A perfect fusion of the two spiritual sex-characters would, on the contrary, have the same result as physical hermaphroditism—sterility. Genius—and in using the term we limit its meaning to poetic genius, for real feminine genius has thus far appeared only in that domain—embraces,as emphasised above, both man and woman, but not harmoniously blended. For such a genius would be unproductive, as we imagine those celestial forms to be which are neither “man nor woman.” The masculine and the feminine characteristics, which exist side by side in the poet soul, produce work in co-operation. Alternately, however, they seek to usurp the entire power, whereby is occasioned the disharmony which enters into the life of those who endeavour to fulfil at one and the same time the universal, human duties as well as those of sex. Indeed it may be that one of the reasons why great poetic geniuses, masculine as well as feminine, have often had no progeny at all, and in other cases one of little significance, is that their nature was not capable of a double production, that poetic creation received the richest part of their physical and psychical power.
Whether the opinion of genius expressed here is correct or not, does not, however, affect the general situation. For the genius will always go his own way, which is never that of the average man. From the point of view of the ordinary individual an effacement of the spiritual sex character would be in still higher degree a misfortune for culture and nature. For it is the difference in the spiritual as well as in the physical sex-characteristics that makes love a fusion of two beings in a higher unity, where each finds the full deliverance and harmony of his being. With theelimination of thespiritualdifferencepsychicallove would vanish. There would be left, then, upon the one side, only the mating instinct, in which the same points of view as in animal breeding must obtain; on the other, only the same kind of sympathy which is expressed in the friendship between persons of the same sex, the sympathy in which the human, individual difference instead of sexual difference forms the attraction. In love, on the other hand, sympathy grows in intensity, the more universally human and at the same time sexually attractive the individual is: the “manly” in man is charmed by the “womanly” in woman, while the “womanly” in man is likewise captivated by the “manly” in woman, andvice versa. But when neither needs thespiritual sexof the other as his complement, then man, in erotic respects, returns to the antique conception of the sex relationship, of which Plato has drawn the final logical conclusion.
The “humanity” in the soul of man was strengthened when he felt himself necessary to mother and child. When woman by sweetness and tenderness taught man to love, not only to desire, then his humanity increased immeasurably.
In our time the average man is beginning to learn that woman does not desire him as man, that she looks down upon him as a lower kind of being, that she does not need him as supporter. He does not at all grasp what it is the woman ofhighest culture seeks, demands, and awaits from his sex. But he learns that even the mediocre woman rejects the best he has to give her erotically; that imbued as she is with ideals of “universal humanity,” she no longer needs him as the supplement to her sexual being. Then brutality awakes in him anew; then his erotic life loses what humanity it had won; then he begins to hate woman. And not with the imaginative, theoretical hatred of thinkers and poets; but with the blind rage which the contempt of the weaker for the stronger arouses in him. And here we encounter what is, perhaps, the deepest reason for the present war between the sexes, appearing already in the literary world as well as in the labour market.
Here the extreme feminists play unconsciously about an abyss,—the depths in the nature of man out of which the elementary, hundred-thousand-year-old impulses arise, the impulses which all cultural acquisitions and influences cannot eradicate, so long as the human race continues to subsist and multiply under present conditions.
The feminism which has driven individualism to the point where the individual asserts her personality in opposition to, instead of within, the race; the individualism which becomes self-concentration, anti-social egoism, although the watchword inscribed upon its banner is “Society instead of the family,”—this feminism will bearthe blame should the hatred referred to lead to war.
It would be a pity to conclude a survey of the influence of the woman movement with an expression of fear lest this extreme feminism should be victorious. I believe not; no more than I believe that the sun will for the present be extinguished or streams flow back to their sources.
No “culture” can annul the great fundamental laws of nature; it can only ennoble them; and motherhood is one of these fundamental laws. I hope that the future will furnish a new and a more secure protection for motherhood than the present family and social organisation affords. I place my trust in a new society, with a new morality, which will be a synthesis of the being of man and that of woman, of the demands of the individual and those of society, of the pagan and Christian conceptions of life, of the will of the future and reverence for the past.
When the earth blooms with this beautiful and vigorous flower of morality, there will no longer be a woman movement. But there will always be a woman question, not put by women to society but by society to women: the question whether they will continue in a higher degree to prove themselves worthy of the great privilege of being the mothers of the new generation.
In the degree in which this new ethics permeates mankind, women will answer this question inlife-affirmation. And the result of their life-affirmation will be an enormous enhancement of life, not only for women themselves but for all mankind.
THE END
THE END
THE END
1. In the summer of 1909 I sat in a Swedish home where the grandmother, for this reason, had never learned to write but where the granddaughter read aloud the thesis for her bachelor’s examination. One hears even to-day of customs and points of view in certain farms and manses which faithfully imitate those of the time of the Reformation.
1. In the summer of 1909 I sat in a Swedish home where the grandmother, for this reason, had never learned to write but where the granddaughter read aloud the thesis for her bachelor’s examination. One hears even to-day of customs and points of view in certain farms and manses which faithfully imitate those of the time of the Reformation.
2. Next to the textile industry, the tobacco industry employs the most women.
2. Next to the textile industry, the tobacco industry employs the most women.
3. This idealism has naturally part also in the fact that, for example, two-thirds of the women who have gone through college in America do not marry, and find in club life a compensation for domestic life. But other motives also must often play a part here, from the desire to devote herself entirely to one of the lifeworks serviceable to mankind, to the egoism of spiritually barren young girls with its distaste for burdens and restraint.A keen-sighted observer who recently spent a half year in North America corroborated what many have already stated: that the student and working young American girls devote themselves with true passion to the cultivation of their beauty, their toilette, their flirtations. All this belongs for her to the “Fine Arts” and as such is an end sufficient in itself, while for European women these arts, as a rule, are still means for alluring men to marriage. While study or work often makes European women in outer sense less “womanly,” although her soul always guards its full power to love, in America the reverse is the case: the outer appearance is bewitchingly womanly, but the soul no longer vibrates for love. The sexual sterility which Maudsley already prophesied thirty years ago, when he spoke about the “sexless ants,” has been partly realised, partly chosen voluntarily. In Europe it still frequently happens that a young woman who has put love aside for the sake of study or work is suddenly seized by an irresistible passion; in America, on the contrary, this is extremely rare. Women students look down upon the less cultured men, who ordinarily finish their studies earlier in order to earn a livelihood. The sympathy which they need, women find more easily in their own sex. The unmarried have quite the same social position as the married and do not desire children. If they finally marry, it is ordinarily because a more brilliant position is offered them than the one which they could create themselves, and the man is then considered and treated as a money-getter.My authority emphasises also that the young students or working girls are ordinarily less original, of less personal significance, less individually developed, than the older women, especially women’s rights women, who often have not studied but have grown grey in marriage and motherhood, in self-development and in social work. The interesting significant American feminists were women between the ages of fifty and ninety; the woman of the present generation, however, which now enjoys the fruits of the work of the older generation, is, in spite of excellent scholarship and great working proficiency, less a woman and less a human being, less a personality.These wholly fresh observations, which were communicated to me during the printing of my book, seem to me to confirm so strongly my point of view that I wish to repeat them here.But in France and elsewhere mothers tell us how clear, intelligent, and universally interested their daughters are, and at the same time how critical, how free from ardour and enthusiasm. It is not the hasty love marriage that many mothers now fear for their daughters, but a worldly-wise marriage without love.
3. This idealism has naturally part also in the fact that, for example, two-thirds of the women who have gone through college in America do not marry, and find in club life a compensation for domestic life. But other motives also must often play a part here, from the desire to devote herself entirely to one of the lifeworks serviceable to mankind, to the egoism of spiritually barren young girls with its distaste for burdens and restraint.
A keen-sighted observer who recently spent a half year in North America corroborated what many have already stated: that the student and working young American girls devote themselves with true passion to the cultivation of their beauty, their toilette, their flirtations. All this belongs for her to the “Fine Arts” and as such is an end sufficient in itself, while for European women these arts, as a rule, are still means for alluring men to marriage. While study or work often makes European women in outer sense less “womanly,” although her soul always guards its full power to love, in America the reverse is the case: the outer appearance is bewitchingly womanly, but the soul no longer vibrates for love. The sexual sterility which Maudsley already prophesied thirty years ago, when he spoke about the “sexless ants,” has been partly realised, partly chosen voluntarily. In Europe it still frequently happens that a young woman who has put love aside for the sake of study or work is suddenly seized by an irresistible passion; in America, on the contrary, this is extremely rare. Women students look down upon the less cultured men, who ordinarily finish their studies earlier in order to earn a livelihood. The sympathy which they need, women find more easily in their own sex. The unmarried have quite the same social position as the married and do not desire children. If they finally marry, it is ordinarily because a more brilliant position is offered them than the one which they could create themselves, and the man is then considered and treated as a money-getter.
My authority emphasises also that the young students or working girls are ordinarily less original, of less personal significance, less individually developed, than the older women, especially women’s rights women, who often have not studied but have grown grey in marriage and motherhood, in self-development and in social work. The interesting significant American feminists were women between the ages of fifty and ninety; the woman of the present generation, however, which now enjoys the fruits of the work of the older generation, is, in spite of excellent scholarship and great working proficiency, less a woman and less a human being, less a personality.
These wholly fresh observations, which were communicated to me during the printing of my book, seem to me to confirm so strongly my point of view that I wish to repeat them here.
But in France and elsewhere mothers tell us how clear, intelligent, and universally interested their daughters are, and at the same time how critical, how free from ardour and enthusiasm. It is not the hasty love marriage that many mothers now fear for their daughters, but a worldly-wise marriage without love.
4. SeeLove and Ethics, Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chicago, and alsoMutter und Kind, published in Germany only, Pan-Verlag. My plan is a paternity assessment upon society as a contribution to the maintenance of children and a compensation of motherhood by the state.Society has already shown by a series of institutions, maternity assurance, infants’ milk distribution, clothing and feeding of children, and many kindred social efforts, that the maintenance afforded by the father is not sufficient for the young generation; quite as little is the mother’s care, which is supplemented by other means, crèches, etc. But when thechildfinally becomes the unconscious “head of the family,” then it will be the affair of society to requite maternity. Marriage will then signify only the living together of two people upon the ground of love and the common parenthood of children.Maternal rightwillin lawtake the place ofpaternal right, butin realitythe father will continue to retain all the influence upon the children which hepersonallyis able to exert, just as has been hitherto the case with the mother.In such circumstances there will be no more illegitimate children; no mothers driven out from the care of tender children to earn their daily bread; no fathers who avoid their economic duties toward their children, and who cannot be compelled by society to perform at least that paternal duty which animals perform now better than men: that of contributing their part to the maintenance of their progeny. There will be no mothers who for the sake of their own and their children’s maintenance need to stay with a brutal man; no mothers who, in case of a separation, can be deprived of their children on any ground except that of their own unworthiness. In a word, society must—upon a higher plane—restore the arrangement which is already found in the lower stages of civilisation, the arrangement which nature herself created: that mother and child are most closely bound together, that they together, above all, form the family, in which the father enters through the mother’s or his own free will.
4. SeeLove and Ethics, Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Chicago, and alsoMutter und Kind, published in Germany only, Pan-Verlag. My plan is a paternity assessment upon society as a contribution to the maintenance of children and a compensation of motherhood by the state.
Society has already shown by a series of institutions, maternity assurance, infants’ milk distribution, clothing and feeding of children, and many kindred social efforts, that the maintenance afforded by the father is not sufficient for the young generation; quite as little is the mother’s care, which is supplemented by other means, crèches, etc. But when thechildfinally becomes the unconscious “head of the family,” then it will be the affair of society to requite maternity. Marriage will then signify only the living together of two people upon the ground of love and the common parenthood of children.Maternal rightwillin lawtake the place ofpaternal right, butin realitythe father will continue to retain all the influence upon the children which hepersonallyis able to exert, just as has been hitherto the case with the mother.
In such circumstances there will be no more illegitimate children; no mothers driven out from the care of tender children to earn their daily bread; no fathers who avoid their economic duties toward their children, and who cannot be compelled by society to perform at least that paternal duty which animals perform now better than men: that of contributing their part to the maintenance of their progeny. There will be no mothers who for the sake of their own and their children’s maintenance need to stay with a brutal man; no mothers who, in case of a separation, can be deprived of their children on any ground except that of their own unworthiness. In a word, society must—upon a higher plane—restore the arrangement which is already found in the lower stages of civilisation, the arrangement which nature herself created: that mother and child are most closely bound together, that they together, above all, form the family, in which the father enters through the mother’s or his own free will.
5. An inquiry instituted among English women as to whether they would prefer to be men or women gave as a result the fact that, out of about 7000 who answered, two-thirds wished to remain women and this above all in order to be mothers, while a third wished to be men. This indicated probably the highest figure of the disinclination for maternity which such aEuropeaninquiry could elicit. But even these women who wish to marry and to become mothers feel the pressure of the idea created by the zealots of the woman movement which finds expression often in the following conversation between two former schoolmates about a third: “And A—— what is she doing now?”—“Nothing—she is married and has children.”The old folk legend about the girl who trampled on the bread she was carrying to her mother because she wished to go dry-shod, can serve as symbol of many modern women zealots: life’s great, sound values are offered for the meal; vanity sits down alone to partake of them.
5. An inquiry instituted among English women as to whether they would prefer to be men or women gave as a result the fact that, out of about 7000 who answered, two-thirds wished to remain women and this above all in order to be mothers, while a third wished to be men. This indicated probably the highest figure of the disinclination for maternity which such aEuropeaninquiry could elicit. But even these women who wish to marry and to become mothers feel the pressure of the idea created by the zealots of the woman movement which finds expression often in the following conversation between two former schoolmates about a third: “And A—— what is she doing now?”—“Nothing—she is married and has children.”
The old folk legend about the girl who trampled on the bread she was carrying to her mother because she wished to go dry-shod, can serve as symbol of many modern women zealots: life’s great, sound values are offered for the meal; vanity sits down alone to partake of them.
6. Bret Harte,The Luck of Roaring Camp.
6. Bret Harte,The Luck of Roaring Camp.
7. E. Carrière and Segantini.
7. E. Carrière and Segantini.
8. Max Kruse,Liebesgruppe.
8. Max Kruse,Liebesgruppe.
9. This amaternal idea is advanced with great ability in some works of Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Rosa Mayreder. The word amaternal coined by me is used to characterise the theory subsequently advanced, because the word unmaternal (unmotherly) signifies aspiritual condition, the antithesis to “motherliness.” The maternal as opposed to the amaternal theory is this: that a woman’s life is lived most intensively and most extensively, most individually and most socially; she is for her own part most free, and for others most fruitful, most egoistic and most altruistic, most receptive and most generous, in and with thephysical and psychic exercise of the function of maternity, because of the conscious desire, by means of this function, to uplift the life of the race as well as her own life.
9. This amaternal idea is advanced with great ability in some works of Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Rosa Mayreder. The word amaternal coined by me is used to characterise the theory subsequently advanced, because the word unmaternal (unmotherly) signifies aspiritual condition, the antithesis to “motherliness.” The maternal as opposed to the amaternal theory is this: that a woman’s life is lived most intensively and most extensively, most individually and most socially; she is for her own part most free, and for others most fruitful, most egoistic and most altruistic, most receptive and most generous, in and with thephysical and psychic exercise of the function of maternity, because of the conscious desire, by means of this function, to uplift the life of the race as well as her own life.
10. It can even be shown that, if man invades the so-called woman’s spheres (for example the art of cooking or of dress-making), it is most frequently he who makes new discoveries and attains great success!
10. It can even be shown that, if man invades the so-called woman’s spheres (for example the art of cooking or of dress-making), it is most frequently he who makes new discoveries and attains great success!
11. The best proof of this is that many women who, in a life free from care in an outward sense, were comparable only to geese or peacocks, nevertheless, when hard times came and gave them opportunity to develop their power of love, not only proved themselves heroines, but asserted that their “happy” years were those in which they had so “sacrificed” themselves.
11. The best proof of this is that many women who, in a life free from care in an outward sense, were comparable only to geese or peacocks, nevertheless, when hard times came and gave them opportunity to develop their power of love, not only proved themselves heroines, but asserted that their “happy” years were those in which they had so “sacrificed” themselves.
12. How many children have had their idea of right debased by the manner in which the “Captain of Köpernick” was received at his liberation—to cite only one example.
12. How many children have had their idea of right debased by the manner in which the “Captain of Köpernick” was received at his liberation—to cite only one example.
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