Herland Part 23

"'Why, you blessed child,' she said, 'you've got the wrong idea altogether. You do not have to think that there ever was such a G.o.d--for there wasn't. Or such a happening--for there wasn't. Nor even that this hideous false idea was believed by anybody. But only this--that people who are utterly ignorant will believe anything--which you certainly knew before.'"

"Anyhow," pursued Ellador, "she turned pale for a minute when I first said it."

This was a lesson to me. No wonder this whole nation of women was peaceful and sweet in expression--they had no horrible ideas.

"Surely you had some when you began," I suggested.

"Oh, yes, no doubt. But as soon as our religion grew to any height at all we left them out, of course."

From this, as from many other things, I grew to see what I finally put in words.

"Have you no respect for the past? For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?"

"Why, no," she said. "Why should we? They are all gone. They knew less than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them--and unworthy of the children who must go beyond us."

This set me thinking in good earnest. I had always imagined--simply from hearing it said, I suppose--that women were by nature conservative. Yet these women, quite una.s.sisted by any masculine spirit of enterprise, had ignored their past and built daringly for the future.

Ellador watched me think. She seemed to know pretty much what was going on in my mind.

"It's because we began in a new way, I suppose. All our folks were swept away at once, and then, after that time of despair, came those wonder children--the first. And then the whole breathless hope of us was for THEIR children--if they should have them. And they did! Then there was the period of pride and triumph till we grew too numerous; and after that, when it all came down to one child apiece, we began to really work--to make better ones."

"But how does this account for such a radical difference in your religion?" I persisted.

She said she couldn't talk about the difference very intelligently, not being familiar with other religions, but that theirs seemed simple enough. Their great Mother Spirit was to them what their own motherhood was--only magnified beyond human limits. That meant that they felt beneath and behind them an upholding, unfailing, serviceable love--perhaps it was really the acc.u.mulated mother-love of the race they felt--but it was a Power.

"Just what is your theory of wors.h.i.+p?" I asked her.

"Wors.h.i.+p? What is that?"

I found it singularly difficult to explain. This Divine Love which they felt so strongly did not seem to ask anything of them--"any more than our mothers do," she said.

"But surely your mothers expect honor, reverence, obedience, from you.

You have to do things for your mothers, surely?"

"Oh, no," she insisted, smiling, shaking her soft brown hair. "We do things FROM our mothers--not FOR them. We don't have to do things FOR them--they don't need it, you know. But we have to live on--splendidly--because of them; and that's the way we feel about G.o.d."

I meditated again. I thought of that G.o.d of Battles of ours, that Jealous G.o.d, that Vengeance-is-mine G.o.d. I thought of our world-nightmare--h.e.l.l.

"You have no theory of eternal punishment then, I take it?"

Ellador laughed. Her eyes were as bright as stars, and there were tears in them, too. She was so sorry for me.

"How could we?" she asked, fairly enough. "We have no punishments in life, you see, so we don't imagine them after death."

"Have you NO punishments? Neither for children nor criminals--such mild criminals as you have?" I urged.

"Do you punish a person for a broken leg or a fever? We have preventive measures, and cures; sometimes we have to 'send the patient to bed,' as it were; but that's not a punishment--it's only part of the treatment,"

she explained.

Then studying my point of view more closely, she added: "You see, we recognize, in our human motherhood, a great tender limitless uplifting force--patience and wisdom and all subtlety of delicate method. We credit G.o.d--our idea of G.o.d--with all that and more. Our mothers are not angry with us--why should G.o.d be?"

"Does G.o.d mean a person to you?"

This she thought over a little. "Why--in trying to get close to it in our minds we personify the idea, naturally; but we certainly do not a.s.sume a Big Woman somewhere, who is G.o.d. What we call G.o.d is a Pervading Power, you know, an Indwelling Spirit, something inside of us that we want more of. Is your G.o.d a Big Man?" she asked innocently.

"Why--yes, to most of us, I think. Of course we call it an Indwelling Spirit just as you do, but we insist that it is Him, a Person, and a Man--with whiskers."

"Whiskers? Oh yes--because you have them! Or do you wear them because He does?"

"On the contrary, we shave them off--because it seems cleaner and more comfortable."

"Does He wear clothes--in your idea, I mean?"

I was thinking over the pictures of G.o.d I had seen--rash advances of the devout mind of man, representing his Omnipotent Deity as an old man in a flowing robe, flowing hair, flowing beard, and in the light of her perfectly frank and innocent questions this concept seemed rather unsatisfying.

I explained that the G.o.d of the Christian world was really the ancient Hebrew G.o.d, and that we had simply taken over the patriarchal idea--that ancient one which quite inevitably clothed its thought of G.o.d with the attributes of the patriarchal ruler, the grandfather.

"I see," she said eagerly, after I had explained the genesis and development of our religious ideals. "They lived in separate groups, with a male head, and he was probably a little--domineering?"

"No doubt of that," I agreed.

"And we live together without any 'head,' in that sense--just our chosen leaders--that DOES make a difference."

"Your difference is deeper than that," I a.s.sured her. "It is in your common motherhood. Your children grow up in a world where everybody loves them. They find life made rich and happy for them by the diffused love and wisdom of all mothers. So it is easy for you to think of G.o.d in the terms of a similar diffused and competent love. I think you are far nearer right than we are."

"What I cannot understand," she pursued carefully, "is your preservation of such a very ancient state of mind. This patriarchal idea you tell me is thousands of years old?"

"Oh yes--four, five, six thousand--every so many."

"And you have made wonderful progress in those years--in other things?"

"We certainly have. But religion is different. You see, our religions come from behind us, and are initiated by some great teacher who is dead. He is supposed to have known the whole thing and taught it, finally. All we have to do is believe--and obey."

"Who was the great Hebrew teacher?"

"Oh--there it was different. The Hebrew religion is an acc.u.mulation of extremely ancient traditions, some far older than their people, and grew by accretion down the ages. We consider it inspired--'the Word of G.o.d.'"

"How do you know it is?"

"Because it says so."

"Does it say so in as many words? Who wrote that in?"

I began to try to recall some text that did say so, and could not bring it to mind.

"Apart from that," she pursued, "what I cannot understand is why you keep these early religious ideas so long. You have changed all your others, haven't you?"

"Pretty generally," I agreed. "But this we call 'revealed religion,'