What Shall We Do? Part 32

CHAPTER XL

As it is said in the Bible, there is a law given unto man and woman,--to man, the law of labour; to woman, the law of child-bearing. Although with our science, "_nous avons change tout ca_," the law of man as well as of woman remains as immutable as the liver in its place; and the breach of it is inevitably punished by death. The only difference is, that for man, the breach of law is punished by death in such a near future that it can almost be called present; but for woman, the breach of law is punished in a more distant future.

A general breach, by all men, of the law, destroys men immediately: the breach by women destroys the men of the following generation. The evasion of the law by a few men and women does not destroy the human race, but deprives the offender of rational human nature.

The breach of this law by men began years ago in the cla.s.ses which could use violence with others; and, spreading on its way, it has reached our day, and has now attained madness, the ideal contained in a breach of the law, the ideal expressed by Prince Blokhin, and shared by Renan and the whole educated world: work will be done by machines, and men will be bundles of nerves enjoying themselves.

There has been scarcely any breach of the law by women. It has only manifested itself in prost.i.tution, and in private cases of crime destroying progeny. Women of the wealthy cla.s.ses have fulfilled their law, while men did not fulfil theirs; and therefore women have grown stronger, and have continued to govern, and will govern, men, who have deviated from their law, and who, consequently, have lost their reason.

It is generally said that women (the women of Paris, especially those who are childless) have become so bewitching, using all the means of civilization, that they have mastered man by their charms.

This is not only wrong, but it is just the reverse of the truth. It is not the childless woman who has mastered man, it is the mother, the one who has fulfilled her duty, while man has not fulfilled his.

As to the woman who artificially remains childless, and bewitches man by her shoulders and curls, she is not a woman, mastering man, but a woman corrupted by him, reduced to the level of the corrupted man, who, as well as he, has deviated from her duty, who, as well as he, has lost every reasonable sense of life.

This mistake also produces the astounding nonsense which is called "woman's rights." The formula of these rights is as follows:--

"You men," says woman, "have deviated from your law of true labour, and want us to carry the load of ours. No: if so, we also, as well as you, will make a pretence of labour, as you do in banks, ministries, universities, and academies; we wish, as well as you, by the pretence of division of work, to profit by other people's work, and to live, only to satisfy our l.u.s.t." They say so, and in deed show that they can make that pretence of labour not at all worse, but even better, than men do it.

The so-called question of women's rights arose, and could only arise, among men who had deviated from the law of real labour. One has only to return to it, and that question must cease to exist. A woman who has her own particular, inevitable labour will never claim the right of sharing man's labour,--in mines, or in ploughing fields. She claims her share only in the sham labour of the wealthy cla.s.ses.

The woman of our cla.s.s was stronger than man, and is now still stronger, not through her charms, not through her skill in performing the same pharisaic similitude of work as man, but because she has not stepped outside of the law; because she has borne that true labour with danger of life, with uttermost effort; true labour, from which the man of the wealthy cla.s.ses has freed himself.

But within my memory has begun also the deviation from the law by woman,--that is to say, her fall; and within my memory, it has proceeded farther and farther. A woman who has lost the law, believes that her power consists in the charms of her witchery, or in her skill at a pharisaic pretence of intellectual labour. Children hinder the one and the other. Therefore, with the help of science (science is always helpful to everything wicked) within my memory it has come to pa.s.s that among the wealthy cla.s.ses, scores of means of destroying progeny have appeared, and these means become a common attribute of the toilet. And behold,--women, mothers, some of them of the wealthy cla.s.ses, who held their power in their hands, let it slip away, and place themselves on a level with women of the street. The evil has spread far, and spreads farther every day, and will soon grasp all the women of the wealthy cla.s.ses; and then they will be on a level with the men, and together with them will lose every reasonable sense of life. There will be no return for this cla.s.s then. But there is yet time. For there still remain more women than men who accomplish the law of their life, therefore there are still reasonable beings among them,--and thus some of the women of our cla.s.s hold in their hands the possibility of salvation.

If only women would understand their worth, their power, and would use these for the work of salvation of their husbands, brothers, and children,--the salvation of all men!

Women, mothers of the wealthy cla.s.ses, in your hands is the salvation of men of our world from the evils from which it suffers.

Not those women who are occupied by their figures, bustles, head-dresses, and their charms for men, and who, against their will, by accident and in despair, bear children, and then give them over to wet-nurses; nor yet those who go to different lectures, and talk of psychometrical centres of differentiation, and who also try to free themselves from bearing children not to hinder their folly, which they call development,--but those women and mothers who, having the power of freeing themselves from child-bearing, hold strictly and consciously to that eternal, immutable law, knowing that the weight and labour of that submission is the aim of their life. These women and mothers of our wealthy cla.s.ses are those in whose hands, more than in any others, lies the salvation of the men of our sphere in life, from the calamities which oppress them.

You women and mothers who submit consciously to the law of G.o.d, you are the only ones who,--in our miserable, mutilated circle, which has lost all semblance of humanity,--know the whole true meaning of life according to the law of G.o.d; and you are the only ones who, by your example, can show men the happiness of that submission to G.o.d's law, of which they rob themselves.

You are the only ones who know the joy and happiness which takes possession of one's whole being,--the bliss which is the share of every man who does not deviate from G.o.d's law. You know the joy of love to your husband,--a joy never ending, never destroyed, like all other joys, but forming the beginning of another new joy--love to your child. You are the only ones, when you are simple and submissive to G.o.d's law, who know, not the farcical pretence of labour, which men of your world call labour, but that true labour which is imposed by G.o.d upon men, and you know the rewards for it,--the bliss which it gives.

You know it, when after the joys of love, you expect with emotion, fear, and hope, the torturing state of pregnancy, which makes you ill for nine months, and brings you to the brink of death and to unbearable sufferings and pains: you know the conditions of true labour, when with joy you expect the approach and increase of the most dreadful sufferings, after which comes the bliss, known to you only.

You know it when, directly after those sufferings, without rest, without interruption, you undertake another series of labours and sufferings,--those of nursing; for the sake of which you subjugate to your feeling, and renounce, the strongest human necessity,--that of sleep, which, according to the saying, is sweeter than father and mother. For months and years you do not sleep two nights running, and often you do not sleep whole nights; walking alone to and fro, rocking in your wearied arms an ailing baby, whose sufferings tear your heart.

When you do all this, unapproved and unseen by anybody, not expecting any praise or reward for it; when you do this, not as a great deed, but as the labourer of the gospel parable, who came from the field, considering that you are only doing your duty,--you know then what is false, fict.i.tious labour,--for human fame; and what is true labour,--the fulfilment of G.o.d's will, the indication of which you feel in your heart. You know, if you are a true mother, that not only has n.o.body seen and praised your labour, considering that it is only what ought to be, but even those for whom you toiled are not only ungrateful to you, but often torment and reproach you. With the next child you do the same,--again you suffer, again you bear unseen, terrible toil, and again you do not expect any reward from anybody, and feel the same satisfaction.

If you are such, in your hands must lie the power over men, and in your hands lies the salvation. Your number is decreasing every day: some busy with practising their charms over men, become prost.i.tutes; others are engaged in compet.i.tion with men in their artificial, ludicrous occupations; the third, who have not yet renounced their vocation, begin to repudiate it in their minds: they perform all the deeds of women and mothers, but accidentally, with grumblings and envy of the free women, not bearing children,--and so deprive themselves of the only reward for them--the inner consciousness of the fulfilment of G.o.d's will--and instead of being satisfied they suffer from what is really their happiness.

We are so confused by our false life, we, men of our circle, have all of us so utterly lost the sense of life, that we do not differ from one another. Having loaded others with all the burdens and dangers of life, we dare not call ourselves by the true names deserved by those who force others to perish in providing life for them--scoundrels, cowards.

But among women a distinction still exists. There are women,--human beings, women,--presenting the highest manifestation of a human being; and there are women--prost.i.tutes. This discrimination will be made by succeeding generations, and we, too, cannot help making it.

Every woman, however she dresses, however she calls herself, however refined she may be, if being married she abstains from bearing children, is a prost.i.tute.

However low a lost woman may be, if she consciously devotes herself to bearing children, she does the best and highest work of life in fulfilling the will of G.o.d, and she has no superior.

If you are such, you will not say, after two or after twenty children, that you have borne children enough; as a fifty-year old workman will not say that he has worked enough, while he still eats and sleeps, and his muscles demand work. If you are such, you will not cast the trouble of nursing and care on a strange mother,--any more than a workman will give the work which he has begun, and nearly finished, to another man,--because in that work you put your life, and because, the more you have of that work, the fuller and happier is your life.

But when you are like this,--and, happily for men, there are yet such women,--the same law of fulfilment of G.o.d's will, by which you guide your own life, you will also apply to the life of your husband, of your children, and of men near to you. If you are such, and if you know by experience that only self-denied, unseen, unrewarded labour with danger of life, and uttermost effort for the life of others, is the mission of man which gives satisfaction, you will claim the same from others, you will encourage your husband to do the same labour, you will value and appreciate the worth of men by this same labour, and for it you will prepare your children.

Only that mother who looks on child-bearing as a disagreeable accident, and upon the pleasures of love, comfort, education, sociability, as the meaning of life, will bring up her children so that they shall have as many pleasures, and enjoy them as much as possible; will feed them luxuriously, dress them smartly, will artificially divert them, and will teach them, not that which will make them capable of self-sacrificing man's and woman's labour with danger of life and uttermost effort, but that which will deliver them from that labour,--which will give them diplomas and idleness. Only such a woman, who has lost the significance of her life, will sympathize with that false, sham man's labour, by means of which her husband, freeing himself from man's duty, may profit, together with her, by the labour of others. Only such a woman will choose a similar husband for her daughter, and will value men, not for what they are in themselves, but for what is attached to them,--position, money, the art of profiting by the labour of others.

A true mother, who really knows G.o.d's law, will prepare her children for the fulfilment of it. For such a mother it will be suffering to see her child overfed, pampered, overdressed, because all this, she knows, will hinder it in the fulfilment of G.o.d's law, experienced by herself. Such a woman will not teach that which will give her son or daughter the possibility of delivering themselves from labour, but that which will help them to bear the labour of life.

She will not want to ask what to teach her children, or for what to prepare them, knowing what it is and in what consists the mission of men, and consequently knowing what to teach her children, and for what to prepare them. Such a woman will not only discourage her husband from false, sham labour, the only aim of which is to profit by other people's work, but will view with disgust and dread an activity that will serve as a double temptation for her children. Such a woman will not choose her daughter's husband according to the whiteness of his hands, and the refinement of his manners, but, knowing thoroughly what is labour and what deceit, will always and everywhere, beginning with her husband, respect and appreciate men, in claiming from them true labour with waste and danger of life, and will scorn that false, sham labour which has for its aim the delivering of one's self from true labour.

And let not those women say,--who, while renouncing the vocation of women, desire to profit by its rights,--that such a view of life is impossible for a mother, that a mother is too intimately connected by love to her children to deprive them of sweets, smart dresses, or entertainments, or not to fear their being unprovided for, if the husband has no fortune or secure position, or not to be afraid for the future of the marrying daughters and sons, who have not got an "education."

All this is a lie, a burning lie!

A true mother will never say this: "You cannot keep yourself from the desire to give them sweets, toys, to take them to the circus?"

But surely you don't give them poisonous berries to eat, you do not let them go out alone in a boat, you do not take them to a cafe chantant?

Why then can you restrain yourselves in this case and not in that?

Because you do not tell the truth. You say that you love the children so much that you fear for their life, you are so afraid of hunger, and cold, and that is why you appreciate so much the security, which your husband's position provides for you, though you consider it unlawful.

You are so afraid of future eventualities, calamities for your children which are very distant and doubtful,--and you therefore encourage your husband to do things unjustifiable in your opinion; but what are you doing now to secure your children in their present conditions of life from the unfortunate eventualities of the present life?

Do you spend much of your time during the day with your children? You do well if you spend one-tenth of the day!

The remaining time they are under the care of strangers, hired people, often taken from the street, or they are in inst.i.tutions, open to the dangers of moral and physical infection.

Your children eat, they are nourished. Who cooks their dinner and what from? Mostly you know nothing about it. Who instills moral principles into them? Neither do you know that!

Then do not say, that you are suffering evil for the good of your children--it is not true. You do evil because you like it.

A true mother, the one who in bearing and bringing up children sees her self-sacrificing vocation of life and the fulfilment of G.o.d's will--will not say it.

She will not say it, because she knows it is not her business to make of her children what she herself or current opinions require. She knows that children, i.e., the following generations,--are the greatest and most sacred thing which is given to men to behold in reality: and, to serve with all her being, this sacred cause is her life.

She knows herself,--being constantly between life and death and ever rearing the feebly flickering life,--that life and death are not her business, her business is to serve life, and she will not therefore search for distant paths of this service but will only endeavour not to avoid the near one.

Such a mother _will bring forth and nurse her children herself_, and, above all things else, will feed and provide for them, will work for them, wash and teach them, will sleep and talk with them, because she makes that her life-work. Only such a mother will not seek for her children external security through her husband's money, or her children's diplomas, but she will exercise in them the same capacity of self-sacrificing fulfilment of G.o.d's will which she knows in herself, the capacity for bearing labour with waste and danger of life, because she knows that only in that lie the security and welfare of life. Such a mother will not have to ask others what is her duty: she will know every thing, and will fear nothing, for she will always know that she has done what she was called to do.

If there can be doubts for a man or for a childless woman about the way to fulfil G.o.d's will, for a mother that way is firmly and clearly drawn; and if she fulfils it humbly, with a simple heart, standing on the highest point of good, which it is only given to a human being to attain, she becomes the guiding-star for all men, tending to the same good. Only a mother can before her death say to Him who sent her into this world, and to Him whom she has served by bearing and bringing up children, beloved by her more than herself,--only she can peacefully say, after having served Him in her appointed service,--

"'Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.'"

And this is that highest perfection, to which, as to the highest good, men aspire.

Such women who fulfil their mission, are those who reign over reigning men, and serve as a guiding-star to humanity,--those who prepare new generations of men and form public opinion: and therefore in the hands of these women lies the highest power of men's salvation from the existing and threatening evils of our time.