Part 169 (2/2)

In slow reluctant admission of this fact, man heretofore has recognized one cla.s.s of women as mothers; and has granted them a varying amount of consideration as such; but he has none the less insisted on maintaining another cla.s.s of women, forbidden motherhood, and merely subservient to his desires; a barren, mischievous unnatural relation, wholly aside from parental purposes, and absolutely injurious to society. This whole field of morbid action will be eliminated from human life by the normal development of women.

It is not a question of interfering with or punis.h.i.+ng men; still less of interfering with or punis.h.i.+ng women; but purely a matter of changed education 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 is the more important. A new sense of the power and pride of womanhood will waken; a womanhood no longer sunk in helpless dependence upon men; no longer limited to mere unpaid house-service; no longer blinded by the false morality which subjects even motherhood to man's dominance; but a womanhood which will recognize its pre-eminent responsibility to the human race, and live up to it. Then, with all normal and right compet.i.tion among men for the favor of women, those best fitted for fatherhood will be chosen. Those who are not chosen will live single--perforce.

Many, under the old mistaken notion of what used to be called the ”social necessity” of prost.i.tution, will protest at the idea of its extinction.

”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 indulgence of one s.e.x 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 now entering upon this new era of world life will be differently reared.

They will recognize the true relation of men to the primal process; and be amazed that for so long the greater values have been lost sight of in favor of the less.

This one change will do more to promote the physical health and beauty of the race; to improve the quality of children born, and the general vigor and purity of social life, than any one measure which could be proposed. It rests upon a recognition of motherhood as the real base and cause of the family; and dismisses to the limbo of all outworn superst.i.tion that false Hebraic and grossly androcentric doctrine that the 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 the world. A higher standard of happiness will result; equality and mutual respect between parents; pure love, undefiled by self-interests on either side; and a new respect for Childhood.

With the Child, seen at last to be the governing purpose of this relation, with all the best energies of men and women bent on raising the standard of life for all children, we shall have a new status of family life which will be clean and n.o.ble, and satisfying to all its members.

The change in all the varied lines of human work is beyond the powers of any present day prophet to forecast with precision. A new grade of womanhood we can clearly foresee; proud, strong, serene, independent; great mothers of great women and great men. These will hold high standards and draw men up to them; by no compulsion save nature's law of attraction. A clean and healthful world, enjoying the taste of life as it never has since racial babyhood, with homes of quiet and content--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 least originally, most congenial to the male. But applied art, in every form, and art used directly for transmission of ideas, such as literature, or oratory, appeals to women as much, if not more, than to men.

We can make no safe a.s.sumption as to what, if any, distinction there will be in the free human work of men and women, until we have seen generation after generation grow up under absolutely equal conditions.

In all our games and sports and minor social customs, such changes will occur as must needs follow upon the rising dignity alloted to the woman's temperament, the woman's point of view; not in the least denying to men the fullest exercise of their special powers and preferences; but cla.s.sifying these newly, as not human--merely male. At present we have pages or columns in our papers, marked as ”The Woman's Page” ”Of Interest to Women,” and similar delimiting t.i.tles. Similarly we might have distinctly masculine matters so marked and specified; not a.s.sumed as now to be of general human interest.

The effect of the change upon Ethics and Religion is deep and wide.

With the entrance of women upon full human life, a new principle comes into prominence; the principle of loving service. That this is the governing principle of Christianity is believed by many; but an androcentric interpretation has quite overlooked it; and made, as we have shown, the essential dogma of their faith the desire of an eternal reward and the combat with an eternal enemy.

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