A POSITIVE ROMANCE By Edward Bellamy 1898 My friend Hammond is a bachelor, and lives in chambers in New York. Whenever we meet on my occasional visits to the city, he insists on myspending the night with him. On one of these occasions we had beenat the opera during the evening, and had witnessed an ovation to abeautiful and famous singer. We had been stirred by the enthusiasm ofthe audience, and on our walk home fell to discussing a theme suggestedby the scene; namely, the tendency of man to assume a worshipfulattitude towards woman, and the reason for it. Was it merely a phase ofthe passional relation between the sexes, or had it some deeper and moremysterious significance? When I mentioned the former idea, Hammond demanded why this tendencywas not reciprocal between the sexes. As a matter of fact, while womenshowed endless devotion and fondness for men, their feeling was withoutthe strain of adoration. Particular men's qualities of mind or heartmight excite the enthusiastic admiration of women, but such admirationwas for cause, and in no way confounded with the worshipful reverencewhich it was man's instinct to extend to woman as woman, with secondaryreference to her qualities as a particular person. No fact in therelations of men and women, he declared, was more striking than thiscontrast in their mutual attitudes. It was the feminine, not themasculine, ideal which supplied the inspiration of art and the aroma ofliterature, which was found enshrined in the customs and common speechof mankind. To this I replied that man, being the dominant sex, hadimposed his worship on the race as a conquering nation, its gods onthe conquered. He, not woman, had been the creator of the art, theliterature, and the language which were dedicated to her. Had woman beenthe dominant sex, the reverse might have happened, and man been obligedto stand upon a pedestal and be worshiped. Hammond laughed, but declared that I was all wrong. Man's tendency toworship woman, while naturally blending with his passional attractiontowards her, did not spring from the instinct of sex, but from theinstinct of race, --a far deeper and generally unrecognized impulse. Even though woman should become some day the dominant sex, man needsuffer no apprehension of being worshiped. His modesty would berespected. Some time later, when we had cozily established ourselves before asea-coal fire in Hammond's quarters, with divers creature comforts athand for one of our usual symposiums, the subject came up again; andunder conditions so favorable to discursiveness our talk took a widerange. "By the way, " said I, apropos of some remark he had made, "talking aboutthe adoration of woman, did not that crack-brained Frenchman, AugusteComte, propose something of the sort as a feature of his 'Religion ofHumanity'?" Hammond nodded. "I wonder, " I said, "whether that feature of his scheme was everactually practiced by his followers. I should like to get a chance toask a Positivist about that, if indeed there are any in America. " Hammond smoked in silence for some time, and finally said, quietly, "Possibly I might tell you something about it myself. " "Hello!" I exclaimed. "How long since you have been a Positivist?" "About twenty-five years, " was the matter-of-fact reply. "A Positivist of twenty-five years' standing, " I ejaculated, "and nevertold of it! Why have you hid your light under a bushel all this while?" "I said that it was twenty-five years since I had been a Positivist, "replied Hammond; "as long, in fact, as it is since I have been asophomore. Both experiences belonged to the same year of my collegecourse, and, perhaps you may infer, to the same stage of intellectualdevelopment. For about six months at that time I was as ardent aconvert, I fancy, as the Religion of Humanity ever had. " "I thought you had told me all about yourself long ago, " I said. "Howis it that you have kept so mum about this experience? I should fancy itmust have been a decidedly odd one. " "It was a very odd one, " replied Hammond, --"the strangest passage, onthe whole, I think, in my life. I have never spoken of it, because it isone of those emotional experiences which no man likes to relate unlesshe is sure of being understood. To tell it to most men would be castingpearls before swine. I have always meant to tell you when a suitableopportunity came up. " "You know, " he said, when I had signified my eagerness to hear, "that Igraduated at Leroy College. It was a little one-horse institution, butblue as a whetstone in its orthodoxy; and with my father, who was aclergyman of a very strait sect and staid views, that fact covereda multitude of shortcomings. I was nineteen when I entered, andconsequently twenty when, at the beginning of sophomore year, I cameunder the charge of Professor Régnier. He was a Frenchman, but spokeEnglish with perfect ease and precision and a very slight accent. At thetime I knew him, he was probably sixty. His hair was quite gray, but hismustache and imperial were still dark. It was rumored among the studentsthat he had left his native land for political reasons, having playedfor too high stakes at the national game of revolution. True or not, thereport naturally heightened the interest which his personality had forus. "He made it his business to know personally all the students in hisclasses; and as it is not easy for a man of sixty, especially if he isalso their teacher, to become really acquainted with students of twenty, the fact may be taken as evidence of his unusual tact. He was, I think, the most fascinating man I ever saw. His insight into character was likemagic, his manners were charming, and his Gallic vivacity made him seemlike a boy. Gradually, while still remaining to the rest of the studentsa genial and friendly instructor, he singled out a smaller circleof particular intimates. Of these I was one, and I believe the mosttrusted. "Of course we boys were immensely flattered by the partiality of sucha man; but equally of course the pursuit of his own pleasurecould scarcely have been the motive which impelled him to seek ourcompanionship. It was, in fact, a motive as unselfish as that of themissionary who leaves the comforts and refinements of civilization andexiles himself among savages that he may win them to his faith. He hadbeen a personal friend and disciple of Auguste Comte, then but latelydead, and on coming to America had sought his present employment, notmerely as a means of livelihood, but equally for the opportunity itoffered for propagating the new gospel among young men. Do you know muchabout what Positivism is?" I confessed that I knew next to nothing, --scarcely more than that therewas such a thing. "I shall not bore you with an account of it, " resumed Hammond, "furtherthan to say that it is a scheme for the perfection of the human race. Itrejects as idle all theories of superhuman intelligences, and declaresthe supreme object of the individual love and devotion should behumanity. The rational demonstration of the truth of this system issought in the course of history, which is claimed to prove Positivismthe finality of social evolution. You will find anything else you wantto know about it in the books. I dare say you will not be converted; butif you were nineteen instead of twice that, with Hippolyte Régnier toindoctrinate you, I fancy the result would be about what it was in mycase. "His personal influence over us, and the intoxicating flattery impliedin being seriously reasoned with on themes so lofty by a man whom weso greatly admired, would have gone far, no doubt, to commend to us anyform of opinions he might have taught; but there were not lacking otherreasons to account for his success in converting us. As for Comte'sdogmatic denial of superhuman existence, and his fanciful schemes of newsociety, we were too young and crude to realize how unphilosophicwas the former, how impossible and undesirable was the latter. Whileaccepting them as facts of a new creed, they meant little to us, nordid Régnier much insist upon them. What most he did insist on was theethical side of Positivism, --the idea of the essential unity of theindividual with the immortal race of man, and his obvious duty to forgetself in its service. What could be better adapted to affect generous andimpassioned boys than an appeal like this? The magnificent audacityof it, the assumption of man's essential nobleness, the contemptuousrefusal to make any terms with selfishness, captivated our imaginations. I know now, indeed, that this enthusiasm of humanity, this passion ofself-abnegation, which I thought a new religion, was the heart of theold religions. In its new-fangled disguise the truth and virtue of thedoctrine were still operative, and the emotional crisis through whichI passed I found was as essentially religious as it was in formunorthodox. "At the end of sophomore year there were a half-dozen very positiveyoung Positivists in our class. The pride of intellect which we felt inour new enlightenment was intoxicating. To be able to look down from aserene height, with compassion frequently tempered by contempt, upon therest of the world still groping in the mists of childish superstition, was prodigiously to the taste of youths of eighteen and twenty. How, tobe sure, we did turn up our noses at the homely teachings in the collegechapel on Sundays! Well do I remember attending my father's church whenat home on vacation, and endeavoring to assume the mental attitude ofa curious traveler in a Buddhist temple. Together with the intellectualvanity which it fostered, our new faith was commended to us by itsflavor of the secret, the hazardous, and the forbidden. We weredelightfully conscious of being concerned in a species of conspiracy, which if it came to light would convulse the college and the community, have us expelled, and cause no end of scandal to the public. "But the more I took my new faith in earnest and tried to make of it thereligion it claimed to be, I was troubled by a lack that seemed to beinherent. Humanity, the object of our devotion, was but an abstraction, a rhetorical expression for a mass of individuals. To these individualsI might indeed render affection, service, compassion, tenderness, self-sacrifice; but their number and pettiness forbade me the glow ofadoration with which service was touched in religions which offereda personified object of adoration. When, finally, I confided thesetroubles to Régnier, I expected to be rebuked; but on the contrary, andto my great discomfiture, he embraced me effusively after the Gallicmanner. He said that he had been waiting for the time when in the courseof my development I should become conscious of the need I had confessedbefore explaining to me the provision made for it by Positivism. "To start with, he put in, as a sort of special plea for Positivism, that it was not singular among religions in recognizing as the objectof devotion an abstraction, the mode of the existence of which was amystery. As a solace to their votaries and an aid to their faith, nearlyall religions recognized sacred emblems; not indeed to be confoundedin clear minds with the original object of devotion, but worthy ofreverence in its place, as its special representative and reminder. Inprecisely this sense the sacred emblem of humanity was woman. "Of course, Positivism claiming to be a creed of demonstration, not offaith, Régnier did not ask me to receive this proposition as his merestatement, but proceeded to establish its reasonableness by logic. Iam going to give you what I remember of his argument, because I believestill, as I did when I heard it, that it is the only philosophicalexplanation of the instinctive reverence of man for woman which wehave been talking about to-night. It was given to me, of course, asa doctrine peculiar to Positivism; but I don't know of any form ofreligious belief, inconsistent with the recognition of the sacredquality of womanhood on the grounds given by Régnier. Indeed, I am by nomeans sure whether the doctrine as I received it is orthodox Positivismat all. I have reason to think that Régnier was quite too original acharacter for a very good interpreter, and should be interested to knowhow far his ideas were his own and how far his master's. "First he pointed out to me as matter of fact that there was no morestriking feature of the modern and humane as compared with the ancientand barbaric world than the constantly growing tendency of the mostcivilized races to apotheosize womanhood. The virgin ideal had been setup by the larger part of Christendom as the object of divine honors. Theage of chivalry had translated for all time the language of love intothat of worship. Art had personified under the feminine form every nobleand affecting ideal of the race, till now it was in the name of womanthat man's better part adjured his baser in every sort of strife towardsthe divine. Is it alleged that it is man's passion for woman that hasmoved him thus in a sort to deify the sex? Passion is no teacher ofreverence. Moreover, it is as the race outgrows the dominion of passionthat it recognizes the worshipfulness of woman. The gross and sensualrecognize in her no element of sacredness. It is the clear soul of theboy, the poet, and the seer which is most surely aware of it. Equallyvain is it to seek the explanation in any general superiority of womanto man, either moral or mental. Her qualities are indeed in engagingcontrast with his, but on the whole no such superiority has ever beenmaintained. How, then, were we to account for a phenomenon so great inits proportions that either it indicates a world-wide madness infectingthe noblest nations while sparing the basest, or else must be theoutcome of some profound monition of nature, which, in proportion asman's upward evolution progresses, he becomes capable of apprehending?Why this impassioned exaltation by him of his tender companion? Whatis the secret spring that makes her the ceaseless fountain of loftyinspiration she is to him? What is the hint of divinity in her gentlemien that brings him to his knees? Who is this goddess veiled in womanwhom men instinctively reverence yet cannot name? "The adoration of woman, which may almost be called the natural religionof the modern man, springs from his recognition, instinctive when notconscious, that she is in an express sense, as he is not, the type, therepresentative, and the symbol of the race from which he springs, ofthat immortal and mystical life in which the secret of his own ishid. She is this by virtue, not of her personal qualities, but of themother-sex, which, overbearing in part her individuality, consecratesher to the interests of the race, and makes her the channel of thoseirresistible attractions by which humanity exists and men are made toserve it. As compared with woman's peculiar identification with therace, man's relation to it is an exterior one. By his constitution heis above all an individual, and that is the natural line of hisdevelopment. The love of woman is the centripetal attraction which indue time brings him back from the individual tangent to blend him againwith mankind. In returning to woman he returns to humanity. All thatthere is in man's sentiment for woman which is higher than passion andlarger than personal tenderness--all, that is to say, which makes hislove for her the grand passion which in noble hearts it is--is thefact that under this form his passion for the race finds expression. Mysterious ties, subtending consciousness, bind him, though seeminglyseparate, to the mighty life of humanity, his greater self, and theseare the chords which, when 'Love took up the harp of life, '. .. 'passedin music out of sight. ' In woman humanity is enshrined and made concretefor the homage of man. This is the mighty indwelling which causes herto suggest something more august than herself, and invests her with animpersonal majesty commanding reverence. "You may imagine with what power such a doctrine as this, set forth byan enthusiast like Régnier, appealed to the mind of an impassioned boyof twenty, as yet pure as a girl, but long vaguely stirred by the masterpassion of our nature. The other tenets of the Religion of Humanity hadbeen impressed upon me by argument, but at the mere statement of this myheart responded, _O Dea Certe!_ "Subsequently, in response to my questioning, Régnier explained to mehow the master had recommended his disciples to give practical effectto the cult of womanhood. I must remember that it was nothing new andnothing peculiar to Positivism for men to adore women to the point evenof idolatry. Lovers constantly were doing it. But in these cases theworshipers did not look beyond the personality of the idol. Possibly, no doubt, some dim apprehension of the true grounds of woman'sworshipfulness might mingle with the lover's sentiment, but it was veryfar from being the clear and distinct sense necessary to redeem hishomage from the charge of extravagance. On the other hand, the spiritin which women received the homage men rendered them was usually asmistaken as that in which it was offered. Either, on the one hand, froman impulse of personal modesty they deprecated it, or, on the otherhand, they accepted it as a gratification to their personal vanity. Ineither case, they equally misapprehended their true and valid titleto worship, which, while personal qualities might enhance or partiallyobscure it, was itself in root more than personal, and consisted in themartyr and mother sex which so peculiarly sacrificed and consecratedthem to the interests of humanity as to draw to them the homage andloyalty of all men who loved their race. It had been the counsel of hismaster, Régnier said, that, while his disciples should hold all women inexalted reverence, they should peculiarly address this general sentimentto some particular woman, who, being of the same faith, should be ableto accept it worthily and without self-exaltation, in the spirit inwhich it was offered. "Of course the reflection was obvious that in the existing conditionsof the Positivist propaganda in America it would be impossible to find awoman capable of understanding, much less of accepting, such a relation, and, therefore, that to me the cult which I had been taught must remainentirely theoretical. Homage from men which did not insure to thetitillation of the vanity would seem to women, as usually educated, equally incomprehensible and unprofitable. "It was in recognition of this situation that Régnier ended by making aproposition which testified, more strongly than anything else could havedone, both to the enthusiasm and sincerity with which he himself heldthe faith he preached, and to his confidence in my own equal singlenessof heart. He had never before spoken of his personal history or homelife. Several times I had spent the evening at his house, but on theseoccasions I had seen only himself. Certain womanly belongings, however, which I had noticed, and the sound of a piano once or twice, hadsuggested that the house might not be without a feminine presence. Theprofessor now told me that long ago in France, for a few short, blissfulyears, he had been the husband of the sweetest of women. She had leftbehind a daughter, the sole companion of his life and the apple of hiseye. She lived in complete seclusion, rarely even leaving the house. Hedid not desire her to make acquaintances in this country, nor indeedwas she able to speak a word of any language but her own. There was noquestion of my making her acquaintance in the ordinary sense, or evenof meeting her a second time, but if I desired to testify my newappreciation of the sacred quality of womanhood, it was possible thatshe might consent to receive my homage in the name of her sex. He couldnot be sure what she would say, but he would speak with her about it. "The following day, a note from him requesting that I should call athis house that evening intimated that he had succeeded in carrying hispoint. When I called at the time set, he told me that he had found itmore difficult than he had anticipated to gain his daughter's consent tosee me. She had been very reluctant to assume the attitude required ofher, and only her respect for his wishes and the good of the cause, andthe assurance he had given her of the entire ingenuousness of my ownmotive, had induced her finally to yield. After some talk as to thesignificance of the interview before me, which I was too much agitatedto comprehend, he bade me follow him. "As may readily be supposed, my fancy, from the moment Régnier hadsuggested this interview, had been exceedingly busy with conjecturesas to the sort of scene it would prove, and especially as to thepersonality of her who was to be the central figure. Except hisintimation that the interview would be necessarily without interchangeof speech and presumably brief, scarcely more, probably, than aconfrontation, he had told me nothing. "Of course, however, my fancies had not failed to take some form. Ithink I had a general expectation of finding myself in the presence of abeautiful woman, statuesquely shaped and posed. I imagine that I ratherexpected her to be enthroned or standing upon some sort of dais, andI am sure that I should not have been surprised had there been someartificial arrangement of lights as in a theatre to add effectiveness tothe figure. "I followed Régnier through several rooms without raising my eyes. Presently he paused and said, 'My daughter. ' "Thrilling with the premonition of a vision of imperious or meltingloveliness which should compel my homage by its mere aspect, I raisedmy eyes to find myself facing a plain-featured, plainly dressed youngwoman, not ill-looking certainly, but destitute of a single traitstriking enough to have won a second glance from me had I met her on thestreet. "Her father need not have told me of her reluctance to assume the parthis wishes had imposed upon her. For the fraction of an instant only, apair of black eyes had met mine, and then she had bent her face as lowas she could. The downcast head, the burning cheeks, the quick heavingof the breast, the pendent arms, with tensely interlacing fingers andpalms turned downward, all told the story of a shy and sensitive girlsubmitting from a sense of duty to a painful ordeal. "The sudden and complete wreck of all my preconceptions as to herappearance, as well as the accessories of the scene, left me for a fewmoments fairly dazed. Not only were my highly wrought expectations asto the present interview brought to humiliating discomfiture, but theinfluence of the disillusionment instantly retroacted with the effectof making the entire noble and romantic cult which had led up to thisunlucky confrontation seem a mere farrago of extravagant and baselesssentiment. What on earth had Régnier been thinking of, to plandeliberately a situation calculated to turn a cherished sentiment intoridicule? If he had seriously thought his daughter capable of supportingthe rôle he had assigned her, had there ever been a like case ofparental fatuity? "But even as I indignantly asked myself this question, I saw a greatlight, and recognized that the trouble was neither with Régnier'sfatuity nor with his daughter's lack of charms, but with myself, anda most unworthy misconception into which I had fallen as to the wholeobject and purport of this interview. What had the beauty or the lack ofbeauty of this girl to do with the present occasion? I was not here torender homage to her for the beauty of her sex, but for its perpetualconsecration and everlasting martyrdom to my race. The revulsion offeeling which followed the recognition of the grossness of the mistake Ihad made had no doubt the effect of greatly intensifying my emotions. Iwas overcome with contrition for the unworthiness with which I had stoodbefore this girl who had so trusted to my magnanimity, appraising herlike a sensualist when I should have been on my knees before her. Areaction of compunctious loyalty made my very heartstrings ache. I sawnow how well it had been for a weak-minded fool like myself that shehad not chanced to be beautiful or even pretty, for then I should havecheated myself of all that distinguished this solemn meeting fromthe merest lover's antics. I won in that moment an impression of thetawdriness of mere beauty which I have never gotten over. It seemed tome then, and more or less has ever since, that the beauty of women is asort of veil which hides from superficial eyes the true adorableness ofwomanhood. "Unable longer to resist the magnetism of my gaze, her eyes rose slowlyto mine. At their first meeting, her face became crimson; but as shedid not avert her eyes, and continued to look into mine, the flushpaled swiftly from her face, and with it all the other evidences ofher embarrassment passed as quickly away, leaving her bearing whollychanged. It was plain that through my eyes, which in that moment musthave been truly windows of my soul, she had read my inmost thoughts, and had perceived how altogether impertinent to their qualityself-consciousness on her part would be. As with a gaze growing evermore serene and steadfast she continued to read my thoughts, her facechanged, and from the look of a shy and timid maiden it gradually tookon that of a conscious goddess. Then, as still she read on, there cameanother change. The soft black eyes grew softer and yet softer, and thenslowly filled with tears till they were like brimming vases. She didnot smile, but her brows and lips assumed a look of benignant sweetnessindescribable. "In that moment no supernatural aureole would have added sacredness tothat head, or myth of heavenly origin have made that figure seem moreadorable. With right good-will I sank upon my knees. She reached forthher hand to me and I pressed my lips to it. I lifted up the hem of herdress and kissed it. There was a rustle of garments. I looked up and shewas gone. "I suppose immediately after that I must have left the house. I onlyknow that the dawn found me miles out of town, walking aimlessly aboutand talking to myself. " Hammond poured himself a glass of wine, drunk it slowly, and then fellinto a profound reverie, apparently forgetful of my presence. "Is that all?" I asked at last. "Did you not see her again?" "No, " he answered, "I never saw her again. Probably, as her fatherhad intimated, he did not intend that I should. But circumstances alsoprevented. The very next day there was an explosion in college. Therehad been a Judas among my fellow-disciples, and the faculty had beeninformed of the Positivist propaganda going on under their noses. Iwas suspended for six months. When I returned to college, Régnierhad disappeared. He had of course been promptly dismissed, and it wasrumored that he had gone back to France. He had left no trace, and Inever heard of him again or of his daughter. I don't even know the nameof the woman I worshiped. "