The Morality of Woman and Other Essays Part 2

Goethe long ago lamented that education aspired to make Philistines out of personalities. And this is now much worse since education has become pedagogical, without at the same time becoming psychological.

Only he who treats the feelings, will and rights of a child with quite the same consideration as those of a grown person, and who never allows the personality of a child to feel other limitations than those of nature itself, or the consideration, based upon good grounds, for the child's own welfare or that of others--only he possesses the first requisite principle of real education. Education must a.s.suredly be a liberating of the personality from the domination of its own pa.s.sions.

But it must never strive to exterminate pa.s.sion itself, which is the innermost power of the personality and which cannot exist without the coexisting danger of a corresponding fault. To subdue the possible fault in each spiritual inclination by eliciting through love the corresponding good in the same inclination--this alone is individual education. It is an extremely slow education, in which immediate interference signifies little, the spiritual atmosphere of the home, its mode of life and its ideals signify on the contrary almost everything.

The educator must above all understand how to wait: to reckon all effects in the light of the future, not of the present.

The educator believes often that he spares the child future suffering when he "opposes his onesidedness," as it is called. He does not reflect that in the effort to force the child in a direction contrary to that in which his personality evinces itself, he merely succeeds in diminis.h.i.+ng his nature; yes, often merely in retaining the weakness in the quality, not the corresponding strength!

But ordinarily it is indeed no such principle, but only the old thoughtlessly maintained ideal of self-renunciation which is decisive.

We repress the child's joy of discovery and check the spirit of enterprise; wound his extremely sensitive sense of beauty; exercise force over his most personal possessions, his tokens of tenderness; combat his aversions and quench his enthusiasm. Amid such attacks upon their individual being, their feelings and their inclinations most children, but especially girls, grow up. It is therefore not surprising that when grown they seldom look back upon their childhood as a happy time.

An intense feeling of life, a sense of plenitude, entirety, of the complete development of the powers of the potentialities--this const.i.tutes happiness. Children have more possibilities of happiness than adults, for they can experience this feeling of joy of life more undividedly and immediately. They should utilize these possibilities of happiness while the parents have partial power over their life. Soon enough must they on their own initiative attempt, accomplish, bleed; and herein no one of all the influences of education has even approximately the significance of this: that the individual be not overtrained, that he have still strength enough to live. That means: to suffer his own sorrow, to enjoy his own happiness, to perform his own work, to think his own thoughts, to be able to devote himself absolutely and entirely--the sole condition of being able to work, to love and to die.

It is a deep psychological truth that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the children. For no one attains the highest that life offers in any other way than by simplicity, unworldliness and the power of devoting his whole being without reserve to his object. This is the strength of the child nature. If a mother by education has preserved this holy strength and developed it to a conscious power, then she has given to mankind not only a new being but a new personality.

But the education in the family, just as in the school, is tending in the opposite direction. The destruction of the personality is therefore the great evil of the time.

Yet man is fortunately a vigorous organism. And those, whose personality has been bowed or repressed by education, could raise themselves again and create freedom for their development if they were aware of the value of this freedom.

Few beings and so likewise few women can be exceptional. But if only a few are destined for a great personality, yet nevertheless most can, in spite of the errors of education, develop a certain degree of personality, if they are deeply, earnestly concerned in it.

For everything is interrelated. No one lives unpunished by a second hand. We cannot advance intellectually by borrowing, without becoming also morally less scrupulous. We are today unjust to a book, a picture, a drama, because we p.r.o.nounce judgment upon it according to the words of others, or because we do not dare to show the pleasure it gives us, in case the critic has not granted us permission to be pleased, or because we feign indignation we do not feel, but which others require of us in the name of taste or morality. Tomorrow, in the same way, we shall be unjust or dishonest to man, or to our own feeling--an injustice or a dishonesty which can have influence over the destiny of a whole life.

The sum of spiritual riches, of spiritual utilities, is thereby diminished if we do not cede to the whole what is most essentially ours.

That which is really our own may be great or small, rich or insignificant--if we ourselves have felt or thought it, it is more significant to others than that which we merely repeat, even if our authority be the highest. And in those cases where we must rely upon authorities, we still can put a certain personality into our choice and honesty in acknowledging our indebtedness, by confessing that we have borrowed our judgment we can put honesty and originality into this dependence.

It is possible for no one to acquire more than a limited amount of the results of culture, to form an entirely original judgment oftener than in a few isolated cases. But each one can learn to understand that it is a mark of culture not to p.r.o.nounce judgment upon questions with which he is not conversant. Good taste prescribes that just as one refuses to wear false jewels if one possesses no real ones, so one should refrain from p.r.o.nouncing judgment upon persons or questions upon which one has not formed an opinion through one's own impressions. When this honesty begins to be considered a mark of spiritual refinement, then will the culture of woman have made quite as great advance as when she learned to read. For next to the power to form decisions for one's self stands in culture value the ability to understand what opinions one does not possess and the courage to recognize one's delicacy.

Courage and truth--that is what women lack above all. And these are the qualities which they must cultivate if the feminine personality is to grow. This does not result because women devote themselves to study, be it ever so thorough, or to social tasks, be they ever so responsible.

Both further the development of woman's personality in the measure only in which her own investigations, her own choice, make her means of culture and her work an organic part of herself. To develop woman's personality from within--that is the great woman question. To free woman from conventionality--that is the great aim of the emanc.i.p.ation of woman.

Such a conception of the woman question is for me the ideal conception of this present great movement. And ideality does not mean to adopt as the conception of life that which the majority considers ideal. Ideality means to live for the ideal, which has inflamed our consciousness and not to violate this consciousness by adapting it to such ideals as we feel with our whole soul are lower.

If it is true that "the lack of genius is the lack of courage," so then is it still more true in regard to the lack of personality. Here lies one of the reasons why individuality is less often found among women than among men. A man is more fully inflamed with his idea, the object of his work; he is more intense in that which he knows and which he wills. He becomes thus often--just as the child--more onesided, almost always more egoistic, but much more absolute than a woman in like position. She is rarely, except in love, wholly penetrated by that which occupies her. It is then easier for her to be considerate, to look about continuously upon all sides. She is more mobile, more quickly sensitive, more manysided and more supple than man, and therein lies her strength.

But just as that of man, it is bought at the price of corresponding weakness. For equipoise is still so difficult in human nature that a good quality is often not the product of a multiplication, but is the remainder after a subtraction.

The man becomes thus especially creative through his greater courage to dare, his more intense power to will; the woman becomes the often anxious conservator. She cherishes with fidelity, not only the customs and memories of the home, but also society's traditional sentiments and conceptions of right. But this very conspicuous conservatism of the woman is exactly that which has obstructed the development of exceptional femininity.

The personal independence of man is hampered because he must work ordinarily in close a.s.sociation with others; whereby he is bound by party discipline and party spirit, by considerations for preferment or other interests.

The personality of woman on the other hand is more fettered by conventional conceptions of morality and a conventional ideal of woman.

She will not distinguish the self-sacrifice which is of value from that which from all points of view is valueless. She does not rely upon her own instinct for right if this instinct deviates only a hair's breadth from the generally accepted idea. She pardons the one who sins against established conceptions of right, provided only he recognizes their validity; but she condemns the one who has acted contrary to this conception in sincere conviction, because his idea of right differs from that of the majority! She confounds in her judgment temperament and opinions, doctrine and life--a confusion which is the origin of all spiritual tyranny, of all social intolerance. Especially does this obtain in questions which concern the relation of the s.e.xes. Every one who expresses an opinion at variance with the conventional ideal of morality has then incurred intrusive conclusions and blasting defamation of his private life. On the part of women then--if it is a question concerning a woman--it must all the more be accepted that it requires not only a glowing red belief but also a snow-white conscience to dare defy society in its most sensitive prejudices.

Conventionality of the woman attains its culminating point in the thoughtless and conscienceless repet.i.tion of others' words by which most women lower their spiritual level, distort, disfigure their character and eventually stultify their personality.

A woman who makes any pretensions to fineness, evinces this among other things, by avoiding all borrowed or sham luxury. She scorns spurious effects, tinsel, and disdains therefore in her dress and her home all artificial ornamentation.

But this same woman utters boldly counterfeited opinions and spurious judgments as her own. Even if she possesses it she dare not express a fresh, original opinion, a warm direct feeling. And her forgeries are then transmitted by other plagarists from circle to circle. Thus "Public Opinion" is formed upon the most delicate life problems, the most serious life work. Thus the most n.o.ble actions become dubious and the vilest calumnies positive authentic truths. Thus the air becomes congested with the grains of sand, under which a man's works of honor are buried.

But a work or a renown which has been interred can be exhumed. It is the blind re-ech.o.e.rs of others' words, themselves, who must at length disappear forever.