Part 121 (1/2)

Conscious young humanity observed and philosophized, congratulating itself on its discernment. ”A man hits me--I hit the man a little harder--then he won't do it again.” Unfortunately he did do it again--a little harder still. The effort to hit harder carried on the action and reaction till society, hitting hardest of all, set up a system of legal punishment, of unlimited severity. It imprisoned, it mutilated, it tortured, it killed; it destroyed whole families, and razed contumelious cities 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 not decrease in proportion to the severest punishment. Little by little we have ceased to raze the cities, to wipe out the families, to cut off the ears, to torture; and our imprisonment is changing from slow death and insanity to a form of attempted improvement.

But punishment as a principle remains in good standing, and is still the main reliance where it does the most harm--in the rearing of children.

”Spare the rod and spoil the child” remains in belief, unmodified by the millions of children spoiled by the unspared rod.

The breeders of racehorses have learned better, but not the breeders of children. Our trouble is simply the lack of intelligence. We face the babyish error and the hideous crime in exactly the same att.i.tude.

”This person has done something offensive.”

Yes?--and one waits eagerly for the first question of the rational mind--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 of nothing. The child does this, the man does that, _because_ of something; because of many things. If we do not like the way people behave, and wish them to behave better, we should, if we are rational beings, study the conditions that produce the conduct.

The connection between our archaic system of punishment and our androcentric culture is two-fold. The impulse of resistance, while, as we have seen, of the deepest natural origin, is expressed more strongly in the male than in the female. The tendency to hit back and hit harder has been fostered in him by s.e.x-combat till it has become of great intensity. The habit of authority too, as old as our history; and the c.u.mulative weight of all the religions and systems of law and government, have furthermore built up and intensified the spirit of retaliation and vengeance.

They have even deified this concept, in ancient religions, crediting to G.o.d the evil pa.s.sions of men. As the small boy recited; ”Vengeance. A mean desire to get even with your enemies: 'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord'--'I will repay.'”

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

The teaching of ”Love your enemies, do good unto them that hate you, and serve them that despitefully use you and persecute you,” has too often resulted, when practised at all, in a sentimental negation; a pathetically useless att.i.tude of non-resistance. You might as well base a religion on a feather pillow!

The advice given was active; direct; concrete. ”_Love!_” Love is not non-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 of our androcentric culture. Consider it once more. Here is one by nature combative and desirous, and not by nature intended to monopolize the management of his species. He a.s.sumes to be not only the leader, but the whole thing--to be humanity itself, and to see in woman as Grant Allen so 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 a.s.sumption, his s.e.x-attributes wholly identified with his human attributes, and overshadowing them, he has imprinted on every human inst.i.tution the tastes and tendencies of the male. As a male he fought, as a male human being he fought more, and deified fighting; and in a culture based on desire and combat, loud with strident self-expression, there could be but slow acceptance of the more human methods urged by Christianity. ”It is a religion for slaves and women!” said the warrior of old. (Slaves and women were largely the same thing.) ”It is a religion for slaves and women” says the advocate of the Superman.

Well? Who did the work of all the ancient world? Who raised the food and garnered it and cooked it and served it? Who built the houses, the temples, the acqueducts, the city wall? Who made the furniture, the tools, the weapons, the utensils, the ornaments--made them strong and beautiful and useful? Who kept the human race going, somehow, in spite of the constant hideous waste of war, and slowly built up the real industrial civilization behind that gory show?--Why just the slaves and the women.

A religion which had attractions for the real human type is not therefore to be utterly despised by the male.

In modern history we may watch with increasing ease the slow, sure progress of our growing humanness beneath the weakening sh.e.l.l of an all-male dominance. And in this field of what begins in the nurse as ”discipline,” and ends on the scaffold as ”punishment,” we can clearly see 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, still androcentric, there was a great to-do to carry out this doctrine, in elaborate symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples, gathered for the occasion, was exhibited, and kings and cardinals went solemnly through the 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 male world. Service and love and doing good are the spirit of motherhood, and the essense of human life.

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

What has the male mind made of Christianity?

Desire--to save one's own soul. Combat--with the Devil.