The Man-Made World Part 7

Take, for instance, the ethical concept among "gentlemen" a century or so since, which put the paying of one's gambling debts as a well-nigh sacred duty, and the paying of a tradesman who had fed and clothed one as a quite negligible matter. If the process of gambling was of social service, and the furnishing of food and clothes was not, this might be good ethics; but as the contrary is true, we have to account for this peculiar view on other grounds.

Again, where in j.a.pan a girl, to maintain her parents, is justified in leading a life of shame, we have a peculiar ethical standard difficult for Western minds to appreciate. Yet in such an instance as is described in "Auld Robin Gray," we see precisely the same code; the girl, to benefit her parents, marries a rich old man she does not love--which is to lead a life of shame. The ethical view which justifies this, puts the benefit of parents above the benefit of children, robs the daughter of happiness and motherhood, injures posterity to a.s.sist ancestors.

This is one of the products of that very early religion, ancestor worship; and here we lay a finger on a distinctly masculine influence.

We know little of ethical values during the matriarchate; whatever they were, they must have depended for sanction on a cult of promiscuous but efficient maternity. Our recorded history begins in the patriarchal period, and it is its ethics alone which we know.

The mother instinct, throughout nature, is one of unmixed devotion, of love and service, care and defence, with no self-interest. The animal father, in such cases as he is of service to the young, a.s.sists the mother in her work in similar fashion. But the human father in the family with the male head soon made that family an instrument of desire, and combat, and self-expression, following the essentially masculine impulses. The children were his, and if males, valuable to serve and glorify him. In his dominance over servile women and helpless children, free rein was given to the growth of pride and the exercise of irresponsible tyranny. To these feelings, developed without check for thousands of years, and to the mental habits resultant, it is easy to trace much of the bias of our early ethical concepts.

Perhaps it is worth while to repeat here that the effort of this book is by no means to attribute a wholly evil influence to men, and a wholly good one to women; it is not even claimed that a purely feminine culture would have advanced the world more successfully. It does claim that the influence of the two together is better than that of either one alone; and in especial to point out what special kind of injury is due to the exclusive influence of one s.e.x heretofore.

We have to-day reached a degree of human development where both men and women are capable of seeing over and across the distinctions of s.e.x, and mutually working for the advancement of the world. Our progress is, however, seriously impeded by what we may call the masculine tradition, the unconscious dominance of a race habit based on this long androcentric period; and it is well worth while, in the interests of both s.e.xes, to show the mischievous effects of the predominance of one.

We have in our ethics not only a "double standard" in one special line, but in nearly all. Man, as a s.e.x, has quite naturally deified his own qualities rather than those of his opposite. In his codes of manners, of morals, of laws, in his early concepts of G.o.d, his ancient religions, we see masculinity written large on every side. Confining women wholly to their feminine functions, he has required of them only what he called feminine virtues, and the one virtue he has demanded, to the complete overshadowing of all others, is measured by wholly masculine requirements.

In the interests of health and happiness, monogamous marriage proves its superiority in our race as it has in others. It is essential to the best growth of humanity that we practice the virtue of chast.i.ty; it is a human virtue, not a feminine one. But in masculine hands this virtue was enforced upon women under penalties of hideous cruelty, and quite ignored by men. Masculine ethics, colored by masculine instincts, always dominated by s.e.x, has at once recognized the value of chast.i.ty in the woman, which is right; punished its absence unfairly, which is wrong; and then reversed the whole matter when applied to men, which is ridiculous.

Ethical laws are laws--not idle notions. Chast.i.ty is a virtue because it promotes human welfare--not because men happen to prize it in women and ignore it themselves. The underlying reason for the whole thing is the benefit of the child; and to that end a pure and n.o.ble fatherhood is requisite, as well as such a motherhood. Under the limitations of a too masculine ethics, we have developed on this one line social conditions which would be absurdly funny if they were not so horrible.

Religion, be it noticed, does not bear out this att.i.tude. The immense human need of religion, the n.o.ble human character of the great religious teachers, has always set its standards, when first established, ahead of human conduct.

Some there are, men of learning and authority, who hold that the deadening immobility of our religions, their resistance to progress and relentless preservation of primitive ideals, is due to the conservatism of women. Men, they say, are progressive by nature; women are conservative. Women are more religious than men, and so preserve old religious forms unchanged after men have outgrown them.

If we saw women in absolute freedom, with a separate religion devised by women, practiced by women, and remaining unchanged through the centuries; while men, on the other hand, bounded bravely forward, making new ones as fast as they were needed, this belief might be maintained.

But what do we see? All the old religions made by men, and forced on the women whether they liked it or not. Often women not even considered as part of the scheme--denied souls--given a much lower place in the system--going from the service of their father's G.o.ds to the service of their husbands--having none of their own. We see religions which make practically no place for women, as with the Moslem, as rigidly bigoted and unchanging as any other.

We see also this: that the wider and deeper the religion, the more human, the more it calls for practical applications in Christianity--the more it appeals to women. Further, in the diverging sects of the Christian religion, we find that its progressiveness is to be measured, not by the numbers of its women adherents, but by their relative freedom. The women of America, who belong to a thousand sects, who follow new ones with avidity, who even make them, and who also leave them all as men do, are women, as well as those of Spain, who remain contented Romanists, but in America the status of women is higher.

The fact is this: a servile womanhood is in a state of arrested development, and as such does form a ground for the retention of ancient ideas. But this is due to the condition of servility, not to womanhood.

That women at present are the bulwark of the older forms of our religions is due to the action of two cla.s.ses of men: the men of the world, who keep women in their restricted position, and the men of the church, who take every advantage of the limitations of women. When we have for the first time in history a really civilized womanhood, we can then judge better of its effect on religion.

Meanwhile, we can see quite clearly the effect of manhood. Keeping in mind those basic masculine impulses--desire and combat--we see them reflected from high heaven in their religious concepts. Reward!

Something to want tremendously and struggle to achieve! This is a concept perfectly masculine and most imperfectly religious. A religion is partly explanation--a theory of life; it is partly emotion--an att.i.tude of mind, it is partly action--a system of morals. Man's special effect on this large field of human development is clear. He pictured his early G.o.ds as like to himself, and they behaved in accordance with his ideals. In the dimmest, oldest religions, nearest the matriarchate, we find great G.o.ddesses--types of Motherhood, Mother-love, Mother-care and Service. But under masculine dominance, Isis and Ashteroth dwindle away to an alluring Aphrodite--not Womanhood for the child and the World--but the incarnation of female attractiveness for man.

As the idea of heaven developed in the man's mind it became the Happy Hunting Ground of the savage, the beery and gory Valhalla of the Norseman, the voluptuous, many-houri-ed Paradise of the Mohammedan.

These are men's heavens all. Women have never been so fond of hunting, beer or blood; and their houris would be of the other kind. It may be said that the early Christian idea of heaven is by no means planned for men. That is trite, and is perhaps the reason why it has never had so compelling an attraction for them.

Very early in his vague efforts towards religious expression, man voiced his second strongest instinct--that of combat. His universe is always dual, always a scene of combat. Born with that impulse, exercising it continually, he naturally a.s.sumed it to be the major process in life.

It is not. Growth is the major process. Combat is a useful subsidiary process, chiefly valuable for its initial use, to transmit the physical superiority of the victor. Psychic and social advantages are not thus secured or transmitted.

In no one particular is the androcentric character of our common thought more clearly shown than in the general deification of what are now described as "conflict stimuli." That which is true of the male creature as such is a.s.sumed to be true of life in general; quite naturally, but by no means correctly. To this universal masculine error we may trace in the field of religion and ethics the great devil theory, which has for so long obscured our minds. A G.o.d without an Adversary was inconceivable to the masculine mind. From this basic misconception we find all our ideas of ethics distorted; that which should have been treated as a group of truths to be learned and habits to be cultivated was treated in terms of combat, and moral growth made an everlasting battle. This combat theory we may follow later into our common notions of discipline, government, law and punishment; here is it enough to see its painful effects in this primary field of ethics and religion?

The third essential male trait of self-expression we may follow from its innocent natural form in strutting c.o.c.k or stamping stag up to the characteristics we label vanity and pride. The degradation of women in forcing them to adopt masculine methods of personal decoration as a means of livelihood, has carried with the concomitant of personal vanity: but to this day and at their worst we do not find in women the _naive_ exultant glow of pride which swells the bosom of the men who march in procession with bra.s.s bands, in full regalia of any sort, so that it be gorgeous, exhibiting their glories to all.

It is this purely masculine spirit which has given to our early concepts of Deity the unadmirable qualities of boundless pride and a thirst for constant praise and prostrate admiration, characteristics certainly unbefitting any n.o.ble idea of G.o.d. Desire, combat and self-expression all have had their unavoidable influence on masculine religions. What deified Maternity a purely feminine culture might have put forth we do not know, having had none such. Women are generally credited with as much moral sense as men, and as much religious instinct; but so far it has had small power to modify our prevailing creeds.

As a matter of fact, no special s.e.x attributes should have any weight in our ideas of right and wrong. Ethics and religion are distinctly human concerns; they belong to us as social factors, not as physical ones.

As we learn to recognize our humanness, and to leave our s.e.x characteristics where they belong, we shall at last learn something about ethics as a simple and practical science, and see that religions grow as the mind grows to formulate them.

If anyone seeks for a clear, simple, easily grasped proof of our ethics, it is to be found in a popular proverb. Struggling upward from beast and savage into humanness, man has seen, reverenced, and striven to attain various human virtues.

He was willing to check many primitive impulses, to change many barbarous habits, to manifest newer, n.o.bler powers. Much he would concede to Humanness, but not his s.e.x--that was beyond the range of Ethics or Religion. By the state of what he calls "morals," and the laws he makes to regulate them, by his att.i.tude in courtship and in marriage, and by the gross anomaly of militarism, in all its senseless waste of life and wealth and joy, we may perceive this little masculine exception:

"All's fair in love and war."

VIII. EDUCATION.

The origin of education is maternal. The mother animal is seen to teach her young what she knows of life, its gains and losses; and, whether consciously done or not, this is education. In our human life, education, even in its present state, is the most important process.

Without it we could not maintain ourselves, much less dominate and improve conditions as we do; and when education is what it should be, our power will increase far beyond present hopes.

In lower animals, speaking generally, the powers of the race must be lodged in each individual. No gain of personal experience is of avail to the others. No advantages remain, save those physically transmitted. The narrow limits of personal gain and personal inheritance rigidly hem in sub-human progress. With us, what one learns may be taught to the others. Our life is social, collective. Our gain is for all, and profits us in proportion as we extend it to all. As the human soul develops in us, we become able to grasp more fully our common needs and advantages; and with this growth has come the extension of education to the people as a whole. Social functions are developed under natural laws, like physical ones, and may be studied similarly.

In the evolution of this basic social function, what has been the effect of wholly masculine influence?

The original process, instruction of individual child by individual mother, has been largely neglected in our man-made world. That was considered as a subsidiary s.e.x-function of the woman, and as such, left to her "instinct." This is the main reason why we show such great progress in education for older children, and especially for youths, and so little comparatively in that given to little ones.

We have had on the one side the natural current of maternal education, with its first a.s.sistant, the nursemaid, and its second, the "dame-school"; and on the other the influence of the dominant cla.s.s, organized in university, college, and public school, slowly filtering downward.

Educational forces are many. The child is born into certain conditions, physical and psychic, and "educated" thereby. He grows up into social, political and economic conditions, and is further modified by them. All these conditions, so far, have been of androcentric character; but what we call education as a special social process is what the child is deliberately taught and subjected to; and it is here we may see the same dominant influence so clearly.

This conscious education was, for long, given to boys alone, the girls being left to maternal influence, each to learn what her mother knew, and no more. This very clear instance of the masculine theory is glaring enough by itself to rest a case on. It shows how absolute was the a.s.sumption that the world was composed of men, and men alone were to be fitted for it. Women were no part of the world, and needed no training for its uses. As females they were born and not made; as human beings they were only servants, trained as such by their servant mothers.

This system of education we are outgrowing more swiftly with each year.

The growing humanness of women, and its recognition, is forcing an equal education for boy and girl. When this demand was first made, by women of unusual calibre, and by men sufficiently human to overlook s.e.x-prejudice, how was it met? What was the att.i.tude of woman's "natural protector" when she began to ask some share in human life?

Under the universal a.s.sumption that men alone were humanity, that the world was masculine and for men only, the efforts of the women were met as a deliberate attempt to "uns.e.x" themselves and become men. To be a woman was to be ignorant, uneducated; to be wise, educated, was to be a man. Women were not men, visibly; therefore they could not be educated, and ought not to want to be.

Under this androcentric prejudice, the equal extension of education to women was opposed at every step, and is still opposed by many. Seeing in women only s.e.x, and not humanness, they would confine her exclusively to feminine interests. This is the masculine view, _par excellence_.

In spite of it, the human development of women, which so splendidly characterizes our age, has gone on; and now both woman's colleges and those for both s.e.xes offer "the higher education" to our girls, as well as the lower grades in school and kindergarten.

In the special professional training, the same opposition was experienced, even more rancorous and cruel. One would think that on the entrance of a few straggling and necessarily inferior feminine beginners into a trade or profession, those in possession would extend to them the right hand of fellowship, as comrades, extra a.s.sistance as beginners, and special courtesy as women.

The contrary occurred. Women were barred out, discriminated against, taken advantage of, as compet.i.tors; and as women they have had to meet special danger and offence instead of special courtesy. An unforgettable instance of this lies in the att.i.tude of the medical colleges toward women students. The men, strong enough, one would think, in numbers, in knowledge, in established precedent, to be generous, opposed the newcomers first with absolute refusal; then, when the patient, persistent applicants did get inside, both students and teachers met them not only with unkindness and unfairness, but with a weapon ingeniously well chosen, and most discreditable--namely, obscenity.

Grave professors, in lecture and clinic, as well as grinning students, used offensive language, and played offensive tricks, to drive the women out--a most androcentric performance.

Remember that the essential masculine att.i.tude is one of opposition, of combat; his desire is obtained by first overcoming a compet.i.tor; and then see how this dominant masculinity stands out where it has no possible use or benefit--in the field of education. All along the line, man, long master of a subject s.e.x, fought every step of woman toward mental equality. Nevertheless, since modern man has become human enough to be just, he has at last let her have a share in the advantages of education; and she has proven her full power to appreciate and use these advantages.

Then to-day rises a new cry against "women in education." Here is Mr.

Barrett Wendell, of Harvard, solemnly claiming that teaching women weakens the intellect of the teacher, and every now and then bursts out a frantic sputter of alarm over the "feminization" of our schools. It is true that the majority of teachers are now women. It is true that they do have an influence on growing children. It would even seem to be true that that is largely what women are for.

But the male a.s.sumes his influence to be normal, human, and the female influence as wholly a matter of s.e.x; therefore, where women teach boys, the boys become "effeminate"--a grievous fall. When men teach girls, do the girls become -----? Here again we lack the a.n.a.logue. Never has it occurred to the androcentric mind to conceive of such a thing as being too masculine. There is no such word! It is odd to notice that which ever way the woman is placed, she is supposed to exert this degrading influence; if the teacher, she effeminizes her pupils; if the pupil, she effeminizes her teachers.

Now let us shake ourselves free, if only for a moment, from the androcentric habit of mind.

As a matter of s.e.x, the female is the more important. Her share of the processes which s.e.x distinction serves is by far the greater. To be feminine--if one were nothing else, is a far more extensive and dignified office than to be masculine--and nothing else.