The Forerunner Part 84

And on what authority are these presented? some will ask. Not on "authority" at all; but on law, natural law, the right and wrong indicated being long since known to us. And are these set presumptuously in the place of the Divine Command? will be tremblingly inquired. By no means. The Ten stand as before--these are auxiliary and merely suggestive of study.

1. Thou shalt learn that human love is a natural law and obey it as the main condition of life: the service of man is the worship of G.o.d.

2. Thou shalt learn that the first duty of human life is to find thy work and do it; for by labor ye live and grow and in it is worship, pride and joy.

3. Thou shalt keep an open mind and use it, welcoming new knowledge and new truth and giving them to all.

4. Thou shalt maintain liberty and justice for everyone.

5. Thou shalt maintain thy health and thy chast.i.ty. Temperance and purity are required of all men.

6. Thou shalt not lie, break faith or cheat.

7. Thou shalt not gamble, nor live idly on the labor of others, nor by any usury.

8. Thou shalt not steal; nor take from one another save in fair exchange or as a free gift.

9. Thou shalt not do unnecessary hurt to any living thing.

10. Thou shalt not worship the past nor be content with the present, for growth is the law of life.

THE MALINGERER

Exempt! She "does not have to work!"

So might one talk Defending long, bedridden ease, Weak yielding ankles, flaccid knees, With, "I don't have to walk!"

Not have to work. Why not? Who gave Free pa.s.s to you?

You're housed and fed and taught and dressed By age-long labor of the rest-- Work other people do!

What do you give in honest pay For clothes and food?

Then as a shield, defence, excuse, She offers her exclusive use-- Her function--Motherhood!

Is motherhood a trade you make A living by?

And does the wealth you so may use, Squander, acc.u.mulate, abuse, Show motherhood as high?

Or does the motherhood of those Whose toil endures, The farmers' and mechanics' wives, Hard working servants all their lives-- Deserve less price than yours?

We're not exempt! Man's world runs on, Motherless, wild; Our servitude and long duress, Our shameless, harem idleness, Both fail to serve the child.

GENIUS, DOMESTIC AND MATERNAL

Most of us believe the human race to be the highest form of life--so far. Not all of us know why. Because we do not properly realize the causes of our superiority and swift advance, we do not take advantage of them as we should.

Among various causes of human supremacy, none counts more than our social gift of genius, the special power that is given to some more than others, as part of social specialization. In social life, which is organic, we do not find each one doing the same work, but some, especially fitted for one thing, doing that thing for the service of the others. No creature approaches us in the degree of our specialization, and the crowning power of individual genius.

Because of this power we, as a whole, have benefited by the "genius for mechanics," for invention, for discovery, for administration, and all the commoner lines of work, as well as in the fine arts and professions.

The great surgeon is a genius as well as the great painter or poet, and the world profits by the mighty works of these specialized servants.

For the development of genius we must allow it to specialize, of course.

The genius of Beethoven would have done us little good if he had pa.s.sed his life as a bookkeeper or dealer in ironware. The greatest of poets could produce little poetry if he worked twelve hours a day in a rolling mill. Genius may overcome some forms of opposition, but it must be allowed to do the work it has a genius for--or none will be manifested.

We can easily see what a loss it would have been to the world if all forms of genius had been checked and smothered; if we had no better poetry than the average man writes when he is in love, no better surgery than each of us could perform if he had to, no better music than the tunes we make up to amuse ourselves, no better machinery than each of us is capable of inventing. We know full well the limitation of the average mind.

Now, suppose we had no better guide than that, no specialization at all, no great financiers, no great administrators, no great astronomers or architects, no great anything--simply the average mind, doing everything for itself without any help from others. A nice, flat, low-grade world we would have! Think of the houses, each of them "the house that Jack built," and not a building on earth bigger or better than Jack alone could make! No sciences, no arts, no skilled trades (one cannot develop much special skill while doing everything for oneself); no teachers and leaders of any sort--just the strength and ingenuity of each one of us, trying to meet his own needs by his own efforts.

This would be stark savagery, not civilization.

All this is as true of women as it is of men; women also are human beings, and members of society. Women have capacity for specialization, for strong preference and high ability in certain kinds of work. But since a man's world has viewed women only as females, since their feminine functions were practically uniform, and since everything they did was considered a feminine function, therefore women have not been allowed to specialize and develop genius. All women were required to do the same work (a) "keep house"; (b) "rear children."

These things we have at no time viewed as arts, trades, sciences or professions; they were considered as feminine functions, and to be performed by "instinct." Instinct is hereditary habit. It is developed by the repeated action of identical conditions. It is a fine thing, for animals, who have nothing else.

In humanity, instinct disappears in proportion as reason develops. Our conditions vary, even more and rapidly, and we have to have something much more rapid and alterable than instinct. No great man runs a business by instinct; he learns how. For the performance of any social service of importance, three powers are required. First, special ability or genius; second, education; third, experience. When we are served by special ability, education and experience, we are well served.

Any human business left without these is left at the bottom of the ladder.

That is where we find the two great branches of human service left to women, the domestic and the maternal. These universal services, of most vital importance not only to our individual lives but to our social development, are left to be performed by the average mind, by the average woman, by instinct.

Our shoemaking is done by a shoemaker, our blacksmithing by a blacksmith, our doctoring by a doctor; but our cooking is done not by a cook, but by the woman a man happens to marry. She may, by rare chance, have some genius for cooking; but even if she does, there is no education and experience, save such as she may get from a cook book and a lifetime of catering to one family. Quite aside from cooking, the management of our daily living is a form of social service which should be given by genius, education, and experience; and, like the cooking, it is performed by any pretty girl a man secures in marriage.

This vast field of comfort or discomfort, ease or disease, happiness or unhappiness, is cut off from the uplifting influence of specialization.

But it is in the tasks and cares we call "maternal" that our strange restriction of normal development does most damage. We have lumped under their large and generous term all the things done to the little child--by his mother. What his father does for him is not so limited.

A child needs a house to live in--but his father does not have to build it. A child needs shoes, hats, furniture, dishes, toys--his father does not have to make them. A child needs, above all things, instruction--his father does not have to give it.

No, the fathers, humanly specialized, developing great skill and making constant progress, give to the world's children human advantages. A partly civilized state, comparative peace, such and such religions and systems of education, such and such fruits of the industry, trade, commerce of the time, and the mighty works of genius; all these men give to children, not individually, as parents, but collectively, as human beings. The father who, as a savage, could give his children only a father's services, now gives them the services of carpenters and masons, farmers and graziers, doctors and lawyers, painters and glaziers, butchers and bakers, soldiers and sailors--all the multiplied abilities of modern specialization; while the mother is "only mother" still.

There are three exceptions: that most ancient division of labor which provided the nurse, the next oldest which gave the servant, and the very recent one which has lifted the world so wonderfully, the teacher. The first two are still unspecialized. As any woman is supposed to be a competent mother, so any woman is supposed to be a competent nursemaid or housemaid. The teacher, however, has to learn his business, is a skilled professional, and accomplishes much.

Teaching is a form of specialized motherhood. It gives "the mother love"--an attribute of all female animals toward their own young--a chance to grow to social form as a general love of children, and through specialization, training, experience, it makes this love far more useful. The teacher is to some degree a social mother, and the advantage of this social motherhood is so great that it would seem impossible to question it. Motherhood is common to all races of humanity, down to the Bushmen, as well as to beasts and birds.

Education is found only with us; and in proportion to our stage of social progress. Where there is no education but the mother's--no progress. Where the teacher comes, and in proportion to the quant.i.ty and quality of teachers, so advances civilization. In Africa there are mothers, prolific and affectionate; in China, in India, everywhere. But the nations with the most and best education are those which lead the world.

Similarly in domestic service. Everywhere on earth, to the lowest savages, we find the individual woman serving the individual man. "Home cooking" varies with the home; from the oil-lamp of the Eskimo or brazier of the Oriental, up to the more elaborate stoves and ranges of to-day; but the art of cooking has grown through the men cooks, who made it a business, and gave to this valuable form of social service the advantages of genius, training and experience.

The whole people share in the development of architecture, of electric transportation and communication, of science and invention. But no such development is possible to the general public, in these basic necessities of child care and house care, for the obvious reason above stated, that these tasks are left to the unspecialized, untrained, unexperienced average woman.

The child should have from birth the advantages of civilization. The home should universally share in the progress of the age. To some extent this now takes place, as far as the advance in child-culture can spread and filter downward to the average mother, through the darkness of ignorance and the obstacles of prejudice, and as far as public statutes can enforce upon the private home the sanitary requirements of the age. But this is a slow and pitifully small advance; we need genius, for our children; genius to insure the health and happiness of our daily lives.

Motherhood pure and simple, the bearing, nursing, loving and providing for a child, is a feminine function, and should be common to all women.

But that "providing" does not have to be done in person. The mother has long since deputed to the father the two main lines of child care--defence and maintenance. She has allowed her responsibility to shift in this matter on the ground that he could do it better than she could.

In instruction she has accepted the services of the school, and of the music-teacher, dancing-teacher, and other specialists; in case of illness, she relies on the doctor; in daily use, she is glad to patronize the shoemaker and hatter, seamstress and tailor. Yet in the position of nurse and teacher to the baby, she admits no a.s.sistance except a servant. But the first four or five years of a child's life are of preeminent importance. Here above all is where he needs the advantage of genius, training and experience, and is given but ignorant affection and hired labor.