nindividualism, the doctrine of evolution now advocates certain\nlimitations of the personal erotic freedom to consummate marriage, but\nadvocates at the same time, contrary to the Christian sexual ethics, new\nfreedom for the sake of the higher development of the race. Here comes\ninto effect, the new conception of life by which the possibilities of\ndevelopment and of happiness in the earthly life have acquired a new\nvalue and force.\n\nThe ultimate heights of the modern conception of sex life are indicated\nby erotic idealism, which since \u201cLa Nouvelle H\u00e9loise\u201d has by poets and\ndreamers been continually elevated, while world-renowned lovers showed\nthe possibility of this wonderful love. In addition to all these\ninfluences of the spirit of the time upon the transformation of\nmarriage, come the _indirect_ effects of the woman movement. Thanks to\nthe vibrations in which this movement has set the \u201cspirit of the time,\u201d\nmany an ordinary man now accords to his wife that power and authority in\nthe family which the law still denies her; yes, many commonplace people\nof both sexes now desire from their marriage things of which their\nequals fifty years ago did not even dream. If one adds also the decisive\ninfluences which the political-economic conditions of the present\nexercise upon the family life, one has found some of the threads which\nform the woof of the unalterable warp, a woof which makes the marriage\nof the present a variegated and unquiet fabric, whose pattern exhibits\nprimeval oriental motives beside those in newest \u201cmodern style.\u201d\n\nHere it is of the greatest importance to indicate the zigzag line which\ndenotes the alternate repulsion and attraction that under the influence\nof the woman movement marriage has had for woman.\n\nFirst came the little crowd of \u201cmasculine women\u201d with their hatred of\nmarriage and man. Then the great working army that forgot, over the\nhuman rights of woman, that to these also must belong the right to\nfulfil her duty as a being of sex, and not alone the right to be\n\u201cindependent of marriage\u201d through her work. Then came the reaction\nagainst this incompleteness. At this time, the nature of woman was\ncalled an \u201cempty capsule,\u201d which received its content only from man: a\n\u201ccry of the blood,\u201d which finds its answer in the child. There was no\nother \u201cwoman question\u201d than the possibility of living erotically a\ncomplete life. One woman wished this in love without marriage, another\nin love without children, a third in children without marriage, a fourth\nin children without love\u2014\u201cA work and a child\u201d was the life cry\u2014a fifth\nwoman wished the man only for the sake of the child, a sixth the child\nonly for the sake of the man, and the seventh wished both only for her\nown sake!\n\nThe conviction of some women that the common erotic life of man and\nwoman must have also a spiritual life value for two human souls, filling\nout and developing each other, was called \u201cIbsenism.\u201d And after the\nideal demands which Ibsen pressed upon the consciousness of the time,\nmany men\u2014and not a few women\u2014found relaxation after their spiritual\nover-exertion, if they desired nothing more from one another than \u201cthe\nsound happiness of the senses.\u201d Woman\u2019s \u201cpersonality,\u201d \u201cequality,\u201d and\n\u201chuman right\u201d were old playthings, relegated to the rubbish heap.\n\nThe reaction against this reaction is now in progress. Just now\u2014and\nequally one-sided as will be shown later\u2014woman\u2019s universal humanity is\nemphasised at the expense of the instinct life; her social labour-duty,\nat the expense of the domestic life; her personality, at the expense of\nthe family.\n\nAmong all these zigzag movements, more deeply thoughtful women\ncontinually sought to recall that neither the universal human nor the\nsexual being of woman must be over-developed at the expense of the other\nqualities of her being; that perfect humanity signifies for neither sex\nthat the spiritual life has suppressed the sex life or sex, the\nsoul-life, but that both find in a third higher condition their full\nredemption and harmony. Through great love, exceptional natures already\ncreate this condition; but what to-day only exceptional natures attain,\nculture can gradually make attainable for many.\n\nThis great love demands fidelity. But often only one\u2014ordinarily the\nwoman\u2014experiences this great feeling. And then not even the deepest\ndevotion on her part suffices to preserve the community of life. To\npreserve the form for the purpose of guarding the inner emptiness, as\nwas done earlier, is repugnant to the erotic consciousness of the modern\nwoman. This is the deepest reason why the modern woman\u2014even also the\nmodern developed man\u2014becomes continually more undecided about\ncontracting marriage. They both know that the passion which attracts two\nbeings is not synonymous with a sympathy which arises through the\nharmony of their natures, which must not be so complete that nothing\nremains of the unexpected and mysterious that is so essential an element\nof love. The modern woman asks herself, \u201cWhat can prove to me that an\nerotic sympathy is profound, real, decreed by nature, life-long?\u201d And\nshe asks with good reason. If two lovers who know that they make each\nother happy with all the senses, constrained themselves, each in a\ncorner of a room fettered to a stool, blindfolded, to entertain each\nother three hours daily for three months, this test would probably\nprevent a great number of marriages void of sympathy. But it would\nfurnish no guaranty that those who consummated the marriage after such a\nconcentrated soul interchange, would hold out. For souls which in a\ncertain stage of development seem inexhaustible can be so transformed\nthat they experience only satiety for each other. The young wife of\nto-day is deeply conscious of what a new problem for each newly married\nwoman marriage is. She knows how impossible it is to foresee what\ndifficulties will be encountered and whether good intentions and tactful\nadaptation will succeed in overcoming these difficulties. She knows\nthat, even if the written law made her wholly equal to man, even if she\nmade herself that equal by entering only into a marriage of the higher,\nnewer conscience, yet all the inner, most difficult, deepest problems\nstill remain. This certainly induces many women to become only the\nbeloved, the mistress, of the man who wishes no community of life, but\nonly happy hours. Many more women still strike the possibilities of\nerotic happiness out of their plan of life, because they have not\nexperienced the ideal love of which they dreamed, or else could not\nrealise it.[3]\n\nSometimes their doubt, in regard to the duration of love and the unity\nof souls, decides them, another time the longing for a personal\nlife-work is the reason for their determination\u2014a life-work for which\nthese women have suffered so keenly, been deprived of so much, and have\nso struggled, that it has become passionately dear to them, and they\nfeel that a complete renunciation of the erotic life is easier than the\ntorment of being \u201cdrawn and quartered,\u201d as the death penalty of the\nMiddle Ages was called\u2014a quartering between profession, husband, home,\nand children. And the result usually demonstrates that celibacy is wiser\nthan the compromise. It is most frequently the case,\u2014in Europe at\nleast,\u2014if the work of the unmarried woman had no personal character, and\nif the home is not dependent upon the earnings of the wife, that she\ngives up her professional work after her marriage.\n\nAgainst this sacrifice, however, the higher erotic idealism has begun to\nrebel and has, thereby, come into conflict with the conservative\ndirection of feminism, which while planning to make the wife equal to\nthe husband, adheres firmly to the present marriage as protection for\nwife and children.\n\nIt is this point of view that is condemned by the new idealism. For it\n\u201cprotection\u201d signifies, in its innermost meaning, that the man buys love\nand the woman sells it, which is considered \u201cmoral,\u201d while it is\nconsidered immoral for a man to sell love and for a woman to buy it. The\n\u201cprotection\u201d in this relationship has as result that the \u201cvirtue\u201d of the\nmaid is synonymous with untouched sexual nature, and that of the wife,\nwith physical fidelity; while the \u201cvirtue\u201d of the youth and the man is\njudged from an entirely different point of view.\n\nThe relationship affording \u201cprotection\u201d has also brought with it the\nidea that a woman could not show her love as openly as a man, except\nwhen he was proud and poor and she was rich. Only when the duty of\nsupport on the part of the man ceases, will woman be able to demand the\nsame chastity and fidelity from him as he demands from her; she will\nthen be able, quite as proudly and naturally as he, to show the\nflowering of her being\u2014her love\u2014instead of as now increasing her demand\nin the marriage market by artful dissimulation. As long as maintenance,\nwithin or outside of marriage, is the price for \u201cpossession\u201d of the\nwoman, the man will consider the woman as \u201chis,\u201d and the more submissive\nshe is the more fully she satisfies his feeling of ownership. Now\nmarriage has become only an affair of custom, a common death or comatose\ncondition, because neither party needs trouble himself to keep the love\nof the other. Only when woman, through her work, can lead an existence\nworthy of a human being, when no woman will sell her love but every\nwoman can freely give it, will man experience what perfect womanly\ndevotion is. And when no man can \u201cpossess\u201d love but must remain worthy\nof love in order to be loved then only will women, on their side,\nexperience what tenderness and fine feeling masculine devotion can\nattain.\n\nThis, the purest and warmest erotic idealism, is the morality of the\nfuture. But the way to its realisation is not, as many women believe\nto-day, that mothers, even, should continue their work of earning a\nlivelihood, but that way whose direction I have elsewhere pointed\nout.[4]\n\nHere we have to do, however, only with the spiritual conditions which\narise in the marriage of to-day, whether the wife has retained her work\nor has given it up.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nEven the cultivated modern man, who brings to the human personality of\nhis wife admiration and sympathy, seeks in her always that \u201cwomanliness\u201d\nto which Goethe has given the classic expression: the finely reserved,\nquiet, strong, self-contained woman, reposing harmoniously in the\nfulness of her own nature, a maternally lovely being, wholly \u201cnatural,\u201d\na \u201cbeautiful soul,\u201d observing, creative, but using these gifts only to\ncreate a home. These creative offices the modern man who loves desires\nto assure, when he wishes to \u201cmaintain\u201d his wife, and begs her to\nabandon the outside commercial work in which he foresees a danger to the\nbeautiful life together of which both dream. The woman who along with\nher new self-conscious individuality and her profound culture has\nguarded the \u201cold\u201d devotion, understands ordinarily this desire of the\nman. She chooses, in spite of her idealism, as he wishes, in cases where\nher work has not been very personal. If she has worked in the same field\nas the man, then she converts her gifts into comprehension of him, into\npersonal interest for all his interests; and these marriages in which\nthe wife has enjoyed the same education as the man, but later has\ndevoted herself entirely to the home, are, as a rule, the happiest\nmarriages of the present time. But in the proportion in which her work\nwas creative, is the difficulty of the choice. In the case where the\nproductive power has the strength of genius, the modern man will\nscarcely utter such a wish and in those circumstances the modern woman\nwill not grant it. And because the woman of genius is generally a\ncomplete human being, with strong erotic as well as universal human\ndemands, she chooses often compromise. She finds in love, in motherhood,\nnew revelations; and in the mysterious depths of her nature, the\nproductive element of the maternal function has an elevating influence\nupon her gift of creative power. Thus the energy temporarily diminished\nby motherhood is restored. And her uneasy conscience, because she must\nentrust to others much of the care and education of the children, is\nappeased by the consciousness that she has often given to mankind richer\nnatures, and so more significant children, than more devoted mothers,\nand that her own nature, because of the double creative activity, has\nattained a ripeness and richness which make her personality more\nsignificant for husband and children than if she had given up her\ncalling to please them. These thoughts cannot, however, prevent the\ndaily conflict between her feelings of love and the impossibility, in\ntimes of strong spiritual production, of giving expression to it. The\nvery proximity of the children consumes at such times too much nervous\nenergy. And since all creation requires selfishness\u2014in the sense of\nconcentration upon one\u2019s _own needs_ in order to be able to work\ncreatively and to sink oneself in the work\u2014while all love\u2019s solicitude\nrequires active _attention_ to the _needs of the loved ones_, the\nconflict must remain permanent and _insoluble_.\n\nIn this conviction, many women of genius choose the lesser conflict:\nmarriage without children. Such a relationship occurs not infrequently\nin our time in this way: a man of feeling through the work of a woman is\nfirst moved by her being. The man is in that case often the younger or\nthe less developed. At first, marriage brings both a rich happiness. But\nlater comes a time when the power of the personality of the woman of\ngenius becomes too strong for the man; when he feels himself exhausted\nby all the sensitiveness and impatience which charge the air about a\ncreative personality with electricity. He has now had enough of the rich\nspiritual exchange and longs for a woman who is only fresh richness,\nsunny quiet, easy docility; the now vanished \u201cing\u00e9nue\u201d would be the type\nof woman who most of all could entrance him.\n\nIn another case, it is the wife who becomes wearied, when the man can no\nlonger keep pace with her development nor afford her new inspiration.\nThe erotic life of the woman as well as of the man of genius exhibits\ntwo phases: in one they are attracted by their opposite, in the other by\na congeniality of souls; in one phase they have sought sentiment,\nintimacy, nature; in the other, soul, passion, culture. The order\nchanges in different cases, but the phenomenon repeats itself. What both\nconsciously or unconsciously desire of love is not another individuality\nto love but only a means of inspiration.\n\nYet one thing may be emphasised: the richer the nature of a woman is and\nthe greater her talents, the more life-determining love will be for her;\nat one time making her existence desolate, at another time making it\nfruitful. For the woman of genius is less able than the man to renounce\nher own fate. This the man is capable of doing, in the midst of passion,\nwithout his work suffering thereby in vigour and strength; the woman on\nthe contrary\u2014even the genius\u2014loses more easily her creative impulse in\nhappiness, her creative power in unhappiness.\n\nIn this connection it may be recalled that many of the most gifted, most\nhighly developed woman personalities of to-day have produced nothing,\nbut have been what a Frenchman has called \u201cles grandes inspiratrices.\u201d\nThese have not, indeed, like the \u201cLadies\u201d of the Middle Ages, been\nworshipped at a distance by knights and poets; but they have had an\ninfluence similar to that of Beatrice, through the power of\ncommunication of their rich personality in a relationship which had now\nthe character of an \u201camiti\u00e9 amoureuse,\u201d now that of a love imbued with\nsympathy, which in some cases, infrequently however, led to marriage. I\nneed only mention the name Richard Wagner for the forms of two such\nwomen to appear, one of whom, who was his wife, surpassed in personal\ngreatness all independently creative women of her time. But there have\nalways been less unusual women who had significance as propagandists of\nthe ideas of a great man through their specifically feminine gifts of\nconvincing, of diffusing ideas, of modifying views, etc. If the future,\nbecause of the wife\u2019s zeal for production on her own part, should lose\nthis element of culture, it would be deplorable.\n\nOne of the favourite arguments of the woman movement has been that two\nmarried people working in the same profession had the best opportunities\nfor understanding each other and consequently also for being happy. And\ntruly they can best talk shop with each other. But that is what the\nworking man needs least of all in his home; there he seeks rather\nrelaxation from his calling, or at least a quite disinterested,\nimmediate sympathy with its annoyances or joys. When one of the married\nfellow-workmen needs exactly this sympathy, the other is perhaps busy or\ntoo tired to be capable of such lively interest as the other expects. Or\none has experienced disappointments, the other joys, and then a real\nsympathy is still more difficult. To these crossings of mood is added\nalso the unintentional, involuntary competition, which the similarity of\nvocation brings with it. The wife gains patients, the husband does not;\nhis picture is praised, hers is pulled to pieces; she comes home from\nthe theatre victorious, he after a defeat. During work, the criticism of\none often disturbs the other; after the work, the criticism of the press\ndisturbs the harmony of both. Love wishes to fuse them into one being,\nthe outer world compels them always to feel themselves separate. In the\nbeginning they think: \u201cNothing can come between us.\u201d But if both do not\npossess a rare tenderness as well as rare fineness of soul, soon needles\nof ice fly through the air between them. Only when the wife, as is the\ncase so often in France, puts her ability into her husband\u2019s affairs\ndoes this common interest prevent rivalry.\n\nWhether the province of the husband and wife is the same or not,\ndifficulty always results from the wife\u2019s commercial or professional\nwork in that she rarely finds a good substitute for the domestic and\nmaternal duties. And when the husband sees the house badly managed and\nthe children ill-bred, he tries according to his strength to render\nassistance or, as more frequently happens, seeks his comfort outside the\nhome. But even if these stumbling-blocks may be cleared away by other\nfeminine hands, the fact still remains that the wife because of her work\nmust demand sacrifices on the part of the man such as his work has\nrequired at all times from the wife. She is often compelled to forego\nmuch of the society of her husband, of his solicitude and tenderness\nbecause he has no available time. Now each of the married people has\nconsideration for the leisure of the other and for all other severe\nconditions of the work. But beside these favourable results stands also\nthe detrimental fact that each suppresses his claims upon the sympathy\nof the other, as well as the wish to express his own, whenever this\nreceiving and giving would interfere with the work. If this has become\nfor one or for both a real passion, then the passion blinds him to\neverything that does not concern the work, and causes alternately joy or\nsuffering. Each of the married couple then disturbs the other by moods,\nand each needs to be cherished by the other. The tenderness which\nneither can give to the other, they find perhaps in a third.\n\nBut in those cases where the work is not passionately absorbing or where\nboth husband and wife are persons of understanding, rather than of\nfeeling, marriages of colleagues turn out well. Each has in the other an\nintelligent, appreciative friend; the common work together is rich, and\nneither gives nor requires more than the other is able to reciprocate.\nThe education of the wife makes her a good organiser in the home, which\nis comfortable without the work\u2019s suffering thereby. When this is not\ntoo strenuous for either, but after the close of a reasonable working\ntime, the two meet spiritually free in the home, the duties of which\nthey often share\u2014then the domestic life is happy and the work progresses\neasily, as long as there are no children. When children arrive, then\nthere begins for the wife, even in such marriages, a life beyond her\nstrength.\n\nBut since nature, in the interest of the race, often makes opposites\nattractive to each other, one may find a husband, full of feeling, who\nloves children, united to a wife for whom science is the greatest value\nof life, while she relegates feeling to a lower plane and considers\nmotherhood an animal function. In place of the tenderness and of the\nchildren for which the husband longed, he has to participate in the\nvictories and defeats of a woman of science. Or we see a wife who\ndreamed of an intimate life with her husband and who sacrificed her work\nto it; but the life together was wrecked upon the husband\u2019s artist\nconcentration, and the wife had to suffer under a twofold emptiness: the\nlack of her work and the lack of happiness. Then one sees instances\nwhere the wife retained her work because it was economically necessary\nand because she hoped out of the richness of her young strength to be\nable to fulfil all duties. And all this she was able to do except one\nthing\u2014to preserve under the excessive strain her beauty, her power of\ncharm, the elasticity of her nature. Perhaps she belonged to the very\nhighest among the new women who are so undivided, so proud, who think so\nhighly of themselves, of man, of love, that they are beyond a wholly\njustified coquetry and rest blindly upon the uniting power of spiritual\ncongeniality. But the day comes perhaps when these strong and, in all\nother respects, wise women have nothing other than freedom to give to\nthe man whose senses, whose fancy, need that charm which the wife no\nlonger possesses. In case, however, the man\u2019s nature is not of those for\nwhom the silken threads of daily domestic comfort form the strong band,\nbut on the contrary is of the sort which needs renewal, then the very\nabsence of the wife, occasioned temporarily by the work, can keep the\nrelationship long fresh. This is upon the assumption that she\nunderstands what some of these women do not understand: to give, but in\nsuch a way that the man always longs for more; to remain sweetheart, not\nonly friend; to be able to jest, not only to talk seriously. The modern\nwife of to-day, tested upon so many subjects, is often deeply mistaken\nin regard to the _kind_ of \u201cministry\u201d the man needs. The simple wisdom\nof their grandmothers consisted in this: to give much and to require\nnothing, always to subordinate themselves to the man with gentleness and\nhumility, never to assert themselves before him as a free,\nself-determining personality. The wives of to-day, sacredly convinced of\nthe right and freedom of women, succeed better in asserting their\npersonality than in pleasing their husbands, and the quantity of their\ndemands is often more noteworthy than the quality of their gifts. That\nmany modern marriages turn out well shows that the adaptability of the\nmodern husband is beginning to be even as great as that of the wife in\nformer times!\n\nThe marriage is absolutely wrecked when the wife brings to it all the\nnew demands of woman, but the husband all the primeval instincts of his\nsex. What in each sex relationship most intimately unites or most deeply\nsunders is and remains the erotic depth of nature in each. And the\ndifference in this respect between the men and women of the present ever\nmore widely separates them, and this division becomes fatal to\ninnumerable individual lovers of to-day, as well as for the attitude of\nthe sexes toward marriage in general. The erotically symmetrical woman\nviews with hostility the dualism in the erotic nature of the modern man.\nThis dualism evinces itself, with innumerable nuances it is true, in\nthree typical ways: infinite erotic discussion, but inability to be\nstirred by it either with the soul or with the senses; ability to love\nonly with the senses, not with the soul; and finally looking down upon\nthe senses and desiring \u201cspiritual love\u201d only. For the modern completely\ndeveloped woman the chattering vacuity, the animal instinct, the ascetic\nspirituality, are equally repellent. And yet it happens that the rosy\nmist of love can bring such a woman to a point where she creates for\nherself an illusion out of one of the above mentioned types. Most\nfrequently this occurs in the case of the vigorous man who divines\nnothing of the spiritual content of the woman whose outer appearance has\ncharmed him. The tragedy of the modern woman is then like that which\nHebbel has revealed in _Judith_, that the sex being in her is attracted\nby the muscular masculinity, which her human personality hates as her\nmortal enemy. For as a personality she admires in man only the spiritual\nstrength of the man. The man on his part regrets his mistake that he did\nnot choose a pretty amiable girl \u201cof the old sort,\u201d who would punctually\nlay his table and willingly share his bed; a woman \u201cinto whose head\nIbsen had put no fancies,\u201d who \u201chad not allowed herself to be talked\ninto some folly by feminism.\u201d\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nAmong such \u201cfollies,\u201d similar men, and many others as well, include the\ndemand advanced by the woman movement for the married woman\u2019s property\nright, as well as a specified income for the wife working in the home,\nwho however has to contribute from her property or her \u201cremuneration\u201d as\nhousekeeper to the common household\u2014a corollary which is always\nforgotten by the anti-feminist writers who assert that \u201cthe man becomes\na slave when he has to work for the whole, but the wife may retain\neverything of hers.\u201d (_Strindberg._)\n\nThe modern woman who before her marriage was independent, owing to her\nwork, abhors the thought of a request for money\u2014this most painful moment\neven in the happiest marriages\u2014to so great a degree that this aversion\ndetermines the wife in some cases to keep up her own work. If on the\ncontrary she has given this up, the consciousness of her earlier\nindependence makes her often so sensitive that she feels herself injured\nby a protest however delicate in regard to the expenditure of money.\nMore than one man has regretted, in consequence of the unreasonable\ndemands of his wife, that he ever begged her to give up her own work.\nThere are women, on the other hand, who continue their work and thereby\nonly increase the incapability of a good-for-nothing man. In such cases,\nit avails little that in many countries the law now allows the wife free\ndisposal of the income from her labour. Notwithstanding this, the\nassertion is ridiculous that \u201cif the man drinks up the money of his wife\nit is with her consent,\u201d and \u201cit is therefore of no avail to alter the\nlaw.\u201d For it makes a significant difference in the relative position of\nthe man and wife whether the law gives him the _right_ to it, or whether\nhe takes it by force. But in this as in other cases, the woman movement\nobviously cannot free women so long as they are impelled by unconscious\nforces from within to actions and sacrifices at variance with their\nconscious personality. The one thing which the woman movement has\nalready achieved and can continue to achieve, is that the undue\nencroachment of the men ceases to have legal protection.\n\nIt is undeniable, on the other hand, that the unmarried woman\u2019s personal\nand economic independence fashions wives who in marriage show themselves\nin a high degree egotistic, but who yet incessantly scold about man\u2019s\negotism, wives who themselves exhibit very little devotion and fine\nfeeling, but place very great importance upon consideration. These wives\nwere the ones whom fifty years ago men called \u201cgraters.\u201d But the lack of\namiability, which in certain women was usually due to childbirth, has\nnevertheless in modern woman, at least during the freedom of her\ngirlhood, been unrestrained habit. Her firm\u2014and just\u2014decision not to be\n\u201csubservient\u201d to her husband has resulted in, first, an armed peace,\nlater, a war, in which the wife\u2019s work is one of the projectiles. \u201cI\nhave my work, why should I stay here to be used up and tormented?\u201d she\nasks herself. And when such questions begin, there is usually but one\nanswer.\n\nThere is one decided advantage in giving to the woman the opportunity to\nearn her living: she has again acquired thereby significance in the\nhome, while the generation of women, who neither co-operated\n_productively_ in the home nor assumed all the duties of the mother,\nwere regarded by man with less respect than, on the one side, their\ngrandmothers who _produced_ all of the household requisites, on the\nother side, their now independent self-supporting granddaughters. Only\nwhen society _recompenses the vocation of mother_, can woman find in\nthis a full equivalent for self-supporting labour.\n\nAnother typical group of our time is formed by the numerous women for\nwhom no choice remains in regard to their work, since it is of a kind\nthat they must give up because of the removal to another place, or more\nfrequently because they find so much work in the new home that every\nthought of anything further outside must cease. Those who think that\nindustry has made the work of the wife in the home to-day superfluous,\nspeak only of the _great cities_, and usually only of _opulent families\nin the great cities_, where they are in a position to buy cheaper\neverything that the labour of the wife could produce. But in the\ncountry, among all classes, the mother must be the director of the work;\nand in all country homes in moderate circumstances\u2014as in countless poor\nor not very well-to-do city families\u2014the work of the mother is still\nfrequently indispensable, and in addition is more economical than her\nearnings out of the house could be, especially since the developed\nmodern woman is usually capable of a more rational housekeeping than the\nwoman of earlier times.\n\nBut while the mothers of that time knew nothing except housework, those\nof to-day have often, as unmarried and self-supporting women, enjoyed a\nfreedom of movement and opportunities of development which, now that\nthey are over-burdened with household cares, they may seriously miss.\nThe work of the mother is now still further increased by the difficulty\nof getting servants\u2014at least capable ones\u2014and also by the demands of\nluxury. The result of this again is that hospitality in the home\ndecreases, that the watchword of the time, \u201cthe windows of the house\nwide open to the world, fresh air in the home, no creeping into the\nchimney corner,\u201d is so interpreted that warmth and intimacy vanish. Yes,\nthe overworked mother often herself insists that the family leave the\nhouse and seek some place of recreation for the annual festivals, which\nwere once the children\u2019s happiest and brightest recollections of home.\n\nThe fact that most modern women of culture devote themselves to some\nbranch of social work, often to several, contributes still further to\nthe over-exertion of the mother. Even when this occurs from pure\naltruism, the motive cannot prevent such altruism from becoming\nsometimes a disease of which one may die quite as surely as of other\ndiseases. This death is quite as immoral as any other resulting from\nneglected hygiene. No one has the right to perish from altruism, except\nwhen destruction is the _condition_ of his fulfilling his duty. But in\nmany cases the occasion is the widely ramified social activity of the\nwoman for whom the home now often falls short; not a result of altruism,\nbut a manifestation of that desire for power which once was satisfied in\nthe family. Or it may be a form of the hysteria characteristic of the\npresent time. In the sixteenth century, the hysterical were burned as\nwitches; now they \u201csacrifice\u201d themselves to an activity which offers\nthem in reality the variety, the intoxication of publicity\u2014in a word,\nthe life stimulus they need. But even sound, sincere, and conscientious\nwomen are driven by the woman movement and by social work to assume\npseudo duties, for which the real duties are pushed aside. If instead of\ninstituting official inquiries among wives and mothers as to what they\ncan accomplish, one should direct the same questions to their husbands\nand children, these would, if they dared be honest, testify that _they_\nmust pay the price for the altruistic activity.\n\nSince the work of married women outside the home, the woman movement,\nand the social work began, one seldom finds a wholly sound, joyous,\nharmonious wife and mother. The constant complaint of the modern woman\nis that she \u201cnever has time.\u201d The minority who live a life of luxury,\nwholly free from work, while the husband works feverishly to provide the\nluxury which neither will forego, telephone away a quarter of the day\nmaking appointments concerning the toilette, visits, and amusements,\nwhich take up the remaining three quarters of the day. And others,\nloaded down with household work or divided between this and work for\ntheir livelihood, how shall they find time!\n\nLeast of all have they the time necessary for the countless little\ntokens of tenderness which intensify all relationships between people. A\nFrench mother who became a widow and brought up her children by means of\nher own work received from her son, grown to a youth, the judgment:\n\u201cThou hast never loved us.\u201d Too late, it became clear to her that \u201cit\nrequires time to love,\u201d that it is not enough to feel love, and, looked\nat as a whole, to act with love\u2014no, love must be expressed. And for this\nthe harassed mother of to-day lacks time and quiet.\n\nFormerly, it was only the husband and father who had no time; the wife\nand mother had it and could thus preserve the warmth of the home. But\nnow?\n\nThere are now, it is true, many women with so few claims that they think\nthey have fulfilled the fourfold task. In reality, they have fulfilled\nall their duties imperfectly, or eliminated one task for a time in order\nto be able to accomplish the others. _No woman has ever been at the same\ntime all_ that a wife can be to her husband, a mother to her children, a\nhousewife to her house, a working woman to her work. In the last\ncapacity the difficulty of the married woman is still further increased\nby the present competition, as also by the fact that the better a person\nworks the more work falls to her, so that an exact and reasonable\ndivision of time between work and home is often rendered quite\nimpossible.\n\nIn addition to all these difficulties arising through actualities, there\nare finally also those evoked by the \u201cspirit of the time.\u201d A wife has,\nfor example, decided to give up a vocation which she saw was not\ncompatible with her home. But she stills finds no rest. She is harassed\nby the demand of the \u201cspirit of the time\u201d that a married woman should be\nable to take care of the house as well as to accomplish outside personal\nwork. The husband, also influenced by the \u201cspirit of the time,\u201d thinks\nthe same or feels painfully the fact that his wife, for love of him, has\nsacrificed the exercise of a talent, in which he perhaps has felt a\npersonal interest; the longing for the vocation awakens in her, and she\nresumes her work, with the result that, if she has energetically\nresisted the lassitude that comes with beginning motherhood, she and the\nchild must suffer later. Or she lives in a permanent state of\nover-exertion which finally culminates in nervous conditions under which\nthe whole family must share her suffering. Had she been able to follow\nin peace her instinct to strike deep root in the home soil and to\nenlarge and enrich her being by the annual growth of ring after ring of\nher production of love, then the essential values would have been\nincreased for all. Now, she is led astray by a biased opinion of the\ntime, which owes its effectiveness to the single fact that the\nopinionated resolutely turn their back upon all facts.\n\nThanks to these ideas of the time propagated by certain feminists, we\nsee increasing numbers of women who perform their \u201csocial duty\u201d as the\ntelegraph poles perform their function; while such duty could have been\nfulfilled as the tree grows in a garden: blooming, fruit-bearing,\njoyful, joy-bringing.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VII\n          THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON MOTHERHOOD\n\n\nBecause it has increased the culture of woman and her feeling of\npersonal responsibility, the woman movement has had its influence, both\ndirectly and indirectly, upon the postponement of the legal and\ncustomary marriage age. Since young girls have exercised their brains as\nmuch as the boys have, they are no longer so far in advance of the boys\nin physical development. But when modern girls finish their studies they\nare physically as well as psychically more universally developed than\ntheir grandmothers were. They know much more of the difficulties and\nrealities of life, not least of the sexual life. And this knowledge has\ninstilled in them a reluctance to undertake too early the serious and\ndifficult task of motherhood. They have greater need of truth and\nculture, and less tendency to erotic visionary dreaming than girls of\ntheir age in the middle of the previous century; their desire for work\nand their social feeling fix goals, and they work with all their might\nto attain them. And because, as already explained, both sexes have for\neach other a more many-sided attraction than the merely erotic, young\npeople are more careful, more choice, in their erotic decisions. The\nfinest young girls of to-day are penetrated by the Nietzschean idea,\nthat marriage is the combined will of two people to create a new being\ngreater than themselves. But their joy does _not_ consist in the fact\n\u201cthat the man wills\u201d; they are themselves \u201cwill,\u201d and above all they\nhave the will to choose the right father for their children, not only\nfor their own sake but for the sake of the children.\n\nIf it be true that immediate, \u201cblind,\u201d erotic attraction is most\ninstinctively correct in choice, then the present comrade life of young\npeople and the increased clear-sightedness which it gives, as well as\nthe increasing erotic idealism of young girls, are not unconditionally\nadvantageous to the new race. The question is, however, still undecided.\nHere it may only be emphasised that the young girl of to-day, in spite\nof all intellectual development, is still won always by powerful\nspiritual-sensual love, which the woman movement has too long considered\nas a negligible quantity. Under the influence of the doctrine of\nevolution, young girls begin to understand that their value as members\nof society depends essentially upon their value for the propagation of\nmankind; all the more they realise the duty of physical culture which\nwill enable them to fulfil this function better; they no longer consider\ntheir erotic longing as impure and ugly but as pure and beautiful. It is\nout of this soul condition that the different movements for the\nprotection of mothers and children, theoretically considered, have\nproceeded. These are at present the most important \u201cwoman movements,\u201d\nalthough unrecognised by the older woman movement. And this older\nmovement has not yet recognised the fact that, because of present\nmarriage conditions, the degenerate, uneducated, decrepit, have greater\nopportunity for propagating the race, both within and outside of\nmarriage, than the young, sound, pure-minded, and loving; that it can\ntherefore _be no sin_, from the point of view of the race, if the latter\nbecome parents without marriage, nor should it be a subject of shame\nfrom the social point of view. All women\u2019s rights have little value,\nuntil this one thing is attained: that a woman who through her\nillegitimate motherhood has lost nothing of her personal worth, but on\nthe contrary has proved it, does not forfeit social esteem.\n\nOur time can point to women who have been typical of the reform\ntendencies of the century in this respect. Some of these women, if they\nreally accomplished the unprecedented task of \u201ca child and a work,\u201d have\ndrawn their strength for the task out of precisely the commonplace,\nhomely qualities and sterling virtues, contrary to which they believed\nthey were acting when they became mothers, driven by a power greater\nthan their _conscious_ personality. Others again became mothers with the\nconsent of their whole personality. They were clear that they thus made\nuse of the masculine rights and freedom which feminism first brought\nhome to women. And although many advocates of women\u2019s rights refrain\nfrom such consequences of their ideas, the women who in other respects\ndetermine their conduct of life by their own free personal choice\nrecognise that this, their _real_ \u201cemancipation,\u201d is a fruit of the\nwoman movement.\n\nIn Europe, however, most women under thirty still dare to dream of\nmotherhood in a love marriage as the greatest happiness and the highest\nduty of life.[5]\n\nBut, as direct and indirect result of the woman movement, the fact none\nthe less remains that there is found _among women an increasing\ndisinclination for maternity_, a reluctance which deprives mankind of\nmany superior mothers, while at the same time woman\u2019s commercial work\nfor self-support in all classes increases her sterility or makes her\nincapable of the suckling so vitally important for the children.\n\nThat the modern woman, because of individual fate or her own choice,\noften remains unmarried is no danger in and for itself. This fact, as I\nhave emphasised above, is connected with a number of cultural and\nmaterial conditions, which sometime will be altered, and then woman\u2019s\ndesire for marriage will again increase. The real danger has appeared\nonly since women have begun to strengthen the tendency to celibacy by\nthe amaternal theory, which now confuses the feminine brain and leads\nthe feminine instinct astray.\n\nThe woman movement in and with this influence upon maternity sinks to\nthe lowest point of the scale according to the criterion of worth\nemployed here: the elevation of the life of the individual and of the\nrace. In this we stand in our time before a twofold mystery, which lies\nin the circumstance that not only women\u2014women \u201cwith breasts made right\nto suckle babes\u201d\u2014emphasise this stultifying influence, but that there\nare men, each the son of a mother, who also propagate it. These men have\nallowed themselves to be blinded by the false logic concerning women,\nwhich declares that since rich mothers do not wish to fulfil the duties\nof a mother and the poor cannot fulfil them, superior social\norganisations must be created for that purpose; in other words,\ninstigated by a mere temporary unpleasant discrepancy, we will create a\nnew, a different order of things. But, if this obtained universally, it\nwould inflict incomparably greater injury upon mankind than do present\nunhappy conditions.\n\nUpon the whole, however, it is precisely as a result of this tendency\nthat the deepest hostility of men against feminism has developed. The\nfact that the idea of evolution is now beginning to enter into the flesh\nand blood of man also contributes its share to this feeling. Just as\nformerly a man wished heirs for his personal and real estate and for his\nname, he now desires inheritors of his being; he desires an eternal\nlife, which becomes a certainty only by means of parenthood, whereby the\nindividual as father or mother lives on physically and spiritually, in\nbody and soul, in his children and grandchildren down to the last of his\ndescendants. This conception has made the sex instinct again holy, as it\nwas for the pagans. This new reverence for their duty as beings of sex\nnow induces many young men to guard their sexual health and strength by\nan asceticism the motive of which is the exact opposite of that which\ndetermined the asceticism called forth by Christianity, the asceticism\nwhich was fear of the sex instinct as impure and as a temptation to sin.\nNow the innermost aim of young men\u2019s creative desire is the higher\ndevelopment of mankind. Love becomes for them the condition by which\nthey can most perfectly redeem their religious certainty of being part\nof a great design, their religious longing for harmony with life\u2019s\ncreative desire, with the infinite.\n\nThere are now men who work most zealously for the ennoblement of the\nrace\u2014\u201ceugenics,\u201d as this effort is called in England\u2014as well as for the\nprotection of mother and child\u2014\u201cpuericulture,\u201d as this endeavour is\ncalled in France. There are men who write excellent works upon the\npsychology of the child, and upon sexual instruction; men, who, in art\nand poetry, give expression to the new veneration for the sanctity of\ngeneration, for motherhood, for the child. The finest thing written\nabout the child as a cultural power is written by an American.[6]\nPainting has now new devotional pictures of the Mother with her Child,\nespecially those conceived by a Frenchman and an Italian.[7] The most\nbeautiful representation of youth\u2019s new desire for love is by a German\nsculptor.[8] Likewise a German, Nietzsche, has the most profound\nconception of parenthood and education as the means whereby humanity\nwill cross over the bridge of the men of to-day to the superman.\n\nOnly when all this is realised can one conceive what the feelings of\nthese new men must be when they meet those new women \u201cwho are no longer\nwilling to be slaves of the instinct for the propagation of the race;\u201d\nwho see in motherhood \u201ca loss of time from their work;\u201d \u201can attack upon\ntheir beauty;\u201d an obstacle to the refined conduct of life;\u2014a conduct of\nlife certain to debase woman\u2019s worth as a child-bearing being, but to\nelevate her to that exquisite, perfect product of culture, a \u201cwoman of\nthe world;\u201d an obstacle also for woman as creator of other objective\ncultural values. If a man with a father\u2019s desires finds himself united\nwith such a woman, he finds himself in marriage quite as much a\nprostitute as innumerable wives have felt themselves to be when they\nwere mere tools of a man\u2019s desire. On the contrary the desire for the\nelevation of mankind on the part of the new woman and the new man, is\nevinced in the idea that not the quantity but the quality of the\nchildren they give to humanity is most significant; that a land of fewer\nbut more perfect men is a higher culture ideal than the principle still\nalways maintained from the point of view of national competition, that\nthe inhabitants of a country must only be numerous however inferior they\nmay be.\n\nTo this wholly new evolutionary conception of life the amaternal women\noppose the following train of thought which greatly influences the\nfeeling and desire of women to-day[9]:\n\nCulture now sets new duties for woman, more significant than exclusively\nnatural ones. The more the individual life increases in value, the more\nthe interest for the mere functions of sex declines, and with it also\nthe value of woman _as woman_ for a society where, because of\nmotherhood, she has become a being of secondary rank. It evinces lack of\nideality if one censures this tendency of the modern woman to renounce\nmaternity for the sake of more spiritual interests. While the mother\nconcentrates herself upon her own child only, the woman who renounces\nmotherhood can extend her being to embrace children as children in\ngeneral. As a mother, woman is only a being of nature. But the\npersonality, with its multiplicity of feelings and endeavours, demands\nan independent activity as well as maternity.\n\nTo put her entire personality into the education of her children is a\ntwofold error. First and foremost, most mothers are _bad_ educators and\nserve their children better if they entrust them to a born teacher; in\nthe second place, _gifted_ children educate themselves best and should\nbe spared all educational arts. The mediocre child, who is more\nsusceptible to education, has ordinarily also only mediocre parents, who\nlikewise benefit the children most if they put them in the care of\nexcellent teachers. Children who are _below_ mediocrity can also be best\neducated by specialists. So there remains for the mother, after the\nfirst years\u2019 care and training, no especial task as educator, at least\nnone in which she can really put her personality. To talk to a mother\nabout the possibilities of a richer office of mother, as educator of her\nchildren, she calls lulling her into an illusion under which she must\nlabour only to suffer. A woman who can exercise her personality in\nanother way should not therefore put it into the education of her\nchildren.\n\nThe amaternal advocates deny that motherliness is the criterion of\nwomanliness; they find this criterion in the form, the external being of\nwoman, in her manner and physical appearance\u2014in a word, in the _outer_\nexpression of the inner disposition, which they deny as typical of\nwomanliness! \u201cWomanliness\u201d is thus reduced to an \u201c\u00e6sthetic principle,\u201d\nwhile woman\u2019s spiritual attributes are considered as \u201cuniversally\nhuman\u201d; and the right is granted to the feminine sex to emancipate\nherself from the result of the heresy that _motherliness_ should be the\nethical norm for the \u201cbeing\u201d or \u201cessence\u201d of womanhood. The suitability\nof woman\u2019s _psychic_ constitution for her work as mother is not\nacknowledged as proof that motherliness is the distinguishing\ncharacteristic of womanliness. For this constitution is less conspicuous\nin the higher stages of differentiation. Its suitability was then a\nphenomenon of adaptation and changed with the conditions of life. Thus\nthis constitution cannot be cited as a reason for limiting woman\u2019s\npersonal exercise of her powers. Motherliness is no social instinct. How\ncan motherliness, which we have in common with beasts and savages, be\nconsidered as higher than, for example, justice, truth, and other\ngradually won spiritual values, which woman can promote by her personal\nactivity? The higher the forms of life woman attains, the less will her\npersonality be determined by motherliness. Why then should women bring\nto the domestic life the sacrifice of their personality, while no one\ndemands this of men? Why shall not woman, just as man, satisfy her\ndemands as a sex being in marriage and, as for the rest, follow her\nprofession, attend to her spiritual development, her social tasks? Why\ncondemn woman to remain a half-being\u2014that is, with unexercised\nbrain\u2014only because certain of her instincts attract her to man, while he\nis not constrained to suppress his personality because he in like manner\nfelt himself attracted to woman? It is the old superstition of the\nfamily life as \u201cwoman\u2019s sphere,\u201d which still confuses the conception. By\nthe present form of family life woman is \u201coversexed.\u201d Her higher\ndevelopment, as well as that of her husband and children, will be\npromoted if woman guards her independence by earning her own living, in\ncommercial work conducted beyond the portal of the home; if housekeeping\nbecomes co-operative; if the education of the children is carried on\noutside the home, in which now the motherly tenderness emasculates the\nchildren and fosters in them family sentiment of an egoistic nature and\nnot social feelings. Thus are solved the difficulties which are entailed\nwhen the wife\u2019s work is carried on outside the home; equipoise between\nher intellectual and emotional, her sexual and social nature follows,\nand her worth, as that of a man, will be measured by her human\npersonality, not by her womanliness, her efficacy in the family, for the\nexercise of which she is now constrained to renounce her personality.\n\nSo runs in brief the programme of the amaternals.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt has already been indicated that the woman movement, in its\n_inception_, could gather strength only by combating with all its power\nthe prejudice that _woman is incapable of the same kind of activity as\nman_. But now the whole woman movement has for a long time been\nemphasising the fact that woman is entitled, not only on her own behalf\nbut more especially in her capacity as home-keeper, wife, and mother, to\nthe full development of her powers and to equality with man in the\nfamily and in society. In the amaternal programme sketched above,\nhowever, the fanaticism, which characterised the entire woman movement a\ngeneration ago, now evinces itself in the error that _equal rights_ for\nthe sexes must mean also _equal functions_; that the development of\nwomen\u2019s powers involves also their application in the same spheres of\nactivity in which man is engaged; that _equality_ of the sexes implies\n_sameness_ of the sexes. While moderate feminism begins to see that, if\nman and wife compete, this rivalry can benefit[10] neither the woman,\nthe man, nor the children, amaternal feminism urges the keenest\ncompetition. And if this is once accepted as advantageous to woman\u2019s\npersonality and to society, then it is obvious that she must, with all\nthe energy of the attacked, defend herself from the duties of maternity,\nbecause of which she would obviously come off second-best in the\ncompetition.\n\nFrom the point of view of individualism it is obvious that the _law_\nmust set no limitations to woman\u2019s practice of a vocation, unless\nevident hygienic dangers menace either her or the coming generation.\nWomen must, for their own sake as well as for that of society, have free\n_choice of work_, for life and nature possess innumerable unforeseen\npossibilities. Nevertheless, it does happen that a woman who gives\nsuperior children to humanity may, nevertheless, feel herself incapable\nof educating them; likewise it sometimes happens that a husband and wife\nwho have exceptional children, cannot endure to live together. In\nneither case has law or custom a right to force upon a mother or a\nfather a yoke that is intolerable or to demand of a mother or a father\nunreasonable sacrifices.\n\nBut the right to limit the choice of work, the law does not possess;\nnature assumes that right herself: first of all from the axiom that no\none can be in two places at the same time, and in the second place\nbecause no one can respond simultaneously and with full energy to two\ndifferent spiritual activities. One cannot, for example, count even to\none hundred and at a certain number give a simple grasp of the hand\nwithout suspending the counting momentarily. Although no one has ever\nbeen denied the privilege of solving a mathematical problem and of\nfollowing carefully at the same time a piece of music, yet it is certain\nthat the effectiveness of both intellectual activities would be thereby\ndiminished. These extremely simple observations can be continued until\nthe most complex are reached. If the observation be directed to the\nsphere of domestic life, every wife and mother who _is willing to\ninstitute impartial observations of self_, will affirm the difficulty of\nworking with a divided mind.\n\nIf a mother carries on her work at home and must put it away in order to\nbe beside the sick-bed of her child, or to make those arrangements which\nassure domestic comfort, or to help her husband, then she feels that her\nbook or her picture suffers, that the activity which binds her more\nintimately to the home relaxes for a time the intimacy of her connection\nwith her work. One can by day carry on a dull industrial task, and by\nnight produce an achievement of the soul; but one cannot let one\u2019s soul\nradiate in one direction without impairing its energy in another. A work\nneeds exclusive devotion. And this is, viewed externally, difficult to\nattain in joint action; viewed from within, it requires a renunciation\nthat in the case of a loving soul evokes a continual inner struggle. For\nthat reason, also, literature with woman as its subject has for some\ndecades been filled with the great conflict of modern woman\u2019s life: the\nconflict between vocation and parents, between vocation and husband,\nbetween vocation and child. Certainly the family has often been a\ntorture chamber for individuality, as a consequence of laws and customs,\nwhich the future will regard as we now do the rack and the thumbscrew.\nBut nature is more severe than law and custom when she confronts us with\na choice which, however it may turn out, tears a piece from our heart.\n\nAnd now neither custom nor man demands of woman the \u201csacrifice of the\npersonality.\u201d This sacrifice is required only by the law of limitations\nwhich rules over us all.\n\nThe creative man or the man working objectively must often condemn the\nemotional side of his personality to a partial development; he must for\nthe sake of his work renounce many family values important for this\nemotional side of his being. Even if shorter working hours could\npartially diminish this cultural offering, the _inner_ conflict, for the\nman or the woman, is not settled thereby.\n\nEven if a man, in the consciousness of his wife\u2019s endowment of talent,\nassumed a number of domestic duties, especially those pertaining to the\nchildren, the inner conflict would still continue. And this conflict is\nin no way solved by the amaternal theory that the personal life must be\nplaced above the instinct life. For, as has been emphasised, the choice\nis not between the personal and the instinct life, but between the\nintellectual and the emotional side of woman\u2019s personality. And the\nsolution of this choice has not been discovered by the amaternals, who\nwould combine commercial work with marriage and maternity. Women who\nremain unmarried or who give up commercial activity which they cannot\ncarry on in the home, have not _settled the conflict_ either, but have\nonly reduced its difficulties.\n\nThe fundamental error of the amaternal solution of the problem is that\nit characterises motherliness as a _non-social_ instinct, but, on the\nother hand, defines the \u201cpersonal\u201d activity of woman as an expression of\nthe social instinct. _For all social instincts have been developed by\nculture out of primitive instincts._ All cultural development lies\nbetween the sex impulse of the Australian negress and the erotic\nsentiment of Elizabeth Barrett Browning\u2019s sonnets. And when the\namaternals assert that motherliness, which \u201cwe have in common with\nbeasts and savages,\u201d cannot be an expression of the personality, their\nargument has the same validity as that which would deny to the Sistine\nChapel the quality of an expression of personality because beasts and\nsavages also exhibit the decorative instinct.\n\nThe development of the mother instinct into motherliness is one of the\ngreatest achievements in the progress of culture, a development by which\nthe maternal functions have continually become more complex and\ndifferentiated. Already in the case of the higher animals maternity\ninvolves much more than the mere act of giving birth; an animal not only\nfaces death for her young, she gives them also a training which often\nindicates power of judgment. A cat, for instance, which sought in vain\nto prevent her kitten from entering the water and which finally threw\nthe kitten in and then pulled it out, thus obtaining the desired result\nof her pedagogy, had not, as have so many modern mothers, read Spencer,\nbut could, nevertheless, put many of these mothers to shame. Even the\ninitial maternal functions, nursing and physical care, involve a culture\nof the spiritual life of the mother, not only through an increase in\ntenderness, but also in observation, discrimination, judgment,\nself-control; a woman\u2019s character often develops more in a month during\nwhich she is occupied with the care of children, than in years of\nprofessional work. Mother love and the reciprocal love which it awakens\nin the child, not only exercise the first deep influence upon the\nindividual\u2019s life of feeling, but this love is _the first form of the\nlaw of mutual help\u2014it is the root of altruism, the cotyledon_ of a now\nwidely ramified tree of \u201csocial instincts.\u201d\n\nAlthough woman through the mere _physical_ functions of motherhood makes\na great social contribution, the importance of her contribution is\ngreatly enhanced if one also takes into consideration her _spiritual_\nnature. And notwithstanding the fact that fatherhood has also, to a\ncertain degree, developed in man the qualities of tenderness,\nwatchfulness, patience, yet the enormous predominance of woman\u2019s\n_physical_ share in parenthood, in comparison with man\u2019s, is in itself\nenough to create, in course of time, the intimate connection which still\nexists to-day between mother and child, as well as the difference\nbetween the personality of woman and man. The physical functions of\nmotherhood were the fundamental reasons for the earliest division of\nlabour. And this division of labour, the aim of which, next to\nself-preservation, was for both sexes the protection of posterity,\naugmented and strengthened the qualities which each sex employed for its\nspecial functions. All human qualities lie latent in each. But they have\nbeen so specialised by this division of labour, or, on the other hand,\nsuppressed by it, that they now appear in varying proportions: in woman,\na careful, managing, supervising, lifeguarding, inward-directed sense of\nlove; in man, courage, desire for action, force of will, power of\nthought, an activity subduing nature and life, became the distinguishing\ncharacteristics; and fatherhood became psychologically, as it is\nphysiologically, something different from motherhood. Even if culture\ncontinues to efface the sharp lines of demarcation, so that it becomes\nmore and more impossible to generalise about \u201cwoman\u201d and \u201cman,\u201d and\nincreasingly more necessary for each and every woman to solve the \u201cwoman\nquestion\u201d individually, yet from the point of view of the race, the\n_division of labour must on the whole remain the same as that which\nhitherto existed_, if the higher development of mankind shall continue\nin uninterrupted advance to more perfect forms. It is necessary for\n_these higher ends of culture_ that woman _in an ever more perfect\nmanner shall fulfil what has hitherto been her most exalted task_: the\nbearing and rearing of the new generation.\n\nThe amaternal assertion, that motherliness can be no higher than justice\nand truth, is an infuriating antithesis. It is as if one should assert\nthat \u201cair is better than water, or both better than bread.\u201d Both\nassertions place the fundamental condition of life counter to other\nneeds of life! Who shall exercise justice and truth when no new men are\nborn? And, moreover, how shall justice and truth increase in mankind if\nchildren are not trained to a greater reverence for justice and a deeper\nlove of truth? In order to fulfil this one office _of education_ well,\nmothers need their _universal human culture in its entirety_. But even\nif this were not so, if motherhood did not require the concentration of\nwoman\u2019s personality; even if motherliness remained only \u201cprimitive\ninstinct,\u201d yet this instinct, in the women who have guarded it, is more\nvaluable for mankind than the universal human development of power of\nthe women who have lost this instinct. No social nor individual activity\nof women could compensate for the extinction of this \u201cinstinct,\u201d which\nonly recently in Messina drove hundreds of mothers to shield their\nchildren with their own bodies; this \u201cinstinct,\u201d which recently impelled\na mother, who learned before she gave birth to her child that her own\nlife must be the price for the saving of that of the child, to cry: \u201cI\nhave lived, but the life of my child belongs now to mankind\u2014save the\nchild!\u201d So the mother died without even having seen the beautiful being\nfor whom she gave her life. In the world of \u201cpersonally\u201d developed\nwomen, however, after a new Messina catastrophe the mothers would be\nfound with their manuscripts and their pictures in their arms. And\nconfronted with a choice like that related above, the mother would\nanswer: \u201cLet the child die, I will live my personal life to the end.\u201d\n\nThe amaternal type must persist for the present. There are in reality in\nour time many women who with unresponsive eyes can pass by a lovely\nchild, among them even mothers who do not feel the pure sensuousness,\nthe wise madness, the intoxicating delight which such a child awakens in\nevery motherly woman; mothers who have no conception what a fascinating\nsubject for study the soul of a child can offer. Jean Paul, who scourged\nworthless mothers and tried to awaken the repressed maternal instinct of\nhis time with the charge that a woman who is bored when she has\nchildren, is a contemptible creature, would find to-day many mothers who\nare bored only if they have their children about them.\n\nAnd these cerebral, amaternal women must obviously be accorded the\nfreedom of finding the domestic life, with its limited but intensive\nexercise of power meagre, beside the feeling of power which they enjoy\nas public personalities, as consummate women of the world, as talented\nprofessionals. But they have not the right to _falsify life values_ in\ntheir own favour so that they themselves shall represent the highest\nform of life, the \u201chuman personality\u201d in comparison with which the\n\u201cinstinctively feminine\u201d signifies a lower stage of development, a\npoorer type of life.\n\nWomen who have produced books and works of art, to be compared, as\nrespects permanence of value, to confetti at a carnival, have, according\nto this viewpoint, proved themselves human individualities, while a\nmother who has contributed an endless amount of clear thought, rich\nunderstanding, warm feeling, and strong will to the education of a fine\ngroup of children, requires a public office in order to prove herself a\n\u201chuman personality\u201d! The brain work which a woman employs in a\ncommercial concern bears witness to her individuality, but the brain\nwork which a large, well-managed household demands, does not. The woman\nphysician who delivers a mother expresses her \u201cpersonality,\u201d but the\nmother has put no \u201cpersonality\u201d into the feelings with which she has\nborne the child, the dreams with which she has consecrated it, the ideas\nin accordance with which she has educated it! The girl who has passed\nher examinations has proved herself a developed human being; but her\ngrandmother, who is now filled with the kindness and wisdom which she\nhas won in a life dedicated to domestic duties, a life in which the\nrestricted sphere of her duties did not prevent the comprehensiveness of\nher cultural interests, nor her all-embracing sympathy with\nhumanity\u2014such a woman is not a personality!\n\nWhen men advance as an argument against women\u2019s rights the fear that\nwomen will lose their womanliness in public life, the older feminists\nanswer that womanliness, especially motherliness, is rooted too firmly\nin nature to make it possible for this danger to exist. Nothing has,\nhowever, become more clear in this amaternalistic time than that\nmotherliness is _not_ an indestructible instinct. Just as our time\nproduces in increasing numbers sterile women and women incapable of\nnursing their children, so it produces more and more psychically\namaternal women. We can pass in silence the cases of children martyred\nin families or in children\u2019s homes, for sexual perversity and religious\nfanaticism often play a r\u00f4le in such connections; we can also pass by\nthe millions of mothers who bring about the abortion of their offspring,\nfor the poor are driven to such practices largely by necessity, the rich\nmostly by love of pleasure. There still remain a sufficient number of\nwomen in whom the mother instinct has faded away because of a course of\nthought like that just described. Our time furnishes manifold proofs of\nthe fact that the mother instinct can easily be weakened, or even\nentirely disappear, although the erotic impulse continues to live; that\nmotherliness is not a spontaneous natural instinct, but the product of\nthousands of years not merely of _child-bearing_, but also of\n_child-rearing_; and that it must be strengthened in each new generation\nby the personal care which mothers bestow upon their children. A woman\nlearns to love the strange child whom she nurses as if it were her own;\na father who can devote himself to the care of his little children is\npossessed by an almost \u201cmotherly tenderness\u201d for them, as are also older\nbrothers and sisters for the little ones whom they care for. But while\nthose who advocate the cause of the amaternal women draw from such facts\nthe conclusion that motherliness cannot be used as a criterion of\nwomanliness, yet an entirely different conclusion forces itself upon\neveryone who sees in the united uplift of the individual and of mankind\nthe criterion of the life-enhancing effect of the woman movement, the\nconclusion that the amaternal soul not only confirms the worst\napprehensions of men in regard to the results of the woman movement, but\nalso constitutes the greatest danger to the woman movement itself. For\nthe amaternal ideas will evoke a violent reaction _on the part of men_,\nin case such a reaction does not appear at an early stage on the part of\nwomen.\n\nThis latter reaction might also include a rebellion against the methods\nof industrial production, which exhaust the strength of mothers and\nchildren. For the objection of industrialism, that \u201cit cannot exist\nwithout women,\u201d falls to the ground in face of the fact that a race\ncannot exist without sound and moral mothers. And \u201cmoral\u201d means, here,\nmothers capable and willing to bear sound children and to train children\nalong moral lines. If, on the contrary, Europe and America adhere to the\neconomic and ethical principles which prevent a number of able and\nwilling women of this type from becoming mothers, and if numbers of\nother women who could be mothers continue unwilling to assume the burden\nof motherhood, then this problem will finally become the problem of _a\nfuture for the European-American people_.\n\nThe woman movement must now with resolute determination abandon the\nnarrow, biased attitude, psychologically natural a generation ago when\nthe zealots of feminism had no other standard of value for an idea, an\ninvestigation, or a book, than whether they _advanced or did not\nadvance_ the cause of woman; whether they _proved or did not prove_\nwoman\u2019s equality with man. For woman\u2019s work, studies, and other\naccomplishments, no other standard was applied than that of equality\nwith man\u2019s work, man\u2019s studies, and the accomplishments of man. In a\nword, the proposition was that woman should be enabled to perform at the\nsame time the life-work of a woman and of a man!\n\nIt is through these hybrids that the feminine sex transgresses against\nthe masculine. And this is one reason why our time is so filled with the\ntragic vicissitudes of women. Truly, every progressive person must agree\nwith Goethe\u2019s aphorism, \u201cI love him whom the impossible lures.\u201d For,\nthus allured, man has elevated his particular generation above the\ngeneration preceding. But _in action_ every one must go down who is not\nimbued with the consciousness that whoever exceeds his limits is liable\nto tragic consequences, in the modern psychological view of the guilt\nattaching to one who undertakes more than his strength will allow.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut our time exhibits also other less convulsively strained conditions\nof the feminine soul and therefore also brighter fates for woman. It\nshows not infrequently wives united with their husbands, not only by the\nsympathy which the human personality of each inspires, but also by the\nerotic attraction which the sex character of each exercises. And they\nhave both won thereby that unity through which all the best and highest\npowers of their being are liberated and elevated as by religion. And\ntheir parenthood will then be the highest expression of this religion.\n\nOnly religious natures are\u2014in the deepest meaning of the word\u2014loving or\nfaithful or creative. It is the same soul which in one person reveals\nitself in ecstasy of belief, in a second in ardour of creation, in a\nthird in a great erotic passion, in the fourth as parental love, in\nothers again as love of country, as enthusiasm for freedom, desire for\nreform. At times one and the same soul, a woman\u2019s or a man\u2019s, is kindled\nby all these passions. But never has the same soul been able _at the\nsame time_ to feed all these passions in their highest potency. Whether\nit be God, a work, or a human being that the soul embraces with its\nentire devotion, the religious character of this devotion always evinces\nitself in increasing longing, an endless susceptibility, a more\npersistent search after means of expression, a continual service, an\ninexhaustible patience in waiting for reciprocal activity from the\nobject of love. The religious strength of a feeling consists in this,\nthat the soul in every work, every sorrow, every joy,\u2014in a word, in\nevery spiritual condition, every experience,\u2014is, consciously as well as\nunconsciously, more closely united with God, with the work, with the\nbeloved, until every finest fibre of one\u2019s being reaches down to the\nprofound depths which the object of love represents for the lover.\n\nIn this necessary condition of concentration of the spiritual life is\nfound the truth of woman\u2019s complaint that the man, absorbed by his work,\n\u201cno longer loves her\u201d; the truth of the experience that earthly love\nindisputably detracts from the love of God; the truth of the frequent\nexperience of husband and wife that with children the wealth of their\nspiritual life together is in certain respects inevitably diminished;\nthe truth of man\u2019s fear that woman\u2019s absorption in a life-work\npersonally dear to her must to a certain degree detract from her\ndevotion to the home; the truth of the experience that the office of\nmother often interferes with the development of woman\u2019s intellectual\npower.\n\nOnly persons who distinguish themselves by what Heine called \u201cexuberance\nof mental poverty,\u201d or what I might call analogously an \u201cabyss of\nsuperficiality,\u201d have not experienced the severe and beautiful psychic\ntruth of Jesus\u2019 glorification of _simplicity_. The quiet harkening to\nthe voice of God or to the inspiration of work or to the delicate\nvibrations of another soul, which daily, hourly, momentarily, are the\nconditions that enable the soul to live wholly in its belief, its work,\nits love, so that these feelings may grow stronger and the soul grow\ngreater through these feelings\u2014all this has \u201csimplicity\u201d as a condition;\nin a word, symmetrical unity, longing for completeness, inner poise, the\nswift emotion. Fidelity\u2014to a belief, a work, a love\u2014is no product of\nduty. It is a process of growth.\n\nThese are the conditions to which many modern women, womanly at heart\nbut divided, restless, groping, attempting much, will not submit. They\ncould even learn to reverence these conditions in the child for whom\nplay is such sacred seriousness; but instead they transform the most\nsacred earnest into play.\n\nOther women, on the contrary, are beginning to understand these\nconditions of growth and to comprehend that it was exactly the protected\nposition of woman in the home, which has made it possible for her family\nfeeling to acquire that depth which is to be attained only by\nconcentration. But if this is no longer possible, then woman will love\nthose that belong to her with less religious warmth. Nothing can better\nillustrate the difference still existing between man and woman in this\nrespect, than the fact that most men would consider themselves\nunfortunate if their entire exercise of power were concentrated upon the\nfamily, while most women still feel themselves fortunate when they have\nbeen given the opportunity to exercise to the uttermost the tendency\ninherent in them. For most women love best _personally_ and _in\npropinquity_, while the potency of love in man often seeks distant\ngoals. Woman is happy in the degree to which she can bestow her love\nupon a person closely connected with her; if she cannot do that, then\nshe may be useful, resigned, content, but never happy.[11] The very fact\nthat woman\u2019s strongest _primitive instinct_ coincided with her\n_greatest_ cultural _office_ has been an essential factor in the harmony\nof her being.\n\nThe modern developed mother feels with every breath a grateful joy in\nthat she lives the most perfect life when she can contribute her\ndeveloped human powers, her liberated human personality, to the\nestablishment of a home and to the vocation of motherhood. These\nfunctions conceived and understood as social, in the embracing sense in\nwhich the word is now used, give the new mother a richer opportunity to\nexercise her entire personality than she could find in modern commercial\nwork. In one such occupation she must suppress either the intellectual\nor the emotional side of her nature; in another, the life either of the\nimagination or of the will. In domestic duties, on the contrary, these\npowers of the soul can work in unison. This is undoubtedly the deepest\nreason why, taken as a whole, women have become more harmonious, and men\nstronger in any special crisis, women more soulful, men more gifted. On\nthis account men offer their great sacrifice more readily for an idea,\nor for the accomplishment of a work; women, for persons closely\nconnected with them. And yet this co-operation of woman\u2019s spiritual\npowers was in earlier times partly repressed by man\u2019s demand for\npassivity on the part of woman as a thinking and willing personality,\nbut for her unceasing activity as promoter of his comfort and that of\nthe entire home. The mother of to-day can, on the contrary, exercise, as\ndistributer, her culture, her thought, her supervision, her judgment,\nand her criticism, in order to make fully effective the faculty of her\nsex for foresight and organisation. She applies a great amount of\nspiritual energy to the selection of the essentials and the\nsubordination of secondary things, to the creation of such facilities in\nthe material work that time and means are left for the spiritual values,\nwhich, alas, are still neglected in the domestic economy of small,\nprivate households, as well as in national housekeeping. And as mother,\nmodern woman is offered the first fitting opportunity to assert herself\nas a thinking and willing personality.\n\nThe significance of the vocation of mother has been underrated in its\nsignificance even by moderate feminists. But these were right when they\ndemonstrated that the \u201csanctity\u201d of this office had become a mere\nphrase, so badly or amateurishly was this vocation fulfilled\u2014an\nindictment in which Nietzsche and feminism for one rare moment are on\ncommon ground. Mothers needed the spur of this contempt; it was\nnecessary that their feeling of responsibility, their universal human\nculture, their personal self-reliance, should be aroused by the woman\nmovement. Only so could the new generation acquire the new type of women\nwho for the present seek to qualify themselves by self-culture for the\noffice of mother, in the expectation that for all women an obligatory\neducation for motherhood will be realised. So long as this vocation\n_can_ be practised without any training, nothing can be known of the\npossibilities whereby ordinary mothers may become good educators\u2014unless\nthey place the mother love and the intuitive understanding of the nature\nof the child that it affords above even the best outside teachers. Just\nas a glorious voice makes a country girl a \u201cnatural singer,\u201d so nature\nhas at all times made certain mothers\u2014and not least the women of the\npeople\u2014natural educators of children.\n\nThe biography of nearly every great man shows the place the mother\nthrough her personality occupied in the life of her son, the atmosphere\nwhich she diffused about her in the home, her direct and indirect\ninfluence. But only the culture of their natural gifts with conscious\npurpose will make of mothers artists.\n\nWhen Nietzsche wrote: \u201c_There will come a time when we shall have no\nother thought than education_,\u201d and when he placed this education\nspecifically in the hands of mothers, least of all did he mean those\n\u201carts of education,\u201d from which amaternals believe they \u201cguard\u201d children\nby rejecting an \u201cartistically creative\u201d home training by the mother, as\na violence to the peculiar characteristic of the child!\n\nThe _new mother_, as the doctrine of evolution and the true woman\nmovement have created her, stands with deep veneration before the mystic\ndepths she calls her child, a being in whom the whole life of mankind is\ngarnered. The richer the nature of the child is, the more zealously she\nendeavours to preserve for him that simplicity which he needs, and at\nthe same time to provide for him the material that will enable him to\nwork for himself. She insures to the child the pleasures adapted to his\nage, pleasures which at no later time can be enjoyed so intensely. The\neffect upon him of his playfellows and books, of nature, art, music,\nconversation, of the entire home _milieu_ which the child receives,\nabove all the influence of the personality and interests of the father\nand mother\u2014all these the mother who is an artist in education observes\nin order to learn the natural proclivity of the child and then _directly\nto strengthen and encourage_ it. At the same time she endeavours to find\nout what _restraints_ are necessary _in order that the natural bent be\nnot impeded in its growth by secondary qualities_. But the new type of\nmother does not seek to _eradicate_; she recognises the likeness between\nwheat and tares. The Christian education, which has thus far prevailed,\nhas exercised a restraining oppression or has done violence to the\n\u201csinful nature,\u201d which must be broken and bent; this education was\ndermatological, not psychological, in method.\n\nThe new mother is especially characterised by the fact that she has\nrejected this earlier method. She allows her child, within certain\nbounds, full freedom, and demands, beyond those bounds, unconditional\nobedience. She helps the child to find for himself ever nobler motives\nfor repression. This she can do because from the very beginning she has\ntaken care of him; year by year she has persevered in the effort to\nestablish good habits; she has tried to enlist as aids, food, bath, bed,\ndress, air, and play in the effort to keep him strong, sound, sexually\npure\u2014conditions fundamental to the whole later conduct of life. Such a\nmethodical physical care _can_ be performed by the mother herself,\nwhile, on the other hand, in the first years of childhood paid hands\nmight, through carelessness, stupidity, cruelty, laxity, or\nover-indulgence, destroy the glorious possibilities. If the prevention\nof _the possibilities of nature being warped or destroyed_ constituted\nall that a mother could give, this one task would, nevertheless, be more\nimportant than any social relief work.\n\nWhat characterises the new mother is that she understands the enormous\nsignificance of the _first years_, when the indispensable \u201ctraining\u201d\ntakes place, in which the future life of the child is determined by the\nmethods employed\u2014whether they be those of torture or of culture,\nirrational or rational. Then the great problem must be solved of\nestablishing willing obedience from within in place of the hitherto\n_enforced_ obedience from without; of maintaining self-control, won by\nself, in place of self-control _imposed_ from without; of evoking\nvoluntary renunciation in place of enforcing renunciation. For the\ncapacity for obedience, for self-control, for renunciation, is one of\nthe qualities fundamental to the whole later conduct of life. The new\nmother knows this as well as the mother of former times. But she\nendeavours to create this capacity by slow and sure means. The same\nthing obtains in regard to physical and psychical courage, which in the\nearly years can often be so demoralised by fright that it can never\nemerge again. The training which hitherto was customary\u2014based on\n_compelling_ and _forbidding_\u2014had its effect only upon the surface and\n_prevented_ the child from experiencing _the results of his own choice_.\n\nIt is this _indirect_ education by results which is the new mother\u2019s\nmethod. Her unceasing vigilance and consistency are required in order\nthat the child shall actually bear the results of his actions. What she\nneeds for this is first and foremost, _time, time_, and again _time_.\nApparently good effects can be obtained much quicker by intervening,\npreventing, punishing, but thus are turned aside the _real_ results. By\nthis method the child is deprived of the _inner_ growth, which only the\nfully experienced reality with its components of bitter and sweet can\ngive; and this growth the new mother endeavours to advance. Much more\ntime still is necessary to play the psychological game of chess, which\nconsists in the checkmating of black by white; in other words, the\nconquest of negative characteristics by positive, through the child\u2019s\nown activity\u2014a task in which the child at first must be guided, just as\nin the assimilation of the elements of every other accomplishment, but\nin which he can later perfect himself. Modern investigation in the realm\nof the soul enables us to see the dangers which sometime will demand\nquite as new methods in spiritual hygiene as bacteriology has created in\nthe hygiene of the body. But we still leave unexercised powers of the\nsoul, still misunderstand spiritual laws which sometime will radically\ntransform the means of education. At some future day the new mothers\nwill institute legal protection for children to an extent\nincomprehensible to us and therefore provocative only of smiles. For\nexample, legal prohibition of corporal punishment by parents as well as\nteachers; legal prohibition of child labour, of certain tenement\nconditions, certain \u201camusements,\u201d certain improper uses of the press.\nFor the present every individual educator must _set these laws over\nhimself_; must sedulously create counter influences to cope with the\ndestructive influences which great cities, especially, exert upon\nchildren.[12] The new mothers lead children out into nature and\nendeavour to satisfy their zeal for activity by appropriate tasks as\nwell as to encourage by suitable means their love of invention and their\nimpulse for play. In the country children provide much for themselves.\nBut what both city and country children need is a mother familiar with\nnature, who can answer the questions which the child is by his own\nobservations prompted to ask; and the number of such mothers is\ncontinually increasing. Both city and country children need also a\nmother who can tell stories. Just as the settlement gardens most clearly\ndemonstrate how sundered the working people of the great cities are from\nnature, so the \u201cstory evenings,\u201d which are now established for children,\nshow how far children have been permitted to stray from the mother, who\nformerly gathered them about her for the hour of story, play, and song.\nWhat, finally, children need is the mother\u2019s delicate revelation of the\nsexual \u201cmystery,\u201d which often early exercises the thoughts of the child\nand in which he should be initiated quietly and gradually by the mother.\n\nAll the educational influences here outlined emanate not only from the\nenlightened, exceptional mother; they are exercised by the average\nmother of to-day to better advantage than by the spiritually significant\nmother of fifty years ago. And they are _quite as essential_, in order\nthat the highest possibility within the reach of each may be attained,\nin the education of the genius as in that of the ordinary child. Such\ninfluences in like degree strengthen the innate bent of the genius and\nraise the average, from generation to generation, to a level where man\ncan live according to higher standards than those of the present time.\nThe new mothers understand that for the utilisation of all these\nopportunities that make their appearance in the first seven years of the\nchild\u2019s life, their motherly tenderness, gentleness, and patience do not\nsuffice; that they need in addition all the intelligence, imagination,\nfine feeling, scientific methods of observation, ethical and \u00e6sthetic\nculture and other spiritual acquisitions they possess, as direct and\nindirect fruits of the woman movement.\n\nWhen student and comrade life begin to claim the children, when the\ninfluence of the mother\u2014that is of the new mother who has respect for\nthe peculiar characteristic, the human worth, and the right of the child\nto live his own life\u2014becomes more indirect, she nevertheless bears in\nmind that it is of the utmost importance that the son and the daughter\nshould _find the mother_, when they return to the parental roof; that\nthey should be able to breathe there an atmosphere of peace and warmth;\nthat they should find the attentive eye, the listening ear, the helpful\nhand; that the mother should have the repose, the fine feeling, the\nobservation requisite for following, without interfering with, the\nconflicts of youth; that she should not demand confidences but be always\nat hand to receive them; that she should show vital sympathy for the\nplans of work, the disappointments, the joys, of the young people; that\nshe should always have time for caresses, tears, smiles, comfort, and\ncare; that she should divine their moods, and anticipate their desires.\nBy all these means the mother perpetuates in the soul of the child,\nunknown to him and to herself, her own personality. The talent which she\nhas not redeemed by a productive work of her own, perhaps often for that\nvery reason, benefits mankind in a son or a daughter, in whose soul the\nmother has implanted the social ideas, the dreams, the rebellion, which\nlater become in them social deeds or works of art. Above all, in the\nrestless, sensitive, life-deciding years when the boy is becoming a\nyouth and the little girl a maiden, the mother needs quiet and leisure\nto be able to give the ineffably needy children \u201cthe hoarded, secret\ntreasure of her heart,\u201d as the beautiful saying of D\u00fcrer runs.\n\nWhen such a mother is found, and such mothers are already found, she is\nthe most splendid fruit of the woman movement\u2019s sowing upon the field of\nwoman\u2019s nature.\n\nBecause the new mother created for herself an open space about her own\npersonality, she understands her son or her daughter when they in their\nturn push her aside in order to create that same open space about\nthemselves. For in every generation the young renounce the ideals and\nthe aims of their parents. The knowledge of this does not prevent the\nnew mother, any more than it did the mother of earlier times, from\nfeeling the pain incident to being set aside. But the former looks\nforward to a day when the son and daughter will freely choose her as a\nfriend, having discovered what a significant pleasure the mother\u2019s\npersonality can afford them.\n\nAs the bird\u2019s nest is made of nothing but bits of straw and down, so the\nfeeling of home is fashioned out of soft, simple things; out of little\nactivities that are neither ponderable nor measurable as political or as\neconomic factors. When Segantini painted the two nuns looking wistfully\ninto the bird\u2019s nest, he gave expression to the deepest pain that many\nmodern women experience, the pain resulting from the consciousness that\ntheir life, notwithstanding its freedom, is lonely, because it has\ndenied them the privilege of making a home and as a consequence has\nfailed to afford them the joy of creation, which nature intended they\nshould have, and of continuity of life in children to whom they gave\nbirth.\n\nHere we stand at a point where the woman movement parallels the other\nsocial revolutions, undeviatingly as the rails of a track, and leads to\nthe same objective. Modern men and women, and especially women, have\nforfeited an opportunity for happiness in the loss of the feeling of\nhomogeneity and security. Just as formerly the property-holding family\nfelt a secure sense of proprietorship in the ancestral estate, so every\nmember of the home group felt himself safe in the family. Now the\nchildren cannot depend with certainty upon the parents, nor the parents\nupon the children; the wife upon the husband, nor the husband upon the\nwife. Each in extremity relies only upon himself. The character of man\nis thus altered quite as much as trees are changed when they are left\nstanding alone in the denuded forest of which they once formed a part.\nIf they can withstand the storms, they have produced more \u201ccharacter\u201d\nthan they had when they stood close together, under a mutual protection\nthat nevertheless enforced uniformity.\n\nFrom their earliest youth innumerable women must now care for\nthemselves, as well as decide for themselves. Thus the feeling of\nindependence of modern woman has increased through the sacrifice of her\npeace; her individual characteristics, at the expense of her harmony.\nHer feeling of loneliness is mitigated to a certain degree by the\ngrowing feeling of community with the whole. But this feeling cannot\ncompensate certain natures for the forfeiture of the advantages which\nwomen of earlier times possessed, when they sat secure and protected\nwithin the four walls of the home, sucked the juice from family\nchronicles, guarded family traditions, maintained the old holiday\ncustoms, lived at the same time in the past and in the present.\n\nThe new woman lives in the present, sometimes even in the future\u2014her\nland of romance! The enthusiasm of the old romanticism about a \u201chut and\na heart\u201d has little charm for her. For she knows reality and that\nprevents her from giving credence to the feminine illusion that twice\ntwo can be five. What she does know, on the contrary, is that out of\nfours she can gradually work out sixteen. While the women of former\ntimes could only save, the new woman can acquire. Woman\u2019s beautiful,\nfoolish superstition regarding life has vanished, but her eagerness to\nachieve can still remove mountains, her daring has still often the\nsplendour of a dream. Intellectual values are for her no longer pastimes\nbut necessities of life; with her culture has developed her feeling for\ntruth and justice. This does not secure the new woman immunity at all\ntimes from new illusions and errors of feeling, nor does it prevent her\ndeveloping passions whose value, to say the least, is questionable. But\nin and through her determination \u201cto be some one,\u201d to have a\ncharacteristic personality, she has acquired a love of life, in its\ndiverse manifestations, both good and evil; a new capacity to enjoy her\nown and others\u2019 individuality, as well as a new joy\u2014sometimes an\nunblushing, insolent joy\u2014in expressing her own being. In place of the\nearlier resignation toward society, the expression of rebellion is found\neven in the sparkling eye of the school-girl, with red cap upon her\ncurly hair.\n\nThe young women of to-day, married or single, mothers as well as those\nwho are childless, are still more vigorous in soul, more courageous,\nmore eager for life than are men. Because all that which for men has so\nlong been a matter of course, is for women new, rich, enchanting,\ncomprising, as it does, free life in nature, scientific studies, serious\nartistic work economic independence. Even in a fine and soulful woman\nthere is found something of the inevitable hardness toward herself and\nothers of which an observer is instinctively conscious when he speaks of\nsome woman as one who \u201cwill go far\u201d upon the course she has chosen. The\nmodern young woman desires above all else the elevation of her own\npersonality. She experiences the same feeling of joy a man is conscious\nof when she realises that her strength of will is augmented, her ability\nbecoming more certain, her depth of thought greater, her association of\nideas richer. She stands ready to choose _her_ work and follow _her_\nfate; in sorrow as in joy she experiences the blessedness of growth, and\nshe loves her view of life and the work to which she has dedicated\nherself, often as devotedly as man loves his.\n\nIf we compare the seventeen-year-old girl of to-day with her progenitor\nliving in the middle of the foregoing century, we find that the girl of\nearlier times was to a larger extent swayed by feeling, and that the\nmodern girl is to a larger extent determined by ideas. The former was\ndirected more to the centre of life, the latter remains often nearer the\nperiphery; the former was warmer, the latter is more intelligent; the\nformer was better balanced, the latter is more interesting.\n\nThe restlessness, the uncertainty, the feeling of emptiness, the\nsuffering, that is sometimes experienced by the young woman of to-day,\nis primarily traceable to the disintegration of religious belief, which\ngave to the older generation of emancipated women an inner stability,\nresignation, and self-discipline. Scientific study has deprived many\nmodern women of their belief and those who can create a new one, suited\nto their needs, are still very few. Thus to the outer homelessness an\ninner estrangement is added. The woman movement has, it is true,\ncontributed indirectly to this spiritual distress by making the road to\nman\u2019s culture accessible to woman. For men also suffer in like manner,\nand suffer above all perhaps because our culture is unstable, aimless,\nand lacks style, owing to the very fact that it is at present without a\nreligious centre. And even the future can give to mankind no such new\ncentre as the Middle Ages had, for example, in Catholicism. The\nattainment of individualism has shut out that possibility forever.\n\nBut _one_ factor in the religion of the past, the adoration of\nmotherhood as divine mystery; _one_ factor in the religion of the Middle\nAges, the worship of the Madonna, has meanwhile been given back to the\npresent by the doctrine of evolution, with that universal validity which\nthe thought must possess which seeks to give again to culture a centre.\nGreat, solitary individuals\u2014prophets more often than sibyls\u2014have\nproclaimed the religion of this generation. But the word will become\nflesh only when fathers and mothers instil into the blood and soul of\nchildren their devout hope for a higher humanity. When women are\npermeated by this hope, this new devout feeling, then they will recover\nthe piety, the peace, and the harmony which for the present, and partly\nowing to feminism, have been lost.\n\nThe innumerable new relations which the woman movement has established\nbetween woman and the home, between woman and society, and all of the\ninterchanges of new spiritual forces which have been put in operation\nbecause of these relations, cannot possibly take fixed form, at least\nnot so long as the woman movement remains \u201ca movement\u201d; in other words,\nas long as everything is in a condition of flux, in a state of becoming,\nall spiritual relationships between individuals must change their form.\nContinual new, fine shades of feeling, not to be expressed in words,\ndetermine every woman\u2019s soul and every woman\u2019s fate. And even ancient\nfeelings receive continually different nuances, different intonations. I\nam, therefore, laying down no laws but merely recapitulating certain\nsuggestions based on what has previously been said in regard to the soul\nof the modern woman, as seen in that portion of the present generation\nwhose age ranges between twenty and thirty years\u2014that is to say, that\npart of the generation which is decisive for the immediate future.\n\nSince co-education is becoming more and more general, each sex is\nbeginning to have more esteem for the other, and woman, as well as man,\nis beginning to found self-respect upon work. When all women by culture\nand capacity for work have finally become strong-willed, self-supporting\nco-workers in society, then no woman will give or receive love for any\nextraneous benefit whatsoever. No outward tie and no outward gain\nthrough love\u2014this is the ultimate aim of the new sex morale as the most\nhighly developed modern young woman sees it.\n\nThe new woman is deeply convinced that the relation between the sexes\nattains its true beauty and sanctity only when every external privilege\ndisappears on both sides, when man and woman stand wholly equal in what\nconcerns their legal right and their personal freedom.\n\nShe demands that the contrasts between legal and illegal, rich and poor,\nboy and girl, shall disappear, and that society shall show the same\ninterest in the complete human development of all children. She knows\nthat when both sexes awake to a feeling of responsibility toward the\nfuture generation, then the real concern of sexual morale becomes the\nendeavor to give the race an ever more perfect progeny. And in order to\nfeel in its fulness this command, maidens as well as youths must\nhenceforth demand scientific instruction in sexual duties toward\nthemselves and their possible children.\n\nThe new woman is also deeply convinced that only when she feels\nhappy\u2014and happiness signifies the development of the powers inherent in\nthe personality\u2014can she properly fulfil her duties as daughter, wife,\nand mother. She can consciously sacrifice a part of her personality, for\nexample forego the development of a talent, but she can never subjugate\nnor surrender her whole personality and at the same time remain a\nstrong-willed member of the family or of society, in the broadest\nmeaning of the word. She must assert her conception of life, her feeling\nof right, her ideals. And no social considerations for children,\nhusband, or family life are, for her, above the consideration which, in\nthis respect, she owes to her own personality. When conflicts arise, she\nseeks, wherever possible, a solution that will permit her to fulfil her\nduty without annihilating herself. But if this is not possible, then she\nfeels that it is her first duty not to fall below her ideal, either\nphysically or spiritually. For this would prevent her from fulfilling\nprecisely those duties for which she has so sacrificed herself; duties\nwhich she can perhaps perform later under other conditions, provided she\nhas saved herself from being extinguished by brutality or despotism.\n\nBut along with this individualism there exists in the new woman a\nfeeling for the unity of existence, the unity in which all things are\nparts and in which nothing is lost. She does not, then, look upon\nhusband and children as continually demanding sacrifice and upon herself\nas being always sacrificed; she sees herself and them, as in the\nantiquity of the race, always existing _by means of one another_. She is\nnot consumed by her love, for she knows that under such circumstances\nshe would deprive her loved ones of the wealth of her personality. But\nalthough she will not, like the women of earlier times, abandon her ego\n_absolutely_, she will not, on the other hand, like certain modern\nfeminists, keep it _unreservedly_. She will preserve upon a higher plane\nthe old division of labour which made man the one who felled the game,\nfought the battles, made conquests, achieved advancement through\nvictories; and which made woman the one who rendered the new domains\nhabitable, who utilised the booty for herself and hers, who transmitted\nwhat was won to the new generation\u2014all that of which woman\u2019s ancient\ntasks as guardian of the fire and cultivator of the fields are beautiful\nsymbols. She feels that when each sex pursues its course for the\nhappiness of the individual and of mankind, but at the same time and as\nan equal helps the other in the different tasks, then each is most\ncapable, then society is most benefited.\n\nThe fact that there is still so much masculine brutality and despotism,\nand that there are so many legal means at man\u2019s disposal whereby he may\nput into practice with impunity this brutality and despotism, is the\nreason why the new woman is still always a \u201cfeminist,\u201d why she still\nmaintains the fundamental tenets of the woman movement. But she is not a\nfeminist in the sense that she turns _against_ man. Her solution is\nalways that of Mary Wollstonecraft: \u201cWe do not desire to rule over men\nbut to rule over ourselves.\u201d She often exhibits now in deliberation and\nin determination the characteristics which were formerly called\n\u201cmasculine\u201d: practical knowledge, love of truth, courage of conviction;\nshe desists more and more from unjust imputations and empty words; she\nproposes a greater number of well-considered suggestions for\nimprovements. The woman movement has now in a word a more universally\nhuman, a less one-sidedly feminine character. It emphasises more and\nmore the fact that the right of woman is a necessity in order that she\nmay fulfil her duties in the small, individual family, and exercise her\npowers in the great, universal human family for the general good. The\nnew woman does not wish to displace man nor to abolish society. She\nwishes to be able to exercise _everywhere_ her most beautiful\nprerogative to help, to support, to comfort. But this she cannot do so\nlong as she is not free as a citizen and has not fully developed as a\nhuman personality. She knows that this is the condition not only of her\nown happiness, but also, in quite as high a degree, of the happiness of\nman. For every man who works, struggles, and suffers there is a mother,\na wife, a sister, a daughter, who suffers with him. For every woman who\nin her way works and struggles, there is a father, a husband, a brother,\nor a son for whom her contribution directly or indirectly has\nsignificance. Above all, the modern woman understands that in every\nmarriage wherein a wife still suffers under man\u2019s misuse of his legal\nauthority, it is in the last analysis _the man who sustains the greatest\ninjury_, for under present conditions he needs exercise neither kindness\nnor justice nor intelligence to be ruler in the family. These humane\ncharacteristics he must, therefore, begin to develop when the wife is\nlegally his equal.\n\nThe sacred conviction of the new woman is that man and woman _rise\ntogether_, just as they _sink together_.\n\nThe antique sepulchres, on which man and wife stand hand in hand before\nthe eternal farewell, could quite as well be the symbol of the entrance\nof modern man and modern woman into the new life, where they work\ntogether in order that the highest ideals of both\u2014the ideals of justice\nand of human kindness\u2014may assume form in reality. The motherly qualities\nof women are applied for the good of children as well as of the weak and\nthe suffering. The arrival of the day when woman shall be given\nopportunity to exercise social motherliness in its full and popularly\nrepresentative extent, can be only a question of time. In a century they\nwill smile at our time, in which it was still the practice to debate\nabout such obvious matters. And those who to-day ridicule the woman\nmovement will be ridiculed most of all.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThen we shall attain such an outlook on the great forces of the\ntime,\u2014the emancipation movements of labouring men and of women,\u2014that we\nshall see how necessary both were in order that society should come to\nunderstand that not the mass of material production, but the higher\ncultivation of the race is the social-political end, and that for this\nend the _service of mother_ must receive the honour and oblation that\nthe state now gives to _military service_.\n\nAnd women themselves, whom nature has made creators and protectors of\nthe tender life\u2014the task for which nature even in the plant world has\nmade such wonderful provision\u2014will no longer resist being more\nintimately associated with nature, nearer to earth, more like plants,\nmore restrained in outer sense and therefore, in inner respects, less\nactive than man, who always had more of the freedom of movement of the\nforest animal. The woman of the future will not, as do many women of the\npresent time, _wish to be freed from her sex_; but she will be freed\nfrom sexual hypertrophy, freed to _complete humanity_. For the\nuniversal, human characteristics, forced to _remain latent_ in the\nprimitive division of labour, because the father was obliged to exert\nall his strength in one direction and the mother in another, can now,\nthrough the facilities for culture in the struggle for existence, be\ndeveloped on both sides: woman can develop the latent quality which\nbecame active in man as \u201cmanliness\u201d; man can develop the latent quality\nwhich became active in woman as \u201cwomanliness.\u201d But the _proportional\nratio_ of these characteristics, which development has already\nstrengthened, will _on the whole_ remain fixed\u2014the proportional ratio\nwhich, in the progress of evolution, gave to woman the ascendency in\nregard to inward creative powers, and to man the ascendency in regard to\noutward creative powers\u2014a proportional ratio which for the present has\nmade woman more gifted in the sphere of feeling, man more potent in the\nsphere of ideas; which has made her the listener and yearner in the\nsphere of the spiritual life, and him the pioneer investigator and\nfounder of systems, that has given her more of the Christian, and him\nmore of the pagan virtues. The improvement of the universal, human\ncharacteristics of both sexes elevates also the plane upon which they\nexercise their especial functions, valuable alike for culture. With\nincreasing frequency the one sex may, when so desired, assume the\nculture function of the other.\n\nA perfect fusion of the two spiritual sex-characters would, on the\ncontrary, have the same result as physical hermaphroditism\u2014sterility.\nGenius\u2014and in using the term we limit its meaning to poetic genius, for\nreal feminine genius has thus far appeared only in that domain\u2014embraces,\nas emphasised above, both man and woman, but not harmoniously blended.\nFor such a genius would be unproductive, as we imagine those celestial\nforms to be which are neither \u201cman nor woman.\u201d The masculine and the\nfeminine characteristics, which exist side by side in the poet soul,\nproduce work in co-operation. Alternately, however, they seek to usurp\nthe entire power, whereby is occasioned the disharmony which enters into\nthe life of those who endeavour to fulfil at one and the same time the\nuniversal, human duties as well as those of sex. Indeed it may be that\none of the reasons why great poetic geniuses, masculine as well as\nfeminine, have often had no progeny at all, and in other cases one of\nlittle significance, is that their nature was not capable of a double\nproduction, that poetic creation received the richest part of their\nphysical and psychical power.\n\nWhether the opinion of genius expressed here is correct or not, does\nnot, however, affect the general situation. For the genius will always\ngo his own way, which is never that of the average man. From the point\nof view of the ordinary individual an effacement of the spiritual sex\ncharacter would be in still higher degree a misfortune for culture and\nnature. For it is the difference in the spiritual as well as in the\nphysical sex-characteristics that makes love a fusion of two beings in a\nhigher unity, where each finds the full deliverance and harmony of his\nbeing. With the elimination of the _spiritual_ difference _psychical_\nlove would vanish. There would be left, then, upon the one side, only\nthe mating instinct, in which the same points of view as in animal\nbreeding must obtain; on the other, only the same kind of sympathy which\nis expressed in the friendship between persons of the same sex, the\nsympathy in which the human, individual difference instead of sexual\ndifference forms the attraction. In love, on the other hand, sympathy\ngrows in intensity, the more universally human and at the same time\nsexually attractive the individual is: the \u201cmanly\u201d in man is charmed by\nthe \u201cwomanly\u201d in woman, while the \u201cwomanly\u201d in man is likewise\ncaptivated by the \u201cmanly\u201d in woman, and _vice versa_. But when neither\nneeds the _spiritual sex_ of the other as his complement, then man, in\nerotic respects, returns to the antique conception of the sex\nrelationship, of which Plato has drawn the final logical conclusion.\n\nThe \u201chumanity\u201d in the soul of man was strengthened when he felt himself\nnecessary to mother and child. When woman by sweetness and tenderness\ntaught man to love, not only to desire, then his humanity increased\nimmeasurably.\n\nIn our time the average man is beginning to learn that woman does not\ndesire him as man, that she looks down upon him as a lower kind of\nbeing, that she does not need him as supporter. He does not at all grasp\nwhat it is the woman of highest culture seeks, demands, and awaits from\nhis sex. But he learns that even the mediocre woman rejects the best he\nhas to give her erotically; that imbued as she is with ideals of\n\u201cuniversal humanity,\u201d she no longer needs him as the supplement to her\nsexual being. Then brutality awakes in him anew; then his erotic life\nloses what humanity it had won; then he begins to hate woman. And not\nwith the imaginative, theoretical hatred of thinkers and poets; but with\nthe blind rage which the contempt of the weaker for the stronger arouses\nin him. And here we encounter what is, perhaps, the deepest reason for\nthe present war between the sexes, appearing already in the literary\nworld as well as in the labour market.\n\nHere the extreme feminists play unconsciously about an abyss,\u2014the\ndepths in the nature of man out of which the elementary,\nhundred-thousand-year-old impulses arise, the impulses which all\ncultural acquisitions and influences cannot eradicate, so long as the\nhuman race continues to subsist and multiply under present conditions.\n\nThe feminism which has driven individualism to the point where the\nindividual asserts her personality in opposition to, instead of within,\nthe race; the individualism which becomes self-concentration,\nanti-social egoism, although the watchword inscribed upon its banner is\n\u201cSociety instead of the family,\u201d\u2014this feminism will bear the blame\nshould the hatred referred to lead to war.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt would be a pity to conclude a survey of the influence of the woman\nmovement with an expression of fear lest this extreme feminism should be\nvictorious. I believe not; no more than I believe that the sun will for\nthe present be extinguished or streams flow back to their sources.\n\nNo \u201cculture\u201d can annul the great fundamental laws of nature; it can only\nennoble them; and motherhood is one of these fundamental laws. I hope\nthat the future will furnish a new and a more secure protection for\nmotherhood than the present family and social organisation affords. I\nplace my trust in a new society, with a new morality, which will be a\nsynthesis of the being of man and that of woman, of the demands of the\nindividual and those of society, of the pagan and Christian conceptions\nof life, of the will of the future and reverence for the past.\n\nWhen the earth blooms with this beautiful and vigorous flower of\nmorality, there will no longer be a woman movement. But there will\nalways be a woman question, not put by women to society but by society\nto women: the question whether they will continue in a higher degree to\nprove themselves worthy of the great privilege of being the mothers of\nthe new generation.\n\nIn the degree in which this new ethics permeates mankind, women will\nanswer this question in life-affirmation. And the result of their\nlife-affirmation will be an enormous enhancement of life, not only for\nwomen themselves but for all mankind.\n\n\n                                THE END\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 1:\n\n  In the summer of 1909 I sat in a Swedish home where the grandmother,\n  for this reason, had never learned to write but where the\n  granddaughter read aloud the thesis for her bachelor\u2019s examination.\n  One hears even to-day of customs and points of view in certain farms\n  and manses which faithfully imitate those of the time of the\n  Reformation.\n\nFootnote 2:\n\n  Next to the textile industry, the tobacco industry employs the most\n  women.\n\nFootnote 3:\n\n  This idealism has naturally part also in the fact that, for example,\n  two-thirds of the women who have gone through college in America do\n  not marry, and find in club life a compensation for domestic life. But\n  other motives also must often play a part here, from the desire to\n  devote herself entirely to one of the lifeworks serviceable to\n  mankind, to the egoism of spiritually barren young girls with its\n  distaste for burdens and restraint.\n\n  A keen-sighted observer who recently spent a half year in North\n  America corroborated what many have already stated: that the student\n  and working young American girls devote themselves with true passion\n  to the cultivation of their beauty, their toilette, their flirtations.\n  All this belongs for her to the \u201cFine Arts\u201d and as such is an end\n  sufficient in itself, while for European women these arts, as a rule,\n  are still means for alluring men to marriage. While study or work\n  often makes European women in outer sense less \u201cwomanly,\u201d although her\n  soul always guards its full power to love, in America the reverse is\n  the case: the outer appearance is bewitchingly womanly, but the soul\n  no longer vibrates for love. The sexual sterility which Maudsley\n  already prophesied thirty years ago, when he spoke about the \u201csexless\n  ants,\u201d has been partly realised, partly chosen voluntarily. In Europe\n  it still frequently happens that a young woman who has put love aside\n  for the sake of study or work is suddenly seized by an irresistible\n  passion; in America, on the contrary, this is extremely rare. Women\n  students look down upon the less cultured men, who ordinarily finish\n  their studies earlier in order to earn a livelihood. The sympathy\n  which they need, women find more easily in their own sex. The\n  unmarried have quite the same social position as the married and do\n  not desire children. If they finally marry, it is ordinarily because a\n  more brilliant position is offered them than the one which they could\n  create themselves, and the man is then considered and treated as a\n  money-getter.\n\n  My authority emphasises also that the young students or working girls\n  are ordinarily less original, of less personal significance, less\n  individually developed, than the older women, especially women\u2019s\n  rights women, who often have not studied but have grown grey in\n  marriage and motherhood, in self-development and in social work. The\n  interesting significant American feminists were women between the ages\n  of fifty and ninety; the woman of the present generation, however,\n  which now enjoys the fruits of the work of the older generation, is,\n  in spite of excellent scholarship and great working proficiency, less\n  a woman and less a human being, less a personality.\n\n  These wholly fresh observations, which were communicated to me during\n  the printing of my book, seem to me to confirm so strongly my point of\n  view that I wish to repeat them here.\n\n  But in France and elsewhere mothers tell us how clear, intelligent,\n  and universally interested their daughters are, and at the same time\n  how critical, how free from ardour and enthusiasm. It is not the hasty\n  love marriage that many mothers now fear for their daughters, but a\n  worldly-wise marriage without love.\n\nFootnote 4:\n\n  See _Love and Ethics_, Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chicago, and also\n  _Mutter und Kind_, published in Germany only, Pan-Verlag. My plan is a\n  paternity assessment upon society as a contribution to the maintenance\n  of children and a compensation of motherhood by the state.\n\n  Society has already shown by a series of institutions, maternity\n  assurance, infants\u2019 milk distribution, clothing and feeding of\n  children, and many kindred social efforts, that the maintenance\n  afforded by the father is not sufficient for the young generation;\n  quite as little is the mother\u2019s care, which is supplemented by other\n  means, cr\u00e8ches, etc. But when the _child_ finally becomes the\n  unconscious \u201chead of the family,\u201d then it will be the affair of\n  society to requite maternity. Marriage will then signify only the\n  living together of two people upon the ground of love and the common\n  parenthood of children. _Maternal right_ will _in law_ take the place\n  of _paternal right_, but _in reality_ the father will continue to\n  retain all the influence upon the children which he _personally_ is\n  able to exert, just as has been hitherto the case with the mother.\n\n  In such circumstances there will be no more illegitimate children; no\n  mothers driven out from the care of tender children to earn their\n  daily bread; no fathers who avoid their economic duties toward their\n  children, and who cannot be compelled by society to perform at least\n  that paternal duty which animals perform now better than men: that of\n  contributing their part to the maintenance of their progeny. There\n  will be no mothers who for the sake of their own and their children\u2019s\n  maintenance need to stay with a brutal man; no mothers who, in case of\n  a separation, can be deprived of their children on any ground except\n  that of their own unworthiness. In a word, society must\u2014upon a higher\n  plane\u2014restore the arrangement which is already found in the lower\n  stages of civilisation, the arrangement which nature herself created:\n  that mother and child are most closely bound together, that they\n  together, above all, form the family, in which the father enters\n  through the mother\u2019s or his own free will.\n\nFootnote 5:\n\n  An inquiry instituted among English women as to whether they would\n  prefer to be men or women gave as a result the fact that, out of about\n  7000 who answered, two-thirds wished to remain women and this above\n  all in order to be mothers, while a third wished to be men. This\n  indicated probably the highest figure of the disinclination for\n  maternity which such a _European_ inquiry could elicit. But even these\n  women who wish to marry and to become mothers feel the pressure of the\n  idea created by the zealots of the woman movement which finds\n  expression often in the following conversation between two former\n  schoolmates about a third: \u201cAnd A\u2014\u2014 what is she doing\n  now?\u201d\u2014\u201cNothing\u2014she is married and has children.\u201d\n\n  The old folk legend about the girl who trampled on the bread she was\n  carrying to her mother because she wished to go dry-shod, can serve as\n  symbol of many modern women zealots: life\u2019s great, sound values are\n  offered for the meal; vanity sits down alone to partake of them.\n\nFootnote 6:\n\n  Bret Harte, _The Luck of Roaring Camp_.\n\nFootnote 7:\n\n  E. Carri\u00e8re and Segantini.\n\nFootnote 8:\n\n  Max Kruse, _Liebesgruppe_.\n\nFootnote 9:\n\n  This amaternal idea is advanced with great ability in some works of\n  Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Rosa Mayreder. The word amaternal coined\n  by me is used to characterise the theory subsequently advanced,\n  because the word unmaternal (unmotherly) signifies a _spiritual\n  condition_, the antithesis to \u201cmotherliness.\u201d The maternal as opposed\n  to the amaternal theory is this: that a woman\u2019s life is lived most\n  intensively and most extensively, most individually and most socially;\n  she is for her own part most free, and for others most fruitful, most\n  egoistic and most altruistic, most receptive and most generous, in and\n  with the _physical and psychic exercise of the function of maternity,\n  because of the conscious desire, by means of this function, to uplift\n  the life of the race as well as her own life_.\n\nFootnote 10:\n\n  It can even be shown that, if man invades the so-called woman\u2019s\n  spheres (for example the art of cooking or of dress-making), it is\n  most frequently he who makes new discoveries and attains great\n  success!\n\nFootnote 11:\n\n  The best proof of this is that many women who, in a life free from\n  care in an outward sense, were comparable only to geese or peacocks,\n  nevertheless, when hard times came and gave them opportunity to\n  develop their power of love, not only proved themselves heroines, but\n  asserted that their \u201chappy\u201d years were those in which they had so\n  \u201csacrificed\u201d themselves.\n\nFootnote 12:\n\n  How many children have had their idea of right debased by the manner\n  in which the \u201cCaptain of K\u00f6pernick\u201d was received at his liberation\u2014to\n  cite only one example.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                         _A Selection from the\n                             Catalogue of_\n\n                          G. P. PUTNAM\u2019S SONS\n\n                                   \u2767\n\n                        Complete Catalogue sent\n                             on application\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n                             _By Ellen Key_\n\n\n                        The Century of the Child\n\n        _Cr. 8vo. With Frontispiece. Net, $1.50. By mail, $1.65_\n\nCONTENTS: The Right of the Child to Choose His Parents, The Unborn Race\nand Woman\u2019s Work, Education, Homelessness, Soul Murder in the Schools,\nThe School of the Future, Religious Instruction, Child Labor and the\nCrimes of Children. This book has gone through more than twenty German\nEditions and has been published in several European countries.\n\n  \u201cA powerful book.\u201d\u2014_N. Y. Times._\n\n\n                       The Education of the Child\n\nReprinted from the Authorized American Edition of \u201cThe Century of the\nChild.\u201d With Introductory Note by EDWARD BOK.\n\n              _Cr. 8vo. Net, 75 cents. By mail, 85 cents_\n\n\u201cNothing finer on the wise education of the child has ever been brought\ninto print. To me this chapter is a perfect classic; it points the way\nstraight for every parent, and it should find a place in every home in\nAmerica where there is a child.\u201d\u2014EDWARD BOK, Editor of the _Ladies\u2019 Home\nJournal_.\n\n\n                           Love and Marriage\n\n                 _Cr. 8vo. Net, $1.50. By mail, $1.65_\n\nEllen Key is gradually taking a hold upon the reading public of this\ncountry commensurate with the enlightenment of her views. In Europe and\nparticularly in her own native Sweden her name holds an honored place as\na representative of progressive thought.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n                               Ellen Key\n                         Her Life and Her Work\n\n\n                            A Critical Study\n\n                       By Louise Nystrom Hamilton\n\n                     Translated by Anna E. B. Fries\n\n                          12\u00ba. _With Portrait_\n\n\nThe name of Ellen Key has for years been a target for attacks of various\nkinds. Friends have in connection with the issues that have arisen in\nregard to the influence of her work become enemies and friction has been\ncaused in many homes. Her ideals and her purposes have been misquoted\nand misinterpreted until the very convictions for which she stood have\nbeen twisted so as to appear to be the evils that she was attempting to\ncombat. Her critics, not content with decrying and distorting the\nmessage that she had to give to the world, have even attacked her\npersonal character; and as the majority of these had no direct knowledge\nin the matter, strange rumors and fancies have been spread abroad about\nher life. The readers of her books, who are now to be counted throughout\nthe world by the hundreds of thousands, who desire to know the truth\nabout this much discussed Swedish author, will be interested in this\ncritical study by Louise Hamilton. The author is one who has been\nintimate with Ellen Key since her youth. She is herself the wife of the\nfounder of the People\u2019s Hospital in Stockholm, where for over twenty\nyears Ellen Key taught and lectured.\n\nThe volume gives an admirable survey of the purpose and character of\nEllen Key\u2019s teachings and of her books.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n\u201cPacked with information about actual present-day business conditions\nand methods.\u201d\u2014REVIEW OF REVIEWS.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n                      The American Business Woman\n\n\n  A Guide for the Investment, Preservation and Accumulation of Property,\n    Containing Full Explanations and Illustrations of all Necessary\n    Methods of Business\n\n                                   By\n                   John Howard Cromwell, Ph.B., LL.B.\n                           Counsellor-at-Law\n\n             _Second Revised Edition.  Octavo.  392 pages.\n                      $2.00 net.  By mail, $2.20_\n\n\u201cMr. Cromwell\u2019s book is without doubt one of the valuable publications\nof the year ... thoroughly well written and carefully thought out....\nFascinating as is the subject of mortgages, it is necessarily but one\nphase of the book.... The book, as before stated, is extremely valuable,\nand will be found a good investment, not only for women for whom it was\nprimarily intended, but for many men.\u201d\u2014_New York Times._\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n\u201cThe most complete and compact study that Has yet been made of the\nevolution of women\u2019s rights.\u201d\u2014_N. Y. Evening Globe._\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n                   A Short History of Women\u2019s Rights\n\n\n             From the days of Augustus to the Present Time\n\n         With Special Reference to England and the United States\n\n                           By Eugene A. Hecker\n\n Master in the Roxbury Latin School, Author of \u201cThe Teaching of Latin in\n                            Secondary Schools\u201d\n\n                 _Crown 8vo. $1.50 net. (By mail, $1.65)_\n\nMr. Hecker, an authoritative scholar, has set himself the task of\ntelling the story of women\u2019s progress, and has done it with much\npainstaking and thoroughness, and with a manifestation of a high order\nof talent for discriminating as to materials and presenting them\nconvincingly and interestingly.... One feels the studiousness of the\nauthor in every page. The matter presented is not only carefully\narranged, but it is in a manner digested too; and thus the work becomes\nliterature in a true sense, and not an unenlightened assembly of details\nand facts from the pages of the past.\n\n                                                      _St. Louis Times._\n\n                          G. P. Putnam\u2019s Sons\n                         New York       London\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                          TRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTES\n\n\n 1. P. 175, added an anchor for the third footnote.\n 2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.\n 3. Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as\n      printed.\n 4. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together\n      at the end of the last chapter.\n 5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.","title":"The Woman Movement","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":57502}