The Forerunner Part 8

The only time when we do recognize what we call "common humanity" is in extreme cases, matters of life and death; when either man or woman is expected to behave as if they were also human creatures. Since the range of feeling and action proper to humanity, as such, is far wider than that proper to either s.e.x, it seems at first somewhat remarkable that we have given it so little recognition.

A little cla.s.sification will help us here. We have certain qualities in common with inanimate matter, such as weight, opacity, resilience. It is clear that these are not human. We have other qualities in common with all forms of life; cellular construction, for instance, the reproduction of cells and the need of nutrition. These again are not human. We have others, many others, common to the higher mammals; which are not exclusively ours--are not distinctively "human." What then are true human characteristics? In what way is the human species distinguished from all other species?

Our human-ness is seen most clearly in three main lines: it is mechanical, psychical and social. Our power to make and use things is essentially human; we alone have extra-physical tools. We have added to our teeth the knife, sword, scissors, mowing machine; to our claws the spade, harrow, plough, drill, dredge. We are a protean creature, using the larger brain power through a wide variety of changing weapons. This is one of our main and vital distinctions. Ancient animal races are traced and known by mere bones and sh.e.l.ls, ancient human races by their buildings, tools and utensils.

That degree of development which gives us the human mind is a clear distinction of race. The savage who can count a hundred is more human than the savage who can count ten.

More prominent than either of these is the social nature of humanity.

We are by no means the only group-animal; that ancient type of industry the ant, and even the well-worn bee, are social creatures. But insects of their kind are found living alone. Human beings never. Our human-ness begins with some low form of social relation and increases as that relation develops.

Human life of any sort is dependent upon what Kropotkin calls "mutual aid," and human progress keeps step absolutely with that interchange of specialized services which makes society organic. The nomad, living on cattle as ants live on theirs, is less human than the farmer, raising food by intelligently applied labor; and the extension of trade and commerce, from mere village market-places to the world-exchanges of to-day, is extension of human-ness as well.

Humanity, thus considered, is not a thing made at once and unchangeable, but a stage of development; and is still, as Wells describes it, "in the making." Our human-ness is seen to lie not so much in what we are individually, as in our relations to one another; and even that individuality is but the result of our relations to one another. It is in what we do and how we do it, rather than in what we are. Some, philosophically inclined, exalt "being" over "doing." To them this question may be put: "Can you mention any form of life that merely 'is,'

without doing anything?"

Taken separately and physically, we are animals, _genus h.o.m.o_; taken socially and psychically, we are, in varying degree, human; and our real history lies in the development of this human-ness.

Our historic period is not very long. Real written history only goes back a few thousand years, beginning with the stone records of ancient Egypt. During this period we have had almost universally what is here called an Androcentric Culture. The history, such as it was, was made and written by men.

The mental, the mechanical, the social development, was almost wholly theirs. We have, so far, lived and suffered and died in a man-made world. So general, so unbroken, has been this condition, that to mention it arouses no more remark than the statement of a natural law.

We have taken it for granted, since the dawn of civilization, that "mankind" meant men-kind, and the world was theirs.

Women we have sharply delimited. Women were a s.e.x, "the s.e.x," according to chivalrous toasts; they were set apart for special services peculiar to femininity. As one English scientist put it, in 1888, "Women are not only not the race--they are not even half the race, but a subspecies told off for reproduction only."

This mental att.i.tude toward women is even more clearly expressed by Mr.

H. B. Marriot-Watson in his article on "The American Woman" in the "Nineteenth Century" for June, 1904, where he says: "Her const.i.tutional restlessness has caused her to abdicate those functions which alone excuse or explain her existence." This is a peculiarly happy and condensed expression of the relative position of women during our androcentric culture. The man was accepted as the race type without one dissentient voice; and the woman--a strange, diverse creature, quite disharmonious in the accepted scheme of things--was excused and explained only as a female.

She has needed volumes of such excuse and explanation; also, apparently, volumes of abuse and condemnation. In any library catalogue we may find books upon books about women: physiological, sentimental, didactic, religious--all manner of books about women, as such. Even to-day in the works of Marholm--poor young Weininger, Moebius, and others, we find the same perpetual discussion of women--as such.

This is a book about men--as such. It differentiates between the human nature and the s.e.x nature. It will not go so far as to allege man's masculine traits to be all that excuse, or explain his existence: but it will point out what are masculine traits as distinct from human ones, and what has been the effect on our human life of the unbridled dominance of one s.e.x.

We can see at once, glaringly, what would have been the result of giving all human affairs into female hands. Such an extraordinary and deplorable situation would have "feminized" the world. We should have all become "effeminate."

See how in our use of language the case is clearly shown. The adjectives and derivatives based on woman's distinctions are alien and derogatory when applied to human affairs; "effeminate"--too female, connotes contempt, but has no masculine a.n.a.logue; whereas "emasculate"--not enough male, is a term of reproach, and has no feminine a.n.a.logue. "Virile"--manly, we oppose to "puerile"--childish, and the very word "virtue" is derived from "vir"--a man.

Even in the naming of other animals we have taken the male as the race type, and put on a special termination to indicate "his female," as in lion, lioness; leopard, leopardess; while all our human scheme of things rests on the same tacit a.s.sumption; man being held the human type; woman a sort of accompaniment aud subordinate a.s.sistant, merely essential to the making of people.

She has held always the place of a preposition in relation to man. She has been considered above him or below him, before him, behind him, beside him, a wholly relative existence--"Sydney's sister," "Pembroke's mother"--but never by any chance Sydney or Pembroke herself.

Acting on this a.s.sumption, all human standards have been based on male characteristics, and when we wish to praise the work of a woman, we say she has "a masculine mind."

It is no easy matter to deny or reverse a universal a.s.sumption. The human mind has had a good many jolts since it began to think, but after each upheaval it settles down as peacefully as the vine-growers on Vesuvius, accepting the last lava crust as permanent ground.

What we see immediately around us, what we are born into and grow up with, be it mental furniture or physical, we a.s.sume to be the order of nature.

If a given idea has been held in the human mind for many generations, as almost all our common ideas have, it takes sincere and continued effort to remove it; and if it is one of the oldest we have in stock, one of the big, common, unquestioned world ideas, vast is the labor of those who seek to change it.

Nevertheless, if the matter is one of importance, if the previous idea was a palpable error, of large and evil effect, and if the new one is true and widely important, the effort is worth making.

The task here undertaken is of this sort. It seeks to show that what we have all this time called "human nature" and deprecated, was in great part only male nature, and good enough in its place; that what we have called "masculine" and admired as such, was in large part human, and should be applied to both s.e.xes: that what we have called "feminine" and condemned, was also largely human and applicable to both. Our androcentric culture is so shown to have been, and still to be, a masculine culture in excess, and therefore undesirable.

In the preliminary work of approaching these facts it will be well to explain how it can be that so wide and serious an error should have been made by practically all men. The reason is simply that they were men.

They were males, avid saw women as females--and not otherwise.

So absolute is this conviction that the man who reads will say, "Of course! How else are we to look at women except as females? They are females, aren't they?" Yes, they are, as men are males unquestionably; but there is possible the frame of mind of the old marquise who was asked by an English friend how she could bear to have the footman serve her breakfast in bed--to have a man in her bed-chamber--and replied sincerely, "Call you that thing there a man?"

The world is full of men, but their princ.i.p.al occupation is human work of some sort; and women see in them the human distinction preponderantly. Occasionally some unhappy lady marries her coachman--long contemplation of broad shoulders having an effect, apparently; but in general women see the human creature most; the male creature only when they love.

To the man, the whole world was his world; his because he was male; and the whole world of woman was the home; because she was female. She had her prescribed sphere, strictly limited to her feminine occupations and interests; he had all the rest of life; and not only so, but, having it, insisted on calling it male.

This accounts for the general att.i.tude of men toward the now rapid humanization of women. From her first faint struggles toward freedom and justice, to her present valiant efforts toward full economic and political equality, each step has been termed "unfeminine" and resented as an intrusion upon man's place and power. Here shows the need of our new cla.s.sification, of the three distinct fields of life--masculine, feminine and human.

As a matter of fact, there is a "woman's sphere," sharply defined and quite different from his; there is also a "man's sphere," as sharply defined and even more limited; but there remains a common sphere--that of humanity, which belongs to both alike.

In the earlier part of what is known as "the woman's movement," it was sharply opposed on the ground that women would become "uns.e.xed." Let us note in pa.s.sing that they have become uns.e.xed in one particular, most glaringly so, and that no one has noticed or objected to it.

As part of our androcentric culture we may point to the peculiar reversal of s.e.x characteristics which make the human female carry the burden of ornament. She alone, of all human creatures, has adopted the essentially masculine attribute of special s.e.x-decoration; she does not fight for her mate as yet, but she blooms forth as the peac.o.c.k and bird of paradise, in poignant reversal of nature's laws, even wearing masculine feathers to further her feminine ends.

Woman's natural work as a female is that of the mother; man's natural work as a male is that of the father; their mutual relation to this end being a source of joy and well-being when rightly held: but human work covers all our life outside of these specialties. Every handicraft, every profession, every science, every art, all normal amus.e.m.e.nts and recreations, all government, education, religion; the whole living world of human achievement: all this is human.

That one s.e.x should have monopolized all human activities, called them "man's work," and managed them as such, is what is meant by the phrase "Androcentric Culture."

COMMENT AND REVIEW

Why criticize?

Why does anybody criticize anything? And why does THE FORERUNNER criticize--the things herein treated?

On examination, we find several sources of criticism. The earliest and commonest is the mere expression of personal opinion, as is heard where young persons are becoming acquainted, the voluble "I like this!" and "Don't you like that?" and "Isn't such a thing horrid?" For hours do the impressionable young exchange their ardent sentiments; and the same may be heard from older persons in everyday discussion.

This form of criticism has its value. It serves to show, even relentlessly to expose, the qualities and deficiencies of the critic.

What one "likes" merely shows what one is like.

The vitality dies out of it, however, when one learns two things; first, that likings change with growth of character and new experience, and, second, that few people are interested in an inventory of limitations.

Following this comes another painfully common source of criticism--the desire to exhibit superiority. The aged are p.r.o.ne to this fault in discussion of the young and their achievements. The elect in general show it, seeking to prove to common people that these are not as they are; the conservative rests his objection to anything new and different on the same broad base; and the critic, the real, professional critic, can hardly trust himself to approve warmly of anything, lest it weaken his reputation. If he does, it must be something which is caviar to the general.

Then comes that amiable desire to instruct and a.s.sist, born of parental instinct, fostered by pedagogy, intrusted by St. Paul to the "husband at home." Moved by this feeling, we point out the errors of our friends and mark examination papers; and thus does the teacher of painting move among his pupils and leave them in ranks of glimmering hope or dark despair.

Another fruitful source of criticism is a natural wish to free one's mind; as the hapless public sputters on the street, or in letters to the papers, protesting against the stupidity and cruelty of its many aggressors. Under this impulse bursts forth the chattering flood of discussion after play or lecture, merely to relieve the pressure.

Then comes a very evil cause--the desire to give pain, to injure.

Certain persons, and publications, use their critical ability with great effect to this end. In England it seems to be a sort of game, great literary personages rush out into the open and belabor each other mercilessly; while the public rejoices as at a prize-fight. We sometimes see a newspaper offering its readers a form of entertainment which is not even a fight, nor yet a prompt and needed execution, but a sort of torture-chamber exhibition, where the dumb victim is vilified and ridiculed, grilled and "roasted," to make an American holiday.

There is one more cause of criticism--the need of money. Some people are hired to criticize others, the nature of their attentions wholly dictated by the employer. A shadowy bridge is opened here, connecting criticism with advertis.e.m.e.nt. Many cross it.