Part 100 (1/2)
This booklet is for sale, in England, as one of the Ethical Message Series, at 6d. net; and may be rebound for American circulation, at 15c.
WOMAN IN CHURCH AND STATE By Stanton Coit, Ph.D., West London Ethical Society, Queen's Road, Bayswater, England.
The ethical movement of the last twenty years is a strong proof of humanity's natural bent toward the study and practice of that first of sciences, the science of conduct.
How to behave, and Why, are universal questions; decided first by conditions, then by instinct, then by custom and tradition, then by religion, then by reason. We are rapidly reaching the reasoning stage; hence the popularity of ethics, and of such papers as The Ethical World.
We have ethical publications in this country, good ones, but it is inspiring to get from other lands the vivid sense of that common movement which so marks the uniting of the world.
Mere verbal language was necessary to the faintest human development; written language, in the permanent form of books, established the long roots of our historic life, with its sense of continuity; today the multiplication of periodic literature, widely specialized, speaks our social consciousness. We no longer have to think alone, but the smallest cult has its exponent, giving to each member the strength of all.
In the issue of March 15th of this paper, Dr. Stanton Coit has an article on ”The Group Spirit,” which treats sympathetically that marvel of social dynamics, ”the interpenetrating Third,” appearing where two or three are gathered together.
I should like to have discussed with Sir James Mackintosh, however, his contention that moral principles are stationary. They are not, but vary from age to age in accordance with conditions.
PERSONAL PROBLEMS
A friend and subscriber writes me thus:
”There are one or two questions I want to ask--not because I disagree, but because I want to be able to meet objections.
”Those who believe in restricting ”Woman's Sphere” to its present--no, its former narrow boundaries may say,--”Yes, man is the only species which keeps the female--or tries to--in the home and restricts her to the strictly female functions and duties. But it is just because man is higher than the other animals, and because the period of infancy is so much longer for human babies. The animal mother bears her young, nourishes them a short time, and is no longer needed. The human mother is something more than an agent of reproduction and a source of nourishment. By just so much as her motherhood is more and higher than that of the ewe, it must take more of her time, her strength, her life.
How can a woman who is giving birth to a child every two or three years for a period of ten years, for example, and ”mothering,” in the fullest sense of the word, those children, find time or strength for anything else?
”Then, too, what you call ”Androcentric Culture” has existed by your own statement practically ever since our historic period began--that is, since man first advanced from savagery to human intelligence and civilization. Is it not fair to a.s.sume that a condition of affairs non-existent among lower animals, but co-existent with the development of the intelligence and civilization of mankind is a higher condition than that found among the animals?”
Here we have five premises:
1. Man is the only species which segregates the female to maternal functions and duties.
2. Man is higher than the other animals.
3. The human period of infancy is longer.
4. The human mother has to devote longer time to maternal cares.
5. The Androcentric Culture is coexistent with the period of progress.
On these premises,two questions are based: On the first four:
A. How can the human mother find time or strength for anything else?
On the fifth:
B. Is not the Androcentric Culture evidence and conditions of our superiority?
To clearly follow and answer this line of reasoning requires close attention; but it is well worth doing; for this inquirer fairly puts the general att.i.tude of mind on this matter.