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diff --git a/old/67662-h/67662-h.htm b/old/67662-h/67662-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 096c098..0000000 --- a/old/67662-h/67662-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6869 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - Our Changing Morality, by Freda Kirchwey—A Project Gutenberg eBook - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; - text-indent: 1em; -} - -.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} -.p4 {margin-top: 4em;} -.p0 {text-indent: 0em;} - -.small {font-size: 0.8em;} -.big {font-size: 1.2em;} -.xbig {font-size: 1.5em;} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } - -div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} -h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} - - -table { - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; -} -table.autotable { border-collapse: collapse; width: 60%; font-size: 1.1em; margin-left: 20%;} -table.autotable td, -table.autotable th { padding: 4px; } -.x-ebookmaker table {width: 95%; margin-left: 2.5%;} - -.tdr {text-align: right;} -.tdc {text-align: center;} -.page {width: 2.5em;} - -.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ - /* visibility: hidden; */ - position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; - font-style: normal; - font-weight: normal; - font-variant: normal; -} /* page numbers */ - -.blockquot { - margin-left: 5%; - margin-right: 5%; -} - -abbr[title] {text-decoration: none;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - - -.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - -.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} - - -/* Footnotes */ -.footnotes {border: 1px dashed; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; margin-top: 2em;} - -.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} - -.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} - -.fnanchor { - vertical-align: super; - font-size: .8em; - text-decoration: - none; -} - -/* Poetry */ -.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} -/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry in browsers */ -/* .poetry {display: inline-block;} */ -/* large inline blocks don't split well on paged devices */ -@media print { .poetry {display: block;} } -.x-ebookmaker .poetry {display: block;} - -/* Transcriber's notes */ -.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; - color: black; - font-size:smaller; - padding:0.5em; - margin-bottom:5em; - font-family:sans-serif, serif; } - - </style> - </head> -<body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Changing Morality, by Various</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Our Changing Morality</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>A Symposium</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Various</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Editor: Freda Kirchwey</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 20, 2022 [eBook #67662]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR CHANGING MORALITY ***</div> - - - -<h1>OUR<br /> -CHANGING MORALITY<br /> -<span class="small"><i>A SYMPOSIUM</i></span></h1> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="small">EDITED BY</span><br /> -<span class="big">FREDA KIRCHWEY</span></p> - - -<p class="center p0 p4"><span class="big">ALBERT & CHARLES BONI</span><br /> -NEW YORK 1924 -</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - - - -<p class="center p0 p2"> -<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1924, by Albert & Charles Boni, Inc.</span></p> -<p class="center p0 p4 small"> -<i>Printed in the United States of America by</i><br /> -J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK<br /> -</p></div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Intro">INTRODUCTION</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY FREDA KIRCHWEY</p> - - -<p>The subject of sex has been treated in this -generation with a strange, rather panic-stricken -lack of balance. Obscenity hawks its old wares -at one end of the road and dogmatic piety shouts -warnings at the other—while between is chaos. -And the chaos extends beyond ideas and talk, -beyond novels and scenarios and Sunday feature -stories, into the realm of actual conduct. Religion -has indeed found substantial matter for -its words of caution and disapproval: never in -recent generations have human beings so floundered -about outside the ropes of social and religious -sanctions.</p> - -<p>But while John Roach Straton and Billy Sunday -point a pleasant way toward hell, while sensationalism -finds in new manners of life subject -for five-inch headlines, and while modern novelists -make their modern characters stumble -through pages of inner conflict to ends of darkness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</span> -and desperation, a few people are at work -quietly sorting out the elements of chaos and -holding fragments of conduct up in the sun and -air to find what they really are made of.</p> - -<p>No one seeks to argue chaos away. Certainly -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Straton and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Sunday are right: Men -and women are ignoring old laws. In their relations -with each other they are living according -to tangled, conflicting codes. Remnants of early -admonitions and relationships, the dictates of -custom, the behavior of their friends, their own -tastes and desires, elusive dreams of a loveliness -not provided for by rules—all these are scrambling -to fill the gap that was left when Right and -Wrong finally followed the other absolute monarchs -to an empty, nominal existence somewhere -in exile. But the traditional, ministerial method -with chaos was not Jehovah’s method. He -brought order and light into the world; but the -way of our current moralists has been to clamp -down the hatches even though “sin” bubbled beneath. -A few courageous, matter-of-fact glances -into the depths have been embodied in the articles -in this volume. The men and women who -have written them have approached the subject<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</span> -variously; the fragments they have brought up to -examine do not necessarily fit together. But -none of these writers is afraid to saunter up to -the edge and see what moral disorder looks like.</p> - -<p>Some of them find it thoroughly disagreeable. -They believe that old laws were born of old desires -and find their sanctions in the emotions -of men. They seek for new and rational ways -back to the sort of stability provided by the traditional -relationships of men and women. Others -find in contemporary manners merely the disorder -incident to reconstruction; they find there -tentative beginnings rather than ruinous endings. -They see chaos as an interesting laboratory, -filled with strange ferments and the pungent -odors of new compounds. None of these writers -offers dogmatic conclusions—and in this they -differ delightfully from our most popular novelists -and preachers. They present facts, they -analyze and interpret; they suggest directions, -they even prophesy. But they never announce -or warn or reprove. When these chapters first -appeared as articles in <i>The Nation</i> it became -evident that this exercise of thought was itself -commonly held to be a simple blasphemy. Letters<span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</span> -from readers came in scores charging the articles -with the sin of intelligence where only -faith and conformity were tolerable. Dogma is -so deep in the bone of even the more enlightened -and adult members of our modern world that the -most modest doubt regarding the success of monogamy -or the virtue of chastity becomes in some -way an insult to Moses or Saint Paul.</p> - -<p>It is interesting to see how many of the authors -of this group of articles find a connection between -the changing standards of sex behavior -and the increasing freedom of women. Are -women forcing this change? Or does freedom -itself make change inevitable? Possibly only the -woman in the isolation of the home is able to -sustain the double load of her own virtue and -her husband’s ideals. Out in the world, in contact -and competition with men, she is forced to -discriminate; questions are thrust upon her. -The old rules fail to work; bewildering inconsistencies -confront her. Things that were sure -become unsure. And slowly, clumsily, she is -trying to construct a way out to a new sort of -certainty in life; she is seeking something to take -the place of the burden of solemn ideals and reverential<span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</span> -attitudes that rolled off her shoulders -when she emerged. That some such process may -be going on is hinted at in more than one of these -articles. Certainly, of the factors involved in -modern sex relations, women and economic conditions -are the two that have suffered the most -revolutionary change; and men’s morals must -largely shape themselves to the patterns laid -down by these two masters of life.</p> - -<p>Much has been said about sex—and everything -remains to be said. Largely, new conclusions -will be reached through new processes of living. -People will act—and then a new code will grow -up. But along the way guidance and interpretation -are deeply needed, if only to take the place -of the pious imprecations of those who fear life -and hate the dangers and uncertainties of -thought and emotion.</p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - - -<table class="autotable"> -<tr> -<th></th> -<th></th> -<th class="tdr page">PAGE</th> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<span class="smcap"><a href="#Intro">Introduction</a></span> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_v">v</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Freda Kirchwey</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Styles"><span class="smcap">Styles in Ethics</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_3">3</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Bertrand Russell</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Modern"><span class="smcap">Modern Marriage</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_19">19</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Arthur Garfield Hays</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Changes"><span class="smcap">Changes in Sex Relations</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_37">37</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Elsie Clews Parsons</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Toward"><span class="smcap">Toward Monogamy</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_53">53</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Charlotte Perkins Gilman</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Women_Free"><span class="smcap">Women—Free for What?</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_69">69</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Edwin Muir</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Virtue"><span class="smcap">Virtue and Women</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_85">85</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Isabel Leavenworth</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Where"><span class="smcap">Where Are the Female Geniuses?</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_107">107</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Sylvia Kopald</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Man"><span class="smcap">Man and Woman as Creators</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_129">129</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Alexander Goldenweiser</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Dominant"><span class="smcap">Dominant Sexes</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_147">147</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By M. Vaerting</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Modern_Love"><span class="smcap">Modern Love and Modern Fiction</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_167">167</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By J. W. Krutch</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Friends"><span class="smcap">Can Men and Women Be Friends?</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_183">183</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Floyd Dell</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Love"><span class="smcap">Love and Marriage</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_197">197</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Ludwig Lewisohn</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Communist"><span class="smcap">Communist Puritans</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_207">207</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Louis Fischer</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Stereotypes"><span class="smcap">Stereotypes</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_219">219</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Florence Guy Seabury</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td colspan="2"> -<a href="#Morality"><span class="smcap">Women and the New Morality</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"><a href="#Page_235">235</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td></td> -<td> -<i>By Beatrice M. Hinkle</i></td> -<td></td> -</tr></table> - - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Styles"> -Styles in Ethics</h2> -<p class="center p0">By Bertrand Russell</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3 class="nobreak" id="Russell"><abbr title="honorable">Hon.</abbr> Bertrand Arthur William Russell</h3> -</div> - -<p class="p0"><i>is a mathematician, writer, and lecturer on international -affairs and problems of government. Born -at Trellech, England, May 18th, 1872. F.R.S. -1908; Late Lecturer and Fellow Trinity College, -Cambridge. Heir presumptive to 2nd Earl Russell. -Author of “German Social Democracy,” 1896; -“Essay on the Foundation of Geometry,” 1897; -“Philosophy of Leibnitz,” 1900; “Principles of -Mathematics,” 1903; with D. A. N. Whitehead, -“Principia Mathematica,” 1910; “Our Knowledge -of the External World as a Field for Scientific -Method in Philosophy,” 1914; “Principles of Social -Reconstruction,” 1917; “Why Men Fight,” 1917; -“Mysticism and Logic,” 1918; “Roads to Freedom,” -1918; “Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy,” -1919; “The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism,” -1920; “The Analysis of the Mind,” -1921; “The Problem of China,” 1922; “The A. B. -C. of Atoms,” 1923; “Icarus, or the Future of -Science,” 1924.</i></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p> -<p class="xbig p0 center">OUR<br /> -CHANGING MORALITY</p> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 big">STYLES IN ETHICS</p> - - -<p class="center p0">BY BERTRAND RUSSELL</p> - - -<p>In all ages and nations positive morality has -consisted almost wholly of prohibitions of various -classes of actions, with the addition of a -small number of commands to perform certain -other actions. The Jews, for example, prohibited -murder and theft, adultery and incest, -the eating of pork and seething the kid in its -mother’s milk. To us the last two precepts may -seem less important than the others, but religious -Jews have observed them far more scrupulously -than what seem to us fundamental principles of -morality. South Sea Islanders could imagine -nothing more utterly wicked than eating out of -a vessel reserved for the use of the chief. My -friend Dr. Brogan made a statistical investigation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> -into the ethical valuations of undergraduates -in certain American colleges. Most considered -Sabbath-breaking more wicked than -lying, and extra-conjugal sexual relations more -wicked than murder. The Japanese consider -disobedience to parents the most atrocious of -crimes. I was once at a charming spot on the -outskirts of Kioto with several Japanese socialists, -men who were among the most advanced -thinkers in the country. They told me that a -certain well beside which we were standing was -a favorite spot for suicides, which were very -frequent. When I asked why so many occurred -they replied that most were those of young people -in love whose parents had forbidden them -to marry. To my suggestion that perhaps it -would be better if parents had less power they -all returned an emphatic negative. To Dr. -Brogan’s undergraduates this power of Japanese -parents to forbid love would seem monstrous, -but the similar power of husbands or wives -would seem a matter of course. Neither they -nor the Japanese would examine the question -rationally; both would decide unthinkingly on -the basis of moral precepts learned in youth.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p> - -<p>When we study in the works of anthropologists -the moral precepts which men have considered -binding in different times and places we -find the most bewildering variety. It is quite -obvious to any modern reader that most of these -customs are absurd. The Aztecs held that it -was a duty to sacrifice and eat enemies captured -in war, since otherwise the light of the sun -would go out. The Book of Leviticus enjoins -that when a married man dies without children -his brother shall marry the widow, and the first -son born shall count as the dead man’s son. The -Romans, the Chinese, and many other nations -secured a similar result by adoption. This custom -originated in ancestor-worship; it was -thought that the ghost would make himself a -nuisance unless he had descendants (real or -putative) to worship him. In India the remarriage -of widows is traditionally considered -something too horrible to contemplate. Many -primitive races feel horror at the thought of -marrying any one belonging to one’s own totem, -though there may be only the most distant blood-relationship. -After studying these various customs -it begins at last to occur to the reader<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> -that possibly the customs of his own age and -nation are not eternal, divine ordinances, but are -susceptible of change, and even, in some respects, -of improvement. Books such as Westermarck’s -“History of Human Marriage” or Müller-Lyer’s -“Phasen der Liebe,” which relate in -a scientific spirit the marriage customs that have -existed and the reasons which have led to their -growth and decay, produce evidence which must -convince any rational mind that our own customs -are sure to change and that there is no reason -to expect a change to be harmful. It thus -becomes impossible to cling to the position of -many who are earnest advocates of <em>political</em> reform -and yet hold that reform in our moral precepts -is not needed. Moral precepts, like everything -else, can be improved, and the true reformer -will be as open-minded in regard to them -as in regard to other matters.</p> - -<p>Müller-Lyer, from the point of view of family -institutions, divides the history of civilization -into three periods—the clan period, the -family period, and the personal period. Of these -the last is only now beginning; the other two -are each divided into three stages—early, middle,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> -and late. He shows that sexual and family -ethics have at all times been dominated by economic -considerations; hunting, pastoral, agricultural, -and industrial tribes or nations have -each their own special kinds of institutions. -Economic causes determine whether a tribe will -practice polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, -or monogamy, and whether monogamy will be -lifelong or dissoluble. Whatever the prevailing -practice in a tribe it is thought to be the only -one compatible with virtue, and all departures -from it are regarded with moral horror. Owing -to the force of custom it may take a long time -for institutions to adapt themselves to economic -circumstances; the process of adaptation may -take centuries. Christian sexual ethics, according -to this author, belong to the middle-family -period; the personal period, now beginning, has -not yet been embodied in the laws of most Christian -countries, and even the late-family period, -since it admits divorce under certain circumstances, -involves an ethic to which the church -is usually opposed.</p> - -<p>Müller-Lyer suggests a general law to the effect -that where the state is strong the family is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> -weak and the position of women is good, whereas -where the state is weak the family is strong and -the position of women is bad. It is of course -obvious that where the family is strong the position -of women must be bad, and vice versa, but -the connection of these with the strength or -weakness of the state is less obvious, though probably -in the main no less true. Traditional China -and Japan afforded good instances. In both the -state was much weaker than in modern Europe, -the family much stronger, and the position of -women much worse. It is true that in modern -Japan the state is very strong, yet the family -also is strong and the position of women is bad; -but this is a transitional condition. The whole -tendency in Japan is for the family to grow -weaker and the position of women to grow better. -This tendency encounters grave difficulties. -I met in Japan only one woman who appeared -to be what we should consider emancipated in -the West—she was charming, beautiful, high-minded, -and prepared to make any sacrifice for -her principles. After the earthquake in Tokio -the officer in charge of the forces concerned in -keeping order in the district where she lived<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> -seized her and the man with whom she lived in -a free union and her twelve-year-old nephew, -whom he believed to be her son; he took them -to the police station and there murdered them by -slow strangulation, taking about ten minutes -over each except the boy. In his account of the -matter he stated that he had not had much difficulty -with the boy, because he had succeeded in -making friends with him on the way to the police -station. The boy was an American citizen. -At the funeral, the remains of all three were -seized by armed reactionaries and destroyed, -with the passive acquiescence of the police. The -question whether the murderer deserved well of -his country is now set in schools, half the children -answering affirmatively. We have here a -dramatic confrontation of middle-family ethics -with personal ethics. The officer’s views were -those of feudalism, which is a middle-family -system; his victims’ views were those of the -nascent personal period. The Japanese state, -which belongs to the late-family period, disapproved -of both.</p> - -<p>The middle-family system involves cruelty -and persecution. The indissolubility of marriage<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> -results in appalling misery for the wives -of drunkards, sadists, and brutes of all kinds, -as well as great unhappiness for many men and -the unedifying spectacle of daily quarrels for -the unfortunate children of ill-assorted couples. -It involves also an immense amount of prostitution, -with its inevitable consequence of widespread -venereal disease. It makes marriage, in -most cases, a matter of financial bargain between -parents, and virtually proscribes love. It considers -sexual intercourse always justifiable -within marriage, even if no mutual affection exists. -It is impossible to be too thankful that -this system is nearly extinct in the Western nations -(except France). But it is foolish to pretend -that this ideal held by the Catholic church -and in some degree by most Protestant churches -is a lofty one. It is intolerant, gross, cruel, and -hostile to all the best potentialities of human nature. -Nothing is gained by continuing to pay -lip-service to this musty Moloch.</p> - -<p>The American attitude on marriage is curious. -America, in the main, does not object to -easy divorce laws, and is tolerant of those who -avail themselves of them. But it holds that those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span> -who live in countries where divorce is difficult -or impossible ought to submit to hardships from -which Americans are exempt, and deserve to be -held up to obloquy if they do not do so. An -interesting example of this attitude was afforded -by the treatment of Gorki when he visited the -United States.</p> - -<p>There are two different lines of argument by -which it is possible to attack the general belief -that there are universal absolute rules of moral -conduct, and that any one who infringes them -is wicked. One line of argument emerges from -the anthropological facts which we have already -considered. Broadly speaking the views of the -average man on sexual ethics are those appropriate -to the economic system existing in the -time of his great-grandfather. Morality has -varied as economic systems have varied, lagging -always about three generations behind. As soon -as people realize this they find it impossible to -suppose that the particular brand of marriage -customs prevailing in their own age and nation -represents eternal verities, whereas all earlier -and later marriage customs, and all those prevailing -in other latitudes and longitudes, are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> -vicious and degraded. This shows that we -ought to be prepared for changes in marriage -customs, but does not tell us what changes we -ought to desire.</p> - -<p>The second line of argument is more positive -and more important. Popular morality—including -that of the churches, though not that -of the great mystics—lays down rules of conduct -rather than ends of life. The morality that -ought to exist would lay down ends of life rather -than rules of conduct. Christ says: “Thou shalt -love thy neighbor as thyself”; this lays down one -of the ends of life. The Decalogue says: “Remember -that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day”; -this lays down a rule of action. Christ’s conduct -to the woman taken in adultery showed the conflict -between love and moral rules. All his -priests, down to our own day, have gone directly -contrary to his teachings on this point, and have -shown themselves invariably willing to cast the -first stone. The belief in the importance of rules -of conduct is superstitious; what is important -is to care for good ends. A good man is a man -who cares for the happiness of his relations and -friends, and, if possible, for that of mankind in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> -general, or, again, a man who cares for art and -science. Whether such a man obeys the moral -rules laid down by the Jews thousands of years -ago is quite unimportant. Moreover a man may -obey all these rules and yet be extremely bad.</p> - -<p>Let us take some illustrations. I have a -friend, a high-minded man, who has taken part -in arduous and dangerous enterprises of great -public importance and is almost unbelievably -kind in all his private relations. This man has a -wife who is a dipsomaniac, who has become imbecile, -and has to be kept in an institution. She -cannot divorce him because she is imbecile; he -cannot divorce her because she affords him no -ground for divorce. He does not consider himself -morally bound to her and is therefore, from -a conventional point of view, a wicked man. On -the other hand a man who is perpetually drunk, -who kicks his wife when she is pregnant, and begets -ten imbecile children, is not generally regarded -as particularly wicked. A business man -who is generous to all his employees but falls -in love with his stenographer is wicked; another -who bullies his employees but is faithful to his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> -wife is virtuous. This attitude is rank superstition, -and it is high time that it was got rid of.</p> - -<p>Sexual morality, freed from superstition, is a -simple matter. Fraud and deceit, assault, seduction -of persons under age, are proper matters -for the criminal law. Relations between adults -who are free agents are a private matter, and -should not be interfered with either by the law -or by public opinion, because no outsider can -know whether they are good or bad. When children -are involved the state becomes interested to -the extent of seeing that they are properly educated -and cared for, and it ought to insure that -the father does his duty by them in the way of -maintenance. But neither the state nor public -opinion ought to insist on the parents living together -if they are incompatible; the spectacle of -parents’ quarrels is far worse for children than -the separation of the parents could possibly be.</p> - -<p>The ideal to be aimed at is not life-long -monogamy enforced by legal or social penalties. -The ideal to be aimed at is that all sexual intercourse -should spring from the free impulse of -both parties, based upon mutual inclination and -nothing else. At present a woman who sells herself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> -successively to different men is branded as -a prostitute, whereas a woman who sells herself -for life to one rich man whom she does not love -becomes a respected society leader. The one is -exactly as bad as the other. The individual -should not be condemned in either case; but the -institutions producing the individual’s action -should be condemned equally in both cases. The -cramping of love by institutions is one of the -major evils of the world. Every person who allows -himself to think that an adulterer must be -wicked adds his stone to the prison in which the -source of poetry and beauty and life is incarcerated -by “priests in black gowns.”</p> - -<p>Perhaps there is not, strictly speaking, any -such thing as “scientific” ethics. It is not the -province of science to decide on the ends of -life. Science can show that an ethic is unscientific, -in the sense that it does not minister to -any desired end. Science also can show how to -bring the interest of the individual into harmony -with that of society. We make laws against -theft, in order that theft may become contrary -to self-interest. We might, on the same ground, -make laws to diminish the number of imbecile<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> -children born into the world. There is no evidence -that existing marriage laws, particularly -where they are very strict, serve any social purpose; -in this sense we may say that they are unscientific. -But to proclaim the ends of life, and -make men conscious of their value, is not the -business of science; it is the business of the -mystic, the artist, and the poet.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Modern">Modern Marriage and Ancient Laws</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Arthur Garfield Hays</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3>Arthur Garfield Hays</h3> - -<p class="p0"><i>is an attorney practicing in New York City. He -was manager of the New York State La Follette -campaign, 1924.</i></p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">MODERN MARRIAGE AND ANCIENT LAWS</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY ARTHUR GARFIELD HAYS</p> - - -<p>“Are we married?” This was a query recently -put to a New York lawyer. The woman -wanted to have been married, but wished not to -be married any longer; at the same time she -rather objected to a divorce. The man did not -care much about it, so long as he could marry, or -marry again, without too much inconvenience -arising from the earlier entanglement. The lawyer’s -answer was so obvious that it might have -been made by a layman: “How do I know?”</p> - -<p>The two had been living together, had called -each other husband and wife, and had in general -passed as such, but at the beginning of the relationship -each had felt that if one wanted to -be free the other would not hold him or her; it -was agreed that they should have no financial -responsibility for each other and that there -should be nothing about the arrangement which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> -would make it last “till death do us part.” In -speaking of themselves as “husband and wife” -they had intended the words to represent merely -a formula of their own.</p> - -<p>Now common-law marriage as recognized in -New York State consists in a meeting of the -minds—a contract. Thus, if two people live together -as husband and wife this may be evidence -of a common-law marriage. No formal agreement -is necessary. But if there has not been -even a private agreement of marriage their living -together would be unimportant. If they -wished to separate they would need no divorce, -for they would never have been married. By -passing as husband and wife they might gain the -social advantages that come from a recognized -relationship, and, since there had been no definite -agreement, they might save the inconvenience of -divorce if they wished to separate. Difficulty -arises only when both parties do not agree that -there was no agreement. Sometimes one party -claims there was and the other that there was -not. Then the very indefiniteness of the tie -means added difficulty and publicity in breaking -it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span></p> - -<p>In order to avoid future disagreement one -couple made a contract in which they stated that -they lived as husband and wife in order to avoid -social stigma, but that as between themselves -there was no agreement of marriage. The situation -was trying because they always felt they -were living a lie. Their answer was that society -foolishly demanded either a penalty or a -form and they preferred to provide the form. -Fortunately, neither ever had to swear to the -status and they felt that this contract—which -provided for future maintenance of the wife and -custody of the children—solved the problem or -doubt of a life-long relationship. To those who -made ethical objection, they answered that they -were willing to contract on matters which concerned -their wills, but knew it was contrary to -human nature to contract on matters which concerned -their emotions.</p> - -<p>Not long ago in New York City a young -woman who had scruples about promising to -love a man forever expressed to the city clerk -her unwillingness to use the form of marriage -ceremony which he had produced committing -her to love, honor, and cherish the man for the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> -rest of his or her life. She said she was in good -faith willing to contract to marry, and that she -would do the best she could to make the marriage -successful, but that was all; to which the -clerk answered that if she were entering marriage -in that spirit she should not be married -at all. He was finally persuaded that the parties -could be tied merely by agreement on her part -to become the man’s wife and on his part to become -her husband.</p> - -<p>If the law seems full of vagaries on the problem -of entering marriage it is still more perplexing -and technical when it concerns the question -whether or not two people are still legally -married when one has obtained a supposed divorce—so -much so that it is not at all uncommon -for a lawyer to be faced by a client asking -whether or not he, or she, is really married. -Some years ago a man was married in Philadelphia -and later, having separated from his wife, -went to New York. She obtained a decree of -divorce in Pennsylvania, the papers having been -served on him in New York. He married again -and died a generation later, leaving a considerable -fortune and three children by his second<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> -marriage. The first wife, or her attorneys, then -discovered that the original divorce was not legal, -since the Pennsylvania courts had not acquired -a jurisdiction which would be recognized -in New York. Since the man had left the estate -to his “wife,” there were complications. -As the question involved the meaning of a will, -the matter was one of intention and it was not -difficult to prove that the deceased intended as -his beneficiary the woman whom he regarded as -his wife. But had he owned real estate at the -time of his divorce the first wife might have -had a dower interest, and had his status become -one of public importance his enemies might successfully -have charged him with bigamy.</p> - -<p>Ordinarily, people are satisfied with a decree -of divorce. It gives them the desired social -status. Its technical legality becomes of importance -only in connection with estates or the -legitimacy of children. But a difficult question -arises in case of remarriage. Legality depends -upon the jurisdiction of the court. This can -be acquired by personal service of papers upon -the defendant within the State or a voluntary -submission to the jurisdiction by appearing in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> -the case personally or by attorney. But State -courts claim and recognize their own jurisdiction -even though papers are served outside the -State. Under these latter circumstances, suppose -a divorce granted a man in Utah is not -recognized in New York. If he remarries in -Utah he will have one wife there, while in New -York another woman would be his wife and he -would be obliged to support her there. If his -wife in New York married again, she would be -guilty of bigamy. In Utah it would be his duty -to live with one woman. New York would attempt -to make it his pleasure to live with another, -and this on the ground of morality, for, -although, ordinarily, the law of the place of -the new marriage (in this case, Utah) would -apply, yet this would result in his having two -wives in New York. So on legal grounds we -disregard the divorce, and on moral grounds we -negative the second marriage.</p> - -<p>Foreign divorces raise the question not only -of jurisdiction but of recognition by treaty of a -judgment of the particular foreign country. For -instance, judgments of French courts are not -absolutely binding upon the courts of this country,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> -as are the judgments of sister-States. In -the case of Russia, where any two parties by -agreement or a single person by request may -become divorced, there is no treaty whatever. -Occasionally, cases arise where persons abroad -have obtained a decree for a rabbinical divorce. -Under the old Jewish custom a rabbi could pronounce -a divorce and the law of the state permitted -a decree to be entered upon his -pronouncement. Some states and countries -make bids for the divorce business; not long -ago an advertisement appeared announcing that -a divorce might be had in Yucatan for $25, not, -of course, including the expense of travel. -Questions of the effect of interlocutory and final -judgments, of the provisions of a divorce decree -forbidding remarriage within a certain period, -of the <em>bona fides</em> of residence, of the jurisdiction -of the court, of treaties with foreign countries -may make it difficult to answer the question -whether or not two people are legally married.</p> - -<p>All this confusion represents a beating of -wings against a cage—an endeavor to obtain a -legal paper with a red seal which will avoid a -situation which two people find intolerable. We<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> -are tending toward a new moral conception of -the marriage relationship, well expressed by -Premier Zahle of Denmark when submitting -a new liberal divorce law: “It is based on the -fundamental conception that it is morally indefensible -to maintain a marriage relation by legal -statute where all the real bonds between the -parties are broken. This is a measure which certainly -means a great step forward in the recognition -of marriage as a moral relation.”</p> - -<p>Marriage is a status resulting from a civil contract, -but very few people who enter into it -know what this contract is. It assumes certain -rights and obligations. What are they? That -the wage-earner will provide. This is enforcible, -at least theoretically. What else? That -the parties live in an emotional and mental state -designated by an agreement “to love, honor, and -cherish,” and, sometimes, “obey.” This is obviously -unenforcible. (I make this assertion despite -the recent Texas case in which a husband -obtained an injunction restraining his wife’s -employer from flirting with her.) The contract -continues for life, subject to termination for -causes which depend chiefly upon the place of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> -residence, actual or acquired. If they live in -South Carolina and stay there, the contract is indissoluble. -In New York the contract may be -terminated for adultery, unless the other party -has likewise sought refuge outside of marriage; -in Alabama, for habitual drunkenness; in Nevada, -for neglect to provide for one year; in -Kentucky and New Hampshire, for joining a -religious sect which believes marriages unlawful; -in New Jersey, for extreme cruelty; in Wisconsin, -if the parties have voluntarily lived separately -for five years; in Massachusetts and a host -of other States, for desertion; in Pennsylvania -and Oregon, for personal indignities or conduct -rendering life burdensome; in Vermont, for intolerable -severity; in France, if the parties have -other emotional interests; in Denmark, by consent; -in Russia, by request. Of course, in most -of these states there are other grounds, but the -result is that either party can bring about a -situation which permits divorce or can make -life so intolerable for the other that he or she -consents to it. But these grounds must arise subsequent -to marriage; the agreement cannot be -made in advance.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p> - -<p>In life the duration of marriage depends upon -the desires or consent of individuals. In law -it is perpetual, subject to termination not by -agreement made at the outset, or by later consent, -but by court decree. At the time of entering -into marriage people usually know merely -that somehow, somewhere, some time there is a -way out if the situation becomes too strained. -Technically, since the contract is for life, a divorce -is granted for a breach. Thus there is -an implied term, as there is in every contract, -that relief is granted for a breach—but what -constitutes a breach depends not upon the terms -of the contract or the law of the place where -the contract is made but upon the jurisdiction -where relief is sought—a matter of which the -parties ordinarily know nothing when they make -the contract. Convention seems to demand that -the parties know not what they do.</p> - -<p>Modern society, this summary seems to show, -has been moving toward freedom of contract in -marriage. Those phases which concern the -state, such as economic provision and children, -must be conserved. But time was—and still is -in some places—when marriage itself was a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> -tribal or a state matter. Then it became a family -matter, determined by the parents, and property -and family rights and interests were the -important considerations. But parents, knowing -by experience that there can be no happiness -without security—although there might be -unhappiness with it—failed to take into sufficient -account the emotional content, and, particularly -in the Western World, there developed -a certain freedom of contract in making a choice. -To-day, when people have come to recognize -the necessity of sexual and social compatibility, -which cannot be determined in advance, there -has come a demand for a further freedom of -contract, to which society has responded by more -liberal divorce laws. The laws which permit -a divorce where parties have not lived together -for a certain length of time make the duration -of the marriage relation really a matter of consent. -They mean in effect that a contract of -marriage contains an implied term that it is to -continue until the parties consent to its end, and -in human relations this means until one party -demands its end.</p> - -<p>If a person proposed that the law recognize<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> -a marriage contract which was to continue until -either party desired its termination, he would -be regarded as a wrecker of our institutions; -but society is doing this very thing—obscurely, -perhaps, as an after-effect, not as a preconceived -design; blindly, and not with intelligent forethought. -Many have suggested that marriages -be made harder and divorces easier. But how -revolutionary would seem a suggestion that marriage -contracts be made in advance, conforming -to the teachings of experience, providing for -maintenance and custody of children and limited -by the understanding of the parties; that -those who, for religious or ethical reasons, -wished to enter into a life contract be permitted -to do so; that those who wished to enter into a -contract to terminate by joint consent or at the -option of either party likewise be permitted to -do so? An objection that this would be dangerous -assumes that people choose the present -form only because compelled to do so. Individuals -are breaking from the old conventions, -and the law, usually a laggard by a generation, -is following them. In forty-three States desertion -is a ground for divorce; in twenty of them,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> -desertion for one year. In seven States, failure -or neglect to provide is a ground; in four of -them, the period is one year. In some States, if -the parties live apart for a certain length of -time—in three of them for five years—that is -ground for divorce. Is not this divorce by -agreement? And by implication, since living -together requires the willingness of two parties, -the result is a contract which may be ended -by either of the parties at any time he or she -sees fit—after an intervening cooling period. -Thus does freedom creep in by the back door.</p> - -<p>Does this work harm to society? There is little -difference in the marital or social conditions -or in the welfare of children in Norway and -Sweden, where there are liberal laws, and in -England, where divorce is a long, complicated, -and expensive process. No one could discover -that he had crossed the State line from New -York to Pennsylvania by observation of the state -of society, the happiness or apparent duration -of marriage, the welfare of children, or the social -conventions of the people. Yet in Pennsylvania -there was one divorce for every 10.2 marriages -in 1922 and only one for every 22.6 in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> -New York. In South Carolina there are no -divorces; in Oregon, the number of marriages -to one divorce was 2.6; in Wyoming, 3.9; in -California, 5.1. In the District of Columbia, -the banner section, there were 35.8 marriages to -one divorce. There, as in New York, the only -ground is adultery. Yet San Francisco society -seems as stable as that of Washington. Of -course, the figures do not mean that seven times -as many Washington couples as California -couples, and four times as many New York -couples, make a success of marriage or live together -when it has ceased to be a success; but -rather, that New Yorkers and Washingtonians -solve their marital troubles elsewhere than at -home. Thus, in Nevada in 1922 there were -more divorces than marriages, because people -married in other States repented in Nevada.</p> - -<p>Whatever effect it may have on society, the -extension of grounds for divorce which has taken -place in the last decade, and the modern improvement -in communication and travel, which -opens other States or foreign countries to an increasing -number, brings about a situation by -which people, though not free to contract, do<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> -avail themselves of means which have the same -effect. Revolutionary changes occur unnoticed, -while our delusions persist and our sense of conservatism -is gratified.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Changes">Changes in Sex Relations</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Elsie Clews Parsons</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak" id="Elsie_Clews_Parsons">Elsie Clews Parsons</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>is widely known as an anthropologist and writer. -She has contributed largely to scientific journals and -in 1922 edited the volume on American Indian Life -by various students of the subject. Graduated from -Barnard 1896; Ph.D. Columbia 1899. Fellow and -Lecturer in Sociology at Barnard; Lecturer in -Anthropology in New School for Social Research. -She is editor of the</i> Journal of American Folklore; -<i>Treasurer of American Ethnological Society; President -of Folk Lore Society. Is author of “The -Family”; “The Old-Fashioned Woman”; “Fear -and Conventionality”; “Social Freedom” and “Social -Rule.”</i></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p> -<p class="xbig p0 center">CHANGES IN SEX RELATIONS</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS</p> - - -<p>The other day I listened to a conversation on -marriage and divorce between a well-known -feminist, her daughter, and an Episcopal clergyman. -The celibate cleric and the younger woman -were in fair accord: the institution of marriage -was invaluable to society and had to be protected. -Let there be no divorce, said the cleric, -on any ground, at least within the church; children -should be cared for by both parents, divorce -being sought only as an ultimate recourse, said -the girl, who was two years married and had a -son.</p> - -<p>The feminist was biding her time. Finally -she said: “So much for the institution. What -of the actual sex life? No divorce and continence -or no divorce and intimacy with another?”</p> - -<p>“The first, of course,” said the cleric.</p> - -<p>“Not at all; the second,” said the girl. “And -you, mother?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span></p> - -<p>“Oh, on the whole I’m for the brittle marriage -as against the lax, the American way against the -European. But most of all I am for tolerance -in sex relations and for respecting privacy. Why -not all kinds of relations for all kinds of persons? -Just as there are now, but with respect or tolerance -for the individual and without hypocrisy.”</p> - -<p>“Even if we did not agree,” the cleric said -later to the feminist, “we could talk about it as -twenty years ago we could not. So much to the -good.”</p> - -<p>“So much to the bad,” said the girl’s father, -still later; “better for all of us the old reserve.” -The speaker was a lawyer with divorce cases in -his practice.</p> - -<p>Had we not here a mingling of currents from -law, the church, feminism, and the younger generation -which illustrates what divergency of attitude -on sex and sex institutions or practices may -exist to-day, even within the same cultural and -local circle? Include circles of different education -and locality and although the range of difference -would be no larger the expressions of -opinion would vary. Is the variation in opinion -due to variation in experience or is it due to that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> -contemporaneous lifting of the taboo on discussion -which characterizes not only our talk about -sex but about other interests as well? A remarkable -and indisputable change of attitude, this release -from verbal taboo, which often gives us a -sense of change in general greater perhaps than -the facts themselves warrant.</p> - -<p>In the conversation I quoted the women were -on the whole the radicals, the men on the whole -the conservatives. This alignment was far from -typical, I think, and yet in contemporaneous life, -whether or not in opinion, women have been the -exponents of cultural change in sex relations. -The increase in the divorce rate, it seems probable, -has been effected predominantly by women; -about two-thirds of the total number of divorces -are granted to women. (Of course the tradition -that it is decent for the man to let the woman get -the divorce must not be ignored in this connection.) -This increase in divorce may indicate a -changing attitude toward the criteria of marriage -on the part of women. Women may be demanding -more of marriage than in the day when they -had little to expect but marriage. In other -words, marriage standards mount as marriage<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> -has other relations to compete with. At any rate -in the talk of women it seems to me that desire -for integral satisfaction in marriage is more consciously -or realistically expressed than ever before. -Emotional and sexual appeasements are -considered as well as social or economic advantage. -What of the part played by women in -changes in sex relations outside marriage?</p> - -<p>Unfortunately, we have no dependable statistics -of prostitution, but whatever decrease -there has been in prostitution, and opinion is -that with the passing of segregated districts there -has been a decrease, may be, on the whole, put -down to women, if only indirectly through an increase -in illicit relations. Illicit relations are -not subject to statistics, but that there has been -an increase in them in this country in this century -will be generally accepted, likewise that in this, -too, the increase is due to women, alike more willing -to participate in such relations and more tolerant -of them in others. Again those curious suits -for alienation of affection appear to be brought -against women as much as against men; and theories -of seduction by men have long since been -sounding archaic to our ears. Even on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> -screen, the great present vehicle of traditional -manners and morals, although rape is always in -order, seduction is infrequent. Seduction with -its complement of marital honor has been rendered -an anachronism, through women.</p> - -<p>The theory of seduction is affiliated with the -proprietary theory of woman and, needless to say, -this general theory has been undergoing considerable -change for several decades. To-day women -are not only not property, they are property -holders, and property holding has become a significant -factor in the social independence of -women. Of this social independence, independence -in mating is the most recent expression, -more recent even than political independence, -and less fully realized or accomplished. Indeed -it would be rash to predict how this type of -independence may be expected to come about; -apart from the gesture, sometimes gay, sometimes -merely comic, of keeping one’s name in marriage, -there is no conscious feministic movement, -in this country at least, toward freedom in sex. -The political emancipation of women came to us -as a reflex from abroad, largely through England. -Whatever the political effect of militancy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> -in England, without the advertisement of the -British suffragette American women would be -voteless to-day. Quite likely the direction of -emancipation in mating may be determined likewise -from abroad, perhaps from innovating -Scandinavia or from Soviet Russia, where the -last legal word has been said on sex equality.</p> - -<p>In the soviet laws on marriage and domestic -relations there is no mention of suit for breach -of promise or for alimony whereby woman proclaims -herself a chattel, and according to the soviet -code husband as well as wife is entitled to -support if incapacitated for work. Incapacity -for work is the sole condition which entitles -either spouse to support. In other words, the -Russian state has interested itself not in maintaining -the proprietary theory of woman; but in providing -for the care of man or woman in distress. -Of such clear distinction American law is innocent. -In American law the husband is still the -provider and in this law lags but little behind -current opinion, which holds that a married woman -should work only when she has to. Dr. -Herskowits tells me that this American attitude -is so well represented in the Negro population<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> -of Harlem that in gathering statistics of employment -as soon as he learns the occupation of the -husband he can predict whether or not the wife is -at work. Low-paid employment for the husband -means wage-earning by the wife, and highly paid -employment means that the woman is not a wage-earner. -Surveys in other parts of the country -have shown the same condition. These surveys -have been made among wage-earners, and concerned -primarily with the margin of subsistence; -but familiar enough is the record in other economic -classes of the persuasion that marriage exempts -a woman from industry or professional -activity. The standing controversies about married -women as school-teachers are fully documented -instances. The Harvard prize play acted -last year on Broadway hinged on the rigidity -of the alternative of a man marrying and sacrificing -his career or pursuing his career and sacrificing -his love. There was not the faintest suggestion -that the woman might contribute to the -family income and so render marriage and career -economically compatible. The young -couple, to be sure, belonged to smart Suburbia, -economically a conservative circle; but there was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> -no indication in the play that the university intelligentsia -did not hold to the theory of wifely -parasitism, nor that audiences might question the -theory. And I incline to think that few in those -Broadway audiences, although drawn as they -were from fairly composite circles, did question. -Wifely parasitism is holding its own.</p> - -<p>In less invidious terms, where income permits, -the wife continues to be the consumer, the husband -the producer. Conjugal partnership in -production, familiar in Europe, remains by and -large unfamiliar in this country. Outside of -marriage, on the other hand, the last years have -seen considerable lessening in our American -forms of segregating the sexes. Not only has -there been an increase of women in gainful occupations -together with an increase of occupations -open to women, but between men and women in -business and in the professions relations are increasingly -less restricted, influenced less by sex -taboo. There is more coöperation, more goodwill, -more companionship.</p> - -<p>Possibly this companionship between the sexes -at large will have a reflex upon marriage, and -marriage will become a more comprehensive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> -partnership. The question of the married -woman in gainful occupations is related, however, -to a larger economic issue. Our capitalistic -and competitive economy not only suffers parasites -and drones, it compels them by reason of its -inelasticity in providing for part-time labor. -The whole workday or no work at all is the notice -given to women who would be part-day home-keepers, -either in their child-bearing years or because -of other family exigency, as well as to men -who are aging or invalid. For this economic -waste and loss to personal happiness and welfare -there seems to be no promise of relief in prospect. -Just the opposite, in fact, for women, since, given -the increasing mechanization of housekeeping -and the ramifying organization of hospital, nursery, -and school, women at home may have a -larger and larger part of the day on their hands -and their functions become less and less significant. -In this connection birth control has been -for some time an important factor. As knowledge -of contraception becomes surer and more -widespread and births more spaced, even during -her child-bearing period the home-staying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> -woman will have less and less call on her vitality -and energy.</p> - -<p>Discussion of contraception has been active in -the last decade or so; but curiously enough its -significance aside from contributing to directly -saner ways of life<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> has been little realized. -Birth control makes possible such clear-cut distinctions -between mating and parenthood that it -might be expected to produce radical changes in -theories of sex attitude or relationship, forcing -the discard of many an argument for personal -suppression for the good of children or the honor -of the family, and forcing redefinition of concepts -of honor and sincerity between the sexes. -In such redefinition reciprocity in passion, emotional -integrity, and mutual enhancement of life -might share in the approval once confined to -constancy, fidelity, and duty, virtues that are obviously -suggested by the hit or miss system of -mating and reproducing our social organization -has favored. With little or no self-knowledge<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> -or knowledge of men, a girl often marries in order -to find out how much she cares or whether or -not she qualifies, and then when her experience -has but begun she finds herself an expectant -mother, and maternity begins to supersede other -interests. She may become a parent without the -assurance of being well-mated, if not, more tragically, -with the certainty of being mismated. Advocates -of the monogamous family would do well -to consider how essential to an enduring union, -at least in our society, experience in love may be, -together with restraint from child-bearing before -experience is achieved.</p> - -<p>That neither such considerations nor other -changes in the theory of sex morality have yet -come to the fore in current discussion is perhaps -because the technique of contraception is still in -the experimental stage, perhaps because in popular -consciousness the morality of contraception in -itself is not fully established. How is it going to -be established? I doubt if through rationalism -or rationalistic propaganda. Social changes, we -begin to know, are rarely due to deliberation, in -any society. In our society they are due mainly -to economic causes. Housing congestion in New<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> -York will in time affect birth-control legislation -in Albany; and fear of an overpopulated world -will drive church as well as state into a new attitude -toward multiplying to the glory of God.</p> - -<p>As in birth control so in other matters of sex -intimacy the growth of cities and the complexity -of our economy may be the more potent factors -of change. In very large communities there is -an ignorance of the personal relations of others, -an inevitable ignoring which contributes unconsciously -to tolerance toward experiment and -variation in sex relations. Indifference to the -private life of others is almost an exigency of our -economic organization. Attention is directed to -the efficiency of the personality encountered and -away from the individual means taken to induce -that efficiency. What difference does it make to -an employer how clerk or stenographer lives -after hours provided he or she is competent, -alert, and responsive to the business need? In -office or in factory one may be but a cog in the -machine and yet left larger personal freedom -than in a more independent job in a small place -or than in a household. Out of such urban influences—negatively, -of indifference, and positively,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span> -of attention to personality <em>per se</em>—come -opportunities for personal freedom that will set -men and women to ordering their sex life to -please themselves rather than to please society. -That is, ordinary men and women; certain outstanding -figures will have to continue to forego -freedom. The President of the United States, -presidents of banks or colleges, cinematograph -stars, “society ladies,” now and again a clergyman -or a prize-fighter—all these will continue to -be observed closely in their private life, and, like -the gods and goddesses of other cultures or times, -will have to conform to popular preconceptions -of marriage or celibacy, chastity or libertinism. -For them, as for other personages in folk-lore, -individual adjustment or variation would be out -of the picture.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p> - - -<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Dr. Ogburn informs me that his recent and still unpublished -analysis of the census of 1920 shows that in localities where birth -control is presumedly practiced the marriage rate mounts. He -states also that in the country at large there has been a higher -marriage rate in the last census decade and that the age at marriage -is earlier.</p> - -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Toward">Toward Monogamy</h2> -</div> - -<p class="p0 center">By Charlotte Perkins Gilman</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span></p> -<h3 class="nobreak" id="Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman">Charlotte Perkins Gilman</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>feminist, philosopher, writer was born at Hartford, -Conn., July 3rd, 1860. Editor of the</i> Forerunner -<i>1909-1916; Author of “Women and Economics,” -1898; “In This, Our World,” 1898; “The Yellow -Wall-Paper,” 1899; “Concerning Children,” 1900; -“The Home, Its Work and Influence,” 1903; -“Human Work,” 1904; “What Diantha Did,” -1910; “The Man-Made World,” 1910; “The -Crux,” 1911; “Moving the Mountain,” 1911; -“His Religion and Hers,” 1923.</i></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">TOWARD MONOGAMY</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN</p> - - -<p>Physiologists tell us that in all our long ages -of animal evolution we have not yet completed -the physical changes incident to assuming an -erect posture. Psychologists may as plainly see -that in the short centuries of social evolution we -have naturally failed to complete the changes -incident to our growth from tribal to national -and international relationships.</p> - -<p>Since we remained savages for some 90 per -cent of the period of human life on earth, it is -to be expected that the long-practiced tribal -morals should have modified our characters -more deeply than those evolved in the recent, -varied, and fluctuating relationship of larger -range. Yet we see, during the short period of -progressive civilization, such swift and amazing -development in some lines, such achievement in -knowledge, in wealth, in ability, in breadth of -thought, and nobility of feeling that our coincident<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> -stupidity and senseless misbehavior call for -explanation.</p> - -<p>The main reason for this peculiar delay and -irregularity in social evolution is that it has been -limited to half the race, the other half being -restricted to domestic industry and to the still -lower level of misused sex. Our specialized -knowledge, power, and skill are developed -through the organic relationships of the social -group; as are also those characteristics of mutual -loyalty and love, of truth, honor, and courage -which are as natural to a human society as the -distinctive virtues of ants or beavers to their -groups.</p> - -<p>Humanity’s major error, the exploitation of -the female by the male, has not only kept her at -the lowest step in social progress—solitary hand-labor -in and for the family—but has resulted in -excessive sex-development through prolonged -misuse. This has made her ultra-feminine, to -a degree often injurious to motherhood; and him -ultra-masculine, his social advance confused, impeded, -and repeatedly destroyed by his excessive -emotions. In social morals he has of course outdistanced -her, as he alone has entered into the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span> -relationships which develop them; but he has -carefully exempted his essentially male activities -from this elevating influence, maintaining that -“all’s fair in love and war.” Of her, domestic -morality demanded but one virtue, sex-loyalty; -her mate or master taking it upon himself to be -both judge and executioner in case of failure. -She might be a liar and a coward, lazy, selfish, -extravagant, or cruel, but if chaste these traits -were overlooked. If unchaste, no array of other -virtues was enough to save her. In her household -labors she developed minor virtues natural -to the position; a tireless industry, an instinct -for cleanliness and order, with great capacity -for self-denial and petty economy. Speaking -broadly, of a race where the young, though -necessarily inheriting from both parents, yet are -divided almost from birth in training and experience, -it may be said that the social virtues -have belonged to men, the domestic virtues to -women.</p> - -<p>Our present age, counting the incredible advance -of the last century and the swift fruition -of these immediate years, shows among its newly -distinguishing social movements one of supreme<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> -importance. Within a hundred years women, in -most civilized countries, have moved from domestic -into social relationship. Such a sudden -and enormous change, while inherently for the -improvement of society, is naturally accompanied -by much local and immediate dislocation -in previously accepted conditions. Many are -alarmed at what is considered “the danger to the -home” resultant from the refusal of an increasing -number of women to spend their lives as -house-servants; they fear “the menace to the -family” due to similarly increasing numbers of -women who refuse compulsory motherhood; -they are shocked at a looseness, even grossness, -of behavior between the sexes which seems to -threaten marriage itself. Few seem able to look -beyond the present inconveniences to a specialized -efficiency in household management which -will raise the standard of public health and private -comfort, with large reduction in the cost of -living; to such general improvement in child-culture -as will lift the average of citizenship -and lower the death-rate appreciably; and to a -rational and permanent basis for our monogamous -marriage.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p> - -<p>To understand rightly this trying period, to -be patient with its unavoidable reactions and excesses, -to know what tendencies to approve and -promote and what to condemn and oppose, requires -some practical knowledge of biology and -sociology. Men, though as yet beyond women -in social morality, are unreliable judges in this -time of change because their ox is gored—they -are the ones who are losing a cherished possession. -The overdeveloped sex instinct of men, -requiring more than women were willing to -give, has previously backed its demands by an -imposing array of civil and religious laws requiring -feminine submission, has not scrupled -to use force or falsehood, and held final power -through the economic dependence of women. -It is easy to see that if women had been equally -willing no such tremendous machinery of compulsion -need have been evolved.</p> - -<p>But now that the woman no longer admits that -“he shall rule over her,” and is able to modify -the laws; now that she has become braver, and -above all is attaining financial freedom, her -previous master has no hold upon her beyond -natural attraction and—persuasion. Toward<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> -this end he manifests an instant and vigorous activity. -Whereas in the past women were taught -that they had no such “imperative instincts” as -men, and the wooer, even the husband, sought to -preserve this impression, now it is quite otherwise. -All that elaborate theory of feminine -chastity, that worship of virginity, goes by the -board, and women are given a reversed theory—that -they are just the same as men, if not more so; -our “double standard” is undoubled and ironed -flat—to the level of masculine desire.</p> - -<p>Clothed in the solemn, newly invented terms -of psychoanalysis, a theory of sex is urged upon -us which bases all our activities upon this one -function. It is exalted as not only an imperative -instinct, but as <em>the</em> imperative instinct, no others -being recognized save the demands of the stomach. -Surely never was a more physical theory -disguised in the technical verbiage of “psychology.” -We should not too harshly blame the -ingenious mind of man for thinking up a new -theory to retain what the old ones no longer -assured him; nor too severely criticize the subject -class, so newly freed, for committing the same -excesses, the same eager imitations of the previous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> -master, which history shows in any recently -enfranchised people. Just as women have imitated -the drug-habits of men, without the faintest -excuse or reason, merely to show that they can, -so are they imitating men’s sex habits, in large -measure. Those who go too far in such excesses -will presumably die without issue, doing no permanent -harm to the stock. This wild excitement -over sex, as if it were a new discovery peculiar -to our time, will be allayed by further knowledge. -Even a little study of the common facts -of nature has a cooling and heartening influence.</p> - -<p>The essential facts are these: That all living -forms show the tendency to maintain and to -reproduce themselves; that some, in differing -degree, show tendencies to vary and to improve; -that after an immense period of reproduction -without it (showing that as the “life force” it -was quite unnecessary) the distinction of sex appeared -as a means to freer variation and improvement; -that the male characteristics of -intense desire for the female, personal display, -and intermasculine combat, as well as the female’s -instinct of selection, are visible contributions -to the major purpose of improvement; that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> -in the higher and later life-forms further and -more rapid improvement has been made through -the development in the female of new organs -and functions for the benefit of the young; -through her alone have come the upward steps -of viviparous birth, the marsupial pouch, and -that crowning advantage, the mammary glands; -the female solely is responsible for the development -of nature’s aristocracy, Order Mammalia.</p> - -<p>In the human species she adds to her previous -contributions to racial progress the invention of -our primitive industries, which were evolved by -her in service to the young, and later carried out -by men into the trades and crafts which support -human life. In the developing care and nurture -of her children she laid the foundation for those -social functions of government, education, and -coöperative industry which are so vitally important -to social progress that we have called the -family “the unit of the state.”</p> - -<p>This is an error. The family is the prototype -of the state, a tiny primitive state in itself, often -quite inimical to the interests of the larger state -which has developed through the wider interaction -of individuals. The state does not elect<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span> -families, tax families, punish families, nor thrive -where physical inheritance is made the basis of -authority. Where the family persists too powerfully, -as in China, there is a commensurate lack -in the vitality and efficiency of the state. By -restricting women to the family relationship, -with its compulsory woman service and domestic -morality, we have checked and perverted social -growth by keeping out of it the most effective -factor in that growth, the mother.</p> - -<p>The world having been for so long dominated -by the individualistic and combative male, with -that vast increment of masculine thought and -emotion embodied in our literature, our religion, -our art, modifying all our ideals, it is not to be -wondered at that the newly freed women are -as yet unable to see their opportunity, their -power, and their long-prevented sex duty—race -improvement.</p> - -<p>The collapse of the arbitrary and unjust domestic -morality of the past will presently be followed -by recognition of the social morality of -the future. Rightly discarding artificial standards -of virtue based on the pleasure of men, we -shall establish new ones based on natural law.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> -Repudiating their duty to an owner and master, -women have yet to accept and fulfill their duty -to society, to the human race. This is not generally -clear to them. In their legitimate rebellion -against domestic service and compulsory -sex-service they almost inevitably confuse these -things with marriage, with which indeed they -have been long synonymous. Some of our most -valuable women, as well as many of negligible -importance, speak of marriage as if it were an -invention of Queen Victoria. Surely no excessive -education is needed to learn that monogamy, -among many of the higher carnivora and birds, -is as natural a form of sex union as the polygamy -of the grass eaters or the promiscuity among insects, -reptiles, and fish. Monogamy appears -when it is to the advantage of the young to have -the continued care of both parents. This means -that the parents share in the activities of supporting -the family; it does not mean that the female -becomes the servant of the male. Because of the -united activities and mutual services of the pair -love is developed, and stays. Such profound -affection is found in some of these natural “marriages” -that if one of a pair is killed the other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> -will not mate again. Mated leopards or ostriches -do not remain together because they are “Victorian” -or “puritanical,” but because they like -to. They could form as many and as variegated -“free unions” as Greenwich Villagers if they -choose; there is nothing to stop them.</p> - -<p>But natural monogamy is as free from sex -service as from domestic service. The pairing -species adhere to their mating season as do the -polygamous ones, or even the promiscuous. -Man is the only animal using this function out of -season and apart from its essential purpose. -These natural monogamists are not “ascetics.” -They are not dominated by religious doctrine -or civil law. They fulfill their natural desires -with the utmost freedom, but these desires do -not move them out of season.</p> - -<p>The human species, with all its immense advantages, -has made many conspicuous missteps. -Its eating habits are such as to have induced a -wide assortment of wholly unnecessary diseases; -its drinking habits are glaringly injurious; and -its excessive indulgence in sex-waste has imperiled -the life of the race.</p> - -<p>Domestic morality vaguely recognized some<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> -duty to society and sought through religion to -limit masculine desires or at least to restrict -their indulgence to marriage. But the desires -of a vigorous polygamist are not easily restricted -to one wife; and our polygamous period was far -longer than that of the recently established -monogamy. It is a most reassuring fact in social -evolution that monogamy, naturally belonging to -our species, has persisted among the common -people and in popular ideals: even in “The -Arabian Nights” the love story is always about -one man and one woman, never of the mad -passion for a harem! So with the accelerated -progress of recent centuries monogamous union -becomes accepted, and is carefully buttressed by -the law, while religion, with commandments and -ceremonies, does its best to establish “the sanctity -of marriage.” But as religion, law, and family -authority were all in the hands of men, they -naturally interpreted that sanctity to suit themselves, -ignored the religious restrictions, and so -handled the law as to apply its penalties to but -one party in a dual offense.</p> - -<p>Social morality requires the promotion of such -lines of conduct as are beneficial to the maintenance<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> -and improvement of society. It will demand -of both man and woman the full development -of personal health and vigor, careful selection -of the best mate by both, with recognition -on her side of special responsibility as the natural -arbiter. It will encourage such sex relations as -are proved advantageous both to individual -happiness and to the race. We are as yet so hag-ridden -by domestic morality, with its arbitrary -restrictions, and by the threats and punishments -of law and religion, that we shrink from the -broader biological judgment as if it involved -blame, punishment, compulsory reform. Not at -all. Men and women are no more to blame for -being oversexed than a prize hog for being over-fat. -The portly pig is not sick or wicked, he is -merely overdeveloped in adipose tissue. Our -condition does not call for condemnation, nor can -we expect any sudden and violent change in our -behavior resting on foolish ideals of celibacy, of -self-denial, or of “sublimated sex.” It will take -several generations of progressive selection, with -widely different cultural influences, to reëstablish -a normal sex development in <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">genus homo</i>, -with its consequences in happier marriage, better<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> -children, and wide improvement in the public -health.</p> - -<p>It is to this end, with all its widening range -of racial progress, that social morality tends.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Women_Free">Women—Free for What?</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Edwin Muir</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span></p> -<h3>Edwin Muir,</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>poet and essayist, has been assistant editor of the</i> -New Age (<i>London</i>) <i>as well as dramatic critic for -the</i> Scotsman <i>and the</i> Athenæum. <i>He was a frequent -contributor to</i> The Freeman.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">WOMEN—FREE FOR WHAT?</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY EDWIN MUIR</p> - - -<p>In the beginning of the Scottish Shorter -Catechism there is a beautiful affirmation. “The -chief end of man,” it says, “is to glorify God and -enjoy Him forever.”</p> - -<p>To any one nourished on the literature and -thought of the last half-century that sentence, -which defines the chief purpose of life as praise -and enjoyment, comes like an audacious blasphemy, -a blasphemy, however, bringing light -and freedom. The terms of the dogma are a -little antiquated now, but it would be easy to restate -them in modern language. For “God” we -might substitute “nature and man” or, if we -were metaphysically inclined, “God in nature -and man.” The authors of the Shorter Catechism, -entangled as they were in a gloomy theology, -recognized that the significance of life -cannot reside in the labor by which men maintain -it, but in some kind of realization of ourselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> -and of the world which is the highest -enjoyment conceivable of both.</p> - -<p>Let us go back for a few decades and see if we -can catch the values of our time confusedly shaping -themselves within the framework of human -life. I say shaping themselves, for as Nietzsche -said fifty years ago, the time of the conscious -valuers has passed; our values for a century -have not been created, they have happened. -They happened because men had become skeptical -not merely of God, or of the existence of a -moral order, but of life itself, and could not set -before themselves any purpose justifying life, -but only its bare mechanism, work, duty, the -preservation of society. It has been, thus, one -of the main achievements of modern thought to -banish from the world the notion of enjoyment. -This was begun first in a philosophical way by -the utilitarians, who were reasonably convinced -that, factories existing for the first time as far -as they knew in history, it was incumbent on men -to work in them. A fine philosophy, truly; yet -men believed in it. After the utilitarians came -the advocates of self-help, who showed that the -utilitarian policy might not be without individual<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span> -advantage; that if one cut off one’s pleasures, -or at least those which cost money, one -might win a bizarre, undreamed-of success. -The anchorites of wealth arose, the great men -who, when they had acquired riches which -might have built a new Florence, if scarcely a -new Jerusalem, could make no use of them, -preferring to teach in Sunday-schools and endow -universities. In the eyes of these men -wealth was justified only if it could not be enjoyed, -for enjoyment was the one thing which -went against all their ideas, all those instincts -which had set them where they stood. Wealth, -thus, could not be enjoyed, could not be used, -for when they had reached their end the means -still remained means.</p> - -<p>The disciples of Smiles have disappeared; -men get rich in other ways now; nevertheless a -whole view of life has been left behind which -we have not fundamentally questioned. The -Victorians established the basis of morals in -utility; we have come to the stage when we imagine -that the basis of life itself is utility. For -recreation as an end in itself we have so little -appreciation that even sport has become a kind<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span> -of duty, and nothing is more devastating than the -scorn of a conscientious athlete for those who, -enjoying perfectly good health, do not go to the -trouble of keeping themselves fit. A little unpremeditated -pleasure still persists in our common -lives, in fox-trotting, drinking, and revues, -but it is without either taste or resource; it is -not expression but simply relaxation, an amusing -way of being tired. The one thing that -people will not pardon is the taking of pleasure -seriously as an end in itself. The æsthete, at the -Renaissance a type of the opulence of life, and -quite a common, indeed an expected type, is in -our day an aberration demanding our satire -when once we have overcome our indignation. -Nothing shows more disastrously how incapable -we are of entertaining the conviction that life in -itself, apart from the labor necessary to make it -possible, is a thing worth living. Even art has -justified itself for several decades chiefly by its -social utility, and only now, against strong opposition, -is it escaping from the barriers set up -by the generation overawed by <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Shaw and -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Wells. The notion that men may be on the -earth for something else than sweating is dead.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span> -We have arrived at an amazing incapacity for -joy; and life is to us always less worth living -than it should be.</p> - -<p>This exaltation of means has brought about a -general instrumentalization of life. It weighs -heavily upon men; but upon women its weight -is crushing, for women have not such a ready -capacity as men for transforming themselves -to the image of their functions, and they disfigure -themselves more in the attempt. Consequently, -as woman has taken a large and larger -part in our tentative and unsatisfactory civilization -she has undergone, in fact and in people’s -minds, a distorting process. It is true, woman, -lovely woman, the fair charmer, has passed -away; but we are hardly better off now when she -has become a term like economics. After the -economic man has come the economic woman; -that is, an entity almost as useful as machinery, -and for the inner culture of mankind almost as -uninteresting.</p> - -<p>How, in striving for emancipation, woman has -reached such a dismal stage in her development -is one of the saddest stories of our time. The -age is an age of work; woman desires freedom,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> -the right of every human being; and freedom -in such an age can only mean the freedom to -work. But to work, except in a few vocations -such as art, is in our time to specialize oneself, -and the freedom of women has necessarily resolved -itself into a permission to do little things -which can give them no final satisfaction. Their -freedom is bounded by the slavery under which -men, too, suffer; and in changing their occupations -they have not escaped from the cage, but -only out of one compartment of it into another, -a little more cheerless than the first. They have -achieved a little more liberty than they had before; -but this liberty is disenchanting because -it leaves them as far away as ever from the full -liberty of their spirit. Perhaps in no other age -has woman been, in a deep, instinctive sense, so -skeptical as she is at present.</p> - -<p>And for all this the age—an age in which -labor has a fantastic prominence—is responsible; -for it is in a time when everybody works, -and when there is nothing conceivable that one -can do but work, that the cantankerous question -of inequality arises. Only in a race can one be -slower than another; only then does the necessity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> -to become as good a runner as the fastest -come home poignantly to every one. But if it -should happen that life is not a race at all? -Where leisure is regarded as a more important -thing than work and work falls into its proper, -subordinate place as the mere means to leisure -one does not think very much about inequality, -for it has no longer any urgent importance. Nor -does one set much value, except in superficials, -on uniformity. Among people free from crushing -labor (as the whole human race may some -time be) there has always been delight in diversity -and scorn for uniformity; for, to people -enjoying their spirit and the world, diversity -even when it is exasperating is of infinite interest, -giving a satisfying sense of the richness of -life.</p> - -<p>Comedy—and comedy is idleness tolerantly -enjoying itself—is founded, it has been said, -upon a recognition of the equality of the sexes; -but it would be more just to say that it is founded -upon a view of life into which the notions of -equality and inequality do not enter at all, because -they are unnecessary. To Congreve and -Stendhal women were not the inferior sex, for,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> -in spite of the conventions in which ostensibly -they moved, they were free, and therefore interesting. -And remote as these figures are from -us, they demonstrate a very useful truth, that the -way to get over our stupid obsession with inequality -is to reach a stage where diversity will -be the norm, involving disadvantage to no one. -Toward that stage, which can only be made possible -by a more general leisure, we are moving, -if what the reformers and the scientists tell us is -true. It will be a stage in which rules will have -more importance than laws and spontaneous actions -than obligations; and most of the things -we do will be regarded as play rather than duty. -Conduct will probably be about a fourth of life, -instead of the three-fourths postulated by Matthew -Arnold. And although this state has not -come yet and may not come for a long time, it -would be as sensible to found a philosophy upon -it as upon a period of transition as dismal and -impermanent as ours. Moreover the values of -the past are against us as well as those of the -future which we imagine. There is a certain -ignobility in the dispute over human inequality, -a failure to rise to the human level. It is not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> -a question but a misunderstanding, which the -accumulated imaginative culture of the world -might have made impossible. A little sense of -the richness of life would disperse it. Who -would be so fantastic as to say that Falstaff is -greater or less than Ophelia, or whether Uncle -Toby is the exact equal of Anna Karenina? To -ask the question is to evoke at once an image of -the diverse riches of human nature and of the -poverty of mind which can reduce it to such -terms, destroying all interest and all nuance.</p> - -<p>But where our instrumental philosophy has -had the most grotesque effect has been upon our -conception of love. People have come to regard -love as merely a device for propagating the -race. Now this view of love is not new; it has -always been dear to the bourgeoisie, who have -always thought it a matter of immense moment -that they should have sons to carry on their businesses -when they were dead. It is the immemorial -philistine conception of love: the strange -thing is that it has been taken over by the intelligentsia -and glorified. This is in the strictest -sense a revolution in thought. No one who has -written beautifully of love has thought of it as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> -the intellectuals think. To Plato and Dante the -essence of love did not reside in procreation; nor -has procreation been anything but a divine accident -to the poets. And that is in the human tradition, -and probably in the natural order of -things; for it is possible that both love and procreation -are most perfect when they are unpremeditated, -and the child comes as a gift and a -surprise; for in the fruits of joy there is a principle -of exuberance which distinguishes them -from the fruits of duty.</p> - -<p>The intellectuals have destroyed the humanistic -conception of love as pure spontaneity, as -expression, by setting its justification not within -itself, but in the child. In “Man and Superman” -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Shaw makes Tanner say that if our -love did not produce another human being to -serve the community, the community would -have the sacred right of killing us off, just as the -hive kills off the drones who do not attain the -queen bee. But what does that mean? It means -that happiness is of no importance, that it is a -matter of the slightest moment whether, in a life -which will never be given to us again, we realize -some of the potentialities of our being or pass<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span> -through it blind to the end. If it is worth while -living at all, this must needs be the precise opposite -of the truth. The child, like everything else, -is justified; but it is not justified because it adds -to the potential wealth of society, but because it -adds to our present delight, and moreover lives a -life as valid as our own. The truth is that we -dare not admit that any pleasure whatever has a -right to exist without serving society, and serving -it deliberately. The joys of other generations -have become our duties; and it is significant -that <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Shaw and the bulk of the intelligentsia -are at one on the birth-rate with the -Roman Catholic Church, that church which has -on many occasions through its theologians affirmed -its belief that sensual love is a guilty -thing, and, using its own kind of logic, has exhorted -man to multiply and replenish the earth.</p> - -<p>“The chief end of man is to glorify God and -enjoy Him forever”; and that being so, it is -the task of those who are a little more serious -than the serious to set about discovering the principles -of glory and enjoyment in life. And—I -am setting down a truism—the main principle of -enjoyment for the human race is not art, nor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> -thought, nor the practice of virtue, but for man, -woman, and for woman, man. The exchange of -happiness between the sexes is not only the creative -agent in human life, perpetuating it; it is -also the thing which gives the perpetuation of -life its chief meaning. People have always felt -this vaguely; it has made labor endurable to -them; but hardly ever have they recognized it -clearly, and to the poets and artists who know it -they have always responded a little skeptically. -They have thought of love as a justification a -little too materialistic for life; but love is only -materialistic when it is regarded as a means.</p> - -<p>To accept men and women as ends in themselves, -to enter into their life as one of them, -is to partake of absolute life, that life which -at every moment realizes itself, existing for its -own sake. We cannot live in that life continuously; -for the accomplishment of the intricate -purposes of society we must at certain times and -with part of our minds regard our fellow-creatures -as instruments; but the more we tend -to do so the more we banish joy from life. Life -does not consist, whatever the utilitarians may -say, in functioning, but in living; and life comes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span> -into being where men and women, not as functions, -but as self-constituted entities, intersect. -This is the state which in religion as well as -art has been called life; this is the final life of -the earth, beyond which there is no other. We -may accept it or pass it by; but whatever we may -do with it, it is our chief end, giving meaning -to the multitudinous pains of humanity. This -commerce between men and women is not -merely sexual, in the narrow sense which we -have given the word; it involves every human -joy, all the thoughts and aspirations of mankind -stretching into infinity. It is the thing which -has inspired all great artists, mystical as well as -earthy. It is the point of reference for any -morality which is not a disguised kind of adaptation; -for virtue consists in the capacity to partake -freely of human happiness. All reform, -all economic and political theory has a meaning -in so far as it makes for this; and that was recognized -by the first reformers, the utopians who -had not yet become mere specialists in reform.</p> - -<p>The libertarian movement has been such a dismal -affair, thus, not because it has been too free, -but because it has not been free enough. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span> -democracies and the women of the world have -been potentially liberated; but not so very long -ago they were slaves, and they have still a slave’s -idea of freedom. Instead of equal joys they have -asked for equal obligations; and the whole -world is in the grip of a psychological incapacity -to escape from the idea of obligation. -Against the unreasonable solemnity which this -has imposed on everything there is little left for -us except a deliberate and reasonable light-heartedness; -this, and the faith that the human -race will some time attain the only kind of freedom -worth striving for, a freedom in joy.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Virtue">Virtue for Women</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Isabel Leavenworth</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h3> -Isabel Leavenworth -</h3> -<p class="p0"><i>is an instructor in philosophy at Barnard College</i>.<br /> -</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">VIRTUE FOR WOMEN</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY ISABEL LEAVENWORTH</p> - - -<p>In the turmoil of discussion regarding present -modes of sex life one can discern a pretty general -approval of just one element in the whole situation: -the ideal by which the good woman has for -so long been controlled. It is commonly held -that if changes are to be made they should be -in the direction of persuading men, and also the -few women who have been at fault, to be just -as good as our good women have always been. -Thus the young girl of to-day is criticized on -the ground that instead of raising men to her -level she is descending to theirs. Even those who -are inclined to belittle the damage which she is -doing to the social structure accompany their -mild defense with the consoling reminder that -human nature does not change and that in the -end the girl of to-day will turn out as well as did -the girls of yesterday; that is, she will finally<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> -come around to the good old feminine way of -doing things.</p> - -<p>It seems to me most unfortunate that the majority -of people hope to improve matters through -an extension of the feminine ideals of the past. -In the established scheme of things one finds a -peculiarly gross form of immorality, an immorality -incommensurably greater than the dreaded -evil of promiscuity; and it is only as an element -in this total scheme that woman’s ideals -have any significance. The fact that they -have always constituted one side of a “double -standard” is not merely something which may be -said about their relation to other elements after -their essential characteristics have been considered. -These characteristics can be described -only in terms of the double standard and of its -attendant evils. It would be as impossible, then, -to destroy the double standard and still keep the -feminine ideal intact as it would be to preserve -the convex nature of a mathematical curve while -destroying the concave. According to the present -system there is a standard of conduct set up -for women which is to constitute virtue. This -standard is a combination of specific positive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> -commands and, more especially, of specific prohibitions. -There are certain things which no -nice woman will do—a great many things, in -fact. She must learn them by heart and accept -them on faith as the Pythagoreans must have had -to learn their curious list of taboos, a list running -from the taboo against eating beans to that -against sitting on a quart measure. This ideal of -virtue does not apply with equal rigidity to men; -quite different things are expected of them and -accepted for them. It is obvious that two -such conflicting ideals by the very nature of their -combination will produce a class of women who -do not live up to the standard of virtue set them -as members of their sex. This class is not merely -an excrescence but an integral part of the situation -created by the total sex ideal of society. The -function of women of this class is to make possible -for men the way of life commonly considered -as suited to their sex and to make possible -a virtuous life for the remainder of womankind. -In fulfilling this function such women lose, in -the eyes of society, their moral nature and forfeit -the right to live within the pale of social morality. -They are considered unfit for normal social<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span> -intercourse and are denied those relationships -and responsibilities which ordinarily serve -as the basis for moral growth. From all normal -responsibility toward them society regards itself -as released. That which is personal, the inner -life, the character, the soul—whatever one prefers -to call it—having been sacrificed in the -service of the social scheme, one is to treat what -is left as of no value in itself, but merely -as an instrument to be used in the service of -man’s pleasure or woman’s virtue. The prostitute -is to society that one thing, defined by the -purpose which she serves, and that is all she is, -all she is allowed to be. The depersonalization, -the moral non-existence, one might call it, of a -large number of women is, then, implicit in the -social system currently accepted. It is not a -punishment meted out to those who fail to act in -accordance with the social scheme (though it is -as such, of course, that society defends it) but is -itself an absolutely essential element in the social -scheme, an element woven in and out through the -entire fabric of current sex morality.</p> - -<p>It is curious how many people feel that a -choice between the present system and any other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> -is reducible to a choice between different degrees -of promiscuity. Promiscuity would be an evil, -but it does not in itself involve this particular -immorality. The worst evils in the present situation -are due not to the “lower” half of the -double standard but to the doubleness itself.</p> - -<p>It is true that the ideal of womanly virtue is -only one element in the conventional system of -sex morality. But, like a Leibnitzian monad, -it reflects the whole universe within itself—the -universe of sex mores. It is in no real sense any -“higher” than the ideal by which men have -lived. They are warp and woof of the same -fabric. According to this ideal it is woman’s -prime duty to keep aloof from evil. This sounds -commendable enough. And it would be at least -innocuous if one could interpret it as meaning -that woman should hold herself aloof from some -imagined evil that would become existent were -she to embrace it. This is not, however, a possible -interpretation of the varied collection of -prohibitions which it is her duty to respect. -Their import is clearly enough that she is to keep -aloof from evil which is already existent, which -is an acknowledged part of her background. She<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span> -is to shun all of those vulgarities, coarsenesses, -and immoralities which are to enter into the -lives of men and for which, one is forced to -conclude, the “other” women are to provide. -And from this other class of women she is, of -course, to keep herself absolutely separate, distinct. -I recently heard an elderly Boston lady -make a remark which expresses the horror commonly -aroused by any conduct which endangers -the distinction between the two classes. “Do you -know,” she said, “I heard that a young man of -our set said he and his friends no longer had to -go to girls of another kind for their enjoyment. -They can get all they want from girls of their -own class.” This was the outrage. The nice -girls were allowing the classes to become confused. -Much the same attitude is revealed in -the frequent remark that the young girl of to-day -appears like “any chorus girl” or like any -“common woman.” The horrid picture is usually -rounded off with the comment that you -simply can’t tell the difference any more between -the nice girl and the other kind. One can -imagine that this might cause considerable inconvenience. -Each of the two classes of women<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span> -has served a special purpose and it is, to say the -least, disconcerting for a person not to know -which way to turn when he knows very well -which purpose he wants fulfilled.</p> - -<p>The precautions which a good woman takes to -preserve her purity are indeed legion. There -are places where no nice woman will go, situations -with which she must have no immediate -acquaintance, people with whom she must not -associate; there are various embodiments of evil, -in short, to which she must not expose herself. -That these evils should exist, that they should -be tolerated as meeting certain needs in the lives -of men and be made possible by other women—all -this the average good woman swallows without -repulsion, or, more commonly, ignores. She -is aroused to a state of true indignation only -when her own moral exclusiveness, or that of her -kind, is threatened. The same woman who -accepts with a good deal of equanimity the fact -that men she associates with also associate with -“gay” women would be considerably upset if -these men were to attempt to associate with both -kinds of women at the same time. Why is the -average woman so upset if a man of her acquaintance<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span> -makes “improper advances”? Is it that -she is horrified to find that he is willing to indulge -his irregular sex desires? No. She is -outraged because he thinks she is willing to -indulge hers, because he holds her virtue too -lightly. Sex evils, coarsenesses are then to be -part of the good woman’s environment in the -intimate sense that they often enter into the lives -of the men she accepts as friends, even of the men -with whom she is to have the most personal and -supposedly ideal relationships. Her sole function -is to turn her back on these evils. The point -of prime importance to her is that they should -not pollute her; and the first demand which -she makes upon men is that they shall show -their respect for this ideal by keeping her apart.</p> - -<p>The acceptance of this situation is implied in -the ideals which are passed down to girls by the -good old-fashioned parent. Do the mothers who -insist that their daughters shall not go with boys -on certain occasions and at certain hours unchaperoned -expect boys to refrain from seeing any -girls except on occasions thus carefully timed -and adequately supervised? I doubt it. Whatever -their expectations may be, it is certain that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span> -they would rather that the good girl should cling -to protection, letting the man seek gayety where -he may, than that she should take the chance -involved in seeking gayety by his side. They -would rather have what they consider the evil -sex element taken care of by men and by a class -of women devoted by society to that purpose -than to risk any slip in conduct on the part of -their own daughters. Purity purchased at such -a price may be purity in some magical sense, -similar to that secured in the ancient mysteries -by passing through fire or going in bathing with -sacred pigs. Purity in any moral sense it certainly -is not. It is simply a social asset, like -physical beauty or pleasing accomplishments, so -tremendously valuable to woman that for it she -has been willing to pay any moral price, however -degrading. Its non-moral character is revealed -in the common assumption that any man -can, without injury to himself, pass through experiences -or be placed in situations from which, -since they would pollute her, every good woman -must be guarded. This assumption, so obviously -insulting to women, is at present complacently -accepted by them as something of a compliment.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span></p> - -<p>William Graham Sumner in his remarkably -unemotional and objective treatment of social -customs devotes some pages to a description of -the houses of prostitution established and run by -the cities of medieval Europe “in the interest -of virtuous women.” In this connection <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> -Sumner for once indulges in terms of opprobrium, -judging the custom as “the most incredible -case” illustrating “the power of the mores -to extend toleration and sanction to an evil -thing.” The inmates of these houses were dedicated -entirely to this special function, wore distinctive -dress, and were taboo to all “good” -women whose virtue, according to the scheme -of things, they made possible. Authority for -such a custom can be found, as Sumner points -out, in Saint Augustine, the reformed rake. -“The bishop,” writes Sumner, “has laid down -the proposition that evil things in human society, -under the great orderly scheme of things which -he was trying to expound, are overruled to produce -good.” Is not this the position taken by -people who hold that it is better to have prostitution -in order to provide for the assumed sex<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span> -irregularity of men than to risk the loss of a -woman’s “virtue” through the removal of those -conventions and taboos which prevent her from -coping with the situation herself and making her -own moral decisions? I can see no difference. -Has man at any period of his checkered moral -career devised a more unpleasant method of saving -his own soul? The good woman sits serenely -on the structure upheld for her by prostitutes -and occasionally even commits the absurdity of -attempting to “reform” these women, the necessity -for whose existence is implied by the beliefs -according to which she herself lives.</p> - -<p>It is hard to follow the mental processes of -those persons who, while deploring the increased -freedom allowed women and the tendency to -judge them less severely, still claim belief in a -single standard for both sexes. In so far as woman’s -virtue consists in aloofness from the evils -which the double standard implies it quite obviously -cannot be adopted as the single standard -by which all members of society are to live. -Even aside from this consideration it would seem -to be as undesirable as it is impossible to extend -to men the traditions and restrictions which have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span> -for so long governed women. Does any one -really wish to have grown boys constantly accompanied -and watched over by their elders? -Does any one wish that the goings and comings -of men should be as specifically determined as -those of women have always been? Should we -look forward to a day when a man will be judged -as good or bad on the sole basis of whether or -not he has ever had any irregular sex relation?</p> - -<p>One would think that the suspicions of even -the most uncritical might be aroused by the -rigidly absolute and impersonal nature of women’s -sex ideals. The notion of purity as lying in -the abstention from a particular act except under -carefully prescribed circumstances has all the -marks of a primitive taboo and none of the characteristics -of a rational moral principle. The -ideals of woman’s honor and chastity have without -doubt been built up in answer to human -wants—the defense which is invariably given of -customs, good or bad. Probably those sociologists -are not far wrong who hold that they have -developed as a response, in early times, to the -sentiments of man as a property owner; later, -in response to masculine vanity and jealousy,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span> -though these motives have, of course, been idealized -beyond all recognition. We need not be -surprised, then, to find that they bear no relation -to an interest in woman’s spiritual welfare and -growth, an interest to which society is only now -giving birth with pitiable pains of labor. To -follow an ideal which almost entirely excludes -sex interest as something evil is to condemn one -of the richest elements in personal experience. -And this ideal has regulated not only woman’s -sex experience but has demanded and received -incalculable sacrifices in all the phases of her -life, mercilessly limiting the sphere of her activities, -smothering interests of value and nourishing -others to an unnatural state of development, -and warping her character to satisfy its most -exacting demands. Because she must first of all -conform to an unpolluted archetype, and because -society must be secure in the knowledge that she -is indeed so conforming, she has never been able -to meet life freely, to make what experience she -could out of circumstances, to poke about here -and there in the nooks and crannies of her surroundings -better to understand the world in -which she lives. We find here a more subtle but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span> -more deadly limitation than exclusion from institutions -of learning or from political privileges. -And under this limitation woman has labored in -the service of a paltry ideal.</p> - -<p>Not only is it undesirable that men should attempt -to follow such an ideal but it is quite -obvious that as long as they accept it as adequate -for women they are prevented in innumerable -ways from developing intelligent principles for -their own guidance. For one thing, they will -come to look upon the sex element in most of its -forms as a moral evil. Experience tells them, -however, that it is, in their own case, a natural -good. Thus they are led to accept a distinction -fatal to moral integrity and progress. The sex -element is admitted to the life of the average -man by the back door; once within, it has fair run -of the establishment though it is always looked -on askance by the other members of the household. -Sex interests are to be recognized and indulged -but divorced from all that is “fine” and -“ideal.” They are considered desirable though -immoral and so are to be tolerated just to the -extent that they are divorced from those elements -in society—the family, the home, and good<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span> -women—which are supposed to embody virtue. -It is not realized that virtue, far from being a -rival of the other good things of life, is to be -attained only through an intelligent interest in -good things, and that to divorce moral from natural -good is to deal a death blow to both. We -cannot wonder that at present sex interest so -often expresses itself in the form of dubious -stories, coarse revues, and degrading physical -relations. While the “good” woman who considers -sex somehow lowering is apt to develop a -personality which is anemic and immature, the -man who accepts the conventional scheme of life -develops a personality coarse and uncoördinated.</p> - -<p>I do not mean to say that there have been no -elements of value in the ideal of purity by which -some women have lived. It is undoubtedly true -that unregulated and impersonal sex desires and -activities quarrel with more stable and fruitful -interests in life. But while the most valuable -experiences of love are, in general, to be found -in more lasting relations, it does not follow that -society should prescribe for every one of its -members a particular line of sex conduct and -attempt to see, through constant supervision, that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span> -its prescriptions are carried out. The sacrifice -in terms of freedom of activity and experience is -too great and the living flower of personal purity -cannot be manufactured by any such artificial -methods.</p> - -<p>The sex relations of an individual should no -more be subjected to social regulation than his -friendships. There is indeed a closely related -matter for which he is immediately responsible -to society—that is the welfare of any children -resulting from such relations. The two matters -are, however, quite distinguishable and no one -could hold that the effort which society makes to -control sex relations is to any extent based upon -concern for the welfare of possible offspring. If -this were so, one would not hear so much condemnation -of birth-control measures on the -ground that they “encourage immorality.” No. -It is personal experience which society would -like to prescribe for its members, personal virtue -that it would like to mold for them. But virtue -is not a predetermined result, a kind of spiritual -dessert that any one can cook up who will follow -with due care the proper ethical receipt. It is,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span> -on the contrary, something which is never twice -alike; something which appears in ever new and -lovely forms as the fruit of harmoniously developed -elements in a unique character complex. -Experience cannot be defined in terms of external -circumstances and bodily acts and thus -judged as absolutely good or bad. Sex experiences, -like other experiences, can be judged of -only on the basis of the part which they play in -the creative drama of the individual soul. There -are as many possibilities for successful sex life as -there are men and women in the world. A significant -single standard can be attained only -through the habit of judging every case, man or -woman, in the light of the character of the individual -and of the particular circumstances in -which he or she is placed.</p> - -<p>From the changes taking place in sex morality -we may, with sufficient wisdom and courage, win -inestimable gains. Certainly we should be grateful -that young people are forming the habit of -meeting this old problem in a quite new way—that -is, with the coöperation of the two sexes. In -the interest of this newer approach we should<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span> -accord to girls as much freedom from immediate -supervision as we have always given to boys. The -old restrictions, imposed upon girls alone, imply, -of course, the double standard with all its attendant -evils; imply the placid acceptance of two -essentially different systems of value; imply the -preference for physical purity over personal responsibility -and true moral development. We -should encourage the daughters of to-day in their -fast developing scorn for the “respect” which -our feminine predecessors thought was their due—a -respect which man was expected to reveal in -the habit of keeping the nice woman untouched -by certain rather conspicuous elements, interests, -and activities in his own life. In so far as there -is something truly gay in these aspects of life, -something which men know at the bottom of -their hearts they should not be called on to forego, -there is much that women can learn. Most -people to-day hold in their minds an image of two -worlds—one of gayety and freedom, the other of -morality. It is because gayety and morality are -thus divorced that gayety becomes sordidness, -morality dreariness. Not until men and women -develop together the legitimate interests which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span> -both of these worlds satisfy will the present inconsistency -and hypocrisy be done away with and -both men and women be free to achieve, if they -can, rich and unified personal lives.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Where">Where Are the Female Geniuses?</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Sylvia Kopald</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span></p> -<h3>Sylvia Kopald</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>is primarily a specialist in labor and the author of -a recent study of outlaw strikes, “Rebellion in -Labor Unions.”</i></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">WHERE ARE THE FEMALE -GENIUSES?</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY SYLVIA KOPALD</p> - - -<p>Many years ago, Voltaire was initiated into -the mysteries of Newton by <abbr title="madame">Mme.</abbr> du Châtelet. -Finishing her translation and her rich commentary -upon the <i>Principles</i>, in a glow he extended -to her the greatest tribute which man has yet -found for exceptional women. He said, “A -woman who has translated and illuminated -Newton is, in short, a very great man.” Genius -has long been a masculine characteristic, although -some more generous authors admit its -possession by certain “depraved” women. Only -the courtesans of classical antiquity could be -women and individuals at once, and, therefore, -Jean Finot found it necessary to remind us -emphatically even in 1913 that “women of genius -and talent are not necessarily depraved.” Not -necessarily, mind you. No, the great woman -may be, in short, a great man, but she is not -necessarily depraved.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span></p> - -<p>As the twentieth century progresses and -women capture the outposts of individuality one -after the other, the old questions lose much of -their old malignancy. Women battle with the -problem of how to combine a home and a career -and men become less sure (especially in these -days of high living costs) that woman’s place is -in the home. As women enter the trades and the -arts and the professions, men begin to discover -comrades where there were only girls and wives -and mothers before. It is an exciting century, -this women’s century, and even though prejudices -crumble slowly, they crumble. Yet one of -the old questions remains, stalwart and unyielding -as ever: Where are the female geniuses?</p> - -<p>Even a pessimist may find cause for rejoicing -in this final wording of the “woman question.” -Man’s search for the female genius is more consoling -than his sorrowful quest for the snows of -yesteryear. For snows, like all beauty, have a -way of melting with time; a mind ripens and -mellows with age. Granted a mind which it is -no longer a shame or a battle to develop, women -can look upon the passing of the years with at -least as great an equanimity as does man. She<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span> -remains in the picture of life long after the -Maker’s paints have begun to dry. And that is -good. But as long as the female geniuses remain -undiscovered, it must be also a bit insecure. -Women may have minds—every average man -will now grant that. But (he will quickly ask) -have they ever much more than average minds? -Look at history, which this time really does -prove what you want it to. Every high peak in -the historic landscape is masculine. Point them -out just as they occur to you: Shakespeare, -Dante, Goethe, Virgil, Horace, Catullus, Plato, -Socrates, Newton, Darwin, Pasteur, Watt, Edison, -Steinmetz, Heine, Shelley, Keats, Beethoven, -Wagner, Bach, Tolstoi....</p> - -<p>Where are the <em>female</em> geniuses?</p> - -<p>It has really become much more than a question -of feminist conversation. Science has attempted -to put its seal of approval upon the implied -answer to this rhetorical question. It has -sought to put the notion that “a woman is only a -woman, but a genius is a man,” into impressively -scientific lingo. The argument goes something -like this: In regard to practically all anatomical, -physiological, and psychic characteristics, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> -male exhibits a greater variability (i.e. a greater -range of spreading down from and up above the -average) than the female. The male is the agent -of variation; the female is the agent of type conservation. -This sex difference operates in the -realm of mental ability as everywhere. In any -comparable group of men and women, the distribution -of intelligence will tend to follow the -law of chances (Gaussian Curve). But female -intelligence will cluster far more about its average -than male. There will be more imbeciles -and idiots among men, but there will also be -more geniuses. It is really very simple, as the -following arbitrary example will show. Supposing -you take comparable sample groups of -1000 men and 1000 women from a given population. -After testing them for grade of intelligence, -you classify them according to previously -accepted “intelligence classes.” Your results -would tend to read a little like this:</p> - -<table class="autotable"> -<tr> -<th class="tdc"><i>Intelligence Class</i> -</th> -<th class="tdc"><i>Number Men</i> -</th> -<th class="tdc"><i>Number Women</i> -</th> -</tr> -<tr> -<td> -Idiots -</td> -<td class="tdr"> -10 -</td> -<td class="tdr"> -3 -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td> -Inferior -</td> -<td class="tdr">100 -</td> -<td class="tdr">50</td></tr> -<tr> -<td> -Slow -</td> -<td class="tdr">200 -</td> -<td class="tdr">150</td></tr> -<tr> -<td> -Average -</td> -<td class="tdr">380 -</td> -<td class="tdr">595</td></tr> -<tr> -<td> -Able -</td> -<td class="tdr">200 -</td> -<td class="tdr">150</td></tr> -<tr> -<td> -Highly Talented -</td> -<td class="tdr">100 -</td> -<td class="tdr">52</td></tr> -<tr> -<td> -Geniuses -</td> -<td class="tdr">10 -</td> -<td class="tdr">..</td></tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span></p> - -<p>Of course none of the proponents of this theory -would state the alleged facts of man’s greater -variability in such bald terms. But all of them -would agree that men do vary more than women -and in some such fashion. In this greater variability -they see the explanation of men’s monopoly -of genius.</p> - -<p>According to Karl Pearson this “law of the -greater variability of the male” was first stated -by Darwin. Somewhat earlier, the anatomist -Meckel had concluded that the female is more -variable than the male. It is interesting to note -in passing that he consequently judged “variation -a sign of inferiority.” By the time Burdach, -Darwin, and others had declared the male more -variable, however, variation had become an advantage -and the basis and hope of all progress. -To-day great social significance is attached to the -comparative variability of the sexes, especially -in its application to the questions of sex differences -in mental achievement. Probably the outstanding -English-speaking supporters of the -theory in its modern form have been Havelock -Ellis and Dr. G. Stanley Hall. But even so cautious -a student as <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> E. L. Thorndike has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> -granted it his guarded support. And <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> -James McKeen Cattell has explained the results -of his study of 1000 eminent characters of history -by means of it. Indeed many others hold -the theory in one form or another—e.g. Münsterburg, -Patrick. What is most important, of -course, is that its supporters do not stop with -the mere statement of the theory. They ascribe -to it tremendous effects in the past and ask for it -a large influence in the shaping of our policies -in the present.</p> - -<p>For Havelock Ellis, the greater variability of -the male “has social and practical consequences -of the widest significance. The whole of our -human civilization would have been a different -thing if in early zoölogical epochs the male had -not acquired a greater variational tendency than -the female.” (“Man and Woman,” p. 387.) Professor -Hall builds up upon it a scheme of gushingly -paradisaical (and properly boring) education -for the adolescent girl, which “keeps the -purely mental back” and develops the soul, the -body, and the intuitions. (“The Psychology of -Adolescence,” <abbr title="Volume">Vol.</abbr> II, <abbr title="Chapter">Chap.</abbr> 17.) Just because -Professor Thorndike is so careful in his statements,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span> -his practical deductions from the theory -are most interesting: “Thus the function of education -for women, though not necessarily differentiated -by the small differences in average -capacity, is differentiated by the difference in -range of ability. Not only the probability and -desirability of marriage and the training of children -as an essential feature of women’s career -but also the restriction of women to the mediocre -grades of ability and achievement should be -reckoned with by our educational systems. The -education of women for such professions as -administration, statesmanship, philosophy, or -scientific research, where a few very gifted individuals -are what society requires, is far less -needed than education for such professions as -nursing, teaching, medicine, or architecture, -where the average level is essential. Elementary -education is probably an even better investment -for the community in the case of girls than in -the case of boys; for almost all girls profit by it, -whereas the extremely low grade boy may not -be up to his school education in zeal or capacity -and the extremely high grade boy may get on -better without it. So also with high school education.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span> -On the other hand, post graduate instruction -to which women are flocking in great -numbers is, at least in its higher reaches, a far -more remunerative social investment in the case -of men.” (“Sex in Education,” <i>Bookman</i>, <abbr title="Volume">Vol.</abbr> -XXIII, April, 1906, p. 213.)</p> - -<p>Before we begin the revision of our educational -systems in accordance with this theory, we -must make sure that it really explains away the -“female geniuses.” For although the theory is -still widely held by biologists and psychologists, -it requires only a short study to discover how -tenuous is the evidence adduced in support of it—in -all its phases, but especially in regard to -mental traits. Darwin apparently gave no statistical -evidence to support “the principle,” as -he called it, and those who have followed him -have done little to fill the lack. Professor Hall -offers evidence that is almost entirely empirical; -Havelock Ellis has been attacked by Karl Pearson -for doing much “to perpetuate some of the -worst of the pseudo-scientific superstitions to -which he [Ellis] refers, notably that of the -greater variability of the male human being.” -Professor Thorndike, in spite of his conclusions,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span> -admits that it “is unfortunate that so little information -is available for a study of sex differences -in the variability of mental traits in the case of -individuals over fifteen.” And while the overwhelming -majority of Professor Cattell’s 1000 -eminent characters are men, he merely states -without proving his explanation that “woman -departs less from the normal than man.”</p> - -<p>Wise feminists to-day are concentrating their -forces upon this theory. Women have won the -right to an acknowledged mind; they want now -the right to draw for genius and high talents in -the “curve of chance.” And this is no merely -academic question. For while genius may overcome -the sternest physical barriers of environment, -it is nourished and developed by tolerant -expectancy. Men may accomplish anything, -popular thought tells them, and so some men do. -But if women are scientifically excluded from -the popular expectation of big things, if their -educations are toned down to preparation for -“the average level,” if motherhood remains the -<em>only</em> respected career for <em>all</em> women, then the female -geniuses will remain few and far between. -And, more important still, all thinking women<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> -will continue restless over the problem of how to -secure the chance to vary in interests and abilities -from the average of their sex, and at the same -time to be wives and mothers.</p> - -<p>In this fight for a full chance to compete, -woman may do one (or all) of three things. She -may merely ignore the theory and go on “working -and living,” trusting that as environmental -barriers fall one after the other, this final question, -too, will lose its meaning. She can point out -in support of this attitude that the past does contain -its female geniuses, however few; and certainly -if all the barriers that have been set up -against woman’s entry into the larger world have -not entirely stifled female genius, we may at -least look forward hopefully to a kinder future. -Something of this attitude, of this demand for -free experimentation, must make part of every -woman’s armor against the implications of this -theory. But taken alone, it becomes more -merely defensive than the status of the theory deserves. -For it is really the theory that must defend -itself. It must not only bring forward more -affirmative evidence, but it must also meet the -contrary findings of such investigation as has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> -been made. It must, again, prove its title to <em>the -cause</em> of the scarcity of female geniuses when so -many other more eradicable causes may be at -its bottom.</p> - -<p>The actual evidence that has been gathered on -this question is still uncertain and fragmentary. -While it does not yet establish anything definitely, -it points to rather surprising conclusions. -In all cases investigated the discovered differences -in variability have been very slight, and if -they balance either way tend to prove a greater -variability among women. Neither sex need -have a monopoly of either imbeciles or geniuses, -but women may yet be found to be slightly more -favored with both!</p> - -<p>The first painstaking investigation in this field -was made by <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Karl Pearson who published -his interesting results as one essay in his <i>Chances -of Death and Other Studies in Evolution</i> in 1897. -Under the heading “Variation in Man and -Woman” (<abbr title="Volume">Vol.</abbr> I, pp. 256-377), written as a -polemical attack upon Havelock Ellis’s stand in -this theory, he set forth results of measurements -upon men and women in seventeen anatomical -characteristics. He obtained his data from statistics<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> -already collected, from measurements of -living men and women, and from post-mortem -and archeological examinations. Female variability -(coefficients of variation) proved greater -in eleven of these seventeen characteristics, male -in six. He concluded among other things that -“there is ... no evidence of greater male variability, -but rather of a slightly greater female -variability. Accordingly the principle that man -is more variable than woman must be put on one -side as a pseudo-scientific superstition until it has -been demonstrated in a more scientific manner -than has hitherto been attempted.”</p> - -<p>To round out this evidence Doctors Leta Hollingworth -and Helen Montague measured -20,000 infants at their birth in the maternity -wards of the New York Infirmary for Women -and Children. They sought to discover whether -environmental influences played any determining -rôle in producing the results obtained by Pearson -from measurements upon adults. From the -ten anatomical measurements made upon these -babies they found that “in all cases the differences -in variability are very slight. In only two -cases does the percentile variation differ in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> -first decimal place. In these two cases the variability -is once greater for males and once greater -for females.” (“The Comparative Variability of -the Sexes at Birth,” <i>American Journal of Sociology</i>, -<abbr title="Volume">Vol.</abbr> XX, 1914-1915, pp. 335-370.)</p> - -<p>The findings on anatomical variability do not, -of course, necessarily prove anything about differences -in the range of mental ability. They -do, however, suggest the probability of parallel -results and such studies as have been made tend, -on the whole, to bear this out. All the recent -work in this field (and it is still fragmentary) -seems to point at least to equal mental variability -among men and women. In 1917, Terman and -others in their “Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon -Scale for Measuring Intelligence” investigated -this problem among school children from -five to fourteen years old. They obtained the Intelligence -Quotients of 457 boys and 448 girls and -compared these I.Q.’s with teachers’ estimates -and judgments of intelligence and work and with -the age grade distribution of the sexes for the -ages of 7 to 14. After making all necessary -qualifications, they concluded that the tests revealed -a small superiority in the intelligence of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span> -the girls that “probably rests upon a real superiority -in intelligence, age for age.” But “apart -from the small superiority of the girls, the distribution -of intelligence shows no significant differences -in the sexes. The data offer no support to -the wide-spread belief that girls group themselves -more closely about the median or that extremes -of intelligence are more common among -boys” (p. 83).</p> - -<p><abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Hollingworth, again, has made a study of -mental differences for adults. She has summarized -the results of recent studies in sex differences -in mental variability and in tastes, perceptions, -interests, etc. Her conclusions on this score -are interesting: “(1) The greater variability of -males in anatomical traits is not established, but -is debated by authorities of perhaps equal competence. -(2) But even if it were established, it -would only suggest, not prove, that men are more -variable in mental traits also. The empirical -data at present available on this point are inadequate -and contradictory, and if they point either -way, actually indicate greater female variability....” -(“Variability as Related to Sex Differences<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span> -in Achievement,” <i>American Journal of Sociology</i>, -<abbr title="Volume">Vol.</abbr> XIX, pp. 510-530, Jan., 1914.)</p> - -<p>It seems hardly safe scientifically, therefore, to -restrict women to the average levels in education -and work and profession on the ground that eminence -is beyond their range. But if the female -geniuses have not been cut off by a comparatively -narrowed range of mental ability, where are -they? Certainly history does not reveal them in -anything like satisfactory number. And it is -now that women may bring forward their third -weapon of attack. The female geniuses may -have been missing not because of an inherent lack -in the make-up of the sex, but because of the oppressive, -restrictive cultural conditions under -which women have been forced to live.</p> - -<p>The important rôle played by cultural conditions -in the cultural achievement of various nations -and races has been noted with increasing -emphasis by the newer schools of sociology and -anthropology. No scholar can now defend unchallenged -a thesis of “lower or higher races” -by urging the achievements of any race as an index -of its range of mental ability. Culture grows -by its own laws and the high position of the white<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> -race may be as much a product of favorable circumstances -as of exceptional innate capacities. -Similarly the expression taken by the genius of -various nations appears to vary strikingly. This -is especially impressive in the realm of music. -The Anglo-Saxon peoples are singularly lacking -in great musical composers. Neither Britain nor -America, nor indeed any of the northern countries -have contributed one composer worthy of -mention beside the Beethovens and Wagners and -Chopins of this art. Indeed the great names in -music are generally of German, Latin or Slavic -origin. Yet no one thinks of urging this fact as -evidence of an Anglo-Saxon failure of major creativeness. -Instead we point to achievements in -other fields or at most attempt to explain this peculiar -lack by some external causation. Similarly -all our impatience with the un-artistic approaches -of the American people does not lead -us to frame a theory of their lack of genius. -There are many cultural factors to be considered -first.</p> - -<p>But as soon as we approach the problem of female -genius, too many of us are apt to bring forward -an entirely different kind of interpretation.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span> -We pass over the undoubted female geniuses -lightly—granting Sappho and Bonheur and -Brunn and Eliot and Brontë and Amster and -Madame Curie and Caroline Herschel and perhaps -even Chaminade and Clara Schumann and -several others. We admit the undoubtedly significant -parts women are playing in modern literature. -But the question always remains.</p> - -<p>Yet in no national or racial group have cultural -influences exercised so restrictive an influence -as among the entire female sex. Not only -has the larger world been closed to them, not -only has popular opinion assumed that “no woman -has it in her,” but the bearing and rearing -of children has carried with it in the past the -inescapable drudgery of housework. And this -is “a field,” as <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Hollingworth points out, -“where eminence is not possible.”</p> - -<p>It was Prudhon who sneered in response to a -similar argument that “women could not even -invent their distaff.” But we now know enough -about the laws of invention to realize how unfair -such sneering is. Professor Franz Boas and his -school have long demonstrated that cultural -achievement and mental ability are not necessarily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> -correlated. For material culture, once it -begins, tends to grow by accumulation and diffusion. -Each generation adds to the existing -stock of knowledge, and as the stock grows the -harvests necessarily become greater. Modern -man need have no greater mental ability than the -men of the ice ages to explain why his improvements -upon the myriad machines and tools that -are his yield so much larger a harvest than the -Paleolithic hunters’ improvements upon their -few flint weapons and industrial processes. For, -as Professor Ogburn has well shown (in “Social -Change,” Part III) all invention contains two -elements—a growing cultural base and inventive -genius to work with the materials it furnishes. -The number of new inventions necessarily grows -with the cultural base. Even 50 times 100 make -only 5000, but 2 times 1,000,000 make 2,000,000. -Countless generations have added their share to -the total material culture which is ours and -which we shall hand down still more enriched to -posterity.</p> - -<p>It must be at once obvious that there has been -no such cultural growth in housework. Housework -has long remained an individualized, non-cumulative<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span> -industry, where daughter learns from -mother the old ways of doing things. The small -improvements and ingenuities which most housewives -devise seldom find their way into the whole -stream of culture. Thus it is that the recent -great inventions which are slowly revolutionizing -this last stronghold of petty individualism -have come from the man-made world. Workers -in electricity could more easily devise the -vacuum cleaner than the solitary housewife; the -electric washer, parquet floors, the tin can, quantity -production of stockings, wool, clothing, -bread, butter, and all the other instruments that -have really made possible women’s emancipation -have naturally come not from women’s minds -(any more than from men’s) but from the growth -of culture and the minds that utilize that growth -for further expansion.</p> - -<p>Consequently, as women participate in the -work of the world and win the right to acquire -the results of past achievement in science and -technique and art, we may expect their contributions -to the social advance to appear in ever -greater numbers. Until we give them this full -chance to contribute, we have no right to explain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> -the paucity of their gifts to society by inherent -lacks. And it seems reasonable to expect that -such a chance will render the old quest for female -geniuses properly old-fashioned. For they -will be there, these women—the able and talented -and geniuses—working side by side with -men, not as “very great men” nor as necessarily -“depraved” nor in any way unusual. They will -be there as human beings and as women.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Man">Man and Woman as Creators</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Alexander Goldenweiser</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span></p> -<h3>Alexander Goldenweiser,</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>psychologist and anthropologist, is a lecturer at the -New School for Social Research in New York</i>.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">MAN AND WOMAN AS CREATORS</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY ALEXANDER GOLDENWEISER</p> - - -<p>“A hen is no bird, a woman—no human,” -says a Russian proverb. In this drastic formulation -stands written the history of centuries. -Woman’s claim to “human”ness was at times accepted -with reservations, at other times it was -boldly challenged and even to-day when woman’s -legal, social, economic and political disabilities -have been largely removed, woman’s acceptance -in society as man’s equal remains dependent -on a definition of the “equal.”</p> - -<p>As in the case of the mental capacity of races, -the question of woman’s intellectual status was -never judged on its merits. Rather, it was -accepted as a practical social postulate, then -rationalized into the likeness of an inductive -conclusion. The problem seems so replete with -temptations for special pleading that a thoroughly -impartial attitude becomes well-nigh -impossible. However, let us attempt it!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span></p> - -<p>Is woman psychologically identical with man? -or, if there is a difference, is it one of superiority -and inferiority? And of what practical significance -is this issue to society?</p> - -<p>Two ways of approach are open: subject men -and women to psychological tests, or observe performance -in life and, exercising due critical -care, infer capacity.</p> - -<p>Both methods have been tried. The first enjoys -to-day a certain vogue: it is the method of -science, of experimental psychology. Unfortunately, -the findings of science in this field have -to date resulted in precisely nothing. It was -feasible to assume that woman was man’s equal -in elementary sensory capacity, in memory, types -and varieties of associations, attention, sensitiveness -to pain, heat and cold, etc. Experimental -psychology has confirmed these assumptions. -But what of it? What can we make of it? Precisely -nothing. What we are interested in is -whether woman can think “as logically” as man, -whether she is more intuitive, more emotional, -less imaginative, more practical, less honest, -more sensitive, a better judge of human nature. -These, among many other interesting issues cannot<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> -even be broached by experimental psychology -“within the present state of our knowledge.”</p> - -<p>Remains the second method, to observe performance -and infer capacity.</p> - -<p>To examine in this fashion all the issues involved -would require a small library. I select -only one, creativeness. Is woman man’s equal -in creativeness? The choice is justified by the -highly controversial character of the issue as -well as its practical bearings.</p> - -<p>Two periods in the history of civilization lend -themselves admirably for our purpose, the primitive -and the modern.</p> - -<p>The primitive world was not innocent of discrimination -against woman. In social and political -leadership, in the ownership and disposition -of property, in religion and ceremonialism, -woman was subjected to more or less drastic restrictions. -It would, therefore, be obviously unfair -to expect her creativeness in these fields to -have equaled or even approximated that of man. -Not so in industry and art, where division of labor -prevailed, but no sex disability. As one surveys -the technical and artistic pursuits of primitive -tribes, woman’s participation is everywhere<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span> -in evidence. The baskets of California, the -painted pots of the Pueblos, the beaded embroideries -of the Plains, the famous Chilkat blankets, -the tapa cloth of Polynesia, all of these were -woman’s handiwork. Almost everywhere she -plans and cuts and sews and decorates the garments -worn by women as well as men. Also, in -all primitive communities she gathers the wild -products of vegetation and transforms them into -palatable foods. More than this, in societies that -know not the plow woman is, with few exceptions, -the agriculturist. It follows that the observations, -skills, techniques and inventions involved -in these pursuits must also be credited to -woman.</p> - -<p>It will be conceded that in primitive society -woman’s record is impressive: wherever she is -permitted to apply her creativeness she makes -good, and the excellence of her achievement is -equal to that of man, certainly not conspicuously -inferior to his.</p> - -<p>In evaluating these findings, however, it is important -to take cognizance of the submergence -of individual initiative by the tribal pattern, a -feature characteristic of primitive life. This<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> -applies to men and women, to artisans and artists. -Imaginative flights being cut short by traditional -norms, the individualism and subjectivism -of modern art are here conspicuous by -their absence.</p> - -<p>How does this record compare with a survey -of the modern period?</p> - -<p>Here again woman’s disabilities in the social, -political and religious realms were so marked -that creative participation was impossible. The -same is true of architecture. Then come -philosophy, mathematics, science, and sculpture, -painting, literature, music and the drama. In -philosophy and mathematics there is no woman -in the ranks of supreme excellence. Even Sonya -Kovalevsky, though a talent, was not a great -mathematician. In science also, where women -have done fine things, none are found among the -brightest luminaries. It must be added, moreover, -that the few women who have made their -mark in the scientific field, notably Mme. Curie, -have done so in the laboratory, not in the more -abstract and imaginative domain of theoretical -science.</p> - -<p>At this point some may protest that the period<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span> -during which women have had a chance to test -their talents in philosophy, mathematics and -science was too short, their number too small, -and that here once more performance cannot -fairly be used as a measure of possible achievement. -We must heed this protest.</p> - -<p>As to sculpture, painting, literature, music -and the drama, I claim that woman’s protracted -disabilities cannot in any way be held accountable -for whatever her performance may be found -to be. Women artists, musicians, writers and, -of course, actresses, have been with us for a long -time. Their number is large and on the increase. -Whether married or single, they devote their -energies to these pursuits quite unhampered by -social taboos. There are in this field no taboos -against women. In the United States, in fact, -these occupations are held to be more suitable -for women than for men.</p> - -<p>But what do we find?</p> - -<p>In painting and sculpture, no women among -the best, although considerable numbers among -the second best and below. There is no woman -Rodin or Meunier or Klinger or Renoir or Picasso.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span></p> - -<p>In literature the case for woman stands better. -Here women have performed wonderfully, both -in poetry and prose. If they have fallen short, -it is only of supreme achievement.<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> - -<p>Finally we come to music and the stage. The -case of music is admirably suited for our purpose, -is really a perfect test case. What do we -find? As performers, where minor creativeness -suffices, women have equaled the best among -men. As composers, where creativeness of the -highest order is essential, they have failed. We -have a Carreño or Novaes to match a Hofmann -or Levitski, a Melba or Sembrich to match a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> -Caruso or deReszke, a Morini or Powell or Parlow -to match a Heifetz or Elman or Kreisler; -but there is no woman to match a Beethoven or -Wagner or Strauss or Mahler or Stravinsky, or -Rachmaninoff—a composer-performer.</p> - -<p>The situation in drama is almost equally illuminating. -Here women have reached the top, -have done it so frequently and persistently, in -fact, as to challenge men, some think successfully -so. But as dramatic writers the few women who -tried have never succeeded to rise above moderate -excellence. A Rachel or Duse can hold her -own as against a Possart or Orlenyev, a Bernhardt -looms as high as an Irving, Booth or Salvini; -but there is no woman to compare with a -Molière or Ostrovski or Rostand or Hauptmann -or Chekhov or Kapek.</p> - -<p>If now we glance once more at the primitive -record the conclusion suggested by an analysis of -music and the drama is greatly reënforced. In -primitive society woman, whenever opportunity -was given her, equaled man in creativeness; in -modern society she has uniformly failed in the -highest ranges. The results are not incompatible. -As indicated before, in early days cultural<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> -conditions precluded the exercise of creativeness -on the part of the individual except on a minor -scale, in modern society major creativeness is possible -and has been realized. Woman’s creative -achievement reaches the top when the top is relatively -low; when the top itself rises, she falls -behind.</p> - -<p>To analyze this fact further is no easy task. -We may not assume, as some do, that the difference -between major and minor creativeness lies -in degrees of rationality. This is certainly erroneous. -The true creator is what he is, not because -of his rationality but because of what he -does with it. The differentia, as I see them, are -two: boldness of imagination and tremendous -concentration on self. The creator, when he creates, -is spiritually alone; he dominates his material -by drawing it into the self and he permits -his imagination, for once torn off the moorings -of tradition and precedent, to indulge in flights -of gigantic sweep. Imagination and personality -exalted to the <em>n</em>th power—not rationality—are -the marks of the highest creativeness.</p> - -<p>In the possession of these traits, then, as here -understood, woman is somehow restricted. She<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> -has them, of course, and exercises them, but not -on the very highest level.</p> - -<p>We might stop right here, but it is hard to -suppress at least a tentative interpretation.</p> - -<p>If the personality-imagination complex is -where woman fails at the top, then it becomes -<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">a priori</i> probable that this difference between -man and woman constitutes a remote sex characteristic. -And if this is so, then it may prove -worth our while to look for a corresponding difference -on a level more directly connected with -sex life. No sooner is this done than a difference -does indeed appear, and it meets our expectations, -for it lies in the direction of personality or -self-concentration as well as of imagination. -Woman is never so much “a part of” as when she -loves, man never so “whole”; her self dissolves, -his crystallizes. Also, woman’s love is less imaginative -than man’s: man is more like what woman’s -love makes him out to be than woman is like -what man’s love makes her out to be. Relatively -speaking, his love is romantic, hers realistic.</p> - -<p>This difference in the diagnostic features of -man’s love and woman’s love confirms our suspicion -that the discrepancy in performance,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> -where the personality-imagination complex is -involved, constitutes a remote sex characteristic.</p> - -<p>We must now turn once more to woman’s -achievement in the different fields of cultural -creativeness, for the variation in the degree of -excellence reached by her provides a valuable -clue as to where her strength lies. In an ascending -series of woman’s achievements musical composition -is at the bottom of the list, then come -sculpture and painting, then literature (with a -strange drop in dramatic writing), then instrumental -and vocal performance; acting, finally, -heads the list.</p> - -<p>This order is most illuminating. The relative -excellence of woman’s achievement is seen to rise -with the concreteness of the task and the prominence -of the technical and human elements. Creativeness -is more abstract in music than in the -plastic and graphic arts, more abstract in these -than in literature; and in each case woman’s -relative achievement increases as abstractness decreases. -Even the peculiar drop in dramatic -writing when compared with other forms of -literature is explicable in terms of a more abstract -sort of creativeness required by the formal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span> -elements of dramatic art. Again, the high position -in the list of musical performers and actresses, -must in part be ascribed to the importance -of the technical element in these arts. The preeminence -of the musical performers is probably -entirely due to this factor, although the intrusion -of the human element (performing for an -audience) may also have a share in the result.</p> - -<p>In the case of acting the human element is the -most important factor, for here there is not only -an audience to act to but the human content of -the acting itself. The human orientation also accounts -for the relatively high position of literature -in the list when compared to sculpture and -painting and to musical composition. Finally, -the creativeness of musical performance and acting—two -fields in which woman excels—is concrete -when compared to that of literature, the -arts and musical composition. Incidentally, a -sidelight is thus thrown on the case of science -where woman’s relative preeminence is found -in the concrete and technical domain of the laboratory.</p> - -<p>The preceding analysis leads to the conclusion -that woman’s strength lies in the concrete as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> -contrasted with the abstract, the technical as -contrasted with the ideational, the human as contrasted -with the universal and detached. This -conclusion, it may be of interest to note, harmonizes -perfectly with the general consensus of -mankind, as expressed in lay opinion and the -judgments of literary men.</p> - -<p>To summarize: in all fields of cultural activity -opened to her, woman has shown creative ability, -but since cultural conditions have made major -creativeness possible, she has failed, in comparison -with man, in the highest ranges of abstract -creativeness. On the other hand, woman has -shown in her psychic disposition affinities for the -concrete, the technical and the human.</p> - -<p>Before closing, these findings may be utilized -for a prognostication of woman’s activities in the -immediate and more remote future.</p> - -<p>The present tendency toward equalizing the -cultural opportunities of man and woman will -no doubt persist. Thus the range of woman’s -cultural contributions will expand and the excellence -of her creative achievement will rise, -especially in the fields in which she has so far -had but little chance to try her hand. It is to be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> -expected, however, that in the highest ranges of -abstract creativeness in philosophy, science, art, -music, and perhaps literature, she will fail as -she has hitherto failed to equal man. Her concrete-mindedness -will ever continue to provide a -useful counterpoise to the more imaginative and -abstract leanings of her male companion. Her -technical talents will shine more brilliantly in a -world in which the crafts will again occupy the -prominent place which was theirs once before. -But her unique contributions will come in the -range of the human element.</p> - -<p>In this respect, woman’s principal affinity is -calculated to bear its choicest fruits in a world -better than the one we live in. When formalism -recedes from the field of education, as indeed it -has already begun to do, and gives room for more -individual and psychologically refined processes, -woman’s share in education will grow in scope -and creativeness. When the family has left behind -the agonies of its present readjustments, the -reconstruction of a freer and happier family -life will largely rest on the shoulders of woman. -When prisons will be turned into hospitals and -criminals will be treated as patients, woman’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span> -sensitiveness, insight and tact will bring her -leadership in this field. When a return of -leisure and the reduction of economic pressure -will permit a revival of the more intimate forms -of social intercourse, woman’s social talents will -find new fields to conquer. When the world of -nations will sheathe its sword forever—an event -toward the realization of which woman will -probably contribute more than man—woman, to -whom nothing human is foreign, will at last be -free to show the world what she can accomplish -as the mother of the family of man.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span></p> - - -<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> We need not mention a Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes or -Milton. Perhaps these are too far back. Not so Tolstoi, Dostoyevski, -Turgenev, Goethe, Heine, Balzac, Maupassant, the Goncourts, -Flaubert, Byron, Browning, Shelley, Emerson, Walt Whitman. -Where are their equals among women? And coming down -to the modern period, when literature is flooded with feminine -figures, is there one who can be placed beside Anatole France or -d’Annunzio or Proust or Gorki or even Bernard Shaw (not to -mention Ibsen)? The feminine names that might be cited in -comparison are obvious enough, but would any of them measure -up to these—quite? However, let me mention Katherine Mansfield, -Edith Wharton, Edna <abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> Vincent Millay. And I may add -Sheila Kaye-Smith, Willa Cather, Selma Lagerlöf and Marguérite -Audou.</p> - -<p>I realize, of course, that such comparisons, except in a most -sweeping statement, are invidious. A better picture could be -obtained by juxtaposing, one to one, writers of similar type and -literary form—but this is a task for a volume.</p> - -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Dominant">Dominant Sexes</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By M. Vaerting</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span></p> -<h3>M. Vaerting,</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>one of a group of German anthropologists whose -lectures and articles have attracted much attention -in Europe; is also part author of “The Dominant -Sex,” recently published in the United States.</i></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">DOMINANT SEXES</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY M. VAERTING</p> - - -<p>Certain peculiarities of physical form are to-day -considered typical feminine sex characters. -Thus roundness and fullness of figure are generally -regarded as characteristic of women; larger -size and strength among men are accepted as a -sex difference, biologically determined.</p> - -<p>But this theory, like the entire doctrine of secondary -sex characters, stands upon a doubtful -basis. It has grown up out of a comparison of -men and women in very unequal situations. The -bodies of men and women whose field of work -and type of occupation differ widely have been -compared. The man attends to the extra-domestic -activities, while the woman is chiefly occupied -at home. Bachofen writes: “If a man sits -at a spinning-wheel a weakening of body and of -soul will inevitably follow.” Charles de Coster -in his “Wedding Journey” makes the significant -remark: “Work in the fields had given Liska<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> -hips like a robust man’s.” Certain of the physical -differences between men and women may therefore -be sociologically determined rather than due -to inborn differences.</p> - -<p>One may object that the division of labor between -the sexes, in which the woman takes the -domestic and the man the extra-domestic sphere, -is itself determined by inborn sex differences. -Even in Socrates’s time it was believed that the -nature of the sexes fixed their fields of activity. -Man was unquestionably intended for matters -which must be attended to outside the house, -“while the weak and timid woman was by divine -order assigned to the inner work of the home.” -After thorough investigation it appears that this -hoary theory, which still persists, is false. The -division of labor between man and woman corresponds -not to an innate difference but to their -power-relation. If man dominates he says that -woman’s place is the home, and that work outside -the home is fit only for men. If woman is -dominant then she has the opposite opinion, takes -care of business outside the home, and leaves the -man to take care of the family and the housekeeping. -The ruling sex, whether male or female,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span> -always puts the domestic duties on the subordinate -sex and takes to itself work outside the -home. To-day man is dominant, but there have -been many peoples among whom woman was -dominant and the rôle of man and woman was -the reverse of that common to-day. In ancient -Egypt there was a period when women ruled. -Herodotus reports that they unnaturally performed -“masculine” activities, carried on commerce -in the market-place, while the men stayed -at home, sewed, and attended to domestic difficulties. -To Herodotus, who came from a state -where men were dominant, the work of the -Egyptian women naturally seemed “male.” In -the Talmud Herodotus’s report is confirmed. -The children of Israel, it tells us, were disturbed -because their men were forced to do women’s -work and their women men’s work. In Sophocles’s -“Œdipus Kolonos” Œdipus says to his -two daughters: “Ha, how they imitate the Egyptians -in the manner and meaning of life. There -the men stay home and sit at the spinning-wheel, -and the women go out to meet the needs of life.” -Œdipus also mentions the fact reported also by -Herodotus, that only the daughters, not the sons,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> -were compelled in Egypt to support their parents. -The sons could not fulfill that duty, Sophocles -says, because, like the Greek girls, they -stayed at home and had no income from their -labor. Furthermore, they had only a limited -right to own property.</p> - -<p>One might cite many other peoples where the -woman was dominant. Among the Kamchadales -the men, in the days of female dominance, were -such complete housewives that they cooked, -sewed, washed, and were never allowed to stay -away from home for more than a day. Similarly -among the Lapps there was a period when the -men did the housework while the women fished -and sailed the sea. Under such circumstances -the men also took care of the children. Strabo -and Humboldt both report of the Vasko-Iberian -races that the women worked in the fields; after -child birth they turned the child over to the man -and themselves resumed their work in the fields. -A similar arrangement prevailed in the days -when women ruled Lybia, which bordered upon -Egypt.</p> - -<p>When one sex is dominant there is always a -division of labor.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span></p> - -<p>This differentiation of occupation is one of the -chief causes of certain differences in physical -form between men and women. It changes the -fundamental conditions of development—among -others the course of the inner secretions. Where -man rules he does the active outside work and is -accordingly larger and stronger; where woman -rules and does the same “man’s work” her body -assumes what are to-day regarded as typically -male proportions, whereas the man develops -what we call feminine characteristics. We have -a few definite proofs of this from states dominated -by women.</p> - -<p>When woman ruled among the Gauls, and -worked outside the home, we are told by Strabo -that the female was the larger and stronger sex.</p> - -<p>Among the Adombies on the Congo women -were in power and did all the hard work. According -to Ellis they were stronger and better -developed than the men. The same was true of -the Wateita in East Africa. Fritsch and Hellwald -report that the woman is larger than the -man among the Bushmen. Female and male pelvises -show no differences, but are alike “male” -in our sense of the word.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span></p> - -<p>The Spartan women in the days of their rule -had a reputation for enormous strength. Aristophanes -says that a Spartan woman could -strangle an ox bare-handed. The Egyptian -women at the height of their power were called -by their neighbors the “lionesses of the Nile,” -and they seemed to like the name. When Heracles -visited the Lybians, whose state bordered on -Egypt and of whose rule by women we have -many witnesses, he had to work, like the other -men of the country, with the distaff. His wife -Omphale, however, wandered about clad in a -lionskin and armed with a club, and won respect -for her strength.</p> - -<p>A very striking report comes from near New -Guinea, where the woman was stronger than the -man. There it was a common sight to see a -woman spanking her husband with a paddle. -Through the brute force of superior strength -she oppressed the man just as men oppress women -where the woman is weaker.</p> - -<p>Thus through legend and the records of travelers -we have clear testimony that man is not -larger and stronger than woman because of innate -differences, as is generally supposed, but that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span> -physical superiority is a characteristic of the -dominant sex, regardless whether that be male or -female.</p> - -<p>Similarly those secondary physical characteristics -which are to-day regarded as female are -found among males when they occupy the subordinate -position in which woman lives to-day. -Woman is inclined to-day to full, rounded curves -and even to stoutness. Among the Celts the -woman dominated, and according to Strabo the -men of that people were inclined to be fat and -heavy-paunched. The same was true of the -Kamchadales in the days of woman rule. The -men were strikingly voluptuous and well -rounded. The male Eskimos too were inclined -to fatness in the days when they did the housekeeping. -The more subordinate the fatter.</p> - -<p>In this connection the Oriental women are -typical; their exuberance of figure is as well -known as their absolute subordination and their -confinement to the home. They may be contrasted -with the fat and subordinate male Kamchadales, -whose wives were slim and firm -breasted into old age.</p> - -<p>Equal rights do away with this division of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> -labor. There are no longer male and female -jobs; not sex but inclination and fitness now begin -to determine the individual’s occupation. In late -Egypt, when the domination of woman was -merging into a period of equal rights, there are -many indications that both sexes did the same -work without any differentiation of occupation. -In the marriage contract in the time of Darius, -the woman—who then made the contract alone—says, -“All, which you and I may together -earn....” Victor Marx has studied the position -of woman in Babylon in the period 604-485 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, -and finds a similar situation. In an inheritance -case of that period a woman recites that “I and -my husband carried on business with my dowry -and together bought a piece of land.” Such -common businesses by man and woman are frequently -mentioned. Under such circumstances -it was natural that neither man nor woman bound -themselves at marriage to live in the same house, -for both went to work outside the home.</p> - -<p>To-day, when we are passing from male domination -to equal rights it is natural that the woman -should be seeking more and more to get out of -the home. The greater her power the more she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> -seeks to level the lines between male and female -work. This effort is strongest in the subordinate -sex—in this case the feminine—because it seeks -naturally to better its position. In this transition -period, therefore, women are pressing into male -pursuits much faster than men into domestic occupations. -Yet even in Germany a beginning has -been made. For women the male professions -seem higher and better, because they have hitherto -belonged to the dominant sex, while for the -men feminine occupations seem to have about -them something degrading; but the more women -approach equality the less odium attaches to -what has been their sphere, and the more men -tend to enter it.</p> - -<p>The same phenomenon may be observed in -periods of transition from female to male domination. -Among the Batta, for instance, both -sexes worked in the fields, but the man alone -cared for the children. This was obviously a step -toward equal rights. The men already shared -the extra-domestic occupations of the women, -but the women still refused to share the work of -the hitherto subordinate men.</p> - -<p>When equal rights put an end to the differentiation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span> -of occupation the physical differences between -men and women also disappear. We are -to-day still far enough away from equality of the -sexes, but there have been people where equal -rights prevailed, and among such people the -physical form of the two sexes was so like that -they could hardly be distinguished. In Tacitus’s -day, when equality was probably general among -the Germans, men and women are reported to -have had exactly the same weight and strength. -Albert Friedenthal says of the Cingalese that a -stranger could not distinguish the sexes. Men -and women were so alike among the Botocudos -that one had to count their tresses to tell them -apart. Lallemant found among this people “a -swarm of men-women and women-men, not a -single man or a single woman in the whole tribe.” -This good man came from a state where men -dominated and did not suspect that when the -power-relation of the sexes changed their physical -appearance changed too. If a Botocudo had -come to Europe in those days he would presumably -have judged by his own standards and noted -with equal horror the outer differences of European -men and women.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span></p> - -<p>Every age holds its own standards absolute. -The domination of one sex depends upon the artificial -development of as many and as striking -bodily differences as possible, and therefore approves -them and insists upon emphasizing them. -Equal rights tend to develop the natural similarity -of the sexes and considering that the norm, -regards it as ideal.</p> - -<p>There is ample opportunity to observe to-day -that equality of the sexes coincides with a tendency -slowly to do away with artificial physical -differences. The disappearance of the so-called -feminine figure was so striking in America, -where the sexes are more nearly equal than in -Europe, that Sargent and Alexander prophesied -in 1910 that soon men and women could hardly -be distinguished from one another. A comparison -with pictures of thirty or forty years ago -makes it plain that even in Europe male and female -figures are coming closer to each other. -The narrow waists and full bosoms of the women -and the full beards of the men have disappeared. -And, as a result of our investigation, we may -prophesy that the coming equality will still more -completely iron out those differences which hitherto<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span> -have been regarded as genuine secondary -sex characters.</p> - -<p>Whenever one sex is dominant there is a tendency -to differentiate male and female costume. -The more completely one sex dominates the -greater will be the differences in clothes, and as -the sexes become equal the differences disappear. -When the two sexes are really equal they will -wear the same clothing.</p> - -<p>The clothing of the dominant sex usually tends -to be uniform and tasteless, that of the subordinate -to be varied and richly ornamented. To-day -man is still dominant, and his clothes are -monotonous, dull, and less subject to shifts of -fashion. Especially in formal dress he wears a -sort of uniform. All men, of whatever age or -position, wear dress clothes of the same cut and -color. A grandfather wears a dinner coat exactly -like that of his eighteen-year-old grandson. -This seems natural, but the situation is reversed -with the subordinate sex, most completely when -the subordination is most complete. Only twenty -or thirty years ago it was a crime in Germany -for a mother to dress as “youthfully” as her unmarried -daughter. A grandmother who dared<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> -to dress like her eighteen-year-old granddaughter -would have been laughed to scorn. As woman’s -power has grown, this has changed. Custom -no longer requires a grandmother to emphasize -her age by her clothes.</p> - -<p>Where woman dominates she tends to wear -darker and plainer clothing and the man dresses -himself more richly and variously. Erman -writes of the old Egyptians:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>While according to our conceptions it befits the woman -to love finery and ornament, the Egyptians of the old -Empire seem to have had an opposite opinion. Beside the -elaborate costumes of the men the women’s clothing seems -very monotonous, for, from the fourth to the eighteenth -dynasty, all, from the king’s daughter to the peasant -woman, wore the same garb—a simple garment without -folds.</p> -</div> - -<p>Herodotus, indeed, reported that Egyptian -men had two suits, women only one. Erman -naturally cannot explain the simplicity of the -women’s clothes and the eagerness of the men for -color and ornament, because it contradicted current -theories of the character of the two sexes. -To-day the view is current which Runge expressed -when he said that “Women’s desire to -please and love of ornament is dependent upon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> -her sex life.” This view, though still common, is -fundamentally false. The inclination to bright -and ornamental clothing is dependent not upon -sex but upon the power-relation of the sexes. -The subordinate sex, whether male or female, -seeks ornament. Strabo tells of the love of finery -and cult of the body among Lybian men. -They curled their hair, even their beards, wore -gold ornaments, diligently brushed their teeth -and polished their finger-nails. “They arrange -their hair so tenderly,” he writes, “that when -walking they never touch one another, in order -not to disturb it.” It is usual in states where -women are dominant for the men to wear long -hair and pay particular attention to their barbering. -The men of Tana, in the Hebrides, wore -their hair 18 to 20 inches long, divided into six -or seven hundred tiny locks, in the days when -women ruled. Among the Latuka the men wore -their hair so elaborately that it took ten years to -arrange it. The Konds also wore very long hair, -elaborately arranged.</p> - -<p>The stronger tendency of the subordinate sex -to ornamentation apparently is closely related to -the division of labor. The subordinate sex,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> -working at home, has more leisure and opportunity -for ornament than the dominant. Furthermore, -leisure stimulates the erotic feelings. -Since the partner does not share the leisure the -lonely erotic often seeks a way out in self-ornamentation. -At the same time the ornament is -intended for the partner, for the stimulated -eroticism increases the desire to please the other -sex.</p> - -<p>When the sexes are equal the clothes of the -two sexes tend to be alike. We have noted that -the Cingalese were physically similar; their -clothes were exactly the same. The only difference -was that the men wore a mother-of-pearl -comb in the hair, the women none. Among the -Lepka the sexes can be distinguished only by the -fact that the men wear their hair in two braids, -the women in one. Tacitus reports that the old -Germans wore the same clothes and wore their -hair alike.</p> - -<p>We can observe the tendency to similarity of -costume in this transition period. Many such -attempts fail the first time, but finally succeed. -More than a decade ago Paris attempted to establish -a fashion of knickerbockers and bobbed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> -hair. The attempt failed, but to-day the bobbed -head has invaded every civilized country, almost -in direct proportion to the degree in which -women have acquired equal rights. It is reported -from England that English women can -already go to their work in trousers, heavy shoes, -and short hair without exciting attention. The -reader may judge of the accuracy of these reports. -In Germany the police forbid one sex to -wear the clothes of the other, but during the war -when German women had to enter male trades -they usually wore men’s clothing.</p> - -<p>Among men too the tendency to similarity is -evident. Thirty years ago the beard was a generally -accepted sign of manhood; it has fallen -out of fashion. In the Youth Movement there is -a tendency to leave the shirt open at the neck and -to adopt a hair-cut like a bobbed girl’s. A note -in Jean Paul’s “Levana,” which appeared in -1806, is interesting. He writes: “A few years -ago it was fashionable in Russia for the men to -fill out their clothing with high false bosoms.” -That was in the days following the French Revolution, -when a short wave of freedom, even for -women, swept across the earth. It showed also<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span> -in the women’s fashion which Jean Paul mentions:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>A fortunate accident for daughters is the Grecian costume -of the present Gymnosophists (naked female runners), -which, it is true, injures the mothers but hardens -the daughters; for as age and custom should avoid every -fresh cold so youth exercises itself on it as on every hardship -until it can bear greater.... So, likewise, the -present naked manner of dressing is a cold bath into -which the daughters are dipped, who are exhilarated by it.</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Modern_Love">Modern Love and Modern Fiction</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By J. W. Krutch</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h3> -Joseph Wood Krutch -</h3> -<p class="p0"> -<i>has been Professor of English at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and is now dramatic editor and regular critic of fiction of</i> The Nation. -</p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">MODERN LOVE AND MODERN -FICTION</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY J. W. KRUTCH</p> - - -<p>Seeing upon the jacket of a recent book the -legend “Solves the Sex Problem,” my first reaction -was a fervent hope that it did nothing of -the sort, for I had no desire that fiction should -be rendered supererogatory or, what is the same -thing, that life should be made a less difficult -art. Problems of housing, wages, taxation, militarism, -and the like may be solved, temporarily -at least, but what a contemporary writer has -called “the irony of being two” is a sufficient -guaranty of one never-to-be-resolved complexity. -Until each individual of the human species -becomes a complete biological entity, until, -that is to say, hermaphrodism is universal, there -can be no fear lest we should cease to live dangerously.</p> - -<p>Were I speaking of happiness I should be -compelled to argue that the attitude of society<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span> -and the individual toward sex is the most important -thing in the world, but speaking as I am -of life as material for art I must maintain, on the -contrary, that it is much less important. As long -as they have an attitude and as long as that attitude -remains, as it has always remained, an inadequate -one, those unresolved discords which -make living and reading interesting will continue -to arise. As a critic I “view with alarm” -nothing except the possibility that the problem -should be solved to everybody’s satisfaction, but -that calamity does not seem at all likely to occur -since I have never heard of a saint in the desert -or a debauché in a brothel who was not sufficiently -maladjusted to be a fruitful subject for -fiction.</p> - -<p>After all, the things we do are both more -significant and less changing than our attitude -toward our acts. We burn men at the stake to -light a Roman garden, to save the world from -the horror of heresy, or to protect the sanctity -of female virtue and assure the supremacy of -the white race, but we burn them always; we -fight because arms are glorious, because the -service of God demands the rescue of His holy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span> -sepulcher from the infidel, or because we must -make the world safe for peace, but always we -fight; and the most important thing is the insistent -lust of cruelty or the impulse to fight -rather than the rationalization of these motives. -So, too, with love. Paphnutius is harried out of -apathy into a state in which he sees visions because -of the temptations of the devil, Milton because -God gave Eve to Adam as a comforter, -Shelley because woman is the symbol of the -unutterable, and Shaw (presumably) because -only by the process of reproduction can the Life -Force perform its perfectionist experiments; but -the resultant impulses are not so very different. -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> F. W. Myers once referred to the procreation -of children in these lines:</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -Lo! When a man magnanimous and tender,<br /> -Lo! When a woman desperate and true,<br /> -Make the inevitable sweet surrender,<br /> -Show one another what the Lord can do,...<br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">but I doubt if the states of mind which called -forth these lines and, say, Swinburne’s Dolores -were as different as the verses would suggest or -as the authors imagined. Without going so far -as to say that the two poems are of equal literary<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span> -merit, one can at least say that they are almost -equally interesting and delightful to the observer -of life or art and that as long as the -mystical, the ascetic, the sentimental, and the -biological attitudes toward love continue to exist -side by side or to follow one another in succeeding -epochs, the critic will not find literature -either dull or monotonous.</p> - -<p>If at the end of a period of twenty-five years -during which fiction has frankly concerned itself -to an unusual degree with sex the problem seems -more complicated than ever before, there is no -cause for surprise. Even the specious pretense -that a solution has been found can only be maintained -when, as during the Victorian era, the -mass of men agree to assume that no difficulties -exist which are not solvable by that rule of -thumb known as the social and moral code, and -insist that sexual battles shall be fought out behind -closed doors in life and between the chapters -in books. By dragging them out into public -view we have been able, no doubt, to palliate -some of the commoner tragedies of stupidity. -But chiefly we have been upon a voyage of discovery, -and it ought to be evident now, if it has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span> -never been evident before, that we cannot possibly -solve the problem because its most important -aspects are not social but human. They have -their roots in man’s ironic predicament between -gorilla and angel, a predicament perfectly typified -by the fact that as he grows critical he -realizes that love is at once sublime and obscene -and that only by walking a spiritual tight-rope -above the abysses can he be said to live at all in -any true sense. The very fact that the social -aspects can to a certain extent be worked out -makes them less interesting and explains the fact -that those novels intended to prove, for example, -that the mother of an illegitimate child may still -be within the human pale have come to seem so -unutterably dull. No doubt they “did good,” -but like all forms of useful literature their life -was short. By far the most interesting contemporary -writers who deal chiefly with sex are -largely concerned with the individual problem.</p> - -<p>Thanks partially to modern fiction we have -attained a certain measure of freedom. But -freedom, as everybody who understands either -the meaning of the word or the value of the -thing knows, raises problems instead of settling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span> -them. It is true that our attitude has changed. -There is hardly a serious contemporary novel -which does not take for granted things which -would have outraged even liberal thinkers of -the past century, and the changes have been -mostly in the direction of clarification. It -would be impossible for any one to-day to fail -to see, as George Eliot failed to see, that the -natural working of the “inevitable moral law” -which punished Hetty Sorrel was neither inevitable -nor natural. The things which happened -to her came entirely from society and not -at all from nature, so that the story which the -author meant to be a tragedy of the ineluctable -becomes merely a description of human stupidity. -So, too, we are clearer on other things; we -are not quite so hopelessly at sea as we once were -when it comes to distinguishing between frigidity -and chastity or purity and prudishness. -But these things mean only that more choices -are open to us, that we have come to see that -sexual conduct cannot be guided or judged by a -few outwardly applied standards, and that, accordingly, -the conduct of life has been made -more thrillingly difficult.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p> - -<p>Most sex novels of the past have been concerned -chiefly with what might be called the -right to love. They have combated an extremely -old idea which Christianity found congenial -and embodied in the conception of love as -a part of the curse pronounced upon man at the -Fall, and hence at best a necessary evil. They -have been compelled solemnly to assure us that -the early Christian Fathers were wrong in assuming -that the human race would have been -better off if it had been able to propagate itself -by means of some harmless system of vegetation, -and they have had to fly in the face of all laws -and social customs which are seen, if examined -closely, to rest upon the assumption that desire -is merely a dangerous nuisance, fatal to efficiency -and order, and hence to be regimented -at any cost. It is now pretty generally admitted -among the educated class that love is legitimate, -even that it has an æsthetic as well as a utilitarian -function. We have got back to the point which -Ovid had reached some two thousand years ago -of realizing that there is an art of love. During -the next quarter of a century fiction will be concerned, -I think, more with the failure or success<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span> -of individuals to attain this art than with the -exposition of theses which most accept.</p> - -<p>No doubt some of the more naïvely enthusiastic -crusaders really believed that as soon as -man was freed from the more grossly stupid -restrictions from without and from the artificially -cultivated inhibitions within, love would -become simple and idyllic, but one needs look -only at the books of D. H. Lawrence or Aldous -Huxley to be relieved of this stupid delusion. -The characters of both of these authors have -long ago ceased to care what law or society -thinks and they are surely untroubled by traditional -asceticism, but their problems are not less -acute. Indeed it is just because these novelists -are so completely concerned with love as a personal -matter that they are the freshest of those -contemporary writers with whom sex is the -dominant interest. Each is concerned with -something fundamental—the one with the problem -of the adjustment of personalities and the -other with the evaluation of sexual love.</p> - -<p>If by “immoral” is meant “tending to excite -lubricity,” then nothing could be more absurd -than the opinion, apparently held by some, that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span> -the books of these men are immoral. They are -so completely unable to lose themselves carelessly -in passion and so insistent upon the need -of adjusting it somehow to the other interests -of life that they strike one as more like saints -than like gallants, and their books are far more -chilling than inflammatory. Huxley and Joyce -try to laugh sex away, but their scorn of the -flesh suggests Erasmus more than Rabelais, and, -as for Lawrence, his novels constitute so solemn -a warning that one imagines him as thoroughly -bored with the exigencies of passion and more -likely to make his disciples celibates than -debauchés.</p> - -<p>In Lawrence’s morbidly sensitive and exaggeratedly -individualistic characters one sees as -through a magnifying-glass the thousand impingements -of personality upon personality -which make love more and more difficult as it -becomes more intimate and personal. His people, -like Schopenhauer’s porcupines, are continually -coming together for warmth only to find -themselves pricked by one another’s quills and -to part snarling, so that his perpetual prayer is -a “Lord deliver us from this need which can<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span> -be neither stilled nor satisfied.” And abnormal -though he is, his abnormality is one of degree -only, for when sexual love is developed beyond -the impulse of the animal and desires the contact -of spirit as well as body that contact is bound -to be both incomplete and painful.</p> - -<p>Nor is the even more fundamental problem -with which Aldous Huxley is concerned likely -ever to receive a permanent or a general solution. -He is in search of love, but he can find only -ridiculous and obscene biological facts, for love, -like God and the other most important human -possessions, does not exist. It is an illusion -created by the effort of the imagination to transform -the unsatisfactory materials which life has -furnished it into something acceptable to the -soul; but being an illusion, it is unstable and -perpetually tending, if not created anew, to dissolve -into its elements. The racial need for the -continuation of the species and the individual -need for the satisfaction of a physiological impulse -exist, but they are hard, unsatisfying realities, -and the struggle of mankind is to create -some fiction which will as far as possible include -and at the same time transcend them.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span></p> - -<p>And nothing derogatory is, of course, meant -by the word “fiction.” All that distinguishes -man from nature is such a fiction, and it is by -his insistent belief in these imaginary things that -civilization has been created. All of <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Huxley’s -books are confessions, first cynically triumphant -and then despairing, of his inability to be -poet or mystic or ironist enough to achieve this -transcendence and find in his animal heritage a -satisfaction for his spiritual needs. Like everyone -else, he is compelled to love, and love implies -a certain amount of idealization. How, -he asks in effect, is he to poetize this ridiculous -function, which he shares with the beasts, and -concerning which science is constantly presenting -us with an increasing amount of disillusioning -knowledge? Exercising the most perverse -ingenuity in confronting romance with biology -and in establishing the identity (in the realm of -fact) of love and lust, he has continually tracked -the trail of the beast into the holy of holies—but -only because it hurt him so much to find it there. -The obscenities in which he seems to revel are -defiances of the inner idealist who has dared to -assimilate the loathsome trivialities of sex into<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> -something capable of satisfying spiritual desires. -When he sings one of his philosopher’s songs or -when, in “Antic Hay,” he describes some particularly -revolting orgy there is nothing new in -the psychological state which provokes his obscenity. -His attitude is a result of failure to -reconcile physical fact with spiritual feeling. -He is not far from Huysmans, who ended “A -Rebours” with the words: “For the man who -has written such a book there are only two alternatives—a -pistol or the foot of the cross.” Only -of course Huysmans was wrong. Anatole -France and James Branch Cabell are not less -sophisticated, but through the perfection of -sophistication they have achieved a peaceful -irony in which they can worship a non-existent -God and believe again in the illusions they -create. Huxley, too sophisticated for simple -faith and too downright for ironic worship, is -lost.</p> - -<p>When the conception of love is, as it has -tended to be in modern times, legalistic, these -problems are submerged. As long as marriage -is a matter of contract, the importance of the -inward harmony of personalities is of the slightest,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span> -for children may be begotten and reared -whether the parents love or hate. As long as -passion is generally conceded to be but a shameful -concession to unregenerate humanity, the -average man is not likely to be concerned if he -finds that the ideal of the poets is not realized -in his own nuptial couch. But when love is free -and unashamed then it is made ten times more -difficult, for lives are recognized as frank failures -which once would have seemed useful and -satisfactory. Fiction, too, becomes, not more -interesting, but more important. It ceases completely -to be what it always tends to be when -opinion is fixed, namely, a mere illustration of -the working out of social or moral “laws”; it -becomes frankly the record of individual souls -in search of a successful way of life. It records, -no doubt, more failures than successes, but it -furnishes the best and perhaps only really important -material for the study of that art of life -which grows ever more complicated as we demand -that it be more complete and beautiful.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Friends">Can Men and Women Be Friends?</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Floyd Dell</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span></p> -<h3>Floyd Dell</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>was born at Barry, Illinois, June 28th, 1887. Is -the author of several novels and collections of essays -including “Janet March,” a story of a young woman -and her adjustment to modern standards. His -latest book is “Looking at Life.” Other books are -“Women as World Builders,” 1913; “Were You -Ever a Child?” 1919; “Moon Calf,” 1920; “The -Briary Bush,” 1921.</i></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">CAN MEN AND WOMEN BE FRIENDS?</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY FLOYD DELL</p> - - -<p>Friendship between men and women is rather -a new thing in the history of the world. Friendship -depends upon equality and choice, and there -has been very little of either in the relations -of the sexes, up to the present. A woman does -not choose her male relatives, nor is she according -to archaic family laws their equal; motives -other than personal choice might lead her to -become a man’s wife; wholly impersonal reasons -might place her in the relationship of kept mistress. -Only in her rôle of paramour was there -any implication of free choice; and even here -there was no full equality, not even of danger. -None of these customary relationships of the past -can be said to have fostered friendship between -men and women. Doubtless it did exist, but -under difficulties.</p> - -<p>Family bonds, however, are being more and -more relaxed, women are no longer the wards of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span> -their male relatives, and friendship with a father -or brother is more than ever possible. Further, -the free personal choice which marked only the -romantic amours of the age of chivalry is now -popularly regarded in America as essential to -any decent marriage, while the possibility of -divorce tends to make free choice something besides -a mere youthful illusion. More than ever -before, husbands and wives are friends.</p> - -<p>At the same time the intensity of friendships -between people of the same sex appears to be -diminishing. This intensity, in its classic instances, -as in Greece, we now regard as an artificial -product, the result of the segregation of the -sexes and the low social position of women. As -women become free and equal with men such -romantic intensity of emotion finds a more biologically -appropriate expression. Friendships -between people of the same sex must to-day compete -on the one hand with romantic love and on -the other with the more fascinating though often -less enduring friendships which can now be enjoyed -between men and women. Neglect of -these latter opportunities is coming to be regarded<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> -as a kind of spiritual cowardice, or at -least as a failure in enterprise.</p> - -<p>The influences of the machine age, so destructive -to fixed authoritarian relationships, appear -to foster the growth of friendship between -the sexes; so much so that we may expect it to -become, in its further developments, a characteristic -social feature of the age that lies immediately -before us.</p> - -<p>Friendship will become a more and more important -aspect of marriage itself; but, except in -the effects of its wider spread, this will hardly -be a new thing—we have friendships between -husbands and wives now. Nor will extra-marital -friendships between men and women be -precisely a new thing. What will be new, furnishing -us with an interesting theme for sociological -speculation, are the conventions which -will gradually come into existence to give social -protection and dignity to extra-marital friendships.</p> - -<p>Conventions are, doubtless, always rather -ridiculous, inevitably a shackle upon the free -motions of the soul, being imposed by fear. But -it will be remembered that we, in America, with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span> -a vast amount of freedom of intersexual association, -have thus far only begun to dispense with -the locks and bars and whippings and chaperons -which were the appurtenances of a physical segregation -of the sexes; the vast paraphernalia of -psychic segregation, including sexual taboos -which hark back to the primeval darkness, are -with us still. Our minds are habituated to unreasonable -fears in all matters concerning the -relations of the sexes. For a long time, extra-marital -friendships of men and women may be -expected to be hedged about with elaborate and -specific permissions, for the sake of keeping -them under social control. Yet these conventions -may be very convenient; and however irksome -they may seem to the free spirits of a future -day, they may still be such as would appear to -us generously libertarian.</p> - -<p>To-day, in the absence of such conventions, it -does not suffice that a man and woman, too well -married to be afraid of extra-marital friendships, -grant them to each other by private treaty; -relatives, friends, and neighbors do not fail to be -duly alarmed. Extra-marital friendship exists<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span> -in an atmosphere of social suspicion which a few -conventions would go far to alleviate.</p> - -<p>As an example in a different field, the convention -with regard to dancing may be adduced. If -dancing were not a general custom, if it were the -enlightened practice of an advanced few, how -peculiar and suspicious would seem the desire of -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> X and Mrs. Y to embrace each other to -music; and how scandalized the neighbors -would be to hear that they <em>did</em>! No one would -rest until the pair had been driven into an -elopement.</p> - -<p>We build huge palaces for the kind of happy -communion which dancing furnishes; we tend -more and more to behave like civilized beings -about the impulses which are thus given scope. -We are less socially hospitable to the impulses -of friendship between men and women.</p> - -<p>In friendship there are many moods; but the -universal rite of friendship is <em>talk</em>. Talk needs -no palaces for its encouragement; it is not an -expensive affair; it would seem to be well within -the reach of all. Yet it isn’t. For the talk of -friendship requires privacy—though the privacy -of a table for two in a crowded and noisy restaurant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span> -will suffice; and it requires time. Such talk -does not readily adjust itself to the limitations -of the dinner hour. It is a flower slow in unfolding; -and it seems to come to its most perfect -bloom only after midnight. But, unfortunately, -not every restaurant keeps open all night. It is -satisfied with two comfortable chairs; a table to -lean elbows on is good, too; in winter an open -fire, where friendly eyes may stare dreamily into -the glowing coals—that is very good; hot or -cold drinks according to the season, and a cigarette—these -are almost the height of friendship’s -luxury. These seem not too much to ask. -Yet the desire for privacy and uncounted hours -of time together is, when considered from that -point of view, scandalous in its implications; -quite as much so as the desire of <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> X and -Mrs. Y to embrace each other to music. However, -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> X and Mrs. Y do, under the ægis of -a convention, indulge their desire and embrace -each other to their heart’s content with the full -approval of civilized society; and it seems as -though another convention might grow up, -under the protection of which <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> X and Mrs. Y<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span> -might sit up and talk all night without its seeming -queer of them.</p> - -<p>Queer, at the least, it does seem nowadays, -except under the conventions of courtship; -friends who happen to be married to each other -can of course talk comfortably in bed. These -bare facts are sufficient to explain why so many -men and women who really want to be friends -and sit up all night occasionally and talk find it -easy to believe that they are in love with each -other. They find it all the easier to believe this, -because friendship between the sexes is usually -spiced with some degree of sexual attraction. -But a degree of sexual attraction which might -have kept a friendship forever sweet may prove -unequal to the requirements of a more serious -and intimate relationship. Disillusionment is -the penalty, at the very least. Society could well -afford to grant more freedom to friendship between -men and women, and save the expense of -a large number of broken hearts.</p> - -<p>It is worth while to wonder if a good deal of -“romance” is not, after all, friendship mistaking -itself for something else; or rather, finding its -only opportunity for expression in that mistake.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span> -Among civilized people, after the romance has -ended, the friendship remains. It may perhaps -have been worth while to imagine oneself in -love, in order to enjoy a friendship; but it seems -rather a wasteful proceeding.</p> - -<p>Yet those who, taking a merely economical -view of the situation, attempt to enjoy such -friendships without becoming involved or involving -others in such waste, may with some -embarrassment discover—what Mrs. Grundy -could have told them all along—that friendship -and sexual romance may sometimes be difficult -to relegate to previously determined boundaries. -Friendship between the sexes may, if -only for a moment, seem to demand the same -tokens of sincerity as romantic love. Does not -this fact threaten the traditional, jealously-guarded -dignity of marriage?</p> - -<p>Perhaps it does. At present, in any conflict of -claims between a marriage and a friendship, -there is “nothing to arbitrate”; marriage has all -the rights, friendship none. If the rights of -friendship are to be at all considered and protected, -marriage may have to yield something. -It may not be good manners for husbands and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span> -wives to be jealous of the quite possible momentary -exuberances of each other’s friendships; it -may be that such incidents will be regarded as -being within the discretion of the persons immediately -concerned, and not quite proper subjects -for inquiry, speculation, or comment by -anybody else.</p> - -<p>And this might have an effect unsuspected by -those whom such a prospect of liberty would -most alarm to-day. When a moment’s rashness -does not necessarily imply red ruin and the -breaking up of homes, when sex is freed to a -degree from the sense of overwhelming social -consequences, it may well become a matter of -more profound personal consequence; and with -nothing to fear except the spoiling of their -friendship, men and women in an ardent friendship -may yet prefer talk to kisses.</p> - -<p>“But what if they don’t?” A complete answer -to that question, from the Utopian point of view, -would take us far afield from the subject of -friendship; yet some further answer may seem -to be required, if only by way of confessing to -Mrs. Grundy that the problem is not so simple -as it may seem. Well, then, out of many possibilities<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span> -which the future holds, I offer this one -for what it may be worth. Such friendships, let -us agree, tend to merge insensibly into romantic -sexual love. But if marriage may be conceived -as yielding some of its traditional rights, extra-marital -romance may well be called upon for -similar concessions. The first thing that extra-marital -romance might be asked to surrender -would be its intolerable and fatuous airs of <em>holiness</em>. -Yes, “holiness” is the word—a holiness all -the more asserted by such extra-marital lovers -because their relations are likely to be taken disrespectfully -by a stupid world. Oh, unquestionably, -if you ask them, never was any legal -and conventional love so high and holy as this -romantic passion of theirs! Its transcendental -holiness calls for sacrifices. So they sacrifice -themselves—and, incidentally, others—to it. -Anything less, they feel, would be cowardly. -They must not palter with these sacred emotions—not -even by the exercise of their dormant sense -of humor!—So it is to-day: but perhaps in a -future where extra-marital romance is made -room for with a tender and humorous courtesy, -it may give up these preposterous and solemn<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span> -airs, and actually learn to smile at its illusions—illusions -which will still give the zest of ultimate -danger to relationships of merely happy and -light-hearted play. Thus life will continue to be -interesting.</p> - -<p>As for the talk of friendship, my Utopian -speculations uncover for me no respect in which -the thing itself can be improved upon. The circumstances -can be made happier, the attitude of -society can foster it; but the talk of friendship -has already reached a splendid perfection beyond -which my imagination is unable to soar. At its -best it has, despite its personal aspect, an impersonal -beauty; it is a poignant fulfillment of -those profound impulses which we call curiosity -and candor; it serves human needs as deep as -those which poetry and music serve, and is in -some sense an art like them. The art exists, and -it remains only for the future to give it an adequate -hospitality.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Love">Love and Marriage</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Ludwig Lewisohn</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span></p> -<h3>Ludwig Lewisohn</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>author of “Up Stream,” “Don Juan” and other -books and contributing editor of</i> The Nation, <i>is now -studying conditions in Eastern Europe and Palestine. -Was born May 30th, 1882, in Berlin—came -to America in 1890—B.A. and M.A. College of -Charleston, S. C., 1901—M. A. Columbia, 1903—Editorial -staff, Doubleday, Page & <abbr title="company">Co.</abbr>, 1910-1911. -Instructor in German, University of Wisconsin, -and Literature at Ohio State University. Dramatic -Editor</i>, Nation, <i>1919. Author of “The Broken -Snare,” 1908;—“A Night in Alexandria,” 1909; -“German Style—an Introduction to the Study of -German Prose,”—1910; “The Modern Drama,” -1915; “The Spirit of Modern German Literature,” -1916; “The Poets of Modern France,” 1918; Editor -with W. P. Trent of “Letters of an American -Farmer,” 1909; “A Book of Modern Criticism,” -1909. Translator—Feuchlersleben’s “Health & -Suggestion,” 1910; Sudermann’s “Judean City,” -1911; Halbe’s “Youth,” Hirschfeld’s “The -Mothers,” 1916; Latzko’s “The Judgment of -Peace,” 1919; Wassermann’s “World’s Illusion.” -Editor and chief translator of Gerhardt Hauptmann’s -Dramatic Works, 1916, 1917; Contributing -Editor, Warner’s Library of World’s Best Literature. -His latest book is “The Creative Life,” 1924.</i></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">LOVE AND MARRIAGE</p> -</div> - -<p class="p0 center">BY LUDWIG LEWISOHN</p> - - -<p>Utopia is the loveliest of all countries; it is -also the farthest away. One may make magnificent -generalizations concerning the future of the -relations of the sexes; one may set down truths -that are theoretically unanswerable. Only one -will change nothing, help not a single soul. Let -me cling to a few humble facts....</p> - -<p>So far as any one can see the habit of one man -living with one woman will persist. The young -will hear of nothing else, since they are under -the sway of romantic passion which is, subjectively, -exclusive and final; those who are older -will hear of nothing else because experience has -shown this method of life capable of securing the -healthiest freedom from preoccupation with sex -and the maximum amount of ordered activity. -To be a rake or even a fastidious “varietist” is -the costliest of occupations. Rational monogamy -is in no danger. The trouble lies elsewhere; it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span> -lies in the fact that current notions of monogamy -are, I use the word advisedly, insane.</p> - -<p>Local bill-board advertisements of moving -pictures have recently shown a ball-room in -which an irate gentleman in evening-dress -grasped the shoulder of another gentleman who -looked crushed and crest-fallen. With an inimitable -gesture of moral indignation the first gentleman -pointed to a quivering female on the -other side of the room. The caption of this -stirring lithograph was “His Forgotten Wife.” -The exquisite absurdity of this picture is clear. -It is significant of the way in which we are all -brow-beaten by the sodden nonsense of the tribe -that it took me some minutes of reflection to -come upon the unreason of the thing. If the -crushed looking gentleman had forgotten the -lady, she was not, of course, his wife and could -never have truly been. If we are dealing with -a euphemism and are to understand that he -wanted to forget her, she may once have been -his wife, but had, quite obviously, ceased to be.</p> - -<p>In this moving picture there is illustrated -what I call the insane view of monogamic marriage, -namely, that it is put on like a shirt or a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span> -coat and must be kept on however ill-fitting, -comfortless, unclean, or dangerous, and that in -this mere keeping on there is virtue. There is -the further implication that marriage has nothing -to do with good behavior, which is rewarded -even in penitentiaries, or with ill; that it is, indeed, -an abstract kind of fate, a magical or -infernal machine, a metaphysical trap. Once -you are caught in it, you must stay caught. To -wriggle is sin.</p> - -<p>Do I seem to be discussing the matter on too -low a plane? I wish I were. The truth is that -cultivated and liberal people have not yet freed -their minds from the concepts with which that -amusing picture deals. It is in action, not in -fireside talk that these things are tested. And it -is true that even such people will pay an uninhibited -respect to a depraved character, cruel, -treacherous, stupid, who practices that moving-picture -theory of marriage which, in ways no -less real for being subtle and but half-conscious, -they will be tempted to withhold from a person -of the utmost spiritual grace and charm who -practices that kind of marriage of which, theoretically<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span> -and outspokenly, they so eloquently -approve.</p> - -<p>This very tentative argument, then, is not directed -against marriage. I am not even ready -to plead—that would be Utopian—that the relations -of the sexes be withdrawn from social control. -Our first step, at least in America, must -be an attempt to sanitate marriage. This can -be done—if it can be done at all—by relating -marriage and its practice to certain notions of -good and decency and honor that already have a -tenure, however feeble, upon the public consciousness. -Marriage, in brief, should be held -to be created by love and sustained by love. I -shall, of course, be accused of meaning passion. -I mean that precise blending of passion and -spiritual harmony and solid friendship without -which, as even those who will not admit it know, -the close association of a man and a woman is as -disgusting as it is degrading. And marriage -should be dependent, though this matter is included -in the first, on good behavior. I will not -keep a man or a woman as my friend whom I -discover to be a liar, slanderer, thief. Much less -ought one to keep such a person as husband or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span> -wife. Who is to judge, it will be asked? No -objective judgment is needed. A subjective conviction -of this sort suffices to reduce the union -in question to dust and ashes.</p> - -<p>Here is the one practical point; here the one -possibility of hope. To frame a rational theory -of the relations of men and women is easy and -agreeable. The very fashioners of such theories, -being human, will be brought, under the discomforts -of social pressure, to <em>seem</em> to assent to all -that their minds most passionately deny. A man -or a woman of the highest philosophic insight -will struggle through the ignominy of the divorce -courts not so much in order to dissolve a -meaningless legal bond as to save some one whom -he or she loves and reveres from the criticism of -the vulgar. For we live in a vulgar world. -There is no safe and ultimate escape; its vulgarity -in precisely these matters will often affront us -where we least expected it. To mitigate that -vulgarity must be our first task.</p> - -<p>I do not know whether it can be done at all. -But if so, then it must be done by making an -unhappy union disgraceful. People who are -always bickering with each other, who are obviously<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span> -unhappy in each other’s presence, who always -hold opinions acridly opposed, who are -always trying either subtly or obviously to escape -from each other—such couples must fall under -social disapproval. And this disapproval must -apply even though one of the two prefers possessiveness -to either happiness or decency or self-respect. -Similarly those who are deliberately -unfaithful should be disgraced—not for the act -of unfaith but for the hypocrisy of remaining in -a union which that very act, which the temptation -to that very act, shows to have lost its purpose -and its meaning.</p> - -<p>This sort of social control is not my ideal. -Love is like religion, a matter for the individual -soul. To change partners in love is very much -like changing one’s opinion on some deep and -vital matter. The spirit must bear its own inherent -witness. But I promised myself not to be -Utopian. And may it not conceivably be -brought home to a few people to begin with that -the men who laugh so spontaneously when the -song-and-dance man sings “My wife’s gone to -the country, hurray, hurray!” are leading immoral -lives and reducing their partners to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span> -rôle of disagreeable prostitutes and unsatisfactory -servants?</p> - -<p>I am not prepared to stress the point unendurably. -True marriage, the true and lovely union -of a man and a woman, body and spirit, is rare. -But to-day it is not even an ideal, not even something -admired and striven for. Love in itself is -rare and married love is perhaps as rare as -beauty or genius. Happiness, too, is rare, happiness -in any relation. But even as a man or a -woman has made an obvious and shattering -mistake if his or her chosen work does not produce -a reasonable minimum of lasting inner satisfaction, -so may marriage also be tested by a -reasonable minimum of lasting—let us say, preference -and blessedness. To fall below that -minimum is to cheat both the self and society, -both the present and posterity, to sacrifice honor -to a fetish and vitality to decay.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Communist">Communist Puritans</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Louis Fischer</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span></p> -<h3>Louis Fischer</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>is Moscow correspondent of the New York</i> Nation.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">COMMUNIST PURITANS</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY LOUIS FISCHER</p> - - -<p>The Soviet state is omnipotent and omnipresent. -Bukharin, the arch-theorist, contends that -this is a transitional phase in the development of -Communism toward perfection. The Bolsheviks’ -professed aim is the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">reductio ad administratum</i> -of the functions of the state; they would -make government the traffic cop of the nation -but not the all-pervading busybody and touch-everybody-everywhere -which it is now in Russia. -The transitional period, however, may last -long. In default of a world revolution it may -project itself beyond the present generation and -even beyond the next. And in the meantime it -is good Communist doctrine to maintain an -Argus-eyed, Herculanean-clubbed state. The -Soviet Government is alike an administrator, -politician, statesman, merchant, manufacturer, -banker, shipbuilder, newspaper publisher, -school-teacher, and preacher.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span></p> - -<p>Such a state is the highest expression of the -anti-individualism of socialist philosophy. The -single <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">simian erectus</i> is nothing; it is the class, -the nation which counts.</p> - -<p>The citizen lives for the state. Mind and -muscle must ever be at its service. A Communist -who is a loose liver is an anomaly. There -is virtue even in a grain of asceticism and in -“morality,” not, it is important to note, because -luxury and license are sinful and lead to damnation -and hell but because the excessive gratification -of physical desires, be they for sex or for -alcohol, and any over-indulgence of one’s selfish -mental weaknesses reduce the energy and attention -which the individual can offer to the state -and to society.</p> - -<p>The Bolsheviks do not believe in evolution in -the realm of politics; they are revolutionists. -Eighteenth and nineteenth-century liberalism -tended toward the survival of the fittest. But -the essence of the Russian revolution is the protection -of the under dog, of the proletarian and -peasant who, unaided, would not survive in the -unequal struggle with the capitalist and landowner. -The function of the Soviet state is to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span> -support the oppressed majority against the -vested and acquired interests of the economically -powerful minority.</p> - -<p>The doctrine of the survival of the fittest, -translated into every-day life, permits freedom -of action, as little restraint as possible, the freest -play for nature and human nature. Communist -doctrine involves the negation of individual -freedom; human nature is discounted in the -socialist scale of weights and measures; laissez-faire -is replaced by discipline, if need be, by -force. Only once did the Communists reveal a -liberal vein. It was in their treatment of conscientious -objectors during the civil wars. Russia -has many sects such as the Dukhobors who -are opposed to violence on grounds of conscience. -Though the Government was engaged -in a death struggle, it respected these sentiments. -But in all else, whenever its own interests have -been at stake, the state has disregarded the wishes -and inclinations of the human unit. Liberty of -the individual is not as sacred an ikon as it is in -the West. To give economic freedom to the -mass is a nobler aim. Thus the Communists -would explain and justify (but in my opinion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span> -this does not justify) the absence of a free press -in Russia and the activities of the G. P. U.</p> - -<p>The aim of the Bolsheviks was not merely to -overthrow one government and to establish their -own. This was a means toward creating a new -society. To that extent the Bolsheviks are as -presumptuous as most reformers. In 1917 they -must have argued to themselves much to this -effect: “We are a minority. The majority has -not invited us to rule it. But we know better -than the majority what is good for it.” In the -interest of the new society a powerful state was -set up. The powerful state was privileged to -ride roughshod over the individual. The Bolsheviks -presume to tell the individual how to act -and how to live. This is the “superiority complex” -which is one of the most essential characteristics -of puritanism. “I am perfect. Watch -me. Go thou and do likewise.” The Russian -Communists are puritans without religion.</p> - -<p>In matters of morals the Communists advocate -and agitate but do not use force. Only in -the case of members of the Communist Party -do they interfere if the individual’s actions are -likely “directly or indirectly to discredit the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span> -party.” (Such a phrase permits of the widest -interpretation and misinterpretation.) Thus in -an article in the <i>Pravda</i> on The Party and Personal -Life, O. Zortzeva, an official of the Central -Control Committee, writes that “not long -ago one of the representatives of the Control -Committee in the South asked for instructions -to combat the evil of divorce.” She cites an instance -(and there must be many more such instances) -where a Communist was required to -explain why he left his wife. He replied he -could not live with her because she was unfit to -mingle in the society of his new friends and acquaintances. -The reply was regarded as unsatisfactory. -The Soviet state enforces a most -liberal divorce law. But the Communists discourage -divorce. Within the party it is looked -upon with disfavor.</p> - -<p>The war, the revolution, the civil wars have -worked havoc with the Russian family. It is -perhaps no exaggeration to say that family life -is crumbling. Trotzky, who has given more -active attention to these questions of personal -behavior than any other Communist leader, -seeks to reënforce the collapsing buttresses of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span> -the family. (It will be recalled that Engels, -the author with Marx of the “Communist Manifesto,” -wrote the “Origin of the Family” to -prove that the family was a new, unnecessary, -and reactionary institution.) Trotzky urges the -“communalization of the family household” so -as to “disencumber the family of kitchen and -laundry.” Take the burden of washing, cooking, -sewing, child-raising from the family and -“the relation between husband and wife will be -cleansed of all that is external, foreign, forced, -accidental. Each would cease to spoil the life -of the other....”</p> - -<p>The family life of most Communist leaders -would probably find favor in the eyes of the -Bishop of New York, and we can imagine that -Cotton Mather, if he returned to the flesh and -visited Moscow, would hurry to Trotzky, slap -him untheologically on the back, and say, “Thou -art a man.” There was something ascetic and -impersonal in the way Lenin used to live. There -is something reminiscent of Christian self-abnegation -in Chicherin’s, Bukharin’s, Radek’s -disdain for good clothes. A Communist is required -to contribute to the party treasury all the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span> -salary he earns above $95 a month. And even -if his writings bring him a supplementary income -he must not spend it for luxuries. The -Communists are the shock troops of the Soviet -régime. They must be like athletes in training. -They must not consume mental and spiritual ice -creams and pastries.</p> - -<p>Alexandra Kollontai, now Soviet ambassador -in Christiania, stands for the utmost freedom in -sexual relations. But a review in the official -press of her book, “Love Among Laboring -Bees,” stigmatizes her views on the subject as -“prostitution” and “intellectual tomfoolery.” -“It is imperative,” reads the last sentence of the -criticism, “to guard against the harmful influence -of Comrade Kollontai.” This is the attitude -which in other countries leads to the appointment -of vice censors. Russia, fortunately, -is too advanced to subject itself to such a humiliation. -Only the lives of Communists are censored. -In respect to the great mass of the people -the Bolsheviks content themselves with preaching.</p> - -<p>Trotzky’s sermons will certainly do the people -no harm. Russians have barely a trace of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span> -puritanism. Take the instance of their famous, -many-ply “mother” oaths. Beside them the -worst product of the British navvy looks pale. -Says Trotzky: “One would have to consult philologists, -linguists, and folk-lore experts to find -out whether any other people has such unrestrained, -filthy, and disgusting oaths as we have. -As far as I know, there is no other.” The Communists -have initiated an anti-swearing campaign. -In some factories the workers themselves -decided to fine any one who used an -“expression.” Wherever one goes, in industrial -plants, in beer saloons, in clubs, one sees the -colored “Don’t Swear” poster. Even in the -army, where curses once found their most fertile -field, they are becoming increasingly rare.</p> - -<p>A Communist should not play cards. A member -of the party will not, if he is a good Communist, -enter a gambling casino. (The Moscow -gambling casinos, incidentally, have been closed -by order of the Government.) Newly initiated -Communists ask their instructors whether they -are to permit their wives to powder their faces. -A Communist would hardly come to her office -with her lips rouged and even non-Communist<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span> -workers in many Soviet commissariats feel that -it is bad form to use the lipstick. Certainly very -few if any women Communists dress to fashion. -Most of them dress badly. There are more serious -things to do than to mind the clothes on one’s -back. It is unworthy of a Communist, and Communists -think it is unworthy of all Russians, to -give too much thought to the flesh. I know a -non-Communist Soviet official who likes to carry -a cane, but he leaves it home when he goes to -work.</p> - -<p>There can be no let-up, says Trotzky, in the -war against alcohol. The Government has abolished -vodka, but the bootleg “samogonka” has -replaced it. The police arrest men and women -(in Russia most of the apprehended bootleggers -are women) but force removes as little of the -evil here as it does in the United States. So -strong is the drink tradition in Russia that even -many Communists indulge in the permissible -wines and light beers. But the party reminds -its members that they must inhibit such desires. -It will not do for the best soldiers of the state -and the master-builders of a new society to become<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span> -inebriated, or lose their heads and time in -the pursuit of women, or play cards, or stop to -adjust their neckties while the foundations of -the structure are being laid.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Stereotypes">Stereotypes</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Florence Guy Seabury</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span></p> -<h3>Florence Guy Seabury</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>is a frequent contributor to the</i> New Republic <i>and -to various popular magazines.</i></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">STEREOTYPES</p> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">BY FLORENCE GUY SEABURY</p> - - -<p>If Clarissa Harlow could have stepped out of -her pre-Victorian world to witness some of the -women stevedores and “longshoremen” now at -work along the New York water front, she -would certainly have fainted so abruptly that no -masculine aid could have restored consciousness. -If we can believe the 1920 census, a goodly number -of Clarissa’s timid and delicate sex are toiling -gloriously in the most dangerous and violent -occupations. Nor are they only engaged in -handling steel beams and freight, running trucks -and donkey engines, but as miners and steeplejacks, -aviators and divers, sheriffs and explorers—everything, -in fact that man ever did or -thought of doing. They have proved, moreover, -as successful in such a new occupation as capturing -jungle tigers as in the old one of hunting -husbands, as deft in managing big business as in -running a little household.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span></p> - -<p>But the census bureau, compiling all the facts -of feminine industry, forgot to note that woman -might perform these amazingly varied operations, -outside the home, without changing in any -measurable degree the rooted conception of her -nature and activities. She may step out of skirts -into knickers, cut her hair in a dozen short shapes -and even beat a man in a prize fight, but old -ideas as to her place and qualities endure. She -changes nothing as set as the stereotyped image -of her sex which has persisted since Eve.</p> - -<p>The Inquiring Reporter of the New York <i>Sun</i> -recently asked five persons whether they would -prefer to be tried by a jury of men or women. -“Of men,” cried they all—two women and three -men. “Women would be too likely to overlook -the technical points of the law.” “Women are -too sentimental.” “They are too easily swayed -by an eloquent address.” “Women are by nature -sentimental.” Almost anybody could complete -the list. Ancient opinions of women’s characteristics -have been so widely advertised that the -youngest child in the kindergarten can chirp the -whole story. Billy, aged ten, hopes fervently -that this country may never have a woman president.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span> -“Women haven’t the brains—it’s a man’s -job.” A. S. M. Hutchinson, considerably older -than Billy, has equally juvenile fears: that the -new freedom for women may endanger her functions -in the home. Whatever and wherever the -debate, the status and attributes of women are -settled by neat and handy generalizations, passed -down from father to son, and mother to daughter. -For so far, most women accept the patterns made -for them and are as likely as not to consider -themselves the weaker vessel, the more emotional -sex, a lay figure of biological functioning.</p> - -<p>Optimists are heralding a changed state in the -relationship of men and women. They point to -modern activities and interests as evidence of a -different position in the world. They say that -customs and traditions of past days are yielding -to something freer and finer. The old order, as -far as home life is concerned, has been turned -topsy-turvy. Out of this chaos, interpreters of -the coming morality declare that already better -and happier ways have been established between -man and maid.</p> - -<p>It sounds plausible enough, but the trouble -remains, that, so far, it isn’t true. The intimate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span> -relationship of men and women is about as it was -in the days of Cleopatra or Xanthippe. The most -brawny stevedorette leaves her freight in the air -when the whistle blows and rushes home to husband -as if she were his most sheltered possession. -Following the tradition of the centuries, the business -woman, whose salary may double that of her -mate, hands him her pay envelope and asks permission -to buy a new hat. Busts and bustles are -out, flat chests and orthopedic shoes are in, while -the waist line moves steadily toward the thigh—but -what of it? Actualities of present days leave -the ancient phantasies unchanged.</p> - -<p>Current patterns for women, as formulated by -the man in the street, by the movies, in the women’s -clubs and lecture halls can be boiled down to -one general cut. Whatever she actually is or -does, in the stereotype she is a creature specialized -to function. The girl on the magazine -cover is her symbol. She holds a mirror, a fan, -a flower and—at Christmas—a baby. Without -variety, activity, or individuality her sugary -smile pictures satisfying femininity. Men are -allowed diversity. Some are libertines, others -are husbands; a few are lawyers, many are clerks.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span> -They wear no insignia of masculinity or badge -of paternity and they are never expected to live -up to being Man or Mankind. But every woman -has the whole weight of formulated Womanhood -upon her shoulders. Even in new times, she -must carry forward the design of the ages.</p> - -<p>One of the quaint hang-overs of the past is that -men are the chief interpreters of even the modern -woman. It may be that the conquest of varied -fields and the strain of establishing the right to -individuality has taken all her time and energy. -Or it may be that the habit of vicarious expression -has left her inarticulate. Whatever it is, in -the voluminous literature of the changing order, -from the earnest tracts on “How It Feels to Be a -Woman,” by a leading male educator to the tawdry -and flippant syndicated views of W. L. -George, masculine understanders take the lead. -And the strange part of their interpretations is -that they run true to ancient form. Old adages -are put in a more racy vernacular, the X-ray is -turned on with less delicacy, but when the froth -of their engaging frankness disappears, hoary -old ideas remain thickly in the tumbler.</p> - -<p>Take the intimate life story of a girl of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span> -younger generation—Janet March—written by -that good friend of women, Floyd Dell. The -blurb on the jacket of the book announces that -she moves toward “not a happy ending but an intelligent -one.” And the end? Janet finds her -mate and the curtain falls to the soft music of -maternity. “One has to risk something,” Janet -cries. “All my life I’ve wanted to <em>do</em> something -with myself. Something exciting. And this is -the one thing I can do. I can”—she hesitated. -“I can create a breed of fierce and athletic girls, -new artists, musicians, and singers.”</p> - -<p>As a conclusion this is acceptable to any one -with a heart, but wherein is it intellectual and -not happy? Queen Victoria, the Honorable -Herbert Asquith, or the Reverend Lyman Abbott -would be equally pleased by its one hundred -per cent womanliness. And how does it differ -from our cherished slogan, “Woman’s place is in -the home”? Only because Floyd Dell cuts Janet -in a large, free-hand design. The advance pattern -calls for a wealth of biological and gynecological -explanation, pictures the girl as a -healthy young animal who “smoked but drew -the line on grounds of health at inhaling,” and,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span> -following the fashion of peasants in foreign -countries, consummated the marriage before it -was celebrated. Yet Janet, who claimed her -right to all experience and experiment, finally -raises her banner on the platform of fireside and -nursery.</p> - -<p>Despite its unquestionable orthodoxy, Janet -March was retired from circulation. But no one -has successfully dammed the flowing tide of W. -L. George. He draws with somewhat futuristic -effect, at times, but his conclusions are those of -the old masters. “No woman,” he enunciates -authoritatively, “values her freedom until she is -married and then she is proud to surrender it to -the man she has won.” Or take this: “All -women are courtesans at heart, living only to -please the other sex.” Wherein does this differ -from the sentiment of Alexander Pope who, -one hundred and fifty or more years before the -birth of W. L. George, declared:</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -Men, some to business, some to pleasures take,<br /> -But every woman is at heart a rake.<br /> -</p> - -<p>H. L. Mencken, stirred by debates about the -intelligence of woman and her newer activities, -essayed “In Defense of Women,” to put his old<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span> -wine in a fancy bottle, but it was the same home -brew. Generously conceding brains to women, -he proves his point on the evidence that they are -used to ensnare men, who weak-minded and -feeble in flight are usually bowled over in the -battle of wits. “Marriage,” he says, “is the best -career a woman can reasonably aspire to—and -in the case of very many women, the only one -that actually offers a livelihood.”... “A childless -woman remains more than a little ridiculous -and ill at ease.”... “No sane woman has ever -actually muffed a chance.”... “The majority -of inflammatory suffragettes of the sex hygiene -and birth control species are simply those who -have done their best to snare a man and failed.”</p> - -<p>In H. L. Mencken’s favor is his absence of the -usual gush about feminine beauty. He declares -with refreshing honesty that in contrast to the -female body a milk jug or even a cuspidor is a -thing of intelligent and gratifying design. Of -woman’s superior mental ability he says, “A cave -man is all muscle and mush. Without a woman -to think for him, he is truly a lamentable spectacle, -a baby with whiskers, a rabbit with the -frame of an aurochs, a feeble and preposterous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span> -caricature of God.” What a pity that women -use all these advantages of superior mentality and -ability only in the age-old game of man-hunting. -But do they?</p> - -<p>D. H. Lawrence shares this philosophy of the -chief business of women, and he is much more -gloomy about it. In fact, he is decidedly neurotic -in his fear of the ultimate absorption of -man. Woman he describes perpetually as a -great, magnetic womb, fecund, powerful, drawing, -engulfing. Man he sees as a pitiful, struggling -creature, ultimately devoured by fierce maternal -force. “You absorb, absorb,” cries Paul to -Miriam in “Sons and Lovers,” “as if you must -fill yourself up with love because you’ve got a -shortage somewhere.” The Lawrence model, -madly, fiercely possessive, differs from older -forms in the abundance of physiological and -pathological trimming. His conclusion, as -voiced again by Paul to Miriam is, “A woman -only works with part of herself; the real and -vital part is covered up.” And this hidden reality -is her terrific, destructive, fervid determination -to drown man in her embrace.</p> - -<p>So it goes. To Floyd Dell woman is a Mother,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span> -to H. L. Mencken a Wife, to W. L. George a -Courtesan, and to D. H. Lawrence a Matrix—always -specialized to sex. There may be men -who are able to think of woman apart from the -pattern of function, but they are inarticulate. -Most of them spend their lives associating with -a symbol. The set pieces they call Mary, Martha, -Elaine, or Marguerite may follow the standardized -design of grandmother, mother, or aunt. -Or in more advanced circles, the pattern may call -for bobbed hair, knickers, and cigarette case. -Under any form of radicalism or conservatism -the stereotype remains.</p> - -<p>The old morality was built upon this body of -folk-lore about women. Whether pictured as a -chaste and beautiful angel, remote and untainted -by life’s realities, or more cynically regarded as -a devil and the source of sin, the notion was always -according to pattern. Naturally, the relationship -of men and women has been built upon -the design, and a great many of our social ideals -and customs follow it. The angel concept led, -of course, to the so-called double standard which -provides for a class of Victorian dolls who personify -goodness, while their sisters, the prostitutes,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span> -serve as sacrificial offerings to the wicked -ways of men. The new morality, as yet rather -nebulous and somewhat mythical, has fewer class -distinctions. The angel picture, for instance, has -had some rude blows. As portrayed by the vanguard -of radicals and interpreters, however, the -changing conventions have their roots in the old -generalizations and phantasies.</p> - -<p>Perhaps this is only to be expected, for the man -or woman does not exist whose mind has not become -so filled with accepted ideas of human beings -and relationships before maturity, or even -adolescence, that what is seen thereafter is -chiefly a fog of creeds and patterns. If several -hundred babies, children of good inherited backgrounds, -could be brought up on an isolated -island, without a taint of superimposed custom -and never hearing generalizations about themselves—never -having standardized characteristics -laid heavily upon their shoulders, perhaps a -different type of relationship founded upon actualities, -would be evolved. Without a mythology -of attributes, based chiefly upon biological functions, -real human beings might discover each -other and create new and honest ways of comradeship<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span> -and association. As it is to-day, we do -not know what the pristine reactions of individuals, -free from the modifications of stereotype, -would be like.</p> - -<p>It was the development of means by which beliefs -could be separated from actual facts which -brought modern science into being and freed the -world from the quaint superstitions of the ages. -Not until the nature of substance could be proved -and classified in contrast with the mass of ignorant -notions which clogged ancient thought was -the amazing mechanical, economic, and scientific -advance of the last century possible. The world -of antiquity had standardized life and tied -thought down to speculative creeds. Empirical -science discarded all supposition and centered -itself upon building up another picture—life as -an examination of its actual nature proved it -to be.</p> - -<p>In the creating of a new order which will -bring with it a different type of social and personal -contact, something similar must take place. -For most of our ideas, even those classified as -liberal and advanced, are built upon the reactions -of an alleged, not an actual human being.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span> -Men have suffered from pattern-making, but -never have they been burdened with the mass -of generalizations that are heaped upon women -from birth. Nobody knows what women are -really like because our minds are so filled with -the stereotype of Woman. And this picture, -even in the interpretations of those who claim to -understand the modern woman, is chiefly of function, -not character. It is impossible to create a -satisfying relationship between a red-blooded -individual and a symbol. A changed morality -cannot successfully emerge when half of those -who participate are regarded not as people but -functions. As long as women are pictured -chiefly as wife, mother, courtesan—or what not—defining -merely a relationship to men—nothing -new or strange or interesting is likely to happen. -The old order is safe.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Morality">Women and the New Morality</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0">By Beatrice M. Hinkle</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span></p> -<h3>Beatrice M. Hinkle</h3> -</div> - - -<p class="p0"><i>is a physician and psycho-analyst who follows in -general the beliefs of Jung. She is the author of -“Recreating the Individual.”</i></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span></p> -<p class="center p0 xbig">WOMEN AND THE NEW MORALITY</p> -</div> - -<p class="p0 center">BY BEATRICE M. HINKLE, M.D.</p> - - -<p>In the general discussions of morality which -are the fashion just now, sex morality seems to -occupy the chief place. Indeed, judging from -the amount of talk on this subject one would be -inclined to think it the outstanding problem of -our time. Certainly the whole of humanity is -concerned in and vitally affected by the sexual -aspect of life. Sexuality in its capacity as an -agent of transformation is the source of power -underlying the creativeness of man. In its direct -expression, including its influence upon human -relationships in general, it is woman’s particular -concern. The position of importance it is -assuming seems, therefore, to be justified, regardless -of the protests of the intellect and the -wish of the ego to minimize its significance.</p> - -<p>A general weakening of traditional standards -of ethics and morals and their gradual loss of -control over the conduct of individuals have long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span> -been observed in other activities—in business affairs -and in the world of men’s relations with -each other. This has taken place so quietly and -with so much specious rationalizing that sharp -practices and shady conduct which formerly -would have produced scandals, shame, and social -taboos now scarcely cause a protest from -society. These aspects of morality belong to the -masculine world in particular and produce little -agitation, while the upheaval in sex morals particularly -affects the feminine world and by many -people can scarcely be considered calmly enough -for an examination. The changes in this field -are the most recent and are being produced by -women; they are taking place in full view of all -with no apologies and with little hesitation. -They appear, therefore, most striking and disturbing. -It can be said that in the general disintegration -of old standards, women are the active -agents in the field of sexual morality and -men the passive, almost bewildered accessories -to the overthrow of their long and firmly organized -control of women’s sexual conduct.</p> - -<p>The old sex morality, with its double standard, -has for years been criticized and attacked by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span> -fair-minded persons of both sexes. It has been -recognized that this unequal condition produced -effects as unfortunate for the favored sex as for -the restricted one, and that because of this it -could not be maintained indefinitely by a psychologically -developing people. As a matter of -course, whenever the single standard was mentioned, -the standard governing women was invariably -meant, and the fact was ignored that -it is easier to break down restrictions than to -force them upon those who have hitherto enjoyed -comparative freedom. Furthermore, it -was not realized that a sex morality imposed -by repression and the power of custom creates -artificial conceptions and will eventually break -down.</p> - -<p>This forced morality is in fact at the present -time quite obviously disintegrating. We see -women assuming the right to act as their impulses -dictate with much the same freedom that -men have enjoyed for so long. The single standard -is rapidly becoming a <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">fait accompli</i>, but instead -of the standard identified with women it is -nearer the standard associated with men. According -to a universal psychological law, actual<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span> -reality eventually overtakes and replaces the cultural -ideal.</p> - -<p>Although this overthrow of old customs and -sex ideals must be chiefly attributed to the economic -independence of women brought about -through the industrialism of our age, it is safe -to say that no man thought ahead far enough or -understood the psychology of women sufficiently -to anticipate the fruit of this economic emancipation. -As long as women were dependent upon -men for the support of themselves and their children -there could be no development of a real -morality, for the love and feelings of the woman -were so intermingled with her economic necessities -that the higher love impulse was largely undifferentiated -from the impulse of self-preservation. -True morality can only develop when the -object or situation is considered for itself, not -when it is bound up with ulterior and extraneous -elements which vitiate the whole. The old morality -has failed and is disintegrating fast, because -it was imposed from without instead of -evolving from within.</p> - -<p>A morality which has value for all time and -is not dependent upon custom or external cultural<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span> -fashions can arise only from a high development -of the psychological functions of -thinking and feeling, with the developed individual -as the determiner of values instead of -general custom or some one else’s opinion. The -function of feeling and the realm of the -emotions have been universally regarded as -woman’s special province; therefore it is women -who are specially concerned with testing -out moral values involving sexual behavior. -Women have been reproached by men again and -again as being only sexual creatures, and they -have meekly accepted the reproach. Now, instead -of examining the statement, they have accepted -the sexual problem of men as though it -were their own, and with it the weight of man’s -conflict and his articulateness. For sexuality as -a problem and a conflict definitely belongs to -man’s psychology; it is he primarily who has -been ashamed of his domination by this power -and has struggled valiantly to free himself; his -egotistic and sexual impulses have always been -at war with each other. But whoever heard of -women being ashamed of yielding to the power -of love? Instead they gloried in the surrender<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span> -of themselves and counted themselves blessed -when love ruled. It is this need of man to -escape from the power of the sensual appeal -that has made him scorn sex and look upon -the great creative power of life as something -shameful and inferior, and in modern days treat -it as a joke or with the indifferent superficiality -which betrays emasculation and inadequacy.</p> - -<p>One has only to “listen in” where any large -group of men, young or old, are gathered together -in easy familiarity (the army camps were -recent examples on a large scale) to discover the -degree to which sexuality still dominates the -minds of men, even though its expression is confined -so largely to the jocose and the obscene. -Many men can corroborate this report from a -military camp—“we have sexuality in all its -dirty and infantile forms served daily for breakfast, -lunch, and dinner.” It is the inferior and -inadequate aspect of masculine sexuality that -has made it necessary for man to conceive it as -something shameful and unclean, and to insist -that woman must carry his purity for him and -live the restrictions and suppression that rightly -belonged to him. Woman on her part became<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span> -an easy victim of his ideas and convictions, because -of the very fact that the function of feeling -and the emotions so largely dominate her psychology. -The translation of feeling into -thought-forms has been slow and difficult. -About herself woman has been quite inarticulate -and largely unconscious. This inarticulateness -inevitably made her accept man’s standards and -values for her, for little directed thinking is -achieved without form and words. Because of -her sexual fertility and fruitfulness woman had -no sexual conflict; therefore, man easily unloaded -his psychological burden upon her, and -claimed freedom for the satisfaction of his own -desires.</p> - -<p>Thus, woman was made a symbol or personification -of man’s morality. She had to live for -him that which he was unable to live for -himself. This was the reason for his indignation -at moral transgressions on her part. She -had injured the symbol and revealed his weakness -to him. However, with the discovery by -women that they could be economically independent -of men, they commenced to find themselves -interesting. As they have gradually come<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span> -to think for themselves about fundamental questions, -there has begun a tremendous activity and -busyness in regard to the very subject which was -previously taboo.</p> - -<p>A recent writer boasts that men have -changed their attitude regarding sexual problems -very little and are not much concerned in -the new interest of women. This is probably -true, for man has contributed all he has to give -to the subject. He has laid down his taboos and -externalized his restrictions, chiefly applicable -to the other sex, and he is finished with the subject—bored -by having it thrust forward as an -unfinished problem needing reconsideration. -All of his knowledge or understanding of the -sexual aspect of life—the aspect underlying human -creativeness, the faulty development of -which is responsible for a large part of his woes, -“can be told in two hours to any intelligent sixteen -year old boy,” another writer recently -stated. It is this youthful ignorance and assurance -that the last word has been spoken on this -subject that has awakened women, no longer dependent -economically, to the fact that they must -also become independent of men intellectually if<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span> -they wish to gain expression for their knowledge -or to form their own rules of conduct based on -their psychology. In the true scientific spirit of -the age they are now experimenting and using -nature’s method of trial and error to find out for -themselves by conscious living experience what -feeling has vaguely told them. This is the first -step towards objectifying and clarifying woman’s -intuitive knowledge.</p> - -<p>With the revolt of women against the old restrictions -and the demand for freedom to experience -for themselves, there has appeared a -most significant phase of the changed morality—the -new relation of women toward each other. -The significance of this enormous change which -has been taking place very quietly and yet very -rapidly is scarcely appreciated. However, when -one realizes that only a generation ago the newspapers -were still publishing their funny paragraphs -at the expense of women (“The dear -creatures; how they love one another”), the -great difference in their relations today becomes -evident. The generally accepted distinction between -the personal loyalties of the sexes can be -summed up in the statement that women are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span> -loyal in love and disloyal in friendship, while -men are loyal in friendship and disloyal in love. -It is this attitude of women that is gradually disappearing -with the awakening of a new sense of -themselves as individuals. Their changed attitude -towards each other—the recognition of -their own values, and the growing realization -that only in solidarity can any permanent impression -be made on the old conception of -woman as an inferior, dependent creature, useful -for one purpose only—constitutes the most -marked difference between their present social -condition and that of the past.</p> - -<p>As long as women remained psychologically -unawakened, their individual values were swallowed -up in their biological value for the race. -They were under the unconscious domination -of their sexual fruitfulness and an enemy of -themselves as individuals. Weininger gives as -the chief difference between the masculine and -feminine creeds that “Man’s religion consists in -a supreme belief in himself—woman’s in a supreme -belief in other people.” These other -people being men, the sex rivalry among women -that has so long stood in the way of their further<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span> -development is easily understood. It has -been a vicious circle which could only be broken -by women’s gaining another significance in the -eyes of the world and in their own eyes. This -other significance is the economic importance -which they have acquired in the world of men.</p> - -<p>It makes little difference within the social -structure how many individual women exist who -have forged a position for themselves and have -won a freedom and independence equal to that -possessed by the ordinary man, so long as they -are isolated phenomena having little understanding -of the peculiar difficulties and problems of -women as a whole, and no relation with each -other. These women have always existed in all -culture periods, but they have produced little -effect upon the social condition or psychology -of women in general. There was no group action -because the majority of women were inarticulate. -The woman who was different became -abnormal in the eyes of the world.</p> - -<p>This lack of an adequate self-consciousness -among women, their general inability to translate -feeling into form capable of being understood -by the masculine mind, accounts for their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span> -acceptance of the statements made about them -by men in an effort to understand creatures apparently -so different from themselves. There -is no doubt that woman’s inarticulateness about -herself, even when her feelings were very different -from those she was told were normal, has -been responsible for a vast amount of the nonsense -written about her.</p> - -<p>This passive acceptance of the opinions of -others has been most disastrous for woman’s development. -Her superior psychological processes -consist of feelings and intuitions, and when -these are stultified or violated by being forced -into a false relation, or are inhibited from development, -the entire personality is crippled. -The inadequate development of the function of -thought and the dominating rôle played by the -function of feeling in the psychology of woman -have produced an obviously one-sided effect and -have caused men to postulate theories about her, -which are given forth as though they were the -last word to be said—fixed and unchangeable. -Indeed the statement that women are incapable -of change and that no growth is possible for them -is one of the favorite assertions of the masculine<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span> -writers upon the subject of women’s psychology. -As the present is the first time in our historical -period in which there has been any general opportunity -for women as a whole to think for -themselves and to develop in new ways, the basis -for this assertion does not exist, and it obviously -conceals an unconscious wish that women should -not change.</p> - -<p>The effect of collective ideas and cultural traditions -upon the personality is immeasurable. -The greatest general change that is taking place -today is the weakening of these ideas and the -refusal of women to be bound by them. Women -are for the first time demanding to live the forbidden -experiences directly and draw conclusions -on this basis. I do not mean to imply that -traditional moral standards controlling woman’s -sexual conduct have never been transgressed in -the past. They have very frequently been transgressed, -but secretly and without inner justification. -The great difference today lies in the open -defiance of these customs with feelings of entire -justification, or even a non-recognition of a necessity -for justification. In other words, there -has arisen a feeling of moral rightness in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span> -present conduct, and wrongness in the former -morality. Actually the condition is one in which -natural, long-restrained desire is being substituted -for collective moral rules, and individuals -are largely becoming a law unto themselves. It -is difficult to predict what will be the result of -the revolt, but it is certain that this is the preceding -condition which renders it possible for a -new morality in the real sense to be born within -the individual. It has already produced the first -condition of all conscious psychic development—a -moral conflict—and woman has gained a -problem.</p> - -<p>In the general chaos of conflicting feelings she -is losing her instinctive adaptation to her biological -rôle as race bearer, and is attempting adaptation -to man’s reality. She is making the effort -to win for herself some differentiation and development -of the ego function apart from her -instinctive processes. This is the great problem -confronting woman today; how can she gain -a relation to both racial and individual obligations, -instead of possessing one to the exclusion -of the other? Must she lose that which has been -and still is her greatest strength and value? I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span> -for one do not think so, although I am fully conscious -of the tremendous psychic effort and responsibility -involved in the changing standards. -It is necessary that women learn to accept themselves -and to value themselves as beings possessing -a worth at least equal to that of the other sex, -instead of unthinkingly accepting standards -based on masculine psychology. Then women -will recognize the necessity of developing their -total psychic capacities just as it is necessary for -men to do, but they will see that this does not involve -imitation of men or repudiation of their -most valuable psychic functioning. The real -truth is that it has at last become apparent to -many women that men cannot redeem them.</p> - -<p>It is not the purpose of this article to deal -with the practical issues involved in the new -moral freedom. One thing however is clearly -evident: Women are demanding a reality in -their relations with men that heretofore has -been lacking, and they refuse longer to cater to -the traditional notions of them created by men, -in which their true feelings and personalities -were disregarded and denied. This is the first -result of the new morality.</p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter transnote"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcriber’s Notes</h2> - - -<p>A few minor errors in punctuation have been corrected.</p> - -<p>The cover image has been modified slightly to include the full title and remove some wear.</p> -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR CHANGING MORALITY ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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