OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE, OR THE MAN MADE WORLD

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

CONTENTS

 I. AS TO HUMANNESS. II. THE MAN-MADE FAMILY. III. HEALTH AND BEAUTY. IV. MEN AND ART. V. MASCULINE LITERATURE. VI. GAMES AND SPORTS VII. ETHICS AND RELIGION. VIII. EDUCATION. IX. "SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" X. LAW AND GOVERNMENT. XI. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. XII. POLITICS AND WARFARE. (with WOMAN AND THE STATE. ) XIII. INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS. XIV. A HUMAN WORLD. 

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE, or THE MAN-MADE WORLD

I. AS TO HUMANNESS. 

Let us begin, inoffensively, with sheep. The sheep is a beast with whichwe are all familiar, being much used in religious imagery; the commonstock of painters; a staple article of diet; one of our main sources ofclothing; and an everyday symbol of bashfulness and stupidity. 

In some grazing regions the sheep is an object of terror, destroyinggrass, bush and forest by omnipresent nibbling; on the great plains, sheep-keeping frequently results in insanity, owing to the loneliness ofthe shepherd, and the monotonous appearance and behavior of the sheep. 

By the poet, young sheep are preferred, the lamb gambolling gaily;unless it be in hymns, where "all we like sheep" are repeatedlydescribed, and much stress is laid upon the straying propensities of theanimal. 

To the scientific mind there is special interest in the sequacity ofsheep, their habit of following one another with automatic imitation. This instinct, we are told, has been developed by ages of wild crowdedracing on narrow ledges, along precipices, chasms, around sudden spursand corners, only the leader seeing when, where and how to jump. Ifthose behind jumped exactly as he did, they lived. If they stopped toexercise independent judgment, they were pushed off and perished; theyand their judgment with them. 

All these things, and many that are similar, occur to us when we thinkof sheep. They are also ewes and rams. Yes, truly; but what of it? Allthat has been said was said of sheep, _genus ovis, _ that bland beast, compound of mutton, wool, and foolishness so widely known. If we thinkof the sheep-dog (and dog-ess), the shepherd (and shepherd-ess), of theferocious sheep-eating bird of New Zealand, the Kea (and Kea-ess), all these herd, guard, or kill the sheep, both rams and ewes alike. Inregard to mutton, to wool, to general character, we think only of theirsheepishness, not at all of their ramishness or eweishness. That whichis ovine or bovine, canine, feline or equine, is easily recognized asdistinguishing that particular species of animal, and has no relationwhatever to the sex thereof. 

Returning to our muttons, let us consider the ram, and wherein hischaracter differs from the sheep. We find he has a more quarrelsomedisposition. He paws the earth and makes a noise. He has a tendency tobutt. So has a goat--Mr. Goat. So has Mr. Buffalo, and Mr. Moose, andMr. Antelope. This tendency to plunge head foremost at an adversary--andto find any other gentleman an adversary on sight--evidently does notpertain to sheep, to _genus ovis;_ but to any male creature with horns. 

As "function comes before organ, " we may even give a reminiscentglance down the long path of evolution, and see how the mere act ofbutting--passionately and perpetually repeated--born of the belligerentspirit of the male--produced horns!

The ewe, on the other hand, exhibits love and care for her little ones, gives them milk and tries to guard them. But so does a goat--Mrs. Goat. So does Mrs. Buffalo and the rest. Evidently this mother instinct is nopeculiarity of _genus ovis, _ but of any female creature. 

Even the bird, though not a mammal, shows the same mother-love andmother-care, while the father bird, though not a butter, fights withbeak and wing and spur. His competition is more effective throughdisplay. The wish to please, the need to please, the overmasteringnecessity upon him that he secure the favor of the female, has made themale bird blossom like a butterfly. He blazes in gorgeous plumage, rearshaughty crests and combs, shows drooping wattles and dangling blobs suchas the turkey-cock affords; long splendid feathers for pure ornamentappear upon him; what in her is a mere tail-effect becomes in him a massof glittering drapery. 

Partridge-cock, farmyard-cock, peacock, from sparrow to ostrich, observehis mien! To strut and languish; to exhibit every beauteous lure;to sacrifice ease, comfort, speed, everything--to beauty--forher sake--this is the nature of the he-bird of any species; thecharacteristic, not of the turkey, but of the cock! With drumming ofloud wings, with crow and quack and bursts of glorious song, he wooshis mate; displays his splendors before her; fights fiercely with hisrivals. To butt--to strut--to make a noise--all for love's sake; theseacts are common to the male. 

We may now generalize and clearly state: That is masculine which belongsto the male--to any or all males, irrespective of species. Thatis feminine which belongs to the female, to any or all females, irrespective of species. That is ovine, bovine, feline, canine, equineor asinine which belongs to that species, irrespective of sex. 

In our own species all this is changed. We have been so taken up withthe phenomena of masculinity and femininity, that our common humanityhas largely escaped notice. We know we are human, naturally, and arevery proud of it; but we do not consider in what our humanness consists;nor how men and women may fall short of it, or overstep its bounds, incontinual insistence upon their special differences. It is "manly" to dothis; it is "womanly" to do that; but what a human being should do underthe circumstances is not thought of. 

The only time when we do recognize what we call "common humanity" is inextreme cases, matters of life and death; when either man or woman isexpected to behave as if they were also human creatures. Since the rangeof feeling and action proper to humanity, as such, is far wider thanthat proper to either sex, it seems at first somewhat remarkable that wehave given it so little recognition. 

A little classification will help us here. We have certain qualities incommon with inanimate matter, such as weight, opacity, resilience. It isclear that these are not human. We have other qualities in common withall forms of life; cellular construction, for instance, the reproductionof cells and the need of nutrition. These again are not human. Wehave others, many others, common to the higher mammals; which are notexclusively ours--are not distinctively "human. " What then are truehuman characteristics? In what way is the human species distinguishedfrom all other species?

Our human-ness is seen most clearly in three main lines: it ismechanical, psychical and social. Our power to make and use things isessentially human; we alone have extra-physical tools. We have added toour teeth the knife, sword, scissors, mowing machine; to our claws thespade, harrow, plough, drill, dredge. We are a protean creature, usingthe larger brain power through a wide variety of changing weapons. Thisis one of our main and vital distinctions. Ancient animal races aretraced and known by mere bones and shells, ancient human races by theirbuildings, tools and utensils. 

That degree of development which gives us the human mind is a cleardistinction of race. The savage who can count a hundred is more humanthan the savage who can count ten. 

More prominent than either of these is the social nature of humanity. Weare by no means the only group-animal; that ancient type of industry theant, and even the well-worn bee, are social creatures. But insects oftheir kind are found living alone. Human beings never. Our human-nessbegins with some low form of social relation and increases as thatrelation develops. 

Human life of any sort is dependent upon what Kropotkin calls "mutualaid, " and human progress keeps step absolutely with that interchange ofspecialized services which makes society organic. The nomad, living oncattle as ants live on theirs, is less human than the farmer, raisingfood by intelligently applied labor; and the extension of trade andcommerce, from mere village market-places to the world-exchanges ofto-day, is extension of human-ness as well. 

Humanity, thus considered, is not a thing made at once and unchangeable, but a stage of development; and is still, as Wells describes it, "inthe making. " Our human-ness is seen to lie not so much in what weare individually, as in our relations to one another; and even thatindividuality is but the result of our relations to one another. Itis in what we do and how we do it, rather than in what we are. Some, philosophically inclined, exalt "being" over "doing. " To them thisquestion may be put: "Can you mention any form of life that merely 'is, 'without doing anything?"

Taken separately and physically, we are animals, _genus homo_; takensocially and psychically, we are, in varying degree, human; and our realhistory lies in the development of this human-ness. 

Our historic period is not very long. Real written history only goesback a few thousand years, beginning with the stone records of ancientEgypt. During this period we have had almost universally what is herecalled an Androcentric Culture. The history, such as it was, was madeand written by men. 

The mental, the mechanical, the social development, was almost whollytheirs. We have, so far, lived and suffered and died in a man-madeworld. So general, so unbroken, has been this condition, that to mentionit arouses no more remark than the statement of a natural law. We havetaken it for granted, since the dawn of civilization, that "mankind"meant men-kind, and the world was theirs. 

Women we have sharply delimited. Women were a sex, "the sex, " accordingto chivalrous toasts; they were set apart for special services peculiarto femininity. As one English scientist put it, in 1888, "Women are notonly not the race--they are not even half the race, but a subspeciestold off for reproduction only. "

This mental attitude toward women is even more clearly expressed byMr. H. B. Marriot-Watson in his article on "The American Woman" in the"Nineteenth Century" for June, 1904, where he says: "Her constitutionalrestlessness has caused her to abdicate those functions which aloneexcuse or explain her existence. " This is a peculiarly happy andcondensed expression of the relative position of women during ourandrocentric culture. The man was accepted as the race type without onedissentient voice; and the woman--a strange, diverse creature, quitedisharmonious in the accepted scheme of things--was excused andexplained only as a female. 

She has needed volumes of such excuse and explanation; also, apparently, volumes of abuse and condemnation. In any library catalogue we may findbooks upon books about women: physiological, sentimental, didactic, religious--all manner of books about women, as such. Even to-day in theworks of Marholm--poor young Weininger, Moebius, and others, we find thesame perpetual discussion of women--as such. 

This is a book about men--as such. It differentiates between the humannature and the sex nature. It will not go so far as to allege man'smasculine traits to be all that excuse, or explain his existence: butit will point out what are masculine traits as distinct from humanones, and what has been the effect on our human life of the unbridleddominance of one sex. 

We can see at once, glaringly, what would have been the result ofgiving all human affairs into female hands. Such an extraordinary anddeplorable situation would have "feminized" the world. We should haveall become "effeminate. "

See how in our use of language the case is clearly shown. The adjectivesand derivatives based on woman's distinctions are alien and derogatorywhen applied to human affairs; "effeminate"--too female, connotescontempt, but has no masculine analogue; whereas "emasculate"--notenough male, is a term of reproach, and has no feminine analogue. "Virile"--manly, we oppose to "puerile"--childish, and the very word"virtue" is derived from "vir"--a man. 

Even in the naming of other animals we have taken the male as the racetype, and put on a special termination to indicate "his female, " as inlion, lioness; leopard, leopardess; while all our human scheme of thingsrests on the same tacit assumption; man being held the human type; womana sort of accompaniment and subordinate assistant, merely essential tothe making of people. 

She has held always the place of a preposition in relation to man. Shehas been considered above him or below him, before him, behind him, beside him, a wholly relative existence--"Sydney's sister, " "Pembroke'smother"--but never by any chance Sydney or Pembroke herself. 

Acting on this assumption, all human standards have been based on malecharacteristics, and when we wish to praise the work of a woman, we sayshe has "a masculine mind. "

It is no easy matter to deny or reverse a universal assumption. Thehuman mind has had a good many jolts since it began to think, but aftereach upheaval it settles down as peacefully as the vine-growers onVesuvius, accepting the last lava crust as permanent ground. 

What we see immediately around us, what we are born into and grow upwith, be it mental furniture or physical, we assume to be the order ofnature. 

If a given idea has been held in the human mind for many generations, asalmost all our common ideas have, it takes sincere and continued effortto remove it; and if it is one of the oldest we have in stock, one ofthe big, common, unquestioned world ideas, vast is the labor of thosewho seek to change it. 

Nevertheless, if the matter is one of importance, if the previous ideawas a palpable error, of large and evil effect, and if the new one istrue and widely important, the effort is worth making. 

The task here undertaken is of this sort. It seeks to show that what wehave all this time called "human nature" and deprecated, was in greatpart only male nature, and good enough in its place; that what we havecalled "masculine" and admired as such, was in large part human, andshould be applied to both sexes: that what we have called "feminine"and condemned, was also largely human and applicable to both. Ourandrocentric culture is so shown to have been, and still to be, amasculine culture in excess, and therefore undesirable. 

In the preliminary work of approaching these facts it will be well toexplain how it can be that so wide and serious an error should have beenmade by practically all men. The reason is simply that they were men. They were males, avid saw women as females--and not otherwise. 

So absolute is this conviction that the man who reads will say, "Ofcourse! How else are we to look at women except as females? They arefemales, aren't they?" Yes, they are, as men are males unquestionably;but there is possible the frame of mind of the old marquise who wasasked by an English friend how she could bear to have the footman serveher breakfast in bed--to have a man in her bed-chamber--and repliedsincerely, "Call you that thing there a man?"

The world is full of men, but their principal occupation is humanwork of some sort; and women see in them the human distinctionpreponderantly. Occasionally some unhappy lady marries hercoachman--long contemplation of broad shoulders having an effect, apparently; but in general women see the human creature most; the malecreature only when they love. 

To the man, the whole world was his world; his because he was male; andthe whole world of woman was the home; because she was female. She hadher prescribed sphere, strictly limited to her feminine occupations andinterests; he had all the rest of life; and not only so, but, having it, insisted on calling it male. 

This accounts for the general attitude of men toward the now rapidhumanization of women. From her first faint struggles toward freedomand justice, to her present valiant efforts toward full economic andpolitical equality, each step has been termed "unfeminine" and resentedas an intrusion upon man's place and power. Here shows the need of ournew classification, of the three distinct fields of life--masculine, feminine and human. 

As a matter of fact, there is a "woman's sphere, " sharply defined andquite different from his; there is also a "man's sphere, " as sharplydefined and even more limited; but there remains a common sphere--thatof humanity, which belongs to both alike. 

In the earlier part of what is known as "the woman's movement, " it wassharply opposed on the ground that women would become "unsexed. " Let usnote in passing that they have become unsexed in one particular, mostglaringly so, and that no one has noticed or objected to it. 

As part of our androcentric culture we may point to the peculiarreversal of sex characteristics which make the human female carry theburden of ornament. She alone, of all human creatures, has adopted theessentially masculine attribute of special sex-decoration; she does notfight for her mate as yet, but she blooms forth as the peacock andbird of paradise, in poignant reversal of nature's laws, even wearingmasculine feathers to further her feminine ends. 

Woman's natural work as a female is that of the mother; man's naturalwork as a male is that of the father; their mutual relation to this endbeing a source of joy and well-being when rightly held: but human workcovers all our life outside of these specialties. Every handicraft, every profession, every science, every art, all normal amusements andrecreations, all government, education, religion; the whole living worldof human achievement: all this is human. 

That one sex should have monopolized all human activities, called them"man's work, " and managed them as such, is what is meant by the phrase"Androcentric Culture. "

II. THE MAN-MADE FAMILY. 

The family is older than humanity, and therefore cannot be calleda human institution. A post office, now, is wholly human; no othercreature has a post office, but there are families in plenty among birdsand beasts; all kinds permanent and transient; monogamous, polygamousand polyandrous. 

We are now to consider the growth of the family in humanity; what isits rational development in humanness; in mechanical, mental and sociallines; in the extension of love and service; and the effect upon it ofthis strange new arrangement--a masculine proprietor. 

Like all natural institutions the family has a purpose; and is to bemeasured primarily as it serves that purpose; which is, the care andnurture of the young. To protect the helpless little ones, to feed andshelter them, to ensure them the benefits of an ever longer period ofimmaturity, and so to improve the race--this is the original purpose ofthe family. 

When a natural institution becomes human it enters the plane ofconsciousness. We think about it; and, in our strange new power ofvoluntary action do things to it. We have done strange things to thefamily; or, more specifically, men have. 

Balsac, at his bitterest, observed, "Women's virtue is man's bestinvention. " Balsac was wrong. Virtue--the unswerving devotion to onemate--is common among birds and some of the higher mammals. IfBalsac meant celibacy when he said virtue, why that is one of man'sinventions--though hardly his best. 

What man has done to the family, speaking broadly, is to change it froman institution for the best service of the child to one modified to hisown service, the vehicle of his comfort, power and pride. 

Among the heavy millions of the stirred East, a child--necessarily amale child--is desired for the credit and glory of the father, and hisfathers; in place of seeing that all a parent is for is the best serviceof the child. Ancestor worship, that gross reversal of all natural law, is of wholly androcentric origin. It is strongest among old patriarchalraces; lingers on in feudal Europe; is to be traced even in Americatoday in a few sporadic efforts to magnify the deeds of our ancestors. 

The best thing any of us can do for our ancestors is to be better thanthey were; and we ought to give our minds to it. When we use our pastmerely as a guide-book, and concentrate our noble emotions on thepresent and future, we shall improve more rapidly. 

The peculiar changes brought about in family life by the predominanceof the male are easily traced. In these studies we must keep clearlyin mind the basic masculine characteristics: desire, combat, self-expression--all legitimate and right in proper use; onlymischievous when excessive or out of place. Through them the male is ledto strenuous competition for the favor of the female; in the overflowingardours of song, as in nightingale and tomcat; in wasteful splendorof personal decoration, from the pheasant's breast to an embroideredwaistcoat; and in direct struggle for the prize, from the stag's lockedhorns to the clashing spears of the tournament. 

It is earnestly hoped that no reader will take offence at thenecessarily frequent, reference to these essential features of maleness. In the many books about women it is, naturally, their femaleness thathas been studied and enlarged upon. And though women, after thousandsof years of such discussion, have become a little restive under theconstant use of the word female: men, as rational beings, shouldnot object to an analogous study--at least not for some time--a fewcenturies or so. 

How, then, do we find these masculine tendencies, desire, combat andself-expression, affect the home and family when given too much power?

First comes the effect in the preliminary work of selection. One of themost uplifting forces of nature is that of sex selection. The males, numerous, varied, pouring a flood of energy into wide modifications, compete for the female, and she selects the victor, this securing to therace the new improvements. 

In forming the proprietary family there is no such competition, no suchselection. The man, by violence or by purchase, does the choosing--heselects the kind of woman that pleases him. Nature did not intend himto select; he is not good at it. Neither was the female intended tocompete--she is not good at it. 

If there is a race between males for a mate--the swiftest gets herfirst; but if one male is chasing a number of females he gets theslowest first. The one method improves our speed: the other does not. If males struggle and fight with one another for a mate, the strongestsecures her; if the male struggles and fights with the female--(apeculiar and unnatural horror, known only among human beings) he mostreadily secures the weakest. The one method improves our strength--theother does not. 

When women became the property of men; sold and bartered; "givenaway" by their paternal owner to their marital owner; they lost thisprerogative of the female, this primal duty of selection. The males wereno longer improved by their natural competition for the female; and thefemales were not improved; because the male did not select for points ofracial superiority, but for such qualities as pleased him. 

There is a locality in northern Africa, where young girls aredeliberately fed with a certain oily seed, to make them fat, --thatthey may be the more readily married, --as the men like fat wives. Amongcertain more savage African tribes the chief's wives are prepared forhim by being kept in small dark huts and fed on "mealies" and molasses;precisely as a Strasbourg goose is fattened for the gourmand. Nowfatness is not a desirable race characteristic; it does not add to thewoman's happiness or efficiency; or to the child's; it is merely anaccessory pleasant to the master; his attitude being much as the amorousmonad ecstatically puts it, in Sill's quaint poem, "Five Lives, "

 "O the little female monad's lips! O the little female monad's eyes! O the little, little, female, female monad!"

This ultra littleness and ultra femaleness has been demanded andproduced by our Androcentric Culture. 

Following this, and part of it, comes the effect on motherhood. Thisfunction was the original and legitimate base of family life; andits ample sustaining power throughout the long early period of "themother-right;" or as we call it, the matriarchate; the father beingher assistant in the great work. The patriarchate, with its proprietaryfamily, changed this altogether; the woman, as the property of the manwas considered first and foremost as a means of pleasure to him; andwhile she was still valued as a mother, it was in a tributary capacity. Her children were now his; his property, as she was; the whole engineryof the family was turned from its true use to this new one, hithertounknown, the service of the adult male. 

To this day we are living under the influence of the proprietaryfamily. The duty of the wife is held to involve man-service as wellas child-service, and indeed far more; as the duty of the wife to thehusband quite transcends the duty of the mother to the child. 

See for instance the English wife staying with her husband in India andsending the children home to be brought up; because India is badfor children. See our common law that the man decides the place ofresidence; if the wife refuses to go with him to howsoever unfit a placefor her and for the little ones, such refusal on her part constitutes"desertion" and is ground for divorce. 

See again the idea that the wife must remain with the husband though adrunkard, or diseased; regardless of the sin against the child involvedin such a relation. Public feeling on these matters is indeed changing;but as a whole the ideals of the man-made family still obtain. 

The effect of this on the woman has been inevitably to weaken andovershadow her sense of the real purpose of the family; of therelentless responsibilities of her duty as a mother. She is first taughtduty to her parents, with heavy religious sanction; and then duty toher husband, similarly buttressed; but her duty to her children has beenleft to instinct. She is not taught in girlhood as to her preeminentpower and duty as a mother; her young ideals are all of devotion to thelover and husband: with only the vaguest sense of results. 

The young girl is reared in what we call "innocence;" poeticallydescribed as "bloom;" and this condition is held one of her chief"charms. " The requisite is wholly androcentric. This "innocence" doesnot enable her to choose a husband wisely; she does not even know thedangers that possibly confront her. We vaguely imagine that her fatheror brother, who do know, will protect her. Unfortunately the father andbrother, under our current "double standard" of morality do not judgethe applicants as she would if she knew the nature of their offenses. 

Furthermore, if her heart is set on one of them, no amount of generaladvice and opposition serves to prevent her marrying him. "I love him!"she says, sublimely. "I do not care what he has done. I will forgivehim. I will save him!"

This state of mind serves to forward the interests of the lover, butis of no advantage to the children. We have magnified the duties of thewife, and minified the duties of the mother; and this is inevitable ina family relation every law and custom of which is arranged from themasculine viewpoint. 

From this same viewpoint, equally essential to the proprietary family, comes the requirement that the woman shall serve the man. Her serviceis not that of the associate and equal, as when she joins him in hisbusiness. It is not that of a beneficial combination, as when shepractices another business and they share the profits; it is not eventhat of the specialist, as the service of a tailor or barber; it ispersonal service--the work of a servant. 

In large generalization, the women of the world cook and wash, sweep anddust, sew and mend, for the men. 

We are so accustomed to this relation; have held it for so long to bethe "natural" relation, that it is difficult indeed to show that it isdistinctly unnatural and injurious. The father expects to be served bythe daughter, a service quite different from what he expects of the son. This shows at once that such service is no integral part of motherhood, or even of marriage; but is supposed to be the proper industrialposition of women, as such. 

Why is this so? Why, on the face of it, given a daughter and a son, should a form of service be expected of the one, which would beconsidered ignominious by the other?

The underlying reason is this. Industry, at its base, is a femininefunction. The surplus energy of the mother does not manifest itself innoise, or combat, or display, but in productive industry. Because of hermother-power she became the first inventor and laborer; being in truththe mother of all industry as well as all people. 

Man's entrance upon industry is late and reluctant; as will be shownlater in treating his effect on economics. In this field of family life, his effect was as follows:

Establishing the proprietary family at an age when the industry wasprimitive and domestic; and thereafter confining the woman solely tothe domestic area, he thereby confined her to primitive industry. Thedomestic industries, in the hands of women, constitute a survival ofour remotest past. Such work was "woman's work" as was all the work thenknown; such work is still considered woman's work because they have beenprevented from doing any other. 

The term "domestic industry" does not define a certain kind of labor, but a certain grade of labor. Architecture was a domestic industryonce--when every savage mother set up her own tepee. To be confinedto domestic industry is no proper distinction of womanhood; it is anhistoric distinction, an economic distinction, it sets a date and limitto woman's industrial progress. 

In this respect the man-made family has resulted in arrestingthe development of half the field. We have a world wherein men, industrially, live in the twentieth century; and women, industrially, live in the first--and back of it. 

To the same source we trace the social and educational limitationsset about women. The dominant male, holding his women as property, and fiercely jealous of them, considering them always as _his, _ notbelonging to themselves, their children, or the world; has hedged themin with restrictions of a thousand sorts; physical, as in the crippledChinese lady or the imprisoned odalisque; moral, as in the oppressivedoctrines of submission taught by all our androcentric religions;mental, as in the enforced ignorance from which women are now so swiftlyemerging. 

This abnormal restriction of women has necessarily injured motherhood. The man, free, growing in the world's growth, has mounted with thecenturies, filling an ever wider range of world activities. Thewoman, bound, has not so grown; and the child is born to a progressivefatherhood and a stationary motherhood. Thus the man-made family reactsunfavorably upon the child. We rob our children of half their socialheredity by keeping the mother in an inferior position; howeverlegalized, hallowed, or ossified by time, the position of a domesticservant is inferior. 

It is for this reason that child culture is at so low a level, and forthe most part utterly unknown. Today, when the forces of education aresteadily working nearer to the cradle, a new sense is wakening of theimportance of the period of infancy, and its wiser treatment; yet thosewho know of such a movement are few, and of them some are content toearn easy praise--and pay--by belittling right progress to gratify theprejudices of the ignorant. 

The whole position is simple and clear; and easily traceable toits root. Given a proprietary family, where the man holds the womanprimarily for his satisfaction and service--then necessarily he shutsher up and keeps her for these purposes. Being so kept, she cannotdevelop humanly, as he has, through social contact, social service, truesocial life. (We may note in passing, her passionate fondness for thechild-game called "society" she has been allowed to entertain herselfwithal; that poor simiacrum of real social life, in which peopledecorate themselves and madly crowd together, chattering, for what iscalled "entertainment. ") Thus checked in social development, we have buta low grade motherhood to offer our children; and the children, rearedin the primitive conditions thus artificially maintained, enter lifewith a false perspective, not only toward men and women, but toward lifeas a whole. 

The child should receive in the family, full preparation for hisrelation to the world at large. His whole life must be spent in theworld, serving it well or ill; and youth is the time to learn how. But the androcentric home cannot teach him. We live to-day in ademocracy-the man-made family is a despotism. It may be a weak one; thedespot may be dethroned and overmastered by his little harem of one; butin that case she becomes the despot--that is all. The male is esteemed"the head of the family;" it belongs to him; he maintains it; and therest of the world is a wide hunting ground and battlefield wherein hecompetes with other males as of old. 

The girl-child, peering out, sees this forbidden field as belongingwholly to men-kind; and her relation to it is to secure one forherself--not only that she may love, but that she may live. He willfeed, clothe and adorn her--she will serve him; from the subjection ofthe daughter to that of the wife she steps; from one home to the other, and never enters the world at all--man's world. 

The boy, on the other hand, considers the home as a place of women, aninferior place, and longs to grow up and leave it--for the real world. He is quite right. The error is that this great social instinct, callingfor full social exercise, exchange, service, is considered masculine, whereas it is human, and belongs to boy and girl alike. 

The child is affected first through the retarded development of hismother, then through the arrested condition of home industry;and further through the wrong ideals which have arisen from theseconditions. A normal home, where there was human equality between motherand father, would have a better influence. 

We must not overlook the effect of the proprietary family on theproprietor himself. He, too, has been held back somewhat by thisreactionary force. In the process of becoming human we must learn torecognize justice, freedom, human rights; we must learn self-control andto think of others; have minds that grow and broaden rationally; wemust learn the broad mutual interservice and unbounded joy of socialintercourse and service. The petty despot of the man-made home ishindered in his humanness by too much manness. 

For each man to have one whole woman to cook for and wait upon him isa poor education for democracy. The boy with a servile mother, the manwith a servile wife, cannot reach the sense of equal rights we needto-day. Too constant consideration of the master's tastes makes themaster selfish; and the assault upon his heart direct, or through thatproverbial side-avenue, the stomach, which the dependent woman needsmust make when she wants anything, is bad for the man, as well as forher. 

We are slowly forming a nobler type of family; the union of two, basedon love and recognized by law, maintained because of its happiness anduse. We are even now approaching a tenderness and permanence oflove, high pure enduring love; combined with the broad deep-rootedfriendliness and comradeship of equals; which promises us more happinessin marriage than we have yet known. It will be good for all the partiesconcerned--man, woman and child: and promote our general social progressadmirably. 

If it needs "a head" it will elect a chairman pro tem. Friendship doesnot need "a head. " Love does dot need "a head. " Why should a family?

III. HEALTH AND BEAUTY. 

 NOTE--The word "Androcentric" we owe to Prof. Lester F. Ward. In his book, "Pure Sociology, " Chap. 14, he describes the Androcentric Theory of life, hitherto universally accepted; and introduces his own "Gyneacocentric Theory. " All who are interested in the deeper scientific aspects of this question are urged to read that chapter. Prof. Ward's theory is to my mind the most important that has been offered the world since the Theory of Evolution; and without exception the most important that has ever been put forward concerning women. 

Among the many paradoxes which we find in human life is our low averagestandard of health and beauty, compared with our power and knowledge. All creatures suffer from conflict with the elements; from enemieswithout and within--the prowling devourers of the forest, and "theterror that walketh in darkness" and attacks the body from inside, inhidden millions. 

Among wild animals generally, there is a certain standard of excellence;if you shoot a bear or a bird, it is a fair sample of the species; youdo not say, "O what an ugly one!" or "This must have been an invalid!"

Where we have domesticated any animal, and interfered with its naturalhabits, illness has followed; the dog is said to have the most diseasessecond to man; the horse comes next; but the wild ones put us toshame by their superior health and the beauty that belongs to rightdevelopment. 

In our long ages of blind infancy we assume that sickness was avisitation frown the gods; some still believe this, holding it to be aspecial prerogative of divinity to afflict us in this way. We speak of"the ills that flesh is heir to" as if the inheritance was entailed andinalienable. Only of late years, after much study and long struggle withthis old belief which made us submit to sickness as a blow from the handof God, we are beginning to learn something of the many causes of ourmany diseases, and how to remove some of them. 

It is still true, however, that almost every one of us is to some degreeabnormal; the features asymmetrical, the vision defective, the digestionunreliable, the nervous system erratic--we are but a job lot even inwhat we call "good health"; and are subject to a burden of painand premature death that would make life hideous if it were not soridiculously unnecessary. 

As to beauty--we do not think of expecting it save in the rarelyexceptional case. Look at the faces--the figures--in any crowd you meet;compare the average man or the average woman with the normal type ofhuman beauty as given us in picture and statue; and consider if there isnot some general cause for so general a condition of ugliness. 

Moreover, leaving our defective bodies concealed by garments; what arethose garments, as conducive to health and beauty? Is the practicalugliness of our men's attire, and the impractical absurdity of ourwomen's, any contribution to human beauty? Look at our houses--are theybeautiful? Even the houses of the rich?

We do not even know that we ought to live in a world of overflowingloveliness; and that our contribution to it should be the loveliest ofall. We are so sodden in the dull ugliness of our interiors, so usedto calling a tame weary low-toned color scheme "good taste, " that onlychildren dare frankly yearn for Beauty--and they are speedily educatedout of it. 

The reasons specially given for our low standards of health and beautyare ignorance, poverty, and the evil effects of special trades. The Manwith the Hoe becomes brother to the ox because of over-much hoeing; thehousepainter is lead-poisoned because of his painting; books have beenwritten to show the injurious influence of nearly all our industriesupon workers. 

These causes are sound as far as they go; but do not cover the wholeground. 

The farmer may be muscle-bound and stooping from his labor; but thatdoes not account for his dyspepsia or his rheumatism. 

Then we allege poverty as covering all. Poverty does cover a good deal. But when we find even a half-fed savage better developed than a wellpaid cashier; and a poor peasant woman a more vigorous mother than theidle wife of a rich man, poverty is not enough. 

Then we say ignorance explains it. But there are most learned professorswho are ugly and asthmathic; there are even doctors who can boast nobeauty and but moderate health; there are some of the petted children ofthe wealthy, upon whom every care is lavished from birth, and who stillare ill to look at and worse to marry. 

All these special causes are admitted, given their due share inlowering our standards, but there is another far more universal in itsapplication and its effects. Let us look back on our little ancestorsthe beasts, and see what keeps them so true to type. 

The type itself set by that balance of conditions and forces we call"natural selection. " As the environment changes they must be adapted toit, if they cannot so adapt themselves they die. Those who live are, byliving, proven capable of maintaining themselves. Every creature whichhas remained on earth, while so many less effective kinds died out, remains as a conqueror. The speed of the deer--the constant use ofspeed--is what keeps it alive and makes it healthy and beautiful. Thevaried activities of the life of a leopard are what have developed thesinuous gracile strength we so admire. It is what the creature does forits living, its daily life-long exercise which makes it what it is. 

But there is another great natural force which works steadily tokeep all animals up to the race standard; that is sexual selection. Throughout nature the male is the variant, as we have already noted. His energy finds vent not only in that profuse output of decorativeappendages Ward defines as "masculine efflorescence" but in variationsnot decorative, not useful or desirable at all. 

The female, on the other hand, varies much less, remaining nearer therace type; and her function is to select among these varying malesthe specimens most valuable to the race. In the intense masculinecompetition the victor must necessarily be stronger than his fellows;he is first proven equal to his environment by having lived to growup, then more than equal to his fellows by overcoming them. This highergrade of selection also develops not only the characteristics necessaryto make a living; but secondary ones, often of a purely aestheticnature, which make much of what we call beauty. Between the two, all wholive must be up to a certain grade, and those who become parents must beabove it; a masterly arrangement surely!

Here is where, during the period of our human history, we in our newbornconsciousness and imperfect knowledge, have grievously interfered withthe laws of nature. The ancient proprietary family, treating the womanas a slave, keeping her a prisoner and subject to the will of hermaster, cut her off at once from the exercise of those activities whichalone develop and maintain the race type. 

Take the one simple quality of speed. We are a creature built for speed, a free swift graceful animal; and among savages this is still seen--thecapacity for running, mile after mile, hour after hour. Running is asnatural a gait for _genus homo_ as for _genus cervus. _ Now suppose amongdeer, the doe was prohibited from running; the stag continuing free onthe mountain; the doe living in caves and pens, unequal to any exercise. The effect on the species would be, inevitably, to reduce its speed. 

In this way, by keeping women to one small range of duties, and in mostcases housebound, we have interfered with natural selection and itsresultant health and beauty. It can easily be seen what the effect onthe race would have been if all men had been veiled and swathed, hiddenin harems, kept to the tent or house, and confined to the activitiesof a house-servant. Our stalwart laborers, our proud soldiers, ourathletes, would never have appeared under such circumstances. Theconfinement to the house alone, cutting women off from sunshine and air, is by itself an injury; and the range of occupation allowed them is notsuch as to develop a high standard of either health or beauty. Thus wehave cut off half the race from the strengthening influence of naturalselection, and so lowered our race-standards in large degree. 

This alone, however, would not have hid such mischievous effects butfor our further blunder in completely reversing nature's order ofsexual selection. It is quite possible that even under confinement andrestriction women could have kept up the race level, passably, throughthis great function of selection; but here is the great fundamentalerror of the Androcentric Culture. Assuming to be the possessor ofwomen, their owner and master, able at will to give, buy and sell, or dowith as he pleases, man became the selector. 

It seems a simple change; and in those early days, wholly ignorant ofnatural laws, there was no suspicion that any mischief would result. Inthe light of modern knowledge, however, the case is clear. The woman wasdeprived of the beneficent action of natural selection, and the manwas then, by his own act, freed from the stern but elevating effect ofsexual selection. Nothing was required of the woman by natural selectionsave such capacity as should please her master; nothing was requiredof the man by sexual selection save power to take by force, or buy, awoman. 

It does not take a very high standard of feminine intelligence, strength, skill, health, or beauty to be a houseservant, or even ahousekeeper; witness the average. 

It does not take a very high standard of masculine, intelligence, strength, skill, health or beauty to maintain a woman in thatcapacity--witness average. 

Here at the very root of our physiological process, at the beginningof life, we have perverted the order of nature, and are suffering theconsequences. 

It has been held by some that man as the selector has developed beauty, more beauty than we had before; and we point to the charms of our womenas compared with those of the squaw. The answer to this is that thesquaw belongs to a decadent race; that she too is subject to the man, that the comparison to have weight should be made between our women andthe women of the matriarchate--an obvious impossibility. We have not onearth women in a state of normal freedom and full development; but wehave enough difference in their placing to learn that human strength andbeauty grows with woman's freedom and activity. 

The second answer is that much of what man calls beauty in woman is nothuman beauty at all, but gross overdevelopment of certain points whichappeal to him as a male. The excessive fatness, previously referred to, is a case in point; that being considered beauty in a woman which isin reality an element of weakness, inefficiency and ill-health. Therelatively small size of women, deliberately preferred, steadfastlychosen, and so built into the race, is a blow at real human progress inevery particular. In our upward journey we should and do grow larger, leaving far behind us our dwarfish progenitors. Yet the male, in hisunnatural position as selector, preferring for reasons both practicaland sentimental, to have "his woman" smaller than himself, hasdeliberately striven to lower the standard of size in the race. We usedto read in the novels of the last generation, "He was a magnificentspecimen of manhood"--"Her golden head reached scarcely to hisshoulder"--"She was a fairy creature--the tiniest of her sex. " Thus wehave mated, and yet expected that by some hocus pocus the boys would all"take after their father, " and the girls, their mother. In hisefforts to improve the breed of other animals, man has never triedto deliberately cross the large and small and expect to keep up thestandard of size. 

As a male he is appealed to by the ultra-feminine, and has given smallthought to effects on the race. He was not designed to do the selecting. Under his fostering care we have bred a race of women who are physicallyweak enough to be handed about like invalids; or mentally weak enoughto pretend they are--and to like it. We have made women who respond soperfectly to the force which made them, that they attach all their ideaof beauty to those characteristics which attract men; sometimes humanlyugly without even knowing it. 

For instance, our long restriction to house-limits, the heavylimitations of our clothing, and the heavier ones of traditionaldecorum, have made women disproportionately short-legged. This is aparticularly undignified and injurious characteristic, bred in womenand inherited by men, most seen among those races which keep their womenmost closely. Yet when one woman escapes the tendency and appears witha normal length of femur and tibia, a normal height of hip and shoulder, she is criticized and called awkward by her squatty sisters!

The most convenient proof of the inferiority of women in human beauty isshown by those composite statues prepared by Mr. Sargent for the World'sFair of '93. These were made from gymnasium measurements of thousands ofyoung collegians of both sexes all over America. The statue of the girlhas a pretty face, small hands and feet, rather nice arms, though weak;but the legs are too thick and short; the chest and shoulders poor; andthe trunk is quite pitiful in its weakness. The figure of the man ismuch better proportioned. 

Thus the effect on human beauty of masculine selection. 

Beyond this positive deteriorative effect on women through man'sarbitrary choice comes the negative effect of woman's lack of choice. Bought or stolen or given by her father, she was deprived of theinnately feminine right and duty of choosing. "Who giveth this woman?"we still inquire in our archaic marriage service, and one man stepsforward and gives her to another man. 

Free, the female chose the victor, and the vanquished went unmated--andwithout progeny. Dependent, having to be fed and cared for by some man, the victors take their pick perhaps, but the vanquished take what isleft; and the poor women, "marrying for a home, " take anything. As aconsequence the inferior male is as free to transmit his inferiority asthe superior to give better qualities, and does so--beyond computation. In modern days, women are freer, in some countries freer than in others;here in modern America freest of all; and the result is seen in ourimproving standards of health and beauty. 

Still there remains the field of inter-masculine competition, does therenot? Do not the males still struggle together? Is not that as of old, asource of race advantage?

To some degree it is. When life was simple and our activities consistedmainly in fighting and hard work; the male who could vanquish the otherswas bigger and stronger. But inter-masculine competition ceases to beof such advantage when we enter the field of social service. What isrequired in organized society is the specialization of the individual, the development of special talents, not always of immediate benefit tothe man himself, but of ultimate benefit to society. The best socialservant, progressive, meeting future needs, is almost always at adisadvantage besides the well-established lower types. We need, forsocial service, qualities quite different from the simple masculinecharacteristics--desire, combat, self-expression. 

By keeping what we call "the outside world" so wholly male, we keep upmasculine standards at the expense of human ones. This may be broadlyseen in the slow and painful development of industry and science ascompared to the easy dominance of warfare throughout all history untilour own times. 

The effect of all this ultra masculine competition upon health andbeauty is but too plainly to be seen. Among men the male idea of whatis good looking is accentuated beyond reason. Read about any "hero"you please; or study the products of the illustrator and note the broadshoulders, the rugged features, the strong, square, determined jaw. That jaw is in evidence if everything else fails. He may be cross-eyed, wide-eared, thick-necked, bandy-legged--what you please; but he musthave a more or less prognathous jaw. 

Meanwhile any anthropologist will show you that the line of humandevelopment is away from that feature of the bulldog and the alligator, and toward the measured dignity of the Greek type. The possessor of thatkind of jaw may enable male to conquer male, but does not make him ofany more service to society; of any better health or higher beauty. 

Further, in the external decoration of our bodies, what is the influencehere of masculine dominance. 

We have before spoken of the peculiar position of our race in thatthe woman is the only female creature who carries the burden of sexornament. This amazing reversal of the order of nature results at itsmildest in a perversion of the natural feminine instincts of love andservice, and an appearance of the masculine instincts of self-expressionand display. Alone among all female things do women decorate and preenthemselves and exhibit their borrowed plumage (literally!) to attractthe favor of the male. This ignominy is forced upon them by theirposition of economic dependence; and their general helplessness. As allbroader life is made to depend, for them, on whom they marry, indeed aseven the necessities of life so often depend on their marrying someone, they have been driven into this form of competition, so alien to thetrue female attitude. 

The result is enough to make angels weep--and laugh. Perhaps no step inthe evolution of beauty went farther than our human power of makinga continuous fabric; soft and mobile, showing any color and texturedesired. The beauty of the human body is supreme, and when we add to itthe flow of color, the ripple of fluent motion, that comes of a soft, light garment over free limbs--it is a new field of loveliness anddelight. Naturally this should have filled the whole world with a newpleasure. Our garments, first under right natural selection developingperfect use, under right sex selection developing beauty; and further, as our human aesthetic sense progresses, showing a noble symbolism, would have been an added strength and glory, a ceaseless joy. 

What is the case?

Men, under a too strictly inter-masculine environment, have evolved themainly useful but beautiless costume common to-day; and women--?

Women wear beautiful garments when they happen to be the fashion; andugly garments when they are the fashion, and show no signs of knowingthe difference. They show no added pride in the beautiful, no hintof mortification in the hideous, and are not even sensitive undercriticism, or open to any persuasion or argument. Why should they be?

Their condition, physical and mental, is largely abnormal, their wholepassionate absorption in dress and decoration is abnormal, and they havenever looked, from a frankly human standpoint, at their position and itspeculiarities, until the present age. 

In the effect of our wrong relation on the world's health, we havespoken of the check to vigor and growth due to the housebound stateof women and their burdensome clothes. There follow other influences, similar in origin, even more evil in result. To roughly and brieflyclassify we may distinguish the diseases due to bad air, to badfood, and that field of cruel mischief we are only now beginning todiscuss--the diseases directly due to the erroneous relation between menand women. 

We are the only race where the female depends on the male for alivelihood. We are the only race that practices prostitution. From thefirst harmless-looking but abnormal general relation follows the wellrecognized evil of the second, so long called "a social necessity, " andfrom it, in deadly sequence, comes the "wages of sin;" death not only ofthe guilty, but of the innocent. It is no light part of our criticismof the Androcentric Culture that a society based on masculine desiresalone, has willingly sacrificed such an army of women; and has repaidthe sacrifice by the heaviest punishments. 

That the unfortunate woman should sicken and die was held to be her justpunishment; that man too should bear part penalty was found unavoidable, though much legislation and medical effort has been spent to shield him;but to the further consequences society is but now waking up. 

IV. MEN AND ART. 

Among the many counts in which women have been proven inferior to men inhuman development is the oft-heard charge that there are no great womenartists. Where one or two are proudly exhibited in evidence, theyare either pooh-poohed as not very great, or held to be the triflingexceptions which do but prove the rule. 

Defenders of women generally make the mistake of over-estimating theirperformances, instead of accepting, and explaining, the visible facts. What are the facts as to the relation of men and women to art? Andwhat, in especial, has been the effect upon art of a solely masculineexpression?

When we look for the beginnings of art, we find ourselves in a periodof crude decoration of the person and of personal belongings. Tattooing, for instance, is an early form of decorative art, still in practiceamong certain classes, even in advanced people. Most boys, if they arein contact with this early art, admire it, and wish to adorn themselvestherewith; some do so--to later mortification. Early personal decorationconsisted largely in direct mutilation of the body, and the hanging uponit, or fastening to it, of decorative objects. This we see among savagesstill, in its gross and primitive forms monopolized by men, then sharedby women, and, in our time, left almost wholly to them. In personaldecoration today, women are still near the savage. The "artists"developed in this field of art are the tonsorial, the sartorial, andall those specialized adorners of the body commonly known as "beautydoctors. "

Here, as in other cases, the greatest artists are men. The greatestmilliners, the greatest dressmakers and tailors, the greatesthairdressers, and the masters and designers in all our decorativetoilettes and accessories, are men. Women, in this as in so manyother lines, consume rather than produce. They carry the major partof personal decoration today; but the decorator is the man. In thedecoration of objects, woman, as the originator of primitive industry, originated also the primitive arts; and in the pottery, basketry, leatherwork, needlework, weaving, with all beadwork, dyeing andembroideries of ancient peoples we see the work of the woman decorator. Much of this is strong and beautiful, but its time is long past. The artwhich is part of industry, natural, simple, spontaneous, making beautyin every object of use, adding pleasure to labor and to life, is not Artwith a large A, the Art which requires Artists, among whom are so fewwomen of note. 

Art as a profession, and the Artist as a professional, came later; andby that time women had left the freedom and power of the matriarchateand become slaves in varying degree. The women who were idle pets inharems, or the women who worked hard as servants, were alike cut offfrom the joy of making things. Where constructive work remained to them, art remained, in its early decorative form. Men, in the proprietaryfamily, restricting the natural industry of women to personal service, cut off their art with their industry, and by so much impoverished theworld. 

There is no more conspicuously pathetic proof of the aborted developmentof women than this commonplace--their lack of a civilized art sense. Notonly in the childish and savage display upon their bodies, but in thepitiful products they hang upon the walls of the home, is seen thearrest in normal growth. 

After ages of culture, in which men have developed Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music and the Drama, we find women in theirprimitive environment making flowers of wax, and hair, and worsted;doing mottoes of perforated cardboard, making crazy quilts and mats and"tidies"--as if they lived in a long past age, or belonged to a lowerrace. 

This, as part of the general injury to women dating from the beginningof our androcentric culture, reacts heavily upon the world at large. Men, specializing, giving their lives to the continuous pursuit of oneline of service, have lifted our standard in aesthetic culture, as theyhave in other matters; but by refusing the same growth to women, theyhave not only weakened and reduced the output, but ruined the market asit were, hopelessly and permanently kept down the level of taste. 

Among the many sides of this great question, some so terrible, someso pathetic, some so utterly absurd, this particular phase of life isespecially easy to study and understand, and has its own elements ofamusement. Men, holding women at the level of domestic service, goingon themselves to lonely heights of achievement, have found their effortshampered and their attainments rendered barren and unsatisfactory bythe amazing indifference of the world at large. As the world at largeconsists half of women, and wholly of their children, it would seempatent to the meanest understanding that the women must be allowedto rise in order to lift the world. But such has not been themethod--heretofore. 

We have spoken so far in this chapter of the effect of men on artthrough their interference with the art of women. There are other sidesto the question. Let us consider once more the essential characteristicsof maleness, and see how they have affected art, keeping always in mindthe triune distinction between masculine, feminine and human. Perhapswe shall best see this difference by considering what the development ofart might have been on purely human terms. 

The human creature, as such, naturally delights in construction, andadds decoration to construction as naturally. The cook, making littleregular patterns around the edge of the pie, does so from a purely humaninstinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regularity, symmetry, repetition, and alternation. Had this natural social instinct grown unchecked inus, it would have manifested itself in a certain proportion ofspecialists--artists of all sorts--and an accompanying developmentof appreciation on the part of the rest of us. Such is the case inprimitive art; the maker of beauty is upheld and rewarded by a popularappreciation of her work--or his. 

Had this condition remained, we should find a general level of artisticexpression and appreciation far higher than we see now. Take the onefield of textile art, for instance: that wide and fluent medium ofexpression, the making of varied fabrics, the fashioning of garments andthe decoration of them--all this is human work and human pleasure. Itshould have led us to a condition where every human being was a pleasureto the eye, appropriately and beautifully clothed. 

Our real condition in this field is too patent to need emphasis; thestiff, black ugliness of our men's attire; the irritating variegatedfolly of our women's; the way in which we spoil the beauty and shame thedignity of childhood by modes of dress. 

In normal human growth, our houses would be a pleasure to the eye; ourfurniture and utensils, all our social products, would blossom intobeauty as naturally as they still do in those low stages of socialevolution where our major errors have not yet borne full fruit. 

Applied art in all its forms is a human function, common to every one tosome degree, either in production or appreciation, or both. "Pure art, "as an ideal, is also human; and the single-hearted devotion of thetrue artist to this ideal is one of the highest forms of the socialsacrifice. Of all the thousand ways by which humanity is specialized forinter-service, none is more exquisite than this; the evolution of thesocial Eye, or Ear, or Voice, the development of those whose work iswholly for others, and to whom the appreciation of others is as thebread of life. This we should have in a properly developed community;the pleasure of applied art in the making and using of everything wehave; and then the high joy of the Great Artist, and the noble workthereof, spread far and wide. 

What do we find?

Applied art at a very low level; small joy either for the maker or theuser. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an electfew who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become anoccult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, andevolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more esoteric yearly. 

Let us now see what part in this undesirable outcome is due to ourAndrocentric Culture. 

As soon as the male of our species assumed the exclusive right toperform all social functions, he necessarily brought to that performancethe advantages--and disadvantages--of maleness, of those dominantcharacteristics, desire, combat, self-expression. 

Desire has overweighted art in many visible forms; it is prominentin painting and music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has pitifullydegraded dancing. 

Combat is not so easily expressed in art, where even competition is on ahigh plane; but the last element is the main evil, self-expression. Thisimpulse is inherently and ineradicably masculine. It rests on that mostbasic of distinctions between the sexes, the centripetal and centrifugalforces of the universe. In the very nature of the sperm-cell and thegerm-cell we find this difference: the one attracts, gathers, draws in;the other repels, scatters, pushes out. That projective impulse is seenin the male nature everywhere; the constant urge toward expression, toall boasting and display. This spirit, like all things masculine, isperfectly right and admirable in its place. 

It is the duty of the male, as a male, to vary; bursting forth ina thousand changing modifications--the female, selecting, may soincorporate beneficial changes in the race. It is his duty to thusexpress himself--an essentially masculine duty; but masculinity is onething, and art is another. Neither the masculine nor the feminine hasany place in art--Art is Human. 

It is not in any faintest degree allied to the personal processesof reproduction; but is a social process, a most distinctive socialprocess, quite above the plane of sex. The true artist transcends hissex, or her sex. If this is not the case, the art suffers. 

Dancing is an early, and a beautiful art; direct expression of emotionthrough the body; beginning in subhuman type, among male birds, as thebower-bird of New Guinea, and the dancing crane, who swing and caperbefore their mates. Among early peoples we find it a common form ofsocial expression in tribal dances of all sorts, religious, military, and other. Later it becomes a more explicit form of celebration, asamong the Greeks; in whose exquisite personal culture dancing and musicheld high place. 

But under the progressive effects of purely masculine dominance we findthe broader human elements of dancing left out, and the sex-element moreand more emphasized. As practiced by men alone dancing has become a meredisplay of physical agility, a form of exhibition common to all males. As practiced by men and women together we have our social dances, solacking in all the varied beauty of posture and expression, so steadilybecoming a pleasant form of dalliance. 

As practiced by women alone we have one of the clearest proofs of thedegrading effect of masculine dominance:--the dancing girl. In the franksensualism of the Orient, this personage is admired and enjoyed on hermerits. We, more sophisticated in this matter, joke shamefacedly about"the bald-headed row, " and occasionally burst forth in shrill scandalover some dinner party where ladies clad in a veil and a bracelet danceon the table. Nowhere else in the whole range of life on earth, is thisdegradation found--the female capering and prancing before the male. It is absolutely and essentially his function, not hers. That we, as arace, present this pitiful spectacle, a natural art wrested to unnaturalends, a noble art degraded to ignoble ends, has one clear cause. 

Architecture, in its own nature, is least affected by that same cause. The human needs secured by it, are so human, so unescapably human, thatwe find less trace of excessive masculinity than in other arts. It meetsour social demands, it expresses in lasting form our social feeling, up to the highest; and it has been injured not so much by an excess ofmasculinity as by a lack of femininity. 

The most universal architectural expression is in the home; the home isessentially a place for the woman and the child; yet the needs of womanand child are not expressed in our domestic architecture. The home isbuilt on lines of ancient precedent, mainly as an industrial form; thekitchen is its working centre rather than the nursery. 

Each man wishes his home to preserve and seclude his woman, his littleharem of one; and in it she is to labor for his comfort or to manifesthis ability to maintain her in idleness. The house is the physicalexpression of the limitations of women; and as such it fills the worldwith a small drab ugliness. A dwelling house is rarely a beautifulobject. In order to be such, it should truly express simple and naturalrelations; or grow in larger beauty as our lives develop. 

The deadlock for architectural progress, the low level of our generaltaste, the everlasting predominance of the commonplace in buildings, isthe natural result of the proprietary family and its expression in thisform. 

In sculpture we have a noble art forcing itself into some servicethrough many limitations. Its check, as far as it comes under this lineof study, has been indicated in our last chapter; the degradation of thehuman body, the vicious standards of sex-consciousness enforced underthe name of modesty, the covered ugliness, which we do not recognize, all this is a deadly injury to free high work in sculpture. 

With a nobly equal womanhood, stalwart and athletic; with the highstandards of beauty and of decorum which we can never have without freewomanhood; we should show a different product in this great art. 

An interesting note in passing is this: when we seek to express sociallyour noblest, ideas, Truth; Justice; Liberty; we use the woman's body asthe highest human type. But in doing this, the artist, true to humanityand not biassed by sex, gives us a strong, grand figure, beautifulindeed, but never _decorated_. Fancy Liberty in ruffles and frills, withrings in her ears--or nose. 

Music is injured by a one-sided handling, partly in the excess ofthe one dominant masculine passion, partly by the general presence ofegoism; that tendency to self-expression instead of social expression, which so disfigures our art; and this is true also of poetry. 

Miles and miles of poetry consist of the ceaseless outcry of the malefor the female, which is by no means so overwhelming as a featureof human life as he imagines it; and other miles express his otherfeelings, with that ingenuous lack of reticence which is at its baseessentially masculine. Having a pain, the poet must needs pour it forth, that his woe be shared and sympathized with. 

As more and more women writers flock into the field there is room forfine historic study of the difference in sex feeling, and the gradualemergence of the human note. 

Literature, and in especial the art of fiction, is so large a field forthis study that it will have a chapter to itself; this one but touchingon these various forms; and indicating lines of observation. 

That best known form of art which to my mind needs no qualifyingdescription--painting--is also a wide field; and cannot be donefull justice to within these limits. The effect upon it of too muchmasculinity is not so much in choice of subject as in method and spirit. The artist sees beauty of form and color where the ordinary observerdoes not; and paints the old and ugly with as much enthusiasm as theyoung and beautiful--sometimes. If there is in some an over-emphasis offeminine attractions it is counterbalanced in others by a far broaderline of work. 

But the main evils of a too masculine art lie in the emphasis laid onself-expression. The artist, passionately conscious of how he feels, strives to make other people aware of these sensations. This is now sogenerally accepted by critics, so seriously advanced by painters, thatwhat is called "the art world" accepts it as established. 

If a man paints the sea, it is not to make you see and feel as asight of that same ocean would, but to make you see and feel howhe, personally, was affected by it; a matter surely of the narrowestimportance. The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sensitive, necessarily, and full of the natural urge to expression of the sex, usesthe medium of art as ingenuously as the partridge-cock uses his wings indrumming on the log; or the bull moose stamps and bellows; not narrowlyas a mate call, but as a form of expression of his personal sensations. 

The higher the artist the more human he is, the broader his vision, the more he sees for humanity, and expresses for humanity, and the lesspersonal, the less ultra-masculine, is his expression. 

V. MASCULINE LITERATURE. 

When we are offered a "woman's" paper, page, or column, we find itfilled with matter supposed to appeal to women as a sex or class; thewriter mainly dwelling upon the Kaiser's four K's--Kuchen, Kinder, Kirche, Kleider. They iterate and reiterate endlessly the discussionof cookery, old and new; of the care of children; of the overwhelmingsubject of clothing; and of moral instruction. All this is recognized as"feminine" literature, and it must have some appeal else the women wouldnot read it. What parallel have we in "masculine" literature?

"None!" is the proud reply. "Men are people! Women, being 'the sex, 'have their limited feminine interests, their feminine point of view, which must be provided for. Men, however, are not restricted--to thembelongs the world's literature!"

Yes, it has belonged to them--ever since there was any. They havewritten it and they have read it. It is only lately that women, generally speaking, have been taught to read; still more lately thatthey have been allowed to write. It is but a little while since HarrietMartineau concealed her writing beneath her sewing when visitors camein--writing was "masculine"--sewing "feminine. "

We have not, it Is true, confined men to a narrowly construed "masculinesphere, " and composed a special literature suited to it. Their effect onliterature has been far wider than that, monopolizing this form ofart with special favor. It was suited above all others to the dominantimpulse of self-expression; and being, as we have seen essentiallyand continually "the sex;" they have impressed that sex upon this artoverwhelmingly; they have given the world a masculized literature. 

It is hard for us to realize this. We can readily see, that if women hadalways written the books, no men either writing or reading them, thatwould have surely "feminized" our literature; but we have not in ourminds the concept, much less the word, for an overmasculized influence. 

Men having been accepted as humanity, women but a side-issue; (mostliterally if we accept the Hebrew legend!), whatever men did or said washuman--and not to be criticized. In no department of life is it easierto contravert this old belief; to show how the male sex as suchdiffers from the human type; and how this maleness has monopolized anddisfigured a great social function. 

Human life is a very large affair; and literature is its chief art. Welive, humanly, only through our power of communication. Speech givesus this power laterally, as it were, in immediate personal contact. For permanent use speech becomes oral tradition--a poor dependence. Literature gives not only an infinite multiplication to the lateralspread of communion but adds the vertical reach. Through it we know thepast, govern the present, and influence the future. In its servicablecommon forms it is the indispensable daily servant of our lives; in itsnobler flights as a great art no means of human inter-change goes sofar. 

In these brief limits we can touch but lightly on some phases of sogreat a subject; and will rest the case mainly on the effect of anexclusively masculine handling of the two fields of history and fiction. In poetry and the drama the same influence is easily traced, but in thefirst two it is so baldly prominent as to defy objection. 

History is, or should be, the story of our racial life. What have menmade it? The story of warfare and conquest. Begin at the very beginningwith the carven stones of Egypt, the clay records of Chaldea, what do wefind of history?

"I Pharaoh, King of Kings! Lord of Lords! (etc. Etc. ), went down intothe miserable land of Kush, and slew of the inhabitants thereof anhundred and forty and two thousands!" That, or something like it, is thekind of record early history gives us. 

The story of Conquering Kings, who and how many they killed andenslaved; the grovelling adulation of the abased; the unlimitedjubilation of the victor; from the primitive state of most ancientkings, and the Roman triumphs where queens walked in chains, down to ouromni present soldier's monuments: the story of war and conquest--war andconquest--over and over; with such boasting and triumph, such cock-crowand flapping of wings as show most unmistakably the natural source. 

All this will strike the reader at first as biased and unfair. "That wasthe way people lived in those days!" says the reader. 

No--it was not the way women lived. 

"O, women!" says the reader, "Of course not! Women are different. "

Yea, women are different; and _men are different!_ Both of them, assexes, differ from the human norm, which is social life and all socialdevelopment. Society was slowly growing in all those black blind years. The arts, the sciences, the trades and crafts and professions, religion, philosophy, government, law, commerce, agriculture--all the humanprocesses were going on as well as they were able, between wars. 

The male naturally fights, and naturally crows, triumphs over his rivaland takes the prize--therefore was he made male. Maleness means war. 

Not only so; but being male, he cares only for male interests. Men, being the sole arbiters of what should be done and said and written, have given us not only a social growth scarred and thwarted from thebeginning by continual destruction; but a history which is one unbrokenrecord of courage and red cruelty, of triumph and black shame. 

As to what went on that was of real consequence, the great slow steps ofthe working world, the discoveries and inventions, the real progress ofhumanity--that was not worth recording, from a masculine point of view. Within this last century, "the woman's century, " the century of thegreat awakening, the rising demand for freedom, political, economic, anddomestic, we are beginning to write real history, human history, and notmerely masculine history. But that great branch of literature--Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and all down later times, shows beyond all question, theinfluence of our androcentric culture. 

Literature is the most powerful and necessary of the arts, and fictionis its broadest form. If art "holds the mirror up to nature" this art'smirror is the largest of all, the most used. Since our very life dependson some communication; and our progress is in proportion to our fullnessand freedom of communication; since real communication requires mutualunderstanding; so in the growth of the social consciousness, we notefrom the beginning a passionate interest in other people's lives. 

The art which gives humanity consciousness is the most vital art. Ourgreatest dramatists are lauded for their breadth of knowledge of "humannature, " their range of emotion and understanding; our greatest poetsare those who most deeply and widely experience and reveal the feelingsof the human heart; and the power of fiction is that it can reach andexpress this great field of human life with no limits but those of theauthor. 

When fiction began it was the legitimate child of oral tradition; aproduct of natural brain activity; the legend constructed instead ofremembered. (This stage is with us yet as seen in the constant changesin repetition of popular jokes and stories. )

Fiction to-day has a much wider range; yet it is still restricted, heavily and most mischievously restricted. 

What is the preferred subject matter of fiction?

There are two main branches found everywhere, from the Romaunt of theRose to the Purplish Magazine;--the Story of Adventure, and the LoveStory. 

The Story-of-Adventure branch is not so thick as the other by any means, but it is a sturdy bough for all that. Stevenson and Kipling have provedits immense popularity, with the whole brood of detective stories andthe tales of successful rascality we call "picaresque" Our most popularweekly shows the broad appeal of this class of fiction. 

All these tales of adventure, of struggle and difficulty; of hunting andfishing and fighting; of robbing and murdering, catching and punishing, are distinctly and essentially masculine. They do not touch on humanprocesses, social processes, but on the special field of predatoryexcitement so long the sole province of men. 

It is to be noted here that even in the overwhelming rise of industrialinterests to-day, these, when used as the basis for a story, areforced into line with one, or both, of these two main branchesof fiction;--conflict or love. Unless the story has one of these"interests" in it, there is no story--so holds the editor; the dictumbeing, put plainly, "life has no interests except conflict and love!"

It is surely something more than a coincidence that these are the twoessential features of masculinity--Desire and Combat--Love and War. 

As a matter of fact the major interests of life are in line with itsmajor processes; and these--in our stage of human development--are morevaried than our fiction would have us believe. Half the world consistsof women, we should remember, who are types of human life as well asmen, and their major processes are not those of conflict and adventure, their love means more than mating. Even on so poor a line of distinctionas the "woman's column" offers, if women are to be kept to their fourKs, there should be a "men's column" also; and all the "sporting news"and fish stories be put in that; they are not world interests; they aremale interests. 

Now for the main branch--the Love Story. Ninety per cent. Of fiction isIn this line; this is preeminently the major interest of life--given infiction. What is the love-story, as rendered by this art?

It is the story of the pre-marital struggle. It is the Adventures of Himin Pursuit of Her--and it stops when he gets her! Story after story, age after age, over and over and over, this ceaseless repetition of thePreliminaries. 

Here is Human Life. In its large sense, its real sense, it is a matterof inter-relation between individuals and groups, covering all emotions, all processes, all experiences. Out of this vast field of human lifefiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, asits necessary base. 

"Ah! but we are persons most of all!" protests the reader. "This ispersonal experience--it has the universal appeal!"

Take human life personally then. Here is a Human Being, a life, coveringsome seventy years; involving the changing growth of many faculties;the ever new marvels of youth, the long working time of middle life, theslow ripening of age. Here is the human soul, in the human body, Living. Out of this field of personal life, with all of its emotions, processes, and experiences, fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, mainly of one sex. 

The "love" of our stories is man's love of woman. If any dare disputethis, and say it treats equally of woman's love for man, I answer, "Thenwhy do the stories stop at marriage?"

There is a current jest, revealing much, to this effect:

The young wife complains that the husband does not wait upon and woo heras he did before marriage; to which he replies, "Why should I run afterthe street-car when I've caught it?"

Woman's love for man, as currently treated in fiction is largely areflex; it is the way he wants her to feel, expects her to feel; not afair representation of how she does feel. If "love" is to be selected asthe most important thing in life to write about, then the mother's loveshould be the principal subject: This is the main stream. This is thegeneral underlying, world-lifting force. The "life-force, " now so gliblychattered about, finds its fullest expression in motherhood; not in theemotions of an assistant in the preliminary stages. 

What has literature, what has fiction, to offer concerning mother-love, or even concerning father-love, as compared to this vast volume ofexcitement about lover-love? Why is the search-light continuallyfocussed upon a two or three years space of life "mid the blank milesround about?" Why indeed, except for the clear reason, that on a starklymasculine basis this is his one period of overwhelming interest andexcitement. 

If the beehive produced literature, the bee's fiction would be rich andbroad; full of the complex tasks of comb-building and filling; the careand feeding of the young, the guardian-service of the queen; and farbeyond that it would spread to the blue glory of the summer sky, thefresh winds, the endless beauty and sweetness of a thousand thousandflowers. It would treat of the vast fecundity of motherhood, theeducative and selective processes of the group-mothers; and the passionof loyalty, of social service, which holds the hive together. 

But if the drones wrote fiction, it would have no subject matter savethe feasting of many; and the nuptial flight, of one. 

To the male, as such, this mating instinct is frankly the major interestof life; even the belligerent instincts are second to it. To thefemale, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a passing interest. In nature's economy, his is but a temporary devotion, hers the slowprocesses of life's fulfillment. 

In Humanity we have long since, not outgrown, but overgrown, this stageof feeling. In Human Parentage even the mother's share begins to palebeside that ever-growing Social love and care, which guards and guidesthe children of to-day. 

The art of literature in this main form of fiction is far too great athing to be wholly governed by one dominant note. As life widened andintensified, the artist, if great enough, has transcended sex; and inthe mightier works of the real masters, we find fiction treating oflife, life in general, in all its complex relationships, and refusing tobe held longer to the rigid canons of an androcentric past. 

This was the power of Balzac--he took in more than this one field. Thiswas the universal appeal of Dickens; he wrote of people, all kinds ofpeople, doing all kinds of things. As you recall with pleasure somepreferred novel of this general favorite, you find yourself lookingnarrowly for the "love story" in it. It is there--for it is part oflife; but it does not dominate the whole scene--any more than it does inlife. 

The thought of the world is made and handed out to us in the main. Themakers of books are the makers of thoughts and feelings for people ingeneral. Fiction is the most popular form in which this world-food istaken. If it were true, it would teach us life easily, swiftly, truly;teach not by preaching but by truly re-presenting; and we should grow upbecoming acquainted with a far wider range of life in books than couldeven be ours in person. Then meeting life in reality we should bewise--and not be disappointed. 

As it is, our great sea of fiction is steeped and dyed and flavored allone way. A young man faces life--the seventy year stretch, remember, and is given book upon book wherein one set of feelings is continuallyvocalized and overestimated. He reads forever of love, good love andbad love, natural and unnatural, legitimate and illegitimate; with theunavoidable inference that there is nothing else going on. 

If he is a healthy young man he breaks loose from the whole thing, despises "love stories" and takes up life as he finds it. But whatimpression he does receive from fiction is a false one, and he sufferswithout knowing it from lack of the truer broader views of life itfailed to give him. 

A young woman faces life--the seventy year stretch remember; andis given the same books--with restrictions. Remember the remarkof Rochefoucauld, "There are thirty good stories in the world andtwenty-nine cannot be told to women. " There is a certain broad field ofliterature so grossly androcentric that for very shame men have triedto keep it to themselves. But in a milder form, the spades all namedteaspoons, or at the worst appearing as trowels--the young woman isgiven the same fiction. Love and love and love--from "first sight" tomarriage. There it stops--just the fluttering ribbon of announcement, "and lived happily ever after. "

Is that kind of fiction any sort of picture of a woman's life? Fiction, under our androcentric culture, has not given any true picture ofwoman's life, very little of human life, and a disproportioned sectionof man's life. 

As we daily grow more human, both of us, this noble art is changing forthe better so fast that a short lifetime can mark the growth. New fieldsare opening and new laborers are working in them. But it is no swiftand easy matter to disabuse the race mind from attitudes and habitsinculcated for a thousand years. What we have been fed upon so long weare well used to, what we are used to we like, what we like we think isgood and proper. 

The widening demand for broader, truer fiction is disputed by the slowracial mind: and opposed by the marketers of literature on grounds ofvisible self-interest, as well as lethargic conservatism. 

It is difficult for men, heretofore the sole producers and consumersof literature; and for women, new to the field, and following masculinecanons because all the canons were masculine; to stretch their minds toa recognition of the change which is even now upon us. 

This one narrow field has been for so long overworked, our minds are sofilled with heroes and heroes continually repeating the one-act play, that when a book like David Harum is offered the publisher refuses itrepeatedly, and finally insists on a "heart interest" being injected byforce. 

Did anyone read David Harum for that heart interest? Does anyoneremember that heart interest? Has humanity no interests but those of theheart?

Robert Ellesmere was a popular book--but not because of its heartinterest. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin appealed to the entire world, more widely than anywork of fiction that was ever written; but if anybody fell in love andmarried in it they have been forgotten. There was plenty of love in thatbook, love of family, love of friends, love of master for servant andservant for master; love of mother for child; love of married people foreach other; love of humanity and love of God. 

It was extremely popular. Some say it was not literature. That opinionwill live, like the name of Empedocles. 

The art of fiction is being re-born in these days. Life is discovered tobe longer, wider, deeper, richer, than these monotonous players of oneJune would have us believe. 

The humanizing of woman of itself opens five distinctly fresh fieldsof fiction: First the position of the young woman who is called upon togive up her "career"--her humanness--for marriage, and who objectsto it; second, the middle-aged woman who at last discovers that herdiscontent is social starvation--that it is not more love that shewants, but more business in life: Third the interrelation of women withwomen--a thing we could never write about before because we never had itbefore: except in harems and convents: Fourth the inter-action betweenmothers and children; this not the eternal "mother and child, " whereinthe child is always a baby, but the long drama of personal relationship;the love and hope, the patience and power, the lasting joy and triumph, the slow eating disappointment which must never be owned to a livingsoul--here are grounds for novels that a million mothers and manymillion children would eagerly read: Fifth the new attitude of thefull-grown woman who faces the demands of love with the high standardsof conscious motherhood. 

There are other fields, broad and brilliantly promising, but thischapter is meant merely to show that our one-sided culture has, in thisart, most disproportionately overestimated the dominant instincts of themale--Love and War--an offense against art and truth, and an injury tolife. 

VI. GAMES AND SPORTS

One of the sharpest distinctions both between the essential charactersand the artificial positions of men and women, is in the matter ofgames and sports. By far the greater proportion of them are essentiallymasculine, and as such alien to women; while from those which arehumanly interesting, women have been largely debarred by their arbitraryrestrictions. 

The play instinct is common to girls and boys alike; and endures in somemeasure throughout life. As other young animals express their aboundingenergies in capricious activities similar to those followed in thebusiness of living, so small children gambol, physically, like lambs andkids; and as the young of higher kinds of animals imitate in their playthe more complex activities of their elders, so do children imitatewhatever activities they see about them. In this field of playing thereis no sex. 

Similarly in adult life healthy and happy persons, men and women, naturally express surplus energy in various forms of sport. We havehere one of the most distinctively human manifestations. The greataccumulation of social energy, and the necessary limitations of onekind of work, leave a human being tired of one form of action, yet stilluneasy for lack of full expression; and this social need has been met byour great safety valve of games and sports. 

In a society of either sex, or in a society without sex, there wouldstill be both pleasure and use in games; they are vitally essential tohuman life. In a society of two sexes, wherein one has dictated all theterms of life, and the other has been confined to an extremely limitedfraction of human living, we may look to see this great field ofenjoyment as disproportionately divided. 

It is not only that we have reduced the play impulse in women byrestricting them to one set of occupations, and overtaxing theirenergies with mother-work and housework combined; and not only that byour androcentric conventions we further restrict their amusements; butwe begin in infancy, and forcibly differentiate their methods of playlong before any natural distinction would appear. 

Take that universal joy the doll, or puppet, as an instance. A smallimitation of a large known object carries delight to the heart of achild of either sex. The worsted cat, the wooden horse, the littlewagon, the tin soldier, the wax doll, the toy village, the "Noah's Ark, "the omnipresent "Teddy Bear, " any and every small model of a real thingis a delight to the young human being. Of all things the puppet is themost intimate, the little image of another human being to play with. The fancy of the child, making endless combinations with these visibletypes, plays as freely as a kitten in the leaves; or gravely carriesout some observed forms of life, as the kitten imitates its mother'shunting. 

So far all is natural and human. 

Now see our attitude toward child's play--under a masculine culture. Regarding women only as a sex, and that sex as manifest from infancy, we make and buy for our little girls toys suitable to this view. Beingfemales--which means mothers, we must needs provide them with babiesbefore they cease to be babies themselves; and we expect their play toconsist in an imitation of maternal cares. The doll, the puppet, whichinterests all children, we have rendered as an eternal baby; and wefoist them upon our girl children by ceaseless millions. 

The doll, as such, is dear to the little boy as well as the girl, butnot as a baby. He likes his jumping-jack, his worsted Sambo, often agenuine rag-doll; but he is discouraged and ridiculed in this. We donot expect the little boy to manifest a father's love and care foran imitation child--but we do expect the little girl to show maternalfeelings for her imitation baby. It has not yet occurred to us that thisis monstrous. 

Little children should not be expected to show, in painful precocity, feelings which ought never to be experienced till they come at theproper age. Our kittens play at cat-sports, little Tom and Tabbytogether; but little Tabby does not play she is a mother!

Beyond the continuous dolls and their continuous dressing, we providefor our little girls tea sets and kitchen sets, doll's houses, littlework-boxes--the imitation tools of their narrow trades. For the boythere is a larger choice. We make for them not only the essentiallymasculine toys of combat--all the enginery of mimic war; but also themodels of human things, like boats, railroads, wagons. For them, too, are the comprehensive toys of the centuries, the kite, the top, theball. As the boy gets old enough to play the games that require skill, he enters the world-lists, and the little sister, left inside, with hereverlasting dolls, learns that she is "only a girl, " and "mustn't playwith boys--boys are so rough!" She has her doll and her tea set. She"plays house. " If very active she may jump rope, in solitary enthusiasm, or in combination of from two to four. Her brother is playing games. From this time on he plays the games of the world. The "sporting page"should be called "the Man's Page" as that array of recipes, fashions andcheap advice is called "the Woman's Page. "

One of the immediate educational advantages of the boy's position isthat he learns "team work. " This is not a masculine characteristic, it is a human one; a social power. Women are equally capable of itby nature; but not by education. Tending one's imitation baby is notteam-work; nor is playing house. The little girl is kept forever withinthe limitations of her mother's "sphere" of action; while the boy learnslife, and fancies that his new growth is due to his superior sex. 

Now there are certain essential distinctions in the sexes, which wouldmanifest themselves to some degree even in normally reared children;as for instance the little male would be more given to fighting anddestroying; the little female more to caring for and constructingthings. 

"Boys are so destructive!" we say with modest pride--as if it was insome way a credit to them. But early youth is not the time to displaysex distinction; and they should be discouraged rather than approved. 

The games of the world, now the games of men, easily fall into two broadclasses--games of skill and games of chance. 

The interest and pleasure in the latter is purely human, and as such isshared by the two sexes even now. Women, in the innocent beginnings orthe vicious extremes of this line of amusement, make as wild gamblers asmen. At the races, at the roulette wheel, at the bridge table, this isclearly seen. 

In games of skill we have a different showing. Most of these aredeveloped by and for men; but when they are allowed, women take part inthem with interest and success. In card games, in chess, checkers, and the like, in croquet and tennis, they play, and play well ifwell-trained. Where they fall short in so many games, and are so whollyexcluded in others, is not for lack of human capacity, but for lack ofmasculinity. Most games are male. In their element of desire to win, to get the prize, they are male; and in their universal attitude ofcompetition they are male, the basic spirit of desire and of combatworking out through subtle modern forms. 

There is something inherently masculine also in the universal dominanceof the projectile in their games. The ball is the one unescapableinstrument of sport. From the snapped marble of infancy to the flyingmissile of the bat, this form endures. To send something forth withviolence; to throw it, bat it, kick it, shoot it; this impulse seems todate back to one of the twin forces of the universe--the centrifugal andcentripetal energies between which swing the planets. 

The basic feminine impulse is to gather, to put together, to construct;the basic masculine impulse to scatter, to disseminate, to destroy. Itseems to give pleasure to a man to bang something and drive it from him;the harder he hits it and the farther it goes the better pleased he is. 

Games of this sort will never appeal to women. They are not wrong; notnecessarily evil in their place; our mistake is in considering them ashuman, whereas they are only masculine. 

Play, in the childish sense is an expression of previous habit; andto be studied in that light. Play in the educational sense should beencouraged or discouraged to develop desired characteristics. This weknow, and practice; only we do it under androcentric canons; confiningthe girl to the narrow range we consider proper for women, and assistingthe boy to cover life with the expression of masculinity, when we shouldbe helping both to a more human development. 

Our settled conviction that men are people--the people, and thatmasculine qualities are the main desideratam in life, is what keepsup this false estimate of the value of our present games. Advocatesof football, for instance, proudly claim that it fits a man for life. Life--from the wholly male point of view--is a battle, with a prize. Towant something beyond measure, and to fight to get--that is the simpleproposition. This view of life finds its most naive expression inpredatory warfare; and still tends to make predatory warfare of thelater and more human processes of industry. Because they see life inthis way they imagine that skill and practice in the art of fighting, especially in collective fighting, is so valuable in our modern life. This is an archaism which would be laughable if it were not so dangerousin its effects. 

The valuable processes to-day are those of invention, discovery, allgrades of industry, and, most especially needed, the capacity for honestservice and administration of our immense advantages. These are notlearned on the football field. This spirit of desire and combat may beseen further in all parts of this great subject. It has developed intoa cult of sportsmanship; so universally accepted among men as ofsuperlative merit as to quite blind them to other standards of judgment. 

In the Cook-Peary controversy of 1909, this canon was made manifest. Here, one man had spent a lifetime in trying to accomplish something;and at the eleventh hour succeeded. Then, coming out in the rich triumphlong deferred, he finds another man, of character well known to him, impudently and falsely claiming that he had done it first. Mr. Pearyexpressed himself, quite restrainedly and correctly, in regard to theeffrontery and falsity of this claim--and all the country rose up anddenounced him as "unsportsmanlike!"

Sport and the canons of sport are so dominant in the masculine mind thatwhat they considered a deviation from these standards was of far moreimportance than the question of fact involved; to say nothing of themoral obliquity of one lying to the whole world, for money; and that atthe cost of another's hard-won triumph. 

If women had condemned the conduct of one or the other as "not goodhouse-wifery, " this would have been considered a most puerile comment. But to be "unsportsmanlike" is the unpardonable sin. 

Owing to our warped standards we glaringly misjudge the attitude of thetwo sexes in regard to their amusements. Of late years more women thanever before have taken to playing cards; and some, unfortunately, playfor money. A steady stream of comment and blame follows upon this. Theamount of card playing among men--and the amount of money lost and won, does not produce an equivalent comment. 

Quite aside from this one field of dissipation, look at the share oflife, of time, of strength, of money, given by men to their wide rangeof recreation. The primitive satisfaction of hunting and fishingthey maintain at enormous expense. This is the indulgence of a mostrudimentary impulse; pre-social and largely pre-human, of no servicesave as it affects bodily health, and of a most deterring influenceon real human development. Where hunting and fishing is of real humanservice, done as a means of livelihood, it is looked down upon like anyother industry; it is no longer "sport. "

The human being kills to eat, or to sell and eat from the returns; hekills for the creature's hide or tusks, for use of some sort; or toprotect his crops from vermin, his flocks from depredation; but thesportsman kills for the gratification of a primeval instinct, and underrules of an arbitrary cult. "Game" creatures are his prey; bird, beastor fish that is hard to catch, that requires some skill to slay; thatwill give him not mere meat and bones, but "the pleasure of the chase. "

The pleasure of the chase is a very real one. It is exemplified, inits broad sense in children's play. The running and catching games, thehiding and finding games, are always attractive to our infancy, asthey are to that of cubs and kittens. But the long continuance of thisindulgence among mature civilized beings is due to their masculinity. That group of associated sex instincts, which in the woman prompts tothe patient service and fierce defence of the little child, in the manhas its deepest root in seeking, pursuing and catching. To hunt is morethan a means of obtaining food, in his long ancestry; it is to follow atany cost, to seek through all difficulties, to struggle for and securethe central prize of his being--a mate. 

His "protective instincts" are far later and more superficial. Tosupport and care for his wife, his children, is a recent habit, in plainsight historically; but "the pleasure of the chase" is older than that. We should remember that associate habits and impulses last for ages uponages in living forms; as in the tree climbing instincts of our earliestyears, of Simian origin; and the love of water, which dates back throughunmeasured time. Where for millions of years the strongest pleasurea given organism is fitted for, is obtained by a certain group ofactivities, those activities will continue to give pleasure long aftertheir earlier use is gone. 

This is why men enjoy "the ardor of pursuit" far more than women. It isan essentially masculine ardor. To come easily by what he wants does notsatisfy him. He wants to want it. He wants to hunt it, seek it, chaseit, catch it. He wants it to be "game. " He is by virtue of his sex asportsman. 

There is no reason why these special instincts should not be gratifiedso long as it does no harm to the more important social processes; butit is distinctly desirable that we should understand their nature. Thereason why we have the present overwhelming mass of "sporting events, "from the ball game to the prize fight, is because our civilization isso overwhelmingly masculine. We shall criticize them more justly whenwe see that all this mass of indulgence is in the first place a form ofsex-expression, and in the second place a survival of instincts olderthan the oldest savagery. 

Besides our games and sports we have a large field of "amusements" alsoworth examining. We not only enjoy doing things, but we enjoy seeingthem done by others. In these highly specialized days most of ouramusement consists in paying two dollars to sit three hours and seeother people do things. 

This in its largest sense is wholly human. We, as social creatures, can enjoy a thousand forms of expression quite beyond the personal. Thebirds must each sing his own song; the crickets chirp in millionfoldperformance; but human being feels the deep thrill of joy in theirspecial singers, actors, dancers, as well as in their own personalattempts. That we should find pleasure in watching one another ishumanly natural, but what it is we watch, the kind of pleasure and thekind of performance, opens a wide field of choice. 

We know, for instance, something of the crude excesses of aboriginalAustralian dances; we know more of the gross license of old Rome;we know the breadth of the jokes in medieval times, and the childishbrutality of the bull-ring and the cockpit. We know, in a word, thatamusements vary; that they form a ready gauge of character and culture;that they have a strong educational influence for good or bad. What wehave not hitherto observed is the predominant masculine influence onour amusements. If we recall once more the statement with regard toentertaining anecdotes, "There are thirty good stories in the world, andtwenty-nine of them cannot be told to women, " we get a glaring sidelighton the masculine specialization in jokes. 

"Women have no sense of humor" has been frequently said, when "Womenhave not a masculine sense of humor" would be truer. If women had thirty"good stories" twenty-nine of which could not be told to men, it ispossible that men, if they heard some of the twenty-nine, would notfind them funny. The overweight of one sex has told in our amusements aseverywhere else. 

Because men are further developed in humanity than women are as yet, they have built and organized great places of amusement; because theycarried into their humanity their unchecked masculinity, they have madethese amusements to correspond. Dramatic expression, is in its truesense, not only a human distinction, but one of our noblest arts. It isallied with the highest emotions; is religious, educational, patriotic, covering the whole range of human feeling. Through it we should be ablecontinually to express, in audible, visible forms, alive and moving, whatever phase of life we most enjoyed or wished to see. There was atime when the drama led life; lifted, taught, inspired, enlightened. Nowits main function is to amuse. Under the demand for amusement, it hascheapened and coarsened, and now the thousand vaudevilles and pictureshows give us the broken fragments of a degraded art of which our onemain demand is that it shall make us laugh. 

There are many causes at work here; and while this study seeks to showin various fields one cause, it does not claim that cause is the onlyone. Our economic conditions have enormous weight upon our amusements, as on all other human phenomena; but even under economic pressure thereactions of men and women are often dissimilar. Tired men and womenboth need amusement, the relaxation and restful change of irresponsiblegayety. The great majority of women, who work longer hours thanany other class, need it desperately and never get it. Amusement, entertainment, recreation, should be open to us all, enjoyed by all. This is a human need, and not a distinction of either sex. Like mosthuman things it is not only largely monopolized by men, but masculizedthroughout. Many forms of amusement are for men only; more for menmostly; all are for men if they choose to go. 

The entrance of women upon the stage, and their increased attendance attheatres has somewhat modified the nature of the performance; even the"refined vaudeville" now begins to show the influence of women. It wouldbe no great advantage to have this department of human life feminized;the improvement desired is to have it less masculized; to reduce theexcessive influence of one, and to bring out those broad human interestsand pleasures which men and women can equally participate in and enjoy. 

VII. ETHICS AND RELIGION. 

The laws of physics were at work before we were on earth, and continuedto work on us long before we had intelligence enough to perceive, much less understand, them. Our proven knowledge of these processesconstitutes "the science of physics"; but the laws were there before thescience. 

Physics is the science of material relation, how things and naturalforces work with and on one another. Ethics is the science of socialrelation, how persons and social forces work with and on one another. 

Ethics is to the human world what physics is to the material world;ignorance of ethics leaves us in the same helpless position in regard toone another that ignorance of physics left us in regard to earth, air, fire and water. 

To be sure, people lived and died and gradually improved, while yetignorant of the physical sciences; they developed a rough "ruleof thumb" method, as animals do, and used great forces withoutunderstanding them. But their lives were safer and their improvementmore rapid as they learned more, and began to make servants of theforces which had been their masters. 

We have progressed, lamely enough, with terrible loss and suffering, from stark savagery to our present degree of civilization; we shall goon more safely and swiftly when we learn more of the science of ethics. 

Let us note first that while the underlying laws of ethics remain steadyand reliable, human notions of them have varied widely and still doso. In different races, ages, classes, sexes, different views of ethicsobtain; the conduct of the people is modified by their views, and theirprosperity is modified by their conduct. 

Primitive man became very soon aware that conduct was of importance. Asconsciousness increased, with the power to modify action from within, instead of helplessly reacting to stimuli from without, there arose thecrude first codes of ethics, the "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" ofthe blundering savage. It was mostly "Thou shalt not. " Inhibition, thechecking of an impulse proven disadvantageous, was an earlier and easierform of action than the later human power to consciously decide on andfollow a course of action with no stimulus but one's own will. 

Primitive ethics consists mostly of Tabus--the things that areforbidden; and all our dim notions of ethics to this day, as well asmost of our religions, deal mainly with forbidding. 

This is almost the whole of our nursery government, to an extent shownby the well-worn tale of the child who said her name was "Mary. " "Marywhat?" they asked her. And she answered, "Mary Don't. " It is also themain body of our legal systems--a complex mass of prohibitions andpreventions. And even in manners and conventions, the things one shouldnot do far outnumber the things one should. A general policy of negationcolors our conceptions of ethics and religion. 

When the positive side began to be developed, it was at first in purelyarbitrary and artificial form. The followers of a given religion wererequired to go through certain motions, as prostrating themselves, kneeling, and the like; they were required to bring tribute to the godsand their priests, sacrifices, tithes, oblations; they were set littlespecial performances to go through at given times; the range of thingsforbidden was broad; the range of things commanded was narrow. TheChristian religion, practically interpreted, requires a fuller "changeof heart" and change of life than any preceding it; which may account atonce for its wide appeal to enlightened peoples, and to its scarcity ofapplication. 

Again, in surveying the field, it is seen that as our grasp of ethicalvalues widened, as we called more and more acts and tendencies "right"and "wrong, " we have shown astonishing fluctuations and vagaries in ourjudgment. Not only in our religions, which have necessarily upheld eachits own set of prescribed actions as most "right, " and its own specialprohibitions as most "wrong"; but in our beliefs about ethics and ourreal conduct, we have varied absurdly. 

Take, for instance, the ethical concept among "gentlemen" a century orso since, which put the paying of one's gambling debts as a well-nighsacred duty, and the paying of a tradesman who had fed and clothed oneas a quite negligible matter. If the process of gambling was of socialservice, and the furnishing of food and clothes was not, this might begood ethics; but as the contrary is true, we have to account for thispeculiar view on other grounds. 

Again, where in Japan a girl, to maintain her parents, is justified inleading a life of shame, we have a peculiar ethical standard difficultfor Western minds to appreciate. Yet in such an instance as is describedin "Auld Robin Gray, " we see precisely the same code; the girl, tobenefit her parents, marries a rich old man she does not love--which isto lead a life of shame. The ethical view which justifies this, puts thebenefit of parents above the benefit of children, robs the daughter ofhappiness and motherhood, injures posterity to assist ancestors. 

This is one of the products of that very early religion, ancestorworship; and here we lay a finger on a distinctly masculine influence. 

We know little of ethical values during the matriarchate; whatever theywere, they must have depended for sanction on a cult of promiscuousbut efficient maternity. Our recorded history begins in the patriarchalperiod, and it is its ethics alone which we know. 

The mother instinct, throughout nature, is one of unmixed devotion, oflove and service, care and defence, with no self-interest. The animalfather, in such cases as he is of service to the young, assists themother in her work in similar fashion. But the human father in thefamily with the male head soon made that family an instrument of desire, and combat, and self-expression, following the essentially masculineimpulses. The children were his, and if males, valuable to serve andglorify him. In his dominance over servile women and helpless children, free rein was given to the growth of pride and the exercise ofirresponsible tyranny. To these feelings, developed without check forthousands of years, and to the mental habits resultant, it is easy totrace much of the bias of our early ethical concepts. 

Perhaps it is worth while to repeat here that the effort of this bookis by no means to attribute a wholly evil influence to men, and a whollygood one to women; it is not even claimed that a purely feminine culturewould have advanced the world more successfully. It does claim that theinfluence of the two together is better than that of either one alone;and in especial to point out what special kind of injury is due to theexclusive influence of one sex heretofore. 

We have to-day reached a degree of human development where both men andwomen are capable of seeing over and across the distinctions of sex, and mutually working for the advancement of the world. Our progress is, however, seriously impeded by what we may call the masculinetradition, the unconscious dominance of a race habit based on this longandrocentric period; and it is well worth while, in the interests ofboth sexes, to show the mischievous effects of the predominance of one. 

We have in our ethics not only a "double standard" in one special line, but in nearly all. Man, as a sex, has quite naturally deified his ownqualities rather than those of his opposite. In his codes of manners, ofmorals, of laws, in his early concepts of God, his ancient religions, wesee masculinity written large on every side. Confining women wholly totheir feminine functions, he has required of them only what he calledfeminine virtues, and the one virtue he has demanded, to thecomplete overshadowing of all others, is measured by wholly masculinerequirements. 

In the interests of health and happiness, monogamous marriage proves itssuperiority in our race as it has in others. It is essential to thebest growth of humanity that we practice the virtue of chastity; it is ahuman virtue, not a feminine one. But in masculine hands this virtuewas enforced upon women under penalties of hideous cruelty, and quiteignored by men. Masculine ethics, colored by masculine instincts, alwaysdominated by sex, has at once recognized the value of chastity in thewoman, which is right; punished its absence unfairly, which is wrong;and then reversed the whole matter when applied to men, which isridiculous. 

Ethical laws are laws--not idle notions. Chastity is a virtue because itpromotes human welfare--not because men happen to prize it in women andignore it themselves. The underlying reason for the whole thing is thebenefit of the child; and to that end a pure and noble fatherhood isrequisite, as well as such a motherhood. Under the limitations of a toomasculine ethics, we have developed on this one line social conditionswhich would be absurdly funny if they were not so horrible. 

Religion, be it noticed, does not bear out this attitude. The immensehuman need of religion, the noble human character of the great religiousteachers, has always set its standards, when first established, ahead ofhuman conduct. 

Some there are, men of learning and authority, who hold that thedeadening immobility of our religions, their resistance to progress andrelentless preservation of primitive ideals, is due to the conservatismof women. Men, they say, are progressive by nature; women areconservative. Women are more religious than men, and so preserve oldreligious forms unchanged after men have outgrown them. 

If we saw women in absolute freedom, with a separate religion devisedby women, practiced by women, and remaining unchanged through thecenturies; while men, on the other hand, bounded bravely forward, makingnew ones as fast as they were needed, this belief might be maintained. But what do we see? All the old religions made by men, and forced on thewomen whether they liked it or not. Often women not even consideredas part of the scheme--denied souls--given a much lower place in thesystem--going from the service of their father's gods to the service oftheir husbands--having none of their own. We see religions which makepractically no place for women, as with the Moslem, as rigidly bigotedand unchanging as any other. 

We see also this: that the wider and deeper the religion, the morehuman, the more it calls for practical applications in Christianity--themore it appeals to women. Further, in the diverging sects of theChristian religion, we find that its progressiveness is to be measured, not by the numbers of its women adherents, but by their relativefreedom. The women of America, who belong to a thousand sects, whofollow new ones with avidity, who even make them, and who also leavethem all as men do, are women, as well as those of Spain, who remaincontented Romanists, but in America the status of women is higher. 

The fact is this: a servile womanhood is in a state of arresteddevelopment, and as such does form a ground for the retention of ancientideas. But this is due to the condition of servility, not to womanhood. That women at present are the bulwark of the older forms of ourreligions is due to the action of two classes of men: the men of theworld, who keep women in their restricted position, and the men of thechurch, who take every advantage of the limitations of women. When wehave for the first time in history a really civilized womanhood, we canthen judge better of its effect on religion. 

Meanwhile, we can see quite clearly the effect of manhood. Keeping inmind those basic masculine impulses--desire and combat--we see themreflected from high heaven in their religious concepts. Reward!Something to want tremendously and struggle to achieve! This is aconcept perfectly masculine and most imperfectly religious. A religionis partly explanation--a theory of life; it is partly emotion--anattitude of mind, it is partly action--a system of morals. Man's specialeffect on this large field of human development is clear. He picturedhis early gods as like to himself, and they behaved in accordance withhis ideals. In the dimmest, oldest religions, nearest the matriarchate, we find great goddesses--types of Motherhood, Mother-love, Mother-careand Service. But under masculine dominance, Isis and Ashteroth dwindleaway to an alluring Aphrodite--not Womanhood for the child and theWorld--but the incarnation of female attractiveness for man. 

As the idea of heaven developed in the man's mind it became the HappyHunting Ground of the savage, the beery and gory Valhalla of theNorseman, the voluptuous, many-houri-ed Paradise of the Mohammedan. These are men's heavens all. Women have never been so fond of hunting, beer or blood; and their houris would be of the other kind. It may besaid that the early Christian idea of heaven is by no means planned formen. That is trite, and is perhaps the reason why it has never had socompelling an attraction for them. 

Very early in his vague efforts towards religious expression, man voicedhis second strongest instinct--that of combat. His universe is alwaysdual, always a scene of combat. Born with that impulse, exercising itcontinually, he naturally assumed it to be the major process in life. It is not. Growth is the major process. Combat is a useful subsidiaryprocess, chiefly valuable for its initial use, to transmit the physicalsuperiority of the victor. Psychic and social advantages are not thussecured or transmitted. 

In no one particular is the androcentric character of our common thoughtmore clearly shown than in the general deification of what are nowdescribed as "conflict stimuli. " That which is true of the male creatureas such is assumed to be true of life in general; quite naturally, butby no means correctly. To this universal masculine error we may trace inthe field of religion and ethics the great devil theory, which has forso long obscured our minds. A God without an Adversary was inconceivableto the masculine mind. From this basic misconception we find all ourideas of ethics distorted; that which should have been treated as agroup of truths to be learned and habits to be cultivated was treatedin terms of combat, and moral growth made an everlasting battle. Thiscombat theory we may follow later into our common notions of discipline, government, law and punishment; here is it enough to see its painfuleffects in this primary field of ethics and religion?

The third essential male trait of self-expression we may follow fromits innocent natural form in strutting cock or stamping stag up to thecharacteristics we label vanity and pride. The degradation of womenin forcing them to adopt masculine methods of personal decoration asa means of livelihood, has carried with the concomitant of personalvanity: but to this day and at their worst we do not find in women the_naive_ exultant glow of pride which swells the bosom of the men whomarch in procession with brass bands, in full regalia of any sort, sothat it be gorgeous, exhibiting their glories to all. 

It is this purely masculine spirit which has given to our early conceptsof Deity the unadmirable qualities of boundless pride and a thirst forconstant praise and prostrate admiration, characteristics certainlyunbefitting any noble idea of God. Desire, combat and self-expressionall have had their unavoidable influence on masculine religions. Whatdeified Maternity a purely feminine culture might have put forth we donot know, having had none such. Women are generally credited with asmuch moral sense as men, and as much religious instinct; but so far ithas had small power to modify our prevailing creeds. 

As a matter of fact, no special sex attributes should have any weight inour ideas of right and wrong. Ethics and religion are distinctly humanconcerns; they belong to us as social factors, not as physical ones. As we learn to recognize our humanness, and to leave our sexcharacteristics where they belong, we shall at last learn somethingabout ethics as a simple and practical science, and see that religionsgrow as the mind grows to formulate them. 

If anyone seeks for a clear, simple, easily grasped proof of our ethics, it is to be found in a popular proverb. Struggling upward from beast andsavage into humanness, man has seen, reverenced, and striven to attainvarious human virtues. 

He was willing to check many primitive impulses, to change manybarbarous habits, to manifest newer, nobler powers. Much he wouldconcede to Humanness, but not his sex--that was beyond the range ofEthics or Religion. By the state of what he calls "morals, " and the lawshe makes to regulate them, by his attitude in courtship and in marriage, and by the gross anomaly of militarism, in all its senseless wasteof life and wealth and joy, we may perceive this little masculineexception:

"All's fair in love and war. "

VIII. EDUCATION. 

The origin of education is maternal. The mother animal is seen to teachher young what she knows of life, its gains and losses; and, whetherconsciously done or not, this is education. In our human life, education, even in its present state, is the most important process. Without it we could not maintain ourselves, much less dominate andimprove conditions as we do; and when education is what it should be, our power will increase far beyond present hopes. 

In lower animals, speaking generally, the powers of the race must belodged in each individual. No gain of personal experience is of avail tothe others. No advantages remain, save those physically transmitted. Thenarrow limits of personal gain and personal inheritance rigidly hemin sub-human progress. With us, what one learns may be taught to theothers. Our life is social, collective. Our gain is for all, and profitsus in proportion as we extend it to all. As the human soul develops inus, we become able to grasp more fully our common needs and advantages;and with this growth has come the extension of education to the peopleas a whole. Social functions are developed under natural laws, likephysical ones, and may be studied similarly. 

In the evolution of this basic social function, what has been the effectof wholly masculine influence?

The original process, instruction of individual child by individualmother, has been largely neglected in our man-made world. That wasconsidered as a subsidiary sex-function of the woman, and as such, left to her "instinct. " This is the main reason why we show such greatprogress in education for older children, and especially for youths, andso little comparatively in that given to little ones. 

We have had on the one side the natural current of maternal education, with its first assistant, the nursemaid, and its second, the"dame-school"; and on the other the influence of the dominant class, organized in university, college, and public school, slowly filteringdownward. 

Educational forces are many. The child is born into certain conditions, physical and psychic, and "educated" thereby. He grows up into social, political and economic conditions, and is further modified by them. Allthese conditions, so far, have been of androcentric character; butwhat we call education as a special social process is what the child isdeliberately taught and subjected to; and it is here we may see the samedominant influence so clearly. 

This conscious education was, for long, given to boys alone, the girlsbeing left to maternal influence, each to learn what her mother knew, and no more. This very clear instance of the masculine theory is glaringenough by itself to rest a case on. It shows how absolute was theassumption that the world was composed of men, and men alone were to befitted for it. Women were no part of the world, and needed no trainingfor its uses. As females they were born and not made; as human beingsthey were only servants, trained as such by their servant mothers. 

This system of education we are outgrowing more swiftly with each year. The growing humanness of women, and its recognition, is forcing an equaleducation for boy and girl. When this demand was first made, by womenof unusual calibre, and by men sufficiently human to overlooksex-prejudice, how was it met? What was the attitude of woman's "naturalprotector" when she began to ask some share in human life?

Under the universal assumption that men alone were humanity, that theworld was masculine and for men only, the efforts of the women were metas a deliberate attempt to "unsex" themselves and become men. To be awoman was to be ignorant, uneducated; to be wise, educated, was to be aman. Women were not men, visibly; therefore they could not be educated, and ought not to want to be. 

Under this androcentric prejudice, the equal extension of education towomen was opposed at every step, and is still opposed by many. Seeing inwomen only sex, and not humanness, they would confine her exclusivelyto feminine interests. This is the masculine view, _par excellence_. In spite of it, the human development of women, which so splendidlycharacterizes our age, has gone on; and now both woman's colleges andthose for both sexes offer "the higher education" to our girls, as wellas the lower grades in school and kindergarten. 

In the special professional training, the same opposition wasexperienced, even more rancorous and cruel. One would think that on theentrance of a few straggling and necessarily inferior feminine beginnersinto a trade or profession, those in possession would extend to them theright hand of fellowship, as comrades, extra assistance as beginners, and special courtesy as women. 

The contrary occurred. Women were barred out, discriminated against, taken advantage of, as competitors; and as women they have had to meetspecial danger and offence instead of special courtesy. An unforgettableinstance of this lies in the attitude of the medical colleges towardwomen students. The men, strong enough, one would think, in numbers, in knowledge, in established precedent, to be generous, opposedthe newcomers first with absolute refusal; then, when the patient, persistent applicants did get inside, both students and teachersmet them not only with unkindness and unfairness, but with a weaponingeniously well chosen, and most discreditable--namely, obscenity. Grave professors, in lecture and clinic, as well as grinning students, used offensive language, and played offensive tricks, to drive the womenout--a most androcentric performance. 

Remember that the essential masculine attitude is one of opposition, of combat; his desire is obtained by first overcoming a competitor;and then see how this dominant masculinity stands out where it has nopossible use or benefit--in the field of education. All along the line, man, long master of a subject sex, fought every step of woman towardmental equality. Nevertheless, since modern man has become human enoughto be just, he has at last let her have a share in the advantages ofeducation; and she has proven her full power to appreciate and use theseadvantages. 

Then to-day rises a new cry against "women in education. " Here is Mr. Barrett Wendell, of Harvard, solemnly claiming that teaching womenweakens the intellect of the teacher, and every now and then bursts outa frantic sputter of alarm over the "feminization" of our schools. It istrue that the majority of teachers are now women. It is true that theydo have an influence on growing children. It would even seem to be truethat that is largely what women are for. 

But the male assumes his influence to be normal, human, and the femaleinfluence as wholly a matter of sex; therefore, where women teach boys, the boys become "effeminate"--a grievous fall. When men teach girls, dothe girls become -----? Here again we lack the analogue. Never has itoccurred to the androcentric mind to conceive of such a thing as beingtoo masculine. There is no such word! It is odd to notice that whichever way the woman is placed, she is supposed to exert this degradinginfluence; if the teacher, she effeminizes her pupils; if the pupil, sheeffeminizes her teachers. 

Now let us shake ourselves free, if only for a moment, from theandrocentric habit of mind. 

As a matter of sex, the female is the more important. Her share of theprocesses which sex distinction serves is by far the greater. Tobe feminine--if one were nothing else, is a far more extensive anddignified office than to be masculine--and nothing else. 

But as a matter of humanity the male of our species is at present farahead of the female. By this superior humanness, his knowledge, hisskill, his experience, his organization and specialization, he makes andmanages the world. All this is human, not male. All this is as opento the woman as the man by nature, but has been denied her during ourandrocentric culture. 

But even if, in a purely human process, such as education, she doesbring her special feminine characteristics to bear, what are they, andwhat are the results?

We can see the masculine influence everywhere still dominant andsuperior. There is the first spur, Desire, the base of the rewardsystem, the incentive of self-interest, the attitude which says, "Whyshould I make an effort unless it will give me pleasure?" with itsconcomitant laziness, unwillingness to work without payment. There isthe second spur, Combat, the competitive system, which sets one againstanother, and finds pleasure not in learning, not exercising the mind, but in getting ahead of one's fellows. Under these two wholly masculineinfluences we have made the educational process a joy to the few whosuccessfully attain, and a weary effort, with failure andcontumely attached, to all the others. This may be a good methodin sex-competition, but is wholly out of place and mischievous ineducation. Its prevalence shows the injurious masculization of thisnoble social process. 

What might we look for in a distinctly feminine influence? What arethese much-dreaded feminine characteristics?

The maternal ones, of course. The sex instincts of the male are of apreliminary nature, leading merely to the union preceding parenthood. The sex instincts of the female cover a far larger field, spendingthemselves most fully in the lasting love, the ceaseless service, theingenuity and courage of efficient motherhood. To feminize educationwould be to make it more motherly. The mother does not rear her childrenby a system of prizes to be longed for and pursued; nor does she setthem to compete with one another, giving to the conquering child whathe needs, and to the vanquished, blame and deprivation. That would be"unfeminine. "

Motherhood does all it knows to give to each child what is mostneeded, to teach all to their fullest capacity, to affectionately andefficiently develop the whole of them. 

But this is not what is meant by those who fear so much the influenceof women. Accustomed to a wholly male standard of living, to masculineideals, virtues, methods and conditions, they say--and say with somejustice--that feminine methods and ideals would be destructive towhat they call "manliness. " For instance, education to-day is closelyinterwoven with games and sports, all of an excessively masculinenature. "The education of a boy is carried on largely on theplayground!" say the objectors to women teachers. Women cannot join themthere; therefore, they cannot educate them. 

What games are these in which women cannot join? There are forms offighting, of course, violent and fierce, modern modifications of theinstinct of sex-combat. It is quite true that women are not adapted, or inclined, to baseball or football or any violent game. They areperfectly competent to take part in all normal athletic development, thehuman range of agility and skill is open to them, as everyone knows whohas been to the circus; but they are not built for physical combat; nordo they find ceaseless pleasure in throwing, hitting or kicking things. 

But is it true that these strenuous games have the educational valueattributed to them? It seems like blasphemy to question it. The wholerange of male teachers, male pupils, male critics and spectators, areloud in their admiration for the "manliness" developed by the craft, courage, co-ordinative power and general "sportsmanship" developed bythe game of football, for instance; that a few young men are killed andmany maimed, is nothing in comparison to these advantages. 

Let us review the threefold distinction on which this whole study rests, between masculine, feminine and human. Grant that woman, being feminine, cannot emulate man in being masculine--and does not want to. Grant thatthe masculine qualities have their use and value, as well as feminineones. There still remain the human qualities shared by both, owned byneither, most important of all. Education is a human process, andshould develop human qualities--not sex qualities. Surely our boys aresufficiently masculine, without needing a special education to make themmore so. 

The error lies here. A strictly masculine world, proud of its own sexand despising the other, seeing nothing in the world but sex, eithermale or female, has "viewed with alarm" the steady and rapid growth ofhumanness. Here, for instance, is a boy visibly tending to be anartist, a musician, a scientific discoverer. Here is another boy notparticularly clever in any line, nor ambitious for any special work, though he means in a general way to "succeed"; he is, however, a big, husky fellow, a good fighter, mischievous as a monkey, and strong in thevirtues covered by the word "sportsmanship. " This boy we call "a finemanly fellow. "

We are quite right. He is. He is distinctly and excessively male, atthe expense of his humanness. He may make a more prepotent sire thanthe other, though even that is not certain; he may, and probably will, appeal more strongly to the excessively feminine girl, who has even lesshumanness than he; but he is not therefore a better citizen. 

The advance of civilization calls for human qualities, in both men andwomen. Our educational system is thwarted and hindered, not as Prof. Wendell and his life would have us believe, by "feminization, " but by anoverweening masculization. 

Their position is a simple one. "We are men. Men are human beings. Womenare only women. This is a man's world. To get on in it you must do itman-fashion--i. E. , fight, and overcome the others. Being civilized, inpart, we must arrange a sort of 'civilized warfare, ' and learn to playthe game, the old crude, fierce male game of combat, and we must educateour boys thereto. " No wonder education was denied to women. No wondertheir influence is dreaded by an ultra-masculine culture. 

It will change the system in time. It will gradually establish an equalplace in life for the feminine characteristics, so long belittled andderided, and give pre-eminent dignity to the human power. 

Physical culture, for both boys and girls, will be part of such amodified system. All things that both can do together will be acceptedas human; but what either boys or girls have to retire apart to practicewill be frankly called masculine and feminine, and not encouraged inchildren. 

The most important qualities are the human ones, and will be so namedand honored. Courage is a human quality, not a sex-quality. What iscommonly called courage in male animals is mere belligerence, thefighting instinct. To meet an adversary of his own sort is a universalmasculine trait; two father cats may fight fiercely each other, but bothwill run from a dog as quickly as a mother cat. She has courage enough, however, in defence of her kittens. 

What this world most needs to-day in both men and women, is the powerto recognize our public conditions; to see the relative importance ofmeasures; to learn the processes of constructive citizenship. We need aneducation which shall give its facts in the order of their importance;morals and manners based on these facts; and train our personal powerswith careful selection, so that each may best serve the community. 

At present, in the larger processes of extra-scholastic education, theadvantage is still with the boy. From infancy we make the gross mistakeof accentuating sex in our children, by dress and all its limitations, by special teaching of what is "ladylike" and "manly. " The boy isallowed a freedom of experience far beyond the girl. He learns moreof his town and city, more of machinery, more of life, passing on fromfather to son the truths as well as traditions of sex superiority. 

All this is changing before our eyes, with the advancing humannessof women. Not yet, however, has their advance affected, to any largeextent, the base of all education; the experience of a child's firstyears. Here is where the limitations of women have checked race progressmost thoroughly. Here hereditary influence was constantly offset by theadvance of the male. Social selection did develop higher types of men, though sex-selection reversed still insisted on primitive types ofwomen. But the educative influence of these primitive women, acting mostexclusively on the most susceptible years of life, has been a seriousdeterrent to race progress. 

Here is the dominant male, largely humanized, yet still measuringlife from male standards. He sees women only as a sex. (Note here thecriticism of Europeans on American women. "Your women are so sexless!"they say, meaning merely that our women have human qualities as wellas feminine. ) And children he considers as part and parcel of the samedomain, both inferior classes, "women and children. "

I recall in Rimmer's beautiful red chalk studies, certain profiles ofman, woman and child, and careful explanation that the proportion of thewoman's face and head were far more akin to the child than to theman. What Mr. Rimmer should have shown, and could have, by profuseillustration, was that the faces of boy and girl differ but slightly, and the faces of old men and women differ as little, sometimes not atall; while the face of the woman approximates the human more closelythan that of the man; while the child, representing race more thansex, is naturally more akin to her than to him. The male reserves moreprimitive qualities, the hairiness, the more pugnacious jaw; the femaleis nearer to the higher human types. 

An ultra-male selection has chosen women for their femininity first, andnext for qualities of submissiveness and patient service bred by longages of servility. 

This servile womanhood, or the idler and more excessively feminine type, has never appreciated the real power and place of the mother, and hasnever been able to grasp or to carry out any worthy system of educationfor little children. Any experienced teacher, man or woman, will own howrare it is to find a mother capable of a dispassionate appreciation ofeducative values. Books in infant education and child culture generallyare read by teachers more than mothers, so our public libraries prove. The mother-instinct, quite suitable and sufficient in animals, is byno means equal to the requirements of civilized life. Animal motherhoodfurnishes a fresh wave of devotion for each new birth; primitive humanmotherhood extends that passionate tenderness over the growing familyfor a longer period; but neither can carry education beyond itsrudiments. 

So accustomed are we to our world-old method of entrusting the firstyears of the child to the action of untaught, unbridled mother-instinct, that suggestions as to a better education for babies are received withthe frank derision of massed ignorance. 

That powerful and brilliant writer, Mrs. Josephine Daskam Bacon, amongothers has lent her able pen to ridicule and obstruct the gradualawakening of human intelligence in mothers, the recognition that babiesare no exception to the rest of us in being better off for competentcare and service. It seems delightfully absurd to these reactionariesthat ages of human progress should be of any benefit to babies, save, indeed, as their more human fathers, specialized and organized, are ableto provide them with better homes and a better world to grow up in. Theidea that mothers, more human, should specialize and organize as well, and extend to their babies these supreme advantages, is made a laughingstock. 

It is easy and profitable to laugh with the majority; but in thejudgment of history, those who do so, hold unenviable positions. Thetime is coming when the human mother will recognize the educativepossibilities of early childhood, learn that the ability to rightlyteach little children is rare and precious, and be proud and glad toavail themselves of it. 

We shall then see a development of the most valuable human qualitiesin our children's minds such as would now seem wildly Utopian. We shalllearn from wide and long experience to anticipate and provide for thesteps of the unfolding mind, and train it, through carefully prearrangedexperiences, to a power of judgment, of self-control, of socialperception, now utterly unthought of. 

Such an education would begin at birth; yes, far before it, in thestandards of a conscious human motherhood. It would require a quitedifferent status of wifehood, womanhood, girlhood. It would be whollyimpossible if we were never to outgrow our androcentric culture. 

IX. "SOCIETY" AND "FASHION"

Among our many naive misbeliefs is the current fallacy that "society" ismade by women; and that women are responsible for that peculiar socialmanifestation called "fashion. "

Men and women alike accept this notion; the serious essayist andphilosopher, as well as the novelist and paragrapher, reflect it intheir pages. The force of inertia acts in the domain of psychics aswell as physics; any idea pushed into the popular mind with considerableforce will keep on going until some opposing force--or the slowresistance of friction--stops it at last. 

"Society" consists mostly of women. Women carry on most of itsprocesses, therefore women are its makers and masters, they areresponsible for it, that is the general belief. 

We might as well hold women responsible for harems--or prisoners forjails. To be helplessly confined to a given place or condition does notprove that one has chosen it; much less made it. 

No; in an androcentric culture "society, " like every other socialrelation, is dominated by the male and arranged for his convenience. There are, of course, modifications due to the presence of the othersex; where there are more women than men there are inevitable resultsof their influence; but the character and conditions of the wholeperformance are dictated by men. 

Social intercourse is the prime condition of human life. To meet, tomingle, to know one another, to exchange, not only definite ideas, facts, and feelings, but to experience that vague general stimulusand enlarged power that comes of contact--all this is essential to ourhappiness as well as to our progress. 

This grand desideratum has always been monopolized by men as far aspossible. What intercourse was allowed to women has been rigidly hemmedits by man-made conventions. Women accept these conventions, repeatthem, enforce them upon their daughters; but they originate with men. 

The feet of the little Chinese girl are bound by her mother and hernurse--but it is not for woman's pleasure that this crippling torturewas invented. The Oriental veil is worn by women, but it is not for anyneed of theirs that veils were decreed them. 

When we look at society in its earlier form we find that the publichouse has always been with us. It is as old almost as the private house;the need for association is as human as the need for privacy. But thepublic house was--and is--for men only. The woman was kept as far aspossible at home. Her female nature was supposed to delimit her lifesatisfactorily, and her human stature was completely ignored. 

Under the pressure of that human nature she has always rebelled at thesocial restrictions which surrounded her; and from the women of olderlands gathered at the well, or in the market place, to our own womenon the church steps or in the sewing circle, they have ceaselesslystruggled for the social intercourse which was as much a law of theirbeing as of man's. 

When we come to the modern special field that we call "society, " wefind it to consist of a carefully arranged set of processes and placeswherein women may meet one another and meet men. These vary, of course, with race, country, class, and period; from the clean licence of ourwestern customs to the strict chaperonage of older lands; but free as itis in America, even here there are bounds. 

Men associate without any limit but that of inclination and financialcapacity. Even class distinction only works one way--the low-class manmay not mingle with high-class women; but the high-class man may--anddoes--mingle with low-class women. It is his society--may not a man dowhat he will with his own?

Caste distinctions, as have been ably shown by Prof. Lester F. Ward, arerelics of race distinction; the subordinate caste was once a subordinaterace; and while mating, upward, was always forbidden to the subjectrace; mating, downward, was always practiced by the master race. 

The elaborate shading of "the color line" in slavery days, from pureblack up through mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, quinteroon, griffada, mustafee, mustee, and sang d'or--to white again; was not through whitemothers--but white fathers; never too exclusive in their tastes. Even inslavery, the worst horrors were strictly androcentric. 

"Society" is strictly guarded--that is its women are. As always, themain tabu is on the woman. Consider carefully the relation between"society" and the growing girl. She must, of course, marry; and hereducation, manners, character, must of course be pleasing to theprospective wooer. That which is desirable in young girls means, naturally, that which is desirable to men. Of all cultivatedaccomplishments the first is "innocence. " Beauty may or may not beforthcoming; but "innocence" is "the chief charm of girlhood. "

Why? What good does it do _her?_ Her whole life's success is made todepend on her marrying; her health and happiness depends on her marryingthe right man. The more "innocent" she is, the less she knows, theeasier it is for the wrong man to get her. 

As is so feelingly described in "The Sorrows of Amelia, " in "The Ladies'Literary Cabinet, " a magazine taken by my grandmother; "The only foiblewhich the delicate Amelia possessed was an unsuspecting breast to lavishesteem. Unversed in the secret villanies of a base degenerate world, sheever imagined all mankind to be as spotless as herself. Alas for Amelia!This fatal credulity was the source of all her misfortunes. " It was. Itis yet. 

Just face the facts with new eyes--look at it as if you had never seen"society" before; and observe the position of its "Queen. "

Here is Woman. Let us grant that Motherhood is her chief purpose. (As afemale it is. As a human being she has others!) Marriage is our way ofsafeguarding motherhood; of ensuring "support" and "protection" to thewife and children. 

"Society" is very largely used as a means to bring together youngpeople, to promote marriage. If "society" is made and governed by womenwe should naturally look to see its restrictions and encouragements suchas would put a premium on successful maternity and protect women--andtheir children--from the evils of ill-regulated fatherhood. 

Do we find this? By no means. 

"Society" allows the man all liberty--all privilege--all license. There are certain offences which would exclude him; such as not payinggambling debts, or being poor; but offences against womanhood--againstmotherhood--do not exclude him. 

How about the reverse?

If "society" is made by women, for women, surely a misstep by ahelplessly "innocent" girl, will not injure her standing!

But it does. She is no longer "innocent. " She knows now. She has losther market value and is thrown out of the shop. Why not? It is hisshop--not hers. What women may and may not be, what they must and mustnot do, all is measured from the masculine standard. 

A really feminine "society" based on the needs and pleasures of women, both as females and as human beings, would in the first place accordthem freedom and knowledge; the knowledge which is power. It would notshow us "the queen of the ballroom" in the position of a wall-flowerunless favored by masculine invitation; unable to eat unless he bringsher something; unable to cross the floor without his arm. Of all blindstultified "royal sluggards" she is the archetype. No, a femininesociety would grant _at least_ equality to women in this, theirso-called special field. 

Its attitude toward men, however, would be rigidly critical. 

Fancy a real Mrs. Grundy (up to date it has been a Mr. , his whiskershid in capstrings) saying, "No, no, young man. You won't do. You've beendrinking. The habit's growing on you. You'll make a bad husband. "

Or still more severely, "Out with you, sir! You've forfeited your rightto marry! Go into retirement for seven years, and when you come backbring a doctor's certificate with you. "

That sounds ridiculous, doesn't it--for "Society" to say? It isridiculous, in a man's "society. "

The required dress and decoration of "society"; the everlasting eatingand drinking of "society, " the preferred amusements of "society, " theabsolute requirements and absolute exclusions of "society, " are of men, by men, for men, --to paraphrase a threadbare quotation. And then, uponall that vast edifice of masculine influence, they turn upon womenas Adam did; and blame _them_ for severity with their fallen sisters!"Women are so hard upon women!"

They have to be. What man would "allow" his wife, his daughters, tovisit and associate with "the fallen"? His esteem would be forfeited, they would lose their "social position, " the girl's chance of marryingwould be gone. 

Men are not so stern. They may visit the unfortunate women, to bringthem help, sympathy, re-establishment--or for other reasons; and itdoes not forfeit their social position. Why should it? They make theregulation. 

Women are to-day, far more conspicuously than men, the exponents andvictims of that mysterious power we call "Fashion. " As shown in merehelpless imitation of one another's idea, customs, methods, there isnot much difference; in patient acquiescence with prescribed models ofarchitecture, furniture, literature, or anything else; there is notmuch difference; but in personal decoration there is a most conspicuousdifference. Women do to-day submit to more grotesque ugliness andabsurdity than men; and there are plenty of good reasons for it. Confining our brief study of fashion to fashion in dress, let us observewhy it is that women wear these fine clothes at all; and why they changethem as they do. 

First, and very clearly, the human female carries the weight of sexdecoration, solely because of her economic dependence on the male. Shealone in nature adds to the burdens of maternity, which she was meantfor, this unnatural burden of ornament, which she was not meant for. Every other female in the world is sufficiently attractive to the malewithout trimmings. He carries the trimmings, sparing no expense ofspreading antlers or trailing plumes; no monstrosity of crest andwattles, to win her favor. 

She is only temporarily interested in him. The rest of the time she isgetting her own living, and caring for her own young. But our women gettheir bread from their husbands, and every other social need. The womandepends on the man for her position in life, as well as the necessitiesof existence. For herself and for her children she must win and hold himwho is the source of all supplies. Therefore she is forced to add toher own natural attractions this "dance of the seven veils, " of theseventeen gowns, of the seventy-seven hats of gay delirium. 

There are many who think in one syllable, who say, "women don't dressto please men--they dress to please themselves--and to outshine otherwomen. " To these I would suggest a visit to some summer shore resortduring the week and extending over Saturday night. The women have allthe week to please themselves and outshine one another; but theirarray on Saturday seems to indicate the approach of some new force orattraction. 

If all this does not satisfy I would then call their attention to thewell-known fact that the young damsel previous to marriage spends farmore time and ingenuity in decoration than she does afterward. This haslong been observed and deprecated by those who write Advice to Wives, onthe ground that this difference is displeasing to the husband--thatshe loses her influence over him; which is true. But since his own"society, " knowing his weakness, has tied him to her by law; why shouldshe keep up what is after all an unnatural exertion?

That excellent magazine "Good Housekeeping" has been running for somemonths a rhymed and illustrated story of "Miss Melissa Clarissa McRae, "an extremely dainty and well-dressed stenographer, who captured andmarried a fastidious young man, her employer, by the force of herartificial attractions--and then lost his love after marriage by asudden unaccountable slovenliness--the same old story. 

If this in not enough, let me instance further the attitude toward"Fashion" of that class of women who live most openly and directly uponthe favor of men. These know their business. To continually attract thevagrant fancy of the male, nature's born "variant, " they must not onlypile on artificial charms, but change them constantly. They do. From theleaders of this profession comes a steady stream of changing fashions;the more extreme and bizarre, the more successful--and because they aresuccessful they are imitated. 

If men did not like changes in fashion be assured these professionalmen-pleasers would not change them, but since Nature's Variant tiresof any face in favor of a new one, the lady who would hold her sway andcannot change her face (except in color) must needs change her hat andgown. 

But the Arbiter, the Ruling Cause, he who not only by choice demands, but as a business manufactures and supplies this amazing stream offashions; again like Adam blames the woman--for accepting what he bothdemands and supplies. 

A further proof, if more were needed, is shown in this; that in exactproportion as women grow independent, educated, wise and free, do theybecome less submissive to men-made fashions. Was this improvement hailedwith sympathy and admiration--crowned with masculine favor?

The attitude of men toward those women who have so far presumed to"unsex themselves" is known to all. They like women to be foolish, changeable, always newly attractive; and while women must "attract" fora living--why they do, that's all. 

It is a pity. It is humiliating to any far-seeing woman to have torecognize this glaring proof of the dependent, degraded position of hersex; and it ought to be humiliating to men to see the results of theirmastery. These crazily decorated little creatures do not representwomanhood. 

When the artist uses the woman as the type of every highest ideal; asJustice, Liberty, Charity, Truth--he does not represent her trimmed. In any part of the world where women are even in part economicallyindependent there we find less of the absurdities of fashion. Women whowork cannot be utterly absurd. 

But the idle woman, the Queen of Society, who must please men withintheir prescribed bounds; and those of the half-world, who must pleasethem at any cost--these are the vehicles of fashion. 

X. LAW AND GOVERNMENT. 

It is easy to assume that men are naturally the lawmakers andlaw-enforcers, under the plain historic fact that they have been suchsince the beginning of the patriarchate. 

Back of law lies custom and tradition. Back of government lies thecorrelative activity of any organized group. What group-insectsand group-animals evolve unconsciously and fulfill by their socialinstincts, we evolve consciously and fulfill by arbitrary systems calledlaws and governments. In this, as in all other fields of our action, wemust discriminate between the humanness of the function in process ofdevelopment, and the influence of the male or female upon it. Quiteapart from what they may like or dislike as sexes, from their differingtastes and faculties, lies the much larger field of human progress, inwhich they equally participate. 

On this plane the evolution of law and government proceeds somewhat asfollows:--The early woman-centered group organized on maternal linesof common love and service. The early combinations of men werefirst a grouped predacity--organized hunting; then a groupedbelligerency, --organized warfare. 

By special development some minds are able to perceive the need ofcertain lines of conduct over others, and to make this clear to theirfellows; whereby, gradually, our higher social nature establishes rulesand precedents to which we personally agree to submit. The process ofsocial development is one of progressive co-ordination. 

From independent individual action for individual ends, up tointerdependent social action for social ends we slowly move; the "devil"in the play being the old Ego, which has to be harmonized with the newsocial spirit. This social process, like all others, having beenin masculine hands, we may find in it the same marks of one-sidedSpecialization so visible in our previous studies. 

The coersive attitude is essentially male. In the ceaseless age-oldstruggle of sex combat he developed the desire to overcome, which isalways stimulated by resistance; and in this later historic period ofhis supremacy, he further developed the habit of dominance and mastery. We may instance the contrast between the conduct of a man when "in love"and while courting; in which period he falls into the natural positionof his sex towards the other--namely, that of a wooer; and his behaviorwhen, with marriage, they enter the, artificial relation of the mastermale and servile female. His "instinct of dominance" does not assertitself during the earlier period, which was a million times longer thanthe latter; it only appears in the more modern and arbitrary relation. 

Among other animals monogamous union is not accompanied by any suchdiscordant and unnatural features. However recent as this habit is whenconsidered biologically, it is as old as civilization when we considerit historically: quite old enough to be a serious force. Under itspressure we see the legal systems and forms of government slowlyevolving, the general human growth always heavily perverted by thespecial masculine influence. First we find the mere force of customgoverning us, the _mores_ of the ancient people. Then comes the gradualappearance of authority, from the purely natural leadership of the besthunter or fighter up through the unnatural mastery of the patriarch, owning and governing his wives, children, slaves and cattle, and makingsuch rules and regulations as pleased him. 

Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce;wherein the average citizen knows nothing of the law, and cares onlyto evade it when he can, obey it when he must. In the household, thatstunted, crippled rudiment of the matriarchate, where alone we can findwhat is left of the natural influence of woman, the laws and government, so far as she is responsible for them, are fairly simple, and bearvisible relation to the common good, which relation is clearly andpersistently taught. 

In the larger household of city and state the educational part of thelaw is grievously neglected. It makes no allowance for ignorance. If aman breaks a law of which he never heard he is not excused therefore;the penalty rolls on just the same. Fancy a mother making solemn rulesand regulations for her family, telling the children nothing about them, and then punishing them when they disobeyed the unknown laws!

The use of force is natural to the male; while as a human being he mustneeds legislate somewhat in the interests of the community, as a malebeing he sees no necessity for other enforcement than by penalty. Toviolently oppose, to fight, to trample to the earth, to triumph in loudbellowings of savage joy, --these are the primitive male instincts;and the perfectly natural social instinct which leads to peacefulpersuasion, to education, to an easy harmony of action, arecontemptuously ranked as "feminine, " or as "philanthropic, "--which isalmost as bad. "Men need stronger measures" they say proudly. Yes, butfour-fifths of the world are women and children!

As a matter of fact the woman, the mother, is the first co-ordinator, legislator, administrator and executive. From the guarding and guidanceof her cubs and kittens up to the longer, larger management of humanyouth, she is the first to consider group interests and co-relate them. 

As a father the male grows to share in these original femininefunctions, and with us, fatherhood having become socialized whilemotherhood has not, he does the best he can, alone, to do the world'smother-work in his father way. 

In study of any long established human custom it is very difficult tosee it clearly and dispassionately. Our minds are heavily loaded withprecedent, with race-custom, with the iron weight called authority. These heavy forces reach their most perfect expression in the absolutelymasculine field of warfare. The absolute authority; the brainless, voiceless obedience; the relentless penalty. Here we have male coercionat its height; law and government wholly arbitrary. The result is asmight be expected, a fine machine of destruction. But destruction is nota human process--merely a male process of eliminating the unfit. 

The female process is to select the fit; her elimination is negative andpainless. 

Greater than either is the human process, to _develop fitness. _

Men are at present far more human than women. Alone upon theirself-seized thrones they have carried as best they might the burdens ofthe state; and the history of law and government shows them as changingslowly but irresistably in the direction of social improvement. 

The ancient kings were the joyous apotheosis of masculinity. Powerand Pride were theirs; Limitless Display; Boundless Self-indulgence;Irresistable Authority. Slaves and courtiers bowed before them, subjectsobeyed them, captive women filled their harems. But the day of themasculine monarchy is passing, and the day of the human democracy iscoming in. In a Democracy Law and Government both change. Laws are nolonger imposed on the people by one above them, but are evolved from thepeople themselves. How absurd that the people should not be educatedin the laws they make; that the trailing remnants of blind submissionshould still becloud their minds and make them bow down patiently underthe absurd pressure of outgrown tradition!

Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authorityfrom one above, but is an organization for public service of the peoplethemselves--or will be when it is really attained. 

In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomesagreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When welearn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear tobe punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game. The rulesof human conduct are for our own happiness and service--any child cansee that. Every child will see it when laws are simplified, based onsociology, and taught in schools. A child of ten should be consideredgrossly uneducated who could not rewrite the main features of the lawsof his country, state, and city; and those laws should be so simple intheir principles that a child of ten could understand them. 

Teacher: "What is a tax?"

Child: "A tax is the money we agree to pay to keep up our commonadvantages. "

Teacher: "Why do we all pay taxes?"

Child: "Because the country belongs to all of us, and we must all payour share to keep it up. "

Teacher: "In what proportion do we pay taxes?"

Child: "In proportion to how much money we have. " (_Sotto voce_: "Ofcourse!")

Teacher: "What is it to evade taxes?"

Child: "It is treason. " (_Sotto voce_: "And a dirty mean trick. ")

In masculine administration of the laws we may follow the instinctivelove of battle down through the custom of "trial by combat"--onlyrecently outgrown, to our present method, where each contending partyhires a champion to represent him, and these fight it out in a wordywar, with tricks and devices of complex ingenuity, enjoying this kind ofstruggle as they enjoy all other kinds. 

It is the old masculine spirit of government as authority which is soslow in adapting itself to the democratic idea of government asservice. That it should be a representative government they grasp, butrepresentative of what? of the common will, they say; the will ofthe majority;--never thinking that it is the common good, the commonwelfare, that government should represent. 

It is the inextricable masculinity in our idea of government which sorevolts at the idea of women as voters. "To govern:" that means to boss, to control, to have authority; and that only, to most minds. Theycannot bear to think of the woman as having control over even their ownaffairs; to control is masculine, they assume. Seeing only self-interestas a natural impulse, and the ruling powers of the state as a sort ofumpire, an authority to preserve the rules of the game while men fightit out forever; they see in a democracy merely a wider range of selfinterest, and a wider, freer field to fight in. 

The law dictates the rules, the government enforces them, but themain business of life, hitherto, has been esteemed as one long fiercestruggle; each man seeking for himself. To deliberately legislate forthe service of all the people, to use the government as the main engineof that service, is a new process, wholly human, and difficult ofdevelopment under an androcentric culture. 

Furthermore they put forth those naively androcentric protests, --womencannot fight, and in case their laws were resisted by men they could notenforce them, --_therefore_ they should not vote!

What they do not so plainly say, but very strongly think, is that womenshould not share the loot which to their minds is so large a part ofpolitics. 

Here we may trace clearly the social heredity of male government. 

Fix clearly in your mind the first head-ship of man--the leader of thepack as it were--the Chief Hunter. Then the second head-ship, the ChiefFighter. Then the third head-ship, the Chief of the Family. Then thelong line of Chiefs and Captains, Warlords and Landlords, Rulers andKings. 

The Hunter hunted for prey, and got it. The Fighter enriched himselfwith the spoils of the vanquished. The Patriarch lived on the labor ofwomen and slaves. All down the ages, from frank piracy and robbery tothe measured toll of tribute, ransom and indemnity, we see the samenatural instinct of the hunter and fighter. In his hands the governmentis a thing to sap and wreck, to live on. It is his essential impulse towant something very much; to struggle and fight for it; to take all hecan get. 

Set against this the giving love that comes with motherhood; the endlessservice that comes of motherhood; the peaceful administration in theinterest of the family that comes of motherhood. We prate much of thefamily as the unit of the state. If it is--why not run the state on thatbasis? Government by women, so far as it is influenced by their sex, would be influenced by motherhood; and that would mean care, nurture, provision, education. We have to go far down the scale for any instanceof organized motherhood, but we do find it in the hymenoptera; inthe overflowing industry, prosperity, peace and loving service of theant-hill and bee-hive. These are the most highly socialized types oflife, next to ours, and they are feminine types. 

We as human beings have a far higher form of association, with furtherissues than mere wealth and propagation of the species. In this humanprocess we should never forget that men are far more advanced thanwomen, at present. Because of their humanness has come all the noblegrowth of civilization, in spite of their maleness. 

As human beings both male and female stand alike useful and honorable, and should in our government be alike used and honored; but as creaturesof sex, the female is fitter than the male for administration ofconstructive social interests. The change in governmental processeswhich marks our times is a change in principle. Two great movementsconvulse the world to-day, the woman's movement and the labor movement. Each regards the other as of less moment than itself. Both are parts ofthe same world-process. 

We are entering upon a period of social consciousness. Whereas so faralmost all of us have seen life only as individuals, and have regardedthe growing strength and riches of the social body as merely so much themore to fatten on; now we are beginning to take an intelligent interestin our social nature, to understand it a little, and to begin to feelthe vast increase of happiness and power that comes of real Human Life. 

In this change of systems a government which consisted only ofprohibition and commands; of tax collecting and making war; is rapidlygiving way to a system which intelligently manages our common interests, which is a growing and improving method of universal service. Here thesocialist is perfectly right in his vision of the economic welfare to beassured by the socialization of industry, though that is but part ofthe new development; and the individualist who opposes socialism, cryingloudly for the advantage of "free competition" is but voicing the spiritof the predacious male. 

So with the opposers to the suffrage of women. They represent, whethermen or women, the male viewpoint. They see the woman only as a female, utterly absorbed in feminine functions, belittled and ignored as herlong tutelage has made her; and they see the man as he sees himself, thesole master of human affairs for as long as we have historic record. 

This, fortunately, is not long. We can now see back of the period ofhis supremacy, and are beginning to see beyond it. We are well underway already in a higher stage of social development, conscious, well-organized, wisely managed, in which the laws shall be simpleand founded on constructive principles instead of being a set ofring-regulations within which people may fight as they will; and inwhich the government shall be recognized in its full use; not only thesternly dominant father, and the wisely servicable mother, but the realunion of all people to sanely and economically manage their affairs. 

XI. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. 

The human concept of Sin has had its uses no doubt; and our specialinvention of a thing called Punishment has also served a purpose. 

Social evolution has worked in many ways wastefully, and withunnecessary pain, but it compares very favorably with natural evolution. 

As we grow wiser; as our social consciousness develops, we are beginningto improve on nature in more ways than one; a part of the same greatprocess, but of a more highly sublimated sort. 

Nature shows a world of varied and changing environment. Into this comesLife--flushing and spreading in every direction. A pretty hard time Lifehas of it. In the first place it is dog eat dog in every direction; thejoy of the hunter and the most unjoyous fear of the hunted. 

But quite outside of this essential danger, the environment waits, grimand unappeasable, and continuously destroys the innocent myriads whofail to meet the one requirement of life--Adaptation. So we must not betoo severe in self-condemnation when we see how foolish, cruel, crazilywasteful, is our attitude toward crime and punishment. 

We become socially conscious largely through pain, and as we begin tosee how much of the pain is wholly of our own causing we are overcomewith shame. But the right way for society to face its past is the sameas for the individual; to see where it was wrong and stop it--but towaste no time and no emotion over past misdeeds. 

What is our present state as to crime? It is pretty bad. Some say it isworse than it used to be; others that it is better. At any rate it isbad enough, and a disgrace to our civilization. We have murderers bythe thousand and thieves by the million, of all kinds and sizes; we havewhat we tenderly call "immorality, " from the "errors of youth" to thesodden grossness of old age; married, single, and mixed. We have all theold kinds of wickedness and a lot of new ones, until one marvels at thepurity and power of human nature, that it should carry so much diseaseand still grow on to higher things. 

Also we have punishment still with us; private and public; applied likea rabbit's foot, with as little regard to its efficacy. Does a childoffend? Punish it! Does a woman offend? Punish her! Does a man offend?Punish him! Does a group offend? Punish them!

"What for?" some one suddenly asks. 

"To make them stop doing it!"

"But they have done it!"

"To make them not do it again, then. "

"But they do do it again--and worse. "

"To prevent other people's doing it, then. "

"But it does not prevent them--the crime keeps on. What good is yourpunishment?"

What indeed!

What is the application of punishment to crime? Its base, itsprehistoric base, is simple retaliation; and this is by no means whollymale, let us freely admit. The instinct of resistance, of opposition, ofretaliation, lies deeper than life itself. Its underlying law is the lawof physics--action and reaction are equal. Life's expression of thislaw is perfectly natural, but not always profitable. Hit your hand on astone wall, and the stone wall hits your hand. Very good; you learn thatstone walls are hard, and govern yourself accordingly. 

Conscious young humanity observed and philosophized, congratulatingitself on its discernment. "A man hits me--I hit the man a littleharder--then he won't do it again. " Unfortunately he did do it again--alittle harder still. The effort to hit harder carried on the action andreaction till society, hitting hardest of all, set up a system of legalpunishment, of unlimited severity. It imprisoned, it mutilated, ittortured, it killed; it destroyed whole families, and razed contumeliouscities to the ground. 

Therefore all crime ceased, of course? No? But crime was mitigated, surely! Perhaps. This we have proven at last; that crime does notdecrease in proportion to the severest punishment. Little by little wehave ceased to raze the cities, to wipe out the families, to cut off theears, to torture; and our imprisonment is changing from slow death andinsanity to a form of attempted improvement. 

But punishment as a principle remains in good standing, and is still themain reliance where it does the most harm--in the rearing of children. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" remains in belief, unmodified by themillions of children spoiled by the unspared rod. 

The breeders of racehorses have learned better, but not the breeders ofchildren. Our trouble is simply the lack of intelligence. We face thebabyish error and the hideous crime in exactly the same attitude. 

"This person has done something offensive. "

Yes?--and one waits eagerly for the first question of the rationalmind--but does not hear it. One only hears "Punish him!"

What is the first question of the rational mind?

"Why?"

Human beings are not first causes. They do not evolve conduct out ofnothing. The child does this, the man does that, _because_ of something;because of many things. If we do not like the way people behave, andwish them to behave better, we should, if we are rational beings, studythe conditions that produce the conduct. 

The connection between our archaic system of punishment and ourandrocentric culture is two-fold. The impulse of resistance, while, aswe have seen, of the deepest natural origin, is expressed more stronglyin the male than in the female. The tendency to hit back and hit harderhas been fostered in him by sex-combat till it has become of greatintensity. The habit of authority too, as old as our history; andthe cumulative weight of all the religions and systems of law andgovernment, have furthermore built up and intensified the spirit ofretaliation and vengeance. 

They have even deified this concept, in ancient religions, crediting toGod the evil passions of men. As the small boy recited; "Vengeance. Amean desire to get even with your enemies: 'Vengeance is mine saith theLord'--'I will repay. '"

The Christian religion teaches better things; better than its expositorsand upholders have ever understood--much less practised. 

The teaching of "Love your enemies, do good unto them that hate you, andserve them that despitefully use you and persecute you, " has toooften resulted, when practised at all, in a sentimental negation; apathetically useless attitude of non-resistance. You might as well basea religion on a feather pillow!

The advice given was active; direct; concrete. "_Love!_" Love is notnon-resistance. "Do good!" Doing good is not non-resistance. "Serve!"Service is not non-resistance. 

Again we have an overwhelming proof of the far-reaching effects ofour androcentric culture. Consider it once more. Here is one by naturecombative and desirous, and not by nature intended to monopolize themanagement of his species. He assumes to be not only the leader, but thewhole thing--to be humanity itself, and to see in woman as Grant Allenso clearly put it "Not only not the race; she is not even half the race, but a subspecies, told off for purposes of reproduction merely. "

Under this monstrous assumption, his sex-attributes wholly identifiedwith his human attributes, and overshadowing them, he has imprinted onevery human institution the tastes and tendencies of the male. As a malehe fought, as a male human being he fought more, and deified fighting;and in a culture based on desire and combat, loud with stridentself-expression, there could be but slow acceptance of the more humanmethods urged by Christianity. "It is a religion for slaves and women!"said the warrior of old. (Slaves and women were largely the samething. ) "It is a religion for slaves and women" says the advocate of theSuperman. 

Well? Who did the work of all the ancient world? Who raised the foodand garnered it and cooked it and served it? Who built the houses, thetemples, the aqueducts, the city wall? Who made the furniture, thetools, the weapons, the utensils, the ornaments--made them strong andbeautiful and useful? Who kept the human race going, somehow, in spiteof the constant hideous waste of war, and slowly built up the realindustrial civilization behind that gory show?--Why just the slaves andthe women. 

A religion which had attractions for the real human type is nottherefore to be utterly despised by the male. 

In modern history we may watch with increasing ease the slow, sureprogress of our growing humanness beneath the weakening shell of anall-male dominance. And in this field of what begins in the nurse as"discipline, " and ends on the scaffold as "punishment, " we can clearlysee that blessed change. 

What is the natural, the human attribute? What does this "Love, " and"Do good, " and "Serve" mean? In the blundering old church, stillandrocentric, there was a great to-do to carry out this doctrine, inelaborate symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples, gathered for theoccasion, was exhibited, and kings and cardinals went solemnly throughthe motions of serving them. As the English schoolboy phrased it, "Thomas Becket washed the feet of leopards. "

Service and love and doing good must always remain side issues in a maleworld. Service and love and doing good are the spirit of motherhood, andthe essence of human life. 

Human life is service, and is not combat. There you have the nature ofthe change now upon us. 

What has the male mind made of Christianity?

Desire--to save one's own soul. Combat--with the Devil. Self-expression--the whole gorgeous outpouring of pageant and display, from the jewels of the high priest's breastplate to the choir ofmutilated men to praise a male Deity no woman may so serve. 

What kind of mind can imagine a kind of god who would like a eunuchbetter than a woman?

For woman they made at last a place--the usual place--of renunciation, sacrifice and service, the Sisters of Mercy and their kind; and inthat loving service the woman soul has been content, not yearning forcardinal's cape or bishop's mitre. 

All this is changing--changing fast. Everywhere the churches arebroadening out into more service, and the service broadening out beyonda little group of widows and fatherless, of sick and in prison, toembrace its true field--all human life. In this new attitude, how shallwe face the problems of crime?

Thus: "It is painfully apparent that a certain percentage of our peopledo not function properly. They perform antisocial acts. Why? What is thematter with them?"

Then the heart and mind of society is applied to the question, andcertain results are soon reached; others slowly worked toward. 

First result. Some persons are so morally diseased that they must havehospital treatment. The world's last prison will be simply a hospitalfor moral incurables. They must by no means reproduce their kind, --thatcan be attended to at once. Some are morally diseased, but may be cured, and the best powers of society will be used to cure them. Some are onlymorally diseased because of the conditions in which they are born andreared, and here society can save millions at once. 

An intelligent society will no more neglect its children than anintelligent mother will neglect her children; and will see as clearlythat ill-fed, ill-dressed, ill-taught and vilely associated little onesmust grow up gravely injured. 

As a matter of fact we make our crop of criminals, just as we make ouridiots, blind, crippled, and generally defective. Everyone is a babyfirst, and a baby is not a criminal, unless we make it so. It neverwould be, --in right conditions. Sometimes a pervert is born, assometimes a two-headed calf is born, but they are not common. 

The older, simpler forms of crime we may prevent with case and despatch, but how of the new ones?--big, terrible, far-reaching, wide-spreadcrimes, for which we have as yet no names; and before which our oldsystem of anti-personal punishment falls helpless? What of the crimesof poisoning a community with bad food; of defiling the water; ofblackening the air; of stealing whole forests? What of the crimes ofworking little children; of building and renting tenements that producecrime and physical disease as well? What of the crime of living on thewages of fallen women--of hiring men to ruin innocent young girls; ofholding them enslaved and selling them for profit? (These things areonly "misdemeanors" in a man-made world!)

And what about a crime like this; to use the public press to lie tothe public for private ends? No name yet for this crime; much less apenalty. 

And this: To bring worse than leprosy to an innocent clean wife wholoves and trusts you?

Or this: To knowingly plant poison in an unborn child?

No names, for these; no "penalties"; no conceivable penalty that couldtouch them. 

The whole punishment system falls to the ground before the huge mass ofevil that confronts us. If we saw a procession of air ships flyingover a city and dropping bombs, should we rush madly off after eachone crying, "Catch him! Punish him!" or should we try to stop theprocession?

The time is coming when the very word "crime" will be disused, except inpoems and orations; and "punishment, " the word and deed, be obliterated. We are beginning to learn a little of the nature of humanity itsgoodness, its beauty, its lovingness; and to see that even its stupidityis only due to our foolish old methods of education. 

It is not new power, new light, new hope that we need, but _tounderstand what ails us. _

We know enough now, we care enough now, we are strong enough now, tomake the whole world a thousand fold better in a generation; but we areshackled, chained, blinded, by old false notions. The ideas of the past, the sentiments of the past, the attitude and prejudices of the past, arein our way; and among them none more universally mischievous than thisgreat body of ideas and sentiments, prejudices and habits, which make upthe offensive network of the androcentric culture. 

XII. POLITICS AND WARFARE. 

I go to my old dictionary, and find; "Politics, I. The science ofgovernment; that part of ethics which has to do with the regulation andgovernment of a nation or state, the preservation of its safety, peaceand prosperity; the defence of its existence and rights against foreigncontrol or conquest; the augmentation of its strength and resources, andthe protection of its citizens in their rights; with the preservationand improvement of their morals. 2. The management of political parties;the advancement of candidates to office; in a bad sense, artful ordishonest management to secure the success of political measures orparty schemes, political trickery. "

From present day experience we might add, 3. Politics, practical; Theart of organizing and handling men in large numbers, manipulating votes, and, in especial, appropriating public wealth. 

We can easily see that the "science of government" may be divided into"pure" and "applied" like other sciences, but that it is "a part ofethics" will be news to many minds. 

Yet why not? Ethics is the science of conduct, and politics is merelyone field of conduct; a very common one. Its connection with Warfare inthis chapter is perfectly legitimate in view of the history of politicson the one hand, and the imperative modern issues which are to-dayopposed to this established combination. 

There are many to-day who hold that politics need not be at allconnected with warfare, and others who hold that politics is warfarefront start to finish. 

In order to dissociate the two ideas completely let us give a paraphraseof the above definition, applying it to domestic management;--thatpart of ethics which has to do with the regulation and government ofa family; the preservation of its safety, peace and prosperity; thedefense of its existence and rights against any strangers' interferenceor control; the augmentation of its strength and resources, and theprotection of its members in their rights; with the preservation andimprovement of their morals. 

All this is simple enough, and in no way masculine; neither is itfeminine, save in this; that the tendency to care for, defend and managea group, is in its origin maternal. 

In every human sense, however, politics has left its maternal base farin the background; and as a field of study and of action is as welladapted to men as to women. There is no reason whatever why men shouldnot develop great ability in this department of ethics, and graduallylearn how to preserve the safety, peace and prosperity of their nation;together with those other services as to resources, protection ofcitizens, and improvement of morals. 

Men, as human beings, are capable of the noblest devotion and efficiencyin these matters, and have often shown them; but their devotion andefficiency have been marred in this, as in so many other fields, by theconstant obtrusion of an ultra-masculine tendency. 

In warfare, _per se_, we find maleness in its absurdest extremes. Hereis to be studied the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from the initialinstinct of combat, through every form of glorious ostentation, with theloudest possible accompaniment of noise. 

Primitive warfare had for its climax the possession of the primitiveprize, the female. Without dogmatising on so remote a period, it maybe suggested as a fair hypothesis that this was the very origin of ourorganized raids. We certainly find war before there was property inland, or any other property to tempt aggressors. Women, however, therewere always, and when a specially androcentric tribe had reduced itssupply of women by cruel treatment, or they were not born in sufficientnumbers, owing to hard conditions, men must needs go farther afieldafter other women. Then, since the men of the other tribes naturallyobjected to losing their main labor supply and comfort, there was war. 

Thus based on the sex impulse, it gave full range to the combativeinstinct, and further to that thirst for vocal exultation so exquisitelymale. The proud bellowings of the conquering stag, as he trampled on hisprostrate rival, found higher expression in the "triumphs" of old days, when the conquering warrior returned to his home, with victims chainedto his chariot wheels, and braying trumpets. 

When property became an appreciable factor in life, warfare took on anew significance. What was at first mere destruction, in the effort todefend or obtain some hunting ground or pasture; and, always, to securethe female; now coalesced with the acquisitive instinct, and the longblack ages of predatory warfare closed in upon the world. 

Where the earliest form exterminated, the later enslaved, and tooktribute; and for century upon century the "gentleman adventurer, " i. E. , the primitive male, greatly preferred to acquire wealth by the simpleold process of taking it, to any form of productive industry. 

We have been much misled as to warfare by our androcentric literature. With a history which recorded nothing else; a literature which praisedand an art which exalted it; a religion which called its central power"the God of Battles"--never the God of Workshops, mind you!--witha whole complex social structure man-prejudiced from center tocircumference, and giving highest praise and honor to the Soldier; it isstill hard for its to see what warfare really is in human life. 

Someday we shall have new histories written, histories of worldprogress, showing the slow uprising, the development, the interserviceof the nations; showing the faint beautiful dawn of the larger spirit ofworld-consciousness, and all its benefitting growth. 

We shall see people softening, learning, rising; see life lengthen withthe possession of herds, and widen in rich prosperity with agriculture. Then industry, blossoming, fruiting, spreading wide; art, givinglight and joy; the intellect developing with companionship and humanintercourse; the whole spreading tree of social progress, the trunk ofwhich is specialized industry, and the branches of which comprise everyleast and greatest line of human activity and enjoyment. This growingtree, springing up wherever conditions of peace and prosperity gave it achance, we shall see continually hewed down to the very root by war. 

To the later historian will appear throughout the ages, like someHideous Fate, some Curse, some predetermined check, to drag down all ourhope and joy and set life forever at its first steps over again, thisRed Plague of War. 

The instinct of combat, between males, worked advantageously so longas it did not injure the female or the young. It is a perfectly naturalinstinct, and therefore perfectly right, in its place; but its placeis in a pre-patriarchal era. So long as the animal mother was free andcompetent to care for herself and her young; then it was an advantage tohave "the best man win;" that is the best stag or lion; and to have thevanquished die, or live in sulky celibacy, was no disadvantage to anyone but himself. 

Humanity is on a stage above this plan. The best man in the socialstructure is not always the huskiest. When a fresh horde of ultra-malesavages swarmed down upon a prosperous young civilization, killed offthe more civilized males and appropriated the more civilized females;they did, no doubt, bring in a fresh physical impetus to the race; butthey destroyed the civilization. 

The reproduction of perfectly good savages is not the main business ofhumanity. Its business is to grow, socially; to develop, to improve; andwarfare, at its best, retards human progress; at its worst, obliteratesit. 

Combat is not a social process at all; it is a physical process, asubsidiary sex process, purely masculine, intended to improve thespecies by the elimination of the unfit. Amusingly enough, or absurdlyenough; when applied to society, it eliminates the fit, and leaves theunfit to perpetuate the race!

We require, to do our organized fighting, a picked lot of vigorous youngmales, the fittest we can find. The too old or too young; the sick, crippled, defective; are all left behind, to marry and be fathers; whilethe pick of the country, physically, is sent off to oppose the pick ofanother country, and kill--kill--kill!

Observe the result on the population! In the first place the balance isbroken--there are not enough men to go around, at home; many women areleft unmated. In primitive warfare, where women were promptly enslaved, or, at the best, polygamously married, this did not greatly matterto the population; but as civilization advances and monogamy obtains, whatever eugenic benefits may once have sprung from warfare arecompletely lost, and all its injuries remain. 

In what we innocently call "civilized warfare" (we might as well speakof "civilized cannibalism!"), this steady elimination of the fit leavesan everlowering standard of parentage at home. It makes a wideningmargin of what we call "surplus women, " meaning more than enough tobe monogamously married; and these women, not being economicallyindependent, drag steadily upon the remaining men, postponing marriage, and increasing its burdens. 

The birth rate is lowered in quantity by the lack of husbands, andlowered in quality both by the destruction of superior stock, and bythe wide dissemination of those diseases which invariably accompany thewife-lessness of the segregated males who are told off to perform ourmilitary functions. 

The external horrors and wastes of warfare we are all familiar with;A. It arrests industry and all progress. B. It destroys the fruits ofindustry and progress. C. It weakens, hurts and kills the combatants. D. It lowers the standard of the non-combatants. Even the conquering nationis heavily injured; the conquered sometimes exterminated, or at leastabsorbed by the victor. 

This masculine selective process, when applied to nations, does notproduce the same result as when applied to single opposing animals. When little Greece was overcome it did not prove that the victors weresuperior, nor promote human interests in any way; it injured them. 

The "stern arbitrament of war" may prove which of two peoples isthe better fighter, but ft does not prove it therefor the fittest tosurvive. 

Beyond all these more or less obvious evils, comes a further result, notenough recognized; the psychic effects of military standard of thoughtand feeling. 

Remember that an androcentric culture has always exempted its ownessential activities from the restraints of ethics, --"All's fair inlove and war!" Deceit, trickery, lying, every kind of skulking underhandeffort to get information; ceaseless endeavor to outwit and overcome"the enemy"; besides as cruelty and destruction; are characteristic ofthe military process; as well as the much praised virtues of courage, endurance and loyalty, personal and public. 

Also classed as a virtue, and unquestionably such from the militarypoint of view, is that prime factor in making and keeping an army, obedience. 

See how the effect of this artificial maintenance of early mentalattitudes acts on our later development. True human progress requireselements quite other than these. If successful warfare made one nationunquestioned master of the earth its social progress would not bepromoted by that event. The rude hordes of Genghis Khan swarmedover Asia and into Europe, but remained rude hordes; conquest is notcivilization, nor any part of it. 

When the northern tribes-men overwhelmed the Roman culture theyparalysed progress for a thousand years or so; set back the clockby that much. So long as all Europe was at war, so long the arts andsciences sat still, or struggled in hid corners to keep their lightalive. 

When warfare itself ceases, the physical, social and psychic results donot cease. Our whole culture is still hag-ridden by military ideals. 

Peace congresses have begun to meet, peace societies write and talk, butthe monuments to soldiers and sailors (naval sailors of course), stillgo up, and the tin soldier remains a popular toy. We do not see boxesof tin carpenters by any chance; tin farmers, weavers, shoemakers; wedo not write our "boys books" about the real benefactors and serversof society; the adventurer and destroyer remains the idol of anAndrocentric Culture. 

In politics the military ideal, the military processes, are sopredominant as to almost monopolise "that part of ethics. " The scienceof government, the plain wholesome business of managing a community forits own good; doing its work, advancing its prosperity, improving itsmorals--this is frankly understood and accepted as A Fight from startto finish. Marshall your forces and try to get in, this is the politicalcampaign. When you are in, fight to stay in, and to keep the otherfellow out. Fight for your own hand, like an animal; fight foryour master like any hired bravo; fight always for some desired"victory"--and "to the victors belong the spoils. "

This is not by any means the true nature of politics. It is not even afair picture of politics to-day; in which man, the human being, isdoing noble work for humanity; but it is the effect of man, the male, onpolitics. 

Life, to the "male mind" (we have heard enough of the "female mind" touse the analogue!) _is_ a fight, and his ancient military institutionsand processes keep up the delusion. 

As a matter of fact life is growth. Growth comes naturally, bymultiplication of cells, and requires three factors to promote it;nourishment, use, rest. Combat is a minor incident of life; belonging tolow levels, and not of a developing influence socially. 

The science of politics, in a civilized community, should have by thistime a fine accumulation of simplified knowledge for diffusion inpublic schools; a store of practical experience in how to promotesocial advancement most rapidly, a progressive economy and ease ofadministration, a simplicity in theory and visible benefit in practice, such as should make every child an eager and serviceable citizen. 

What do we find, here in America, in the field of "politics?"

We find first a party system which is the technical arrangement to carryon a fight. It is perfectly conceivable that a flourishing democraticgovernment be carried on _without any parties at all;_ publicfunctionaries being elected on their merits, and each proposed measurejudged on its merits; though this sounds impossible to the androcentricmind. 

"There has never been a democracy without factions and parties!" isprotested. 

There has never been a democracy, so far--only an androcracy. 

A group composed of males alone, naturally divides, opposes, fights;even a male church, under the most rigid rule, has its secretundercurrents of antagonism. 

"It is the human heart!" is again protested. No, not essentially thehuman heart, but the male heart. This is so well recognized by men ingeneral, that, to their minds, in this mingled field of politics andwarfare, women have no place. 

In "civilized warfare" they are, it is true, allowed to trail along andpractice their feminine function of nursing; but this is no part of warproper, it is rather the beginning of the end of war. Some time it willstrike our "funny spot, " these strenuous efforts to hurt and destroy, and these accompanying efforts to heal and save. 

But in our politics there is not even provision for a nursing corps;women are absolutely excluded. 

"They cannot play the game!" cries the practical politician. Thereis loud talk of the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its resultantdarkening of fair reputations, the total unfitness of lovely woman totake part in "the rough and tumble of politics. "

In other words men have made a human institution into an ultra-masculineperformance; and, quite rightly, feel that women could not take partin politics _as men do. _ That it is not necessary to fulfill thishuman custom in so masculine a way does not occur to them. Few mencan overlook the limitations of their sex and see the truth; that thisbusiness of taking care of our common affairs is not only equally opento women and men, but that women are distinctly needed in it. 

Anyone will admit that a government wholly in the hands of women wouldbe helped by the assistance of men; that a gynaecocracy must, of its ownnature, be one sided. Yet it is hard to win reluctant admission of theopposite fact; that an androcracy must of its own nature be one sidedalso, and would be greatly improved by the participation of the othersex. 

The inextricable confusion of politics and warfare is part of thestumbling block in the minds of men. As they see it, a nation isprimarily a fighting organization; and its principal business isoffensive and defensive warfare; therefore the ultimatum with which theyoppose the demand for political equality--"women cannot fight, thereforethey cannot vote. "

Fighting, when all is said, is to them the real business of life; not tobe able to fight is to be quite out of the running; and ability to solveour growing mass of public problems; questions of health, of education, of morals, of economics; weighs naught against the ability to kill. 

This naive assumption of supreme value in a process never of the firstimportance; and increasingly injurious as society progresses, would belaughable if it were not for its evil effects. It acts and reacts uponus to our hurt. Positively, we see the ill effects already touched on;the evils not only of active war; but of the spirit and methods of war;idealized, inculcated and practiced in other social processes. Ittends to make each man-managed nation an actual or potential fightingorganization, and to give us, instead of civilized peace, that "balanceof power" which is like the counted time in the prize ring--only a restbetween combats. 

It leaves the weaker nations to be "conquered" and "annexed" just asthey used to be; with tariffs instead of tribute. It forces uponeach the burden of armament; upon many the dreaded conscription; andcontinually lowers the world's resources in money and in life. 

Similarly in politics, it adds to the legitimate expenses of governingthe illegitimate expenses of fighting; and must needs have a "spoilssystem" by which to pay its mercenaries. 

In carrying out the public policies the wheels of state are continuallyclogged by the "opposition;" always an opposition on one side or theother; and this slow wiggling uneven progress, through shorn victoriesand haggling concessions, is held to be the proper and only politicalmethod. 

"Women do not understand politics, " we are told; "Women do not care forpolitics;" "Women are unfitted for politics. "

It is frankly inconceivable, from the androcentric view-point, thatnations can live in peace together, and be friendly and serviceableas persons are. It is inconceivable also, that in the management of anation, honesty, efficiency, wisdom, experience and love could work outgood results without any element of combat. 

The "ultimate resort" is still to arms. "The will of the majority" isonly respected on account of the guns of the majority. We have but apartial civilization, heavily modified to sex--the male sex. 

WOMAN AND THE STATE

 [A Discussion of Political Equality of Men and Women. To be read in connection with chapter 12 of Our Androcentric Culture. ]

Here are two vital factors in human life; one a prime essential to ourexistence; the other a prime essential to our progress. 

Both of them we idealize in certain lines, and exploit in others. Both of them are misinterpreted, balked of their full usefulness, andhumanity thus injured. 

The human race does not get the benefit of the full powers of women, norof the full powers of the state. 

In all civilized races to-day there is a wide and growing sense ofdiscontent among women; a criticism of their assigned limitations, anda demand for larger freedom and opportunity. Under different conditionsthe demand varies; it is here for higher education, there for justicebefore the law; here for economic independence, and there for politicalequality. 

This last is at present the most prominent Issue of "the woman question"in England and America, as the activity of the "militant suffragists"has forced it upon the attention of the world. 

Thoughtful people in general are now studying this point more seriouslythan ever before, genuinely anxious to adopt the right side, and thereis an alarmed uprising of sincere objection to the political equality ofwomen. 

Wasting no time on ignorance, prejudice, or the resistance of specialinterests, let us fairly face the honest opposition, and do it justice. 

The conservative position is this:

"Men and women have different spheres in life. To men belong the creationand management of the state, and the financial maintenance of the homeand family:

"To women belong the physical burden of maternity, and the industrialmanagement of the home and family; these duties require all their timeand strength:

"The prosperity of the state may be sufficiently conserved by men alone;the prosperity of the family requires the personal presence and servicesof the mother in the home: if women assume the cares of the state, thehome and family will suffer:"

Some go even farther than this, and claim an essential limitationin "the female mind" which prevents it from grasping large politicalinterests; holding, therefore, that if women took part in state affairsit would be to the detriment of the community:

Others advance a theory that "society, " in the special sense, is thetrue sphere of larger service for women, and that those of them notexclusively confined to "home duties" may find full occupation in"social duties, " including the time honored fields of "religion" and"charity":

Others again place their main reliance on the statement that, as to thesuffrage, "women do not want it. "

Let us consider these points in inverse order, beginning with the lastone. 

We will admit that at present the majority of women are not consciouslydesirous of any extension of their political rights and privileges, butdeny that this indifference is any evidence against the desirability ofsuch extension. 

It has long been accepted that the position of women is an index ofcivilization. Progressive people are proud of the freedom and honorgiven their women, and our nation honestly believes itself the leaderin this line. "American women are the freest in the world!" we say; andboast of it. 

Since the agitation for women's rights began, many concessions havebeen made to further improve their condition. Men, seeing the justiceof certain demands, have granted in many states such privileges asadmission to schools, colleges, universities, and special instructionfor professions; followed by admission to the bar, the pulpit, and thepractice of medicine. Married women, in many states, have now a rightto their own earnings; and in a few, mothers have an equal right in theguardianship of their children. 

We are proud and glad that our women are free to go unveiled, to travelalone, to choose their own husbands; we are proud and glad of everyextension of justice already granted by men to women. 

Now:--Have any of these concessions been granted because a majority ofwomen asked for them? Was it advanced in opposition to any of them that"women did not want it?" Have as many women ever asked for these thingsas are now asking for the ballot? If it was desirable to grant theseother rights and privileges without the demand of a majority, why is thedemand of a majority required before this one is granted?

The child widows of India did not unitedly demand the abolition of the"suttee. "

The tortured girl children of China did not rise in overwhelmingmajority to demand free feet; yet surely no one would refuse to liftthese burdens because only a minority of progressive women insisted onjustice. 

It is a sociological impossibility that a majority of an unorganizedclass should unite in concerted demand for a right, a duty, which theyhave never known. 

The point to be decided is whether political equality is to theadvantage of women and of the state--not whether either, as a body, isasking for it. 

Now for the "society" theory. There is a venerable fiction to theeffect that women make--and manage, "society. " No careful student ofcomparative history can hold this belief for a moment. Whatever theconditions of the age or place; industrial, financial, religious, political, educational; these conditions are in the hands of men; andthese conditions dictate the "society" of that age or place. 

"Society" in a constitutional monarchy is one thing; in a primitivedespotism another; among millionaires a third; but women do not make thedespotism, the monarchy, or the millions. They take social conditionsas provided by men, precisely as they take all other conditions attheir hands. They do not even modify an existing society to their owninterests, being powerless to do so. The "double standard of morals, "ruling everywhere in "society, " proves this; as does the comparativehelplessness of women to enjoy even social entertainments, without theconstant attendance and invitation of men. 

Even in its great function of exhibition leading to marriage, it is thegirls who are trained and exhibited, under closest surveillance; whilethe men stroll in and out, to chose at will, under no surveillancewhatever. 

That women, otherwise powerful, may use "society" to further their ends, is as true as that men do; and in England, where women, through theirtitled and landed position, have always had more political power thanhere, "society" is a very useful vehicle for the activities of bothsexes. 

But, in the main, the opportunities of "society" to women, are merelyopportunities to use their "feminine influence" in extra domesticlines--a very questionable advantage to the home and family, tomotherhood, to women, or to the state. 

In religion women have always filled and more than filled the placeallowed them. Needless to say it was a low one. The power of the church, its whole management and emoluments, were always in the hands of men, save when the Lady Abbess held her partial sway; but the work of thechurch has always been helped by women--the men have preached and thewomen practised!

Charity, as a vocation, is directly in line with the mother instinct, and has always appealed to women. Since we have learned how injuriousto true social development this mistaken kindness is, it might almost beclassified as a morbid by-product of suppressed femininity!

In passing we may note that charity as a virtue is ranked highestamong those nations and religions where women are held lowest. With theMoslems it is a universal law--and in the Moslem Paradise there are nowomen--save the Houries!

The playground of a man-fenced "society"; the work-ground of aman-taught church; and this "osmosis" of social nutrition, this leakageand seepage of values which should circulate normally, called charity;these are not a sufficient field for the activities of women. 

As for those limitations of the "feminine mind" which render her unfitto consider the victuallage of a nation, or the justice of a tax onsugar; it hardly seems as if the charge need be taken seriously. Yetso able a woman as Mrs. Humphry Ward has recently advanced it in allearnestness. 

In her view women are capable of handling municipal, but not stateaffairs. Since even this was once denied them; and since, in England, they have had municipal suffrage for some time; it would seem as iftheir abilities grew with use, as most abilities do; which is in truththe real answer. 

Most women spend their whole lives, and have spent their whole lives foruncounted generations, in the persistent and exclusive contemplation oftheir own family affairs. They are near-sighted, or near-minded, rather;the trouble is not with the nature of their minds, but with the use ofthem. 

If men as a class had been exclusively confined to the occupation ofhouse-service since history began, they would be similarly unlikely tomanifest an acute political intelligence. 

We may agree with Tennyson that "Woman is not undeveloped man, butdiverse;" that is _women_ are not undeveloped _men;_ but the femininehalf of humanity is undeveloped human. They have exercised theirfeminine functions, but not their human-functions; at least not to theirfull extent. 

Here appears a distinction which needs to be widely appreciated. 

We are not merely male and female--all animals are that--our chiefdistinction is that of race, our humanness. 

Male characteristics we share with all males, bird and beast; femalecharacteristics we share with all females, similarly; but humancharacteristics belong to _genus homo_ alone; and are possessed by bothsexes. A female horse is just as much a horse as a male of her species;a female human being is just as human as the male of her species--orought to be!

In the special functions and relations of sex there is no contest, nopossible rivalry or confusion; but in the general functions of humanitythere is great misunderstanding. 

Our trouble is that we have not recognized these human functions assuch; but supposed them to be exclusively masculine; and, acting underthat idea, strove to prevent women from an unnatural imitation of men. 

Hence this minor theory of the limitations of the "female mind. "

The mind is pre-eminently human. That degree of brain development whichdistinguishes our species, is a human, not a sex characteristic. 

There may be, has been, and still is, a vast difference in our treatmentof the minds of the two sexes. We have given them a different education, different exercises, different conditions in all ways. But all thesedifferences are external, and their effect disappears with them. 

The "female mind" has proven its identical capacity with the "malemind, " _in so far as it has been given identical conditions. _ It willtake a long time, however, before conditions are so identical, forsuccessive generations, as to give the "female mind" a fair chance. 

In the meantime, considering its traditional, educational andassociative drawbacks, the "female mind" has made a remarkably goodshowing. 

The field of politics is an unfortunate one in which to urge thisalleged limitation; because politics is one of the few fields in whichsome women have been reared and exercised under equal conditions withmen. 

We have had queens as long as we have had kings, perhaps longer; andhistory does not show the male mind, in kings, to have manifested anumerically proportionate superiority over the female mind, in queens. There have been more kings than queens, but have there been more goodand great ones, in proportion?

Even one practical and efficient queen is proof enough that being awoman does not preclude political capacity. Since England has had suchan able queen for so long, and that within Mrs. Humphry Ward's personalmemory, her position seems fatuous in the extreme. 

It has been advanced that great queens owed their power to theassociation and advice of the noble and high-minded men who surroundedthem; and, further, that the poor showing made by many kings, was due tothe association and vice of the base and low-minded women who surroundedthem. 

This is a particularly pusillanimous claim in the first place; is notprovable in the second place; and, if it were true, opens up a verypretty field of study in the third place. It would seem to prove, if itproves anything, that men are not fit to be trusted with politicalpower on account of an alarming affinity for the worst of women; and, conversely, that women, as commanding the assistance of the best of men, are visibly the right rulers! Also it opens a pleasant sidelight on thatoft-recommended tool--"feminine influence. "

We now come to our opening objection; that society and state, home, andfamily, are best served by the present division of interests: and itscorollary, that if women enlarge that field of interest it would reducetheir usefulness in their present sphere. 

The corollary is easily removed. We are now on the broad ground ofestablished facts; of history, recent, but still achieved. 

Women have had equal political rights with men in several places, forconsiderable periods of time. In Wyoming, to come near home, they haveenjoyed this status for more than a generation. Neither here nor in anyother state or country where women vote, is there the faintest proof ofinjury to the home or family relation. In Wyoming, indeed, divorce hasdecreased, while gaining so fast in other places. 

Political knowledge, political interest, does not take up more time andstrength than any other form of mental activity; nor does it preclude akeen efficiency in other lines; and as for the actual time required toperform the average duties of citizenship--it is a contemptible bit oftrickery in argument, if not mere ignorance and confusion of idea, tourge the occasional attendance on political meetings, or the annual orbi-annual dropping of a ballot, as any interference with the managementof a house. 

It is proven, by years on years of established experience, that womencan enjoy full political equality and use their power, without in theleast ceasing to be contented and efficient wives and mothers, cooks andhousekeepers. 

What really horrifies the popular mind at the thought of women inpolitics, is the picture of woman as a "practical politician;" givingher time to it as a business, and making money by it, in questionable, or unquestionable, ways; and, further, as a politician in office, assheriff, alderman, senator, judge. 

The popular mind becomes suffused with horror at the first idea, andscarcely less so at the second. It pictures blushing girlhood onthe Bench; tender motherhood in the Senate; the housewife turned"ward-heeler;" and becomes quite sick in contemplation of theseabominations. 

No educated mind, practical mind, no mind able and willing to use itsfaculties, need be misled for a moment by these sophistries. 

There is absolutely no evidence that women as a class will rush into"practical politics. " Where they have voted longest they do not manifestthis dread result. Neither is there any proof that they will all desireto hold office; or that any considerable portion of them will; or that, if they did, they would get it. 

We seem unconsciously to assume that when women begin to vote, men willstop; or that the women will outnumber the men; also that, outnumberingthem, they will be completely united in their vote; and, still further, that so outnumbering and uniting, they will solidly vote for a ticketcomposed wholly of women candidates. 

Does anyone seriously imagine this to be likely?

This may be stated with assurance; if ever we do see a clever, designing, flirtatious, man-twisting woman; or a pretty, charming, irresistable young girl, elected to office--it will not be by the votesof women!

Where women are elected to office, by the votes of both men and women, they are of suitable age and abilities, and do their work well. Theyhave already greatly improved some of the conditions of local politics, and the legislation they advocate is of a beneficial character. 

What is the true relation of women to the state?

It is precisely identical with that of men. Their forms of service mayvary, but their duty, their interest, their responsibility, is the same. 

Here are the people on earth, half of them women, all of them herchildren. It is her earth as much as his; the people are their people, the state their state; compounded of them all, in due relation. 

As the father and mother, together; shelter, guard, teach and providefor their children in the home; so should all fathers and mothers, together; shelter, guard, teach and provide for their common children, the community. 

The state is no mystery; no taboo place of masculine secrecy; it issimply us. 

Democracy is but a half-grown child as yet, one of twins? Its boy-halfis a struggling thing, with "the diseases of babyhood"; its girl-halfhas hardly begun to take notice. 

As human creatures we have precisely the same duty and privilege, interest, and power in the state; sharing its protection, itsadvantages, and its services. As women we have a different relation. 

Here indeed we will admit, and glory in, our "diversity. " The "eternalwomanly" is a far more useful thing in the state than the "eternalmanly. "

To be woman means to be mother. To be mother means to give love, defense, nourishment, care, instruction. Too long, far too long hasmotherhood neglected its real social duties, its duties to humanity atlarge. Even in her position of retarded industrial development, as thehousekeeper and houseworker of the world, woman has a contribution ofspecial value to the state. 

As the loving mother, the patient teacher, the tender nurse, the wiseprovider and care-taker, she can serve the state, and the state needsher service. 

XIII. INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS. 

The forest of Truth, on the subject of industry and economics, isdifficult to see on account of the trees. 

We have so many Facts on this subject; so many Opinions; so manyTraditions and Habits; and the pressure of Immediate Conclusions is sointense upon us all; that it is not easy to form a clear space in one'smind and consider the field fairly. 

Possibly the present treatment of the subject will appeal most to theminds of those who know least about it; such as the Average Woman. To her, Industry is a daylong and lifelong duty, as well as a naturalimpulse; and economics means going without things. To such untrainedbut also unprejudiced minds it should be easy to show the main facts onthese lines. 

Let us dispose of Economics first, as having a solemn scientificappearance. 

Physical Economics treats of the internal affairs of the body; the wholemachinery and how it works; all organs, members, functions; each lastand littlest capillary and leucocyte, are parts of that "economy. "

Nature's "economy" is not in the least "economical. " The waste of life, the waste of material, the waste of time and effort, are prodigious, yetshe achieves her end as we see. 

Domestic Economics covers the whole care and government of thehousehold; the maintenance of peace, health, order, and morality; thecare and nourishment of children as far as done at home; the entiremanagement of the home, as well as the spending and saving of money; areincluded in it. Saving is the least and poorest part of it; especiallyas in mere abstinence from needed things; most especially when thisabstinence is mainly "Mother's. " How best to spend; time, strength, love, care, labor, knowledge, and money--this should be the main studyin Domestic Economics. 

Social, or, as they are used to call it, Political Economics, coversa larger, but not essentially different field. A family consists ofpeople, and the Mother is their natural manager. Society consists ofpeople--_the same people_--only more of them. All the people, who aremembers of Society, are also members of families--except some incubatedorphans maybe. Social Economics covers the whole care and management ofthe people, the maintenance of peace and health and order and morality;the care of children, as far as done out of the home; as well as thespending and saving of the public money--all these are included in it. 

This great business of Social Economics is at present little understoodand most poorly managed, for this reason; we approach it from anindividual point of view; seeking not so much to do our share in thecommon service, as to get our personal profit from the common wealth. Where the whole family labors together to harvest fruit and store it forthe winter, we have legitimate Domestic Economics: but where one membertakes and hides a lot for himself, to the exclusion of the others, wehave no Domestic Economics at all--merely individual selfishness. 

In Social Economics we have a large, but simple problem. Here is theearth, our farm. Here are the people, who own the earth. How can themost advantage to the most people be obtained from the earth with theleast labor? That is the problem of Social Economics. 

Looking at the world as if you held it in your hands to study anddiscuss, what do we find at present?

We find people living too thickly for health and comfort in some places, and too thinly for others; we find most people working too hard and toolong at honest labor; some people working with damaging intensity atdishonest labor; and a few wretched paupers among the rich and poor, degenerate idlers who do not work at all, the scum and the dregs ofSociety. 

All this is bad economics. We do not get the comfort out of life weeasily could; and work far too hard for what we do get. Moreover, thereis no peace, no settled security. No man is sure of his living, nomatter how hard he works, a thousand things may occur to deprive him ofhis job, or his income. In our time there is great excitement along thisline of study; and more than one proposition is advanced whereby wemay improve, most notably instanced in the world-covering advance ofSocialism. 

In our present study the principal fact to be exhibited is the influenceof a male culture upon Social Economics and Industry. 

Industry, as a department of Social Economics, is little understood. Heretofore we have viewed this field from several wholly erroneouspositions. From the Hebrew (and wholly androcentric) religious teaching, we have regarded labor as a curse. 

Nothing could be more absurdly false. Labor is not merely a means ofsupporting human life--it _is_ human life. Imagine a race of beingsliving without labor! They must be the rudest savages. 

Human work consists in specialized industry and the exchange of itsproducts; and without it is no civilization. As industry develops, civilization develops; peace expands; wealth increases; science and arthelp on the splendid total. Productive industry, and its concomitant ofdistributive industry cover the major field of human life. 

If our industry was normal, what should we see?

A world full of healthy, happy people; each busily engaged in what heor she most enjoys doing. Normal Specialization, like all ourvoluntary processes, is accompanied by keen pleasure; and any check orinterruption to it gives pain and injury. Whosoever works at what heloves is well and happy. Whoso works at what he does not love is ill andmiserable. It is very bad economics to force unwilling industry. That isthe weakness of slave labor; and of wage labor also where there is notfull industrial education and freedom of choice. 

Under normal conditions we should see well developed, well trainedspecialists happily engaged in the work they most enjoyed; forreasonable hours (any work, or play either, becomes injurious if donetoo long); and as a consequence the whole output of the world would bevastly improved, not only in quantity but in quality. 

Plain are the melancholy facts of what we do see. Following that pitifulconception of labor as a curse, comes the very old and androcentrichabit of despising it as belonging to women, and then to slaves. 

As a matter of fact industry is in its origin feminine; that is, maternal. It is the overflowing fountain of mother-love and mother-powerwhich first prompts the human race to labor; and for long ages menperformed no productive industry at all; being merely hunters andfighters. 

It is this lack of natural instinct for labor in the male of ourspecies, together with the ideas and opinions based on that lack, andvoiced by him in his many writings, religious and other, which havegiven to the world its false estimate of this great function, humanwork. That which is our very life, our greatest joy, our road to alladvancement, we have scorned and oppressed; so that "working people, "the "working classes, " "having to work, " etc. , are to this day spoken ofwith contempt. Perhaps drones speak so among themselves of the "workingbees!"

Normally, widening out from the mother's careful and generous servicein the family, to careful, generous service in the world, we should findlabor freely given, with love and pride. 

Abnormally, crushed under the burden of androcentric scorn andprejudice, we have labor grudgingly produced under pressure ofnecessity; labor of slaves under fear of the whip, or of wage-slaves, one step higher, under fear of want. Long ages wherein hunting andfighting were the only manly occupations, have left their heavy impress. The predacious instinct and the combative instinct weigh down anddisfigure our economic development. What Veblen calls "the instinct ofworkmanship" grows on, slowly and irresistably; but the malign featuresof our industrial life are distinctively androcentric: the desire toget, of the hunter; interfering with the desire to give, of the mother;the desire to overcome an antagonist--originally masculine, interferingwith the desire to serve and benefit--originally feminine. 

Let the reader keep in mind that as human beings, men are able toover-live their masculine natures and do noble service to the world;also that as human beings they are today far more highly developed thanwomen, and doing far more for the world. The point here brought out isthat as males their unchecked supremacy has resulted in the abnormalpredominance of masculine impulses in our human processes; and that thispredominance has been largely injurious. 

As it happens, the distinctly feminine or maternal impulses are far morenearly in line with human progress than are those of the male; whichmakes her exclusion from human functions the more mischievous. 

Our current teachings in the infant science of Political Economy arenaively masculine. They assume as unquestionable that "the economic man"will never do anything unless he has to; will only do it to escape painor attain pleasure; and will, inevitably, take all he can get, and doall he can to outwit, overcome, and if necessary destroy his antagonist. 

Always the antagonist; to the male mind an antagonist is essential toprogress, to all achievement. He has planted that root-thought in allthe human world; from that old hideous idea of Satan, "The Adversary, "down to the competitor in business, or the boy at the head of the class, to be superseded by another. 

Therefore, even in science, "the struggle for existence" is the dominantlaw--to the male mind, with the "survival of the fittest" and "theelimination of the unfit. "

Therefore in industry and economics we find always and everywhere theantagonist; the necessity for somebody or something to be overcome--elsewhy make an effort? If you have not the incentive of reward, or theincentive of combat, why work? "Competition is the life of trade. "

Thus the Economic Man. 

But how about the Economic Woman?

To the androcentric mind she does not exist. Women are females, andthat's all; their working abilities are limited to personal service. 

That it would be possible to develop industry to far greater heights, and to find in social economics a simple and beneficial process for thepromotion of human life and prosperity, under any other impulse thanthese two, Desire and Combat, is hard indeed to recognize--for the "malemind. "

So absolutely interwoven are our existing concepts of maleness andhumanness, so sure are we that men are people and women only females, that the claim of equal weight and dignity in human affairs of thefeminine instincts and methods is scouted as absurd. We find existingindustry almost wholly in male hands; find it done as men do it; assumethat that is the way it must be done. 

When women suggest that it could be done differently, their proposal iswaved aside--they are "only women"--their ideas are "womanish. "

Agreed. So are men "only men, " their ideas are "mannish"; and of the twothe women are more vitally human than the men. 

The female is the race-type--the man the variant. 

The female, as a race-type, having the female processes besides;best performs the race processes. The male, however, has with greatdifficulty developed them, always heavily handicapped by his maleness;being in origin essentially a creature of sex, and so dominated almostexclusively by sex impulses. 

The human instinct of mutual service is checked by the masculineinstinct of combat; the human tendency to specialize in labor, torejoicingly pour force in lines of specialized expression, is checkedby the predacious instinct, which will exert itself for reward; anddisfigured by the masculine instinct of self-expression, which is anentirely different thing from the great human outpouring of world force. 

Great men, the world's teachers and leaders, are great in humanness;mere maleness does not make for greatness unless it be in warfare--adisadvantageous glory! Great women also must be great in humanness; buttheir female instincts are not so subversive of human progress as arethe instincts of the male. To be a teacher and leader, to love andserve, to guard and guide and help, are well in line with motherhood. 

"Are they not also in line with fatherhood?" will be asked; and, "Arenot the father's paternal instincts masculine?"

No, they are not; they differ in no way from the maternal, in so far asthey are beneficial. Parental functions of the higher sort, of the humansort, are identical. The father can give his children many advantageswhich the mother can not; but that is due to his superiority as a humanbeing. He possesses far more knowledge and power in the world, the humanworld; he himself is more developed in human powers and processes; andis therefore able to do much for his children which the mother can not;but this is in no way due to his masculinity. It is in this developmentof human powers in man, through fatherhood, that we may read theexplanation of our short period of androcentric culture. 

So thorough and complete a reversal of previous relation, suchcontinuance of what appears in every way an unnatural position, musthave had some justification in racial advantages, or it could not haveendured. This is its justification; the establishment of humanness inthe male; he being led into it, along natural lines, by the exercise ofpreviously existing desires. 

In a male culture the attracting forces must inevitably have been, wehave seen, Desire and Combat. These masculine forces, acting uponhuman processes, while necessary to the uplifting of the man, have beenanything but uplifting to civilization. A sex which thinks, feels andacts in terms of combat is difficult to harmonize in the smooth bondsof human relationship; that they have succeeded so well is a beautifultestimony to the superior power of race tendency over sex tendency. Uniting and organizing, crudely and temporarily, for the common hunt;and then, with progressive elaboration, for the common fight; they arenow using the same tactics--and the same desires, unfortunately--incommon work. 

Union, organization, complex interservice, are the essential processesof a growing society; in them, in the ever-increasing discharge of poweralong widening lines of action, is the joy and health of social life. But so far men combine in order to better combat; the mutual serviceheld incidental to the common end of conquest and plunder. 

In spite of this the overmastering power of humanness is now developingamong modern men immense organizations of a wholly beneficial character, with no purpose but mutual advantage. This is true human growth, andas such will inevitably take the place of the sex-prejudiced earlierprocesses. 

The human character of the Christian religion is now being more and moreinsisted on; the practical love and service of each and all; in placeof the old insistence on Desire--for a Crown and Harp in Heaven, andCombat--with that everlasting adversary. 

In economics this great change is rapidly going on before our eyes. Itis a change in idea, in basic concept, in our theory of what the wholething is about. We are beginning to see the world, not as "a fair fieldand no favor"--not a place for one man to get ahead of others, for aprice; but as an establishment belonging to us, the proceeds of whichare to be applied, as a matter of course, to human advantage. 

In the old idea, the wholly masculine idea, based on the processes ofsex-combat, the advantage of the world lay in having "the best man win. "Some, in the first steps of enthusiasm for Eugenics, think so still;imagining that the primal process of promoting evolution through thepaternity of the conquering male is the best process. 

To have one superior lion kill six or sixty inferior lions, and leave aprogeny of more superior lions behind him, is all right--for lions; thesuperiority in fighting being all the superiority they need. 

But the man able to outwit his follows, to destroy them in physical, orruin in financial, combat, is not therefore a superior human creature. Even physical superiority, as a fighter, does not prove the kind ofvigor best calculated to resist disease, or to adapt itself to changingconditions. 

That our masculine culture in its effect on Economics and Industry isinjurious, is clearly shown by the whole open page of history. From thesimple beneficent activities of a matriarchal period we follow the samelamentable steps; nation after nation. Women are enslaved and captivesare enslaved; a military despotism is developed; labor is despisedand discouraged. Then when the irresistible social forces do bring usonward, in science, art, commerce, and all that we call civilization, we find the same check acting always upon that progress; and the reallyvital social processes of production and distribution heavily injured bythe financial combat and carnage which rages ever over and among them. 

The real development of the people, the forming of finer physiques, finer minds, a higher level of efficiency, a broader range of enjoymentand accomplishment--is hindered and not helped by this artificiallymaintained "struggle for existence, " this constant endeavor to eliminatewhat, from a masculine standard, is "unfit. "

That we have progressed thus far, that we are now moving forward sorapidly, is in spite of and not because of our androcentric culture. 

XIV. A HUMAN WORLD. 

In the change from the dominance of one sex to the equal power of two, to what may we look forward? What effect upon civilization is to beexpected from the equality of womanhood in the human race?

To put the most natural question first--what will men lose by it? Manymen are genuinely concerned about this; fearing some new position ofsubservience and disrespect. Others laugh at the very idea of changein their position, relying as always on the heavier fist. So long asfighting was the determining process, the best fighter must needs win;but in the rearrangement of processes which marks our age, superiorphysical strength does not make the poorer wealthy, nor even the soldiera general. 

The major processes of life to-day are quite within the powers of women;women are fulfilling their new relations more and more successfully;gathering new strength, new knowledge, new ideals. The change is uponus; what will it do to men?

No harm. 

As we are a monogamous race, there will be no such drastic and cruelselection among competing males as would eliminate the vast majority asunfit. Even though some be considered unfit for fatherhood, all humanlife remains open to them. Perhaps the most important feature of thischange comes in right here; along this old line of sex-selection, replacing that power in the right hands, and using it for the good ofthe race. 

The woman, free at last, intelligent, recognizing her real place andresponsibility in life as a human being, will be not less, but more, efficient as a mother. She will understand that, in the line of physicalevolution, motherhood is the highest process; and that her work, asa contribution to an improved race, must always involve this greatfunction. She will see that right parentage is the purpose of the wholescheme of sex-relationship, and act accordingly. 

In our time, his human faculties being sufficiently developed, civilizedman can look over and around his sex limitations, and begin to see whatare the true purposes and methods of human life. 

He is now beginning to learn that his own governing necessity of Desireis not _the_ governing necessity of parentage, but only a contributorytendency; and that, in the interests of better parentage, motherhood isthe dominant factor, and must be so considered. 

In slow reluctant admission of this fact, man heretofore has recognizedone class of women as mothers; and has granted them a varying amount ofconsideration as such; but he has none the less insisted on maintaininganother class of women, forbidden motherhood, and merely subservient tohis desires; a barren, mischievous unnatural relation, wholly aside fromparental purposes, and absolutely injurious to society. This wholefield of morbid action will be eliminated from human life by the normaldevelopment of women. 

It is not a question of interfering with or punishing men; still lessof interfering with or punishing women; but purely a matter of changededucation and opportunity for every child. 

Each and all shall be taught the real nature and purpose of motherhood;the real nature and purpose of manhood; what each is for, and which isthe more important. A new sense of the power and pride of womanhood willwaken; a womanhood no longer sunk in helpless dependence upon men; nolonger limited to mere unpaid house-service; no longer blinded by thefalse morality which subjects even motherhood to man's dominance; buta womanhood which will recognize its pre-eminent responsibility tothe human race, and live up to it. Then, with all normal and rightcompetition among men for the favor of women, those best fittedfor fatherhood will be chosen. Those who are not chosen will livesingle--perforce. 

Many, under the old mistaken notion of what used to be called the"social necessity" of prostitution, will protest at the idea of itsextinction. 

"It is necessary to have it, " they will say. 

"Necessary _to whom?_"

Not to the women hideously sacrificed to it, surely. 

Not to society, honey-combed with diseases due to this cause. 

Not to the family, weakened and impoverished by it. 

To whom then? To the men who want it?

But it is not good for them, it promotes all manner of disease, of vice, of crime. It is absolutely and unquestionably a "social evil. "

An intelligent and powerful womanhood will put an end to this indulgenceof one sex at the expense of the other; and to the injury of both. 

In this inevitable change will lie what some men will consider a loss. But only those of the present generation. For the sons of the women nowentering upon this new era of world life will be differently reared. They will recognize the true relation of men to the primal process; andbe amazed that for so long the greater values have been lost sight of infavor of the less. 

This one change will do more to promote the physical health and beautyof the race; to improve the quality of children born, and the generalvigor and purity of social life, than any one measure which could beproposed. It rests upon a recognition of motherhood as the real baseand cause of the family; and dismisses to the limbo of all outwornsuperstition that false Hebraic and grossly androcentric doctrine thatthe woman is to be subject to the man, and that he shall rule over her. He has tried this arrangement long enough--to the grievous injury of theworld. A higher standard of happiness will result; equality and mutualrespect between parents; pure love, undefiled by self-interests oneither side; and a new respect for Childhood. 

With the Child, seen at last to be the governing purpose of thisrelation, with all the best energies of men and women bent on raisingthe standard of life for all children, we shall have a new status offamily life which will be clean and noble, and satisfying to all itsmembers. 

The change in all the varied lines of human work is beyond the powersof any present day prophet to forecast with precision. A new grade ofwomanhood we can clearly foresee; proud, strong, serene, independent;great mothers of great women and great men. These will hold highstandards and draw men up to them; by no compulsion save nature's law ofattraction. A clean and healthful world, enjoying the taste of lifeas it never has since racial babyhood, with homes of quiet andcontent--this we can foresee. 

Art--in the extreme sense will perhaps always belong most to men. It would seem as if that ceaseless urge to expression, was, at leastoriginally, most congenial to the male. But applied art, in every form, and art used directly for transmission of ideas, such as literature, ororatory, appeals to women as much, if not more, than to men. 

We can make no safe assumption as to what, if any, distinction therewill be in the free human work of men and women, until we have seengeneration after generation grow up under absolutely equal conditions. In all our games and sports and minor social customs, such changeswill occur as must needs follow upon the rising dignity alloted to thewoman's temperament, the woman's point of view; not in the least denyingto men the fullest exercise of their special powers and preferences; butclassifying these newly, as not human--merely male. At present wehave pages or columns in our papers, marked as "The Woman's Page" "OfInterest to Women, " and similar delimiting titles. Similarly we mighthave distinctly masculine matters so marked and specified; not assumedas now to be of general human interest. 

The effect of the change upon Ethics and Religion is deep and wide. Withthe entrance of women upon full human life, a new principle comes intoprominence; the principle of loving service. That this is the governingprinciple of Christianity is believed by many; but an androcentricinterpretation has quite overlooked it; and made, as we have shown, theessential dogma of their faith the desire of an eternal reward and thecombat with an eternal enemy. 

The feminine attitude in life is wholly different. As a female she hasmerely to be herself and passively attract; neither to compete norto pursue; as a mother her whole process is one of growth; first thedevelopment of the live child within her, and the wonderful nourishmentfrom her own body; and then all the later cultivation to make the childgrow; all the watching, teaching, guarding, feeding. In none of this isthere either desire, combat, or self-expression. The feminine attitude, as expressed in religion, makes of it a patient practical fulfillment oflaw; a process of large sure improvements; a limitless comforting loveand care. 

This full assurance of love and of power; this endless cheerfulservice; the broad provision for all people; rather than the competitiveselection of a few "victors;" is the natural presentation of religioustruth from the woman's viewpoint. Her governing principle being growthand not combat; her main tendency being to give and not to get; she moreeasily and naturally lives and teaches these religious principles. It isfor this reason that the broader gentler teaching of the Unitarian andUniversalist sects have appealed so especially to women, and that somany women preach in their churches. 

This principle of growth, as applied and used in general human life willwork to far other ends than those now so painfully visible. 

In education, for instance, with neither reward nor punishment as spuror bait; with no competition to rouse effort and animosity, but ratherwith the feeling of a gardener towards his plants; the teacher willteach and the children learn, in mutual ease and happiness. The lawof passive attraction applies here, leading to such ingenuity inpresentation as shall arouse the child's interest; and, in the truespirit of promoting growth, each child will have his best and fullesttraining, without regard to who is "ahead" of him, or her, or who"behind. "

We do not sadly measure the cabbage-stalk by the corn-stalk, and praisethe corn for getting ahead of the cabbage--nor incite the cabbage toemulate the corn. We nourish both, to its best growth--and are thericher. 

That every child on earth shall have right conditions to make the bestgrowth possible to it; that every citizen, from birth to death, shallhave a chance to learn all he or she can assimilate, to develop everypower that is in them--for the common good--this will be the aim ofeducation, under human management. 

In the world of "society" we may look for very radical changes. 

With all women full human beings, trained and useful in some form ofwork; the class of busy idlers, who run about forever "entertaining" andbeing "entertained" will disappear as utterly as will the prostitute. No woman with real work to do could have the time for such pettyamusements; or enjoy them if she did have time. No woman with realwork to do, work she loved and was well fitted for, work honored andwell-paid, would take up the Unnatural Trade. Genuine relaxation andrecreation, all manner of healthful sports and pastimes, beloved of bothsexes to-day, will remain, of course; but the set structure of "socialfunctions"--so laughably misnamed--will disappear with the "societywomen" who make it possible. Once active members of real Society; nowoman could go back to "society, " any more than a roughrider couldreturn to a hobbyhorse. 

New development in dress, wise, comfortable, beautiful, may beconfidently expected, as woman becomes more human. No fully humancreature could hold up its head under the absurdities our women wearto-day--and have worn for dreary centuries. 

So on through all the aspects of life we may look for changes, rapid andfar-reaching; but natural and all for good. The improvement is not dueto any inherent moral superiority of women; nor to any moral inferiorityof men; men at present, as more human, are ahead of women in alldistinctly human ways; yet their maleness, as we have shown repeatedly, warps and disfigures their humanness. The woman, being by nature therace-type; and her feminine functions being far more akin to humanfunctions than are those essential to the male; will bring into humanlife a more normal influence. 

Under this more normal influence our present perversities of functionswill, of course, tend to disappear. The directly serviceable tendencyof women, as shown in every step of their public work, will have smallpatience with hoary traditions of absurdity. We need but look at longrecorded facts to see what women do--or try to do, when they haveopportunity. Even in their crippled, smothered past, they have madevaliant efforts--not always wise--in charity and philanthropy. 

In our own time this is shown through all the length and breadth of ourcountry, by the Woman's Clubs. Little groups of women, drawing togetherin human relation, at first, perhaps, with no better purpose than to"improve their minds, " have grown and spread; combined and federated;and in their great reports, representing hundreds of thousands ofwomen--we find a splendid record of human work. They strive always toimprove something, to take care of something, to help and serve andbenefit. In "village improvement, " in traveling libraries, in lecturecourses and exhibitions, in promoting good legislation; in many a lineof noble effort our Women's Clubs show what women want to do. 

Men do not have to do these things through their clubs, which are mainlyfor pleasure; they can accomplish what they wish to through regularchannels. But the character and direction of the influence of women inhuman affairs is conclusively established by the things they already doand try to do. In those countries, and in our own states, where they arealready full citizens, the legislation introduced and promoted bythem is of the same beneficent character. The normal woman is a strongcreature, loving and serviceable. The kind of woman men are afraid toentrust with political power, selfish, idle, over-sexed, or ignorant andnarrow-minded, is not normal, but is the creature of conditions menhave made. We need have no fear of her, for she will disappear with theconditions which created her. 

In older days, without knowledge of the natural sciences, we acceptedlife as static. If, being born in China, we grew up with foot-boundwomen, we assumed that women were such, and must so remain. Born inIndia, we accepted the child-wife, the pitiful child-widow, the ecstatic_suttee_, as natural expressions of womanhood. In each age, eachcountry, we have assumed life to be necessarily what it was--a movelessfact. 

All this is giving way fast in our new knowledge of the laws of life. We find that Growth is the eternal law, and that even rocks are slowlychanging. Human life is seen to be as dynamic as any other form; and themost certain thing about it is that it will change. In the light of thisknowledge we need no longer accept the load of what we call "sin;"the grouped misery of poverty, disease and crime; the cumbrous, inefficacious, wasteful processes of life today, as needful orpermanent. 

We have but to learn the _real_ elements in humanity; its true powersand natural characteristics; to see wherein we are hampered by the wrongideas and inherited habits of earlier generations, and break loose fromthem--then we can safely and swiftly introduce a far nobler grade ofliving. 

Of all crippling hindrances in false ideas, we have none moreuniversally mischievous than this root error about men and women. Giventhe old androcentric theory, and we have an androcentric culture--thekind we so far know; this short stretch we call "history;" with itsproud and pitiful record. We have done wonders of upward growth--forgrowth is the main law, and may not be wholly resisted. But we havehindered, perverted, temporarily checked that growth, age after age; andagain and again has a given nation, far advanced and promising, sunk toruin, and left another to take up its task of social evolution; repeatits errors--and its failure. 

One major cause of the decay of nations is "the social evil"--a thingwholly due to the androcentric culture. Another steady endless checkis warfare--due to the same cause. Largest of all is poverty; thatspreading disease which grows with our social growth and shows mosthorribly when and where we are most proud, keeping step, as it were, with private wealth. This too, in large measure, is due to the falseideas on industry and economics, based, like the others mentioned, on awholly masculine view of life. 

By changing our underlying theory in this matter we change all theresultant assumptions; and it is this alteration in our basic theory oflife which is being urged. 

The scope and purpose of human life is entirely above and beyond thefield of sex relationship. Women are human beings, as much as men, bynature; and as women, are even more sympathetic with human processes. Todevelop human life in its true powers we need full equal citizenship forwomen. 

The great woman's movement and labor movement of to-day are parts of thesame pressure, the same world-progress. An economic democracy mustrest on a free womanhood; and a free womanhood inevitably leads to aneconomic democracy.