{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_73154/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_73154","id":"gutenberg_73154","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73154","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Gender & Sexuality Studies","Category: History - Other","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Women","Women -- Social and moral questions"],"text":"HYPATIA\n\n\n\n\n           TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW SERIES\n\n\n  _D\u00c6DALUS, or Science and the Future_\n      By J. B. S. Haldane\n\n  _ICARUS, or The Future of Science_\n      By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.\n\n  _THE MONGOL IN OUR MIDST_\n      By F. G. Crookshank, M.D. _Fully Illustrated_\n\n  _WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES_\n      By Prof. A. M. Low. _With four Diagrams._\n\n  _NARCISSUS, or An Anatomy of Clothes_\n      By Gerald Heard. _Illustrated_\n\n  _TANTALUS, or The Future of Man_\n      By Dr. F. C. S. Schiller\n\n  _THE PASSING OF THE PHANTOMS_\n      By Prof. C. J. Patten, M.A., M.D., Sc.D., F.R.A.I.\n\n  _CALLINICUS, A Defence of Chemical Warfare_\n      By J. B. S. Haldane\n\n  _QUO VADIMUS? Some Glimpses of the Future_\n      By E. E. Fournier d\u2019Albe, D.Sc., F.Inst.P.\n\n  _THE CONQUEST OF CANCER_\n      By H. W. S. Wright, M.S., F.R.C.S.\n\n  _HYPATIA, or Woman and Knowledge_\n      By Dora Russell (Hon. Mrs. Bertrand Russell)\n\n  _LYSISTRATA, or Woman\u2019s Future and Future Woman_\n      By A. M. Ludovici\n\n  _WHAT I BELIEVE_\n      By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.\n\n\n                _In Preparation_\n\n  _PERSEUS, of Dragons_\n      By H. F. Scott Stokes, M.A.\n\n  _THE FUTURE OF SEX_\n      By Rebecca West\n\n  _THE EVOCATION OF GENIUS_\n      By Alan Porter\n\n  _AESCULAPIUS, or Disease and The Man_\n      By F. G. Crookshank, M.D.\n\n\n         _Other Volumes in Preparation_\n\n             E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY\n\n\n\n\n                                HYPATIA\n                                  OR\n                          WOMAN AND KNOWLEDGE\n\n                                  BY\n                             DORA RUSSELL\n                        (MRS. BERTRAND RUSSELL)\n\n\n                            [Illustration]\n\n\n                               NEW YORK\n                        E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY\n\n\n\n\n                            Copyright 1925\n                       By E. P. Dutton & Company\n\n                         _All Rights Reserved_\n\n              First Printing                  July, 1925\n              Second Printing                 July, 1925\n              Third Printing              February, 1926\n\n               _Printed in the United States of America_\n\n\n\n\n                                  To\n                              MY DAUGHTER\n                              KATE RUSSELL\n\n\n\n\n                                PREFACE\n\n\nHypatia was a University lecturer denounced by Church dignitaries and\ntorn to pieces by Christians. Such will probably be the fate of this\nbook: therefore it bears her name. What I have written here I believe,\nand shall not retract or change for similar episcopal denunciations.\n\n                                                        DORA RUSSELL.\n\n_January, 1925._\n\n\n\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS\n\n\n   I  JASON AND MEDEA\n      _Is there a Sex War?_                   1\n\n  II  ARTEMIS\n      _The Early Struggles of Feminism_      13\n\n III  ASPASIA\n      _The Younger Feminists_                26\n\n  IV  HECUBA\n      _Feminist Mothers_                     40\n\n   V  JASON AND ADMETUS\n      _Men_                                  71\n\n\n\n\n                                HYPATIA\n\n\n\n\n                                   I\n\n                            JASON AND MEDEA\n                         _Is there a Sex War?_\n\n\nA feature of modern life is that matrimonial quarrels, like modern\nwar, are carried on on a large scale, involving not individuals, nor\neven small groups of individuals, but both sexes and whole classes\nof society. In the past, Jason and Medea, neither of them quite an\nexemplary character, measured their strength against one another as\nindividuals; and, though each voiced the wrongs and the naked brutality\nof their sex, it did not occur to either to seek in politics or in\nsocial reform a solution or a compromise. Jason, indeed, as the\nreactionary face to face with a turbulent and insurgent female, called\nto his aid the powers of kingship and the State\u2015\u2015to suppress and exile,\nbut not to remedy. Medea, driven mad\u2015\u2015like so many able and remarkable\nwomen\u2015\u2015by the contempt and ingratitude of men as individuals or in the\nmass, and aware that the law was a mockery where she was concerned,\nexpressed herself in savage protest after the manner of a militant\nsuffragette. While I can open my newspaper to-day and read of mothers\ndesperate with hunger, misery, or rage drowning themselves and their\nchildren, I cannot bring myself to look upon Medea as some elemental\nbeing from a dark and outrageous past. As for Jason, he never did\nappear to anybody as other than an ordinary male.\n\nDuring the last twenty or twenty-five years, when women were struggling\nfor their right as citizens to a vote and to a decent education, began\nwhat has been called the sex war. No woman would deny that we began\nit, in the sense that we were rebels against a system of masculine\nrepression which had lasted almost unbroken since the beginning of\nhistory. In a similar sense, the proletarian to-day begins the class\nwar. Those who remember the heroic battles of suffrage days know that\nthe sequence of events was as follows: We made our just demands and\nwere met with ridicule. We followed with abuse\u2015\u2015all the pent-up anger,\nmisery, and despair of centuries of thwarted instinct and intelligence.\nMan retaliated with rotten eggs. We replied with smashed windows; he\nwith prison and torture. People forget so readily, that it is well to\nremember that this was in the immediate past; it is not a nightmare\npicture of one of those future sex wars with which our modern Jasons\ndelight to terrify the timorous of both sexes.\n\nIs there a sex war? There has been. It was a disgraceful exhibition,\nand would not have come to a truce so soon, but that it was eclipsed\nby the still more disgraceful exhibition of the European War. In 1918\nthey bestowed the vote, just as they dropped about a few Dames and\nM.B.E.\u2019s, as a reward for our services in helping the destruction of\nour offspring. Had we done it after the fashion of Medea, the logical\nmale would have been angry. They gave the vote to the older women,\nwho were deemed less rebellious. Such is the discipline of patriotism\nand marriage, as it is understood by most women, that the mother will\nsacrifice her son with a more resigned devotion than the younger\nwoman brings to the loss of her lover. There may be more in this\nthan discipline. If honesty of thought, speech, and action were made\npossible for women, it might transpire that on the average a woman\u2019s\nlove for her mate is more compelling than love for her offspring.\nMaternal instinct\u2015\u2015genuine, not simulated\u2015\u2015is rarer, but, when found,\nmore enduring.\n\nThere was a promise, as yet unredeemed by any political party\u2015\u2015for the\npolitician has yet to be found who will realize that the sex problem\nis as fundamental in politics as the class war, and more fundamental\nthan foreign trade and imperial expansion\u2015\u2015to extend this franchise\non equal terms with men. \u201cGood fellowship\u201d between the sexes as\nbetween classes was the key-note of the war. It was held that women\nhad proved their mettle and that mutual aid was to be the basis of all\nfuture activities, public and private. The sex question was deemed\nsettled, and everyone was led to suppose that all inequalities would\nbe gradually eliminated. On this partial victory and this promise\nfeminists called a truce, and abandoned the tactics of militarism.\n\nBut you never know where you have Jason. He was a soldier, mark you,\nand a gentleman. Forbidden open warfare, he takes to sniping. He snipes\nthe married women out of those posts for which they are peculiarly\nfitted\u2015\u2015as teachers or maternity doctors\u2015\u2015although it is against the\nlaw to bar women from any public activity on the ground of marriage.\nHe cheats unemployed women out of their unemployment insurance more\ncraftily and brutally than he cheats his fellow-men. Instead of\nrealizing that the competition of women in industry and the professions\nis a competition of population pressure rather than of sex, he seeks by\nevery means in his power to drive woman back to matrimonial dependence\nand an existence on less than half a miserably inadequate income; and\nthen he mocks at her when she claims the right to stem the inevitable\ntorrent of children whose advent will but aggravate man\u2019s difficulties\nas well as her own. But worse than all the sniping is the smoke-screen\nof propaganda. While feminists have, in a large measure, stayed their\nhand, anybody who has anything abusive to say of women, whether ancient\nor modern, can command a vast public in the popular press and a ready\nagreement from the average publisher.\n\nIt is a very insidious propaganda. Thus the fashion-papers tell us\nthat grandmamma\u2019s ways are coming back into their own; elsewhere\nwe are flattered for the frank honesty of the modern girl and then\nwarned not to ask for equal pay or opportunity.[1] Again, we hear that\nwoman, like the Labour Party when in office, has done nothing with\nthe opportunities given her by the vote; or that the country rejected\nthe women candidates wholesale. This, regardless of the fact that the\nsteady increase of the Labour poll has been due in great part to the\nvotes and more to the organization and propaganda of large numbers of\nintelligent working women who know not only what they want, but how to\nget it. They are backed now by many of the middle-class women who were\nyoung enough to be revolted by war politics in 1914, and are old enough\nto claim their citizenship in 1924. Hundreds of thousands of others,\nnow between twenty and thirty, mothers, professional and working women,\nwill make themselves heard before long. To them, the principle of\nfeminine equality is as natural as drawing breath\u2015\u2015they are neither\noppressed by tradition nor worn by rebellion. I venture to think that,\nhad the Labour Party machine been less dominated by the masculine\nperspective, to which the equal franchise bill was a matter of\nsecondary importance, they would not have lost so heavily in the 1924\nelection. Votes for women at 21 would have greatly increased the poll\nof many Labour candidates. I have seen young mothers almost sobbing\noutside the polling-station on polling-day because they had no vote to\ncast for the future of themselves and their children. As for the defeat\nof women candidates, everybody, including the leader-writers who spread\nthe adverse propaganda, knew perfectly well that the majority of them\nstood in constituencies where even a man of their party would not have\nhad the ghost of a chance. Here again Jason at headquarters displayed\nhis well-known chivalry.\n\n  [1] Lovat Fraser in a cunning article in _The Sunday Pictorial_,\n      January 4, 1925.\n\nIt is no part of my thesis to maintain that women display their\nfeminism in proportion as they vote for any particular political\nparty\u2015\u2015Labour, for example. But I do suggest that it is the progressive\nworking woman rather than the woman of the middle class who will in the\nfuture make the most important contribution to the thought of feminism\nand to a solution of our practical difficulties. One of the most\ninveterate anti-feminists, the author of _Lysistrata_, as an avowed\nanti-democrat, has based his thesis and his strictures on observations\nthat do not go beyond the bounds of upper- and middle-class people,\nbarely even beyond the bounds of the night club or the suburban\ndance-hall. In his eyes we are to blame for everything. Our worst\ncrime is to \u201cblaspheme life and man\u201d; our next, not to have prevented\nfood being put into tins; our next, to have adhered faithfully to that\nascetic view of life and sex so firmly instilled into us by medieval\nmonks and bullying Puritan fathers and brothers. We are to blame for\nthe industrial revolution in that we let weaving, spinning, milling,\nand baking go out of our hands. We are to blame for the iniquities of\ndoctors in that we did not maintain our position as the dispensers\nof healing potions and simples. We are to blame in that we have not\nlearned to bring forth our children without pain, those children\nwhose brows bear the marks of obstetric instruments that were used\nto spare their mothers, and whose lips have not been laid to those\ninhuman mothers\u2019 breasts. (There are no scars of war, O Jason!) Where\nis salvation for us, and how shall we rid us of the burden of our\niniquity? We who have waxed so arrogant that we have even aspired to\nlet science build our children outside their mothers\u2019 bodies must\nhumble ourselves once more and take upon us the whole duty of woman.\nWe must use our votes to restore aristocracy[2] and take the food out\nof tins; spin and weave, no doubt, the while we nurse and bear our\nyearly child, delivering it over to infanticide when necessary, since\nbirth-control is artificial and displeasing to the male. In our leisure\nmoments\u2015\u2015of which, doubtless, we shall find many under this humane\n_r\u00e9gime_\u2015\u2015we are to discover by what means of diet, or exercise it\nmay be, we can fulfil our maternal functions with pleasure instead of\nsuffering.\n\n  [2] An ingenious method of accomplishing this suggests itself.\n      Since women do not sit in the House of Lords, suppose that\n      all Peers\u2019 wives, following the example of the Duchess of\n      Atholl, stand for Parliament where their husbands have\n      estates. This would obviate the necessity, now felt by\n      Conservatives, of restoring the veto of the House of Lords.\n\nA joke, you say? No, no, my poor Medea, it is a man called Rousseau,\nrisen from the dead. Not long ago he preached this sort of thing to\nwomen who pinched their waists and wore a dozen petticoats. They were\nnot educated enough to follow Voltaire, so they listened to what\nRousseau called the Voice of Nature. Soon thereafter, they found they\nwere being abused for being less civilized, more ape-like than the\nmale, irrational and unsuited to take a part in public life. So they\ntried again, poor things, and then there was an awful thing called\nthe Industrial Revolution, and the food got into tins. They may be\npardoned, as may all of us, if at this point they became a little\nbewildered. Some people blamed science, some civilization, some the\nmeat-trusts and the millers, but the true culprit, as ever, was Woman.\nA thousand voices cried her down\u2015\u2015she hadn\u2019t enough children; she\nhad too many; she was an ape; she was a dressed-up doll; she was a\nPuritan; she was an immoral minx; she was uneducated; they had taught\nher too much. Her pinched waist was formerly abused\u2015\u2015now it was her\nslim and boyish body. Eminent surgeons[3] committed themselves to the\nview that the boyish figure with its pliable rubber bust-bodices and\ncorselets would be the ruin of the race, that race which had been\nsuperbly undegenerate through four centuries of armour-plate corset\nand eighteen-inch waists, that race which, then or now, can hardly\ncompete in toughness with the Chinese, among whom the boyish figure has\nbeen for centuries the ideal, and whose women cannot conceivably be\naccused of shirking any of the responsibilities of maternity. Others\ntold us that the woman-doctor has no nerve to tend confinements, and\nconveniently forgot that, since the world began, and until quite modern\ntimes, it is women who have ministered to one another in that agony\nwhich now as in the past is the lot of every mother. Is there truth\nin the words of Jason? Is there truth or justice in the passion of\nMedea? Let us not ask the protagonists, but let us summon the inquiring\nintelligence of Hypatia to find us a way out of the intolerable tangle\nin which their quarrelling has landed us.\n\n  [3] Sir Arbuthnot Lane, for whom I have hitherto entertained an\n      entirely unqualified admiration, in a recent article. _Vide\n      The Weekly Dispatch_, December 28, 1924.\n\n\n\n\n                                  II\n\n                                ARTEMIS\n                   _The Early Struggles of Feminism_\n\n\nWhen the feminist struggle began during the last century, ignorance and\nbeauty were the two qualities most admired in women. It is necessary\nto remind our masculine critics what was the soil from which the\nfeminist movement sprang and what the current morality which influenced\nits direction. It was customary in those days to make fun of old or\nugly women and to scorn those who showed any signs of intelligence.\nA man chose a young, beautiful, and blushing creature for his bride,\nand transformed her by one year of marriage and one childbirth into a\ngentle and submissive matron. Ugly or intelligent women, for the most\npart, paid a heavy price. Not only were they rejected in youth, and\nstarved of all their natural joys, but as \u201cold maids\u201d they were the\nobject of general scorn and derision. Small wonder that women adopted\nartificial aids to beauty and artificial hindrances to their native\nintelligence. Strongest of all the taboos laid by masculine custom and\nreligion on feminine minds was that regarding sex-knowledge. Their\npurity was to be preserved only by ignorance, and even as matrons and\nmothers it was scarcely decent for them to refer to any of the physical\nchanges of their bodies. It is impossible to over-estimate the strength\nof this tradition, or the harm which has been worked by it to the cause\nof women.\n\nThe feminists were, and are still, howled down by men on the pretence\nthat they invented chastity and scorn of bodily values. History\ndisproves such a ridiculous assertion. The early feminists were what\nhistory and tradition made them, and could not at the time of their\nrebellion have been otherwise. The origin of the stupid ideal of\nwomanhood against which men as well as women to-day are still fighting\nwas the asceticism of the Christian religion; and, unless St. Paul\nwas a woman in disguise, I fail to see how woman is to be blamed for\na conception of her place and duty from which she has suffered more\nthan anybody else. Before the conversion of the West to Christianity,\nbarbarian women of the North enjoyed a certain rough equality with\ntheir husbands. They stride through the sagas, these fierce women,\nbrides of heroes, glad to reward the warrior with their favours, quick\nto avenge an insult or a wrong. They had no need to stoop to cajolery.\nSavage and untamed, they were the fit and equal mates of savage men.\n\nThen came the monks, and the white wimples and courtly dresses and\nchivalry, chants and cathedrals, and meek and reverent casting up and\ncasting down of eyes. The savage breast that had swelled and throbbed\nuntrammelled in love or anger learnt to flutter and to sigh. Quenched\nwere the fires of Brunhilde, her sunlit rock deserted. Agnes and\nMary, tamed and pious, sat cooing in the shade. But for meekness and\nmaternity, the early days of asceticism might have seen a crusade to\ndestroy that temptress\u2015\u2015woman. Barely allowed a soul, she slipped\nthrough a life of oblivion, praying that it might be a pretty crown\nwith which Heaven would reward her patience and submission at the last.\nThen came the Puritans and denied her even that, substituting ugliness\nin this life as well as the negation of body, and a heaven of people\nin starched nightshirts, rendered oblivious to the horrid spectacle of\ntheir figures by the still more horrid chanting of their nasal psalms.\n\nA breath of rationalism\u2015\u2015brief, soon choked, a breath of \u201cnature\u201d\u2015\u2015and\nso to crinolines, pantalettes, and a life still lived in terror of\nhell-fire, terror of parents, dread of husband, horror of the least\nbreath of adverse public opinion. Anyone who reads the _Fairchild\nFamily_ must marvel that from such nerve-destroying parental tyranny\nand the intolerable weight of prejudice and religious superstition the\nnineteenth-century woman ever found the courage to rebel.\n\nWas it astonishing that the revolt had in it something frenzied and\nascetic\u2015\u2015that it seemed to express the anger of the spinster thwarted\nand despised in the current schemes of values? I do not think the\npioneers were so much Puritan as votaries, hanging the tablet of\neach achievement in the temple of Athene or of Artemis, pressing\non, breathless, swift of foot, sure of aim, in dread of the fate of\nAtalanta whom the Golden Apples lured to destruction and the marital\nembrace. \u201cChaste as the icicle, that hangs on Dian\u2019s temple.\u201d They had\nneed to be, perhaps, who, in an atmosphere of swoons and ringlets,\nwon for us schools and colleges, free limbs, health and the open air;\nunlocked for us the classics, science, medicine, the history of our\nworld; drew us from our paltry, ladylike accomplishments; wrote upon\nour school-books: \u201cKnowledge is now no more a fountain sealed,\u201d and\nflung wide the gate into the world.\n\nThey, these pioneers, childless, unwed, created and bore thousands of\nwomen, made them anew, body and soul, for lives of mental and physical\nactivity unknown in the past to any but the very exceptional few. Just\nlike the new learning of the Renaissance to men\u2019s minds in Europe was\nthe opening of high school and university to the feminine mind of\nto-day. Thousands of women of the last generation and this, who would\notherwise have passed their existence in genteel poverty and vacancy\nof mind, have found their happiness in teaching, in medicine, or in\nsome other profession. Thousands of mothers have watched with delight\nthe unfolding of their children\u2019s minds, and enjoyed co-operating over\n\u201clessons\u201d and arguing politics with the adolescent.\n\nWe, who in a sense are the children of the feminist pioneers, whose\nthoughts embrace the universe, whose lives are one long round of mental\nand physical delight, at times intense to ecstasy\u2015\u2015we at least will pay\nour tribute to those who lit the sacred fires, before we take up pen\nand paper to criticize.\n\nWhen one reads the lamentations of would-be intelligent men about\nthe iniquities of modern young people, chiefly those of the female\nsex, one cannot but laugh at their method of approach. It would seem\naccording to them that our modern women just happened like that: no\none had a part in forming their bodies or in training their minds. In\nso far as these people consider education or early training at all, it\nis to blaspheme at the sex-hating feminists who have trained modern\nwomen to dispense with their birth-right\u2015\u2015the love of man. How this\nsquares with the wail of the Bishops against the sexual immorality of\nthe younger generation we will leave Jason or the eloquent author of\n_Lysistrata_ to decide. Our business is not to condemn woman, past or\npresent, but to chronicle faithfully the forces that have made her, and\nthe aspirations which will mould her future. For she, and she alone,\nshall be the arbiter of her fate, and neither man nor creed stand\nbetween her and the realization of her ideals. Men have blasphemed\nwoman and life too long, and it will not be until the issues are\nclearer, the battle more advanced, that the basis for co-operation\nbetween man and woman can be finally established. There is too much\nevidence at present that man, professing friendship and concern, is\nstill ready to snatch from us what little we have won.\n\nTo those elderly gentlemen, then, who watch with horror the upper- and\nmiddle-class woman perpetrating similar follies to those of upper- and\nmiddle-class men, the first question we would put is: \u201cWhat education\ndid they give their daughters, and what was taught to their mothers\nbefore them? What were the current ideas about feminine destiny which\nencircled them in their impressionable years?\u201d Many would answer,\nstill far too many, that their daughters were given the education of\na gentlewoman and fitted to become the wives of gentlemen. This we\nknow of old. The lady eats, drinks, digests, wears clothes, tinkles\nthe piano, dances, sings, handles a golf-club, submits to sex, bears\na child without the smallest notion of anatomy, turns from the whole\nthing disgusted, and probably bears no more. Whose fault? Not hers.\nThey do not teach mothercraft or physiology in finishing schools for\ngentlemen\u2019s daughters, and it is no part of the duty of gentlemen\u2019s\nwives to reproduce their kind. Perhaps there is comfort in that.\n\nA great many parents, however, would tell us that they gave their\ndaughters a good and liberal education in such schools as were\navailable, good ordinary boarding- and day-schools which have sprung\nup during the last fifty years in response to the feminist propaganda.\nThen we have the working woman, who has shared with her brothers in\nwhat education is permitted to trickle through the elementary schools.\nIt must not be forgotten that this ends at fourteen.\n\nIs there something wrong with this education of women, and if so, what?\nI think we must judge that there is. The reason lies in the sense of\ninferiority bred in women by so much oppression, and the natural result\nthat their chief aim as they struggled upwards was to prove that in\nall respects they were just as good as men. The second aim was to\nprove that they could jolly well do without them. In exactly the same\nway the worker, rising in the social scale, seeks to prove himself a\n_bourgeois_. Both efforts are mistaken. Each class and sex has that\nto give to the common stock of achievement, knowledge, thought, which\nit alone can give, and robs itself and the community by inferior\nimitation. The feminist movement, like one dissentient voice in an\nexcited public meeting, was querulous, hysterical, uncertain of itself.\nIt dared not cry out that women had bodies. Its one hope of success\nwas to prove that women had minds. And it was right in this, that the\nprimary fact about men and women is not that they are two sexes apart,\nbut that they are human beings and as such should share all knowledge\nin the world and make it the basis of their partnership and the rearing\nof their children.\n\nMany an ardent feminist spinster in a girls\u2019 secondary school has\nsighed over the state of public opinion which forced her to drive her\ngirls\u2019 minds along channels for which they were not always suited, that\nthey might do well at college and show that women could surpass the\nmen. Many another, well drilled by a mother or tradition in ideals of\nfeminine virtue, gloried in the sexless learned women she was creating\nand in the thought that one day they would force those savage, lustful\nmen to conform to the ideals which they set up for women. Why blame\nher? Lay the blame where it is due. It will be but a just retribution\nfor that lustful male and his ideal of feminine virtue if one day, in a\nworld full of prohibitions, he finds himself forced to kneel before the\nMumbo-Jumbo[4] he himself built up to terrify his wives and daughters\nto submission.\n\n  [4] Mumbo-Jumbo was an idol set up by the men in Nigeria to\n      terrify erring women. The men, but not the women, knew him\n      to be a fake. See _Mungo Park\u2019s Travels_.\n\nFeminist ideals of education, then, had the defect that they did in a\ncertain measure deny sex, or ignore it. The feminists had a pathetic\nhope that by so doing they would convince the dominant male that a\nwoman might be learned and yet remain a lady. But I wish to emphasize\nthe fact that this feature has belonged to all education of women,\nespecially of ladies, from time immemorial, and it is, therefore,\nunbecoming in a male, whether young or old, to use this as a cause\nfor reproach to our sex. We went as far as we dared with an eye to\nmale hostility. Young feminists to-day would be the first to admit\nthat it would probably have paid us to go further. There never has\nbeen a period when education has trained women for the possibility of\nmotherhood, and it is time that such training was begun. There never\nwas a period when the education of women was completely honest, and\nit is time that that training was begun. What knowledge is of more\nvital importance to women than anatomy and physiology? They were\nallowed it if they were to be doctors, and then only with caution.\nTurning casually the pages of a book on anatomy in a girls\u2019 secondary\nschool library, I found the diagrams connected with sex and maternity\ncarefully stuck fast. What is more calculated to inspire prying and\nprurience? We have no right to blame young women for shirking marriage,\nsex, or motherhood, or for moulding their figures on boyish lines, when\nwe carefully treat them as boys and withhold from them as long as we\ncan all knowledge of the difference of their physique and possibly of\ntheir destiny. I have no wish to go back on the great achievements of\nfeminism, or to drive women from the professions in which they have\na just right to be employed. I want to break down the last barriers.\nArtemis is slim and bold; Athene is stately. We have done well to\nworship at their shrines.\n\nBut the call of Demeter the Fruitful is insistent. If we would add\nto the achievements of those who came before us, let us freely admit\nthat we have but been playing mock modesty, and that to us the body\nis no mere box to hold the mind, but a temple of delight and ecstasy:\na temple to hold the future if we will. To me the important task of\nmodern feminism is to accept and proclaim sex; to bury for ever the\nlie that has too long corrupted our society\u2015\u2015the lie that the body is a\nhindrance to the mind, and sex a necessary evil to be endured for the\nperpetuation of our race. To understand sex\u2015\u2015to bring to it dignity and\nbeauty and knowledge born of science, in place of brute instinct and\nsqualor\u2015\u2015that is the bridge that will span the breach between Jason and\nMedea.\n\n\n\n\n                                  III\n\n                                ASPASIA\n                        _The Younger Feminists_\n\n\nWhile we have admitted that the first aim of the feminist movement was\nto open to women the stores of learning, to develop their minds and\nto teach them to think, and that no attempt was made to handle the\nproblem of sex, it is not quite fair to say that even early feminism\nhas consistently denied or despised the body. The schools and colleges\nmade it their business to give to women opportunities for physical\ndevelopment, for open-air exercise, swimming, tennis, hockey, lacrosse.\nThe Victorian young woman learnt gradually to be ashamed of her tiny\nwaist and fat hips. She learnt that a healthy appetite[5] as well\nbecame a young woman as a young man, gave up her snacks in private\nand did justice to good meals taken at proper intervals. Quietly, and\nwithout mention of the fatal word \u201csex,\u201d the spinster feminists, by\nemphasis on health and vigour, built up a generation of young women who\nwere to be frank about other desires besides eating and drinking.\n\n  [5] There may be a biological cause of the alleged smallness of\n      feminine appetite. Watching a raven and his consort with\n      fresh meat, I observed that she obtained only a minute\n      portion beneath the contempt of the male. Can it be that,\n      in the savage state, only those females survived who could\n      exist on the little the male allowed them? Is this a case of\n      sex-linked heredity?\n\nI cannot see what is the matter with our figures. Steel rods and rubber\nare more modern materials than oak beams and pink plaster. Neither\nwe nor our modern lovers admire the opulent Venuses, indolent and\nrose-embowered, who adorned the ceilings of old-fashioned ballrooms.\nThey were stupid, self-indulgent creatures, not even good mothers,\nwhatever the sentimental elderly gentlemen in their top-hats and\nwhiskers may have to say. What is a good mother we will discuss in\na later chapter, but for the present it is enough to say that more\ndangerous childbirths are due to narrow pelves caused by rickets than\nto hips contracted by the corsets of vanity. Let the doctors turn\nsocialist and feed the poor, instead of spending their time lamenting\nthe inadequacy for childbirth of a few fashionable women who don\u2019t\nvery much matter. Middle- and upper-class girls nowadays\u2015\u2015and most\nworking-class girls, too\u2015\u2015go corsetless up to maturity. They do\ngymnastic exercises, and dances that give suppleness to the body.\nThey swim and they play out of doors. Those who are rich enough to be\nadequately fed are graceful and active as kittens, and as healthy.\nBy the time adolescence brings, as it always does, a few years of\nintensive sex-vanity, the corset can do very little harm. The muscular\nlittle body does not tolerate it stiff, or very tight, and the bones\nare well grown. The mystery of feminine dress helps the appearance of\nslimness. There are few clothes, and no lumpy gathers. Beneath that\nboyish outline are firm little breasts, clean arching hips, abdominal\ncurves and thighs, lovely as anything the Venus of Milo has to show.\n\nArtemis fashioned this modern woman. That is admitted. Has Artemis her\nvows?\n\nI\u2019m afraid for once we have to admit that the Bishops are right.\nIn spite of everything the Church can do, in spite of an education\ncommitted, so far as the authorities can control it, to sour or\nreligious spinsters, the modern young woman is not very moral. It is\na pathetic picture which the author of _Lysistrata_ has drawn for us,\nof sexless beings going to and fro in tube and bus-like shuttles in\na machine to dull work robbed of all joy, earning their livelihood\nand turning their backs on man in response to feminist propaganda.\nMan, the enemy\u2015\u2015to be defeated in his own professions, to be repelled\nin every onslaught upon feminine virtue: I wonder? I would hazard a\nguess that, relatively to the population, fewer women retain their\nvirginity till death than in the Victorian period or the Middle Ages.\nIn all probability it is sex, not sexlessness, which makes women\ncling so tenaciously to the right to earn their living. Marriage\nbrings a jealous intolerant husband, children, prying and impertinent\nneighbours\u2015\u2015degraded and humiliating slavery for the vast majority of\nwomen. Thirty shillings a week and typing or working in a shop, a still\ntongue, or a toss of the head and the assertion that independence is\nthe best; and, in the background a lover with whom somehow evenings are\nspent\u2015\u2015a lover who has no claim and cannot tyrannize. A lover, perhaps,\nwho pleads to become a husband, but has no chance unless his income is\ngood or secure. Marriage would change him: Aspasia knows it. Marriage\nwould also rob her of that thirty shillings a week, which alone stands\nbetween her and the abyss of primeval submission. Or else Aspasia\nteaches in a school or college. She is a skilled teacher, devoted to\nher work and pupils. She may be a Research Fellow in some difficult\nbranch of learning which is to her the very breath of life. She may\nbe a doctor in the public service, tending and advising mothers and\nchildren. She is lovely, vital, creative. Man approaches. There are\nholidays of delight and secret dread of the scandal which will end the\nwork Aspasia loves\u2015\u2015or marriage and the certainty of that end at once.\n\u201cChoose,\u201d say the Bishops and the school-managers (often the same\nthing): \u201cChoose,\u201d say the public authorities who support the Church\nand rather wish women would get out of this indelicate profession of\nsurgery and medicine; \u201cchoose between love and duty to the male and\nservice to the community.\u201d This is not feminism\u2015\u2015feminists have fought\nit persistently\u2015\u2015it is medieval Christianity. It presents a choice\nbetween physical pleasure and service to the mind or soul; it upholds\nthe time-honoured theory that renunciation of the world, the flesh, and\nthe devil is the path to duty and salvation. I am fully aware of all\nthe arguments about economic pressure, the primary right of married\nmen to work, the awful situation of their dependent children and their\nwives. None of this is fundamental, and the jealous male knows it.\n\u201cDivide to conquer\u201d is the principle in dealing with trade unions;\nit works equally well in the feminist struggle. Persuade the single\nwomen that the married woman is an unfair competitor,[6] terrify them\nso far as you can into believing that to succumb to sex is something\nunbecoming and disgraceful and punishable with misery everlasting,\nwhether in marriage or outside of it, and you can prevent the women\ncombining against you.\n\n  [6] This scheme no longer works, as is evidenced by the attitude\n      of the National Union of Women Teachers this year (1925).\n      Intelligent women are more appreciated than they were, and\n      teachers know they may all want to marry some day.\n\nBut not if Aspasia will speak. If she but would, and put an end to this\nlie for ever. She could tell us how, especially during the years of\nwar, young women took the last step towards feminine emancipation by\nadmitting to themselves and their lovers the mutual nature of sex-love\nbetween man and woman. It sounds a platitude, but is, in fact, a\nrevolution. Strange to say, the nearness of death from enemy bombs or\nenemy fire did not intensify the thought of holiness and heaven. It\nmade the little footrules to measure morality look absurd; it mocked\nthe emptiness of female virtue. While poverty and parents forbade the\ncertainty of marriage, with nothing but instability and death around\nthem, our modern Aspasias took the love of man and gave the love of\nwoman, and found this union, free and full on either side, the most\npriceless gift the immortal gods can bestow. There is nothing new in\nthis, the moralist will say\u2015\u2015it is just wickedness. Yes, there is this\nthat is new: that, though these younger women may be driven from fear\nof starvation to the outward acceptance of old codes and conventions,\ninwardly they know they have done no wrong and will not admit a\nconviction of sin. Sex, even without children and without marriage,\nis to them a thing of dignity, beauty, and delight. All Puritans\u2015\u2015and\nmost males so long as they can remember\u2015\u2015have tried to persuade women\nthat their part in sex is pregnancy and childbirth, and not momentary\ndelight. As well tell a man his part is the hunting and skinning of\nanimals for food and clothing. To enjoy and admit we enjoy, without\nterror or regret, is an achievement in honesty. We will go further\nand say that polygamy, proffered by the male as a solution to our\nsexless lives, is no solution at all when we are polyandrous. It is\nuseless to go on pretending, as both sexes do, about this question.\nThe plain truth is that there are as many types of lover among women\nof all classes as among men, and that nothing but honesty and freedom\nwill make instinctive satisfaction possible for all. Grant each man\nand woman the right to seek his or her own solution without fear of\npublic censure. Moral questions of this kind cannot be decided by some\nabstract rule. It would not be wrong for a man to have six wives,\nprovided he and they all found mutual happiness in that arrangement;\nnor for a woman to have six husbands and a child by each, if she and\nthey found such a life satisfactory. The wrong lies in rules that are\nbarriers between human beings who would otherwise reach a fuller and\nmore intense understanding of one another. And any man or woman of\nintelligence and vitality can testify that to have known each other as\nlovers is to have completed mental and spiritual, as well as physical,\nunderstanding, and to have permanently enriched each other\u2019s lives,\ncapacities, energies, imaginations. There is no need to make these\ndivisions into mind and body. There is no difference. A way of walking,\nlaughter, thoughts spoken or written, gestures of love or anger, colour\nand light of eyes or hair\u2015\u2015these are the human being, man or woman. It\nis thus that modern individuals think of one another. When we think\nso, it seems absurd to argue whether or no love between man and woman\nshould stop short of a certain kind of physical expression. It is\nuseless to say that a mental exchange is sufficient. On the contrary,\nlovers know that it is through sexual understanding they best apprehend\nthe quality of each other\u2019s minds. It is equally futile to argue that\nwoman is cheated of her full rights if children do not result. That is\nnot true.\n\nIt is said that modern human beings, by dint of not valuing the body,\nare physically degenerate and lose the finest ecstasies of love. Their\ndigestions are poor, we are told, their breath foul, their teeth\nbad. Was love more delightful, then, in the old days when baths were\nunknown, when \u201csweet breath\u201d in a woman was so rare as to be sung by\npoets, and the reek of stale sweat was barely stifled by a strong\nperfume? John Donne wrote verses to the flea he saw nestling in his\nlady\u2019s bosom. There is scarcely a fine gentleman to-day who could face\nthe prospect of making love to one of the fine ladies of the past six\nor seven hundred years in Europe, if she could be presented to him just\nas she was to her contemporary lovers. It is true that neither vermin,\nfilth, nor squalor\u2015\u2015being equal for both\u2015\u2015can stay the passion of sex\nwhether now or in the past, but I do not believe in the theory that\nthe rougher our physique the more intense our bodily delights. Health,\nto be sure, is essential; but health is to be secured in the modern\nworld, not by a return to savagery, but by the use of intelligence. I\nbelieve the bodies of young people of to-day to whom fair opportunities\nhave been given are more healthy within and without than they were\nin past times. And I believe that the disappearance of religious and\nmoral dualism between mind and matter\u2015\u2015not by an oppressive victory of\neither, neither by rational and moral control, nor by abandonment to\nsensual materialism, but by a better understanding of psychology and\nphysiology based on the discoveries of physical science\u2015\u2015is bringing to\nthe whole of life, but especially to sex-love, maternity, the rearing\nand education of children, joy and rapture and promise surpassing\nanything known to the purely instinctive life of the past. Of course we\nare bewildered. Civilization without decay is at last a possibility.\nLet us have knowledge and patience: blaspheming and violence will ruin\nall.\n\nIt is for modern women and for men who can understand the problem to\nmake an end to secrecy, shame, and starvation where sex is concerned.\nThere has been a good deal of freedom in action, but less boldness\nin speech, because of the heavy penalties involved. For some women\nspeech is impossible; those who are secure must fight their battle.\nHow old and proper people love a vigorous and god-like young male!\nHow they look askance upon, brow-beat, and bully his equivalent in\nthe opposite sex! Here is a community for ever starving and choking\nits finest women, stifling their voices in education and public life;\nthen turning and rending the submissive residue for being what years\nof intimidation have made them. Let them marry, you say, and make a\nsuccess of that and their children. That would be well enough but for\nthe taboos and disabilities with which marriage is surrounded. Feminism\nled women away from the home that they might return armed and unsubdued\nto make marriage tolerable. Women who have been free remember the\nhorror of the approach to marriage: a barrier for most of us to free\npublic activity; a life-long contract only to be broken in disgrace\nand public disgust; aunts, uncles, social duties that exasperate and\nare totally unnecessary; the common view that henceforward husband and\nwife are one and indivisible, and the wife for ever to be burdened with\nher husband\u2019s duties and affairs; looks of surprise and reproach if we\nenjoy other male society; constraint in the manner of men formerly our\nfriends; income, if we have any or can still earn, taxed as a part of\nour husband\u2019s; children, which, had we had them illegitimate, would\nhave been our own but now are our husband\u2019s; worst of all, the looks\nand smiles from silly women broken in to slavery, congratulating us on\nhaving done well and made ourselves secure for life.\n\nLet no one think this is petulant abuse. It is the accumulation of\nthese details, and the pressure of public opinion which gradually\ndestroy the nerve and independent judgment of married women who, in\ntheir free state, have been brilliant and remarkable. It is the fact\nthat, by marriage, we conform and place ourselves in a line with\nmillions of others whose view of what we have done is entirely foreign\nto our own. As a Labour Minister is corrupted by Court dress, so is\na free woman by the marriage-contract. Nothing but our desire for\nchildren would make us endure it. We, to whom the mutual nature of\nsex-love is sacred, to whom a partnership involving children is of\nequal dignity on both sides, to whom the surrender of our whole being\nin love is a free gift\u2015\u2015the highest we can bestow; who would neither\nbind ourselves nor others where love is non-existent; we must submit\nto a contract based on rights of property and possession, buying and\nselling of our bodies; a law whose conception of conjugal wrongs is\nsin, punishment, and just revenge; and a Church whose utmost concession\nis to bid us \u201cserve\u201d instead of \u201cobey\u201d our husbands. Build, O Aspasia,\na trade union of lovers to conquer the world, and cry aloud that\nfeminism is nowhere so much needed as in the home.\n\n\n\n\n                                  IV\n\n                                HECUBA\n                          _Feminist Mothers_\n\n\nSo far I have refrained from any detailed discussion of modern women\nand maternity because it is still necessary to make it clear that a\nfull life of activity for women is perfectly possible and permissible\nwithout it. I am quite aware that certain religious people assert\nas a moral principle that the purpose of sex-love is not mutual\nenjoyment but the perpetuation of the race. I am also aware that\nmilitarists enjoin on women the necessity of marriage and large\nfamilies as a patriotic duty. Further, certain doctors have gone\nout of their way to try to prove that the use of contraceptives is\ncontrary to health and nature. These same people, we may note, have\nno aversion from the wearing by women of internal remedial rubber\nsupports for months on end nor to patching up with silver, papier\nm\u00e2ch\u00e9, and other foreign materials, the insides and outsides of human\nbeings mutilated in the natural and healthy pursuit called war. I\nam not concerned with the morals of convention or superstition, but\nwith the morals of experience. It is the experience of modern women\nthat sex is an instinctive need to them as it is to men, and further\nthat the prevention of conception brings to them no loss of poise,\nhealth, or happiness. On the contrary, when once they embark on the\ntask of maternity, contraception is a blessed safeguard to health and\nrecovery in the periods of rest between pregnancies. I am not going\nto deny that the most perfect delight known to human beings is the\ncompletely reckless, mutually adoring union of two people of vitality\nand intelligence who hope to create another human being as a constant\nreminder of the beauty of that moment. But many considerations, which\nwe shall discuss, forbid a yearly child. I read recently in an article\nby G. K. Chesterton, that sex without gestation and parturition is\nlike blowing the trumpets and waving the flags without doing any of\nthe fighting. From a woman such words, though displaying inexperience,\nmight come with dignity; from a man they are an unforgivable,\nintolerable insult. What is man\u2019s part in sex but a perpetual waving\nof flags and blowing of trumpets and avoidance of the fighting? The\nvast majority of men are not even tender or kindly to their pregnant or\nnursing wives, nor will they give help or consideration to the care of\ntheir young children.\n\nA revolt against motherhood under present conditions is not surprising,\nnor is it entirely regrettable. There are quite a number of women\nwhose minds and bodies are not fitted or have not been fitted by their\nupbringing and education to produce and care for children. This is\na source of distress to many people, who, as was suggested earlier,\ndid not think of it at the right moment, when the education of women\nin public and private schools was being developed. Even now these\nsame people stand in the way of the surest remedy: which is to teach\nscience, physiology, and the beauty of sex and maternity to boys and\ngirls at an early age. The London County Council, many of whom are\ncertainly distressed beyond measure at the falling birth-rate and the\ndiscontent and irresponsibility of modern young people, have just, in\nconsultation with suitably selected moral headmasters and mistresses,\nturned down the suggestion of sex-teaching in elementary and secondary\nschools. We are always told that boys and girls of all classes nowadays\nacquire this knowledge easily for themselves, but the mere knowledge\nis not the only thing to the adolescent mind. Things not spoken of by\nparents or teachers, things dealt with in hushed voices by moral and\nspiritual leaders, surrounded by cant and humbug and false sentiment,\nare bound to be thought nasty by mild young people and to provide\nribald laughter for the obstreperous.\n\nThis is not to say that sex-information should be given in a spirit of\nevangelical solemnity and exhortation, nor even of soft sentimentality.\nAll that is needed is lessons in physiology, taught as a matter\nof course, as botany or nature-study are often taught; and then\nexplanations to boys of the working of their bodies, how to keep them\nin health, how not to dissipate and destroy their energies too soon.\nFurther, they should be told that woman is neither a chattel nor a\nservant, nor even an inferior, but a partner in joy as in the business\nof life; that there is no question or difficulty, public or private,\nwhich cannot be brought to her for discussion and judgment; and that\nshe has a right to share in all decisions affecting a joint life,\nchildren, money, and the conduct of affairs of State. To girls in the\nsame way could be explained the physical changes of puberty, marriage,\nand maternity, how the child grows, what food and care the mother, and\nafterwards the baby, will need. There is nothing in this too difficult\nor shocking to young or adolescent minds. So many of us can remember\nthe secret conclaves with our friends when we puzzled out and pieced\ntogether what scraps of information we could glean, awakening instinct\ndarkly supplementing this knowledge. Some of us can remember, perhaps,\nhaving noticed obscene writing on school-walls, instantly reported by\nshocked prefects, instantly effaced by school-mistresses with an awful\nand portentous gravity which made us feel we had stumbled on the brink\nof a secret of incredible wickedness and horror. One straightforward\nlecture of concise information could have dispelled the lurking\nmystery once and for all and imparted a sense of magic and wonder and\nambition. Some of the more fortunate of us, through study in libraries\nand dreaming over poems, created for ourselves a finer attitude. With\nno teaching other than that we might find someone who would marry us\nsome day, and that marriage was an excellent destiny even for educated\nwomen, and with no belief in any of the moral taboos current around\nus, some of us can none the less remember the pride of caring for the\nbody, safeguarding health and looks, avoiding excess, severe strain,\nand overwork, because we cherished our dreams of the children that our\nbodies were to make\u2015\u2015not ordinary children, of course not: Promethean\ncreatures, endowed with every gift that mortal man could steal from\nthe jealous gods, strong, beautiful, intelligent and bold\u2015\u2015kings and\nconquerors, not of their fellow-creatures but of nature and the mystery\nof the world. There is not a woman, unless completely warped by early\ntraining, in whom such dreams and visions will not stir if we try to\nwake them. If not, then let her pass: we do not need her to perpetuate\nthe race. And do not trick her into motherhood by false sentiment and\ninformation, or by withholding from her the means to protect herself if\nshe is not fully resolved upon bearing a child.\n\nWe want better reasons for having children than not knowing how to\nprevent them. Nor should we represent motherhood as something so common\nand easy that everyone can go through it without harm or suffering\nand rear her children competently and well. Without arousing dread\nor horror, we should tell young women frankly the pain and agony of\nchildbirth, and the anxiety and griefs which are the fate of every\nwoman who is a mother by choice and therefore loves her children.\nNothing whatever is to be gained by driving the timorous and weak by\nlies or compulsion into pain which they will resent and responsibility\nwhich they will evade. Everything is to be gained by training a woman\nin knowledge, courage, and physical strength, and leaving it then to\nher own instinct and her mind to tell her that to create new human\nbeings is worth the discomfort and the suffering which she must\nnecessarily undergo. Those in whom the courage to create survives\nwhen choice is free and all the facts are known are those best fitted\nto bring children into the world, and breed in them eagerness and\nintrepidity. The others will only pass on fear and distaste for life\nfrom which individuals and the community suffer far too much already.[7]\n\n  [7] The anti-feminists who see in emancipated women nothing but\n      persecuting spinsters should take comfort from the fact that\n      voluntary motherhood will ultimately destroy feminism, if\n      they are right. The children of women passionately desirous\n      of maternity will inherit strong parental and survival\n      instincts, the occasional feminist \u201csport\u201d not reproducing\n      herself!\n\nI do not mean by this that we should, scorning the aid of science,\nreturn to natural childbirth, and let its pangs scare off the weaklings\nand the cowards. In this matter the charges of our critics are\nconflicting. They condemn us for having sought the aid of science to\nmitigate our suffering, and in the same breath tell us that a return\nto natural child-bed will bring back a primitive exhilaration and\nfreedom from pain lost for thousands of years. I do not believe that\nfor any comparatively civilized race, any race really worthy the name\nof man, childbirth has ever been painless. The upright position, held\nby eighteenth-century divines to be a source of pride in man, was the\nfirst injustice to women. Nor do I believe that the sufferings of\nmodern women are any worse or their confinements any more difficult\nthan those of women in the past. They are more closely observed and the\ndifficulties known, and, where skill is available, the dangerous ones\nare less likely to be fatal. In the past the fragile woman died, or\ncontinued ailing, unobserved by a doctor and afraid to complain. People\nwho live and breed in a state of nature are by no means so healthy and\nvigorous as our modern Rousseaus would have us believe: more children\ndie than survive, and those who are left have physical defects and\ndeformities which could have been remedied by knowledge and care. These\nand the ravages of smallpox and other diseases, and the deformities\ndue to the natural accidents of life unmitigated by medical care,\nproduce far more ugliness than the mark of an obstetric instrument on\ntemple or forehead. Then, again, youth passes more quickly. The men\nand women we see in modern life, still reasonably young and fresh with\nrounded faces and teeth stopped or supplemented by art, would in a more\nprimitive community be dead, or else crouching useless and despised,\ntoothless and with sunken cheeks by the fireside of their sons and\ndaughters.\n\nDecay and pain belong to nature. To arrest the one and mitigate the\nother has been the task which the sciences that deal in physiology\nhave set themselves. Remedial at first, they pass on to the stage\nof prevention. Already the principle of intelligent medicine is to\nstrengthen what is weak in the body by nourishment and exercise rather\nthan provide artificial substitutes. Paralysed limbs return to life;\nwomen retain their teeth white and strong through several pregnancies.\nThis is not done by a return to nature, but by an increase in\ncivilization and knowledge. In that way our very landscapes have been\nformed. We prune, we nourish the soil, we cross-breed our plants. The\nvegetables upon which the enthusiast for nature urges us to live are\nthe product of science and artifice: thousands of years of cultivation,\nnitrates from Chile, skill of the experimenter, skill of the gardener\u2019s\nhand. The same is true of the animals we breed for meat, eggs, or\nmilk supply. Agriculture and stock-breeding seem natural to us\u2015\u2015they\nwere not natural in the distant past. As regards the human body, to\nme at least it seems that we are now beginning to approach the right\nattitude. There was more dosing and doctoring of petty ailments among\nintelligent people in the last century. To-day we try to learn how best\nto live in order that such ailments may not occur, and substitute a\nwell-balanced diet for aids to digestion and the normal functioning of\nour bodies. We do the same in rearing our children. And this attitude\nwould become more general if those who rule us, Press, Church, rich men\nand politicians, would consider it really important that every man,\nwoman, and child in the State should have health and happiness, and\ntherefore supply broadcast the necessary rules of life and sufficient\nof healthy and staple foods for all, in place of advertisement of\nquack remedies and patent substitutes prepared by profiteers.\n\nTo return to the application of science and nature to maternity. A\nspecial sentimentality and superstition inherited from the completely\nsavage periods of history cling about this, as about sex. The avoidance\nof suffering in childbirth is taboo in the Japanese moral code, as\nit was until recently in Christian morals. Religion has persisted\nin regarding the female body as unclean when engaged in its most\nimportant functions, and purifying it afterwards by special prayers\nto the Deity.[8] We find this savagery current in Judaism[9] as in\nChristianity, together with an exhortation to be fruitful and multiply,\nand therefore to pass through shame and uncleanness as often as we can.\nIt was thought a horror and an outrage when chloroform was used to\nhelp us. It is a still greater horror when means are discovered of not\nhaving children at all. To this day most doctors and dentists refuse\nto give an an\u00e6sthetic and draw a rotten tooth which is wearing down a\npregnant mother\u2019s strength by sleepless nights and days of agony. Yet\nthis can be done with reasonable care and skill. Behind all this there\nis the mystic belief that somehow or other nature does the work best\nunaided and unhindered; and this mysticism is rooted in a savage taboo.\nLife is, indeed, so pertinacious that somehow some of us will survive\nwhatever we do, but this does not seem to me an adequate attitude for\nthe rational mother.\n\n  [8] See the service for the _Churching of Women_ in the Prayer\n      Book.\n\n  [9] _Leviticus_, xii, 1\u20138.\n\nThe truth is that it is not desired or expected that mothers should\nbe rational. Maternal instinct is so wonderful, maternal devotion so\nsublime, cry our sentimental brutes. Whatever we may have known of life\nand the outside world, it is still expected in modern times that, once\nmarried, we shall descend into a morass of instinct and ignorance from\nwhich we shall never, if the male and the vindictively-minded spinster\ncan prevent it, emerge again. We are privileged, so we are told, in\nthat we may bear each year a child for the State, rock the cradle,\nwash, mend, and make, pass on the lore of housekeeping and infant-care\nto our daughters just as we received it from our mothers. It is such\na beautiful picture: a pity it is entirely false. The old-fashioned\nmother had no lore, and her instinct was inadequate. She succeeded by\nluck rather than by knowledge. She adored, or disciplined; she killed\nby kindness or by severity and neglect. She would coddle when she\nshould have hardened, harden when she should have coddled; she would\nover-feed and under-feed, or give the wrong kind of food. Since it has\nbeen the fashion for women to have minds, the books for mothers have\nbecome more scientific and our intelligent inquiries have been met by\nresearch and more adequate replies. Every mother with any intelligence\nwho has reared one or more children through the first year of life and\nup to five years of age would admit nowadays that scientific knowledge\nwas of more service to her than all the instinct and adoration at her\ncommand. Indeed, I believe the so-called maternal instinct in handling\nand understanding babies consists of habit almost imperceptibly learnt\nin tending the first, blossoming into a smooth instinctive unity with\nthe coming of the second. The fashionable mother, said to be devoid of\nmaternal instinct because she neglects her child, has simply not learnt\nit, because necessity does not compel her to practical duties. This is\neven true, though less so, of well-to-do mothers who feed their babies\nat the breast.\n\nPeople will persist in imagining that uncivilized women were always\nable to feed their children in natural fashion. Very often they were\nobliged to seek the help of another mother, and, when that was not\nforthcoming, the baby died. It is quite true that our adaptation to\nmodern conditions of life, nerve-stress, combined with overwork for\nwomen in towns and industrial districts, has caused breast-feeding to\nbe less common than it was in the past. But here again the way of life\nis not back to nature, which is impossible because we cannot at a blow\ndestroy industrialism and the towns\u2015\u2015but onwards, to greater knowledge.\nInstead of bullying the mothers and telling them it is wicked not to\nfeed their babies at the breast, let them know how, by pre-natal care\nof health and strength, by diet, by deliberate nerve-control, they can\nfeed their babies with comfort and delight and without detriment to\ntheir health and the work which they must necessarily do\u2015\u2015or even to\ntheir beauty. Here again, if choice is free and the child therefore\nardently desired, there is more chance of success with breast-feeding.\nAnd knowledge of the chemical constituents of cow\u2019s milk and patent\nfoods as compared with human milk is more likely to induce the modern\nmother to suckle her child than volumes of abuse or sentimental twaddle.\n\nThen as to the hygiene of pregnancy. Could our mothers have taught us\nabout the different food-values, about protein, nitrogenous foods,\ncalcium from the green foods for teeth and bones, avoidance of too\nmany albuminous foods? Knowledge of what diet can do to help us in\npregnancy and our children in early youth is in its infancy, but it\nis there, none the less. Shall we fling it aside and return to pure\ninstinct? What massage and remedial exercises have taught can be\napplied to our bodies during pregnancy and after childbirth. It is\nprobable that closer study of the functions of the muscles of the back\nand the abdomen would enable us to teach women to exercise and control\nthem in a way that would make childbirth almost painless, and the\nrecovery of poise and activity afterwards more rapid and more thorough.\nUnder present conditions, muscles that are often too rigid or too\nfeeble expand and never recover their tone; others\u2015\u2015the back muscles,\nit may be\u2015\u2015go out of use temporarily and similarly do not recover.\nIn the middle-class woman laziness is often the cause of difficult\nconfinements and poor recovery of the figure; in the working mother a\ntoo speedy return to work which is too hard and does not exercise the\nbody harmoniously; in both the ignorance which leads to wrong kinds\nof nourishment during pregnancy, and fear of doing harm to the child\nwhich leads to rigid and over-careful movement, are responsible for a\ngood many troubles. Psychological effects may be serious. Most women\ndevelop during pregnancy sensitiveness and a timidity protective to the\nchild. From this the very fertile mother has no opportunity to recover.\nHence many of the silly old ladies who cannot cross roads unaided by a\npoliceman. With birth-control, in two years a determined mother can\ncompletely restore her nerve, her joy in life, and her full muscular\npowers.\n\nThe author of _Lysistrata_ suggests that by diet we may produce thin\nbabies and therefore have easier confinements. This may be true, but\nit is a curious fact that the experience of some mothers and doctors\ngoes to show that much protein (which Mr. Ludovici suggests we should\navoid) produces a thin baby and a corpulent mother; that, on the other\nhand, light and nitrogenous foods, while keeping the mother slim\nand supple, yield a plump 8 to 9 lbs. baby. I think the size of our\nbabies is perhaps not so much under our control as many might wish to\nsuggest. Heredity enters in. Children sometimes have large fathers. The\nsheep-breeder knows that he dare not mate certain larger types of rams\nwith small-made ewes.\n\nIn all these problems, however, it is the frankness and intelligence\nwhich feminism has made possible for women which will bring solution\nand progress, rather than a return to the unguided instincts of\nour forefathers. The lore of motherhood is a science which is now\nbeginning, but it is not following the lines which convention and\nthe moralists expect. It defies sentiment, ridicules unnecessary and\nunintelligent sacrifice, is not content to suffer, but makes demands.\nIt begins with birth control, which to many seems the negation of\nmotherhood, but which to the creative mother is the key-stone of her\nwork.\n\nSuppose we have educated our young women sanely about physical matters,\nas suggested earlier in this chapter. As they reach the age of maturity\nand activity, what will they find? If they are middle- or upper-class,\nan existence that is not too intolerable. Feminism has won for them\nthe right of entry to most professions and, provided they are fairly\nable, they can get work. None the less, it must be admitted that the\nyears since the War have borne hardly upon wage-earning women of all\nclasses. The lack of sexual freedom is a terrible burden, but the\nremedy ultimately lies in their own hands. Life in marriage still\noffers reasonable comfort and good food for man and wife and two or\nthree children. But late marriages, from the lack of opportunity for\nmen and the expense of living, cause girls\u2019 young bodies to be worn\nwith longing unless they are bold enough to follow our modern Aspasias.\nThis waiting to marry is a real danger to young women\u2019s health which\nconventional, unimaginative people refuse to face. It produces nervous\ndisorders bordering at times on insanity.\n\nAs regards the care of her body in pregnancy and childbirth, and the\nfeeding of her children, the middle-class mother is in a position to\ncarry out what modern science has to teach. She cannot have a large\nfamily, it is true, and the cry goes up on all sides that it is very\nhard for the middle-classes to pay for the proper education of their\nchildren.[10] The best stocks are being penalized and extinguished,\nso we are told. This is part of a much bigger problem, and a problem\nthat involves the class-war. All ambitious mothers, from miners\u2019 wives\nto the aristocracy, would like to breed the fine types who receive a\nthorough education and then enter one of the intellectual professions.\nObviously this cannot be. And, given equal ability in two children\nof different classes of life, there is no just reason for driving\nthe worker\u2019s child, who has less good food and conditions and is\ntherefore less fitted to stand the strain, through the worry of the\nscholarship system, whilst the other child\u2019s path is made smooth to a\nruling position. Man for man, woman for woman, the workers would be\nthe equals of the middle-class in strength and ability, given the same\nnourishment, comfort and training. In actual fact, the middle-class is\nperpetually being replenished in one generation, or two at most, from\nbelow. Middle-class fathers and mothers have no right to claim the\nprivilege of a large family unless their children, if they are strong\nbut not clever, are prepared to work the railways or dig coal in the\nmines. Professional people, scientists, artists, research workers, pure\nmathematicians, as well as skilled engineers, are, indeed, the salt of\nthe earth, and the community that fails to produce them and give them\nscope is doomed in this modern world. But they are supported by manual\nlabor, and it cannot be denied that their number cannot be indefinitely\nextended except by an increase of productivity and wealth. A more equal\nsystem of society will diminish drudgery and make it possible for all\nto have a fine development of intelligence and understanding, whatever\nthe work on which they are employed.\n\n  [10] An instance of the incredible snobbery surrounding this\n       question is given by the decision of the conference of\n       Headmasters of Secondary Schools, January, 1925, against\n       free secondary education. While the middle-class parent\n       groans against the cost of his children\u2019s education, he also\n       refuses to take the obvious remedy of making education free,\n       for fear the working class should get some of it. Class\n       difficulties would not exist if health and education were\n       adequately dealt with.\n\nFeminism in the mother has led us far from maternity. That is what\nit is bound to do. The working mother to-day looks straight from her\nkitchen, if she is lucky enough to have one, on to one of the most\ncomplex situations in history. And the intelligent ones are not blind\nto the situation. That is why I suggested that, though middle-class\nfeminism has conquered the professions, the feminism of working mothers\nmight bring a new and powerful contribution to our work.\n\nThe life of the working woman who intends maternity is becoming\nwell-nigh impossible, and she knows it. When she has found a husband\nthe community denies them a decent house. Possibly they find one room\nor two at an exorbitant rent, with no water and a grate unsuited for\ncooking. There are no restaurants at which the pair can afford to feed.\nTherefore they exist on partially or casually-cooked food, innutritious\nbread, and food from tins. Things may not be so bad if the wife can go\non with work at a mill and get food that is fairly good at the canteen,\nher wages helping the meals taken at home.\n\nThe coming of a baby too often means a search for another lodging. The\nBishops and the Generals like babies, but landladies don\u2019t. Another\nroom is found, perhaps. The mother works till the last moment, has a\ndifficult confinement and inadequate attention, and gets up too soon.\nIt is not easier for her than for a delicately-nurtured woman, and it\nis not less painful. Probably it is worse, because the working mother\nhas from birth been underfed and has weaknesses and deformities\u2015\u2015a\ncontracted pelvis, perhaps\u2015\u2015that a woman well-fed and cared for\nescapes. Then it goes on, baby after baby up to ten and eleven,[11]\nalways in one room and no more money coming in. The mother works\nwhenever she can to help keep the family. Frequently she is cursed or\nbeaten by her husband for her fertility. Should the husband die, she\nmust work continually and harder or send her children to the workhouse.\nIn the opinion of the Bishops, she deserves the \u201cstigma of the Poor\nLaw,\u201d and, in the opinion of all right-thinking people, anything done\nfor her by individuals or the State is in the nature of a charity.\n\n  [11] A woman of 45 years of age gave birth recently at Queen\n       Charlotte\u2019s Hospital, Paddington, to her 23rd child. Ten\n       children is not uncommon.\n\nIf I but had the eloquence of Hecuba mourning her slaughtered sons!\nThe crime of war is bad enough: this butchery of hope and promise and\nhuman lives is one so black that the heart and mind of every woman\nwho has borne a child should revolt against it until it is tolerated\nno more. It is easy to escape into an aristocratic theory of society.\nIt has been done before, and ends in the guillotine. These working\nmothers are the people who must be lied to and terrified by bogies\nfor fear that they use their votes to help themselves. And it is they\nwho, when they sit in conference, demand of the State the right to stem\nthe tide of children, to endow mothers, to pension widows, to teach\nand tend maternity and ensure rest for pregnant and nursing women; to\nsee that houses and schools are built, and to control and purify the\nfood-supply. Here is the most serious problem for the mothers, and\none which the middle-class politician does not touch, because for the\nmiddle-class pure and fresh food is almost always obtainable. It is\nfor the working mother to tackle those tins. She cannot now destroy\nindustrialism, which dragged her work and her after it to the mill;\nbut she can claim her right to control it in the name of life and\nthe destiny of her children. Control of the population is essential\nto solving the food-problem and improving national health. Women in\nsmall houses know it. They know, moreover, that contraceptives are\nbetter than infanticide and war. The survival of the fittest is a\nfalse doctrine in child-bearing as in fighting. Every child which\nstarts with a reasonably good constitution can, by the right care up\nto one year and food up to five, grow up to be strong and well. And,\nif the weak and unhealthy are discouraged from breeding and healthy\nmothers given proper care, great improvements are possible. Poor food\nand over-crowding are the ladder down which we go to mental deficiency\nand ultimate complete feebleness of mind.[12] If we cared for life,\nthe best food would by law go to the pregnant and nursing mothers\ninstead of, as at present, to clubs for fat old gentlemen and the\nfrequenters of palatial hotels. It is probable that at present we do\nnot produce enough milk, or produce and import enough butter and eggs\nto distribute adequately to all.[13] But, by stabilizing or decreasing\nour population, and by co-operation, intensive culture and control of\nmarketing abroad and of marketing and purity at home, we could see to\nit that everybody had enough and that what they had was really good.\n\n  [12] Professor MacBride, dealing recently with the \u201cInheritance\n       of Defect\u201d (_Daily Telegraph_, January 8, 1925) said: \u201cThe\n       question of questions was whether the failure of the lowest\n       strata of society was due to their surroundings or to their\n       inborn characters. Such questions must be ultimately decided\n       by experiment; and proper experimental work could only be\n       done with animals; we were not entitled to make _corpora\n       vilia_ of our fellow human beings. For this reason he\n       would direct attention to the common goldfish, whose weird\n       monstrosities were all originally due to the starvation\n       of the eggs with respect to light and air in the earliest\n       stages of development. The result of this starvation\n       was to weaken the developmental power and to produce a\n       disharmonious arrest of growth of various organs. Similar\n       arrests of growth occurred in human beings, and were the\n       causes of mental and bodily defects. Their original cause,\n       however, must be sought in the starvation and poisoning\n       of the blood of the mother, but, once started, they were\n       hereditary.\u201d\n\n  [13] Working people live on tinned milk, margarine, and\n       substitute eggs\u2015\u2015all deficient in necessary vitamins.\n\nTo feed an industrial population in a small island is a peculiar and\nspecial problem and one demanding expert care and advice. Food must\ncome long distances and must \u201ckeep.\u201d Hence the preservatives and tins\nand the need to be watchful beyond measure against poisoning and the\nloss of what is vital to our well-being. With research, the problem\nwould be easy; but we must make it clear that it is important. Science\nwould easily enable us to produce more from the soil, and, as regards\nthe food of mothers, since the assimilation of extra minerals, salts,\netc., in their natural state is not always satisfactory or easy during\npregnancy, we might find ways of growing food, through treatment of the\nsoil, to provide for the special needs of their condition.\n\nWhat then must feminist mothers demand? The right first of all to the\nrecognition of their work\u2015\u2015the most dangerous of all trades and the\nmost neglected and despised. They should ask for endowment from the\ncommunity. This is opposed by many on the ground that fathers delight\nto support their children, and it is they who should claim from the\ncommunity an adequate family-wage. But, after all, it is the mother\nwho bears and tends the child, and, although many women receive the\nwhole of their husbands\u2019 wages, others must fight a humiliating battle\nagainst drink and tobacco for the wherewithal to build their children\u2019s\nbodies. This struggle is exemplified on a large scale in the spending\nof State revenue, most of which goes on armaments and the forces of\ndestruction, and an infinitesimal portion to aid and support life. If\nJason cannot give up his murderous playthings, let him have neither\nsons to destroy nor daughters to drag through misery. His children\nshall never be conceived. I have indicated that this is happening\nalready, not as a deliberate revolt, but as a counsel of despair in a\nworld which offers no hope, no joy, and no opportunity to the young.\n\nThe mother has a right to demand two years\u2019 rest between pregnancies;\nand the right to decide the number of her children. For some the call\nof motherhood is insistent and its charm grows with experience; they\nwould be good mothers and might well have large families. They could\nhelp others by superintending nursery-schools in which children from\none to five years might have their important meal of the day. But it is\nimperative that the woman who has children should not be shut out from\npublic life. The ideal would be for a woman to continue her education\nat least till eighteen, have the first child at twenty-four, then\nperhaps three others at two-year intervals. This assumes that large\nnumbers of women do not choose to breed. At thirty-five every mother\nof four children would, in a community of good schools, convenient\nhouses, and well-run restaurants, be free again to take part in public\nlife. It does not follow that she would be separated from her children;\nthey would go to day-schools. But the mother would do the work for\nwhich she was best fitted in school,[14] kitchen, hospital, shop,\nmill, or Parliament. In this way her opinion would count, and her\nattitude to life help to permeate the community, which is otherwise\nleft to be guided by the outlook of the single woman and the male.\nProblems of unemployment and competition due to married women\u2019s work\nare really questions of population pressure, muddled thinking, and bad\norganization. To discuss all this in close detail is hardly within the\nscope of this book.\n\n  [14] I am strongly of opinion that experience of maternity, even\n       more than of marriage alone, would help the teacher. Some\n       women, even teachers, are bored by children until they have\n       one of their own, whereupon all children of all ages become\n       interesting.\n\nIn conclusion, it may be said that the community should never, except\non the strongest grounds, deny parenthood to man or woman. Therefore\nmarriages which after two years did not result in a child should be\ndissoluble at the wish of either party to the contract. This, apart\nfrom all other reasons for which the cancelling of marriage should\nbe allowed. Partnership in marriage should in effect be regarded as\na partnership for parenthood, and as such should not be entered upon\nlightly.\n\n\n\n\n                                   V\n\n                           JASON AND ADMETUS\n                                 _Men_\n\n\nBefore we pass on to an attempt at a summary and conclusion of the\nargument, it may be as well to re-state briefly what is the matter\nwith men. Certainly they are not such fierce tyrants as when first\nwe fought them; certainly they have some grounds to complain of the\nfeminine arrogance which, not content with proving equality, wants to\ngo on and prove women the superior sex. We might, on grounds of science\nperhaps, advance this claim, urging that, since a female being needs\none more chromosome for its creation than a male, it must, therefore,\nbe of higher importance. Should we do so, and seek to live alone on\nthe planet, producing our children by parthenogenesis, our pride would\nbe doomed to a fall. Such children, there is reason to believe, would\nall be males. At least, that is what happens when the experiment is\ntried by sea-urchins. Men, on the other hand, like to pretend that our\nassumption of intelligence and independence is but a momentary spurt\nin a race which must end in masculine victory and feminine submission.\nThey admit that the great development of our freedom in body and mind\nhas given us a serious advantage, and the more discerning among them\nurge their fellows to press on and catch us up. Others trundle the\ngolden apples beseechingly, but still Atalanta runs.\n\nI believe it to be true that the education and outlook of men is more\nold-fashioned than that of women reared in the freedom of feminist\ntraditions. Men have not yet realized how women\u2019s outlook is changing,\nnor attempted very seriously to adapt themselves to the change. They\nwill do so, of a certainty; for, true as it may be that above all\ndesires in woman is that to be pleasing to men, it is still truer that\nthe desire of desires in man is to be pleasing to women. I believe that\nPuritanism or asceticism, of which they accuse us, is very strong in\nthem. One of the compliments or insults that has been hurled during the\nsex-war is that the feminine mind is pervaded by the physical harmony\nof the feminine body. One may perhaps retort that the dualism of mind\nand matter is a very masculine philosophy; and one which, moreover, men\nhave translated into their everyday lives by the sharp division they\nlike to make between fighters and thinkers, games-playing idiots and\nthin intellectuals. Too often a woman of vitality and intelligence must\nchoose between a soldier-gentleman and Chaucer\u2019s clerk.[15] Should she\nchoose the former, she takes a plunge into the past. This man exults in\nmurder, whether of animals or of his fellow-creatures; deep down within\nhim he is still convinced that women are divided into good and bad\u2015\u2015and\nboth require the handling of a master. His wife must beware how she\nresponds to his advances; she may be thought forward or impure. Decency\nmust above all things be preserved. Though games and the classics may\nhave taught the English gentleman the beauty of paganism and the joy\nof the naked body where man is concerned, he is still stuffy in his\napproach to sex. He rarely brings the freshness of the morning and the\njoy of the open skies to the love of mistress or of wife. Plush, gilt\nand silk stockings express the one; pipe, the armchair at the fireside,\ndinner, and a coldly furnished bedroom, the other. Conversation is\na masculine monologue, punctuated by assent. He will be good to his\nchildren, provided they are not odd, and will protect his wife. He will\nnever lift her to rapture. She fears, and will probably deceive him.\n\n  [15] A clerk ther was of Oxenford also\n\n       That unto logyk hadde longe y-go.\n       As leene was his hors as is a rake,\n       And he nas nat right fat, I undertake,\n\n          *       *       *       *       *\n\n       And him was lever have at his beddes heed\n       Twenty bokes clad in black or reed.\n\nThe intellectual\u2015\u2015perhaps by reason of the monastic tradition of\nlearning, perhaps because he finds Jason so revolting\u2015\u2015does all\nthat he can to forget the needs of the body. Woman counts as one of\nthem. She is a burden, a responsibility, a distraction, an incursion\nof the material into a world of contemplation. As for children and\ndomestic life, they would make an end to all thought, to all art. An\ninstinctive life\u2015\u2015so he thinks\u2015\u2015is possible only in spasm, if at all,\nfor a man with serious mental work to accomplish. If woman persists in\nkeeping him company, then she must shoulder the burdens, tend him and\ncare for him, and leave him alone when he doesn\u2019t want her. It is this\ncontempt for the natural play of instinct which eats the heart out of\nlife for many intellectuals, men and women, of to-day. They dread the\ngift of themselves, the loss of independence which passion would bring,\nand therefore they never give freely. In part, they are cherishing the\nmedieval tradition that to be worthy of spiritual or mental labour man\nand woman must go aside and renounce; in part, they are inspired by a\ntight conception of materialism, in which individuals are hurled like\nlumps of matter by dynamic forces through space, unable to do more than\ncome near, but never mingle one with another. This view of life and the\nmedieval are combining to destroy our world in lovelessness and despair.\n\nThe old-fashioned mind clings to spiritual duties and consolations and\nthe framework of Church discipline, as a bulwark against personal\nlicence; the more modern mind is dominated by mechanism\u2015\u2015which is,\nafter all, no more than the rational control of matter\u2015\u2015and seeks in an\nintelligent organization of the State, a framework within which each\nindividual is to perform the duties for which he is best fitted. To\nneither conception is love between individuals, or sex-love between man\nand woman, important. In effect, personal relationships do not matter.\nThe Christian doctrine of all-embracing love was once potent, but fails\nto-day because of the foundation of God, dogma, and Church on which it\nis built and which modern people cannot accept. \u201cTo love thy neighbour\nas thyself\u201d is also inadequate without knowledge and understanding.\nBut the rational materialists\u2019 attitude\u2015\u2015such, for instance, is that\nof the Bolsheviks\u2015\u2015to human relationships, in particular to women and\nsex, is as lacking in the sense of human dignity as the Christian.\nMonogamy and undiscriminating licence rest upon a common basis of\ncontempt for love and personality, both asserting that the desire\nof a man is for a woman, of a woman for a man, but no matter whom.\nDualism, as ever, is the culprit. Sex-love is to be no more than a\nphysical need\u2015\u2015no part of the serious business of life. Science has\nbrought a more modern attitude to matter which by its effect upon the\nimagination may change our conception of personality and sex. Force,\nstruggle, solidity, contact, may yield to gentleness, non-resistance,\nintermingling and uniting\u2015\u2015not by an ethical change, but by a change\nin scientific thought. We shall no longer think of mind and matter\nas wronging or thwarting one another, because they are not different\nforces; and we shall no longer be able to separate physical from mental\nvirtue or depravity. We shall no longer value a love that suppresses or\ndisregards the union of personality.\n\nTaboos and superstitions, struggling dynamic individuals or States\u2015\u2015how\nmay we set up a new vision? Perhaps what I have written above seems\nfar-fetched to the reader, but I do not think our life can be cut up\ninto compartments. Philosophy and sex are more important in politics\nthan General Elections. The revolt against the all-powerful Christian\nState began in the assertion of certain people that their love of good\nfruit and wine or their enjoyment of sex were not worthy of hell-fire.\nOn personal conduct, on our standards of personal relationship, man to\nwoman, parents to children, are built the customs and laws of States\nand ultimately their national and international policy. It is here,\nthen, with man and woman, that we must begin. I have in mind, as I\nwrite, a piece of Chinese porcelain, on which the sage or poet sits\nwith his book and long pipe; a lovely and elegant lady peeps over his\nshoulder, and close at hand plays an impish child. I do not think that\nthe Chinese who conceived it expected that poet to write bad verses,\nor, if a sage, to compose worthless philosophy. On the contrary, to\nlove with devotion, to be learned, to have children, are ideas which\nhave shaped the harmony of Chinese life. As compared with their\ngenerous acceptance of instinct our Christian dread of sex and horror\nof the body are obscene.\n\nIf we are to make peace between man and woman, and by their unity and\npartnership change the ideas that govern our politics and our outlook\non the world, it is essential that men should make a more determined\nattempt to understand what feminists are seeking. It is useless to go\non abusing, or pretending that this is a matter of minor importance.\nIt is essential also that women should think clearly and continue in\ncourage and honesty of word and action, neither abandoning all for the\npursuit of pleasure nor glorying in opportunities for an oppressive\nmorality belonging to past ages. First and foremost, man or woman, we\nare human beings. There is a great deal of the work in the community\nwhich we can each do with equal ability, given equal training and\nopportunity. There are other tasks which we must agree to delegate to\none another, and neither despise the other for performing them. Life\nand harmony, generosity and peace are the ideals which the best thought\nof feminism has set before us. We believe that States and individuals\ncan put them into practice. Will man not pause to understand before he\ncontinues on the path of destruction and strife, cupidity and war? Can\nwe not persuade Jason from barbarity and Admetus to the abandonment of\nhis fears? To live with vigour, body and mind and imagination, without\nfear or shame or dread of death; to drive these baser passions from the\nhold they have upon our morality and our politics\u2015\u2015this is what we ask\nof modern men and women. They can come to it only in a reckless love\nof one another, a passion that gives again and again without fear of\nhurt or exhaustion. It is not an abandonment to nature and to instinct\nthat we need. Pure and barbaric instinct is no more. Our bodies are\ntoo much impregnated by inherited habit and knowledge, too much\nsurrounded in their growth by the findings of science. Men and women\nare not creatures of clay, nor disembodied spirits; but things of fire\nintertwining in understanding, torrents leaping to join in a cascade of\nmutual ecstacy. There is nothing in life to compare with this uniting\nof minds and bodies in men and women who have laid aside hostility and\nfear and seek in love the fullest understanding of themselves and of\nthe universe. You cannot measure it in inches, nor turn it on and off\nlike a tap. You cannot stay it now and indulge it another time. You\ncannot come to it by religion or by unaided reason, or by the brute\ncourage of sheer physical vitality. Jealousy is death. Dualism is\nnonsense, compartments unavailing. You must have in you the thought\nthat is creation; life\u2019s spring, and the daring of its unconquered\nwaters\u2015\u2015so may you transform the world and people it with gods who know\nno more the hates and littleness of men.\n\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n Transcriber\u2019s Notes:\n\n \u2015\u2015Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).\n\n \u2015\u2015A Table of Contents has been provided for the convenience of the\n   reader, and is granted to the public domain.\n\n \u2015\u2015Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.\n\n \u2015\u2015Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.\n\n \u2015\u2015Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.","title":"Hypatia : $b or, Woman and knowledge","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":15385}