^liii^ 
 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 HQ 1210.H25Z9 1906 
 
 3 1924 021 876 176 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021876176 
 
STUDIES IN THE 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
—r 
 
 Studies in the a\'V, 
 Psychology of Woman 
 
 BY 
 
 LAURA MARHOLM 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 GEORGIA A. ETCHISON 
 
 iKV »t< .;:*r^ 
 
 New York 
 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 1906 
 
COPYRIGHT 1899, BY 
 GEORGIA A. ETCHISON 
 ALI, RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 This edition published July, igo6 
 by Duffieid or" Company 
 
 ^09^:,(,jf 
 
 X 
 
 The Trow Press, N. Y. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTER FAQB 
 
 I. Introduction 13 
 
 II. Three Generations of Women . 29 
 
 III. The Woman of To-day ... 49 
 
 IV. The Demand for Happiness 81 
 1/ V. The History OF Woman's Illnesses — 
 
 A Bit of Evolution , , .105 
 
 PART II 
 
 VI. The Force of Anxiety . . . 133 
 
 VII. Seekers 151 
 
 Those who Die on the Way 158 
 
 Upon a Steamer . . . 162 
 
 The Old Maid . . .179 
 
 '/ The Samaritan ... 195 
 A Figurine .... 222 
 
 Finder? 234 
 
 PART III 
 
 VIII. The Man Question .... 279 
 
 IX. Economic and Psychic Distress 301 
 
 X. Woman's Productive Work 317 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This is the first attempt at a Psy- 
 chological Study of Woman which has 
 been laid before the public by a woman. 
 That such a work is undertaken from 
 the feminine side might of itself be 
 well taken as a contribution to the 
 psychology of woman, and will doubt- 
 less, by earnest and competent critics, be 
 so considered. 
 
 In this volume, which took shape 
 under the hindrances and disturb- 
 ances which surround women in the 
 struggle for existence, I have, above 
 all, sought to grasp those points of view 
 and facts which are affected by the 
 social position of woman in the present 
 and most recent past. I have depicted 
 woman as her nature and ideas were 
 formed and must have been formed during 
 the later centuries, and shown why she has 
 arrived at the place where, to the astonish- 
 ment of many and the satisfaction of a 
 few, she now stands. I have thrown as 
 much light as possible upon her activity 
 
PREFACE 
 
 in the most varied social positions, her 
 personal efforts and her general charac- 
 ter; have brought forward the points 
 where her best womanhood and her 
 deepest insufficiency lie. And in doing 
 so I found a thread running along from 
 the great upheaval of the Reformation 
 to the present day, and I followed it and 
 have seen everywhere the inner changes 
 in the woman dependent upon the outer 
 conditions. 
 
 If we wish to understand woman, it is 
 not alone sufficient to study the Protes- 
 tant woman and the freethinking woman 
 in her inner and outer preliminary condi- 
 tions, as has heretofore been done almost 
 exclusively, for both of these are in a 
 certain sense detached. The thought 
 development of the time has carried them 
 along too quickly and torn them out of 
 their roots. The Catholic woman still 
 possesses to-day the connection with 
 nature and the power of emotional 
 expansion, both of which are indispensa- 
 ble to the woman. A psychology of the 
 woman without inclusion of the Catholic 
 element would be incomplete; it would 
 even be founded upon a false basis. 
 
 In this volume I have studied woman 
 
PREFACE 
 
 and her functions from the standpoint of 
 the social conditions. There is still 
 another direction of research, for which 
 I have here tried to create the prelim- 
 inary conditions, — that of purely sexual 
 psychology. In this I hope to succeed at 
 some later time. 
 
 Laura Marholm. 
 
 
PART ONE 
 
STUDIES IN THE 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 I— INTRODUCTION 
 
 She sat upon her handsome puffed 
 divan, surrounded by many soft embroid- 
 ered cushions, busily engaged in em- 
 broidering one more. Before her, on a 
 table, stood the lamp adorned with a pink 
 shade, and underneath lay books, maga- 
 zines, colored wools and the pattern of 
 her embroidery. Behind the red glass 
 door of a pretty majolica stove, burning 
 logs crackled and snapped and the long 
 red flames played at hide and seek. 
 
 Her hair was blond and her face rosy, 
 — or was the warm tint only the double 
 reflection from the fire and pink lamp- 
 shade? As blond and as rosy, with head 
 bowed as gracefully over embroidery, by 
 the same lamp and beside the same table, 
 sat the same slender figure in the portrait 
 which hung upon the wall above, framed 
 13 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 in gay colored Italian scarfs and dried 
 palm leaves. 
 
 The portrait was by a well-known 
 artist, and the interior depicted was as 
 rich, as peaceful, and as clearly stamped 
 with the atmosphere of comfort and 
 affluence as was the room about the living 
 lady ; but the taste of the early seventies 
 displayed in its style of furniture, pattern 
 of carpet, and paintings by fanious artists 
 of that day, seemed more appropriate to 
 her and less conspicuous. The whole 
 arrangement of the room belonged to that 
 period to which belonged also the lady's 
 youth ; and as she now looked up at the 
 young man who sat opposite, observing 
 her with respectful admiration, her smile, 
 the play of her features and her modest 
 manner were survivals of that time of 
 honeyed womanliness. The young man 
 talked of the tendency towards religious 
 criticism in the present time, and the 
 lady made obligatory responses in her 
 quiet, soft voice, now and then throwing 
 in a subtle remark as she stitched away at 
 her cushion. 
 
 Through the adjoining room, with its 
 more modern arrangements of draped 
 easy-chairs, stools and lounges, came the 
 14 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 meager, quiet, wandering figure of the 
 lady's learned brother. He walked up 
 and down in the parlor for a while, silent 
 and aimless, looking at the trifles on the 
 tables, then muttered something to the 
 young man and took him into his study. 
 
 She sat there, blond and rosy, with her 
 unvarying, soft, half-smiling expression, 
 and embroidered on industriously, I lay 
 in my low arm chair and looked at her, at 
 her portrait, at the elegant room, and now 
 and then turned my eyes towards the 
 window where evening was closing in, — 
 the chilly evening which did not look 
 inviting and which made me wish to 
 linger. 
 
 "Tell me," I asked, simply for the 
 sake of saying something, "does that 
 really give you pleasure, — stitching 
 flowers and vines on cloth and velvet?" 
 
 "Pleasure?" she raised her eyes and the 
 soft smile was a little bitter. "Of course, 
 — ^the greatest pleasure. Do you see the 
 portifere before the dining room door 
 with the transylvania pattern? I em- 
 broidered all of that; and the window 
 curtains, and the sofa covers; when this 
 cushion is finished, then come the 
 draperies for the door of the cpmer 
 15 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOI 
 
 salon. Then for the Spring Exhil 
 I am to work a wall tapestry in or< 
 The director of the Industrial 
 Museum has already suggested a prii 
 it, as my chestnut branch on 
 attracted so much attention at th« 
 Exhibition. How can you ask? S 
 satisfying acti'vity! My name wil 
 on undying in the catalogue of indu 
 art, — the discoverer of a new fern: 
 tru]g_ feminine, me ans of living 
 imitating flowers, leaves and iter 
 high relief, with a new stitch, upon i 
 With this consciousness I can solac 
 self in old age." 
 
 She laughed a short laugh, thre^ 
 trumpery work aside and arose. 
 
 "Come, let us look out of the win< 
 she said, "that is so amusing a 
 respectable. We can look at what 
 are doing. Don't you find that a 1 
 fitting aim in life, pleasing to God a 
 man?" 
 
 We stood at the window, she, 
 strong and slender, dressed with qui( 
 gance, her blond hair drawn to the 
 of her head and piled up at the bj 
 braids which were not quite all hei 
 her thin lips parting carefully over 
 
 i6 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 which were not quite all real, — looking 
 /faded and gray in the trying gray 
 evening light ;-/-old, old, a correct old 
 maid. 
 
 "Why do you look at me so, my dear?" 
 she asked, with a distrustful side glance. 
 "You have not much more time either. 
 No, there is still time for you," she added 
 good-naturedly, — "but make use of it, 
 make use of it!" 
 
 "Yes; but how?" 
 
 "Of course that is only a way of talk- 
 ing. It will be with you as with me ; you 
 are made for it. And what do we lack, 
 — ^we old maids? Have I not everything? 
 Do I not still look pretty by lamplight? 
 What if everybody in this dear town 
 where I was bom knows how old I am? 
 Have I not suitors? Look at the youth 
 who is now sitting with my brother, — 
 with how much love he gazes on me. He 
 desires nothing better than to be allowed 
 to accompany me to the Philharmonic 
 concerts and the cycle lectures ; he would 
 do anything for me, except marry 
 me. And at our great family dinners, 
 am I not the central point of the con- 
 versation? Am I not always an object 
 for the addresses of the table cavaliers, — 
 17 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 a bright girl like me who knows how to 
 talk much and well and gives her com- 
 panion a chance to enjoy his dinner 
 undisturbed? At the balls, don't I draw 
 the dancers away from the young girls? 
 Aren't they so fond of talking with me 
 that they sometimes even forget their 
 little partners?" 
 
 She had remained standing at the win- 
 dow with the evening light falling upon 
 her faded features. 
 
 "When I survey my life should I not 
 be satisfied? Respected, loved, sought 
 after as member of committees in all the 
 raffles and charity bazaars, indispensable 
 to my poor, clumsy brother, a good 
 daughter, a comfort to my parents while 
 they lived; do I not also belong to a 
 highly distinguished family, a family 
 whose name has a place in the literature 
 and art of our country? ( Have I not an 
 unspotted reputation, a clear conscience 
 and an immaculate past? /Why do you 
 look at me so maliciously, dear girl, — 
 isn't that enough for a perfect lady?" 
 
 She held my hand a moment, then left 
 the window, walked up and down the 
 room a few times, and finally lay down 
 upon a sofa in a dark corner. 
 i8 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 "I have also been loved," she con- 
 tinued, "at any rate, poems have been 
 written about me. I could have married, 
 — a widower with four children, considered 
 a match, or a polite scholar, an influen- 
 tial literary dilettante in fact, who was 
 only slightly bald. At that time I was 
 still young and pretty and fresh, and I 
 waited for something very different. 
 And then the time went by. You know 
 how time flies. It seems to go slowly 
 and you feel there is so much ahead; 
 you are healthy and young and in no 
 hurry; but one morning you awake and 
 are no longer young. One scorns to 
 race for a prize! How I shrink within 
 myself at the thought! My awakening 
 came just as my parents became invalids 
 and were constantly journeying. My 
 dear parents absorbed me, with the 
 untroubled consciences of loving parents, 
 — ^and when I had finally laid them to rest, 
 then — it was too late." 
 
 She changed her position and com- 
 plained of backache. 
 
 There was a silence — a dreary silence. 
 
 A clock struck. It was late for me and 
 
 I rose to take leave. The elderly girl 
 
 upon the sofa sat up suddenly and seized 
 
 19 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 my hand. "No, stay a little longer. I 
 like you so much. You are so fresh. 
 These lonely evenings are so dismal for 
 me. Always, always alone! And these 
 dreadful nights! Do you understand? 
 How does my brother endure it — a man ! 
 Evening after evening we sit here, these 
 long, long evenings, he with his cunei- 
 form inscriptions, which do no one any 
 good, I with my high-relief embroidery, 
 which is equally useless; day after day 
 the same stupid, aimless pursuits, the 
 same stupid affectation of industry. 
 
 "And then when spring comes there is 
 so much to be done. All this lovely 
 frippery to be beaten out and put into 
 camphor that the moths may not destroy 
 it ; — but the moths go on devouring us, our 
 youth, our freshness, all our thousand 
 patient woman-hopes, year in and year 
 out they eat them in the living body. 
 And when we cannot stand it any 
 longer, and summer comes — ^then we 
 travel. Ah, it is such a pleasure to 
 travel! Only think — Italy and Switzer- 
 land and Stubbenkammer by electric 
 light! And the Venus of Milo and the 
 Sistine Madonna — ^those everlasting types 
 of the womanly. What elevation! What 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 joys for body and soul ! The felicity, too, 
 of one's own chaste maidenhood and 
 these ideal friendships with men of intel- 
 lectual renown ! Oh, my dear, believe me, 
 I have had everything high and beauti- 
 ful that life can give; I have seen the 
 wonders of art and nature in Europe, 
 Africa, and Asia, have associated with 
 the best people of my time at dinners and 
 suppers, have stood before the master- 
 pieces of living and dead artists, have 
 known Platonic love, — oh, why doesn't 
 some one shout aloud the whole stupid, 
 absurd lie of such a life? 
 
 "I have not been unhappy. No, I have 
 certainly lived in the most fortunate sur- 
 roundings ; but I have been deceived by 
 my loving parents, by my dear teachers, 
 by my good friends, by my worshiping 
 admirers. Why is there such a con- 
 spiracy on the part of those who know? 
 Why do they all unite to defraud the girl 
 of her life? Can you tell me why she is 
 required her whole life long to live upon 
 substitutes for happiness, and go to wreck 
 on them? Do you understand it? I can- 
 not. But if it could only once be told to 
 the world. A woman must say it. Let 
 me tell you what I think!" 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 She sat up straight on the sofa with 
 trembling lips and held my hand in her 
 moist fingers. 
 
 " You are the one to say it. Sit down 
 and write it out — write it for us all. You 
 can do it, for you can write. I have tried 
 it many times, but it always comes to 
 nothing. It is always in the same com- 
 monplace words ; but you have so many 
 new expressions, you can say with per- 
 fect calmness things which make our 
 flesh creep. You must say this. Tell it 
 in such a way that the men also will pay 
 attention. I cannot do it; when it comes 
 to the point I am afraid. How could I 
 look my brother and my relatives in the 
 face afterwards? But you — ^listen! I 
 will be your fellow- worker." 
 
 I let her detain me against my will. 
 This suggestion did not appeal to me 
 in the least. It had an unpleasant 
 resemblance to the attempts of a 
 prominent woman whose unfortunate 
 marriage had led her also to rebellious 
 thoughts. They resulted, however, in 
 nothing at all to the point, but all turned 
 upon Katherine II. of Russia, and her 
 canonization. I was to execute the 
 onerous task according to my companion's 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 exact intentions, and she, so long as I 
 was occupied with this useful work, would 
 move about with me through the largest 
 hotels in all the historical places in 
 Europe, in order properly to stimulate 
 me. Discouraged by the contemplation 
 of this plan, I now prepared to release 
 my hand and escape. 
 
 Just then we heard the bell ring and 
 the maid entered to announce some one. 
 My companion pressed me hastily back 
 upon the sofa and left the room. Soon 
 after I saw through the open door, in the 
 dusky dining room, the figure of a 
 small, thin, black-veiled woman, who 
 talked almost inaudibly to the elderly 
 "young lady," with gestures of dissent, 
 apparently keeping me in view mean- 
 while. The "young lady" speedily re- 
 turned, closing the dining room door 
 behind her. 
 
 "Do stay," she urged in a low tone; 
 "the old specter may amuse herself in 
 there alone. She will not see you because 
 you have not visited her, although you 
 must know through me that she is here. 
 You have not written anything about her, 
 which she thinks very unkind, for she was 
 the first woman who brought up the ques- 
 23 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 tion of the emancipation of woman and 
 therefore deserves your gratitude as a 
 woman and your interest as a writer. 
 But you have no party spirit!" 
 
 The lady spoken of was Camilla Collet, 
 one of the oldest "Woman's Rights" 
 women in Europe, who died but lately 
 at the age of eighty. If she had not 
 written in the language of a few millions 
 of people only, and for a little land like 
 Norway, she would have rested on her 
 laurels in her old age, and given cere- 
 monious audiences, instead of wandering 
 about in strange cities, unknown, shy and 
 embittered, or sitting in the back rooms 
 of her acquaintances. 
 
 Yet she had lived, both as woman and 
 author, a rich life. Her book, "The 
 Magistrate's Daughter," which was the 
 first bugle-call from the "camp of the 
 dumb," had given Ibsen the impetus to 
 that great literature on the position of 
 woman, by which he stepped into the 
 foreground of literary and ethical interest 
 throughout England. Sister of an emi- 
 nent man who appreciated and en- 
 couraged her, well married, mother of 
 vigorous sons and daughters ; sought and 
 honored as an intelligent woman ; friend 
 24 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 and correspondent for many years of the 
 leading men of her nation; the youthful 
 love of one of these men ; she had pos- 
 sessed in her full and eventful life all 
 that constitutes the happiness of woman, 
 — according to the general conception of 
 large or small minds./ First, the romantic 
 love of her youthful days, then an active 
 married life, good children, honor and 
 recognition, the satisfaction of inspiring 
 great men, and a fruitful posterity of 
 highly respected citizens, among whom 
 she might have passed a cherished and 
 contented old age./ 
 
 Instead, she wandered like a lost spirit 
 from one acquaintance to another, un- 
 social, solitary, perplexed; seeking; 
 always seeking for an unknown, lost, 
 youthful happiness, to which she gave 
 fantastical names and shapes, — seeking 
 it in her old yellowed letters, in her misty 
 relation to the strong clever genius, long 
 since dead; embittered, lonely, revolving 
 in a circle about her own shrunken ego; 
 tenacious, careworn, a strange contradic- 
 tion of all the richness of her experience. 
 
 The young man was now ushered in 
 again by the learned brother. He seated 
 
 *5 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 himself once more opposite the lady, 
 under the lamp, and they philosophized 
 this time about contentment. The young 
 man took it for granted that the lady had 
 always been, was, and always would be 
 contented. She, blond and rosy under 
 the pink shade, smiled and had nothing 
 to say in contradiction; and while with 
 discreet insinuation he spoke of the inner 
 conflicts and outer hardships of the 
 impecunious academical lecturer on 
 Church history, his eyes looked fondly 
 and boldly into hers, and her eyes 
 fastened stealthily upon his, imbibing with 
 shy coquetry his glance. 
 
 The "old specter" in the next room 
 was not forgotten meanwhile. The young 
 lady related in a half whisper the history 
 of her life as wife and author, and 
 illustrated it with quotations from the 
 books of "this famous and happy writer, " 
 which lay in complete edition upon an old 
 German side-table, ready at hand for 
 visits. And as her gaze fastened more and 
 more openly upon the young man's, the 
 talk drifted to the dissatisfactions of 
 married and unmarried life, and lost 
 itself beneath sweet languishing glances 
 in a general pessimism. 
 26 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I rose and took leave. I went through 
 the streets in the still evening and heard 
 in my ears the distressed cry of unhappy 
 woman, again and again sent forth from 
 the "cultured womanliness" of the "per- 
 fect lady" — that cry of distress which I 
 now for the first time heard and com- 
 prehended, and whose one original note 
 I have since then heard ring through our 
 "highly developed" cultured society in a 
 thousand shrill, impure and false tones, 
 piercing through manifold coverings, 
 disguises and distortions, — a concert of 
 bad, untuned and broken instruments, 
 and in the midst one single, pure, long, 
 complaining, alluring tone. 
 
 27 
 
II— THREE GENERATIONS 
 OF WOMEN 
 
 The ocean lay large and blue and calm, 
 breathing coolness upon the land ; a light 
 wind blew freshly; the silver-beeches 
 stood still under their waving crowns, 
 their leaves exhaling a sweet fragrance; 
 a salt smell came from the sea, and the 
 long yellow line of cliffs rested the eye. 
 The guests of the bathing resort lay 
 quietly about the beach in easy comfort 
 under the sunny sky, and for a little while 
 all strain and restraint seemed dissolved 
 in the pleasure of merely vegetating. 
 
 Suddenly a sharp feminine laugh came 
 sounding up from the beach, then a buzz 
 of women's voices, then a ceaseless con- 
 cert of laughter. I sat up and looked 
 over the cliff. Below were my neighbors 
 of the hotel where I had taken my abode, 
 hard at work in a very singular occupa- 
 tion. Half a dozen ladies assisted a 
 young wife to bury her husband in the 
 sand. The man, apparently phlegmatic 
 of temperament and in the prime of life, 
 29 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 lay patiently upon his back like a statue, 
 a sand-heap under his head; while the 
 newly-wedded wife, brown, thin and 
 shriveled, with the coiffure of a school- 
 mistress and the gaze of a street gamin, 
 worked hardest of all, breathless and 
 panting with eagerness, at his interment. 
 With hands and feet and spades a hill 
 was scraped and shoveled over him ; the 
 man vanished ; only the points of his toes 
 and his nose still showed. When he lay 
 so fixed that he could not move, the wife 
 jumped up, caught the hand of a twenty- 
 year-old youth who had stood pensively 
 by, and sprang with him across the mock 
 grave and back, amid jubilant shouts ; the 
 others standing about accompanied the 
 symbolical act with silly laughter. 
 
 All at once, by some reflex association 
 beneath the threshold of consciousness, 
 the "old specter," the renowned creator 
 of the question of "Woman's Emancipa- 
 tion" in the North, stood visibly there 
 below near this strange new wife; the 
 figures of that very intellectual woman and 
 of this very ordinary, narrow-minded 
 teacher-wife blended for a moment into 
 one, and it wore an expression of aversion 
 — of sharp aversion for the man. What 
 30 
 
THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 was it that had driven the newly- 
 married woman, usually so ostensibly 
 tender, whose husband showed honest 
 affection for her, — and that other be- 
 loved wife and mother, to turn with 
 nagging discontent and suppressed anger 
 against the men who allowed themselves 
 to be made happy by them and hung 
 upon them without reserve? Why from 
 their full table did both grasp for some- 
 thing more? Why were they not happy 
 in their happiness? 
 
 I turned the leaves of the books out of 
 which the "woman-question" grew, in 
 which, in the more personal places, a 
 perverse yearning rings out; and I 
 turned the leaves in the trivial soul of 
 this no longer "young wife" who, with 
 feigned frankness, constantly went about 
 with the young men and loaned her hus- 
 band to others, and I asked myself — 
 "Why so unsatisfied at the full board?" 
 
 Gradually, as I sat there on the clifE 
 and looked out across the unending, 
 still, shining blue, till heaven and ocean 
 became one, all merged in a rosy violet 
 light, — with the mirth of the mock-burial 
 ringing up from below, there rose before 
 me that autumn scene in another land 
 31 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 md city, far from this strip of coast; — 
 :he aging aristocratic maiden in her 
 wealthy home, and beside her the "old 
 ipecter, ' ' slight, meager and black- veiled, 
 (vhom I myself had never seen except 
 launting corridors and vanishing in back 
 rooms, — both ladies from that height 
 jf society in which "moral refinement" 
 [las already continued through some 
 generations; and I heard the restless, 
 complaining murmur of the one and 
 the stifled, woeful cry of the other, — 
 "If only some one would tell what we 
 suffer!" 
 
 From below still resounded the hard, 
 unpleasant laughter of the wife springing 
 over her buried husband, and all at once 
 the ocean and coasts vanished, the sky 
 grew dark and the sand dunes black, and 
 I saw nothing save an endless throng of 
 women, young, old and of uncertain age, 
 fresh and withered, women like men in 
 women's clothing, ahd women with all 
 womanly loveliness, women-children and 
 matrons, and mothers, mothers with their 
 daughters, friendly, decrepit grand- 
 mothers and childless vampires; and it 
 was no hallucination; they were all 
 genuine women among whom I, a woman, 
 32 
 
THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 had grown up; they had sat upon the 
 school bench with me, they had reared 
 and taught me, chastised and petted me, 
 loved and oppressed me, — all the mothers, 
 aunts and relatives, with their following 
 of feminine domestics, — the whole pass- 
 ing and past generation, all staring with 
 strange, bitter, sufiEering faces and long- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 After them there pressed the countless 
 numbers of those I had met upon the 
 path of mature life, who had crossed my 
 way or with whom I had walked a little 
 distance; the woman friends and ac- 
 quaintances, the patronesses and petition- 
 ers of all the various ranks above and 
 below me, the indifferent people who had 
 brushed past me, the competitors and 
 parasites who lived by snatching, the 
 betrayers and betrayed of my life, my 
 generation, most of them limp, tired, 
 dragging behind them their better halves ; 
 with anaemic children and corpulent hus- 
 bands; some moving like lizards spying 
 and seeking; others with pastoral se- 
 renity and broad, smiling faces ; women, 
 and eternal virgins and sirens. Already 
 another throng crowds these away, — the 
 young brood which has just learned to 
 
 33 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 fly; pale and rosy charmers with alluring, 
 anxious eyes; a half -knowledge in their 
 gaze, a restless, disappointed mien; 
 exhausted daughters of dissatisfied par- 
 ents; delicate, empty faces or pnflEy, cod- 
 liver-oil cheeks; laced and macadamized 
 creatures; many, many trained articles 
 of luxury, but rarely a real woman for the 
 real man. 
 
 And there come more, still more, mix- 
 tures and hybrids, — and not one unknown 
 face, not one strange apparition. For I 
 have seen them all, spoken with them all, 
 and read them, as man never sees nor 
 speaks with nor reads them; — as only 
 a woman can understand a woman. 
 Woman looks at woman with a glance 
 of free-masonry; she lets another read 
 the secret language of her inner being, 
 — that language which the wise and the 
 stupid alike speak, which the learned and 
 the unlearned alike comprehend; that 
 language before which the wise and 
 the stupid man, the learned and the 
 unlearned, — everything that is man, 
 always stands with the same bewildered 
 expression; I know them all, — ^these 
 women, and their histories; those which 
 have been related to me, those which 
 
 34 
 
THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 have not been related to me, and those 
 which have been related to me falsely; 
 for I am a woman like these and a 
 daughter of the same period. 
 
 The crowd of familiar faces grew and 
 surged about me, a throng of four or five 
 generations and as many nationalities, — 
 Russian and Scandinavian, French, Ger- 
 man and Jewish; and out of the multi- 
 tude a few here and there stood out 
 clearly, those who had differentiated 
 themselves from the mass, the women 
 who felt and suffered, conscious of them- 
 selves as women and who as women 
 wished to live, — the first forerunners of 
 the coming age. And these cried to me : 
 
 "Speak! — tell what we have said to 
 you! Speak for us because we have 
 talked to you unreservedly and truthfully. 
 Tell why we suffer and die!" 
 
 I lay upon the sandy slope under the 
 shady, waving beeches, and the afternoon 
 sun glistened on the first foam-caps across 
 the green-blue sea. I lay there and it 
 was good. And because for me all was 
 good, something arose out of me, separ- 
 ated itself from my being and became 
 concrete; something stood before me as 
 a palpable, tangible, graspable substance, 
 
 35 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 which usually only moves and swells 
 dimly, deep down in the human heart, 
 but which now gathered its millions of 
 separated particles together as a whole, a 
 broad black cloud which lay over the 
 whole earth and drew up out of the hearts 
 of men its gray spiderweb mists, — 
 Discontent. 
 
 The swarm of women from various 
 lands and circles and classes vanished 
 from my thoughts into the distance; 
 mothers and grandmothers, daughters, 
 wives and sweethearts, young and old 
 maidens, — they were alike unsatisfied 
 women. Not one had found what she 
 sought, or if she had found it, it tasted 
 bitter. Many called themselves happy 
 but at the same time chased around the 
 world as if possessed and could compose 
 themselves to nothing; others mourned 
 their dead husbands and cultivated an 
 extensive worship of the dead, but as 
 widows bloomed into a comfortable 
 brightness never seen in them before. 
 The independent, self-supporting maidens 
 called themselves fortunate, but at the 
 same time lost early their youth and 
 brightness. Wherever one looked in 
 civilized lands and "cultured classes" — 
 36 
 
THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 dissatisfaction with man and dissatisfac- 
 tion without man! 
 
 Whence came this? Was it merely a 
 reflection of the restless hurrying, seek- 
 ing and^ pursuing which afflicts man in 
 this closing century? Was it simply the 
 joylessness which so stamps the life of 
 our time, imprinted upon the sensitive, 
 imitative soul of woman even more 
 strongly than upon that of man? Was 
 it only the rheumatic twinges, the nerv- 
 ous tension and irritation by which the 
 great Epoch of Change marks its out- 
 break? Was it the same passion for life 
 without the life vigor, the same pursuit 
 of pleasure without pleasure, the same 
 desire for enjoyment without the ability 
 to enjoy, which make our festivals so 
 impersonal, our society so empty, our 
 intercourse so tiresome? Or was it some- 
 thing else, — something at the same time 
 more or less than these, something 
 essentially feminine, — a discontent differ- 
 ing from the discontent of man, arising 
 from another organic basis than his? 
 
 Was it something that had formed itself 
 
 out of woman's nature and grown like a 
 
 misshapen foetus, born of the female 
 
 organism? Was it not something, per- 
 
 37 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 baps, that had not been in woman 
 Eormerly and probably would not be in 
 her later, — something which she must 
 bhrow off, like the depression of spirits 
 and impurities of the skin in disease? 
 
 Whence does it f^ome, this hesitating 
 eagerness, this secret aversion of woman 
 for man, this displeasure of the woman 
 in her sex, this desire to be above and 
 beyond her sex, with which the woman 
 of our day coquets? Whence come her 
 coldness in pleasure and her passion in 
 renunciation? Whence the nervous dis- 
 eases, soul-sickness, mental disorders, and 
 all the hysterical outbursts of dissatisfac- 
 tion which prey upon the woman of our 
 day? Why is her charm for man and her 
 power over man so weak and uncertain? 
 Why are her births so hard and her 
 children so often feeble, while all sanitary 
 conditions and the opportunities for pro- 
 longing life are so much better than ever 
 before? Why are marriages now so 
 joyless, why is love now so lame of 
 wing? Why are women so much more 
 cowardly than formerly in their sexual 
 life, and "young ladies" more stupid 
 than ever? Why? 
 
 Still another question: why is all this 
 38 
 
THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 so much more evident in Protestant lands 
 than in Catholic countries? — and why is 
 it precisely in the centers of our highest 
 civilization that people can neither live 
 nor die? 
 
 There is yet something more, — a 
 deeper, painfuler malady, a growth — 
 illness of the race; the trees grow, but 
 the leaves fall and dry up or decay. Why 
 should the tree concern itself about its 
 fallen, withered and decayed leaves? 
 
 Hence the secret despair in the still 
 closet; the loosened seal from woman's 
 lips, and the dawn of a new conscious- 
 ness, woman's awakening consciousness 
 of herself as woman, of her woman 
 nature. 
 
 For the moment the sexes are more 
 distinct, live in more widely separated 
 spheres, think more differently upon all 
 matters which concern them mutually, 
 than ever before. "Woman thinks stu- 
 pidly about men, and man thinks coarsely 
 about women," as Ame Garborg ex- 
 presses it. 
 
 Woman, who is the one more imperiled, 
 
 has attempted to rescue herself from her 
 
 blind lane by her own efforts. It is the 
 
 attempt of the "intellectual woman;" 
 
 39 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 emancipation of woman is the form it 
 takes. After having devastated the 
 North the movement is now sweeping 
 over Germany. But the emancipation of 
 woman is nothing but woman's despair 
 of herself as woman. 
 
 For in nothing can woman be like man ; 
 her development tends more and more to 
 tinlikeness in ways ever more delicate and 
 manifold. In her very dissimilarity lie 
 her charm for man and her own happi-; 
 ness. The woman of the present, how- 
 ever, has no longer the coarse-grained 
 completeness of her grandmother and 
 great-grandmother, nor has she yet the- 
 finished basis of a fortunate differentia- 
 tion. Woman has become but half-; 
 woman, and this most absurd of all inter- 
 mediate stages, we seek by all accepted 
 means, educational and moral, in the 
 home and school, to maintain and make 
 permanent. 
 y The woman of our day has no longer- 
 
 ^ respect for man, no longer respect for 
 herself as a productive organism ; in other- 
 words, she has no veneration for the 
 mystery of her existence. She is stupidly- 
 wise — unnatural. At most the woman of 
 
 J to-day has only fear of man. 
 
THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 Our grandmothers also stood in fear of 
 man, but they feared him and submitted 
 to him as one does to Providence, v. The 
 modern woman when she fears man, fears 
 in him only the individual brutal being 
 with whom she is unfortunately thrown, 
 who can maltreat her, in his greater 
 strength, if he chooses, and against 
 whom she feels herself defenseless; she 
 always fears in man one individual com- 
 mon boor; and the war against man 
 which the emancipation movement leads, 
 is also simply a struggle against an acci- 
 dental row of cruel fellows, who in the 
 narrow minds of a number of embittered 
 women have swelled to the dimensions of 
 the whole masculine sex. 
 
 Yet in precisely these qualities, brutal- 
 ity, coarseness and overbearingness, 
 natural or assumed, consists man's sole 
 attraction for many of -the cultured 
 women of to-day, as well as for the 
 ordinary woman. Herein is the mistake 
 into which so many of our women, high 
 and low, married and single, fall; and 
 when they lie in the beds of their own 
 making, then the "horrid man" is held 
 to blame, not their own blunted instinct. 
 
 This stupid fear and unnatural pleasure 
 
 41 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 in the possibility of being mishandled, in 
 which the woman feels herself an indi- 
 vidual opposed to another individual, is 
 the precise opposite of what our grand- 
 mothers and the long row of their pred- 
 ecessors felt towards their husbands. 
 The wife till the close of the last century, 
 and even later, thought of her husband 
 not at all as a certain limited personality 
 but as "the man." Instead of addressing 
 him as nowadays by his baptismal name 
 or by a pet name, she — and our mothers 
 still frequently do the same — spoke to or of 
 him by his family or clan name, or simply 
 with the idea of species as "my man." 
 So likewise with her feeling towards him ; 
 the wife had not yet thought of her hus- 
 band as something which belonged to 
 her, but rather as something to which she 
 belonged, as sex, as species, as mystery, 
 as distance, as that which one does not 
 understand and before which one must 
 bow. 
 
 For life with our grandmothers was not 
 a game of chance, an arithmetical prob- 
 lem, a probably unfortunate experiment, 
 as it is now with our men and youths and 
 so in consequence also with our women 
 and girls. It was to them a mystery 
 42 
 
THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 which they reverently accepted. In 
 nothing is this contrast more strongly 
 shown than in the attitude of our grand- 
 mothers towards conception, pregnancy 
 and birth, and that of the women of to- 
 day. I can still remember, — ^it is indeed 
 one of my earliest deep impressions, — 
 with what calm, religious care the elders 
 always surrounded their daughters at 
 such a time. No grumbling, no moods, 
 no opposition. Since life was a divine 
 ordinance, so was the husband, such as 
 he might be, of God's sending. So was 
 everything pertaining to woman's mission 
 especially and in the highest degree of 
 Providence, to be accepted as it came ; for 
 there is no jesting with Providence and 
 things might always have been "so much 
 worse." Woman performed her daily 
 work, admonished her daughters, watched 
 by the neighbors' sickbed, rendered assist- 
 ance in the hour of trial, and swaddled 
 the new-born, with a collected demeanor 
 of mixed humility and pride, as if she 
 were discharging a holy duty. 
 
 With the same respect did she treat the 
 
 unavoidable and necessary circumstance 
 
 that the husband should visit his wife; 
 
 that "was as it should be," and was the 
 
 43 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 "wife's duty," which must be fulfilled 
 without grumbling, but also without 
 unbecoming exultation. Her own sen- 
 suousness had probably in most cases no 
 stronger consciousness than this, of the 
 personality of her partner. For her it 
 did not depend so much upon a particular 
 individual; it was enough that he was 
 man and her husband; for the rest, 
 matters were transacted, as with all 
 matrimonial mysteries, in darkness. The 
 heavy draw-curtains of the old-time 
 marriage-beds — each bed massive and 
 shut in like a small fortress — played 
 assuredly something more than a sym- 
 bolic role. 
 
 What a contrast do we see in the 
 daughters of these women, our mothers! 
 As yet, no revolt, but already an un- 
 pleasant state of malaise ; a very frequent 
 and general disinclination to the fulfil- 
 ment of the "conjugal duties"; conten- 
 tiousness and demands during pregnancy ; 
 pleasure in torturing themselves and their 
 husbands with a nourished fear of the 
 birth, with which the growing daugh- 
 ters are consciously inoculated; a dis- 
 trustful guarding of the "position of the 
 wife" and the control of the house; — in 
 
 44 
 
THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 short, ill-tempered virtue. These women 
 demand of their husbands respect for the 
 praiseworthiness of their performance of 
 duty; they instil with lasting persistence 
 the somewhat difficult idea that they are 
 really disguised martyrs whose natural 
 humility alone forbids them to exact all 
 their dues. Their favorite word is self- 
 sacrifice. They sacrifice themselves for 
 their husbands ; they sacrifice themselves 
 for their children; they sacrifice them- 
 selves for the household; they sacrifice 
 themselves for the position of the family 
 in society; their life is one great sacrificial 
 ceremony. 
 
 For so much self-sacrifice, however, 
 they demand strict devotion from hus- 
 band and children, and admiration as 
 "an exemplary wife and mother." They 
 allow themselves nothing, but they also 
 allow their conjugal slaves nothing. 
 Income and expenditure are under their 
 just control, and if the husband drinks a 
 cup beyond his thirst, he is so well 
 trained that he is immediately assailed by 
 clamorous scruples. These wives are no 
 pleasure to their husbands, but then they 
 are not there for pleasure. In all that 
 they do they "fulfil their duty," there- 
 
 45 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAl 
 
 fore they have a right to require stri( 
 performance of duty from their hui 
 bands. They keep their marital fidelit 
 ^hining bright like their kitchen utensili 
 and hence are enabled to see every fill 
 breathed upon it, — such as a light-minde 
 side-glance of the husband at a youn 
 face, — nor do they allow the tarnish t 
 pass uncensured. As they become ol 
 they make much ado over their illnesse 
 and pains, the consequence of thei 
 "self-denial," and it is peculiarly chai 
 acteristic that the older and less cham 
 ing they grow, the more submissive an 
 attentive is the husband. As a rule the 
 outlive him and extend their sway an 
 ample collection of "duties" and "rights' 
 over their sons and daughters, whos 
 married, happiness they do not promote 
 but if they die before him, of cancel 
 diabetes, dropsy or some other illnes 
 acquired through self-sacrifice, the beref 
 widower mourns, misses and praises hi 
 wife the rest of his days, the sons rav 
 about their mother and hold her up t 
 their wives as a model, and the daughter 
 become "old maids." 
 
 Of course these types are not confinei 
 to the given periods. In the so-calle( 
 46 
 
THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 lower classes and in the remote little 
 towns, there are still many of the 
 youngest generation who are like our 
 grandmothers, but this uniformly passes 
 where literature for women is introduced, 
 and the characteristics of our mothers are 
 now very common in the young women of 
 the higher circles in provincial towns, and 
 among the bureaucracy. The old atti- 
 tude is limited chiefly to backward and 
 narrow-minded ranks of society. In gen- 
 eral one may say that between the 
 generation which married in the fifties 
 and that which married in the eighties a 
 sharp line of division can be drawn. Our 
 mothers held the categorical imperative 
 in high honor; the daughters of our 
 generation have already a touch of 
 anarchism, they honor arbitrariness. 
 
 47 
 
Ill— THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 And the women of to-day? The 
 women who are now in their prime ; the 
 women at the two great turning-points of 
 woman's life, — the woman of thirty and 
 the woman of forty years ; the woman in 
 whom, but a short time before, that great 
 musical symphony of love was first 
 intoned, and the woman of forty, in whom 
 this music rises once more like a foaming 
 cascade and then slowly sinks and ebbs 
 and dies away? 
 
 To comprehend the woman of to-day 
 in her typical and at the same time most 
 perfect development, to grasp her in the 
 most prominent phases of her existence, 
 to read the secrets of her inner and con- 
 cealed experience, to observe the pulsa- 
 tion of her blood and the vibrations of 
 her soul, to watch the activity of her 
 organs behind the rigorous corset of con- 
 vention and training, to see how her per- 
 sonality gradually outgrows and bursts 
 this corset, and how the individual 
 demands break the thread of society's 
 
 49 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 puppet-play, and the woman bursts forth 
 from the lady, — that were worth our 
 pains! But where is this figure which 
 daily goes about among us, which openly 
 speaks a language for all ears, plainly, 
 so that all may understand who are 
 interested enough to listen? Where is 
 the type which comprises all the thou- 
 sand variations and offshoots, in one 
 powerful, collective, comprehensible 
 figure? 
 
 I do not here consider those women 
 who have fallen from the fortifications 
 of society's great citadel and live upon a 
 lower plane, — the fallen, the erring, the 
 led astray, or whatever one may term 
 them; that mass of wantonness and 
 duped simplicity does not concern us now. 
 I refer to those women whose honor is 
 without stain, whose reputation is un- 
 touched by slander; to those who are 
 bom "ladies" in the best sense of the 
 word, with all the sensitive pride and 
 certain distinction of the lady who has 
 inherited generations of culture in bear- 
 ing and action ; to those women who have 
 not only natural tact but natural intel- 
 ligence in avoiding everything brusque, 
 unpleasant or striking. If we could but 
 50 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 read the inner history of these women 
 we should reach the central truth con- 
 cerning the woman of to-day, could 
 environ her past and future, her height 
 and depth, beholding her in all grada- 
 tions, modifications and transitions. 
 
 But how read this hidden writing? — 
 how open these concealed and locked 
 chambers? 
 
 Woman leads a life of concealment. 
 Her whole education is nothing but a 
 concealment of the woman from herself. 
 The mother hides from her little daugh- 
 ter the girl within the child; the school 
 hides from the growing girl the woman 
 within the maiden. Formerly maiden- 
 hood was considered a mystery ; now it is 
 a mystification. Formerly the girl grow- 
 ing to woman's estate knew everything 
 which she could understand, and her own 
 maidenhood set very clearly the limits of 
 this understanding. In this day of be- 
 nevolent humanity and saving education 
 she must, of all things, know the least of 
 that which she instinctively understands ; 
 the great human and educational problem 
 of all girls' schools is the rearing of 
 women to sexlessness. Even in the 
 beginning of this centiiry women ac- 
 51 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 cepted what was natural, without affecta- 
 tion; while nowadays the means of pre- 
 serving maidenly innocence is to ignore 
 everything in any way connected with sex. 
 Throughout Europe the classics are cas- 
 trated before they are admitted into girls' 
 schools, and even the Word of God is 
 served up to the blooming, blossoming 
 maiden in carefully ' 'expurgated" editions. 
 Thus the lady grows up in our society. 
 And under these influences two types are 
 formed. 
 
 One is the outgrowth of a morbid 
 curiosity, artificially developed by this 
 stupid concealment and repression, which 
 in the children of our great cities usually 
 becomes quite early an inflamed desire. 
 The representative of this type flutters 
 covetously from man to man, unable to 
 settle to rest beside any one of them; 
 finds nothing but disappointment in the 
 final satisfaction of her wants, under- 
 values her husband, converts marriage 
 into a torture, and — strange as it may 
 seem— in spite of her eternal circling 
 about it, rarely comprehends the physical 
 basis of the relation between man and 
 woman or enjoys spontaneously the rela- 
 tion itself. This is the type which the 
 52 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 French characterize by the untranslatable 
 and irreplaceable word, une d6traqu6e.* 
 
 The maiden of the other type carries 
 in her blood an over-sensitive chastity- 
 barometer. There is a very large group 
 of women, — and I have observed that 
 they are usually the finest minds and 
 noblest souls, — who instinctively guard, 
 with fear and trembling, their inviola- 
 bility ; nothing is to them so distressing, 
 so debasing, as to feel a stain upon 
 themselves. And they feel themselves 
 stained by everything imaginable ; by the 
 glance of a man to whom they are utterly 
 indifferent; by a thought which flashes 
 through their brains upon some ordinary 
 suggestion, and whose trace they seek 
 scrupulously to wash away from their 
 souls as they wash a contaminating hand- 
 pressure with soap and water from their 
 hands. In many cases this super-sen- 
 sitiveness is nothing but unrestrained 
 maidenliness ; the woman jealously re- 
 serves her entire capital, for the great 
 bliss of an individualized, self -abandoning 
 love for the one man destined for her. 
 These are generally women who have 
 an instinctive pride in their worth, and 
 
 * Disordered, unbalanced. 
 
 53 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 an instinctive delicacy in the deeper 
 phases of love ; women of rich, beautiful 
 blood, which longs to gather itself for 
 loving germination of healthy children. 
 These are the natures which play for 
 high stakes. For such a woman is not 
 for the many among men, but for the 
 few; and it is a question whether she 
 meet one of these few, and having met, 
 whether he will notice her. 
 
 It does not often happen that he does 
 notice her. The most frequent mascu- 
 line types of the present are the barbarian 
 and the decadent. The barbarian, — the 
 un-complex, great, strong, healthy, good 
 fellow, with the heart of a child and the 
 nerves of a buffalo, takes note of nothing 
 — ^it is his peculiar characteristic — and 
 therefore generally tumbles into his love 
 affairs. If he is fortunate he marries a 
 mop, rusticates with her, and begets 
 many children who also rusticate ; but if 
 he is unfortunate he gets caught in one of 
 the many outstretched devil-fish arms of 
 the d6traqu6e. 
 
 The d6traqu6e is altogether "the great 
 
 attraction" for the man of to-day. In the 
 
 race for the man she has only one rival, 
 
 — the correct and formal beauty, with the 
 
 54 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 pure line and expressionlessness of a Greek 
 statue and the temperament of a prize 
 cow. This rival, however, is pleasing 
 only to the barbarian; the decadent can 
 make nothing of her. To call his jaded 
 manhood into activity, impressions more 
 direct and exciting are needed than the 
 large passive beauty can bestow. 
 
 The ddtraqu^e supplies all this. Her 
 wanton curiosity, her constant longing, 
 inflame the decadent and appeal directly 
 to his sensuality ; but her cowardice and 
 disinclination to satisfaction drive her 
 ever from attack to flight, and no sooner 
 has she retreated than she stretches forth 
 her antennae and gropes for him again. 
 To see man burning — that is what she 
 lives upon; if she cannot have this 
 atmosphere about her she becomes 
 sallow, hollow-cheeked and hysteric. And 
 the more localized the sensuality of the 
 man, the more does this kind of charm 
 work upon him. The d^traqu^e is never 
 beautiful, seldom pretty, J)ut "she has 
 something about her;" we call her 
 "piquante" and we meet her in all 
 assemblies and in all classes of society. 
 Give her but the little finger and she 
 takes, at once and often very gracefully, 
 55 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 the whole hand; that is generally the 
 whole secret of her catching the bar- 
 barian ; the physiological explanation lies, 
 nevertheless, in his localized sensuality. 
 For the undifferentiated man still loves 
 as our forefathers did, and reacts 
 promptly upon the coarser and more 
 direct excitements; while the decadent 
 (according to the law that the most 
 recently acquired characteristic is the 
 first to disappear) responds no longer with 
 his whole being, brain, soul and nervous 
 system in an indissoluble union; for in 
 him the highest developments of evolu- 
 tion are already sinking in paralysis, and 
 he has need of importunate stimuli to stir 
 his sluggish blood and rouse the feeling 
 of desire. 
 
 Largely in this, I think, lies the ex- 
 planation of the great unhappiness in love 
 and marriage at the present time. Man 
 as well as woman is in a stage of tran- 
 sition and has not yet attained an harmo- 
 nious unity. From the old race of men, 
 which I might call of the barbarian 
 type, a line of inefficient and powerless 
 differentiations detach themselves as 
 decadents. When our attention is once 
 called to this matter, we perceive that 
 56 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 there is nothing more frequent, in our 
 very modern life, than the union of these 
 two types in one person, — the bar- 
 barian-decadent; the man who in his 
 perceptive faculties has still the bar- 
 barian's lack of delicacy, but who, so far 
 as women are concerned, reacts only 
 upon decadent stimuli. We meet him in 
 private and in public, and in modern 
 literature he is typical. 
 
 The man of this unfortunate mixed 
 type, who is not content with himself and 
 therefore at one time reproaches woman 
 and at another the social conditions, is so 
 frequent among our great and small 
 "great men" that the fortunate, fully 
 developed individual seems not to come 
 under consideration at all. The larger 
 part of the literature of the day dealing 
 with sexual problems, the struggle 
 between the sexes, the dissatisfaction 
 with women, the mysterious, sphinx-like 
 characteristics of woman, has — with a 
 very few exceptions — attained to no 
 greater depth than the level from which 
 the decadent, be he poet-barbarian or 
 barbarian-poet, draws his bilious pessi- 
 mism, and to which he himself is held fast 
 by his personal limitations. 
 
 57 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 Between the barbarian and the deca- 
 dent, the two types which comprise the 
 majority of the men of the present, the 
 woman (or type of woman) whom I have 
 described earlier must take her way, — the 
 woman who has reached the highest 
 development yet attained by woman, a 
 dangerous distinction by which she 
 becomes in twofold degree isolated, — first 
 from the mass of her sex, from whom, 
 nevertheless, she cannot withdraw her- 
 self, and secondly, from the mass of men, 
 among whom she is destined to live and 
 by whom her fate is decided. The 
 woman of this type will be recognized 
 even upon superficial observation, by 
 her intelligence. She has not, like the 
 d^traqu6e, a sharp glance and quick 
 judgment for trivialities only, nor the 
 attentive artfulness with which the latter 
 knows how to gain for herself position 
 and unmeasured influence; she has real 
 breadth of mind, a wisdom without cun- 
 ning, an ardent but not moody tempera- 
 ment, the straightforwardness of pride 
 and the sovereignty of self-reliance. 
 These qualities, however, are as stones 
 upon her path. 
 There is something of weight which 
 58 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 distinguishes this type of woman, giving 
 her the effect of being drawn in great 
 lines, in contrast to the smallness and 
 triviality of every day. The lazy 
 casuality and stupid emptiness of average 
 life become unpleasantly evident when 
 she appears; but casuality and emptiness 
 are the very elements of life to the 
 decadent, and therefore he cannot get on 
 with this type of woman. Yet he has a 
 perpetual yearning for her ; he seeks for 
 her continually, as it is his instinct ever 
 to seek the meeting point of the old and 
 new refinement, but when he has found 
 her he cannot endure to remain beside 
 her for any length of time ; he feels too 
 keenly his own barrenness in the presence 
 of this woman so earnest and full of con- 
 centration, and he slips away from her, 
 angry and reproachful. Her nature also 
 refuses to blend with that of the decadent, 
 as if it feared to be hindered thereby in 
 its long journey of development and to be 
 brought to a sudden standstill. 
 
 But the barbarian, to whom this 
 species of woman feels more strongly 
 attracted, as to a vigorous ancestral type, 
 hardly ever returns her interest. Whether 
 it is for the reason that his masculine 
 59 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 superiority suflEers through her greater 
 mental activity, or because of the great 
 distance between these two unlike yet 
 equally strong beings on the path of evolu- 
 tion, I do not know; in either case the 
 mental dissatisfaction with such women 
 outweighs for him their sexual charm 
 and forbids that sympathy which is love. 
 Finally, because these mental processes 
 are so completely beneath the threshold 
 of consciousness, they are the more liable 
 to all sorts of checks and hindrances; the 
 more uncertain of herself the woman is 
 the less she is comprehended by others. 
 
 And uncertain of herself she is, and 
 little comprehended; for this type of 
 woman is signally a type of the future, a 
 differentiation in its early beginnings. 
 We see her among those strange women 
 who are now everywhere calling loudly 
 for "Woman's Rights;" we find her 
 among the ladies of the educational craze 
 in the higher circles, and in the rush of 
 women who assail the universities; we 
 find her as the grande amoureuse and as 
 the c^r^brale, — that increasingly numer- 
 ous class, so little observed or defined. 
 
 If to the two classes which these French 
 expressions mark (our beloved German 
 
 60 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 is quite too plain for such subtleties) we 
 add the class of the d^traqu^e, we have 
 some of the essential lines for the psychol- 
 ogy of modern woman. 
 
 The grande amoureuse is not a differ- 
 entiation of to-day. Representing a high 
 intensification of woman-nature, she has 
 always, from the day of Occidental 
 culture, detached herself from time to 
 time from the mass. She is a product of 
 culture. She not only embodies the 
 growing ardor of womanly devotion, but 
 represents in the highest degree refined 
 nature, culture which has become nature ; 
 she is in a certain sense the woman- 
 genius, — yes, she is perhaps the only 
 woman-genius there is. In her, all 
 passive womanly qualities, — desire to 
 love, devotion to man, reflective intelli- 
 gence, faithfulness, solicitude, loyalty, 
 — have, as it were, stepped from their 
 home in the spinal cord and formed a 
 closer communion with the brain; and 
 her whole being is so aglow with energy 
 that we can almost see the red blood, the 
 essence of life itself, gleaming in her, as 
 when we hold a woman's hand before 
 the light. 
 
 The grande amoureuse has still another 
 6t 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 central, characteristic, — she has an excel- 
 lent mind. She is the flower of feminine 
 intelligence and the moral refinement of 
 her time ; she appears as the embodiment 
 of the highest feminine intellect. A third 
 characteristic is the warm, full, nourish- 
 ing passion which she wraps about man, 
 fostering but not scorching, like the 
 warmth in which the mother carries the 
 child in her womb. There is, in the love 
 of the grande amoureuse, in contrast to 
 the parched thirst of the d6traqu6e, 
 always something of the anxious trem- 
 bling of the mother for her child. It is a 
 love without the haughtiness or the satiety 
 of possession ; a love without repletion, a 
 love of unlimited surrender, of intellec- 
 tual devotion, and of psychic enthusiasm, 
 fully as much as of physical enjoyment; 
 a love in which the physical is trans- 
 formed without loss into vibrations of the 
 soul; finally, a love of long duration, of 
 joyful self -surrender to one man, without 
 intervals of emptiness and lassitude. 
 
 That which plainly distinguishes the 
 love of the grande amoureuse from that of 
 the d^traqu6e is the absence of hysteria. 
 The grande amoureuse is the organism 
 which bears with devotion, whereas the 
 62 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 detraqu^e is the unwillingly bearing 
 organism. The former demands con- 
 tent, and nourishes to greatness that 
 which she receives from her husband and 
 children ; the latter absorbs her husband 
 but accepts him neither spiritually nor 
 mentally as her content. 
 
 We have still a third type, which stands 
 in the vanguard of the phalanx of women 
 in many places to-day. It is harder to 
 define this type than the other two, for it 
 is very variable, marked and yet indefi- 
 nite, pronounced, yet incomprehensible; 
 on the one hand verging towards mas- 
 culinity, and on the other towards the 
 unripeness of a clever, precocious child. 
 It has qualities which partake of the 
 essential characteristics of the grande 
 amoureuse, but these very qualities 
 develop into sexlessness. This type is 
 the c6r6brale. 
 
 What the c^r^brale has in common with 
 the grande amoureuse is the constant, 
 regular, mental activity, by which she is 
 distinguished as well from the ddtraqu^e 
 as from the remaining, average feminine 
 types. 
 
 Of these women I cherish the belief that 
 they were constituted for grande amour- 
 63 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 euses, but under the pressure of their 
 surroundings and by the restraint of their 
 natural impulses, they turn into c^r^brales. 
 The grounds in their own natures for 
 this change were, firstly, a very feminine 
 characteristic, — sharp observation ; sec- 
 ondly, a very common feminine defect, 
 — lack of poetical feeling. 
 
 The words which I have used — which 
 I must use, as the only ones available to 
 express something which is not yet 
 clearly formulated in our minds — have 
 certainly a double meaning. The French 
 usually apply them exclusively to the out- 
 ward manifestations of love. La grande 
 amoureuse suggests not, as in olden 
 times, boundless devotion, what Stendhal 
 calls the "love passion" — ^I'amour 
 passion — ^but the instability of love. La 
 c^r^brale is for them the woman who 
 loves with her head and not with her 
 heart, the woman whose sexual sensibility 
 needs mental consent, who must have 
 reasons for loving. In the word d6tra- 
 qu6e, they understand those who show a 
 perverted instinct, the minute, hidden 
 beginning of perversion. This interpre- 
 tation of these words is somewhat local, 
 — Parisian; something is breathed into 
 64 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 them by use, by the disposition of the 
 French people, which they lose as soon 
 as they are transplanted to other soils. I 
 must take them in their broader meaning 
 when I attempt to catch and hold fast the 
 main types of modern differentiation, as 
 a basis for further research. In order to 
 do this I must first divest them of the 
 secondary signification which the Parisian 
 esprit has given them. 
 
 The c^r^brale is a very frequent type 
 among "intellectual" women. She is the 
 clever, cool, irreproachable wife, with an 
 atmosphere of distinction, purity and 
 fresh cleanliness about her. She is the 
 young girl with the intellectual expres- 
 sion and frank, open, friendly features. 
 She is the widow who, after the death of 
 her husband, grows younger, . brighter, 
 more graceful, looks happier and yet does 
 not take a step beyond the limits of 
 widowhood. She is the ripe maiden with 
 the mute glance which does not recipro- 
 cate, and lips which speak good, sensible, 
 unprejudiced things.- As mother, she is 
 the lady who is completely engrossed 
 with educational cares for her children, 
 and who takes her husband into con- 
 sideration chiefly as the father of 
 65 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 her children and the holder of a posi- 
 tion. 
 
 It is the c6r6brale whom we meet in 
 the good, clever woman, the woman of 
 noble uprightness and directness, of calm 
 assurance; with a glance which man fears 
 and which rules him; with the keen 
 judgment and intuitive insight into 
 character at which intelligent men are 
 prone to wonder, and upon which they 
 are still more prone to rely ; — this is the 
 c6r6brale. Or is it the grande amoureuse? 
 
 Perhaps it is also the grande amoureuse 
 — the grande amoureuse who has never 
 loved. 
 
 There passes through our time a wave 
 of indignant astonishment that women no 
 longer love. The modern woman cannot 
 love, it is said. What is meant by this is 
 that she cannot forget herself, cannot 
 lose consciousness of herself, cannot sur- 
 render herself in an ecstasy, cannot sub- 
 jugate herself. Woman no longer loves, 
 they say ; she thinks and she judges ; she 
 is always giving reasons ; she has become 
 critical. 
 
 Alas, it is true! Woman thinks with 
 the apparatus which has been given her. 
 She thinks with the spinal cord, criticises 
 
 66 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 with her nerves, and judges by sexual 
 perception. These are three reliable and 
 well-adjusted weighing scales. But since 
 the woman who becomes c^r^brale has 
 enjoyed a thorough and well-assimilated 
 education, she is able to give expression 
 to the results of her weighing in the 
 terminology of science and ]ea,Tnmgj^~^T 
 one does not find the c^r^brale, like the 
 d^traqu^e, in all classes; she is always 
 the flower of culture; she has always a 
 means of communication between spinal 
 marrow and brain. 
 
 Or it may be that the brain function of 
 woman receives its impulse from the 
 spinal column. 
 
 The woman who loves thinks with the 
 brain of the man she loves. I do not 
 know whether this was so formerly, but 
 it is so now. 
 
 The c6r6brale is the woman who tries, 
 as well as she can, to think with her own 
 brain. Although she is a woman, 
 although she has intact her instincts and 
 sexual nature, she still tries to think with 
 her own brain. 
 
 Why does she do this? 
 
 Because she has no man with whose 
 brain she can think. 
 67 
 
/ 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 Or because she deems herself above the 
 I man whom she has. 
 
 The more heterogeneous and unsettled 
 a civilization is, the more difficult 
 becomes the realization of love, for 
 woman. Every civilization inculcates a 
 definite ideal of feeling and action. 
 
 We have sought for nearly a hundred 
 years to develop in our women a false 
 womanliness, not only outwardly but 
 inwardly, physically and psychically. 
 
 In consequence, love has become less 
 and less a blind instinct to which woman 
 yields without conditions or exactions. 
 For the cultivated woman of to-day, love 
 is no longer a compelling force. By her 
 "culture" she is thoroughly saturated 
 with all sorts of men's ideas, and has 
 thereby imbibed something of masculine 
 judgment and criticism of men. She has 
 in addition her own instruments of in- 
 stinct, and with these she quickly per- 
 ceives which man among men stands 
 upon the level where for her man and 
 love become possible. 
 
 Our present relations are such that a 
 
 woman is able to feel herself free "from 
 
 something" only — ^never free to do or feel 
 
 anything; and which of our men, even 
 
 68 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 among the most advanced and refined, 
 would allow a woman the disclosure of 
 her whole inner being without feeling an 
 unpleasant embarrassment? The woman 
 who does so disclose herself seems 
 strange to him, because he has in his 
 nerves the memory of all the rules laid 
 down in literature, art and life, for the 
 behavior of the real, true and acceptable 
 woman. 
 
 It is man who makes of w^oman what he 
 wills. For man is woman's security. It 
 is because he does not want her, that the 
 grande amoureuse is so rare. These 
 quiet women with the worship of man in 
 their hearts, who now represent the 
 grandes amoureuses, are stunted, — ^like 
 the white palm-leaves grown in artificial 
 darkness for the Roman Easter, — ^because 
 neither men nor women are free, and the 
 great, proud joy which is red and warm 
 like the blood shining in the veins against 
 the light, is unknown to this generation 
 of overmuch reading and commercial 
 struggle. 
 
 The c6r6brale is the woman who has 
 
 already an individualized sexual instinct; 
 
 who does not yield herself without 
 
 exactions, who eventually — ^if she does 
 
 69 
 
THE PS YCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 not find what she requires — does not give 
 herself at all. It is difficult to naake the 
 differentiation clear except by a living 
 example, and it happens that while I was 
 writing this, such an one came to my 
 knowledge. 
 
 She was the most perfect illustration of 
 the c4r6brale one can imagine, the 
 embodiment of bright, intellectual, cul- 
 tured womanhood. Her upbringing was 
 like that of thousands of the gifted and — 
 according to the ideas of the day — care- 
 fully educated young girls of the higher 
 circles. Her father was a well-known 
 professor; her brothers were also pro- 
 fessors. She attended an excellent young 
 ladies' school, and afterwards took a 
 special course preparatory to teaching, 
 — ^the usual method nowadays of assuring 
 the future of the gifted, impecunious 
 daughters of the higher circles. Then 
 began that strange, uneasy time of wait- 
 ing, a waiting without aim or content, 
 which comes to every young maiden. 
 She attends balls which disappoint her, 
 goes into company which bores her, takes 
 part in family intercourse which leaves 
 her weary. Everywhere she expects to 
 find something and everywhere she finds 
 70 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 nothing. She is grown up, and awaits 
 the surging waves of life ; they are far, 
 far away, there where she is not; here 
 where she is, they are not. She has read 
 in books of poetry and pages of history 
 so much about the great happiness which 
 comes upon the young woman like a thief 
 in the night, and she waits for this thief 
 with feverish eyes and suppressed 
 breath ; but he does not come. After a 
 time her glance becomes dull, her breath 
 weaker, and the just-awakened woman 
 falls asleep again. 
 
 One young man, and another perhaps^ 
 out of her circle of acquaintances pays 
 court to her. Good heavens! she has 
 known this one ever since the time when 
 he wore kilts; she has sat behind the door 
 while the other was being tutored, and 
 heard how he could not get into his head 
 the simplest sort of things, in which she 
 could easily have prompted him. Some- 
 thing stirs in her, though, when these 
 youths come, — she does not know what; 
 for a time she is quite enlivened; but 
 then it seems so foolish, and presently she 
 sees them try elsewhere, without caring. 
 She sews and embroiders, walks and 
 keeps house, is a good daughter and well- 
 71 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 bred young lady, but the emptiness grows 
 upon her ; as if she were in a room with- 
 out air, it seems as if she must die ; and 
 now and then she starts up in anxious 
 doubt whether she still lives, whether 
 it may not all be a delusion and she 
 not really there. The make-believe of 
 life, — modern toilets, mother's kitchen, 
 father's wine-cellar, the addresses of a 
 couple of drawing room lions, the trans- 
 parent attentions of a provident, dry, 
 self-made "good" man, — she feels a con- 
 tempt for it all ! 
 
 Meanwhile comes the first turning 
 point of a woman's life, — the twentieth 
 year. She stops and reflects. Her first 
 youth is past, has slipped away like a 
 summer night's dream, with scarcely a 
 pausing-place for memory. She looks 
 forward ; — nothing different ! Then some- 
 thing comes over the young girl; she 
 feels that she must pull herself up out of 
 herself,' that she must do something in 
 order to seem real to herself. That by 
 which a woman becomes real to herself is 
 the great awakening act of consummated 
 love ; but of this a well-bred and maidenly 
 girl knows nothing. And that which the 
 young girl would like to draw up out of 
 72 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 herself, and cannot grasp, sinks deeper 
 and deeper, glides away and disappears; 
 the sweet, vague expectation vanishes; 
 the first disillusionment has come. And 
 now the young woman seats herself to 
 write. 
 
 They all write, — these intelligent young 
 women — either openly or in secret. 
 They write in order to feign to them- 
 selves a contentment; whereas the man 
 who writes does so in order to unburden 
 himself of a contentment, real or fancied. 
 The young woman who writes and the 
 young man who writes are alike dissatis- 
 fied; but the woman writes in order to 
 have something, the young man in order 
 to be relieved of something. Gradually the 
 scribbling woman grows to interpret her 
 lack as a virtue. She was desirous of 
 love; now she is desirous of knowledge. 
 She begins to read ; she gains for herself 
 an outward content since she cannot gain 
 an inward one, and the longing of the 
 woman in her begins to grow silent and 
 die away. 
 
 She breathes a little more freely now. 
 
 Under certain circumstances, — such as a 
 
 dislike to be dependent upon her parents, 
 
 or the complaints of those parents that 
 
 73 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 the expense of her education has been for 
 nothing, — she allows her writings to be 
 published. The first money gained thus 
 without the humiliation of a genuine 
 feminine profession, gives her an illusion 
 of freedom. She believes that she is on 
 the way to become mistress of herself; 
 she unconsciously feels herself a mis- 
 understood and unappreciated woman, 
 and mistakenly tries to explain it on the 
 grounds of her intellectual superiority. 
 She writes on, and her voice rings 
 louder; she attracts notice and her self- 
 esteem increases. 
 
 This is the psychological process by 
 which a whole series of women have 
 become authors in the last quarter of a 
 century. 
 
 The woman writer affords excellent 
 material for the psychological study of 
 woman; she cannot help betraying that 
 process of becoming woman — or non- 
 woman, whichever it may be — always 
 concealed by other women and difficult to 
 discover. 
 
 And of what do the majority of books 
 
 written by women treat? They treat of 
 
 the position of the daughter in the 
 
 family; of woman's demand for life, 
 
 74 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 which in maiden fashion, unclear and 
 vague and cautious, is generally formu- 
 lated as the demand of the artist-nature 
 for the exercise of her art ; of the injustice 
 of marriage in which a young, fresh girl 
 is mated with a man anything but fresh 
 and active. They all treat of the sub- 
 stitute which John Stuart Mill (it took an 
 Englishman to do that) offers the modern 
 woman in place of the right to love; 
 they treat of woman's right to freedom. 
 
 She of whom I speak, went this way 
 also; it is the common and typical first 
 phase. 
 
 After an interval she brought out 
 something different, — some little volumes 
 of society portraits. They were written 
 just as a clever, lively, knowing, disillu- 
 sionized woman talks; their charm and 
 merit lay in their being spoken. This 
 talent for picturesque, witty, character- 
 istic speech, with an acute perception for 
 the telling detail, is much more common 
 in gifted women than in gifted men. A 
 large part of good description is always 
 gossip; therefore women and the so-called 
 "good story-teller" excel in this art, — 
 the latter having usually a very mediocre 
 intellect. 
 
 75 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 She was now really remarked. She 
 had waited thirty years ; she had married ; 
 but the great event of her life had not 
 yet occurred. She had experienced out- 
 wardly all that a gentlewoman can; she 
 had lived in the best and most fashion- 
 able society, and the best and most 
 fashionable society had appeared to her 
 insipid, absurd and barbarous. Especially 
 the men of this society appeared so to 
 her; the better the society, the earlier 
 the men became bald, worn out and prosy. 
 She had seen marriages made and broken, 
 and love come and go ; it always appeared 
 to her only a short ecstasy and a long 
 indifference, and she herself had grown 
 ever more c6r6brale. 
 
 As she advanced in the thirties she was 
 seized by a dull wrath — the true reform- 
 er's wrath. Everything was rotten, and 
 foulest of all were men. This kind of 
 rancorous indignation, the causes of 
 which are obscure, is usually accom- 
 panied by sexual coldness; she with- 
 drew from married life. From this time 
 she became ever more c^rb^rale, ever 
 more judicial, and her style ever colder. 
 Yet she would not have differed very 
 greatly in dispositi9n from our mothers if 
 76 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 the "emancipation movement" had not 
 come her way. 
 
 The color and tone of her books became 
 like the hues and character of her cloth- 
 ing, constantly grayer and more stifE in 
 the neck. Her wit turned sharp; her 
 humor, acid; the moral sermon took the 
 upper hand. She disdained working by 
 womanly methods — it became her ambi- 
 tion to advance intellectually by the 
 strength of her argument, and physically 
 by the strength of her elbows. She culti- 
 vated intellectual friendships, she debated 
 with professional men questions of polit- 
 ical economy and social science, and 
 fought for her views with emphasis and 
 self-confidence. The warm tones and 
 rounded lines in her "works" disap- 
 peared; they became as prosy as a pro- 
 fessor's lecture. 
 
 Up to this time the process was such 
 as thousands of women undergo in some- 
 what less marked form, and which we 
 unscientifically enough are accustomed 
 to consider as fitting and proper, and only 
 the natural cooling-down of riper years. 
 Again a time went by. 
 
 She traveled a great deal and began to 
 take an interest in her dress; soon a 
 77 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 rumor flew about that she had fallen in 
 love. People designated as the man who 
 had wrought '' this transformation an 
 athlete, with the latest rules for physical 
 development; and the women who had 
 hiterto admired her as a paragon now 
 advertised and commented upon this new 
 phase. Nothing came of the romance, 
 however, save the romantic suggestion of 
 the possibility of love between this 
 highly gifted woman, mentally and 
 morally developed, this independent 
 author, and a strong-bodied young man 
 of intellectual insignificance. It proved 
 impossible. The c6r6brale found the 
 minus greater than the plus; the disap- 
 pointment greater than the gain. 
 
 But now came the reaction; the 
 repressed nature refused to be longer 
 bound. She became attached to a lean, 
 sober, matter-of-fact man in modest 
 circumstances, who had the two neces- 
 sary qualities — ^his own longing and its 
 response to her feeling. His youth gave 
 her the deceptive idea of warmth, his 
 complaisance transfigured him to a man 
 worthy of admiration mentally and 
 morally. She saw him not as he was — 
 she saw him as her perpetually baffled 
 
 78 
 
THE WOMEN OF TO-DAY 
 
 demand for life depicted him ; she raised 
 him above herself and set herself under 
 him, as she would have borne herself 
 long ago in her youth towards the really 
 superior man. She showed herself proudly 
 with him everywhere, as if she had won 
 the iirst prize among men ; she could not 
 exhibit her happiness suiBciently. And 
 the child which she bore him — although 
 in the twelfth hour — was beautiful, 
 healthy and strong, as if from parents in 
 their first bloom. The grande amoureuse 
 had evolved out of the c6r^brale, and her 
 one service as woman was not drawn 
 from two stunted lives, but was the fruit 
 of her original capital — a blooming child 
 of love. 
 
 79 
 
IV.— THE DEMAND FOR 
 HAPPINESS 
 
 "We wish to be happy!" — It is the cry 
 of the age. 
 
 This demand, so far as our knowledge 
 of past civilizations extends, has never 
 come forward so nakedly before. It has 
 always been clothed in some garb, 
 oftenest in that of religion. Christianity, 
 which has impressed its forms and ideals 
 upon our life and morals, transfers all 
 harmonious happiness to the other world, 
 and at the same time converts that 
 happiness into something impersonal, 
 non-individual ; by the mystics, happiness 
 is regarded as reunion with the Infinite 
 Soul. 
 
 Among our old fathers of culture, the 
 Greeks and Romans, there was but one 
 idea of personal happiness, — enjoyment, 
 sensation. Since pleasure, other than 
 personal, and sensation other than indi- 
 vidual, cannot be felt nor understood, 
 individualism arose among them at the 
 
 a' 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 beginning of their so-called decline. The 
 Greeks became individualists at the 
 beginning of their political disorganiza- 
 tion; the Romans at the beginning of 
 their moral disintegration. More than 
 this does not concern us, for what the 
 ancients called by the same name was, in 
 its nature, a very diflEerent thing from 
 the state of feeling which we describe by 
 the word "happiness." 
 
 We, as they, seek enjoyment and sensa- 
 tion. Mankind has never done otherwise ; 
 we have never had in our unconscious 
 consciousness any other cause for exist- 
 ence. But in this century something 
 new has been added, something which 
 was never before so openly avowed, never 
 set itself up so insolently and self- 
 assertingly; this is the declaration — We 
 will be happy ! 
 
 This is something different from the 
 old, intermittent, noisy desire for pleas- 
 ure and excitement, with collapses and 
 inertia, allowing every yoke to be put 
 upon its neck through long periods. 
 This is something always awake, some- 
 thing integral, something which no mo- 
 mentary satisfaction can appease; which 
 demands a satisfaction entire and con- 
 82 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 stant, a lasting condition, and which pre- 
 supposes awakened personalities. 
 
 I will be happy! That is the cry of 
 modem individualism, and it was not 
 raised till now. To be happy; — it never 
 occurred to our grandfathers nor grand- 
 mothers to demand that! Their creed 
 was expressed thus: "One must thank 
 God if he is not unhappy." Unhappi- 
 ness was for them the positive, happiness 
 a negative thing, which only now and 
 then took fleeting shape in some stroke 
 of fortune. The poet has handed down 
 his judgment: 
 
 "Is not unclouded happiness 
 A harder thing to bear 
 Than Fortune's most untoward strokes 
 Which we, complaining, fear?" 
 
 What do these pious words conceal, if 
 not that the poet looked tipon "unclouded 
 happiness" as wearisome and monoto- 
 nous, whereas "untoward Fortune" had 
 the inestimable advantage of playing 
 upon the feelings and creating emotion? 
 
 This idea, and the general conceptions 
 
 of the earlier time, presupposed crude, 
 
 strong sensations and crude, strong 
 
 pleasures, strength and rudeness, a total 
 
 83 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 lack of gradation. Just as the ancients 
 had eyes only for the strong, unbroken 
 color, they had feeling only for strong, 
 explosive excitements. They knew noth- 
 ing of subtle gradations, of unending, 
 incessant changes in a condition. And 
 our poets know very little about these 
 to-day, for they still dwell upon the 
 essential transciency of happiness and 
 describe it as perishable through mo- 
 notony. Permanence, however, is not 
 sameness; it consists in continual, end- 
 less modulation and change, a constant 
 alteration, like the shimmer of light upon 
 a surface of water. To conceive per- 
 manence as stability, — that is wholesale 
 discernment; to be conscious of the 
 infinite variations in a state, — that is self- 
 recognizing individuality. 
 
 The yearning for happiness, for per- 
 sonal, individualized, richly variable and 
 permanent happiness, intones itself at the 
 close of this parting century in millions 
 of souls, upon a deep ringing sounding- 
 board of the durability of happiness. 
 And as a general broad, swinging wave 
 always precedes the single vibration, so 
 the idea of the durability of happiness 
 must first rise in millions of hearts and 
 84 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 swell to a wave mountain, ere it can 
 break in a single poet-soul a"nd roll out 
 in a great song of Life in Happiness. 
 
 This conception of a happiness which is 
 not covered by the ideas of enjoyment 
 and sensation, is now penetrating all 
 classes, and wherever it appears it causes 
 a condition of gnawing dissatisfaction 
 with all that now is, accompanied by 
 depressed vital energy. It is the longing 
 for unity that leaps forth, and meeting 
 nothing but disunion, withdraws again. 
 The craving for happiness is the source of 
 our disgust with life ; the hopelessness of 
 creating for themselves a unified exist- 
 ence drives thousands to suicide. In this 
 desire for a condition of happiness is 
 manifested an individualized inner life 
 which was formerly unknown, an 
 intensely personal soul-absorption which 
 we do not find earlier than the close of 
 this century. Formerly life was a 
 struggle with circumstances, with many 
 adventures and happenings ; or a mental 
 dog's sleep with automatic performances, 
 — this latter being especially the daily life 
 of women. Now man strives for an 
 inner coherence of his ego, for a con- 
 tinuous satisfaction of his whole person- 
 
 85 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 ality, for a more lasting, more tranquil, 
 richer comfort within himself; and out 
 of this springs his longing for a happy 
 condition. And as woman always fol- 
 lows at the heels of man and differen- 
 tiates in his footsteps, there arises in her 
 also the desire for a state of happiness. 
 
 Man and woman now live in a daily 
 tension. 
 
 I think this, of all the phenomena of the 
 times, the most interesting, though per- 
 haps the hardest to grasp firmly. It can- 
 not be observed except in solitary 
 instances, and only from the frequency 
 of these incidents can general conclu- 
 sions be drawn. People did not formerly 
 live with daily intensity. We can ob- 
 serve in the older generations, among 
 the country folk, the bureaucracy, etc., 
 with what mechanical somnambulism, in 
 what a half -awake condition the daily per- 
 formances of daily life were gone through 
 with. When there was a hitch in the 
 machinery, and the daily routine through 
 some external accident fell to pieces, 
 the individual, rudely awakened from his 
 psychological slumber, reacted in the 
 same manner as a person aroused from 
 real sleep, — with a burst of anger or with 
 
 86 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 helpless and dazed action. Self-percep- 
 tion is for such people only a holiday 
 meal; for others it is their daily bread. 
 The first class carry mechanically and 
 almost unconsciously the accustomed 
 burdens, no matter how heavy if only 
 they are accustomed to them; whereas 
 the new being, with his developed sensi- 
 bilities, cannot help being awake and per- 
 sonally present in his performances and 
 endurances. 
 
 Hence the totally differing conception 
 of the ideas of pleasure and sensation. 
 And hence the generations of this 
 century, and especially the younger, have 
 less and less satisfaction in enjo3mient 
 and emotion, unless they can surrender 
 themselves to it upon the soft pillow of a 
 happy condition. And that for which 
 millions are languishing develops into a 
 theory of happiness, into philosophy, and 
 into the aspiration for good conditions, 
 — into socialism. 
 
 "The greatest possible good for the 
 greatest possible number," write the 
 English, utilitarians upon their banners; 
 "Happiness for all" is the promise of 
 socialism. "We have need of happiness; 
 without it we die!" answers the chorus of 
 87 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 cultured humanity. And in millions of 
 women's souls rises the silent, unconscious 
 cry: "Give us the happiness to live out 
 our woman nature ; that is for us the one, 
 the only happiness!" 
 
 Aloud, they say — "Give us the right to 
 play an active part." 
 
 Upon the rights of woman two 
 remarkable and well-known books have 
 been written: John Stuart Mill's "Sub- 
 jection of Woman," and Bebel's "Woman 
 and Socialism." 
 
 There is profound and positive knowl- 
 edge in both of these books, so far as 
 knowledge can be profound and positive ; 
 there is brave and generous good-will in 
 them. But what shall we women do with 
 them? Ah, God knows what the women 
 did do with them; they accepted them. 
 They believed them; they molded 
 themselves according to them; in their 
 unlimited power of adaptation they 
 molded themselves to that which was 
 written of them in these volumes. I 
 have seen, spoken and dealt with them, 
 — these women and Woman's Rights 
 women, who hold Mill and Bebel 
 enshrined in their fine, credulous, and 
 ah, so often virginal hearts; they have 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 honestly and to the best of their ability 
 formed themselves into non-women. 
 
 For both these famous and courageous 
 authors forgot one thing in their famous 
 and courageous books; unfortunately it 
 was the principal thing, — the woman! 
 But woman, in her boundless sensibility 
 to suggestion, is caught by everything, 
 — the theorist, the agitator, the pedant. 
 She is always whatever man desires; 
 woman or not woman, just as he wishes. 
 
 Dear gentlemen and leaders, do not 
 deceive yourselves and us! Your books 
 are very good, very instructive and 
 beneficial, — but what a pity that you do 
 not know us in the least ! Everything is 
 there in your books; everything except 
 the one spark revealing woman to man 
 and man to woman; that is wanting. 
 You can make us what you will; — 
 courtesans, amazons, reasonable beings; 
 holy, learned or idiotic wives and vir- 
 gins; for we yield to every pressure of 
 your finger and it is our nature to follow 
 where you lead. But whatever you make 
 us, we are not so happy, nor yet so 
 unhappy as you imagine; for what you 
 consider happiness for us is not our 
 happiness, and what you look upon as 
 89 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 unhappiness in us is not our unhappi- 
 ness. For while man has in almost all 
 ages "oppressed" woman, woman has, 
 in nearly every age, influenced man. 
 
 Now, when the sensibility of man is 
 refined to a degree before unknown, 
 when his longing for happiness has 
 swelled to an intensity never before 
 experienced, — now is woman more than 
 ever an indispensable part of his happi- 
 ness. And precisely now is woman 
 rallied by her benefactors to a struggle 
 with man, or at least she takes it so, and 
 acts as if called to such a conflict. 
 Woman, sensitive to suggestion, who has 
 allowed herself to be led by revolution- 
 ists and pastors, by mothers and aunts, by 
 ethics and morals, lets herself now be 
 led by "the Rights of Woman," and 
 "her part in public life," and while the . 
 whole drift of modern development is 
 toward a more intense inner life, the 
 "good" awakened women press forward 
 to an increased external life. 
 
 That is the great shortcoming in both 
 these books about women; they direct 
 their attention to her external position 
 alone. A double stream is flowing 
 through our times and this they do not 
 90 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 perceive. Above runs the sharp, swift 
 current of social and political demands, 
 the pushing and struggling of rapidly- 
 changing ranks and classes; it arose in 
 the French Revolution, sprang as a 
 cataract in the "Freeing of the Burghers" 
 in 1830 and 1848, and will before many a 
 day come down in a mighty torrent 
 before which possiblyjthe bourgeoisie and 
 many others will be swept away. But 
 beneath and parallel to this runs another 
 warmer stream from a more ardent 
 source; it is the wish to live, to drink 
 the cup of life in full. Swelling in the 
 breasts of many, it forms a powerful 
 stream. Men are no longer willing to 
 lose themselves in social and political 
 demands for freedom ; they desire to live 
 out their transient lives in full, to capture 
 the condition of happiness ; and they now 
 see woman — without whom they cannot 
 live — ^incapable of understanding them; 
 stupid, spoiled, or moldering in her 
 shell of musty forms and opinions ; or in 
 the ranks opposed, demanding Rights. 
 Neither Mill nor Bebel take into con- 
 sideration by even the slightest allusion, 
 the fact that in the deepest and most 
 important relations between man and 
 91 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 woman it is never a question of rights 
 and duties, ordination or subordination, 
 boundaries or restraints, but only a 
 question of how far their natures can 
 merge into one another, or how far they 
 cannot blend and give mutual enjoyment. 
 
 Upon this all ameliorative measures 
 depend, relating to the rights and duties, 
 domination and subordination and every- 
 thing else with which the incompatible 
 protect and defend themselves against 
 each other. 
 
 All "rights" between man and wife are 
 weapons of protection against the un- 
 fortunate efforts at union. But there is 
 no protection against this, because in the 
 most central question the electric instinct 
 must speak ; and when this does not exist, 
 not even the book of the law can help. 
 
 This leading question in the psychology 
 of woman, — the relation between man 
 and wife, — is difficult to explore because 
 of its many sides. There is the problem 
 of the race ; the question of the effect of 
 race mixtures upon the relation; there 
 are the opposing polygamic and mono- 
 gamic inclinations, which when they exist, 
 are certainly not to be directed by moral 
 teaching nor good institutions; there are 
 92 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 the most intimate sexual requirements 
 with their plus and minus; the strength 
 and weakness of the emotional nature, the 
 differing kinds of development, and the 
 enormous, unexplored domain of atavism ; 
 there are all the deviations from normal 
 sexual nature; in short, what are there 
 not here in active operation, and as un- 
 known as America before discovery? 
 
 All these things should be taken into 
 consideration in a discussion of the rela- 
 tion between man and wife ; they have all 
 gone to form it, and all, in a state of per- 
 petual change, draw out of it again and 
 leave it standing as an empty shell ; and 
 none of these things have been taken into 
 consideration by Mill or Bebel, nor by 
 the religious or civil law. 
 
 Mill's and Bebel's books, — reflecting 
 the spirit of their day, only compre- 
 hended when it was already disappearing, 
 — treat in their narrowness of only one 
 thing, the legal position of woman, and 
 battle for only one thing, a quite two- 
 sided matter, upon which the letter or 
 the intention of the law can come into 
 application very seldom. The wooden- 
 ness of these champions of the new, this 
 paragraphic thinking with which they 
 93 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 make the women who listen to them also 
 wooden and paragraphic, is a reproach 
 and no very light one. We have already 
 had enough masculine pedants ; if we are 
 going to make pedants of our women 
 also, life will be too dreary. And as a 
 fact, wherever there is a "woman's move- 
 ment" — and I am acquainted with them 
 for no small part — there are woman 
 pedants who stand forward prominently 
 in it. The "woman-movement" is in 
 itself a new kind of pedantry; it gives to 
 woman every possible freedom save one, 
 — that of being woman. 
 
 The old state of things was not alto- 
 gether so bad as it appeared, for in it the 
 woman had in largest measure the pos- 
 sibility of making herself beloved. And 
 man loved her and could not do without 
 her. Out of this sprang an authority 
 whose paragraphs are nowhere weighed 
 nor printed. 
 
 The wholly unpsychological starting- 
 point of all pioneers for woman's rights, 
 is that they draw a line between the past 
 and future. In the past all was bad, it 
 was nothing but violence and oppression; 
 from now on all will be better. To be 
 sure, they all agree there was once a state 
 
 94 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 of things worthy of woman; the Ma- 
 triarchate. Unfortunately that existed 
 so long ago that we know really nothing 
 about it. I do not believe in the happi- 
 ness of the Matriarchate. Not that the 
 idea does not please me; — it pleases me 
 and I see it realized every day among the 
 farmer-class and laboring people. But I 
 do not believe the Matriarchate rendered 
 people in any way more blissful than the 
 Patriarchate. 
 
 Bebel, in his "Woman," finds it shock- 
 ing that a man should have relations with 
 several women, but contemplates with 
 quiet good-will the primitive form in 
 which the woman had relations with 
 several men, and the inquiry into the 
 paternity of the children was — for very 
 good reasons — forbidden. However, this 
 is no cause for quarrel. With greater 
 refinement of feeling, the polygamic dis- 
 positions decrease in number everywhere 
 and the monogamic increase. 
 
 The realization of a radical reform of 
 society and consequently a change in the 
 position of woman, is not so simple as it 
 is pressingly needed. To be sure, we are 
 now come tolerably near the point where 
 things cannot go on longer as they are. 
 95 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 It is true, woman feels now as never 
 before, that she stands tietween two 
 chairs and wears herself out in nervous 
 impatience. It is true all customary 
 methods of stupefaction have become 
 ineffectual through overuse ; the "ideals" 
 under which the spirits formerly bowed 
 are in part dead, in part dying; it is 
 true man insults woman unceasingly, and 
 woman revolts secretly and openly against 
 man. It is true our present condition is 
 like a ball which a juggler balances on 
 the point of a little rod; — what follows 
 from all this? There must be a change. 
 
 But what must be changed? 
 
 Bebel and Mill, and the avowed and 
 unavowed Woman's Rights women, and 
 the natural and compulsory celibates cry 
 in chorus: "The relation between man 
 and woman." 
 
 How, then? The relation of the indi- 
 vidual man and woman can be changed 
 every day, just as they themselves wish, 
 if they are a pair of honest and warm 
 creatures and have not lost the sensitive 
 instinct of choice. Between man and 
 woman in the abstract and in general it 
 will never be any different — from what 
 it will be. 
 
 96 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 A great alteration can take place, — that 
 which the socialistic state of the future 
 is pledged to efiEect, and the Agrarian 
 movement now undertakes to bring 
 about; the economic security of produc- 
 tive labor and especially of the poorer 
 classes. A boundless improvement in 
 general health and probably in intelli- 
 gence would follow, if hundreds of thou- 
 sands of budding souls and lives no longer 
 went to ruin in misery and exclusion ; but 
 the relation between man and woman, 
 the sexual life, would receive a new face 
 upon its upper surface only. 
 
 Mankind is not made of wood, as John 
 Stuart Mill — ^for whom the ideal relation 
 between the sexes consists in holding 
 intelligent conversation — seems to think ; 
 but is, rather, a vast body, full of germs, 
 energies, desires, instincts and passions, 
 which are there to be thrown out, millions 
 for destruction, millions for regeneration, 
 millions for degeneration. 
 
 Religion, in past times, absorbed a part 
 of the superabundance of these passions, 
 and tamed or crippled them. The 
 Church was a safety valve for the too 
 high pressure; she diverted it, she dis- 
 covered the "diverted impulse." Just as 
 97 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 the sexual satisfaction demands an 
 accompanying soul-satisfaction, Religion, 
 by making herself profound and beautiful, 
 appealed equally to the soul and senses. 
 She did not concern herself so much with 
 what she taught as with how she stirred 
 the heart. In Catholicism the sexual 
 instinct was sublimated, and has left 
 behind in its buildings, pictures and 
 music a unified culture. The portraits 
 of women of that time all have a con- 
 tented, still, sated expression; but we 
 find also that in that period, female 
 epileptics, hysterical females, half-idiots 
 in transports of ecstasy, painted with an 
 eye for their state as no artist has since 
 painted, no poet perceived, no scholar 
 understood. The ancient gentlemen 
 were not moralists, but they were psycho- 
 physiologists — who still await their scien- 
 tific interpretation. 
 
 Catholicism absorbed into herself the 
 sexual impulse, stimulated and appeased 
 it alternately, taught it finer shades of 
 feeling, set in motion finer stimulants, 
 and delivered it back into life again. She 
 herself absorbed all the excess of sensu- 
 ality. Where this was not the case, it was 
 because of the temperament of some of 
 98 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 her practitioners. This new tempera- 
 ment, matter-of-fact, judicious and dis- 
 ciplinarian, of the stamp of Bebel and 
 Mill, brought the Reformation and over- 
 moralized Northern Europe. 
 
 What was the result? 
 
 Yes, what was the result of increased 
 order and reason, increased conventional 
 uprightness, discarded ardor and accepted 
 "morality"? What was the consequence 
 of the fact that Northern-European rigor, 
 boredom and bad conscience dictated the 
 moral laws? I will not dwell upon the 
 coarsening of taste, the decline of art, 
 and the loss of tranquil feeling, which 
 continue to this day, but there was 
 another, a special consequence — the 
 trials for witchcraft. 
 
 We have as yet only an official and 
 predominantly political history of these 
 trials; if we ever have a psycho-physio- 
 logical history of human evolution, or of 
 European evolution alone, this period will 
 be one of those to stand out most sharply. 
 The trials for witchcraft were essentially 
 the release of suppressed and stored-up 
 pressure. All the outlets for excitement 
 which were formerly found in public gaie- 
 ties, banquets, masquerades, penances, 
 
 99 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 ecstatic fervors, etc. , had been discarded, 
 for several generations. Life under Prot- 
 estantism was uniform, sophistic, devoid 
 of imagination. A small measure of en- 
 joyment was allowed people in the phys- 
 ical union ; more than this was not deemed 
 necessary. They had the unlimited right 
 to the married life — and there was an 
 end ! But they needed more. 
 
 The unoccupied fancy lay fallow and 
 worked, in a vacuum. Life was bare and 
 ugly and the imagination became vicious 
 again as in the early Middle Ages. But 
 under the pressure of the ruling good 
 sense and respectability it dared no 
 longer naively show itself in its ugliness 
 as formerly. All the surplus of sexual 
 emotion which the simple satisfaction of 
 its purpose does not absorb, and which 
 will expend itself in bestiality, folly and 
 extravagance, penances or productive 
 creation, — in the infinitely varied fonns 
 of life-manifestation, with the infinite 
 variety of emotional excitements, — ^for all 
 this there was no outlet. People had to 
 be decorous and wooden, and decorous 
 and wooden they were. 
 
 But vitality and sexuality are one. 
 Mankind could not exist nor move an 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 inch if it did not live upon, and were not 
 drawn forward by allurements. And all 
 entrances to pleasure which had stood 
 open till far into the Renaissance, — the 
 numerous arrangements for strong and 
 weak, normal and perverse, direct or mis- 
 placed impulses, were nailed up. A 
 period of culture unfolded itself; the 
 inventive instinct puzzled itself for new 
 attractions. 
 
 It found them. Secret, unconfessed 
 incitements from bad consciences, con- 
 cealed like the vices which flourished in the 
 pietism following ; cowardly incitements, 
 with obscene images which had here- 
 tofore only crept out occasionally among 
 the martyrs of monastic confinement, 
 seized now first upon the decorous clergy 
 who shone foremost in chaste family life, 
 and by means of these infected the 
 equally honorable councilors, magistrates 
 and other high authorities. They spread 
 like an epidemic among the "common 
 folk," and a frenzy of bestial fantasy 
 rolled through the lands, manifesting 
 itself outwardly in a pretended dishonor- 
 ing of woman. The psychosis of the 
 masses which found expression in the 
 witch persecution had only too clearly 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 a sexual origin; it was the desire of 
 woman which remained unsatisfied in 
 monogamy, it was the irrepressible vital 
 instinct for a multiplicity of excite- 
 ments which, restricted on all sides and 
 in all forms and becoming at last per- 
 verted, sought satisfaction in grotesque, 
 obscene images and visions of women 
 mated with animals and devils, — occur- 
 rences about which their lascivious 
 desires, which they dared not gratify 
 otherwise, constantly played. In the 
 continually., spreading hallucinations of 
 devils' and witches' orgies, was revealed 
 such a; monstrous brutality of imagina- 
 tion as had never before been heard of, 
 and as is only possible from the restraint 
 and repression of a powerful natural 
 force. In order to create a real, external 
 outlet for the excited imagination, they 
 invented the details of the trials for 
 witchcraft, which for idiotic perversity 
 stand unrivaled in history. 
 
 That was one consequence of mascu- 
 line over-morality; — for the other, the 
 feminine? 
 
 We have, from that period, two kinds 
 of evidence as to the inner life of 
 women; the portraits of women in the 
 
THE DEMAND FOR HAPPINESS 
 
 galleries, and the attitude of women 
 towards the prosecution of witches. 
 
 From this point begins an illness, in 
 the midst of which we are to-day. 
 
 103 
 
V— THE HISTORY OF WOMAN'S 
 
 ILLNESSE&^A BIT OP 
 
 EVOLUTION 
 
 From the instant in which man com- 
 pleted the division between himself and 
 the Church, he began to seek in woman 
 what he had hitherto sought in that 
 Church. He made of woman an inter- 
 mediate link between himself and the 
 supernatural. 
 
 That we, as human beings, were not 
 benefited by this is clear enough; that 
 as women, we had to be exalted above 
 ourselves, is equally clear. That we are 
 to-day still occupying this height, is less 
 easy of comprehension. 
 
 We must impress one fact upon our 
 minds; man is, what we women never 
 are, a supra-sensuous being. He is never 
 satisfied in any way nor at any point with 
 what really exists, — precisely because 
 through his mental and physical constitu- 
 tion he is the creative organism ; whereas 
 woman is the bearing organism. As soon 
 as man ceases to be creative, ceases, that 
 105 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 is, to consider the world and us also as his 
 material, — he begins to resemble woman. 
 But thereupon he ceases to be man ; it is 
 his declaration of bankruptcy. 
 
 Therefore I do not hesitate to say that 
 the men who teach and advocate the 
 equality and the similar position of man 
 and woman, always produce rather the 
 impression of physical or mental bank- 
 rupts, — be thej' scholars, poets, or simply 
 train-bearers to the ladies. For it is not 
 a matter of forming something anew, 
 bounding it and providing weapons for its 
 protection, because there are a certain 
 percentage of mean fellows and villains 
 among men; in the true man there has 
 always existed and will ever exist, fusible 
 in form and with infinite capacity for 
 modification, the wish to raise woman to 
 his own level, and if possible high above 
 himself. Every honest man carries in 
 the recesses of his soul a touch of wor- 
 ship for woman, — and that which one 
 worships, one naturally defers to. 
 
 I should like to go farther, and say it is 
 to this adoration by man that we owe 
 finally the woman-emancipation move- 
 ment. Woman rebels at last against 
 passing for something which she is not. 
 
 io6 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 She is not an angel, not a Madonna, not 
 any supernatural creature; this she 
 wishes to demonstrate emphatically, once 
 for all. And the difficult economic con- 
 ditions furnish the opportunity for this 
 impulse to break forth. 
 
 With the Reformation began the sub- 
 limation of woman, but with it began also 
 the first convulsions of the emancipation 
 (let us remember Ursula von Grumbach), 
 and with it appeared the old maid. 
 Catholicism knew nothing of the old 
 maid; indeed it is striking that where 
 Catholicism is active to-day, it still knows 
 nothing of her as a social figure. Yet 
 there must have been in earlier times, 
 through wars, revolution, trading in 
 foreign lands, knighthood, numerous 
 monasteries and other hindrances to 
 marriage, at least as great an excess of 
 the feminine element over the masculine 
 as to-day. Nor did these conditions 
 change until this century, for the guild 
 organizations, military colonization across 
 the seas, and bloody international wars 
 still decimated the masculine numbers. 
 But there was no bitter complaining of 
 this, either from the remainder of the 
 men or the surplus women; why, then, 
 107 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 have people now come to such painful 
 consciousness of it? 
 
 The answer might run : because of the 
 wide-reaching ego-culture which in this 
 century has taken the place of religion; 
 whereby an infinite swarm of inferior egos, 
 — echantillons sans valeur, to use a postal- 
 card expression, — fill the world with 
 demands, for which most of them, even 
 with the best fortune, could with difficulty 
 produce "proofs of qualification. ' ' There 
 is to-day a total lack of those resorts and 
 institutions which give the idle occupa- 
 tion, the empty, content ; a lack which in 
 Catholic lands to-day occasions the ever 
 growing population of the cloisters. 
 
 No one would call the nun an old maid, 
 nor does she feel herself such. She 
 carries neither in face nor figure — those 
 whom I have seen, at least — the char- 
 acteristic marks of one. Even in the 
 sickly and suffering nuns there is a calm 
 steadfastness, something noticeable, — 
 exactly that which is not found in the old 
 maid, and which arises chiefly from the 
 fact that the nun's imagination does not 
 turn about a fixed idea with bitter feel- 
 ing, that she does not feel herself one of 
 those who have nothing, and therefore 
 io8 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 compare herself enviously with those who 
 have more. 
 
 From the standpoint of "equality" 
 before mentioned, the needs of women 
 are too frequently confounded with those 
 of men ; the passive, which must first be 
 awakened, with the active which wakes 
 of itself; and women have deferred to this 
 suggestion with the same alacrity as to 
 all others. To be a nun is an honor and 
 arises from a voluntary renunciation ; old- 
 maidhood is not an honor, and arises 
 usually not from voluntary renunciation ; 
 and in this delicate point we must not 
 leave out of consideration the deep-reach- 
 ing effect of inflamed womanly vanity 
 upon body and soul. 
 
 Woman as wife has undergone in the 
 last four hundred years a no less difficult, 
 and as a sexual being, no less fearful proc- 
 ess. In the moment when the adorn- 
 ment and refuge of the religious calling 
 was withdrawn from woman, old maiden- 
 hood became a humiliation, and at the 
 same moment man's exaltation of 
 woman, the beloved, was felt to be 
 overdone. 
 
 Of the worship of Mary we lack almost 
 all historical details; but they would help 
 109 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 us very little if , we had them. As well 
 ask how the idea of the Gothic dome 
 originated. It was suddenly there! It 
 appeared, was embodied, shaped and 
 reshaped, and gradually disappeared. It 
 was a creation of man's soul; a spring- 
 flood of transcendent feeling which rose to 
 heaven and fell; a poem with its own 
 laws of beginning and end. And 
 similarly, one day the Mariolatry was 
 there, — the invention of the masculine 
 soul, the softest minor chord of man's 
 sensitive passion, which always was, and 
 always will be, so long as the natural and 
 ultra-natural creative power of man shall 
 last. 
 
 The moment of conception is so short, 
 fleeting and uncertain that it is an easy 
 matter to leave it out of consideration 
 entirely, and the infinitely more intimate 
 relation of the woman to the child grew 
 upon man so overwhelmingly that he 
 fashioned her into the Mother with her 
 Son; fashioned her out of the greater 
 fleshliness of the woman, in whose blood 
 the child grows nine months long, on 
 whose breast he is nourished another nine 
 months, and who feels his every sorrow 
 her whole life long as her own pain. 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 Frailer than man, more full of sorrows 
 than he, more bound to earth than him- 
 self, — so he saw her one day, the woman 
 with the fruit of her womb, the young 
 mother with her little child; she moved 
 him, in her helpless loveliness; the 
 vessel of all human life became holy to 
 him and he set it up above himself. 
 Christ, the Man, vanished for men, from 
 the Church, and the little Child appeared 
 upon the arm of his Mother, or the dead 
 Son upon the knees of the Mater Dolorosa. 
 The greatest height which man has 
 reached in the understanding of woman 
 and the mystery of life, he achieved then, 
 when he placed the Mother with her Child 
 upon the altar. For in conceiving woman 
 as holy and letting the little child stretch 
 out his tiny hands towards the heart of 
 every man, every woman became holy in 
 her womanhood, and wrong and harshness 
 toward any child, a sacrilege. An 
 immeasurable moderation of customs 
 and softening of hearts proceeded from 
 every picture of Mary on every altar; 
 and Christ, the Grod and the Infant, upon 
 the arm of the Holy Virgin, spoke with 
 his little naked child's body, praising or 
 upbraiding every man: "Inasmuch as ye 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 have done it unto one of the least of these, 
 
 ye have done it unto me ! ' ' the god-like 
 
 in the child, and the child-like in the God. 
 The Holy Virgin spread her mantle over 
 all virgins and all mothers, — and viola- 
 tion of a woman became a deadly sin. 
 
 Yet another thing resulted from this 
 elevation of the woman and mother from 
 the natural to the supernatural ; it freed 
 man from woman. 
 
 We cannot conceal from ourselves that 
 woman, by her very nature and con- 
 stitution, is often burdensome, and even 
 disagreeable, to man, — even to the very 
 best of men. With her states of body and 
 the frequent mental depression and moral 
 irresponsibility dependent upon them, 
 with her moods, anger and tears, her 
 vanity and tendency to overrate herself, 
 with her narrow points of view and talk- 
 ative obtrusiveness, — she charms and 
 worries the man whom she has in her 
 power as her matrimonial possession. A 
 great part of the enmity shown towards 
 women in these times and in our present 
 literature, arises from this unavoidable 
 lack of fitness between man, who wants 
 repose, and woman, who does not give it. 
 
 The Madonna worship removed this 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 incongruity; it removed man from too 
 great nearness to woman; it removed 
 him inwardly from her; it made him 
 imdisturbed by his accidental companion ; 
 it calmed his nerves and prevented him 
 from being brutal or irritable; it made 
 him indulgent toward the woman, with- 
 out making him weak toward her, as is 
 generally the case nowadays. In the spec- 
 tacle of perfect womanhood and the 
 eternal mystery of life, all the creative 
 power in man was lifted to its highest 
 mental and spiritual action, and all the 
 hundred little broken lines with which 
 the everyday woman surrounded and 
 confused him, vanished into nothing. 
 Man became in the highest sense, man 
 — and woman remained woman. 
 
 Afterwards, in the Reformation, the 
 image worship fell ; the Mother and Son 
 disappeared from the altar; the child 
 ceased to be holy, and infanticide pre- 
 vails up to the present day, especially in 
 Protestant lands. 
 
 Something else now took place, which 
 one would not believe if the whole 
 Protestant morality did not confirm it. 
 Man transferred the conception of the 
 highest womanhood in which he had been 
 113 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 trained for centuries, abruptly to woman, 
 to every woman. The heavenly image 
 being gone, he was thrown again upon 
 the earthly woman and began to demand 
 of her the qualities of the heavenly one. 
 It was a subtle process which long 
 remained concealed and only very 
 gradually revealed itself. It was a 
 process, too, of which we can discern 
 little in Catholic countries, although they, 
 and Catholicism itself especially, received 
 visible finger-prints of the new spirit of 
 the times. 
 
 Next sprang up a notion of "immo- 
 rality' ' which was before unknown. What 
 had until this period been comprised in 
 the religious idea of the immoral and 
 sinful, — ^usury, fraud, false witness, etc. 
 — now, in distinction to the new "immo- 
 rality, ' ' lost more and more the stamp of 
 dishonor; the idea of immorality shrank 
 to one single item — ^the sexual. Every 
 deviation from the prescribed code was 
 visited with the full weight of shame. 
 
 And here began the tribulations of 
 woman; — for naturally it was against 
 woman that the whole severity of this 
 standard turned. 
 
 Man now required of her the immacu- 
 114 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 lateness he had once honored in a 
 heavenly symbol; he followed her de- 
 meanor, actions and disposition with a dis- 
 trustful glance, and what he had mildly 
 overlooked or utterly ignored in Catholic 
 times, now filled him with a morose 
 eagerness for amendment. They had 
 shattered the image of the pure Virgin ; 
 but now every tinker and cobbler set up 
 an altar to the pure woman in his own 
 house. Venerable ministers and scholars 
 led the way with good example, and soon 
 the daughter of every senator, pastor, 
 sexton and undertaker had to shine as an 
 example of womanliness. The natural slip 
 of the woman became the unnatural ; the 
 illegitimate child, the disgrace of all dis- 
 graces, and the maiden who had become a 
 mother, the outcast of her sex. Formerly 
 the Church — as Dr. Ratzinger relates in 
 his instructive history of "The Care of 
 the Poor" — placed receptacles at her 
 doors where she who had secretly borne 
 a child might deposit it, sure of the 
 Church's care and protection, "that no 
 mother fall into temptation to murder her 
 new-bom babe." Now instead there 
 came a period of frantic rage against this 
 most innocent of all transgressions; the 
 "5 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 number of child-murders became legion, 
 and the despairing murderers of their 
 own offspring were exhibited in the 
 pillory or at the place of execution as a 
 spectacle and target. Even in our own 
 day, the commonest crime among girls 
 of the lower classes is child-murder; for 
 the higher classes there are, of course, 
 other expedients. 
 
 A further consequence of the deepened 
 masculine concern for women was the 
 discovery of the witch. This was simply 
 one of those violent upheavals in which 
 one symbol changes place with another; 
 the holy becoming obscene, the heavenly, 
 devilish. 
 
 The unending disappointment which 
 the active imagination of man suffered 
 through the earthly woman hastened the 
 conception of the witch, as an abortion of 
 his creative necessity. His fear of 
 woman as a sexual creature, of woman as 
 mystery, found frantic and absurd 
 expression in the imaginary sexTial devil- 
 worship of woman. Thus woman, who 
 had once been the mediator between him 
 and the Diety, now became the mediator 
 between him and vileness, — with which 
 she still has a good deal to do to-day. 
 
 ii6 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 And how did woman meet this sudden 
 and fearful overthrow? Did she show 
 any power of resistance, any self-asser- 
 tion, pride of womanhood, strength of a 
 good conscience, any of the qualities 
 which bespeak originality or even the 
 pretense of originality? On the con- 
 trary, she showed herself the wholly 
 receptive, jrielding, blindly following 
 creature which she is to-day ; as she now 
 lets herself be humbugged into the 
 struggle for woman's rights, so foreign to 
 her nature, she then allowed herself to 
 be persuaded of witchcraft. Even more ; 
 she actually strove to be a witch, she 
 thirsted for it, she languished for the 
 horrible martyrdom, as she to-day burns 
 to enter the ranks of men as non-woman. 
 It was a psychosis, called up by a sug- 
 gestion of the masculine imagination, 
 which overpowered even those most 
 capable of resistance, as has since often 
 been the case. 
 
 This phase had rendered woman pliant ; 
 from this time on she begins to change 
 gradually. The large, voluptuous, 
 healthy animalism of the earthly woman 
 — her entire naturalness — vanishes; a 
 change is initiated in a certain direction 
 "7 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 towards a certain type. Woman no longer 
 reposes in herself as in the pictures of the 
 Middle Ages; she poses for outward 
 effect, she represents something, she 
 impersonates innocence, modesty, loveli- 
 ness, majesty; there is an intention in 
 her face, — the intention to make every- 
 thing right, to correspond to the heavenly 
 Greek ideal which man has wrought into 
 shape. One never sees the child now, 
 even the indications of motherhood dis- 
 appear, vanishing so completely that 
 where the body formerly showed the 
 greatest circumference it has now the 
 least; the waist glides down, and forbids 
 by its waspishness every thought of the 
 vocation of woman. 
 
 In order clearly to comprehend the 
 change in man's conception of woman, 
 let us take the accidental witnesses at 
 hand, — the long rows of sacred and pro- 
 fane pictures and portraits from the 
 Middle Ages up to the present day. 
 When I observe these pictures which fill 
 the galleries in great number, I cannot 
 help reading in them the story of 
 woman's sufferings written there in 
 invisible characters, — the history of her 
 sorrows and evolution. 
 ii8 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 And when I come to the portraits of 
 women of this century and day, I no 
 longer wonder that a part of the women 
 say, "Let us cease to be women." No, 
 I do not wonder that we already see fre- 
 quently — especially among the English 
 — types which no longer have the faces or 
 bodies of women, but mark an inter- 
 mediate form, a third sex, which certainly 
 may have the qualifications of competi- 
 tion with man, and of stamping the 
 human spirit with the sterility of her- 
 maphroditism. Still less do I wonder 
 that the time has come — it is here now — 
 when a steadily increasing number of 
 women, dismayed at the extreme peril of 
 their inner sanctuary, feel the over- 
 mastering impulse — to be women and 
 nothing else but women ! 
 
 This desire will finally lead them to 
 conscious knowledge of their femininity, 
 to an insight into their own woman 
 nature. With this an evolutional curve 
 and a severe process of disease will have 
 found an end. For even to man the 
 woman has something to assert, — ^her 
 woman nature, upon which he has so 
 often tried painful experiments in times 
 of unhealthy creative energy, 
 iig 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 The Church once made woman the 
 vessel of divinity, laid the Son in his 
 extremest helplessness, not in the arms 
 of the Heavenly Father, but of the 
 earthly mother, and thus placed the 
 motherly woman in the nucleus of the 
 world. Now we are so far advanced as 
 once more to consider ourselves the 
 vessel of all life, — a bitterly achieved con- 
 sciousness, whereas formerly it was 
 unconscious, — and with this feeling, we 
 shall again raise the child upon the altar 
 from which he has been taken, and with 
 him, our own vocation also. All healthy 
 masculine strength will protect us in our 
 womanhood and motherhood, and in noth- 
 ing else but these. It is true, for this is 
 indeed a very great and complete recovery 
 of health by men. But for what, then, do 
 we bear sons? 
 
 To return to the study of these picture 
 treasures in the galleries, — what do we 
 find? We find man's conception of 
 woman, the kind of woman that he needs 
 and loves and honors, the kind of woman 
 that he sees or wishes to see. Throughout 
 the Middle Ages, till the period of Durer 
 and Cranach, we find a markedly pecu- 
 liar type which would be very falsely 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 described as aesthetic. These women 
 have peaceful, quiet and cheerful faces, 
 full of innocence; long, narrow, young 
 figures, the shoulders scant, the breast 
 small, the limbs under the garments 
 slender and thin; the clothing on the 
 upper part of the body close and tight, 
 almost constraining. The waist is cut 
 off just under the bosom, and the wide, 
 full skirts give the most womanly part of 
 the womanly figure full and unrestricted 
 opportunity for movement and expansion. 
 The abdomen is plainly visible in the 
 entire pose of the body, and stands out 
 prominently under the clothing even in 
 the figures of the holy women and 
 virgins. The mother function of the 
 woman is that which is marked in the 
 whole type, holy as well as worldly, — 
 which defines the entire conception of 
 woman. 
 
 The Reformation and Renaissance 
 swept away religious art. For a short 
 time there was overflowing joy in life, — 
 unrestricted expansion. The portraits of 
 that period emphasize the characteristics 
 of masculinity and femininity ; under the 
 amplitude of feminine clothing was 
 clearly indicated the fulfilled vocation. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 maternity. For a long interval, until 
 about the time of Louis XIV., and long 
 after the gay colored clothing had been 
 exchanged for the somber black garb, 
 the sign and sequence of the Reforma- 
 tion, we find under the highly puffed 
 skirts and flat, protruding corset-board the 
 condition of pregnancy in considerable 
 prominence. But as soon as absolutism 
 has become a fact, there is an almost 
 instant change. Man is separated from 
 the soil, the farmer is poor and a serf, 
 the nobility equally poor, broken, and 
 condemned to a parasitic existence at 
 court ; the earth no longer belongs to the 
 many, it belongs to the few, is become a 
 thing of trade and barter, a monopoly of 
 the rulers; — and woman? 
 
 If one wishes to study anywhere the 
 economic revolutions, he can find the 
 data, accurate and at first hand, in the 
 portraits of women. 
 
 Now the feminine body must entice; 
 it must no longer bear. The smile 
 becomes sweet and coquettish, the glance 
 inviting; the upper part of the body is 
 modeled with almost ideal grace above 
 the puffed skirts, the bosom swells out, 
 the abdomen is laced away to nothing, — 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 woman must please, must arouse covet- 
 ousness, must flatter the possessor; in 
 no feature must her mission be indicated ; 
 from this time on that was regarded as 
 ugly and disfiguring — as it still is — and 
 was concealed. Still another century and 
 old and young trip about on stilt-like 
 heels, in short dresses, balancing Babel 
 towers of powdered and be-ribboned 
 coiffures on their heads, and are all good- 
 will, amiability and doUishness. The 
 whole costume henceforth is of a kind to 
 damage the child and pregnant mother as 
 much as anything could. 
 
 What does it mean? The economically 
 ruined man must be stimulated in order 
 that he may love and enjoy; woman has 
 sunk to the level of a mistress, and one 
 does not wish children of a mistress. 
 The oppressed man wants nothing in the 
 appearance of his bride to remind him of 
 the long burden consequent upon the 
 short joys, — the care of offspring. The 
 child is conceived with a sigh. Another 
 step nearer the present and we see Greek 
 costumes in a cold northern climate; 
 woman must be more aesthetic. Of 
 Byron, the great singer of Freedom, 
 whom I still think pretty much a fool, 
 123 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 but who, like many others, was set upon 
 a pedestal for very obvious literary and 
 political reasons, — of Byron it is related 
 that he could not bear to see a pretty 
 woman eat. 
 
 Pale, transparent women now became 
 the fashion; the consumptive appears as 
 the object of love in literature ; a woman 
 carries in shame and impatience the bur- 
 densome child which so disfigures her. 
 In the feminine portrait of this whole 
 period empty faces look out at us in which 
 nothing is visible but an expressionless 
 smile, equally insipid for everybody; for 
 the times are hard and woman must her- 
 self look out for a "provider," for "love," 
 since we have become sentimental. 
 
 Then comes the time of "liberal 
 citizenship," and "highest enlighten- 
 ment." It enlightens for us the fact 
 that men no longer tolerated the slightest 
 token of individuality in women ; women 
 had only to look "pretty" and "feel 
 nobly." Woe to the painter who could 
 not paint fashion-plates! — ^he could starve. 
 Everything which related to the child 
 and the vocation of woman was ignored ; 
 it was indecorous to see, to allude to it, 
 or to take it into account; nothing was 
 124 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 known about such things. In this age of 
 theatrical mania, they played theater with 
 themselves and others. And now we 
 have come so far in the matter of por- 
 traits that in the pictures of "moderns" 
 absolutely nothing is to be seen except 
 something streaky, obliterated and 
 ghostly- vague which is entitled "fem- 
 inine portrait." This is the artistic 
 expression of the fact that men do not in 
 the least know any more what to do with 
 women. 
 
 "Liberal citizenship" has developed 
 into wholesale commerce, great industries, 
 plutocracy, with a horde of dependent 
 appointees. No one stands on his own 
 feet, and no one owns the tools and pro- 
 ceeds of his labor. The whole structure 
 of society rests upon the basis of work- 
 ing to order, and for the wage-givers ; the 
 employer decides what work shall be 
 done, and how ; everything is piece-work. 
 Productive labor is reduced almost to a 
 cipher, since the culture of the soil is no 
 longer productive for the owner. The 
 present system of society is an elaborated 
 form of parasitism. Endless hosts of 
 parasites sit one above the other, begin- 
 ning with the proletarian at the foot, and 
 
 125 
 
THE P SYCHOLOGY OF WOMA N 
 
 suck one another dry. The parasitic 
 positions are the best paid; the less 
 parasitic a man is, the worse it stands 
 \^ith his income. 
 
 Our modern views, moral and social, 
 are ruled by the maxim, "Help thyself!" 
 In these lofty and beautiful words is con- 
 densed the whole spirit of modern eco- 
 nomic doctrine — free competition. In the 
 early days of Protestantism the version 
 was: — "God helps those who help them- 
 selves!" But since we have no other 
 expression for contact with the Almighty 
 than the building of churches, the open- 
 ing clause of the earlier Protestants, 
 which I must own had already a savor 
 of self-interest about it, has fallen into 
 oblivion. Help thyself! is a very good 
 saying. Munchausen had well shown 
 how a man can help himself, for he, when 
 he fell into the water, pulled himself out 
 again by his own queue. In the dim 
 Middle Ages this saying read also: 
 "Help others, and God will help you!" 
 
 We have seen in the portrait galleries 
 how woman has developed more and 
 more from a productive to a parasitic 
 creature. This finds ample expression 
 in this century in the decrease in the 
 126 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 number of children. Thus woman's 
 raison d'etre is actually diminished. A 
 series of financially insufficient bachelors 
 ask: "If we no longer dare allow our- 
 selves children, why should we hang upon 
 our necks hysterical wives who can 
 neither cook and clean, nor help earn 
 a living?" We meet this reflection 
 especially among men in public or private 
 parasitical positions. But it is its own 
 denial, for man can rarely resist granting 
 these things to himself. 
 
 When the social relations have reached 
 this point, one thing inevitably appears 
 among the Germanic races, — the move- 
 ment for the emancipation of woman, 
 the systematic parasitism of woman. It 
 came first to the English, a commercial 
 nation with monopolized, unproductive 
 land ; and then to the equally eager and 
 commercial Americans. More time was 
 required for it to reach a land like Ger- 
 many, which is still in some sections a 
 farming land; it appeared there finally 
 simultaneously with the perception that 
 the farming classes could no longer hold 
 out against existing conditions. The 
 "Woman-Movement" and the corset 
 invariably go hand in hand, although the 
 
 127 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 former reckons it among its tasks ener- 
 getically to do away with the latter. 
 When the country girl begins to lace, 
 the balance has been lost between debit 
 and credit, in the farmer class. 
 
 Man must first obtain a firm hold upon 
 the soil again, before woman can take 
 root in him, according to her nature. 
 Until then, women will constantly seek to 
 add new pursuits to the many already 
 open to them, — and right numerous these 
 are, even in lands which know no woman- 
 movement. In Bavaria and France, for 
 instance, it is not material stress merely, 
 which impels women thus ; it is far more 
 a mental distress, an inner emptiness, the 
 steering into the void, which they try to 
 escape by study, by a calling, an effort, 
 or a business. 
 
 We must not measure the movement 
 for the emancipation of woman by its 
 leading speakers, nor by the majority of its 
 public champions. The feminine struggle 
 differs in no way from the masculine. 
 When we turn from the superficial 
 aspect, we have to admit that this 
 woman-movement, in its deepest origin, 
 represents not a starting point but a 
 terminus. Though we have brought 
 128 
 
A BIT OF EVOLUTION 
 
 women to the condition of yielding up 
 their profoundest happiness, they have 
 not yet resigned their right to life and 
 being. The instinct for life is always 
 stronger than the sexual instinct. "The 
 present conditions of life," says Garin, 
 that quiet and profound observer of 
 human nature, "prevent woman from 
 attaining her right, — love. Therefore 
 she demands Rights, — and with justice," 
 
 129 
 
PART TWO 
 
 131 
 
VI— THE FORCE OF ANXIETY 
 
 A long era of evolution was thus passed, 
 whose influences will be felt for centuries. 
 Woman ceased to be regarded as a 
 necessary creature, and she had educated 
 herself, or let herself be educated as a 
 creature for pleasure. In this process 
 not a few women were sacrificed, — 
 witness the cloisters and the system of 
 prostitution. To this tendency chiefly, 
 we owe the short duration of life among 
 the rich and distinguished families of the 
 city, where the constraint could be better 
 enforced than among the country gen- 
 try or landed nobility. Immoderate and 
 impossible demands were made upon 
 woman's vital energy and endurance by 
 restraining her natural functions, bodily 
 and mental; and thereupon followed 
 generations of weaker and more sensitive 
 children, who were forced to re-mold 
 life and veil reality because they felt 
 unable to look it squarely in the face. 
 This created the theatrical mania of the 
 past century. All the world played at 
 133 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 something. First, under the pervading 
 absolutism, they assumed the courtly, 
 tragic style of the classical dramas; 
 then came the phase of the pastoral 
 plays, which were not only performed 
 but completely lived; of this we have 
 lasting evidence in the houses and parks, 
 the decorative requisites hewn out of 
 stone, etc., from the Trianon to Hellbrun 
 and Bayreuth. One could no longer be 
 himself; he must have a role which made 
 something of him, and which, like the 
 steel corset-board, must be worn daily, 
 his own spinal column not sufficing to 
 hold him erect. 
 
 This theater-going and playing con-, 
 tinned into this century, which likewise is 
 a century of spectacle and scenic effect. 
 Art, literature, politics, — have all been 
 mere phrase, declamation and posing. 
 Although we have remained retrospec- 
 tive, we have by philosophy. Biblical 
 criticism and composition, cut off all 
 organic connection with the past : we call 
 those vigorous early times brutal, coarse 
 and grim; we have become so refined 
 that we maintain whole ranks of "sub- 
 lime" authors, electrifying actors, and 
 artists who cannot paint. What, think 
 134 
 
THE FORCE OF ANXIETY 
 
 you, will the future ages say to the 
 "monumental" portraits of the greatest 
 men of our century? There are not even 
 clothes, let alone bodies, portrayed there ! 
 And yet these great men have anxiously 
 avoided discovering the existing artists 
 who are really able to paint body and 
 soul. Later will be said to us, as we say 
 to the great ones of the past whose aspect 
 and character have been preserved by 
 great painters: "Show us him who has 
 painted you, and we will tell you who 
 you are." 
 
 The spirit of the old Church was still 
 active two centuries after the outward 
 separation of the churches. There was 
 still, until this century, a certain peace of 
 the soul, the effect of the old unshaken 
 view of life. The old symbols were still 
 effective, even in the "purified" church. 
 Above all, the old social organization was 
 still in effect; though internally under- 
 mined by absolutism, it stood externally 
 firm. Life was ruled from the standpoint 
 of duty, which checked the exuberance 
 of individual greed, as, earlier, the 
 reference of everything earthly to the 
 divine, had done. As every one exercised 
 self-restraint rigidly and constantly, no 
 135 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 one felt that restraint as hardship or 
 injustice. A widespread charity, born 
 of the teachings of the old Church, was 
 now attributed to duty, — ^it was a matter 
 of course, about which there was little 
 talk or fuss. This connection with the 
 universal, in the fulfilment of daily 
 duties, gave peace to the spirit. "They 
 were contented;" they were submissive 
 and enduring; all ranks and classes sub- 
 mitted and endured. To this period 
 belongs the verse of a poet, — so far as I 
 am aware, still undiscovered: 
 
 Glucklich ist, 
 Wer verg^sst, 
 Was doch nicht zu andem ist. 
 
 "Happy is he who forgets what cannot 
 be altered." 
 
 I should be inclined, however, to 
 ascribe this pessimism in waltz meter to 
 a somewhat late date, — the beginning of 
 this century, for instance, since the praise 
 of contentment is already a sign of 
 discontent. 
 
 And discontent now began to appear, 
 to grow, to spread and penetrate every- 
 where. It came in the shape of an 
 imagined harmony to be found far, far 
 136 
 
THE FORCE OF ANXIETY 
 
 away, beyond everything established. 
 Goethe and Schiller, and the hosts of 
 lesser writers, fled before it to the Greeks, 
 the Niebelungen, the Edda, the Jews 
 and the heathen. As in Schubert's 
 "Wanderer" — "There where thou art not 
 is happiness!" This sentiment revolu- 
 tionized the political conditions, created 
 realms, constitutions, the press, repre- 
 sentatives of the people, etc. ; all 
 "samples without value," mere tools for 
 new forms of corruption, molding and 
 decaying within a few decades like the 
 piece-work fagades of modem palaces! 
 It was the acid which ate away the roots 
 of the old view of life that had almost 
 become second nature; from Hegel to 
 Schopenhauer, from Kant to Nietzsche, 
 it gnawed into the established organic 
 conception of the world, as Munchausen's 
 wolf ate its way through the nag before 
 his wagon, and at last came out in the 
 harness in front and dragged the wagon 
 after him. It entered into atheism, 
 materialism, monotheism; it was very 
 pretty, a "marvel of the human mind," 
 but — ^it was not "bread." 
 
 And through all, woman kept pace, 
 with grace and dignity. She became 
 137 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 enthusiastic over philosophy and govern- 
 ment, over writer and actor ; she "twined" 
 and "clung," unused to stand alone in 
 anything, to rely upon herself or to act 
 independently. In order to do so, indeed, 
 she must first take footing in her sex, in 
 the assumption of her woman-nature, and 
 every direct indication of this tendency 
 was looked upon as "unwomanly." 
 Woman had no nature ; she was not sub- 
 ject to immutable, imperative conditions, 
 — save to a "passionateness" of Jewish 
 invention, which the revolutionary writers 
 turned to literary account. 
 
 In the midst of "giant strides of prog- 
 ress by the human mind and human 
 power of invention, ' ' a new and hitherto 
 unnoticed condition reveals itself more 
 and more clearly, — that of nervous 
 depression. 
 
 In steadily increasing numbers the 
 diseases of exhaustion appear in man, — 
 nervous prostration, mental collapse, 
 obscure mental illnesses, anxiety, restless- 
 ness and all the other symptoms which 
 express the feeling of transciency in 
 business or private life. Life itself 
 breaks into smaller and smaller particles, 
 till at last it becomes the matter of a 
 138 
 
THE FORCE OF ANXIETY 
 
 moment, the instantaneous portrait, the 
 momentary enjoyment, the momentary 
 gain. And man, himself the creature of 
 a moment, comes to woman with his 
 moment's love, momentary weakness and 
 all his momentary humors; and he 
 demands of her all that he has found 
 described in books as "womanly," — devo- 
 tion, tenderness, passion, inspiration, pity. 
 What does he find? — when it is not 
 simply a matter of payment in one form 
 or another. He meets an astonished 
 gaze, in which flashes something he can- 
 not and does not wish to interpret, but 
 which, interpreted, is scorn and aversion ; 
 he finds a limp hand in which no pulse 
 beats, a stiff, angular body, a nervousness 
 which transfers itself to him painfully, 
 like a swarm of ants on bare skin; and 
 something which makes his weariness 
 more fatiguing, his irritability more 
 intense, his disquiet more intolerable. 
 He declares with bitterness that the 
 "cultured" woman can no longer cheer 
 or calm, afford pleasure or recreation, 
 sympathize or be companionable; so it 
 is better to seek refuge elsewhere, where 
 at least for the moment, — and what does 
 one ask more? — he can find forge tfulness. 
 139 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 Meanwhile the woman of whom he has 
 just taken leave, expresses herself also. 
 She asks herself: "Is this He, the 
 lordliest of all? the reputed noble, good, 
 strong, handsome creature? — the Man! 
 This is no man, — there are no men any 
 more. " She gazes dreamily at the strong 
 carter unloading casks before her win- 
 dow; and if she awakes it is to such 
 emptiness, such boredom, such utter 
 vacuity that it alarms and hurts her, 
 and her thoughts turn in all direc- 
 tions, seeking some satisfaction, some 
 mission. 
 
 This seeking for an aim, something for 
 herself, of her own, a refuge which the 
 man does not understand and which he 
 is not allowed to inspect, which is con- 
 cealed from him, — we iind in almost all 
 the more active women, maidens, wives, 
 and mothers, even when they really 
 have occupation enough with the care of 
 children and home. Whether it is lessons 
 in architecture, the worship of an author, 
 the attending of lectures or the reading of 
 new and exciting books; whether it is 
 felt as a joyful advance, as formerly, or 
 as an unwelcome self-torture, as it is to- 
 day, — these are only differences of degree. 
 140 
 
THE FORCE OF ANXIETY 
 
 The chief thing is the separation from 
 man in the center of interest which is 
 concealed from him, which he does not 
 set in motion, — ^in which the woman 
 wishes to be by herself. As counterpart 
 of this, the man has his card-parties, 
 clubs and banquets. This is more sig- 
 nificant than it appears, for it shows that 
 where the man, after his work is over, 
 seeks recreation, relaxation and an agree- 
 able simpleton, — the woman, her work 
 completed, desires excitement, stimulation 
 and exaltation. 
 
 That is to say, the man feels himself 
 exhausted, the woman feels herself merely 
 bound down. 
 
 We have a parallel to this in a very 
 distant past, which nevertheless offers 
 many examples in line with our present 
 development. We know that the accept- 
 ance of Christianity was much more 
 general among the aristocratic women of 
 the Roman Empire than among the men. 
 Where the man, holding some official 
 position, developed into a gourmand, the 
 wt)man developed into an enthusiastic 
 Christian ; that is, where the man sought 
 relaxation, the woman sought fresh 
 exertions. If we wish to make quite 
 141 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 clear to ourselves the need and urgency 
 of the present time, it is from this point 
 we must start. 
 
 In this century man is passing through 
 one of his most difficult crises. Exter- 
 nally viewed it appears, and is often stated 
 to be, a wholly material crisis, caused by 
 the transformation of the various lands 
 from farming countries into industrial 
 countries. It is a crisis similar to that in 
 which the Roman Empire fell. This 
 tearing of men away from the soil and 
 transplanting them upon one another as 
 parasites, has produced for several hun- 
 dred years a frightful inner turmoil 
 which is shown more and more clearly in 
 increasing fatigue and outward dejection. 
 It is as if a man should try to hold him- 
 self upright all his life, hanging by his 
 hands instead of standing on his feet. In 
 this situation he becomes at last too worn 
 out to attempt to change his condition; 
 and from this arises perhaps the caustic 
 nitric-acid pessimism of literature and 
 philosophy in this century. 
 
 But this, after all, is only the super- 
 ficial view. The underlying cause of both 
 material and mental distress is the fact 
 that for four hundred years a line of 
 142 
 
THE FORCE OF ANXIETY 
 
 evolution in human thought has unrolled 
 and has arrived at nothing. 
 
 The mystery of the world is more 
 inscrutable than ever; all the results of 
 "scientific development," which we have 
 honored with the same reverence that was 
 once accorded to religious revelations, 
 have crumbled in our hands; the philo- 
 sophical systems have proved but mental 
 trapeze performances, the theatrical basis 
 is lost, the spiritual equally so. Man has 
 gone through long and tremendous exer- 
 tion without result, and he feels nauseated 
 and bruised, as after a debauch with 
 adulterated wine. 
 
 But man in this depressed condition is 
 no especial stimulator of woman. 
 
 When the Romans felt this dejection, 
 upon which the Decline followed, the 
 Roman matrons became Christians or 
 public prostitutes; that is, they turned 
 from man as leader, in both ways, — one, 
 inwardly, in the depths of her heart, the 
 other outwardly in her mode of life. We 
 stand now at the same point. Our mothers 
 and grandmothers long since built for 
 themselves private altars. To-day many 
 women demand a position similar to man's 
 and the freedom of love, and many others 
 143 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 look anxiously about for something 
 beyond their own selves and beyond man, 
 to which they can fasten themselves. The 
 Countess Schimmelmann, Annie Besant 
 and many others are examples 
 
 Whence comes this remarkable fact, 
 appearing now with the same clearness as 
 long ago in the great world-crisis of the 
 declining Roman Empire? 
 
 It rests upon the deepest claim of 
 woman's nature, which far transcends her 
 sensual needs, — the demand for emotion. 
 When man can no longer stimulate the 
 emotional side of woman, she turns from 
 him; for woman has her super-sensuous 
 side as well as man. In him it manifests 
 itself as creative energy; in her as the 
 need of emotion. 
 
 And the man of to-day, standing at the 
 crest of a wave of evolution, tired and 
 over-excited, dulled and disappointed, has 
 nothing to arouse the fundamental nature 
 of woman. 
 
 A bright young woman, having received 
 a letter from an admirer, was somewhat 
 uncertain about its contents. She showed 
 it to a feminine friend, who read it and 
 exclaimed deprecatingly, — "These little 
 men of to-day!" 
 
 144 
 
TH E FORCE OF ANXIETY 
 
 The same emotional necessity which 
 impelled women three hundred years ago 
 to denounce each other as witches, and 
 avow themselves as such, now drives 
 them into the movement for the eman- 
 cipation of women. Both phenomena 
 are the result of emotional cravings mis- 
 placed and diverted from their natural 
 channels. 
 
 It is a despairing road and yet it is the 
 only road which many see before them ; 
 and this they can only travel by deafen- 
 ing, with parrot phrases loudly spoken, 
 the inward voice of their souls, that still, 
 small voice which tells them this road 
 leads precisely to the point where the 
 present line of development has led man, 
 — ^to absurdity. 
 
 But what else can they do? They must 
 do something to get away from them- 
 selves. Many have a feeling that they 
 would fly into pieces if forced to remain 
 still. 
 
 The men of our time, even the 
 strongest and most truly distinguished 
 representatives of their sex, show, as we 
 have said, the signs of fatigue and depres- 
 sion ; especially is this true of the younger 
 generation. Man has waged a long, 
 
 145 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 hard, heroic battle,— the battle for 
 mental freedom; and he has forfeited 
 meanwhile his human freedom, which 
 depends upon the possession of the soil he 
 stands on. He feels that he no longer 
 owns anything, not even himself! The 
 next stage in such a recognition is the 
 nervousness of powerlessness. 
 
 For this nervousness a great many- 
 causes are assigned. First, the blame is 
 laid upon alcohol, and this is stormed 
 against in public meetings; next, it is 
 meat which is injurious, and the vegeta- 
 rian creed is recommended ; then youthful 
 excesses are to blame, and man is almost 
 brought to vow chastity until marriage, 
 which is very often indefinitely post- 
 poned by his financial position. Only 
 upon one point are all our learned and 
 unlearned augurs united, — never by any 
 chance to graze the real cause! always 
 neatly to suggest the effect as cause! — 
 the man cannot contain himself, because 
 he does too much eating, drinking and 
 loving ! 
 
 Is it just possible that he only eats, 
 
 drinks and loves irrationally because by 
 
 means of these quite human stimulants he 
 
 may now and then feel tolerably well con- 
 
 146 
 
THE FORCE OF ANXIETY 
 
 tained? And in the interval, when his 
 spiritual and material depression gain the 
 upper hand, he feels pessimistic. 
 
 With woman it is different. Certainly 
 we find chlorosis, nervousness and hysteria 
 in all classes; as among men, these 
 ailments arise more from mental than 
 physical causes, and no journeys to bath- 
 ing and health resorts can cure them. The 
 only help is a cheerful courage which is 
 not to be picked up in ball-rooms nor 
 purchased of the apothecary. 
 
 But whereas the sufferings of man arise 
 chiefly from exhaustion, those of the 
 woman arise, above all, from restricted 
 energies. Woman, as soon as she is up- 
 borne by a warm interest, has — even in the 
 most ailing condition — far more endur- 
 ance than man. She is tougher, harder to 
 break than he ; and what she thirsts for is 
 expansion. 
 
 Always when the most difficult crises 
 occur, we see the woman longing for 
 a way out and seeking it. Where man's 
 courage fails, hers begins. When there 
 seems no more hope, woman's confidence 
 sets in. No amount of work, at such 
 times, makes her ill; it is only in inac- 
 tivity that symptoms of illness and dis- 
 147 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 integration appear in her. Long ago, in 
 the greatest of all revolutions, it was the 
 women who helped essentially the victory 
 of the Christian idea. A great change is 
 again at hand ; but that which thus far 
 has been laid in woman's outstretched 
 hands is dead, not living. 
 
 Let us admit one thing. The move- 
 ment for the emancipation of woman, 
 which has been gaining ground for 
 decades in England, America, Scandi- 
 navia, and now advances in Germany, is 
 a misdirection of woman, based upon an 
 erroneous idea of the trend of evolution ; 
 but considered in itself, it does not 
 appear to be a symptom of degeneration 
 in woman, but rather a sign of awaken- 
 ing consciousness of strength. Woman 
 will not continue in the old way any 
 longer; this much she has established. 
 She will concentrate herself more upon 
 herself; she will go more deeply into her 
 own nature; in other words, she will 
 return to her specific work and forget 
 herself in her duty. 
 
 And her duty is to prepare the ground 
 for a new and different race of men. 
 
 That was once the work of the Roman 
 Christian matrons. Out of them arose a 
 148 
 
THE FORCE OF ANXIETY 
 
 different race of men, different from their 
 fathers, brothers and husbands; a race 
 with other powers of endurance, a new 
 outlook, and a different and new produc- 
 tiveness. 
 
 Every fruitful emotion in woman has 
 a religious impulse ; — without this motive 
 woman becomes sterile. 
 
 But step for step, as man has lost the 
 soil, he has lost his religion; and quite 
 consistently, reflecting present conditions, 
 he has arrived at ego-worship and 
 intensified ego-worship. He expects to 
 draw himself up into the heights by his 
 own queue and hang himself on an 
 imaginary peg in ether, — what he calls 
 self-deliverance. For he has no ground 
 to stand upon. 
 
 Out of the possession of the soil a new 
 religion would arise, for, out of the earth 
 sprout all productive religious energies. 
 That these impulses cannot act, is the 
 cause of the unrecognized disorder of the 
 time. 
 
 The men of our time have a thirst- 
 ing and languishing, a longing and seek- 
 ing, a desire for something which they 
 cannot attain. 
 
 It is present in miserable creatures as 
 149 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 well as in the best. Many have died of 
 it; others have been ruined by it. But 
 now something which seemed long ago 
 swept away by the prevailing conception 
 of life, bursts out like warm spring wind, 
 awakening and softening hearts, and 
 melting souls. Even the most selfish 
 ego-worship is only an expression of 
 awakened expansiveness ; for how can 
 there be an ego-worship without a tu- 
 worship? 
 
 Our present institutions are hard and 
 impersonal, based upon the idea of profit. 
 They must be overthrown in order that 
 souls may melt. Women have tried to 
 achieve this. They have not succeeded 
 but they have made a beginning. In the 
 following pages I shall sketch some of 
 their attempts. 
 
 150 
 
VII— SEEKERS 
 
 There is a popular belief that in our 
 times it is exceedingly easy for hidden 
 talent to win to light and play a leading 
 part. This must be conceded in regard 
 to those gifts which are not connected 
 with an intense inner life. Whoever dis- 
 covers a new incandescent lamp, suggests 
 a new method of exploiting his fellow 
 men, visits and opens up to culture the 
 North Pole, — so exceedingly useful and 
 signifying so much to the material and 
 mental welfare of mankind, — or pro- 
 vides our standing armies with new tools 
 of murder for the preservation of inter- 
 national peace, — for him, the requisite 
 means and consequent honors and dis- 
 tinctions will not be wanting. If we look 
 at the intellectual leaders of this century, 
 we may divide them into four groups, 
 parallel to the divisions of modem indus- 
 trial life ; those who have become insol- 
 vent, those who have liquidated their 
 debts, those who after some losses have 
 withdrawn creditably upon their reserve, 
 151 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 and those who have fraudulently obtained 
 importance and respect. 
 
 But none, not one, has left his offspring 
 wherewithal to build further. There is 
 no inheritance from the fathers for the 
 minds and hearts of the children, nor 
 footing in our century for the growing 
 generation. Each must to-day begin 
 afresh, each enter life as a beggar; and 
 it is pure accident with what kind of rags 
 and tatters from all periods and civiliza- 
 tions he clothes his mind, or upon which 
 of the margarines so stormily recom- 
 mended in literature and the press, he 
 nourishes his soul. 
 
 The broken curve is the mark of our 
 century; it is an ending place, an off- 
 shoot, a margarine century, which cheats 
 its hunger with warmed-over, freshly- 
 garnished scraps and crumbs, and stares 
 out into the void, tired and ill. 
 
 We have only to look at the "intellectual 
 lights" which our times have produced, 
 to perceive that the chief reason for their 
 success and acceptance is their power of 
 adaptation to the spirit of the tiine. 
 
 But what of those who cannot adapt 
 themselves to crumbling conditions, — 
 whose spirit outruns the present and 
 152 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 reaches into the future and the past,—- 
 who are not of those city-bred men, whose 
 offspring, should they have any, die out 
 in a generation or two, even as the 
 "ideas" they conceive are cast aside by 
 the next generation as debris, which the 
 literary second-hand dealer rakes over 
 and uses in "cheap editions" for the 
 lower classes? What becomes of these 
 others we do not know. It is certain they 
 do not succeed. It is doubtful whether 
 they ever become conscious of themselves ; 
 more doubtful because of the mental 
 pressure which has been exerted through, 
 out the whole century of freedom, 
 uniformly- and in all lands, towards a 
 definite political and intellectual end, by 
 the intellectual and social authorities who 
 control the schools, universities and the 
 press. 
 
 One consequence, however, of this 
 uniform pressure can be clearly seen, — 
 the malaise in the people of to-day; their 
 uneasiness, their mania for moving from 
 place to place, their nervousness, their 
 desire to dull their senses, their lack of 
 belief in anything and everything, 
 especially in themselves, — the thought 
 of suicide as a last resource and relief 
 
 153 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 hanging over the lives of hundreds of 
 thousands. 
 
 And if this is the fundamental note in 
 the life of men, the adaptable as well as 
 the unadaptable, — to what key is the life 
 of sensitive woman tuned? 
 
 To the same discord, breaking off 
 shorter and shriller because of her 
 greater susceptibility, and rending her in 
 soul, in nerves, in her whole feminine 
 nature. 
 
 Two years ago, in "Six Famous 
 Women," I sketched a number of emi- 
 nent women who had made themselves 
 widely felt and won distinguished 
 recognition. Without the capacity of 
 adapting themselves to the spirit and- 
 ideas of the time, they would not have 
 won recognition nor influence ; they would 
 have remained unknown. But this so- 
 called "modernness" in them, their 
 capacity for accommodating themselves 
 to the ephemeral movements of to-day, 
 shattered them from within. One died; 
 the others will perhaps outlive their 
 popularity. 
 
 In another book — "Women and the 
 Men Who Write about Them" — I have 
 described some of the leaders of thought 
 154 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 of to-day. Those of the number who 
 have gained the wider recognition from 
 their contemporaries, lead us to the 
 absurd. They possess in high degree 
 the power of adaptation to the "ideas" 
 of the time, and those "ideas" are 
 unfortunately djring out, one after 
 another, before the bodily decease of 
 their prophets. 
 
 Marie Bashkirtseff, and S6nya Koval- 
 6vsky, Anne Charlotte Edgren and Amalie 
 Skram, George Egerton and Eleanora 
 Duse, the literary-dramatic machine 
 galvanized into a fleeting life; all pos- 
 sessed the power of adaptation and 
 accommodated themselves to the "tenor" 
 of modern life; so Ibsen and Bjornson, 
 Tolstoi and Strindberg and Heyse, excel 
 in this respect, but their readers leave 
 them at last more desolate in soul than 
 when they came to their writings. 
 
 Below and behind all those who have 
 made their way, stand those who have 
 not arrived at anything, because they 
 have not been able to adapt themselves. 
 It is not, however, my task to consider 
 such instances among men. 
 
 Among women they are not rare, and 
 of those I have met, I have selected a 
 155 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 few, and will try in the following pages 
 to draw the outlines of their characters ; 
 — strange, crooked, extravagant lines 
 often, of suppressed natures which sud- 
 denly expand or contract and wear deep 
 and frequently disfiguring marks of the 
 battle they unconsciously undertook and 
 found too hard, — ^for no help came. 
 
 For the "leading minds" of our time 
 have shown themselves utterly incapable 
 of one thing, — to lead us women. 
 
 And if I were asked why, I should 
 answer: Because in us all, whether we 
 have children or not, whether we are 
 wives or not, at some time — unless we are 
 degenerate — the question rises, round 
 which our mother instinct gathers — 
 "What do we leave to our children? 
 What do we give them to take with them 
 into life as nourishing bread and sustain- 
 ing content, upon which they can rest 
 and struggle, live and die?" And when 
 the inward answer to this question is — 
 "Nothing," then we turn our backs upon 
 our leaders. 
 
 Then, when in searching anxiety we 
 
 turn our gaze backward and ask : "What 
 
 did our parents give us as nourishing 
 
 bread and sustaining content?" — and meet 
 
 156 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 here also the reply: "They had nothing 
 to bequeath us, or we would never have 
 gone to the guides which stand on every 
 corner," — we form the despairing reso- 
 lution: "We ourselves will seek, and try 
 to find something to give to those who 
 come after us and from us!" Many who 
 are childless feel all children as their 
 own. 
 
 Those whom I shall depict in this 
 chapter are seekers. The impulse to 
 seek ruled them like an inner compulsion 
 not to be restrained. They found noth- 
 ing upon which they could lean; no 
 man remained permanently their leader. 
 Their peculiar characteristic was that 
 they did not let themselves be incor- 
 porated in any movement, as did the "Six 
 Famous Women" whom I have delin- 
 eated ; they did not lose their vital energy 
 nor their peculiarities in organizations. 
 
 No, they remained themselves, even 
 though this self could often be preserved 
 only in caricature. They did not sur- 
 render their ego. Was it because they 
 did not feel them as individual egos, — 
 because each felt herself as one emana- 
 tion from a great center, which drew her 
 back into itself again? They did not 
 
 157 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 succeed, or only in strange, far-away 
 spheres about which people shrugged their 
 shoulders and smiled. Or they only suc- 
 ceeded for a moment and then vanished 
 again. They were lacking in the power 
 of adaptation which is the chief requisite 
 for general recognition. Or did their 
 superiority consist precisely in this lack? 
 
 THOSE WHO DIE BY THE WAY 
 
 There are lives which, as we survey 
 them, seem to show the influence of a 
 guiding hand and will ; lives which seem 
 predestined to pass in misery, misfor- 
 tune and obscurity, yet they received 
 most fully all that was needed for de- 
 velopment and growth. He who has 
 once stood still in the course of his 
 existence, and looking back upon his life 
 has suddenly discovered with beating 
 heart a coherence where he had expected 
 to find only fragments, chance and 
 uncertain gropings, — who has asked him- 
 self: "How did I come this path, having 
 no presentiment that it existed, nor that 
 warm hands would receive me on the 
 way, nor that the sun would shine upon 
 158 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 it?" — he who has reached this point in 
 his life has no more fear. Nor does he 
 belong to himself thenceforth. He has 
 beheld a vaster connection than that 
 between his ego and himself, and knows 
 that henceforth he will act, think, feel 
 and live from deeper motives than per- 
 sonal ones. The limits of the ego are 
 dispersed. 
 
 But such persons are rare. They break 
 through the limits of the visible world, 
 whether they live on unknown, or stand 
 as feeble guides and far apart upon the 
 human pathway. 
 
 This consciousness of being led is 
 more common in women than in men. 
 Woman frequently believes in a power 
 controlling her for good or evil. And 
 this inner goodness or evil manifests 
 itself later, in the nature of her chil- 
 dren. 
 
 This century has undermined much 
 that has stood for ages. It has made 
 man dependent upon himself, upon his 
 finiteness, his ego, his consciousness. 
 The curve is now ended and we can see 
 what man's possession of himself means. 
 It is as if one tore up a tree, turned its 
 roots upward, and said: "Become air- 
 159 
 
THE PSYCH OLOGY OF JWOMAN 
 
 rootlets and nourish yourselves on the 
 atmosphere." 
 
 This century has also made woman 
 dependent upon herself, upon her 
 finiteness, her ego, her consciousness. 
 It might as well have stood her upon her 
 head and commanded her hair to take 
 root in the earth ; the position and task 
 would not have been more unsuitable for 
 her than her present task and position in 
 life. 
 
 Well, woman is teachable! She 
 understood that it was her moral duty to 
 feel herself exalted and upheld by the 
 new views, and she therefore felt elevated 
 in the contemplation of her finiteness, her 
 ego, her consciousness. Out of these 
 three conceptions she began with her 
 own hands to construct a life. 
 
 "Free competition in every direction" 
 gave her, to be sure, a strong support, 
 and with the tested word of freedom, — 
 Help thyself! — she went to work. 
 
 Some years, a decade, perhaps two, 
 went by, and now we see the borders of 
 every road strewn with those who die on 
 the way. 
 
 The hosts of these broken ones who 
 have striven with an unsparing expendi- 
 
 l6o 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 ture of strength, and have accomplished 
 nothing, are legion. No one took them 
 in, when they could no longer help them- 
 elves. Their ego glided out of their 
 hands; their consciousness forsook them, 
 and their finiteness stared at them and 
 reflected back to them their withered, 
 tired selves. 
 
 Whoever has been in a position to read 
 many letters from women who are pene- 
 trated by the spirit of the times, would 
 declare, with a shrinking of the heart, 
 that not one is happy or even half- 
 content. How clearly the different 
 temperaments are revealed in these 
 letters! How much of exaltation, per- 
 versity, or material aims, finds expression 
 here! Yet all these letters are really 
 cries for help from the drowning who are 
 torn away and carried past in the night. 
 Nothing can be done for them, for no 
 one of them is submerged by a single 
 definite misfortune. Economic stress, an 
 inward upheaval and a tempestuous desire 
 for happiness and joy, — ^these are the in- 
 spiring causes of all; and for these we 
 should hardly hold^'any one of the writers 
 responsible, as these three are signal 
 marks of the time. 
 
 i6i 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 'Talented ones who died on the way, 
 seekers who missed the goal or whose 
 energies failed them, belonged formerly 
 to the masculine sex. That is no longer 
 the case. Now it is especially the 
 feminine seekers who die on the way; 
 and it is not alone the less gifted and 
 weaker ones, — among them are some of 
 the very finest natures. One such, who 
 may serve as a type of many, known and 
 unknown, I wish now to describe. 
 
 II 
 
 UPON A STEAMER IN THE BOHUSLAN CLIFFS 
 
 Sea air! Sea smells! A fresh wind 
 making one at once so strong and so 
 tired ; a plashing and spraying and rush- 
 ing that comes from far, far away; little 
 white wave-caps, in an endless glisten- 
 ing, flowing blue, ever remaining and 
 ever passing, — now green, like watered 
 silk, now silver like moonlight, then 
 bright deep blue and dull gray; the 
 coasts vanish, and the ship steers 
 straight into the sparkling blue light 
 under the white, opalescent sky. 
 
 I sit and gaze and breathe, drinking in 
 the scene and the salt air, at once 
 162 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 aroused and soothed. The water becomes 
 bluer — ^more blue, the dome of the 
 heaven ever deeper; Goteborg disappears 
 behind the projecting red cliffs, and the 
 steamer cuts sharply through the foam, 
 the fine, salty spray flying up thickly. I 
 look and look, and breathe and breathe, 
 till I only see a golden sparkling and 
 only feel myself as floating in the air. 
 
 The steamer puts in to Marstrand, 
 where tiresome pleasure-seekers stand 
 on the shore; sickly yellow faces or 
 apoplectic red ones greet us ; shrill voices 
 scream, deep bass tones sounding be- 
 tween. . . . Suddenly it all vanishes again 
 and there is only the sparkling, glowing, 
 rolling blue, above and below. 
 
 It rushes and rolls and sparkles on, — I 
 think I must have slumbered. The ship 
 passes through a narrow sound, winding 
 in between granite cliffs like red sealing- 
 wax, runs past quays of mighty wooden 
 piles and shining, scoured escarpments, 
 runs out again around a red granite hill, 
 mountain-high, and straight into an 
 infinite silver light. Through that silver 
 light another steamer draws a blue fur- 
 row, a new granite cone glows ahead of 
 us almost blood-red; the steamer seems 
 163 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 to merge into it and is gone. Sharper 
 and more salt grows the ocean smell; 
 crying gulls rise up from the water like 
 flying foam ; a pilot-boat with red stripes 
 in the white sail cuts obliquely past, swifter 
 than a gull's flight. Did I really see 
 it? 
 
 Further northwards we go, in the direc- 
 tion of Christiania. Ever more harsh 
 and monotonous becomes the scenery. 
 Lysekil, whence come the finest an- 
 chovies, is behind us. Most of the pas- 
 sengers have landed. The land is nothing 
 but a great heap of stones washed by the 
 sea. Not a tree, not a bush, not a green 
 leaf nor a grass-blade to be seen. And 
 no roads nor paths. Boats are the means 
 of conveyance here. All the colors of 
 nature have vanished except a steel blue 
 and a dull, blood red. Here and there 
 lonely red houses stand on round, smooth, 
 polished red cones, clinging with their 
 four corner posts to the stone, and lime- 
 washed with a color like congealed blood. 
 Split mackerel hang drying on long lines 
 and fill the air with their biting odor. A 
 misstep on these narrow cliffs — and the 
 steel blue closes together over a human 
 being. Nature here has nothing con- 
 164 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 dilating, nothing beguiling, no exuber- 
 ance, no transitions. But she is great! 
 Blue and red! — ^the hot waves of organic 
 life enveloped in the blue of the two 
 primeval elements. 
 
 "Hilma Strandberg lived here," said 
 a voice behind me. 
 
 The name was spoken with a peculiar 
 emphasis. I turned. Behind me sat an 
 unknown gentleman in conversation with 
 my husband. 
 
 "What was she doing here in this 
 desolation?" asked the latter. 
 
 "She was a telephone girl," answered 
 the stranger. "She came from the West 
 Coasts. Very fine family, — but she would 
 not accept anything from them. She 
 wished to support herself. And here she 
 sat through nine months of winter and 
 three of summer, telephoning about the 
 prices of mackerel, herring and lobster 
 catch." 
 
 "I have read only one of her books," I 
 heard my husband say. 
 
 "She wrote only one. She married." 
 
 There was silence behind me. My 
 
 husband seemed to have no desire to 
 
 learn more. A cigar was lighted, with 
 
 great exertion, behind my back, and the 
 
 165 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 talk turned upon good, better and best 
 brands of cigars. 
 
 I, however, wished to know more, and 
 turning around, let the stranger be intro- 
 duced to me. He was a pastor's son from 
 the Coasts. He was to go ashore at 
 Fjallbacka, the next landing-place, and 
 return home. He was one of those 
 numerous sons of Swedish pastors who 
 rule like petty kings in their parishes — 
 parishes the size of a German principality, 
 with the revenues of a small princely 
 appanage. In this young man's veins 
 coursed the wandering blood of the 
 vikings, who once won these Bohuslan 
 coasts from Normandy and laid waste the 
 west shores of Europe. It was diluted 
 in the veins of this tall, slender, lightly- 
 built figure with the birdlike, blond head, 
 and clear blue eyes in the gentle face; 
 but it was none the less the old adven- 
 turous blood. He was never settled any- 
 where and could stay long in no one 
 place. He had rowed in an open row- 
 boat from Goteborg across the North Sea 
 to the German Coasts, and was famous in 
 sporting circles as "the great rower." 
 He had wandered through England 
 and crossed America, stealing rides 
 166 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 on the railroad trains when his money- 
 gave out, in constant danger of being dis- 
 covered and ejected from the train. He 
 was a gentleman in appearance and 
 manner, with almost a touch of the 
 dandy ; but under the elegant light gray 
 summer ulster were hidden trained, tough 
 and enduring muscles, and in his slow, 
 keen glance sparkled the indifferent 
 frivolity and the spontaneous warmth of 
 the vabanque-player. While I drank my 
 tea and he his cognac, he related to me 
 the history of the remarkable young girl, 
 Hilma Strandberg. 
 
 This recital made me eager to read 
 her book, and her book made me wish to 
 tell her story here. 
 
 She was one of those whose natures are 
 planned to be something complete. 
 Young, restricted, inexperienced as she 
 was when she wrote her first book, in 
 that book she is neither young, restricted 
 nor inexperienced. In the ten pictures 
 of the Swedish West Coasts which she 
 grouped under the title "Westwards," 
 was an entirely firm, strongly marked 
 personality. 
 
 The singular and almost the only 
 peculiarity of this young girl was that she 
 167 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 had no illusions. The world stood before 
 her, like nature about her, in bright blue 
 and blood red. All the haze of softer 
 distinctions existed as little for her as for 
 these coasts. For Hilma Strandberg, 
 life was clothed in the deep blue of 
 tranquil self-assurance or the blood-red 
 of inescapable Fate. And as from the 
 beginning Nature had given her fully 
 formed views of life, so she had from the 
 beginning also a finished style, — the 
 simple, firm style of maturity. In this 
 young girl was everything at first hand 
 which great masculine geniuses in great 
 civilized countries usually attain only 
 after long effort. Sharply, clearly, 
 directly, so she saw and so she wrote; 
 cold-blooded and unafraid, like a sailor 
 between the cliffs. 
 
 What she depicts in "Westwards" is 
 the life in these narrow sounds and 
 dangerous water-ways; the life of hard, 
 reticent people, who make little ado over 
 distress and death. The pictures of plain, 
 homely life drawn by the best Middle 
 European writer, seem colorless and 
 weak compared with the great tragical- 
 ness in the simple realism of this young 
 girl, for whom an individual life is like a 
 l68 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 small red cliff which the infinite ocean 
 laves when good-humored, covers with 
 billows in its climbing anger, lashes and 
 rages against in the uproar of storm. 
 Just as old crags disappear and new ones 
 arise and no one counts the one nor the 
 other, so the individual existences appear 
 and disappear, each as lonely as a crag in 
 mid-ocean. 
 
 If these people suffer, however, they 
 also enjoy. When the herring come 
 streaming in, and the nets break with 
 the catch, then the champagne corks 
 crack and the ten-crown pieces fly, and 
 poor women prink themselves in silk 
 handkerchiefs and aprons. Then winter 
 comes with the long nights and the 
 pockets are empty again, while often 
 there is not even whisky to go with the 
 salted fish. 
 
 As nature about them is pitiless and 
 wild, so the spirit of these people is 
 adventurous and unbending. And like 
 all this which she described was Hilma 
 Strandberg herself, the telephone operator 
 of the West Coasts. 
 
 From this same Bohuslan in the two 
 colors, red and blue, came also Emilia 
 Flygare-Carlen, Sweden's greatest woman 
 
 l6g 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 writer. Various accidents and care for 
 the support of her family had made her 
 a productive writer. And womanly cares 
 of another kind took the pen out of Hilma 
 Strandberg's hands. She was, in the 
 opening of her career, by far the most 
 gifted of Swedish woman-authors, and 
 she was the first to disappear from their 
 ranks. For she found what others did 
 not; — occupation for her entire woman- 
 nature. 
 
 The last and greatest tale in her book 
 is called "Draussen am Elf!" In it she 
 describes the destiny of two generations 
 — father and son — of the working class. 
 Anders Rothberg, the father, was over- 
 seer in a saw-mill, — a quiet, orderly, 
 industrious and aspiring man. He pre- 
 ferred to be with people who stood above 
 him, not so much because it flattered his 
 vanity as because something in himself 
 forced him always to rise above the place 
 he held in the world. " As a young man he 
 dreamed great dreams of becoming some- 
 thing ; but this something was so indefi- 
 nite, his capacities were so divided, — a 
 little drawing, a little violin playing, 
 some higher mathematics, — and thus the 
 time went by and the workman's son had 
 170 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 to choose a trade for breadwinning. " He 
 became a carpenter and married an 
 ordinary woman, commonplace in origin 
 and spirit, who fairly hated "aristocracy." 
 Their son, Oscar Friedrich, must study. 
 The father was often seized with actual 
 anguish at the thought that Oscar Fried- 
 rich might stick fast at the same point 
 where he had stuck, — going no higher. 
 
 The son was like the father. Many 
 times he was seized with a raging desire 
 to take hold — to concentrate all his ener- 
 gies upon one point and begin at once. 
 But with what? Ah, that was not at all so 
 clear to him. He had enthusiasms for so 
 many things, for all which his fancy 
 seized upon in succession. The injustice 
 of a teacher spoiled for him his inclina- 
 tion to study. After working a while in 
 the lumber yard he had a mind to become 
 an artist. The father gathered his shil- 
 lings and sent him to Stockholm. Oscar 
 Friedrich worked industriously, but at a 
 certain level he stopped; he could not 
 advance; there was no further develop- 
 ment. Shy and retired, the workman's 
 son neither found nor sought companions ; 
 the class consciousness stood in his way. 
 He returned again to the lumber yard, 
 171 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 working meanwhile in the private studio 
 of an artist who advised him to become a 
 lithographer. 
 
 He became a good lithographer, but 
 not one of the best. At a certain point 
 he stuck here too. He was always 
 solitary and married late. Like his 
 father he was a tall man, stooping a little 
 in the shoulders and frail in health, always 
 well dressed and immaculately neat. 
 The girl whom he married was — Hilma 
 Strandberg. 
 
 And Hilma Strandberg reviewed him 
 in his narrowness and limitations, — the 
 workingman's son, with the working- 
 man's horizon and brain, a good, tire- 
 some man, a gentle fellow among the 
 vnld rakes of the West Coasts; — she 
 placed him Taefore the reader without a 
 touch of sentimentality, apparently with- 
 out sympathy. How came she, the ca- 
 pable, ever to accept him, the incapable? 
 — the daughter of an old house, to accept 
 the workingman? — ^the woman with a 
 future, the man with no future? Noth- 
 ing was further from her than extrav- 
 agance or eccentricity. 
 
 They married and went to America. In 
 Boston and Philadelphia he supported 
 172 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 himself scantily by his handicraft, and 
 she worked upon a newspaper. Then 
 they were lost sight of. My informant 
 tried to trace them, thoroughly but in 
 vain, as he passed through these cities. 
 They were no longer there. No one could 
 tell him where they had gone. 
 
 Who can say why a woman, feeling her- 
 self bound, breaks her bonds in one way 
 instead of another? The important thing 
 for her is that they be broken. Many 
 girls marry to be taken care of; a few, 
 in order to get air. Hilma Strandberg 
 saw before her the ocean and behind her 
 the cliffs. Her book had won recogni- 
 tion, — but it did not help her to escape. 
 There she sat; there she might remain. 
 And everywhere without was the rich, 
 great world which the human being 
 wishes to have known before he turns his 
 back upon it. Write more books? To 
 what end? She had written what she 
 had ; she had nothing more. She wanted 
 to have, not to give. And Oscar Friedrich 
 was a good fellow and dissatisfied like 
 herself. There was Viking blood in her 
 too. They joined their fates together 
 and traveled across the sea that beat 
 against their crags, and disappeared from 
 173 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 view like the point of the crag in high 
 billows. Was her own life too like those 
 she described in "Westwards," — a boat 
 that overturns in a winter night? 
 
 Ill 
 
 Years went by. One day, during a 
 temporary stay in Denmark, I heard again 
 the name, Hilma Strandberg, spoken by 
 a chance acquaintance, and received in 
 answer to my question the reply: "She 
 is in consumption. With the help of 
 patrons we have brought her back to 
 Sweden and placed her in a sanitarium. 
 But she longs constantly for her hus- 
 band. He is supporting himself in 
 America and lives with his parents, who 
 followed, him there. Good heavens ! they 
 cannot support themselves together! 
 Here she began at once to write again, 
 and can find a market. " 
 "Had she no children?" 
 "Two or three. They are dead." 
 I could not ask further. What I had 
 heard was enough. One shattered exist- 
 ence more brought clearly to my con- 
 sciousness. But my informant did not 
 forget me. After she returned home I 
 received one day a packet of letters 
 174 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 written by Hilma Strandberg to friends 
 in her native land, and from time to time, 
 articles from her pen as they appeared in 
 the papers and journals. 
 
 These letters and two or three stories, 
 all drawn from her very own life and 
 written with her life's blood, let me under- 
 stand enough and more than enough. 
 
 Something peculiar, a personal re- 
 straint lay over all these utterances. 
 
 It was like a person trying to regain 
 consciousness, — as if between the self to 
 which she gave expression and the self 
 which she felt, there stood a wall, render- 
 ing the communication imperfect. The 
 self which found expression spoke clearly 
 and plainly and was often hard ; and the 
 self which experienced quivered silently, 
 like a suffering animal who has no means 
 of expression save a mute shrinking. 
 
 Her impulse towards cbmmunication 
 was boundless, — closely written letters of 
 sixteen or twenty pages, often crossed 
 and almost illegible. One saw in these 
 letters that she had no one near with 
 whom to talk freely and clearly. There 
 were descriptions of American impres- 
 sions, concise and perspicuous, such as 
 are seldom published, and beside them, 
 175 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 long, groping, aimless outpourings ; solil- 
 oquies in which she strives to come into 
 agreement with herself, — about what? 
 She did not herself know. She felt only 
 a whirling galop of vanities about her, 
 which they called life, reality, fighting 
 one's way, duty, and so forth. It was 
 like a merry-go-round upon which she 
 must spring, where everything depended 
 upon jumping up and catching a flying 
 wooden horse. But she never mounted 
 it. She only heard the rattling, shrill 
 grind-organ of material interests, and 
 saw the wild chase after fictitious realities 
 whirling past her, and cried to herself: 
 "To-morrow I shall do it too. I shall join 
 in it to-morrow surely. I must ^o into the 
 thick of human life ! ' ' But it was and ever 
 remained for her only empty human life, 
 into which she could not go, where there 
 was no place for her. 
 
 Her husband did what he could, — 
 peaceful, patient, unenterprising. Now 
 he had work as a lithographer, now 
 none; in the forefront where money is 
 made, he never came. One can see so 
 well that what cut them both off from all 
 prosperity was their merit. Both were 
 too fine, too much children of real culture 
 176 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 for the roughness of the American 
 struggle for life or American pleasures. 
 Both personalities were already too strong 
 to be easily roughened. And for her, 
 especially, stood in the way the inborn 
 pride of good origin, which is so much 
 harder for a woman to give up than for a 
 man. Here and there she took part in a 
 congress or exhibition as a reporter. The 
 remarkable freshness and acuteness of 
 perception and description were obstacles 
 here ; — she involuntarily drew the stupid 
 self-sufficiency and empty, much-occupied 
 air of the leading woman's rights women 
 and other eminent persons, and her 
 relations with the papers naturally came 
 to a hasty end. 
 
 One child seemed inclined to cling to 
 life. She found great joy in it; her 
 heart, drawn together like a hardened 
 muscle by the realistic ideas of the time, 
 swelled and expanded and her soul began 
 to melt. But during a very hot summer 
 it died in the course of a day. Overworked 
 and exhausted, her own cook, child-nurse 
 and washerwoman, she did mechanically 
 what she could and watched the child 
 almost apathetically as it died. Such a 
 moving sketch as the little story of the 
 177 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 death of her child in its almost dull bit- 
 terness, I have seldom read. 
 
 With the child's death, something 
 broke, — her own power of resistance. 
 She wished to go home, away from 
 America. She hoped in her native land 
 to find a place also for the poor partner of 
 her sorrowful life. But she herself found 
 only a place in a sanitarium, through the 
 aid of friends ; there she passes year after 
 year, superfluous in her country as in the 
 foreign land, an invalid, whose pride may 
 now at last be broken through the self- 
 interest which continual illness generally 
 creates. 
 
 She who still lives without living was 
 one of the greatest feminine observers and 
 delineators. Of the women writers who 
 have won a name in Europe, very few 
 can measure themselves with Hilma 
 Strandberg in natural gifts, — if I ex- 
 cept her countrywoman, Selma Lagerlof, 
 whose Wermlandic heart would like to 
 thaw and melt, but finds no material — no 
 substance to fasten upon and make itself 
 live thereby, — a soft Catholic heart in the 
 cold, pietistic, free-thinking north. 
 
 There have not been many periods 
 when the gifted woman possessed as 
 178 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 much inward worth as now. There 
 have been still fewer periods when that 
 which was offered her as substance and 
 content was worth so little as now. The 
 degenerate spirit of our time, in its stupid 
 egoism and its fear of the secret sources of 
 life, which cannot be measured, taken up, 
 marked or catalogued, has set a kind of 
 premium upon egoism and upon the har- 
 dening of the woman in order to steel her 
 for the struggle of life. But only feminine 
 material of inferior value is educated to 
 be great and "steeled" thus. Woman her- 
 self is an ever-flowing source of life, 
 which is not here for its own sake and 
 will not be hardened. When like Hilma 
 Strandberg she lets herself be caught by 
 concrete realism and wishes to become 
 hard for the sake of living out her ego, 
 she becomes merely sterile. But the 
 blame does not lie with her. 
 
 THE OLD MAID 
 
 In all nations and races there is a frac- 
 tion of the people vulgarly described in 
 the common saying: "He smells neither 
 sweet nor foul." Among the German 
 races the number of these people is per- 
 
 179 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 haps exceptionally large, — the German 
 representing in his nature a moderate 
 climate. Out of this number were 
 recruited, formerly, the old maids and 
 bachelors. They ' ' remained in the home ' ' 
 and were handed down with the rest of 
 the inherited inventory to the member of 
 the family who continued the house. 
 
 In the country homes, everywhere 
 where the farming class is preserved 
 intact, we still find such "honored young 
 men" or "virtuous maidens," who make 
 up for any lack of personal feeling by 
 their intensified family feeling, and can 
 as little be driven away from their homes 
 by good or evil as a domesticated cat can 
 be driven away. And since in one home not 
 more than one family can dwell, it is a mat- 
 ter of course that they remain single, and 
 after a long, industrious and more or less 
 complaining life, die as honest celibates. 
 
 To such life-long youths and maidens, 
 the renunciation is not, as a rule, a hard 
 necessity or bitter compulsion, but a 
 fairly natural condition. They are quite 
 satisfied. If one or the other becomes 
 independent through inheritance and 
 "could have it," they do not marry even 
 then; and in cases where extensive 
 i8o 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 property interests render a spouse indis- 
 pensable, I have often observed that they 
 do not easily renounce their solitary state. 
 Certainly the feminine resistance is some- 
 what weaker and more readily overcome 
 by flattery and perseverance. 
 
 In the cities, the uncle who remains at 
 home as partner in the business, fellow- 
 worker or overseer, has ceased to exist. 
 We can at most only remember him as 
 belonging to the period of our childhood. 
 Also the maiden aunt, who, as head cook, 
 sick-nurse, child-nurse and teacher, at- 
 tained a far-reaching competence as 
 adviser of the first rank, is no more. She 
 has disappeared, together with the pros- 
 perity of the town family; as the uncle 
 disappeared with the stability of the town 
 business. Instead of these, we have now 
 in most families a brother who does not 
 get on well in the world and must be 
 shaken off, and one or more still 
 unmarried daughters. 
 
 The inorganic idea of the family, which 
 is an achievement of this century, is 
 shown in nothing else so clearly as in the 
 pushing off of these members which were 
 predestined for the maintenance of the 
 family rather than the building up of 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 one. In this ill-natured shaking off of 
 the tree's sterile fruit, is manifested still 
 more strikingly the general economic 
 impoverishment of the families. 
 
 In all large families there are several 
 members who evince no special power, 
 either in perceptive faculty or tempera- 
 ment, in sexuality or imagination. If 
 they are sons they must go forth, good or 
 bad. If they are daughters the mothers 
 begin early to complain that "they are 
 not noticed." Whether they are pretty 
 or ugly seems of little consequence ; they 
 bore people. They are overlooked at 
 balls, and on the street gentlemen do not 
 recognize them again; they have no 
 bosom friends among the girls, the half- 
 grown boys do not fall in love with them, 
 nor marriageable men pay court to them ; 
 and in the shops the busy clerks let them 
 wait unserved. In the days when mar- 
 riage was not an affair of "love," but of 
 family arrangement, these were married 
 off also, and made their husbands neither 
 happy nor unhappy. Now they are "left 
 over. " They are the born old maids. 
 
 That they suffen under it in their 
 woman-nature is hardly the case. Their 
 blood is not so full, their fancy has not 
 182 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 the sensibility, their temperament not the 
 energy to feel the necessity of love, pain- 
 ful or compelling. Their sensuality is 
 slight and indefinite, only temporarily 
 directed towards definite persons. But 
 they have the instinct of attachment and 
 the need of assurance; and what is 
 easily aroused in such souls and can then 
 swell to a surprising strength is envy. 
 When to such a nature is added the 
 increased egoism which philosophers and 
 writers have carefully built up and mag- 
 nified for decades, there often develops 
 in them — not through impulse but through 
 the substitute, reflection — a devouring 
 and barren longing for the joys of life 
 denied to them. This, through lack of 
 occupation and the uprooting from the 
 family life, may lead beyond attacks of 
 religious fervor to the fixed idea, i. e. , to 
 periodical insanity. 
 
 It is natures like these, with a minus of 
 sexual life and therefore a surplus of 
 bitterness and self-righteousness, which 
 for some decades have held themselves up 
 as the standard of "sound relations" in 
 public life, in literature, art, science, and 
 political economy, and have played the 
 leading roles in the woman-movements 
 183 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 through the world, — when these are not 
 combined with free love, and some- 
 times even then ! For such natures the 
 cloisters formerly stood open, a welcome 
 place of refuge where these, men or 
 women, lived harmless to themselves and 
 to others ; the suppression of the cloisters 
 closed to them this refuge, like so many 
 more; and forced out into life, they 
 occupied themselves in ways whose fuller 
 discussion would demand another place 
 and ampler room than this. 
 
 A nature of this kind, and quite typical, 
 has been delineated by a feminine hand, 
 with an exactness of knowledge and 
 sharpness of detail which only the 
 exaltation of the ego, so highly developed 
 in our day, can give to the view and the 
 organs of perception. This sketch is in 
 Gabrielle Renter's story, — "Of Good 
 Family. The Misfortunes of a Spinster. " 
 
 II 
 
 A remarkable book ! A book over which 
 one asks himself ho,w it came to exist. 
 For how can a woman bring herself to 
 confess the never-confessed? Not that the 
 most intimate avowals are so difficult for 
 the woman who has had and possessed; 
 184 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 we have sufficient proofs that they are 
 only too easy ; but these are chiefly pre- 
 arranged confessions, to make oneself 
 interesting. 
 
 Here, however, the contrary is the 
 case. Here one is depicted, one who has 
 never desired. It is all honest through 
 and through. Here the grooved imprint 
 of decades is shaken off by a firm will, 
 which in silent, mute exaltation frees 
 itself from all compromises. A human 
 being has gone about with a ghost on 
 her back through her childhood, through 
 her youth, through her maturity; — 
 without having had a childhood, youth or 
 maturity, for that which went by these 
 names was only a process of withering. 
 Now she throws the goblin off, turns and 
 faces it ; she is determined to see for her- 
 self how it looks ; and at the same time 
 she comes to a knowledge of herself. 
 At present that is all she wants. 
 
 It is a North German temperament that 
 is revealed in this book; matter-of-fact, 
 sober, without impulsiveness or expansive 
 warmth. I might even say, there is a 
 touch of Prussian discipline in it. The 
 author, whom I once met cursorily, has 
 the typical appearance of the higher 
 185 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 official's daughter, — ^large, slender, some- 
 what angular, with a regular, careworn 
 face and conventional, constrained man- 
 ner. Only the burning eyes and hot 
 lips make protest; but consumptives 
 have just such eyes and lips. 
 
 Briefly, to sum up the strongest impres- 
 sion of this book ; it is that while reading 
 it, one reflects upon oneself. Others 
 will feel this, — especially women and 
 those young girls who have not yet 
 become women. It is not a man's book, 
 for it deals almost exclusively with those 
 affiictions of the woman which the 
 genuine man does not, will not, cannot 
 see; firstly, because he is indifferent to 
 them; secondly, because they are tire- 
 some to him ; thirdly, because he at once 
 tries to break of them the woman with 
 whom he comes into relation. They are 
 the sufferings which make the barrier 
 between man and woman, — the dull 
 twilight, unconscious coyness and inner 
 defenses, the indifference of the un- 
 awakened senses, and the purposeless, 
 consuming waiting. 
 
 The type described in this book is 
 the girl, who, when married, becomes 
 only a mother. The husband is a second- 
 i86 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 ary thing. I remember, when I was 
 confirmed, hearing a schoolmate, a good- 
 natured, robust creature, say enthusias- 
 tically: "Oh, I should so like to have 
 children! I should like to have ten 
 children, — but no husband?" Accord- 
 ingly, she accepted later a little, homely, 
 sallow man, the first who offered himself, 
 and as I wished her happiness, she cried 
 with animation: "How could one be 
 anything but happy when she is the 
 chosen out of a thousand?" This bit 
 of statistics in regard to the number of 
 the unchosen was perhaps exaggerated. 
 But she had no time to stop on that 
 account, for now the dear little ones 
 came promptly trooping along in rapid 
 succession. 
 
 The young girl delineated in this book 
 is in nowise remarkable. Agatha is the 
 ordinary and typical young girl of "good 
 family." She thinks nothing, feels 
 nothing; she does not wish to be noticed, 
 and she makes no marked impression 
 upon any one. To sum up her life, — she 
 is submerged in other lives. She has no 
 experiences, external or internal, and she 
 exercises upon no man a deep personal 
 attraction. That is partly the fault of 
 187 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 the circle to which she belongs, where a 
 young girl is taken into consideration 
 by marriageable men only when she is a 
 "good match." Agatha is not a good 
 match in her first youth, and in her second 
 — after her father has paid the debts of 
 the lieutenant, her brother, with the 
 mother's fortune, — she is none at all; 
 upon ascertaining which, her one suitor, 
 an elderly new-baked district sheriff, 
 promptly withdraws. No one has ever 
 been betrayed for a single moment into 
 doing something bright or stupid on her 
 account, and very naturally so, for when 
 anything "which young girls should not 
 know" chanced to come under her eyes, 
 she not only looked "prim," but really 
 felt so. To be sure, she had once in her 
 life been in love — of course without the 
 object of her love ever suspecting it, — 
 with a tolerably demoralized artist, 
 who, to her horror, had a child by an 
 actress, whereupon she lost her love 
 for him. She is really more than usually 
 prim. 
 
 One might suppose that a young girl like 
 
 this had no inner life, and men generally 
 
 do suppose so. The value of this book is 
 
 that it reveals this inner life. It is not 
 
 i88 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 complex, certainly; it is very simple, it 
 consists simply in waiting. 
 
 Agatha's education was planned in the 
 somewhat colorless manner of the higher 
 bourgeoisie, with the expectation that the 
 young girl would grow up into wife and 
 mother. Agatha also had conceived her- 
 self thus literally, and as Frau Dornheim 
 presented her at her confirmation with 
 the "Woman's Life as Girl, Wife and 
 Mother," with fitting illustrations by 
 Paul Thurman, she felt herself in a 
 measure dedicated for that which must 
 now come. 
 
 But nothing came. Only a second and 
 a third generation after her, who dis- 
 placed her at balls. Agatha was still 
 always girl; of wife and mother, not a 
 sign. 
 
 One day Agatha coughs blood. This 
 is just after she has learned that her 
 secret love, the modern painter, is father 
 incognito. The family physician assures 
 them it is of no consequence, only the 
 bursting of a vein from some excitement 
 or other. Agatha recovers and becomes 
 pious ; but she makes no better progress 
 with her piety than she had in attaining 
 wifehood; in a higher official's household 
 189 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 one must above all things avoid making 
 oneself conspicuous. Gradually Agatha 
 ceased from piety; it had no meaning, 
 it was altogether empty. 
 
 She had nothing to do but to econo- 
 mize. The small parental household 
 went of itself, although with all sorts of 
 little frugal cares. She had nothing to 
 hope for, nothing to remember, nothing 
 even to wish. Since the year of her con- 
 firmation her life had passed in a grow- 
 ing depression. The one charm in this 
 life — a charm mingled with constant 
 exasperation, — was her sister - in - law 
 Eugenie, the daughter of a rich cigar 
 manufacturer. Eugenie was an ordinary, 
 pretty, matter - of - fact, rather good- 
 natured woman, of coarse and robust 
 vitality, attractive to all men through her 
 intelligent coquetry; as wife, never tire- 
 some; a solicitous mother; by nature so 
 practically constituted that nothing in life 
 remained mysterious to her and she went 
 towards her marriage with more quiet 
 unconcern than the gay yotmg lieutenant, 
 her husband. 
 
 The years pass. Agatha grows thin and 
 becomes an old maid. As she becomes 
 more noticeably delicate she is sent to 
 
 igo 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 a bathing resort. And one day Agatha 
 prepares for her acquaintance the first 
 surprise. 
 
 Agatha is raving mad ! 
 
 She is brought to an insane asylum and 
 later to a sanitarium for nervous diseases, 
 and modern science scores another of its 
 triumphs, for Agatha gradually becomes 
 so reasonable that she finds a heartfelt 
 joy in crochet-work, and eventually rises 
 to the dignity of a collector — though only 
 of crochet-patterns. Let us hope she 
 does not again from time to time give 
 modern science opportunity for new 
 triumphs in combating such a deeply- 
 rooted evil as the impulse to become wife 
 and mother. 
 
 Such is the outline of this book, a 
 remarkable and valuable contribution to 
 the history of present culture. 
 
 Is the life of the family daughter really 
 so starved? many will question. Is mar- 
 riage really the great stake in a girl's life? 
 Is this Agatha, who begins to love 
 the elderly all-the-world's suitor merely 
 because he seems to have serious inten- 
 tions, really so typical? 
 
 I must unfortunately answer to all 
 these questions: Yes! 
 191 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 Let no one, therefore, complain of 
 woman or her nature. She is not lowered 
 by this, — as many of her sisters would 
 assert, — she only protects herself by it as 
 well as she can; she but concentrates, 
 even though she be the weakest indi- 
 vidual, upon her central point, because 
 every other kind of womanly expansion is 
 denied her. 
 
 Our present society, our form of society, 
 is not in condition to create anything 
 organic or to shape anything out of the 
 organic. It is itself in process of dissolu- 
 tion and can only effect dissolution. It 
 works eagerly for the relinquishment of 
 masculine branches of work to the woman, 
 and promotes in dress, manner, and posi- 
 tion the masculinity, or, if that be too 
 harsh a word, the unsexing of woman. 
 It expropriates the farmer, and attempts 
 by soup-houses, night-asylums, widow's 
 mites and care of the poor, to keep the 
 unemployed proletarians hovering be- 
 tween life and death. Everything which 
 is attributable to a wilful and inten- 
 tional shifting of the equilibrium, it 
 excuses with the theory of overpopula- 
 tion'; overpopulation of the cities, over- 
 crowding of the professions, overpop- 
 
 iq2 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 ulation in the families, etc. As soon 
 as something goes wrong anywhere, 
 science must declare it the result of an 
 inevitable natural law and pronounce it 
 holy. 
 
 It is highly characteristic of this age 
 that whole ranks of productive popula- 
 tion and the half of productive hu- 
 manity — the women — are cut off from 
 the exercise of their fitting and nat- 
 ural functions. Among others, one nat- 
 ural sphere of actiyity for woman is com- 
 passion. 
 
 Not every woman can find room for 
 the full expansion of her sexuality. Not 
 every woman has the strong sexual need 
 of it, as a literature speculating in sexual 
 instigation would at present like us to 
 believe; but every woman — in so far as 
 she is not degenerate — ^has a deep instinct 
 to rise above and escape from her ego. 
 This is the fundamental impulse of 
 motherhood. 
 
 A woman can become a mother without 
 this instinct, but when it dwells in her, 
 she will be mother in a super-sensual man- 
 ner, in that she will feel all suffering as 
 though it were borne by her children, 
 and to all who suffer she will long to be 
 193 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 a tending, comforting, loving mother. 
 This, in our time, is strictly prohibited to 
 her. She cannot take hold, help, soothe, 
 set straight, where she feels there is need, 
 because there are no organizations exist- 
 ing for such work, into which she could 
 enter. The spirit of the age throws 
 every one back upon himself. Woman 
 also is taught to live egoistically. And 
 yet, for every woman of large vitality — 
 and by this I mean only those who could 
 bring forth a generation of robust chil- 
 dren — the egoistic happiness is no happi- 
 ness. Yes, even the intensest love-life is 
 still not happiness. For happiness, the 
 full expansion of all one's latent powers 
 is necessary. 
 
 The woman of to-day is condemned to 
 idleness or to unproductive and for the 
 most part useless work. Whether the 
 superfluous daughter sits aimlessly at 
 home, her unoccupied thoughts circling 
 around one of the fixed ideas of the time 
 till she becomes dizzy from it, or whether, 
 as beloved or wife, she becomes an article 
 of luxury for the man, the end will be the 
 same : flightiness, hysteria, or some other 
 of the various steps in the long ladder of 
 degeneration. 
 
 194 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 THE SAMARITAN 
 
 For those women of our time who 
 escape the constant, if sometimes latent, 
 strain caused by the specter of material 
 necessity, there lies in wait another 
 specter, seizing upon many with even 
 stronger grasp, — the omnipresent specter 
 of ennui. Material uncertainty is at 
 least uncertain, one can hope to avert or 
 escape from it, there is a certain stimula- 
 tion in it which keeps one awake and 
 alive; but for those who tread the golden 
 path of wealth or high birth there is not 
 even this stimulus. Their life is, accord- 
 ing to human conception, safe, and thus 
 robbed for the most part of the charm of 
 accident. The young girl who is led into 
 this path of life knows beforehand what 
 will meet her there. In the course of a 
 year she has learned all that the art of 
 the tailor and the invention of the dealer 
 in luxuries can accomplish, and also what 
 these same arts can make of the gentle- 
 men of her social circle. She feels 
 clearly, too, that most of these gentlemen 
 only favor her, the equal born, with the 
 exuberance of their temperaments in the 
 195 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 rarest instances, and most often then 
 when she— the young girl-r-is unable to 
 make anything of the nature of this tem- 
 perament. Whatever they possess of fire, 
 folly, tenderness and amusing qualities 
 benefits the sirens of the podium and the 
 secret circle especially educated for those 
 who serve Aphrodite; when they have 
 left this temple and her priestesses, they 
 often urgently need marriage as a refuge. 
 
 We have now had twenty-five years of 
 European peace ; war, the chief stimulant 
 of the high-bom classes, has been lack- 
 ing. In the absence of other anxieties, 
 pure physical anxiety is the principal 
 impulse toward those sudden expansions 
 of feeling and spontaneous approaches of 
 men and women of equal birth, in which 
 the generous and warm sympathies are 
 aroused. 
 
 In the world of finance, with its external 
 collisions, there is almost nothing to 
 awaken these feelings, and nowhere else 
 is the young woman doomed to so super- 
 ficial a life. The convulsions and under- 
 minings which formerly came violently 
 upon mankind and so won for him 
 sympathy, now come, sneaking and con- 
 cealed, effecting isolation and avoidance 
 igb 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 where they once called forth interest and 
 the sudden outpouring of love. 
 
 The young girl of wealth and social 
 position is insulated from life; she sees 
 its deep red, its beating pulse, its sweet 
 surprises and sudden disclosures, from 
 afar like a pale phantasmagoria, or it 
 passes before her in the distorted reflec- 
 tions of half-forbidden, fashionable read- 
 ing, and she returns every evening to her 
 own inward void. She may live love 
 romances if she wishes to, and later, when 
 married, she can, if she likes, make up 
 by the number of her love affairs for their 
 lack of variety; but that deep, healthy 
 restoration which the staking of one's 
 whole being upon the fate of another in 
 the hour of danger brings — that moment 
 of bliss when all the inner fountains gush 
 forth and body and soul are so glowing 
 that they no longer perceive external cold 
 and could walk naked in winter frost 
 without noticing it, — these remain hidden 
 from her. And yet it is these for which 
 she pines ; this inward salvation for which 
 she reaches out. 
 
 Externally, she is only permitted to 
 move in prescribed forms, and she feels 
 with deadly weariness that only pre- 
 19^ 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 scribed feelings meet and will continue to 
 meet her. Many young girls have in the 
 first years an almost frantic pleasure in 
 adorning themselves, but it changes sud- 
 denly to indifference when they realize 
 that the charm of their adorned persons, 
 which surprises themselves, awakens no 
 corresponding emotion in the men they 
 meet. Dress, as an aim in itself, is the 
 mania of the empty-minded woman and 
 even she needs to be stimulated in her 
 enjoyment by the envy of conquered 
 rivals. 
 
 In the weariness of their disappointment 
 many of the most promising young women 
 revolt from marriage, in which they 
 expect only a lukewarm affection. Pre- 
 cisely in those circles where no material 
 obstacles exist many of the prettiest and 
 healthiest women remain single. And 
 when, after unenjoyed enjoyments, fes- 
 tivities, distinctions, proposals, etc., a con- 
 stantly increasing and more suffocating 
 depression overspreads them, — when body 
 and soul gradually lose their resisting 
 powers, then the pretty one becomes 
 pious and the healthy, delicate. 
 
 They look about them for something 
 which can give their idle days a purpose, 
 198 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 the emptiness of their existence a mean- 
 ing, which can restore their weakened 
 vital energies; something which can 
 release them from the interminable 
 society of their ego, — a duty, a sacrifice, 
 or a diversion which they can clothe in 
 these fine names. 
 
 Their womanly instincts, so long 
 warped, repressed and cheated, waken in 
 their original strength. The instincts of 
 motherhood, which consist in bearing, 
 enduring, waiting, helping, sympathizing, 
 and which had never been granted free 
 outlet and expansion because their 
 owners had lost faith in motherhood in 
 their own cases, are now turned to 
 others. They feel personally and 
 strongly, in their own bodies, the tor- 
 tures of starving mothers, suffering chil- 
 dren, and unemployed fathers, the whole 
 misery of the poor and the robbed, of 
 undeserved want and unhealthy trade, 
 out of which the golden ground is beaten 
 whereon capital and the high-born aris- 
 tocracy walk. And they yearn to help, 
 out of a wild desire which is really 
 to help themselves, to find peace, to get 
 relief from the pain which they, — ^reflect- 
 ing on the suffering around them, — feel 
 199 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 as if in the body of the child they do not 
 bear. 
 
 But how to succeed, where to take hold, 
 by what means to find a way to the con- 
 fidence of the estranged classes of the 
 people, or upon what to concentrate? For 
 those who have looked beneath the 
 smooth, polished surface of police and 
 state, human suffering is like an infinite, 
 black, welling ocean, and the help of the 
 individual is like a nutshell on these 
 waters. Women who are endowed with 
 a strong sense of the direct and practical 
 see this at a glance, and many do not try 
 at all to take hold of the impossible, 
 especially in Protestant lands, but with 
 clenched hands fight back the pain and 
 seek to forget again what they have seen 
 and felt. Gradually the impressions are 
 erased, but the women also are undone 
 and turned into those marred, ruined, 
 peculiar, comfortless, indifferent skeptics, 
 whom one meets with increasing fre- 
 quency among women and quite young 
 girls, and from whom one shrinks with a 
 shudder, as if from contact with a corpse. 
 
 Others, without considering, without 
 looking a second time for fear of seeing 
 too deeply, take hold simply and bring help 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 to the spot where they see need. And if 
 they succeed with greater or less exertion 
 in bringing relief to this one point, help- 
 ing a single time or more, they feel it go 
 through their whole being like a life- 
 stream of health and energy ; their spirits 
 are cheered as if by the sun of personal 
 fortune. For the ego is no such solitary, 
 selfish, self-sufficing thing as the philoso- 
 phy of the last centuries, down to its 
 latest earnest product, Nietsche, and its 
 latest humorous product, Stirner, would 
 have us believe. The ego is only a form 
 of continuity; and especially the feminine 
 ego has no point at which it can draw a 
 line and content itself with pure indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 On the contrary the expansion of the 
 feminine ego is so strongly directed 
 towards those who are near her and 
 exactly under her eyes, that she does not 
 or will not perceive that they are limited 
 by the general social relations and 
 depend upon them; she therefore con- 
 siders as effective the off-hand and 
 isolated aid which can be rendered by an 
 individual or a few individuals. So the 
 good souls work away with all their 
 might to aid individuals, never consider- 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 ing that the only effective and lasting 
 improvement is that which results from 
 a general, well-conducted organization, 
 — an international organization, one 
 might say. The Church represented 
 such an one in earlier times, with its 
 institutions through which the purely 
 personal was brought into connection 
 with the universal. For some centuries 
 now, and especially in Protestant lands, 
 all attempts at care of the poor and 
 improvement of their condition have 
 been fruitless, surely the fault of the 
 basis upon which they are undertaken. 
 
 In the preceding chapters, I have already 
 indicated upon the background of the 
 time the portrait of the personality whose 
 characteristics and social limitations will 
 be shown more clearly in the following 
 pages. 
 
 II 
 
 Through an apparent mistake of a 
 specialist in nervous diseases, a mistake 
 which seems to have favored a suit charg- 
 ing insanity, and through the attacks of a 
 sensational paper, the widest publicity 
 was given to a name and life which could 
 hardly have been destined for this kind 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 of fame. In 1894, Countess Adeline 
 Schimmelmann, former lady of honor 
 to the Empress Augusta, and descended 
 from that wealthy race of Counts of this 
 name which had furnished one of the 
 first and most generous patrons of 
 Schiller, was lured into the county 
 hospital of Copenhagen, during a stay in 
 that city, and there detained in spite of 
 her urgent protests, on the plea of mental 
 derangement. After a time she was 
 transferred from the unpeaceful county 
 hospital to the quieter insane asylum at 
 Vordingborg. The physician here soon 
 dismissed her with an attestation that he 
 could discover no symptoms of mental 
 disease. 
 
 After she had escaped another attempt 
 to send her to a private asylum, and the 
 Danish papers had published column- 
 long articles, without ever entirely clear- 
 ing up the details of the affair, the count- 
 ess was herseljf seized with an impulse to 
 give testimony. She printed a small 
 pamphlet, written simply and honestly, 
 and spoke publicly before the Baptists 
 in Aalborg and the Methodists in Copen- 
 hagen, since the pietistic "Inner Mission" 
 would not open its rooms to her. 
 203 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 What she said did not amount to much. 
 She related in a clear voice and in the 
 simplest words how she had come to 
 Jesus. Her story is like a hundred 
 others, and gives one the impression 
 that the countess intentionally kept her- 
 self to the level of her audience. Only 
 one feature is of interest, shbwing the 
 womanly feeling of this lady who had 
 performed masculine work throughout 
 nine years. She told how she had 
 struggled for love of Jesus without being 
 filled with it: "I had determined to love 
 Jesus; I worried myself about it, but 
 it did no good; I always felt that I did 
 not love him enough. Then one day it 
 came to me — 'The great thing is not that 
 you love Jesus but that He loves you; 
 when you really understand that Jesus 
 loves you, it will follow of itself that you 
 love Him.' " Here, I think, we reach the 
 central point of this personality, — the 
 feminine need of being surrounded by a 
 warmth which is here sublimated to the 
 warming love of the Son of God. As soon 
 as this has penetrated her imagination, 
 all is well ; the imperturbable balance is 
 gained, the woman satisfied, healed, and 
 proof against all outward shocks. 
 204 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 One rarely reads records from a 
 woman's pen which display such uniform 
 firmness and strength of will as the short 
 account of the previous nine years, which 
 the cotmtess published immediately 
 after her release from Vordingborg, and 
 therefore after a very severe spiritual 
 shock. 
 
 One feels how greatly the psychiater of 
 the county hospital had miscalculated in 
 his treatment of this woman. In this 
 small pamphlet all is quietly revealed; 
 if the woman is insane, it is certainly in 
 a fashion for which asylums have neither 
 cures nor cells. Assuredly not pre- 
 eminent in intellect, but endowed with 
 clear, good, practical sense, one-sided and 
 strong, with an overflowingly good heart, 
 this woman, disdaining the soft life of a 
 great lady, had an instinctive leaning 
 toward the deep, powerful, dangerous 
 primeval sensations in which the pulse- 
 beats of life are like the blows of a 
 hammer. These primeval sensations did 
 not fall to her share as a wife and mother, 
 perhaps because her nature demanded 
 more than the times could give, but she 
 found them unexpectedly under rough, 
 half-savage conditions from which any 
 205 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 other lady of rank would have fled in 
 squeamish fear and dismay. 
 
 The well-known pastor and writer of 
 religious tracts, Otto Funcke, had 
 already, in 1890, given a warm and gen- 
 uinely appreciative sketch of the count- 
 ess's remarkable activity at Rugen. He 
 had met her, then still a lady of honor to 
 the Empress Augusta, in 1886 at a "Tea- 
 Evening" in the Architectural Hall in 
 Berlin, where he gave a lecture. After 
 the lecture she went to him in deep 
 emotion. She told him she had been 
 thirteen years at Court and felt more 
 dissatisfied every year. Through his 
 words it had at last become clear to her 
 how empty this life was, and that she 
 must now do something to help her 
 fellow men. Pastor Funcke,. however, 
 understood court ladies; he listened 
 politely, but in his heart believed no 
 more in the seriousness of this elegant, 
 pretty, delicate-looking lady of thirty 
 years than in other pining court ladies. 
 
 Four years later the good Funcke was 
 staying in Sassnitz on the island of 
 Rugen. While he sat at table with his 
 family a Countess Schimmelmann sent 
 in her card. When he went out to her, 
 206 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 the former lady of honor stood before 
 him, transformed; happy, contented, 
 healthful and fresh. She invited him to 
 come to see the work which the Lord 
 had shown her in His vineyard. He 
 journeyed to Gohren and visited her in 
 the villa which she had built on the South 
 Strand: a kitchen and three small rooms, 
 the smallest her bedroom, no larger than 
 a second-class cabin on a ship. Here she 
 lives as guardian and mother of the 
 Pomeranian fishers, at war with the en- 
 tire population of the region, who will not 
 tolerate her intruders because they re- 
 ceive free maintenance from the countess 
 and no longer carry their earnings to the 
 inns or farmers. They are very poor 
 people, rough and wild; hardly ever on 
 land from February to November except 
 to buy provisions, which they are accus- 
 tomed to do in Gohren and the Griefs- 
 walder Oie. As the Pomeranian coast 
 and land fisheries are leased, they are 
 forced to go far out on the high seas in 
 poor boats, in which they sleep under the 
 open sky and pass their lives for weeks at 
 a time. The countess has built them a 
 fisherman's home in Gohren, where they 
 often gather by hundreds, and another 
 207 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 upon the Griefswalder Oie. There food 
 and coffee are served, but no whisky, 
 beer or other intoxicating liquors. On 
 the other hand the countess reads aloud 
 to them, holds morning and evening devo- 
 tions, allows them to play dominoes and 
 other innocent games, and employs those 
 adapted to it in cabinet-making during 
 the idle winter months. With her she has 
 three small boys, sick children of per- 
 ished fishermen, whom she nursed to 
 health, who run in and out of the villa, 
 bare-footed and bare-headed, and to 
 whom she fills a mother's place. 
 
 Funcke saw and heard all this with 
 astonishment. His good Christian heart 
 was deeply touched. He wrote a pretty 
 article about it and called on Christian 
 people to give financial support to the 
 countess, who could herself only give 
 her rents. A good deal followed, from 
 the side of the government too, but the 
 countess could not endure the interference 
 of governmental rule. She was herself 
 able to rule. 
 
 Now it will be asked — and I think this 
 
 was the summed-up reason of the family 
 
 for thinking her mentally deranged — 
 
 how came this lady, still young, dis- 
 
 208 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 tinguished by beauty, belonging to the 
 highest and most fastidious sphere of life, 
 to choose such a band of wild fishermen 
 in their prime, sailing hither and thither 
 among them in storm and tempest 
 between Gohren, the Griefswalder Oie 
 and the Pomeranian coasts, with spiritual 
 and material food, and maintaining on 
 land an almost dangerous strife with 
 embittered innkeepers who were driven 
 to bankruptcy through the countess's 
 poaching upon their privileged territory? 
 It would have been more reasonable, at 
 least, if she had provided a summer 
 sanitarium for chlorotic seamstresses in 
 Gohren, or founded a kindergarten on 
 the Pomeranian coasts. 
 
 If we inquired of the countess, she 
 would probably answer: "My Jesus did 
 not give me that to do." And there 
 would be some psychological truth in it. 
 It was an accident which gave the countess 
 the direction for her course. 
 
 A trunk having been sent by mistake 
 to Gohren, she went there instead of to 
 another bathing place. One Sunday 
 morning she saw a host of fishermen land 
 and go from house to house, from hotel 
 to hotel to buy food. The uninvited 
 ao5 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 guests were everywhere turned away. 
 This the countess could not suffer. Her 
 cook was ordered to cook a large pot of 
 potatoes and meat, and as that was not 
 enough she sent besides her own store of 
 supplies down to the beach. As she was 
 from Holstein she could speak Low 
 German; she talked with the fishermen, 
 learned something of their way of life, 
 and so it all began. Once begun, the 
 hundred thousand needs of these numer- 
 ous, bitterly poor classes of mankind took 
 up more and more, and finally all, of her 
 time. 
 
 In this the countess had not sacrificed 
 herself. She had merely found the circle 
 of activity which corresponded to her 
 spirit and temperament. She ruled, 
 sovereign, over her fishermen, and the 
 unconcealed, admiring worship of these 
 rough fellows was certainly to her a 
 better pillow than a satin bed. It was no 
 small achievement that she dared deny 
 every drop of alcohol to these professional 
 whisky drinkers; nor would it have been 
 possible without that other stimulant 
 which she gave them in place of it, — the 
 singing and praying which she herself 
 led. Dim, primeval memories may have 
 
 3J0 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 been awakened in these people, living 
 apart from all the influences of culture, 
 by this priestess who created for them a 
 world of fancy and gave it direction. 
 She lived among them, divided all she had 
 with them, wrote petitions to the govern- 
 ment, ate with them, and hungered with 
 them when provisions were scant, — and 
 yet always stood above them, a strange, 
 half-feared, half-superstitiously worshiped 
 creature. 
 
 But however well she might get on with 
 her fishermen, the Countess Adeline could 
 not get on with the organized committee 
 of assistance, nor with the government. 
 The measures of the latter she found 
 only serviceable to the dealers, the 
 middle-men, and not the fishermen; 
 while the pious Seminarists who were 
 sent to aid her, proved as useless as the 
 beer houses about to be erected were 
 abhorrent. If her fishermen once began 
 to drink again, — no matter what, — how 
 was she to manage them? 
 
 In comparison with the countess's 
 clear, positive account of her activity 
 among the fishermen, Funcke's emotional 
 description seems weak and cloying. In 
 her marginal notes, she handles him in a 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 slightly superior manner, — as a super- 
 fluous litterateur. The second half of the 
 book — to which she promises a continua- 
 tion, as she had just then no time to write 
 more, — contains a very interesting 
 account of her advent among the insur- 
 gent mob of the unemployed in Berlin 
 during the winter of 1891-92. She seems 
 in a measure to be the historian of those 
 days when history was made, — ^but of 
 which we know so little. She shuddered 
 before this mob, beside which her fisher- 
 men were as white lambs and which was 
 designated by the police as the worst of 
 Berlin ; but she drove into the midst, never- 
 theless, in spite of the fact that in front of 
 her another carriage was overthrown and 
 the occupants beaten back with fists when 
 they tried to creep out. wShe and her two 
 foster sons descended from their vehicle 
 just as the same fate was prepared for 
 them, and as she did not know what else 
 to do, she began distributing money. 
 When she had no more, the coachman 
 offered her his. During the whole time 
 she prayed inwardly and felt no trace of 
 fear. "In those moments I understood 
 how the martyrs could go fearlessly unto 
 death." About her, windows were 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 beaten in, shops broken into and edibles 
 carried off. She saw emaciated, anxious 
 faces, and others of more than animal 
 brutality surrounding her. 
 
 Then in her distress, her money being 
 all gone, she began to speak. It must 
 have been the greatest moment of her life. 
 For while she talked and preached of 
 Jesus to the unbelieving Berlin mob, she 
 felt, as she herself says, that the woman 
 who wholly devotes herself to a cause 
 gains, through her very womanhood, a 
 sublimity and power "which elevate her 
 to fellowship with the angels." 
 
 She turned again to her old resource, 
 furniture-making. A hall was cleared 
 out for the unemployed workmen and 
 she, herself, supported by Countess 
 Zedlitz, the daughter of the Minister of 
 Public Worship and Instruction, was 
 among them from morning till night, 
 drawing the patterns for cutting upon the 
 hard wood till her fingers bled. When 
 she had at last brought her Berlin prol- 
 etarians so far that she dared sing a 
 hymn to them, the landlord served notice 
 upon her, because "he did not want any 
 canting in his house." The police, to 
 whom she appealed, could not help her. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 At last another, less intolerant man took 
 pity upon them and she and her poor 
 again had a roof over them where they 
 could work for their livelihood. 
 
 One evening, after a day so spent, she 
 went home to the "Christian Hospice," 
 where she lodged, and heard some 
 fashionable Christian ladies relate a 
 shocking tale about the unemployed, 
 which they had heard or read and which 
 they held it their moral duty to hear or 
 read ; in the large room adjoining, a well- 
 known minister preached on the theme — 
 Why Jesus rode upon an ass's foal instead 
 of upon an ass. "In the mood in which 
 I had returned," she says, "I could not 
 bear it any longer ; I did not remain for 
 evening prayers — I went up to my room 
 and held them there with bitter tears." 
 
 Ill 
 
 When the countess, having proven the 
 possession of her mental powers through 
 public lectures and her pamphlet, "My 
 Missionary Life," had escaped the insane 
 asylum and entered again into control of 
 her inherited fortune, she confronted a 
 new chapter in her life. Her meeting- 
 214 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 house on the Griefswalder Oie had been 
 broken up during her long absence, and 
 her work among the Pomeranian fishermen 
 destroyed. Nothing was heard of her 
 wanting to take it up again, at first. She 
 decided to go out on missionary work, 
 with which she could combine the pro- 
 visioning of the fishers of the West Coasts 
 of Denmark. From the sale of her 
 countrj' house in Helleback, she procured 
 the means of buying a yacht, which she 
 named ' ' The Dove. ' ' Through exchange, 
 she got from the youngest prince of Den- 
 mark a large ship, suitable for long voy- 
 ages and heavy lading, manned it with a 
 Mecklenburg ship's captain and his wife, 
 a steersman and six sailors, and went 
 aboard with her two foster-sons. She 
 loaded it with provisions and Bibles in 
 several languages, and began sailing back 
 and forth between England and the 
 Danish Coasts. 
 
 In this part of the North Sea an exten- 
 sive high-sea fishery is carried on, from 
 the English coasts as well as the Danish. 
 The fishermen sell their catch to steamship 
 monopolies which run here and there, 
 and buy from the same their necessary 
 provisions, which naturally subjects the 
 215 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 fishermen to outrageous fleecing. Here 
 the countess brought material relief, 
 as formerly to the Pomeranian fishers, 
 distributed Bibles free, and held serv- 
 ices on board her ship when it ran 
 near the coasts, for all who would 
 come. 
 
 Since then three years have passed. 
 A Seaman's Home has been built at 
 Gohren upon Rugen Island again. Dur- 
 ing the dock-laborer strike at Hamburg, 
 the countess made the cause of their 
 laborers her own and had often thousands 
 of hearers at the meetings which she 
 arranged. 
 
 In one year she had distributed 20,000 
 Bibles and other religious books in vari- 
 ous languages, and had visited five hun- 
 dred vessels. For those who work so 
 strongly, comprehensively, and openly, 
 many pockets are opened, and a great 
 part of this extensive work could only 
 have been possible through private 
 munificence. 
 
 When we survey the singular life of this 
 woman, now in the forties, two features 
 stand out with special prominence. 
 From the moment when it became indi- 
 vidual, it was passed among men ; it was 
 216 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 directed towards regulating men ; and it 
 regulated them according to her person- 
 ality. The first is Sectarian, the second 
 Protestant. 
 
 In a life work of this kind, directed 
 towards practical benefits depending upon 
 organizing ability and organizing ideas, 
 one must apply practical rather than 
 ideal standards. Of such work we must 
 not ask whether it is fine or good, but 
 whether it is useful. 
 
 Of what use, then, is the work of the 
 countess in the service of the Seaman's 
 Mission? 
 
 Let us deal first with the more ideal 
 side, — that of the feelings. 
 
 In America women appear as preachers 
 and as such hold permanent appointments. 
 In the Salvation Army, also, women 
 appear in the pulpit. In all periods of 
 disorganization, in the Reformation, the 
 French Revolution, etc., women have 
 always spoken publicly, whether for the 
 Kingdom of God or for human rights. 
 The pulpit and the speaker's chair are as 
 dear to woman as the stage. In them 
 equally she can enjoy the finest and least 
 dangerous stimulant, in her influence 
 over men. To speak as a woman to 
 217 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 women arouses none of those trembling 
 vibrations, gives none of that delicate 
 satisfaction to vanity, wakens none of the 
 sensations in which the woman — ^however 
 unconfessedly — feels herself woman. The 
 old church leaders forbade the public 
 appearance of women as teachers or 
 preachers, on the ground of modesty. 
 Applied to the present, modesty would 
 have to be far more subtly conceived than 
 formerly. Let us go back to our question 
 and ask : of what use is the preaching of 
 women before men? 
 
 It occupies, entertains and moves them 
 perhaps for the moment. But what sort 
 of contact is there between the lady of 
 honor to the Empress Augusta, and the 
 rough, wild English seaman, who carries 
 his limbs and life to market for his 
 month's wage, and dwells under the con- 
 straint of nature and the force of condi- 
 tions of which the well-bred lady can 
 have, after all, only the most distant 
 conception. She feels the masculine 
 element in these men, in that bearing of 
 chivalry and respect which never dies 
 out in the healthy sons of danger and 
 poverty; — and they feel at best grateful 
 towards this fine lady who means so 
 
 2l8 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 well towards them. But what comes of 
 it all? 
 
 A round of weak tea, with ship's 
 biscuit and a Bible sermon. Those who 
 actually read in these seldom end by 
 being the better or milder for it; they 
 become sectarians, either as the founders 
 of new sects or parts of those already 
 existing. 
 
 And the material help of the countess? 
 — her purveyance of provisions to the 
 fishermen and her delicate care of them? 
 
 In one year she provisioned five hun- 
 dred vessels once or oftener, and for how 
 long? At the most for a couple of 
 months. Who will provision them 
 further? Is this provisioning regular? 
 Can -it be regular? And both of these 
 granted, — though the contrary must be 
 the case, — will a continuance be assured? 
 Does not this very limited help stand or 
 fall with the health, the financial means, 
 and the will of the countess towards it? 
 Who controls her? Who holds her to the 
 execution of the once undertaken duty 
 and organizes the work so that it shall 
 go on after her death or withdrawal? 
 "My Jesus!" she would say. "No one," 
 the incredulous would answer her. 
 219 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 Poor Relief, — of which this is a part, — 
 is the canker of our times. The State 
 has everywhere proven its inability so to 
 organize it that the poor are really 
 helped. Private relief of the poor has 
 been shown to be equally incapable of 
 remedying poverty; that is, of helping 
 those temporarily impoverished through 
 illness or lack of work back to the strong- 
 hold of human society, by means of an 
 ordered and assured livelihood ; those who 
 once accept support usually go to ruin; 
 he who has once relied upon external aid 
 cannot find his way again upon the 
 narrow, hard, but even basis of his cir- 
 cumstances. The aid is uncertain, hence 
 it does more harm than good. 
 
 The subjective aid, therefore, which 
 proceeds from and depends upon one 
 person, is of no importance, — when it is 
 not worse, — in spite of all the sums thus 
 expended and the sacrifices it may 
 represent. Only self-less help, imper- 
 sonal help which is nevertheless giving 
 by living hands with warm pulses — there- 
 fore not the hands of the State — ^help 
 from hands always open and warm, the 
 failing and dying being instantly replaced 
 by others, only such help could form a 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 basis for the raising of those impoverished 
 through natural causes or by over-reach- 
 ing expropriation. 
 
 I could imagine a "Brotherhood of the 
 Sea," springing out of and growing by 
 pious bequests, which would carry through 
 what the countess has begun, found 
 Seaman's Homes, provision fishermen, 
 assist their widows and orphans, and 
 regulate the coast service of this strongest, 
 bravest, and most endangered class of 
 human beings; whose members could 
 die and be replaced without disturbing 
 the organization and practice by the 
 breadth of a feather, and which would 
 maintain in their might, in this age of 
 struggle for existence, a class of men 
 who are demoralized rather than helped 
 by the occasional collections after great 
 accidents. Such a service would rest 
 upon personal self-denial of the old order, 
 and presupposes renunciation of the 
 egoistic life; a tendency which is again 
 becoming strongly marked at the present 
 time. And what would not a nature and 
 disposition such as that of the Countess 
 Schimmelmann have been in a sisterhood 
 of good works, under the firm control of 
 a far-seeing organization ! But it is still 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 the fate of the most gifted to see them- 
 selves and their sincere purposes reduced 
 to atoms. 
 
 A Figurine 
 
 The central cause for that feminine 
 disquiet to which we give the name of the 
 Woman Movement is seldom recognized, 
 still less spoken of, and least of all defined 
 in its nature. It is this: woman now 
 wants to possess and enjoy for herself 
 that which she was formerly content to 
 transmit, she, often quite unconsciously, 
 and without intention, considers herself 
 as an end, and desires — what all desire 
 who attain to an end — to live herself out 
 freely. He who looks deeper into life, and 
 into a closer connection of things than this 
 century offers, knows that this is an illu- 
 sion. One cannot live oneself out fully 
 because one is not that compact I which 
 one imagines oneself to be, in accordance 
 with the philosophy of egoism; because 
 the free life of the ego really carried out 
 would always end in the painful void of 
 mental and physical sterility ; and because 
 the true feeling of delight in existence is 
 the feeling of continuity, and so in. a 
 deeper sense, the merging of the person- 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 ality in a great wave of life which carries it 
 up, draws it into itself and submerges it. 
 
 The feverish impulse of self-assertion 
 which is called living oneself in full, 
 only comes when some one conception of 
 the world and of life is approaching an 
 end. Men feel that they will have no 
 heirs, either in the flesh or in the spirit ; 
 they also feel that they are not inheritors, 
 for between them and their progenitors 
 there is a chasm, — the enmity of views, 
 the contrast between old and young. 
 When we study the mode of life as 
 expressed in the literature of this century, 
 we see that it is all built upon the contrast 
 between old and young. From the period 
 of Sturm and Drang onwards, this is the 
 real theme of the poem, and youth 
 appears always noble and age corrupt; 
 youth is right; age is wrong; youth has 
 intelligence, age stupidity; youth the 
 future, age the past. Is it not astonish- 
 ing how quickly, according to this view of 
 life, youth becomes age? 
 
 It is a matter of five or six generations 
 since the period of storm and stress just 
 mentioned. Each of these generations 
 was once young, accordingly noble and 
 intelligent, with the right and the future 
 223 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 on its side. Each of these generations 
 in a few decades has become old, stupid, 
 in the eyes of its heirs, in the wrong 
 and of the past. And it is the same 
 with these heirs when they have become 
 fathers, and with their sons. The whole 
 present literature is full of these con- 
 trasts. What is this contradiction but a 
 breaking off — a continual breaking off of 
 the curve of development which is always 
 being pieced together again? 
 
 When, however, mankind is in a patched 
 up curve of development, the individual 
 will save and seize what he can ; he must 
 do so because no one, not even his father 
 or his son, leaves him his natural property 
 untouched; because every one lives by 
 robbery of others, even the daughter 
 from her mother and the mother from 
 her daughter; because where continuity 
 and mutual confidence and support were 
 alone most natural and useful, the con- 
 trary — distrust and open enmity — have 
 succeeded. 
 
 This circumstance alone, upon which 
 art, literature, the manner of life, ideas 
 of the world, family and State, — all are 
 built, suffices to show plainly that one 
 age has unfolded and is exhausted; for 
 224 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 more warring contradictions there are 
 none, unless the old and the new ego 
 wage battle in the same being (k la 
 Nietzsche) and make an end mutually. 
 
 In such fostering soil are now planted 
 the gifted, intelligent, individualized 
 woman-natures, so few or so many as 
 they be. 
 
 For such a young woman, the first 
 gloomy feeling changes into the conscious 
 question: Am I not being robbed? Do 
 they not take from me under the guise of 
 love, tenderness and care, that which 
 should make the basis of my life, if it is 
 ever to have any? She feels that all 
 those about her are takers, and give only 
 that which they themselves do not want. 
 And if she be not coarse, calculating and 
 grasping, — which a great many women 
 are, — anxiety is awakened in her. She 
 begins to observe and weigh and think — 
 think anxiously. And out of the suspicion 
 of being robbed springs the desire to 
 have. That is, if she be highly-bred ; for 
 the rudeness of the young ladies of the 
 parvenu class in the large cities is fre- 
 quently without limits. Certainly they 
 enjoy the advantage that their need of 
 having is wholly material and can there- 
 
 22 s 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 fore be satisfied by more or less of indis- 
 cretion, — for which they are at no loss — 
 and that in consequence they do in some 
 measure extract the meaning of life in 
 certain directions and live their lives 
 completely. 
 
 It is otherwise with those in whom 
 there is the pressure of an inner life, an 
 awakening individuality, a more com- 
 plex and many-sided demand for expres- 
 sion and for a free course. Such natures 
 almost always lose their first ventures and 
 have often no others. They cannot find 
 their way. They go out courageously 
 and seek a path, but sooner or later they 
 come to a wall along which they grope 
 but find no door. They go back and 
 forth along the wall, they search and 
 search, — no outlet. Then they become 
 anxious, they have no time to lose. The 
 days, weeks, years are going, the time is 
 coming nearer when the woman wants to 
 be sheltered, sheltered by a man's protec- 
 tion, sheltered by his position. They 
 feel alone and cannot remain lonely. 
 They crave an enclosure, and perhaps it 
 lies just behind this wall — but they can- 
 not pierce it. Surely this wall must have 
 an end somewhere, — ^but then one must 
 226 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 wander along beside it, and that takes so 
 long; and whether one will find what one 
 seeks at that end — who can know? 
 
 One thing we do know ; the time thus 
 lost is woman's youth, the most precious 
 thing she possesses. And when a young 
 woman has thought so far as this, an 
 immeasurable weariness overtakes her. 
 It creeps upon them all, those with 
 strong, enduring powers and those with 
 short-lived, early-withering freshness. 
 Their blood slackens and grows pale, and 
 there comes the failing of health, enervat- 
 ing rather than consuming, which in one 
 becomes a fever of impatience and in 
 another the pallor of weakness, and leads 
 most of them into the first refuge which 
 opens to them. 
 
 That a young girl should ever try to 
 depict this condition, to give expression 
 to this tendency, would be denied off- 
 hand. That would be contrary to a young 
 girl's nature! Not even Marie Bash- 
 kirtseff, the only revealer of a young' 
 gfirl's soul, has done this; on the con- 
 trary she struggled with all her might 
 against making clear the connection 
 between her depression and the inner 
 physical and psychical life. 
 227 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 And yet there was a 3'oung girl who 
 attempted to do this very thing. She 
 encountered many very hard attacks from 
 press and public on account of it, and 
 together they suppressed her. She dis- 
 appeared and kept silence for about eight 
 years, and when she again came before 
 the public she was no longer a young 
 girl, but the wife of a merchant. She no 
 longer turned to account her own impres- 
 sions and observations, but composed 
 historical novels from books of memoirs ; 
 nor was she again attacked and sup- 
 pressed, but praised and read. She no 
 longer wrote under her pseudonym of 
 "Stella Kleve," but under her proper 
 married name, Mathilde Mailing. 
 
 Stella Kleve could have given us much 
 honest and valuable information about 
 the psychological processes of the 
 modern, nervous, refined and delicate 
 young girl. She possessed by nature all 
 the qualifications for delineating the 
 psychology of feminine artfulness and 
 the erotic side of young maidens of old 
 aristocratic families; but neither the 
 public nor private life of her Swedish 
 home gave these unusual talents a chance 
 to ripen and bear fruit. Such a disposi- 
 228 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 tion can no more stand rough usage than 
 one of those graceful draped figures of 
 Sevres porcelain, or a rare piece of 
 precious Venetian glass, such as one sees 
 now and then in museums, but which 
 are not there to be handled or drunk 
 out of. 
 
 She was one of those infrequent femi- 
 nine creatures who have attained at 
 eighteen years the height of culture, 
 refinement and aspiration in their day. 
 That she moreover matriculated as 
 student of philosophy is of less impor- 
 tance. She came of old and rich family, 
 was given a thoroughly French educa- 
 tion in a Swiss pension on the Lake of 
 Geneva. She entered life, a small, spoiled 
 girl, stickling for good form, animated 
 by and predisposed to the art of coquetry, 
 for which she built up a whole structure 
 of arguments; unusually qualified for 
 comradeship and mental association with 
 men; full at the same time of fear and 
 curiosity towards the great unknown; 
 afraid for her reputation, still more afraid 
 for her maidenhood; often appearing 
 perverse when she was only naive; 
 created for a luxurious existence, and 
 prepared and educated for such even at 
 22g 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 a time when parental fortune was already 
 beginning to vanish and soon left nothing 
 more than a too quiet place of refuge in 
 a lonely country house. 
 
 During this period appeared two little 
 books by her, "Bertha Funcke" and 
 "Alice Brandt" ; books for psychological 
 gourmands to whom incompleteness, half- 
 concealment and unconscious betrayal are 
 more interesting than finished form and 
 ripe, displayed contents. They were in 
 the highest degree the books of an 
 inexperienced young girl, ignorant of 
 the realities and standards of life ; but in 
 them were so many new and surprising 
 possibilities of knowledge of the woman 
 of the present, so many curious contradic- 
 tions, so much fastidious caprice, so much 
 real morbidity, so much unhealthy, super- 
 ficial life, all held in the sure, clever 
 grasp of a thin small hand trembling 
 with sympathy. It is herself whom one 
 sees in the perspective; the young girl 
 who took herself and the externals of her 
 mundane existence seriously, and another 
 young woman — herself again, as she 
 would have been after some years of 
 deeper impressions, real experiences and 
 favorable development; a bold yet shy 
 230 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 revealer of the trembling vibrations and 
 broken lines in that small group of women 
 who are pure examples of culture and 
 thorough creatures of luxury, and in 
 whom we have seen the civilization of 
 every period culminate and come to a 
 crisis. 
 
 It is no longer motherhood and the 
 exercise of the womanly mission, which 
 is desired by these women ; it is no longer 
 on this account that men seek them. 
 They offer an aesthetic pleasure like a 
 work of art, and please the soul like 
 music; they are charming and useless, 
 like a shepherdess of Sbvres porcelain or a 
 piece of artistic glass-work, — but for such 
 the connoisseur gives tens of thousands. 
 Why? Because they arouse certain 
 delicate and subtle sensations which it is 
 a pleasure to feel, a peculiar kind of 
 elevation and satisfaction. Such a 
 feminine creature, gifted besides with a 
 subtle, critical, psychological predisposi- 
 tion to self-observation, a spy upon 
 woman-nature in herself and others, of 
 perfect cultivation and entire mental 
 freedom, full of tact, timid and yet 
 chattering confidentially with quiet 
 pleasure, — such an one could have made 
 231 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 some little disclosures of high and lasting 
 value to the knowledge of woman as a 
 flower of culture. 
 
 She did not make them. Upon her 
 courageous though somewhat awkward 
 attempt to do so in "Pyrrhus Conquests," 
 she was simply trampled and thundered 
 down by the apostles of morality, by 
 woman's rights advocates with and with- 
 out petticoats, and by the intelligent 
 citizenship of her home; and no one 
 came to her aid. Literature ought to 
 be useful, they said, and no one could 
 call such as this useful ; it was injurious 
 really. How, for instance, can any one 
 describe how a young girl in her love 
 reveries saw not the man of her desire, or 
 at least not his face before her eyes, but 
 his neck? A face is always something 
 soulful, or at least could be so, — but a 
 neck! That this neck was but a very 
 simple picture of memory imprinted 
 upon the eye by a striking light or some 
 accident, and retained by the brain with- 
 out the action of the will, — a psycholog- 
 ical process especially frequent in 
 women because of their susceptibility, 
 and hence often the starting point of 
 love, — could not be admitted into the 
 232 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 highly advanced atmosphere of northern 
 literature. 
 
 A peculiar feminine talent, — morbid and 
 infirm in itself, — was broken. As the 
 woman of thirty came before the public 
 again, she had become retrospective. 
 Her perceptive faculties, which life had 
 not nourished nor unfolded, had sought 
 stimulus and distraction in memoirs of a 
 dazzling period, and grown into a vision- 
 ary, girlish worship of the great, — and 
 towards women very brutal, — Napoleon. 
 Weakness seeks the protection of the 
 strong, if only in fancy, and she fabri- 
 cated in the midst of her descriptions of 
 costumes and details of the time of the 
 First Consul, the figure of an enthusiastic 
 young girl who loved Napoleon and was 
 wrecked by her love of him. This 
 readable book was accepted with great 
 satisfaction, and Mathilde Mailing wrote 
 on industriously, every year a new histor- 
 ical — quite historical — romance, based 
 upon good authorities, about famous his- 
 torical personages. 
 
 But there is no longer a Stella Kleve 
 with the promise and realizing power of 
 her girlhood. 
 
 Or does she still exist, quite hidden and 
 233 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 overlain, like a mountain spring, in the 
 comer of Mathilde Mailing's soul? Noth- 
 ing is more tenacious than these small, 
 slender, pliant women with ineffaceable 
 yearning written in the small counte- 
 nances, on which the years leave no mark. 
 In a little "Boot and Shoe Study, from 
 the Mus^e de Cluny," the Stella Kleve of 
 yore seemed to me to stand again before 
 the wall along which so many women are 
 groping, and to seek the door. The door 
 was there, but she lacked the latch with 
 which to open it. Some day, however, if 
 the seeker came again, the door might 
 perhaps stand wide. 
 
 FINDER? 
 
 Among the women whose names have 
 become famous, there are probably few 
 who have devoted themselves to the lead- 
 ing ideas of our times, with such intensity 
 and self-abnegation as Annie Besant. 
 Her name is known all over the world ; 
 admiration and condemnation have been 
 constantly disputing about her. She has 
 captivated and moved masses as has no 
 other woman, not even Louise Michel, with 
 234 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 whom she has, in external position and in 
 some sides of her temperament, many 
 points in common. Both, in their entrance 
 upon public life, had a common starting 
 point, — ^the conviction which they ham- 
 mered into their hearers with the greatest 
 vehemence and which Louise Michel con- 
 densed into the short and pithy phrase: 
 "Le hon Dieu n'existe pas!" Both were 
 bom speakers full of magnetism, speaking 
 not only with the tongue, but with the 
 whole being. 
 
 Louise Michel, meager, wasted, beg- 
 garly poor, with the face and body of a 
 resuscitated corpse and the dry, complain- 
 ing voice of endless disappointment, a fa- 
 natic, consumed from within, an eternal 
 maiden of the pronounced type of the poor 
 and ashamed old maid, was yet no woman 
 in the attributes of woman. Annie Besant, 
 a lady from the best social class, of an 
 old, honored race, young at the time when 
 Louise Michel, already broken down, 
 returned from deportation, a wife and 
 mother, pretty and attractive, with some- 
 thing the manner of an awakened child 
 all her life long, a woman in everything 
 and nothing but woman, and all the more 
 a woman where she overpassed all the 
 235 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 boundaries, external or internal, pre- 
 scribed for women. 
 
 In the women of our day no moral 
 characteristic is so marked as their 
 cowardice. They do not dare to deviate. 
 In this they follow a masculine example. 
 Neither does man dare to deviate. No 
 one dares any more to have an opinion of 
 his own. The sole opinion is a collective 
 one ; there must first be a number, before 
 it is spoken aloud. This is a clear indica- 
 tion of a general democratizing, — a proc- 
 ess just in its beginning and conditional 
 and based upon a reaction against inter- 
 national capital, which even now has at 
 its disposal all military and legislative 
 means of defense. No one can stand by 
 himself any longer. It is even questioned 
 whether anybody ever did ; whether that 
 was not one of the Protestant, free-think- 
 ing fictions, in which the well-known and 
 already mentioned artifice of Munchausen 
 was performed. 
 
 To be sure, our classic Lessing says: 
 "No one must be compelled," but he also 
 teaches very logically that there is only 
 one possibility of escaping the compulsion 
 — suicide. I have never been able to 
 understand how that can be called an 
 236 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 escape. An act of desperation is no 
 escape. Self-destruction is no escape. 
 The only thing which could be called a 
 way of escape would be to give the ego 
 more life, not to destroy it. 
 
 But that mode of escape is not for the 
 individual ego in our day. An opinion 
 contradictory to the general opinion never 
 reaches the public. The printing and 
 disseminating of unwelcome opinions is 
 hedged in by thousands of censors, 
 amongst whom the State Censor plays a 
 very modest role. In the first place a 
 disagreeable opinion finds no publisher; 
 if the author has the means to print it at 
 his own expense, the book finds no 
 reviewers, the article no acceptance, or 
 if both these obstacles are fortunately 
 passed, the inconvenient person runs the 
 risk of being undermined in his social 
 position, starved out in his business life, 
 or ruined by process of law. Our whole 
 mental life at present bears this brand in 
 every land; above all, of course, litera- 
 ture, because it has most directly the 
 quality of magnetism. Does the public 
 believe that the weak, submissive produc- 
 tions of the highly-praised popular writers 
 are expressions of the general frame of 
 237 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 mind, or even of the general enervation? 
 Or that they are even an expression of 
 the weak, desultory characters of those 
 who produce them? Not at all ; they are 
 merely an expression of the race and will 
 of the money-bags who wish to rule on 
 undisturbed and like to enjoy a sweet 
 perfume in their nostrils. Of course it 
 goes without saying that the fullest 
 expression of these armies is — the theater. 
 
 The first thing any one does who feels 
 himself blessed with an idea is to seek 
 connection with others, to found a group, 
 a Society, or Union. That is very well 
 for the bearer of the idea, but very bad 
 for the idea. For this reason, most of the 
 ideas of our day are as flat and common- 
 place as so much worn small coin ; because 
 from their very origin they are fingered, 
 handled and popularized. 
 
 And thus we see everywhere, instead 
 of the individual whose appearance would 
 be so forceful and productive, the Society 
 with its speakers, male and female. Such 
 Society and Union speakers of the first 
 rank were Annie Besant and the great 
 agitator, Louise Michel. I have heard the 
 latter speak and have seldom encountered 
 anything so trivial; I have read some of 
 238 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 Annie Besant's speeches and hardly know 
 anything more inflated, doctrinary and 
 pathetic. 
 
 Pathos is a prevailing form of expres- 
 sion in this departing century. Things 
 which if said in natural language would 
 at once reveal their defects to people of 
 healthy common sense, to say nothing 
 of deeper minds, are rendered holy, 
 exalted and sublime by pathos. Pathos 
 for the general, sentimentality for the 
 personal, affairs of life, — this is what the 
 leading lights of art, literature and 
 popular science have administered to us 
 tmanimously and for centuries. What 
 wonder then that the individual is 
 cowardly and uncertain and the public 
 speaker pathetic and sentimental? 
 
 Pathetic and sentimental was Annie 
 Besant also, but she never had the cow- 
 ardice of grown people; she preserved 
 always the impulsive — one might say the 
 thoughtless — courage of a child whom the 
 world has not yet touched, and also a 
 child's credulity and need of faith. 
 
 That which distinguished her radically 
 
 from Louise Michel, and might occasion 
 
 much criticism and the rejection of my 
 
 comparison of the two, is that she never 
 
 239 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 preached murder and arson, insurrection 
 and riot. That she might as easily have 
 done so, with her imitative nature, as to 
 proclaim unweariedly for thirteen years : 
 "Le bon Dieu n'existe pas!" is beyond a 
 psychological doubt. The men who 
 became Annie Besant's leaders were 
 not practical revolutionists, they were 
 theoretic insurgents; not men of deeds 
 but men of instructive and converting 
 words, — Protestants and preachers. That 
 which among the Romance races engen- 
 ders outbreaks of wild action, leads in 
 Germanic nations only to a wild exercise 
 of speech. They are much more civilized. 
 If we follow Annie Besant's life we shall 
 see that with her, in contrast to the other 
 seekers described in this book, every- 
 thing she took hold of succeeded. She 
 was not only a seeker; she was also a 
 finder. She had the gift of finding, 
 wherever she sought. Many will deem 
 this a merit and the mark of a healthy 
 talent, and will consequently rank her 
 above the other women described in 
 mind and individuality. I should not be 
 willing to do this. It is true all the 
 others essentially failed ; they found noth- 
 ing, achieved nothing. But is not that 
 240 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 rather a merit? Did they perhaps find 
 nothing because there was nothing to 
 find; achieve nothing because there was 
 nothing to achieve? Was it not possibly 
 precisely the more highly individualized 
 spiritual life, the more original nature in 
 them, which kept them from succeeding? 
 They struggled and suffered as differ- 
 entiated women, and if this or that in 
 them became disjointed and perverse 
 therefore, they were still perversions of 
 their woman-nature, of their personal 
 character which were revealed. 
 
 In Annie Besant we cannot discover 
 the personal, individual woman nature; 
 she is wholly a type. She is the typical 
 woman of culture and cultured tendencies 
 of the latter half of this century; — the 
 woman lacking her own standards of 
 weight and measure, lacking the feminine 
 quality of intuitive, sharp, discriminating 
 criticism, lacking the strong, imperative 
 sympathies and antipathies of woman. 
 She is the woman with the unconquer- 
 able passion for reading, capable of 
 reading and appropriating everything, 
 theology and social science, botany and 
 algebra, atheism and theosophy, politics 
 and devotional literature. She has 
 241 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 studied everything, comprehended every- 
 thing, talked and written about every- 
 thing. She is the prototype of the 
 intellectual woman with the "quick under- 
 standing" and "open" — ah, only too open 
 — mind. The impersonality of the cul- 
 tivated woman of the last decades is 
 exhibited to us in her to a remarkable 
 degree. She is a reflection of the mas- 
 culine, consummate, scientific feeling 
 towards the mental and social problems 
 of that period. Everything knowable is 
 known; everything comprehensible is 
 comprehended; the human relations can 
 be ordered and solved easily and clearly 
 through political — ^parliamentary discus- 
 sions, meetings, popular lectures and so 
 on. There is much rhetorical "fire," 
 little warmth and no depth whatever in 
 this conception. There is also little 
 modesty in it. 
 
 Annie Besant sought the truth all her 
 life, found the truth, proclaimed it, found 
 the still truer truth and proclaimed that, 
 and was always equally hopeful. 
 
 At that time when the "Truth" was 
 
 established in every tea-circle, and was as 
 
 fine and strengthening to the palate as a 
 
 glass of port wine with apple cake, and 
 
 242 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 when the dogmatists and theorists, David 
 Strauss and Kuno Fischer, plus Emerson 
 and Hausrath, replaced the upright but 
 antiquated Luther with his "Word" 
 which they "must let stand," Annie 
 Besant also relished her new-found truth 
 as scrupulously as a wine-glass of "half 
 and half" in the morning. 
 
 II 
 
 Born in London on the first of October, 
 1847, Annie Besant, in her autobiography, 
 first of all acquaints us with her horo- 
 scope, whose signs and numbers are, to 
 my ignorance, incomprehensible. Proud 
 of her Irish blood on the mother's side, 
 and descended on the father's from a line 
 of English country gentlemen, she united 
 visibly the quick excitability of the Irish 
 with the unapproachable willfulness and 
 obstinacy of the Anglo-Saxon, — at present 
 directed to external things. 
 
 The early-widowed mother, left in 
 straitened circumstances, reared her 
 only daughter in a sentimental fashion 
 fatal to all reality, which was then 
 characteristic of the mothers in all 
 classes pretending to culture. A rich old 
 243 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 maid undertook the intellectual and 
 spiritual training of the little Annie, in 
 strict Anglican sense, together with the 
 two children of another clergyman. 
 When the young girl was dismissed, after 
 some educational tours in Germany and 
 France, as prepared for life, she had no 
 idea of the cost of a pair of gloves or of 
 the way of basting a collar on a dress, to 
 say nothing of the mysteries of the kitchen 
 and house-keeping. On the other hand, she 
 had dabbled in abstract theology, and sat 
 in the trees declaiming Milton's "Paradise 
 Lost," was pretty and captivating at 
 balls, and rode and walked with young 
 men with English freedom. 
 
 The unexpected consequence of all this 
 was that the Reverend Frank Besant, for 
 whom she had decorated the church dur- 
 ing his mission sermons, paid her his 
 addresses. Miss Annie was filled with 
 consternation. "My sensitive pride, to- 
 gether with my strict views, found in this 
 an intimation that I had flirted; I hung 
 back, and instead of following my first im- 
 pulse to say no, I took refuge in silence." 
 The young clergyman begged her to 
 preserve this sweet silence till he should 
 have opportunity to speak with her 
 244 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 mother; and now followed "the first un- 
 happy days of my life, for I had a secret 
 from my mother ; a secret which I passion- 
 ately longed to disclose to her, but dared 
 not, for fear of doing something dishonor- 
 able. " Then as her suitor again ap- 
 peared and Miss Annie "out of pure 
 weakness" still did not say no, her 
 "reluctance to the thought of marriage 
 faded" in the idea of "becoming a clergy- 
 man's wife and working always in the 
 church and among the poor." "I longed 
 for work," she continues, "I yearned to 
 devote myself — as I had read women 
 saints had done — to the service of the 
 church and the poor, and to the battling 
 against sin and misery." 
 
 But as Miss Annie, at the age of twenty, 
 and after almost two years of engage- 
 ment, became the wife of the Reverend 
 Frank Besant, or to quote her own words 
 — "sailed out of the safe harbor of her 
 peaceful and happy girlhood upon the 
 wide sea of life, ' ' the first thing she did 
 upon this waving foundation was to seat 
 herself — and write. She composed little 
 tales and religious stories, got them 
 accepted in family papers and felt "an 
 intense delight at her first fee of thirty 
 =;3 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 shillings. ' ' She ' ' fell upon her knees and 
 thanked God;" and a "wonderful feeling 
 of independence" also came over her. 
 "I did not yet know that everything a 
 married woman earned belonged to her 
 husband according to the law." She 
 further informs us: "This odious law 
 has lately been changed, and a married 
 woman is now a person, not a chattel." 
 
 From the very beginning it was the 
 unhappy marriage of a gifted woman. 
 The Reverend Frank Besant "had high 
 ideas of the authority of the husband. 
 He thought of all the details of the 
 household, was punctual, methodical, 
 easy to anger and hard to conciliate." 
 Mrs. Besant, on the other hand, was 
 "accustomed to freedom, indifferent to 
 domestic affairs, impulsive, very fiery, 
 and proud as Lucifer." In addition 
 there was another very difficult point. 
 Mrs. Besan; not only "had no idea of the 
 management of a household and the 
 economical use of money;" not only did 
 she "accomplish as quickly as possible 
 ■what there was to do, in order to get back 
 to the beloved books again," but she 
 moreover had no conception of the nature 
 of the marriage bond, and was "given 
 246 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 over defenseless to a fearful awakening." 
 She reproaches her mother strongly, not 
 because she had handed her over to the 
 son-in-law after a two years' engagement, 
 utterly ignorant and incapable of house- 
 wifely duties, a dowerless girl, — but 
 because she had been sent out of the 
 paradise of mother-love "perfectly inno- 
 cent, without knowledge of good or bad. ' ' 
 
 "For," she continues, "many an un- 
 happy marriage dates from that fearful 
 blow which the pride and sensitive mod- 
 esty of the young girl undergoes, and 
 from her helpless bewilderment and 
 fear." Annie Besant's allusions reveal 
 a wholly physiological ground. She 
 relates that her entire childhood and 
 youth were passed in reading, and for 
 that matter her whole life was spent in 
 the unceasing exchange of what she 
 read into spoken and written language. 
 This had produced a constant concentra- 
 tion of blood in the young brain, or 
 cerebral congestion, and — "Hot head, 
 cold senses!" 
 
 In the years following came two chil- 
 dren, both births accompanied with long 
 illness. The second child was delicate, 
 and during the first months in daily dan- 
 247 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 ger of suffocating from the paroxysms of 
 whooping-cough. As soon as the child, 
 under her careful nursing, recovered, 
 Mrs. Besant fell into a frenzy of religious 
 doubt. The matrimonial discord also 
 reached a crisis and Mr. Besant vainly 
 brought an ecclesiastical friend into the 
 house, to assist his wife. This man, to 
 judge from one of his letters, possessed 
 a deep, refined, and mature personality, 
 warm hearted and full of understanding; 
 but between this cultured mind, uniting 
 the best theological dialectics with a 
 mystic nature, and the much-read Mrs. 
 Besant, who interpreted everj^hing 
 spiritual with a fearful literalness, there 
 was too deep a division. The young wife 
 and mother immersed herself completely 
 in "theological inquiries," and these soon 
 led to weeks of racking headaches, in- 
 ability to sleep, inability to bear the light 
 of day, and utter exhaustion. 
 
 The subjects of her spiritual misery 
 and violent doubt were the following: i, 
 "the eternal punishments of hell;" 2, 
 the meaning of the words, God's "Good- 
 ness" and "Love," since He had made 
 the world with all its misery and sin ; 3, 
 the nature of Christ's Sacrificial Atone- 
 248 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 ment, and the "Justice" of God in per- 
 mitting a substituted suffering and a 
 conciliation by proxy ; 4, the meaning of 
 "Inspiration," as applied to the Bible, 
 and the perfection of the Creator in con- 
 trast to the mistakes and immorality of 
 His works. 
 
 As I write down these vexatious theo- 
 logical questions which robbed Mrs. 
 Besant of her sleep, her vigor of sight, 
 and the consciousness of her housewifely 
 and motherly duties, the question of her 
 "intellectual power" arises. Mrs. Besant 
 has all her life held herself as a woman 
 highly gifted in powers of thought and 
 judgment, basing upon this her qualifica- 
 tion for her long, public life. She has 
 always possessed the wholly feminine capa- 
 city of assimilating the most varied and 
 incompatible mental food without disturb- 
 ance or indigestion, and of giving it forth 
 with a certain accuracy; her brain was 
 like a photographic plate upon which the 
 exposed picture is clearly and mechanic- 
 ally printed. These characteristics, the 
 quick perception and exact repetition, are 
 frequently praised by professors who 
 examine feminine students, and many 
 have declared that in eagerness for 
 249 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 knowledge and ability to acquire it, 
 women excel men. It is undeniable that 
 in these characteristics they excel most 
 men ; it would be a pity if most men ex- 
 celled them, for these characteristics rest 
 upon the lesser power and capacity for 
 original thought, independent selection, 
 and deeper affinity to the appropriated 
 idea; they depend upon a mechanical 
 instead of an organic process. 
 
 It is difficult to believe that theological 
 problems like the above could so turn a 
 woman's head in 1873; in 1673 it were 
 more comprehensible. For between the 
 two centuries runs a line of development 
 which from Calvinistic- Lutheran polem- 
 ics has led to an historical and mythical 
 conception of doctrinal theology; and for 
 the sensitive woman it is never the ques- 
 tion whether the head, but whether the 
 heart, doubts the inherited faith. After 
 months of speculative controversy be- 
 tween herself and several distinguished 
 theologians, Mrs. Besant decided "to test 
 once more, carefully, all the grounds for 
 and against the divinity of Christ," with 
 the result that she declared herself no 
 longer a member of the church, and 
 unable to partake of the Lord's Supper 
 250 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 which her husband administered. As a 
 brave and self-respecting woman she 
 translated this into action and solemnly 
 marched out of the church during the 
 celebration of the next Communion, in 
 the face of the uncomprehending con- 
 gregation, who thought nothing but that 
 the young wife was seized with a sudden 
 illness. 
 
 These hard months of doubt had, how- 
 ever, brought her one comfort; she "be- 
 came acquainted with a feeling of power 
 and rapture, — but especially power — " 
 which formed later one of the deepest 
 joys of her life; for the first time she 
 heard her own voice in oratory. 
 
 Mrs. Besant, who had married a min- 
 ister "because no earthly monarch can 
 bestow so high a title as is the patent of 
 nobility from the hand of the King of 
 Kings," . . . "a consecration which seems 
 also to include his wife," — Mrs. Besant 
 was one day tempted "to know how one 
 feels when one preaches." She went into 
 the empty church, mounted the pulpit, 
 and preached in the echoing, vacant room 
 a sermon on the "Inspiration of the 
 Bible." As she heard her voice resound- 
 ing in rhythmic cadences through the nave, 
 
 251 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 "only one thing was lacking, — the church 
 full of upturned faces, filled with listen- 
 ing, heart-beating sympathy. " " For now 
 I knew," she continues, "that the gift of 
 melodic expression would win hearers for 
 every message I should bring." 
 
 Soon followed the catastrophe. She 
 was told she must conform to "the 
 external forms of the Church or leave the 
 house." 
 
 "Against harshness I am as inflexible 
 as steel," she tells us rhetorically, "but 
 it was hard to remain firm when my dear 
 mother, whom I loved as I loved nothing 
 else on earth, threw herself on her knees 
 before me and begged me to yield. . . . But 
 — ^live a lie? Even for her, this ignominy 
 was impossible to me; in this fearful 
 crisis of blinding, deadly torture, my will 
 clung fast to the Truth. Besides this the 
 children were to be considered, — the two 
 little ones who adored me. ' ' 
 
 When all was arranged, she had a small 
 annual income and her little girl. Her 
 mother died in the following months. 
 Some difficulties arose because she wished 
 to take the sacrament with her daughter, 
 and the daughter would only take it with 
 the conscientious proviso that she did not 
 252 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 believe in it. Upon receiving this declara- 
 tion several ministers refused under these 
 circumstances to administer it ; at last the 
 Dean of Westminster, to whom she finally 
 applied, consented. 
 
 She now studied more industriously 
 than ever, wrote treatises on "The 
 Nature and Existence of God," and the 
 like, and associated with free preachers. 
 These drew her attention to the Free- 
 Thought Society, whose leading speaker 
 was Mr. Bradlaugh, and from the first 
 time of her hearing him they at once 
 formed an alliance and led, inseparable 
 and united, the battle for atheism and 
 the extension of political rights, — at that 
 time the struggle of the so-called Radicals 
 in all countries. 
 
 Ill 
 
 "If the Roman Catholic Church had 
 won me, — which almost happened, — it 
 would have sent me on missions full of 
 danger and self-sacrifices and used me as 
 a martyr ; the Established Church turned 
 me into an unbeliever and opponent," 
 says Annie Besant of herself. And in 
 another place : "So far as I can look back 
 in my life it was ruled by this longing 
 253 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 towards sacrifice for something greater 
 than myself. " 
 
 This something greater than herself, 
 this leading power which subordinates 
 the woman, Annie Besant found in 
 Charles Bradlaugh. One cannot say that 
 he was a master mind, — this member 
 from Northampton, and editor of the 
 atheistic and militant "National Re- 
 former," who fought twelve years for his 
 seat in the Lower House under vehement 
 persecution and won at last, a victor but 
 broken in health and ruined by lawsuits. 
 But he was a man. An athlete in growth 
 and energy, a bull-dog in tenacity, and 
 stubbornness, of an unexpansive, unre- 
 fined, sincere nature, he possessed in 
 highest degree that physical quality which 
 affects the masses, and women above all ; 
 he diffused about him the feeling of 
 security. When one traverses a lonely 
 wood in the dark, one feels safe with a 
 true, strong and not too aged St. Bernard 
 dog at his side ; and one feels the same 
 sense of comfort and reliance when with 
 every glance at the man who is one's 
 companion, the strength and capacity of 
 his muscles and his bodily agility are per- 
 ceived. But let this man possess the 
 
 254 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 greatest physical beauty, the utmost 
 delicacy of feeling, the rarest mental 
 qualities, and lack that bear-like physical 
 force, — one would rather have a farm- 
 hand for a companion and, for the 
 moment, would feel more warmly to- 
 wards him. This undiverted instinct of 
 women and of the masses serves only the 
 strong, i. e., the protector; and in this 
 instinctive feeling of safety, both are 
 capable of the greatest self-sacrifice. 
 
 Mrs. Besant in her religious fervor felt 
 in no way called to take upon herself the 
 martyrdom of married life with an ordi- 
 nary man like the Reverend Frank Besant. 
 It is even a question if she would ever 
 have fallen away from the Church whose 
 servant he was, if she had not despised the 
 Reverend Frank Besant. She had wished 
 to espouse the Church in him, — ^perhaps 
 because she felt at once the impossibility 
 of subordinating herself to him as man, 
 and instinctively spread about him the veil 
 of mysticism ; and as the intimate meas- 
 uring of forces took place, which enters 
 into every marriage, his personal inferior- 
 ity was translated for her into an inferi- 
 ority of the authority of the Church. 
 Her desertion to atheism was only a 
 255 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 change of front, not of nature. As free- 
 thinker, she was only a fanatical, literal 
 believer, — not a free mind. She entered 
 into the profundities of free thought just 
 as little as she had entered into the 
 depths of the Christian symbolism ; other- 
 wise she would have found the under- 
 ground passage which leads from the one 
 to the other. This would have been 
 hardly possible. I know no woman who 
 has shown a capacity for pure knowl- 
 edge, by which I do not mean to say 
 that I have not known dozens in pub- 
 lic and private life who affirm them- 
 selves possessors of this gift in high 
 degree. 
 
 There now followed for Annie Besant 
 thirteen years of "political life. " Pretty, 
 young, gifted with a melodious flow of 
 speech, reveling like an actress in the 
 personal enjoyment of public appear- 
 ances, stimulated by the ecstatic feeling 
 of a martyr, she was a wonderful instru- 
 ment in the hands of an aspiring party 
 leader, who trained her skilfully to the 
 work of agitation, and could shift upon 
 her a large part of his labors as agitator 
 and editor, certain of a worshiping assent 
 in everything, such as no masculine fel- 
 256 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 low-worker could have given in equal 
 degree. 
 
 Annie Besant was divorced from her 
 husband, and Bradlaugh separated from 
 his wife, who had become insane through 
 the effect of intemperance. A marriage 
 between them was, under English law, 
 impossible; a free relation excluded by 
 their public position. Mr. Bradlaugh, a 
 vehement opponent of free love, sub- 
 scribed to the strictest moral views. 
 Materialistic atheism, the last link in the 
 change of thought starting in the Ref- 
 ormation, was as a matter of course 
 puritanic in England, just as it was 
 "ethic" in Germany. Ethics had to wield 
 the fallen rod of religion ; atheism must 
 prove its trustworthiness and its raison 
 d'etre in increased moral demands. The 
 difficult situation of these two, inseparable 
 yet dwelling separately, was at once 
 increased and diminished by the fact that 
 both were ardent Malthusians, pro- 
 claimers and defenders of the limitation 
 of the number of children. 
 
 It is idle and concerns us not to examine 
 more closely the intimacy of Mr. Brad- 
 laugh and Mrs. Besant. She herself tells 
 us that from a weak, sickly woman, 
 257 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 inclining to consumption, she developed 
 in the course of thirteen years, through 
 the constant exercise of speaking and the 
 free unfolding of her mind, into a woman 
 beaming with health. The two portraits 
 in her autobiography tell us the same 
 thing. The one shows her as a young, 
 thin, clergyman's wife at the age of 
 twenty-two, with feverish face, almost 
 staring gaze, and a capricious smile on 
 the lips. In the second, taken in her 
 thirtieth year, we see a comfortable, 
 rounded woman, elegantly dressed, the 
 apparently short hair arranged in careful 
 ringlets framing the smooth forehead, the 
 pretty hands in graceful positions, an 
 open pearl-edged Stuart collar as foil for 
 the round-cheeked pretty countenance 
 with the great too-wide-open gaze of a 
 child and an actress ; and about the small 
 full mouth, from the nose downwards, 
 that tell-tale expression which the smooth- 
 shaven faces of actors and lecturers wear, 
 caused by the constant straining of the 
 mouth in order to be heard by great 
 masses, a feature strange in a woman's 
 face and producing an eJBEect of boldness, 
 — a boldness not feminine. And we find 
 the pendant and prototype of this expres- 
 258 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 sion of face in Mr. Bradlaugh's defiant 
 and self-assured, smiling, people's tribune 
 and declamatory countenance; a counte- 
 nance such as this century of "political 
 duties upon the speaker's platform" 
 creates in all countries by dozens; the 
 sophistic countenance of the ever-ready 
 virtuoso of debate, the man trained for 
 external effect in the art of mental boxing 
 within a strictly limited range of vision. 
 
 And therefore it is of no consequence 
 to us whether Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. 
 Besant associated together platonically or 
 otherwise ; for the sexual life only comes 
 into consideration when it effects, at the 
 same time with the physical satisfaction, 
 a deliverance of the soul, a warming and 
 expansion of the personalities. Where 
 this is excluded or wholly' secondary, 
 the rest remains, for the psychological 
 student, indifferent. And indifferent so 
 far as the value of these two in question 
 is concerned, it probably was. 
 
 Mrs. Besant now swam for years in the 
 full stream of the agitator's life. The 
 whole field of England was mown by 
 atheistic-political lectures, of which she 
 frequently gave three in a day. Often there 
 was throwing of stones ; oftener frenzied 
 259 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 applause from rude laborers' hands. She 
 was, moreover, an extremely skilful 
 writer of effective pamphlets and declama- 
 tory-pathetic articles in the taste of the 
 seventies and eighties, her pen flying no 
 less swiftly than her tongue. She pushed 
 her studies eagerly and always; Haeckel 
 and Buchner, Stuart Mill and Spencer, Dar- 
 win, Lubbock, Buckle, Lecky and many 
 others were devoured and parceled out. 
 In Mr. Bradlaugh's political campaigns 
 and battles for entrance into the Lower 
 House of Parliament, she was always 
 active, and in street processions and riots 
 she often directed the masses unperturbed. 
 Meanwhile arose many legal processes, 
 including that against the distribution of 
 Malthusian literature, which led to the 
 taking away of her child by her husband ; 
 a process during which Judge Jessel, a 
 Jew, tried to render service to English 
 orthodoxy by insolence to a woman; 
 the only instance in all her numberless 
 dealings with the law — in which she 
 always conducted her own defense — 
 wherein she complains of the ill-will of an 
 English judge, apparently also the only 
 instance of the English judge being of 
 foreign race and origin. 
 z6o 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 The year 1883 brought to Mr. 
 Bradlaugh, the first atheist in an English 
 parliament, complete victory at last and 
 the public sympathy. Elected for the 
 fourth time from Northampton, in the 
 beginning of the next year he took uncon- 
 tested his seat in the House of Commons 
 which had been denied him for six years ; 
 and with this his contribution to the work 
 of culture was at an end. The time for 
 theoretical political Radicalism, which 
 played everywhere in politics and intel- 
 lectual life the same short and insufficient 
 role, was at an end. Socialism came in. 
 "Social reforms are more needed than 
 mere political reforms," wrote Mrs. 
 Besant in the same year ; and even before 
 Mr. Bradlaugh had quite won, she went 
 over to the Socialists. Her leader and 
 friend could neither imitate her nor for- 
 give her. The moment of her desertion 
 is characteristic. As he had once won her 
 by his eloquence, so now, ten years later, 
 he had lost her by it. Mr. Bradlaugh 
 was in the trend of all his theories based 
 upon the ground of the Law's authority, 
 a half patron and whole enemy of Social- 
 ism. In a debate between Bradlaugh and 
 Hyndham in St. James's Hall in Lon- 
 261 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 don, in the spring of 1884, the insufficient 
 insight and class limitation of the old 
 advocate became suddenl)' transparent to 
 her. Hyndham defeated Bradlaugh; he 
 brought Mrs. Besant a "new and deeper 
 knowledge," whereas the knowledge of 
 her master had for some time appeared 
 to her neither new nor deep nor in- 
 spiring. 
 
 Mrs. Besant's "battle-comradeship" 
 with Mr. Bradlaugh had begun in ecstasy 
 and ended in tedium. 
 
 And now see the woman again mani- 
 fested, the woman with her natural im- 
 pulses, curiosity, compassion and change- 
 ableness, which no external fetters can 
 hold in check. 
 
 The only thing into which Mrs. Besant 
 had gone with her whole heart was the 
 sexual question of Malthusianism ; for 
 the agitation and dissemination of the 
 knowledge of the way of preventing con- 
 jugal over-production, she unhesitatingly 
 risked her reputation, social position and 
 the possession of her dearly-loved little 
 girl. In the last and deepest depths the 
 woman grows really strenuous only for 
 sexual and religious matters, — that is, for 
 the satisfaction and goal of her life, 
 262 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 The sexual life concerns the woman 
 more nearly, more deeply, and more 
 lastingly than the man. Therefore in the 
 period of dissolution and over-reaching 
 such as the last century forms, the sexual 
 life in woman was suppressed and threat- 
 ened at its roots. For the woman is only 
 dangerous, fearful and irresistible in one 
 point, from which it was therefore above 
 all necessary to divert her, — in her mother- 
 hood, in her ill-treated, defrauded, sacri- 
 ficed life, and in the ill-treated, defrauded 
 and robbed life of her children. Why 
 has she borne children, — and she will bear 
 them, — if shfe must see them, her own best 
 flesh and blood, the religious purpose of 
 her life, — stunted, drained, degenerated? 
 She cannot endure this ; she must revolt 
 against it, if she becomes conscious of 
 herself, of her woman-nature in its whole- 
 ness. The delicate woman who battles 
 for her young inflames man too to the 
 utmost. Hence it was necessary to treat 
 sexual life as brutish or trivial, preg- 
 nancy as a shame, and the illegitimate 
 child as a disgrace. 
 
 Annie Besant had little of the woman 
 in her, the little which the higher educa- 
 tion and finer culture of this century 
 263 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 leaves generally in plastic young girls. 
 She had passed her youth in much read- 
 ing and had given up her two children to 
 purchase an imaginary freedom, in an age 
 when every form of "mental freedom" 
 is only another form of mental servitude. 
 But in one point her instinct was not 
 false; in her compassion for flesh and 
 blood. She had seen in Malthusianism 
 the only possibility for the working 
 woman and the poor woman to maintain 
 her motherhood and the care of her chil- 
 dren; and we must here take into con- 
 sideration the incredible fruitlessness of 
 the English pauper marriages, and the 
 bestial side of it, comprised in the 
 degeneration of the proletarian. Cer- 
 tainly she could not know that what she 
 recommended to the poor as an extremest 
 means of help would be commended some 
 years later by an orthodox paper to the 
 families of the rich and thereupon indus- 
 triously practiced in the circles of culture 
 and wealth. 
 
 So long as she stood in the thick of the 
 battle near Mr. Bradlaugh, she could 
 neither look to the right nor left, neither 
 feel nor think; but the struggle had 
 hardly begun to abate when she felt a 
 264 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 void, — the weariness of relaxed tension 
 first of all. She tried at once to escape 
 it by the way nearest at hand, according 
 to the program of the Radicals, — the way 
 of feminine scholarship. She also hoped 
 to overcome the yearning for her little 
 daughter who had been taken away from 
 her, by leaving no moment in her life in 
 which the feelings and emotions of woman 
 and mother could break forth. Training 
 can do everything, — ^it can even convert a 
 woman into an organic machine. And 
 training was and is the watchword of the 
 prevailing spirit. She matriculated there- 
 fore in the London University, and found 
 a great relief in plunging into algebra, 
 geometry, physics and botany, though 
 already overburdened by mental, if un- 
 productive, work. She passed her ex- 
 amination, took her degree, and taught, 
 together with Bradlaugh's daughter, 
 Hypatia, in eight different branches in 
 Dr. Aveling's Free-Thought Classes, 
 from 1879 to 1888. The connection be- 
 tween emotional and mental life seems to 
 have been broken ; she was now, accord- 
 ing to the new teaching, a human being, 
 not merely a woman. 
 Then Socialism with its practical 
 26s 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 demands appeared, and straightway there 
 arose in the woman the need of practical 
 activity. From her childhood, she had 
 felt the poverty of the despoiled country 
 population, the need of the starving prol- 
 etarian family, as if in her own bowels. 
 But the spirit of the times went out upon 
 the barren heath of political and philo- 
 sophical theories and she followed on with 
 the masses. 
 
 The self-satisfied Radicalism of Brad- 
 laugh was showered with derision by the 
 Socialists. She perceived that her ad- 
 mired leader no longer understood the 
 times. She threw herself eagerly into 
 practical reforms. Compulsory education 
 had been introduced, but no one troubled 
 himself about the compulsory nourish- 
 ment of the children. She established 
 mid- day meals for the school children, 
 addressed the public for aid, and entered 
 into cooperation with the great {Socialist, 
 William Morris, who died but a short 
 time ago. She took up the cause of sew- 
 ing-women under the "sweating system" 
 in clothing branches when they "struck," 
 compelled a favorable issue of the strike 
 through her public speeches, instigated 
 Mr. Bradlaugh to interpellate Parliament, 
 266 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 assisted in founding the "Match-makers' 
 Union," and the largest Women's Trade 
 Union. Then came calls for help from 
 all quarters; from the tin-can workers, 
 the dock-workers, the chain-finishers, 
 etc. English socialism, directed entirely 
 towards the practical, tried everywhere 
 to bring about instant reforms and 
 immediate measures of relief. All were 
 mere palliatives. 
 
 In the middle of the hard winter of 
 1887, when the unemployed wandered in 
 quiet, starving, freezing masses, harassed 
 by the police and ridden down by the 
 militia, — there arose and grew in Mrs. 
 Besant the feeling: "Something more 
 than we possess is necessary to cure the 
 social ills." Together with Mr. Stead, 
 editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, she 
 pondered the thought of a "brotherhood 
 in human service." "The teaching of 
 the social duties, the handling of social 
 justice, the building up of the common 
 welfare, — these must belong to the 
 Church of the future." And she also 
 felt more and more strongly "that some- 
 thing must be sought in which the service 
 of men was only the means. ' ' 
 
 Two years later she knew the word for 
 267 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 which she sought, — "Whence to derive 
 the inspiration which shall lead to a real- 
 ization of a brotherhood of man? Our 
 exertions to organize a host of unselfish 
 workers were in vain. Much was done 
 (from the economic side), but a real move- 
 ment in which by self-sacrificing devotion 
 people worked for love's sake only, and 
 longed to give, not to take.^this it was 
 not." And she confesses: "Since 1886 
 I have gradually come to perceive that 
 my philosophy is insufficient; life and 
 thought are not what I dreamed. ' ' 
 
 And here — in the spring of 1889 — she 
 stood upon a wave which now, eight 
 years later, seems to be all-pervasive and 
 to comprehend the whole world of souls. 
 The long reveries such as she had known 
 in her youth in the warm spring evenings, 
 returned, and her soul melted in yearning 
 to find the unfindable. Some time later, 
 Mr. Stead gave her for review the copy 
 of the "Secret Doctrine," by Madame 
 Blavatsky, in two thick volumes. "I knew 
 now that seeking was at an end and the 
 Truth was found," she says after reading 
 the book. 
 
 She sought out Madame Blavatsky and 
 went from her an enthusiastic disciple. 
 268 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 It did not occur to her how similar this 
 was to that other occasion when she 
 became Bradlaugh's follower at the 
 moment when his eye rested upon her 
 and his voice spoke to her. The manner, 
 also, in which the two won her was pre- 
 cisely similar and sprang from the same 
 psychologically applied tactics. "Guard 
 yourself from becoming my disciple," 
 Bradlaugh had said to her in the first 
 private interview. "I am so hated by 
 English society that every one who tries to 
 be my friend must sorely atone for it. " 
 And Madame Blavatsky's first words 
 were: "Have you read the accusations 
 which the Society for Psychical Re- 
 search has brought against me?" — (a 
 demonstration of mediumistic fraud) — and 
 upon a negative reply : "Go home then 
 and read them. If you come back to me 
 then, — well and good!" 
 
 Mrs. Besant read the charges and went 
 at once to apply for membership in the 
 Theosophical Society, 
 
 The first thing which Madame Blavatsky 
 required of her was to renounce the teach- 
 ing of Malthusianism. Her grounds were 
 nearly the same as those of the Catholic 
 Church, although Buddhistically clothed. 
 869 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY O F WOMAN 
 
 In fact the Buddhistic Theosophy stands 
 nearest, perhaps, to the Catholic of all 
 the sects. One cannot therefore tell 
 when Mrs. Besant, now a woman of fifty 
 and the head of the English Theosophical 
 Society, will find finally and for the last 
 time the Truth. 
 
 She now renounced all that she had 
 hitherto taught, believed, proclaimed. 
 Her Malthusian pamphlets, which had 
 gained an enormous circulation, she now 
 withdrew, prohibiting further editions. 
 She withdrew from the editorship and 
 management of the free-thinking papers, 
 conducted with Mr. Bradlaugh. Hun- 
 dreds of friends and followers who had 
 stood firmly by her through hard years 
 now fell away. She was once more an 
 outcast. But this time it was not a 
 valiant man and the swelling of a new 
 wave of sexual life, even if only platonic- 
 ally, — that carried her away; it was an 
 old, sick, and personally very poor 
 woman, under suspicion of imposture, 
 to whom she went over. And the strug- 
 gle for existence was begun anew for 
 her. 
 
 She made a complete Theosophical 
 confession of faith, and they were no 
 270 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 trifles, — these articles of faith; the 
 Church of her youth from which she had 
 fallen away, had not given her any harder 
 nuts to crack than those whose kernels 
 she now swallowed. Nor was she satisfied 
 with the facultative, "I believe;" she con- 
 fessed firmly and decidedly to the positive 
 — "I know." And she had the happiness 
 of seeing her children who had been torn 
 away from her, come back to her as con- 
 verted Theosophists and deserters from 
 the Anglican Church. 
 
 Charles Bradlaugh died soon after her 
 change of religion. Since her desertion 
 to Socialism he had placed no more con- 
 fidence in her judgment and he never ad- 
 vised with her again as formerly. After 
 she turned Theosophist, he also doubted 
 her reason. But there is no doubt that she 
 was just as much or as little in her right 
 mind when she recognized in atheism the 
 proclaimed "Truth," as when she be- 
 lieved herself to have found that "Truth" 
 in Theosophy. 
 
 Mrs. Besant bears in peculiar — one 
 
 might say in concentrated — form the 
 
 various distinctive traits of the woman 
 
 of the present. The most striking 
 
 271 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 feature, showing a new differentiation in 
 woman, is the mental distress, an anxious 
 seeking, enraptured finding, swift losing, 
 seeking again, finding again and agam 
 
 losing. 
 
 This is a new feature. 
 
 It shows more plainly than any other 
 
 that the man has lost, or has given out of 
 
 his own hands the guidance of woman; 
 
 that he no longer can lead, because he 
 
 himself does not know the way. With 
 
 what a joyous feeling of safety Mrs. 
 
 Besant threw herself into the arms of the 
 
 man and animal-tamer, Bradlaugh; and 
 
 how easily she forsook him fifteen years 
 
 later, without winking or blinking, for 
 
 an old and ill woman ! 
 
 How thoroughly possessed by mental 
 stimulus is this same Annie Besant as 
 young girl; a creature delighting in the 
 realm of lettered fantasies ; desirous of all 
 ecstasies, a trembling worshiper of the 
 mysticism of Catholicism, so permeated 
 by art, in which to-day something still 
 speaks to us of the primitive creative 
 power of mankind. How purely tuned 
 is this young soul for all rare melodies; 
 how open to every germinating seed! 
 And what does she become.' 
 
 273 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 A clergyman's wife, full of abhorrence 
 and unspeakable disgust towards her hus- 
 band, who committed no greater crime 
 than that of being a too ordinary man ; a 
 revolter against sexuality, which instead 
 of a feeling of pleasure aroused in her 
 infinite depression; a woman who bore 
 her children in difficult travail and re- 
 covered slowly from their births, — the 
 consequence of unwilling conception. 
 
 And finally she concentrated her 
 energies upon the one aim which is the 
 last cry of the despairing - woman — to be 
 free ! free from this oppression, for which 
 the individual man is far less to blame 
 than the whole state of society to which 
 he belongs. 
 
 Most women ask themselves: "Whith- 
 er?" — and this "Whither?" shuts the door 
 before them. But Annie Besant went. 
 She went, thanks to the gift of enthusiasm 
 which formerly the woman transmitted 
 entire to the children of her womb, but 
 which the woman must now take for her- 
 self in order to live. 
 
 And she found the man towards whom 
 everything in her yearned for surrender. 
 But he had no time for her. 
 
 He trained her to speak, to write, to 
 273 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF _WOM^ 
 
 agitate. He waved her as a banner. 
 He counseled with her in difficult political 
 and philosophical questions. He, the 
 tired giant, propped himself with her as 
 with a willow wand in his hand. But for 
 the wholly womanly quality in her, for 
 the woman-child that blinked with awak- 
 ened eyes, he had no glance, no expan- 
 siveness, no comprehension. He was an 
 overburdened, overworked man. He had 
 no time. 
 
 So she sought the "Truth," sought for 
 it with feverish determination of the 
 unsatisfied nature, and proclaimed it with 
 the fanaticism of the self-deafening soul. 
 And beside the athlete of atheism she 
 stands as the priestess of the discovered 
 Truth. 
 
 But she cannot transform herself, can- 
 not wholly make herself what the man of 
 this time requires of the woman, — to exist 
 for him, utterly for him, his mental com- 
 panion, his friend, the reflection of his 
 ego ; withal, somewhat his beloved. 
 She is still woman — 
 And then she meets a woman, tired 
 and starved, another woman like herself; 
 who fascinates her with the motherly 
 gaze, who is superior to her in mind and 
 274 
 
SEEKERS 
 
 will, who lulls her with her woman's voice 
 and strokes her soothingly with her aged, 
 soft hands ; who looks at her and under- 
 stands, as only a woman can understand 
 a woman; a greater judge of life and 
 more of a sinner than she, who hopes, 
 wishes and seeks for nothing more, re- 
 hearsing her ancient stories which are so 
 soothing, like the prayers before sleeping 
 when she was a little girl. 
 
 The whole, dry, wearing tension of 
 reason relaxes ; she collapses and believes, 
 partly from exhaustion, partly because of 
 the mystic in woman, who believes any- 
 thing rather than be shut within her finite 
 Ego — the self which has become sterile. 
 
 Many have gone this road, but few so 
 ostentatiously and conclusively. It is the 
 road of disappointment which many are 
 now constantly traveling in all lands, 
 zones and climes. At the same time they 
 feel with a sort of comfortable resignation 
 that they really stand nearer to each other 
 — woman to woman, among themselves — 
 and understand one another better than 
 man and woman tmderstand one another. 
 
 As I was one day walking in Munich, 
 two ordinary old women stood on the 
 pavement and talked eagerly. " The 
 
 aye 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 gossips!" I said to myself, half uncon- 
 sciously. But just as I was passing them, 
 the words fell upon my ear in tones of 
 honest conviction and deepest gratitude: 
 "After all, the best thing in the world is 
 a good woman friend!" I looked up into 
 such a sincerely moved countenance that 
 I both laughed and felt moved in sym- 
 pathy. Women are naturally allied. Sup- 
 pose this feeling should spread now 
 throughout all classes? 
 
 276 
 
PART THREE 
 
 477 
 
VIII— THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 I start from the premises that the 
 woman never, nowhere and in nothing, 
 can make or mark a starting point; that 
 all that she does, performs or suggests, 
 represents always but a deviation, a con- 
 nection with or continuation of something 
 already produced, existing, done; that 
 in mental spheres she is subject to this 
 law as well as in the physical; and 
 whether or no she succeeds in subjecting 
 the physical side, the mental will not be 
 altered. 
 
 She has only one quality peculiar to 
 herself; that everything which she 
 receives, pretty or ugly, strong or weak, 
 bright or dull, good or bad, can sprout 
 and grow, — influenced quite essentially by 
 the substance of herself which she gives, 
 — ^but not the best endowed woman can 
 change a false thought into a true one, or 
 a bad seed into good fruit. 
 
 One such false thought of insufficient 
 
 279 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 masculine brains, — of weak men, needing 
 support, overburdened with study, in a 
 crumbling, brutalized, undermined so- 
 ciety, — is the idea of the emancipation of 
 woman. 
 
 As such it is wholly consistent; the 
 premises granted, it is a logical conclu- 
 sion. The only question is whether the 
 premises are real, stable and unalterable. 
 Real? — yes. Stable? — questionable. 
 Unchangeable? — ^no, for the change is 
 already here. 
 
 The emancipation of woman presup- 
 poses one thing clearly; it presupposes 
 that the man says to the woman — "I can 
 no longer strengthen you, no longer sup- 
 port you, no longer defend you. I shall 
 not prop, support, nor defend you any 
 longer. It is burdensome to me, — and it 
 is unworthy of you. We will become 
 equals. You shall have equal rights, to 
 fight with me over the bones. I don't lay 
 claim to them for myself alone, but I 
 don't divide willingly with you as in the 
 dark times of the Middle Ages. Le^t us 
 wrestle for the bones ; that is our human 
 right. They belong to him who can get 
 them and keep them, — thanks to the law 
 of free competition ; and this law is holy. 
 2S0 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 Nothing is more sacred than the right 
 to overreach, which custom has made 
 legal. But besides, the demands of the 
 heart and other human parts, not to be 
 more clearly designated on account of 
 their doubtful moral authorization, remain 
 to be allowed for. Let us form an alli- 
 ance, based upon personal freedom, for 
 mutual support. We have an example 
 in the societies with limited securities. 
 We form this union with a view to mutual 
 advantage. To each belongs what he 
 earns, and what he brings with him. 
 And we increase our working ability, as 
 was said, in that we lean upon one 
 another. I am really very much in need 
 of this, for the course of the world has 
 damnably debilitated me." 
 
 Thereupon answers the independent 
 young woman: "Lean on one another? 
 I fancy myself serving as a prop to you ! 
 I shall stand much more "steadily alone. 
 I am not conscious of any needs of a 
 doubtful morality. I know nothing of 
 any needs other than to eat, drink, sleep 
 and work. Of these the last is the strong- 
 est in me. I have an inhuman craving to 
 work. My gifts and talents have already 
 rusted for too many centuries. My ego 
 281 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 has been misused by the man to make 
 other egos out of me. Therefore I have 
 nothing. I shall be myself and do what I 
 wish to do; — Fichte taught that, as you 
 perhaps remember. I must first become 
 a human being before I can be a woman ; 
 — I owe this knowledge to Stuart Mill, 
 Bebel and Ibsen. For the present you 
 are a human being and I am a human 
 being; ergo, we are equally great. Please 
 make industriously, dear fellow-man, as 
 many books as you can write; — that is 
 the only thing truly worthy of a human 
 creature. I read everything you write and 
 repeat it all after you by rote. You shall 
 not lack this kind of support from me. ' ' 
 
 And then the two fellow-creatures go 
 wandering on, arm in arm, into the morn- 
 ing red of the new century, "thinking and 
 composing. ' ' 
 
 But he who happens to meet them in 
 their naked beauty, will feel as one does be- 
 fore certain pictures by modern painters. 
 He asks doubtfully: "Which is the man 
 and which is the woman? Or are they 
 both men? Or are they both women? 
 Or is neither of them a man, — and neither 
 a woman?" The external marks are 
 wanting, the internal also. 
 282 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 They are both fellow-creatures, "new 
 creatures." 
 
 When the woman forgets her nature 
 and breaks into the domains of man, it 
 is a sign that the man has forgotten his 
 nature, and has begun to retreat from his 
 domains. Such times are a serious men- 
 ace to civilization, and the races in which 
 they appear go through a severe crisis, 
 — the crisis between barbarism and 
 degeneracy. If this crisis becomes latent, 
 as is the case in England and the United 
 States, — whence these teachings come, 
 — we have the barbarian-decadent, and 
 his counterpart, the aggressive masculine 
 woman, the cerebrale. In other words, 
 hybrids right and left. 
 
 And between these two "human t3T)es" 
 as guard of honor, we are passing now. 
 
 I shall not linger over the physical and 
 mental premises for these appearances, 
 the actual existing sexual fluctuations; 
 they require a chapter to themselves, out 
 of place in this book; nor shall I here 
 describe the classes of society or the 
 combinations in which these variations 
 most frequently occur; only this, their 
 true, fostering soil seems to be the large 
 cities, the sedentary occupations, the par- 
 283 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 asitic callings, the confined life in various 
 forms among the rich and poor, and the 
 crossing of heterogeneous races. 
 
 I have noticed that in people of mixed 
 blood, such for example as the Germans 
 and Jews, this variation of sex, — the 
 effeminate man, with cackling voice, the 
 fleshy body with a mountain of ^ fat in the 
 hips, the thick white face with weak 
 beard, the somewhat coquettish and 
 theatrical manner, the sweet smile, the 
 modest glance; and the opposite mascu- 
 line characteristics in the woman, — ^the 
 reckless pushing into prominence, the 
 shrill, confident speech, the pronounced 
 business sense, the self-satisfied smile, — 
 these double sexual indications are strik- 
 ingly frequent in such crosses. 
 
 This is most easily to be observed in 
 literature and the theater. Do not many 
 of the fashionable writers, young and old, 
 smile at us from their portraits in the 
 book-store windows with painfully sweet 
 womanish lips? Is not all that they Write 
 spongy and loose and calculated to please 
 the speculative sense of the publisher and 
 theater magnates? Are not natural lines 
 and homogeneous development rare ap- 
 pearances in the world of printer's ink 
 284 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 and painter's canvas? And is not the 
 so-called "manner" exaggerated till it 
 affects us like angular feminine thinness? 
 
 What is most characteristic in the 
 "writings" of the last decade? It is the 
 obliteration of the distinguishing sexual 
 stamp of the man and woman. The 
 woman has now in all literature some- 
 thing of the masculine. She has a cer- 
 tain practical, coarse ability for keeping 
 on top of life. Usually she appears 
 as a sort of guardian of the man; in 
 most cases she knows what she wants. 
 These, considered from the standpoint of 
 woman-nature, are signs of degeneration ; 
 they are acquired characteristics, acquired 
 through struggle and at the expense of 
 more valuable feminine qualities, ac- 
 quired through adaptation to a period of 
 dissolution. 
 
 In men, meanwhile, the typical feature 
 is weakness; weakness of will, weakened 
 powers of resistance, inordinate self- 
 esteem, self-surrender, something broken, 
 back-boneless, trifling or dull, arising not 
 merely from bodily weakness but essen- 
 tially from that pitiful condition of mind 
 which we describe as "not knowing in 
 from out." 
 
 28s 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 Such conditions are the outcome of 
 overmuch scribbling and composition 
 during that decade of highest enlighten- 
 ment and civic liberalism in which every- 
 thing swam in beatitude, declamation, 
 higher moral views, still higher education, 
 and highest consciousness of energy. 
 From the A B C to the seat of Ministry 
 the ways were all clear, pointed out and 
 paved, and the "Good, True and Beauti- 
 ful" the self-evident Pole-Star of the 
 higher classes. Through a systematic cul- 
 tivation of self-esteem, and an openly sanc- 
 tioned and protected, though faulty, line of 
 development, two generations were made 
 incapable of understanding or even see- 
 ing the actual, in its effects, its essence 
 and limitations. Instinct, the most pre- 
 cious inheritance of the human animal, 
 was systematically discredited, repressed, 
 eradicated. Of what use was instinct to 
 the sons of "cultured families," the chil- 
 dren of large cities? In place of direct 
 contact, they set the children to reading 
 and "systematic education." Only the 
 "self-made" man, cast out into life early, 
 escaped the "systematic education" or 
 mis - education which is still in force 
 to-day. 
 
 286 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 Hence we find even where there is no 
 mixed blood, the same moUusk-like flac- 
 cidity in appearance, and the unmodi- 
 fied brutality, — a brutality already decay- 
 ing, even as the moUusk-characteristic 
 hardly appeared ere it began to mold. 
 
 From a press and literature so nour- 
 ished, the mental food of the people is 
 drawn, from the effect of which no one 
 who reads can entirely escape; it pene- 
 trates him as the miasma and bacilli in 
 the air do, invisibly and irresistibly. 
 
 And if we stand before the schoolhouses 
 as they empty and look at the growing 
 youth, we see already in the boys the 
 spongy, fleshy bodies, the puffy, pale 
 faces with loose cheeks, the dull gaze of 
 overburdened childhood, unhealthy de- 
 velopment and obstructed sex, — the bless- 
 ings of the large city, the general education 
 and compulsory school attendance from 
 the sixth year. 
 
 Thus the boy becomes the man. And 
 how does the man appear? 
 
 One need only stand where the trains 
 pour out their Sunday loads into the 
 country, to note two groups of men. 
 
 There are the tall, lank, narrow-shoul- 
 dered ones with dull eyes and weak legs 
 287 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 which manifest an estrangement between 
 the knees, walking or standing. And 
 there are the bulky, goggling, round- 
 backed men with their womanish legs and 
 insolent rudeness. These are the two 
 city types, as this century of freedom, 
 humanity and free competition has made 
 thern. 
 
 Barbarian, decadent, and barbar- 
 decadent; but in their clothes there is 
 no difference. For they all dress in the 
 fashion of the day; the long and the 
 short, the thick and the thin; in round 
 sacks without back seams or shoulder- 
 marking, which fall away loosely from the 
 neck; and below, the sack divides into 
 two other sacks which hang down loose 
 and flapping. And thus they wander 
 about, round-shouldered, without shoul- 
 ders, without calves, without signs of age 
 or sex, — ^living illustrations of the revenge 
 of Israel upon the vanquished Germans, 
 beaten in the money-market and in the 
 fashions. 
 
 But past them go wheeling, brave and 
 homely in tricot stockings and knee- 
 trousers, with masculine high collars and 
 cravats, their sweethearts and sisters, — 
 also their mothers. 
 
 288 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 And the sporting woman and business 
 man form a free union with or without 
 accident insurance. 
 
 To render the progress of civilization 
 in this century quite intelligible, let us 
 place beside these a leaf from Holbein or 
 Durer, hence also from a period of revolu- 
 tion, the beginning of the very period of 
 scribbling and declaiming revolution of 
 which we to-day are the last offshoots. 
 
 How do they look, these arborealists 
 and worthies, who were also merchants 
 and townspeople? 
 
 There they stand, lean and slender and 
 firmly built, every line sharp, masculine 
 and direct, the close-fitting hose reaching 
 to the hips, on the upper part of the body 
 the equally close-fitting doublet ; nothing 
 of their build or the peculiarity of their 
 movements escapes the eye, and their 
 sharp, bony, shrewd faces, with the easy, 
 indifferent glance, say: "We are wide- 
 awake even when we are not looking, for 
 the Real in which we have tossed about 
 from our childhood has no secrets and no 
 surprises for us. ' ' 
 
 And beside these men we see the 
 women of their time, firm and straight, 
 stately and assured, carrying under wide 
 289 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 projecting stomacher the work of the 
 man ; in long, folding, trailing skirts and 
 puffed sleeves, their persons are as con- 
 cealed as the man's is exposed to view. 
 
 Now, it is precisely the opposite. The 
 man conceals his body ; the woman unveils 
 hers. It is another form of the struggle 
 for existence. 
 
 If the woman is to bear men — strong 
 and handsome men in carriage and form 
 — she must have strong and handsome 
 men, of noble mien and carriage, before 
 her eyes. Now, when the moneybag 
 makes the fashion, she has nothing but 
 round backs and crooked legs before her 
 eyes. When ten years more have gone 
 by, it will be interesting to see how 
 large a proportion of our German pos- 
 terity talk Jewish jargon with the arms 
 and legs. 
 
 II 
 
 Among the distinctive characteristics of 
 this century of sanitary arrangements, 
 bacilli - breeding and giant strides of 
 medical science, is to be classed — Illness. 
 Not very long ago the collective chorus 
 of enlightened writers proclaimed that 
 the time was now come when science and 
 2go 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 the physician should take the place of the 
 priest and religion. The noble bards 
 hereby abdicated for their part, for only 
 a few decades earlier, in the first half of 
 the century, they had proclaimed them- 
 selves and their writings as the guiding 
 light of the people in place of priests and 
 religion. The poets are gone, — dust to 
 dust; the physicians disarm; illness 
 remains. 
 
 Yes, being sick is the fashion, is a duty 
 and a credit. As soon as he can afford it, — 
 and of course the cultivated and upper 
 classes, the purse-proud, the capitalists 
 and higher bureaucracy can afford it, — 
 the person of culture invariably suffers 
 from something or other which is not at 
 all appetizing; liver, kidneys, bladder, 
 stomach, bowels, lungs, heart, eyes, ears, 
 throat, or nose, — these are the organs 
 whose diseases one confesses to with a 
 certain importance. There are other 
 organs over whose sufferings we preserve 
 a profound silence. 
 
 Illness is an achievement of culture, 
 like the methods of cure; one "believes" 
 in his famous physician and "expects" 
 from him one of his famous "scientific 
 triumphs." One journeys to baths, visits 
 291 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 sanitariums, drinks at springs, follows a 
 diet, subjects himself to treatment, carries 
 his internal organic disorder traveling by 
 land and sea, loves with his maladies and 
 takes it for granted the dear progeny also 
 should have a physician in attendance 
 from the cradle up, and come into the 
 world in fact with an outfit of scrofula, 
 anaemia, etc., etc., to which they may 
 add in time the other ailments of civilized 
 mankind. 
 
 What is more significant in the age of 
 vast progress for the human mind, of 
 stock-jobbing and of international, home- 
 less capital — the achievements of the 
 "liberal era" — what is more significant 
 than that the higher classes regard ill- 
 health as fine, and the health of the 
 farmer, like the farmer himself, as 
 coarse, — something to be looked down 
 upon and destroyed? The farmer must 
 disappear, — ^he has already done so in a 
 measure, — in order that the "industrial 
 state" may sow the whole earth with 
 chimneys and change all civilized peo- 
 ples into sickly ones. No one is healthy 
 who loses the earth from under his feet, 
 or whom the earth — ^the rejuvenator and 
 nourisher of organic life, — no longer 
 
 2g2 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 nourishes. Illness — one might well say 
 the worship of illness — appears also 
 among the farming and country families 
 where the decrease in land values, 
 exhaustion from over-exertion in produc- 
 tion, and hopelessness of the future have 
 penetrated. 
 
 To the healthy person illness is a shame ; 
 he feels it akin to a refusal, a corruption 
 of the organic forces of his body. He is 
 ashamed of his unhealthy humors. Only 
 that illness which he has acquired in an 
 honest struggle with life, in work, resist- 
 ance and resentment of wrong, he bears 
 and overcomes as a warrior his wounds. 
 The sound man admits illness as nothing 
 else than a wound which life deals him 
 and which will heal with the first good 
 weather, the first rising of the new sap. 
 The parasites of society, the unproductive 
 strata and the uprooted, consider illness 
 an integral element of being. 
 
 And how does the woman look upon 
 illness? 
 
 At once we must ask: Which woman? 
 
 The idle, unoccupied, dissatisfied woman 
 enjoys illness. It is a distraction, a kind 
 of occupation. It relieves her from duties, 
 it relieves her from self-reproaches, it gives 
 
 2g3 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 her an opportunity to torture others, — ^hus- 
 band, children, servants, all those to- 
 wards whom she feels the rancor of the 
 wronged and deceived. The woman of 
 the "upper classes," bom in great cities, 
 is to a very large proportion an unmerci- 
 ful parasite, especially upon her husband, 
 upon whom she seeks to revenge herself 
 for the fact that she looks down on him, 
 by a life-long, unintermitted small war- 
 fare. Many men have ruined themselves 
 for such women and for this kind of love. 
 A woman knows very well when she 
 drives the man to dishonest or criminal 
 action with her desires and needs; she 
 reads the silent language of his soul with 
 great ease, in his determined face, his 
 brooding immobility and his accidental, 
 uncontrolled movements. But she will 
 not see it; she ignores it; she knows 
 nothing of it before herself, before him 
 or his intimates ; as if in a secret intoxi- 
 cation of moral insanity she urges over 
 and over the one demand with which she 
 gave herself to him: "You are my pro- 
 vider, you are my support, — ^well then! 
 Provide for me, support me!" 
 
 Still another type of women, that which 
 struggles for bare life without happiness, 
 294 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 fortune or prospects, the stinted daughters 
 of the impoverished middle-classes, will- 
 ingly seek in illness a refuge from the 
 Unspeakable which pierces them, — an 
 oblivion. In illness they pamper them- 
 selves, — who have been so little pam- 
 pered ; and all those women in whose life 
 the masculine sun does not shine, who go 
 on by the side of pining husbands and 
 weakly, oppressed sons, — ^they all wish: 
 "Ah, if I could only be really ill so as to 
 see nothing, forget everything!" 
 
 The working woman has no time to be 
 sick. She beats down the illness or 
 drags through it. Every day has its 
 exchange of work and wages. There can 
 be no intermission, else the machine will 
 throw her out. 
 
 The woman is not generally sick in the 
 same way as the man ; she has not such a 
 great number of organic diseases with 
 their unchangeable courses; hers is not 
 such a slowly and irresistibly decomposing 
 organism as his. She grows ill from 
 emotional causes and recovers from emo- 
 tional reasons. Stagnation is for her 
 portentous; but not so fatal as is the 
 stagnation combined with multitudinous 
 duties and pleasures, of the man. 
 295 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 There is one thing — as I said before — 
 which the woman seeks in the man, every 
 woman from every man, in every class of 
 society, in every age, from every stand- 
 point; — that is protection. Upon this is 
 based the whole relation of the woman to 
 the man. 
 
 The strongest and healthiest woman 
 feels herself at times weak, by reason of 
 her constitution as woman. She is suJd- 
 ject to pangs of anxiety which remain 
 always vague and which she would there- 
 fore the next moment deny, but which 
 nevertheless influence her. She seeks in 
 the man first of all the undivided feeling 
 of physical security which the warm 
 proximity of the stronger body gives to 
 the weaker, the body with more in its 
 power gives to the body with less. She 
 seeks from the man exactly that which 
 the child seeks from its mother, — protec- 
 tion, translated into warmth. That is 
 the reason why even to-day the strong 
 man ranks higher for the womto than 
 the handsome man, and muscles higher 
 than mental charms. 
 
 However, the muscular man is not 
 always the strongest man. A woman 
 wants protection for her mind and soul no 
 296 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 less than for her body. The man who is 
 man by virtue of his mental and physical 
 qualities and not only by virtue of his 
 muscles, far surpasses the athlete in the 
 eyes of the refined and intellectual 
 woman, because he can give her a more 
 perfect form of protection than the 
 latter. And for many women there is a 
 peculiar kind of fascination in the man 
 who, physically delicate or not making use 
 of his physical strength, guides and holds 
 them by virtue of his inward manliness. 
 Herein lies the great influence of the 
 priest over the woman. He is to her both 
 man and priest and equally strong in 
 both aspects; the mediator between her 
 and the Infinite ; whom she fears, yet by 
 whom she is attracted. 
 
 But when we see to-day a tendency in 
 the woman to isolate herself from the 
 man, to protect herself against him, we 
 should not ask : "What kind of women are 
 these?" but rather: "What kind of men 
 are they that occasion this?" 
 
 If we examine more closely into the 
 many forms of expression which this 
 tendency away from and against the man 
 has found in literature, of which there is 
 much in the petitions of women, the 
 297 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 temperance movement, the efforts to 
 affect the making of laws, etc., we come 
 to the surprising result that this whole 
 movement rises from fear of the man 
 without self-control, — the man as fleecer. 
 However distorted in manifestation, how- 
 ever comical in effect — especially in the 
 form of activity in England and America 
 — ^its origin in the lands of the largest 
 capitalistic enterprise, where the struggle 
 for existence is the most brutal and 
 extortion most heartless, is highly 
 significant. Women band together to 
 protect themselves against the man in 
 his chase for money, who in his rage for 
 speculation considers all that comes 
 within his view only as booty ; from the 
 drunken wretch who does not know what 
 he is about to the delegates of the land 
 who concoct laws for their own benefit 
 and the protection of a minority. 
 
 It is from the man as brute that the 
 woman tries to protect herself; let him be 
 never so good-natured a brute in his 
 quiet moments, and though the individual 
 woman may be able to turn her individual 
 brute with her little finger, there still 
 remains a fear, — the sympathetic quiver 
 of the woman who feels the endangering, 
 
 2g8 
 
THE MAN QUESTION 
 
 suffering and mishandling of all, as if they 
 were her own flesh and blood. 
 
 The view of life in this century — to 
 return to what was said before — ^has 
 made of the man a race-runner for 
 advantage, a finite ego with short, finite 
 aims, a fool of egoism without an outlet 
 or a prospect. Therefore he has lost 
 sovereignty over the woman. For the 
 woman cannot bear finiteness. She will 
 not accept the idea that the chain of life, 
 of which she is but a link, should be cut off 
 behind and before her. The man who can 
 offer her nothing more than that values her 
 lightly, and his offering, himself included, 
 tastes insipid. 
 
 The man-question of our day is not the 
 question of how one shall find a husband ; 
 it is the question of finding men of pro- 
 ductive will, subjecting themselves to a 
 loftier, more enduring purpose, and ruling 
 over the women not as single creatures 
 with individual claims but as links in a 
 chain of life. 
 
 2Q9 
 
IX— ECONOMIC AND PSYCHIC 
 DISTRESS 
 
 The many honest people who think 
 they hear in the Woman-Movement the 
 memento mori of a race, and the gnaw- 
 ing of the death -worm, are not so far 
 wrong. As it manifests itself outwardly 
 it is a sign of decay and corruption, and 
 where it has produced conditions — or 
 more accurately has grown out of con- 
 ditions — as in the lauded lands of woman's 
 emancipation, the decline of a race is 
 plainly shown. 
 
 What are the conditions of the highly- 
 civilized lands in which the woman's 
 movement is felt, — where it makes prog- 
 ress? America is to be considered as a 
 land of culture only in a very restricted 
 sense; and when certain ladies point 
 proudly to the power of women in 
 Wyoming or New Zealand they bring 
 very poor support to their cause. The 
 social order in new countries can never be 
 held up to older civilized lands for imita- 
 tion ; else a clean sweep must be made in 
 these States of their inhabitants and their 
 301 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 culture, together with their traditions and 
 early history. The woman-movement has 
 everywhere a wholly economic basis ; in 
 all its phases it deals with the necessity 
 of the woman's providing for herself, — 
 what women call "being independent." 
 But of what nature are the economic 
 conditions which bring forward so 
 strongly this necessity? 
 
 In the lands where the inhabitants fol- 
 low farming or cattle -raising as occupa- 
 tions, or in districts where these pursuits 
 are most exclusively engaged in, we find 
 no woman-movement or a diminishing 
 one. But I have seen it appear at once, 
 in Sweden and Denmark for instance, 
 with the falling of the price of grain as 
 these countries found for their grain prod- 
 ucts no market on account of the enor- 
 mous exports from Hungary, Russia and 
 America, and were forced into other pro- 
 duction, sugar beets, eggs, slaughtered 
 beeves, hogs, etc. ; therefore as tension 
 of business and the expenses were in- 
 creased in unheard-of — ^let us simply say 
 in extortionate — degree and these coun- 
 tries were forced to become industrial 
 countries. In this period of transition we 
 remark the following parallel appear- 
 302 
 
ECONOMIC DISTRESS 
 
 ances : rapid falling of cottagers and small 
 farmers into the rank of proletarians, 
 decrease of marriages in all classes, 
 increasing alcoholism side by side with 
 a temperance war against this evil by 
 both masculine and feminine agitators, 
 growing emancipation of woman in the 
 upper classes and increasing prostitution 
 in the lower classes. The large cities are 
 the real centers of this movement, equally 
 advancing among high and low, and pre- 
 eminently so the largest cities, and more 
 exactly defined still, the large Protestant 
 cities. We find a real woman-movement 
 almost exclusively in the Protestant 
 industrial countries of both hemispheres. 
 The women who have achieved inde- 
 pendence remain single in the majority of 
 cases, or in marriage are childless. In 
 London there are whole quarters which 
 are inhabited for the most part by self- 
 supporting spinsters who have their own 
 clubs, kitchens and dwellings. We see 
 here in the better classes thousands of 
 women deprived of their natural life- 
 satisfaction for the sake of their living; 
 and parallel with this circumstance, in 
 the lower classes thousands of equally 
 childless prostitutes. A similar increase 
 303 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 in the number of unmarried men in these 
 great world centers has also preSminently 
 the avoidance of offspring in view. But 
 the renunciation of offspring is what deals 
 human nature the hardest blow and most 
 deeply desolates the soul; wherever it 
 appears in force it brings with it a retro- 
 gression of culture, a coarsening of the 
 ideals of life. It is moreover only occa- 
 sioned by urgent motives, by economic 
 distress, or by degeneration,— and distress 
 is in most cases the cause of degeneration. 
 Prostitution and emancipation go pro- 
 gressively side by side; they are two 
 stalks from the same root, — woman's 
 despair over her allotted portion in life. 
 But woman does not, of her own initia- 
 tive, despair; the despair of man must 
 have preceded hers. And the despair of 
 man has been expressed for decades in 
 the great centers of trade by the increas- 
 ing growth of alcoholism and the fright- 
 ful increase of suicides. 
 
 Woman, who has by nature a sharp eye 
 for details and things near at hand but 
 almost none for great proportions, has till 
 now allowed herself simply to be led by 
 the formula of human rights, which in 
 this century has only resulted in free 
 304 
 
ECONOMIC DISTRESS 
 
 competition and wage-slavery under the 
 rule of capital. And when she has 
 attained what she sought, — her full per- 
 sonal independence, right to vote, un- 
 limited power of self -disposal, — she will 
 have achieved merely one thing; she will 
 have run the last and most comprehensive 
 errand in the service of vast international 
 capital, which there was left to run. 
 
 We have to-day two strictly divided 
 classes of woman, those with invested 
 capital and those without it. The last 
 named are the proletarian class, and I 
 have but very rarely seen the well-to-do 
 woman, the woman of the upper classes, 
 exhibit towards these others a womanly 
 understanding, humane pity, active and 
 effective compassion. People will at once 
 hold up to me the great charitable tend- 
 ency of this age. Charity, — yes! For 
 this the so-called lower classes are grate- 
 ful so long as there is still a bit of honor 
 in them. But the blessed aid of Charity's 
 dole here and there can only be bestowed 
 upon absolute poverty. Active sympathy 
 is not charity; it is something quite 
 different, much warmer, more personal, 
 and the knowledge and exercise of it does 
 not belong to "the achievements of our 
 305 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 century. ' ' But it is a part of the woman- 
 question, and one of the weightiest parts. 
 
 The woman-question as it is now con- 
 ceived is a class question. It first begins 
 where the means for development are at 
 hand. It demands equal rights for the 
 sexes; that means, penetration of the 
 woman into the labor-market of the man 
 in mercantile, technical and learned call- 
 ings. Dispassionately considered, that 
 signifies depreciation of wages, hence 
 further impoverishing of the middle class. 
 And thus the woman-movement in its 
 present form can only do service for King 
 Capital. 
 
 We have seen that in the development 
 of industry masculine labor has been in 
 great part displaced by woman and child 
 labor in order to effect a reduction of 
 wages ; we now stand upon the verge of a 
 displacement of men by women workers 
 in the so-called higher occupations also, 
 — occupations where there existed already 
 a monstrous over-supply of masculine 
 laborers. As soon as the woman enters 
 these occupations, she will at once effect 
 there also a fall in wages ; for in the first 
 place she always offers herself more 
 cheaply in order merely to get there; 
 306 
 
ECONOMIC DISTRESS 
 
 secondly, she then consents to greater 
 deductions than the man; and thirdly, 
 she lives — as soon as she is no longer sup- 
 ported by the man — ^incredibly cheaply. 
 Parsimonious King Capital is therefore 
 willing to open to her all callings directly 
 or indirectly dependent upon it, where till 
 now it let itself be drained by the wage- 
 demands of the man. Hence the woman, 
 if she would open new fields of occupa- 
 tion for herself, must work for man's 
 destruction. When man is no longer the 
 supporter of woman, she must become his 
 oppressor. The two parallel appearances, 
 prostitution and emancipation, must, 
 whether their representatives wish it 
 or not, undermine the man physically, 
 materially and mentally; the man, the 
 procreator, the maintainer. 
 
 Many people object to this woman- 
 movement; most people look askance at 
 it. Many find the demands of the women 
 foolish and destructive, and every sensible 
 person smiles at the formula of the equal 
 position of the sexes in their physical and 
 psychical consequences. 
 
 And yet we cannot deceive ourselves, a 
 woman-movement exists ; a much deeper, 
 stronger, more. general movement than 
 307 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 appears publicly or dares to formulate its 
 wishes. In comparison with this woman- 
 movement, the public one is only a ripple 
 and a transient degeneracy. This other 
 woman-movement is as yet a dull, instinc- 
 tive revolt against the whole spirit of 
 this century, its teachings and achieve- 
 ments. It is shown above all in the 
 manner of the relations between women 
 and men in the higher classes. 
 
 A general depression has entered into 
 the association of the sexes, and on both 
 sides there is an effort to keep it super- 
 ficial. Nowhere in the love-relations can 
 one perceive a spark of enthusiasm in the 
 woman's being. People in reality only 
 seek to get along tolerably with one 
 another. But a woman's love is 6la.n, is 
 devotion; where she does not feel both, 
 she does not love, she only makes a 
 business exchange. 
 
 I have often been struck by the em- 
 barrassed, piqued manner of young men 
 in company with young girls. Why are 
 they so piqued and embarrassed? Do 
 they perhaps vaguely feel that they are 
 despised? 
 
 Men have no idea — and take great 
 pains not to imagine — how quickly 
 308 
 
ECONOMIC DISTRESS 
 
 women, and even the youngest girls, 
 despise. Where they no longer admire 
 they have already begun to despise. 
 There is no thought in it, it is an impul- 
 sive reflex emotion. But how many 
 women and girls nowadays admire men, 
 — the men whom they personally know? 
 Whom, then, do they know? The patient, 
 working animal, the bow-legged, weak 
 toady, the time-is-money man; for this 
 unfeeling money-maker is nowadays the 
 flower of manhood. 
 
 The successful speculator wins the 
 admiration .of our time, whether he be an 
 American petroleum-king, a Berlin stock- 
 gambler, or an international grain specu- 
 lator. They are spoken of in tones of 
 awe. Success is honored in them, and 
 they are regarded as examples. And for 
 more than half a century the generations 
 of growing masculine youth have emu- 
 lated these examples. "Make haste to be 
 rich!" that is the suggestion which is 
 hammered into the young man through 
 all the impressions of life and his whole 
 course of development and study. It has 
 produced the strangest forms of degen- 
 eration and a fearful lowering of culture, 
 has made the moneyed man, the sports- 
 3og 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 man and the keen barbarian the true 
 representatives of man. 
 
 One step lower, the cry is "Money 
 here!" and one takes it where he can find 
 it. Often he succeeds, often not ; then 
 he shuts his eyes and sends a bullet 
 through the brain, or evaporates — to 
 America. Those who are not so fortu- 
 nately placed as to have a chance of seiz- 
 ing, admire humbly and with a bitter 
 feeling of inferiority the various forms of 
 purse-pride in their time and land. 
 
 What can the woman, the bearer of the 
 future generations, do among such fathers, 
 brothers, lovers and husbands? 
 
 Much has been written, in this century 
 of exact inquiry, concerning the psy- 
 choses. Learned psychologists have 
 thoroughly studied the great psychosis of 
 the Middle Ages. First of all there was 
 the great religious psychosis of the 
 Crusades, — that period to which curi- 
 ously enough we owe the most lasting 
 monuments of civilization of the Christian 
 Era, those lyrics in stone, the Gothic 
 cathedrals. There were the psychoses of 
 the Flagellants, the St. Vitus dancers, the 
 wandering spirit of the masses; in the 
 time of the Reformation, those of the 
 310 
 
ECONOMIC DISTRESS 
 
 iconoclasts and Anabaptists. Could we not 
 perhaps call the Reformation as a whole 
 the psychosis of rebellion of the North 
 against the South? 
 
 Then followed the fearful persecutions 
 for witchcraft, their orthodox sophistry, 
 the extenuated and in a measure sneaking 
 psychosis of Pietism, which continues till 
 the present ; and parallel, though in con- 
 trast, the psychosis of enlightenment with 
 its scientific materialism and atheism, in 
 the midst of which we are to-day. There 
 is only one essential difference between 
 those surmounted psychoses of the 
 Middle Ages and the still unsurmount- 
 able ones of to-day. The former were 
 warm, from redundancy of feeling pene- 
 trated by sensual warmth; those of the 
 present are cold, — psychoses of mental 
 over-tension and palsied feeling Why is 
 it that no one of our "leading minds" 
 has as yet busied himself with the psy- 
 chosis which is now exactly at its height, 
 the practical materialism which, in league 
 with vast international capital, endeavors 
 to repeat the Roman Empire, — the 
 dominion of a very small, fluctuating 
 minority over the endless masses of wage- 
 earning slaves? The speculating mania of 
 311 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 our age is also a psychosis — a cold 
 psychosis. 
 
 The first thing which such a period tries 
 to repress in woman is her emotional qual- 
 ities — ^precisely those to which an earlier 
 time opened doors and gates ; in religion, 
 in art, in the numberless institutions for 
 charitable work where sjrmpathy — ^the 
 human feeling of universal oneness — not 
 only found expression but could pour 
 forth fruitfully and helpfully. 
 
 Not only have all these institutions 
 vanished within a few centuries, but 
 emotional life in general is dammed up, 
 restrained, isolated entirely within the 
 family. Ecstasy, one of the greatest 
 levers of civilization and pillars of develop- 
 ment, became suspected and was placed 
 under strict and unfavorable supervision. 
 In course of time, it fell into discredit as 
 bad taste, and was branded as "mental 
 darkness"; later ensued the consequence 
 that every well-bred woman must hide 
 and repress her feelings — even her S3mi- 
 pathy — and hence must and did shut her 
 eyes to a number of shocking things 
 practiced in public and private life. By 
 the middle of this century of civic virtue 
 things had gone so far that every glance 
 312 
 
ECONOMIC DISTRESS 
 
 or deed of the woman beyond the family 
 circle bore witness to an "unhealthy 
 fancy" and was held up to her as a proof 
 of "unwomanliness. " 
 
 The "true" woman, the national and 
 liberal woman, the German "woman had 
 eyes only for the Good, the True, the 
 Beautiful," against everything "ugly," 
 "dirty" or "common," and whatever else 
 belonged to the lowest rounds; blinders 
 were fastened on by school, home and 
 custom, over which she dared not squint 
 at the risk of losing her "purity" as 
 "maid, wife or mother." 
 
 When, however, the woman with her 
 emotional qualities "knows not in from 
 out," she does as she did in the period of 
 the Roman Empire ; she goes to the bad ; 
 or she emancipates herself and degen- 
 erates. For she always follows her mas- 
 culine example. 
 
 Out of the material distress which grew 
 with the advancing years of the century, 
 sprang the woman-question; as to this 
 we are agreed, and the rest is clear. Or 
 do not the roots go still farther back? Do 
 they not reach down into the secret 
 region of mental distress about which no 
 one concerns himself all this time? For 
 313 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 man does not live by bread alone. Might 
 we all agree perhaps that this ancient 
 saying contains a certain truth? 
 
 This mental distress was caused by the 
 constantly narrowed limits to the woman's 
 instinct of expansion; because the range 
 in which she could be active became ever 
 smaller; because she was more one- 
 sidedly thrown back upon herself, upon 
 herself as sex, and because she was in 
 her sexuality more and more restricted, 
 chilled, rendered superfluous. 
 
 After the Reformation, woman had one 
 right to existence only — as wife and 
 mother, under the guardianship of the 
 husband; aside from this she led only an 
 accessory existence as fine or ordinary 
 courtesan. Finally as old maid she 
 became a superfluous member of the 
 family, who had in modesty to efface her- 
 self. Aside from her available or unavail- 
 able sexuality she had no cause for 
 existence ; she was altogether superfluous. 
 
 As the family could not longer support 
 this steadily increasing number of super- 
 fluous members, and endeavored to push 
 them off, the woman-question arose. 
 
 Confused, unprepared, injudicious, a 
 host of blinded creatures sprang out of 
 314 
 
ECONOMIC DISTRESS 
 
 the darkness; the mass of superfluous 
 beings threw themselves upon the labor- 
 market and tried to seize on what lay 
 nearest. Equally confused, unprepared 
 and injudicious were most of the men 
 who met them there or led them thither. 
 The inevitableness of competition was at 
 once demonstrated; a struggle which 
 threatens to make earth more of a hell 
 than ever for mankind; for the struggle 
 between man and woman for the mouth- 
 ful of bread is the most unnatural of all 
 struggles. 
 
 And what the woman does in the 
 departments which she has conquered in 
 the struggle for existence, — is it any 
 more than unproductive work, work in 
 which her innermost woman nature, her 
 need of expansion, her enthusiasm, her 
 emotions, lie fallow ; work in which her 
 woman-substance fades, in which she 
 is unsexed? 
 
 Already in the teacher's vocation there 
 is for many women no adequate content- 
 ment; what sort of satisfaction for her 
 woman nature, of exaltation of her 
 womanly instincts shall a woman find 
 then in office work, as telephone or tele- 
 graph operator, as typewriter, in railway 
 31S 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 offices, at the postoffice window or as 
 college auditor? 
 
 And everywhere in these departments 
 they are interlopers and parasites, taking 
 the bread away from the mouth of the 
 founder of the family. Are there no 
 positions where the woman can perform 
 productive labor to the satisfaction of 
 her woman-nature, and yet remain out of 
 competition with man? 
 
 If courage had not so thoroughly broken 
 connection with the past, had not at most 
 points broken the contintiity of evolution, 
 this way would already have been found 
 and entered upon, as found it must be and 
 trodden. 
 
 3t6 
 
X— WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 I 
 
 The air is gray, warm and damp, filled 
 with the thousand-fold twittering of bird 
 voices. Water drops and purls and runs, 
 from the roof, under the snow, between 
 the stones. A pale young blue parts as 
 if with invisible hands the white cloud- 
 drifts, and climbs higher and higher in 
 the heavens. The snow sinks away as if 
 drunk in from beneath, and tiny blue, 
 yellow and white heads peep out like little 
 eyes, waiting for the sun. Everything 
 thaws and melts and stretches itself 
 timidly in the March mildness. Is spring 
 really coming? A tiny gnat dances in the 
 air as if drunken, a spider sits on the wall 
 and stretches carefully first one leg and 
 then another. The unchanging animals 
 begin their invariable life anew and con- 
 fide in the spring although they do not yet 
 know that it is coming. 
 
 And I feel already the thawing in 
 
 thousands of human souls, and in my 
 
 own. I know that now thousands of 
 
 women will pour out the spring-rain of 
 
 317 
 
THE PSYC HOLOGY OF WOMA N 
 
 tears which have no reason and no pur- 
 pose ; tears at sight of which sensible peo- 
 ple unwillingly ask— "Why do you weep?" 
 and the questioned one answers, shy and 
 abashed — "I don't know!" tears which 
 are still the best of all tears, for they 
 well forth wholly pure out of a yearning 
 soul, they thaw out all hardness and float 
 away all obstructions, till the ground of 
 the soul is quite full of moist warmth and 
 fruitful readiness and opens quietly, tran- 
 quil and consecrated to the §eed and sun 
 —waiting for the seed and the sun. . . . .' 
 In every spring the souls of millions of 
 women open thus at the first gurgling of 
 brooks and drinking of the earth, from 
 the twelve year old girl to the fifty year 
 old matron, from the streaming tears of 
 early youth which gush like a mountain 
 spring, to the single drops which fall 
 hard and burning— or else strangely cold, 
 from the lashes of the tear-dimmed eyes 
 of the old woman. Who does not under- 
 stand these tears, does not understand 
 woman. And in those who no longer 
 shed these tears, the woman is dead. 
 
 These causeless tears are the most real 
 tears of the woman — tears of yearning 
 after her perfection, tears of unfulfilled 
 318 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 destiny. The unhappy weep them and 
 the happy weep them, for between the 
 fortune of the one and the misfortune of 
 the other there is little diflEerence. But 
 why she weeps, no one of them can say; 
 she only knows — "I feel so." 
 
 I will attempt to say it, to comprehend 
 something of that which lies on my heart 
 again, as it falls upon the souls of thou- 
 sands of other women, soft and heavy and 
 oppressive. 
 
 Our time has educated us to isolate 
 ourselves, and taught us to call this 
 "individualization." We speak of indi- 
 vidual happiness and individual life, and 
 we persuade ourselves that when we have 
 found our individual happiness and have 
 planned our individual life we have some- 
 thing upon which we can live and die. 
 But at the corner there stands a beggar- 
 woman with a baby on her arm; she 
 stands there although begging is for- 
 bidden and the next policeman will send 
 her away. We see only the back of the 
 little child and the little body as it is out- 
 lined through the old shawl ; it lies with 
 its head upon the woman's shoulder and 
 sleeps, nestled close as only little children 
 and little animals can nestle, and as we 
 319 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 see it, unexpectedly it goes through us 
 from head to foot like a burning pain, 
 and against our will it is as if it were the 
 child of our own womb that sleeps there 
 helpless and exposed to all evil; and if 
 we were going now straight into the arms 
 of the beloved man, in the leisure hour of 
 happiness, it is still as if the sun were 
 extinguished and everything cold and 
 black around us; even he, the beloved, 
 seems to us distant and strange. For our 
 mother-feeling is stronger than all other 
 instincts and our mother-feeling is all- 
 embracing. 
 
 The spirit of our time isolates the 
 woman with her own children, if she has 
 any, and if she has none, it isolates her by 
 herself. Personal happiness! 
 
 Whoever has lived life, first without per- 
 sonal happiness and then in the personal 
 happiness, knows that for the woman 
 who has remained woman there is no 
 limitation of personal happiness ; for the 
 woman in her womanly activity will 
 everywhere go beyond her personal 
 happiness and outside of it — into the all- 
 motherly. To fill up this fountain of 
 warmth, has been for several hundreds 
 of years the line of development of 
 320 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 advanced thought. And therefore we 
 stand where we are. 
 
 From decade to decade, from century 
 to century, we have been exclusively 
 referred to man, till the end is that we 
 have been referred also to man's la- 
 bor market, — that we have been forced 
 into his duties and rights. Now is it 
 time that we demand back again our 
 whole woman-being, not only our wom- 
 anhood as regards man, not only our 
 womanhood as mother, but all that we 
 are by virtue of and through our sex ; 
 and that we reject everything which 
 by virtue of, and through our sex, we are 
 not. 
 
 The woman is not merely woman 
 through her sexual function and in it; 
 she is also woman aside from and without 
 exercise of her sexual function, by virtue 
 of her organs as woman which determine 
 her soul and feeling. Let us be wholly 
 women, in everything pertaining to 
 woman, in our view of life, in our life- 
 activity, and in our occupation, whether 
 we become the man's or not. We will 
 not go begging at his table nor crowd 
 him from it; we desire a table of our 
 own, for us and our children, — ^if not the 
 321 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 children of our body, then the children of 
 our all-embracing motherly love. 
 
 We are not here simply for his pleasure, 
 — the pleasure which he always imagines, 
 and which we let him imagine gives us 
 so much more pleasure than it really 
 does. For us the pleasure is a rare 
 quiver, perhaps only wholly felt, and then 
 with awe, in the moment of impregna- 
 tion, — and hundreds of times not felt, 
 where many are so obliging as to feign 
 it to the man because he wishes it to be 
 so and so rejoices over it. And we are 
 also pleased because he is pleased. For 
 the woman sexual enjo3rment is a bliss 
 only felt at long intervals, after yearning 
 and denial, not in daily habitude. And 
 when the woman burns in constant 
 longing, which the man takes as a ca- 
 pacity for a high degree of sexual enjoy- 
 ment, — then it is either an alternation of 
 men which stimulates her or there are 
 shameful grounds of local disorder, for 
 which the man, always vain in this cen- 
 tral point and easy to dupe, makes a fool 
 of himself. 
 
 Yet another thing; all, who are not 
 ugly, are trained and educated by the 
 mother, by the servants, the books given 
 
 322 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 them, the family papers, to be pleasing 
 and at the same time suggestively coy 
 towards the man. For he has been for 
 several centuries the woman's only pos- 
 sibility in life, aside from which there was 
 nothing, and in regard to which all 
 caviling and choosing was dangerous. 
 "One must take whatever offers." 
 
 This ran through all classes, till the 
 economic stress had reached such a point 
 that the man began to consider how he 
 could quickly free himself from the burden 
 of women at least. The earlier forms for 
 this — the practical, well -carried out 
 organizations — were destroyed, forgotten, 
 or where this was not the case, dis- 
 credited as expressions of mental dark- 
 ness. No one had the courage to revert 
 to them or even give them earnest con- 
 sideration. The line of development 
 should go forwards, not backwards. 
 Therefore, forward march ! 
 
 Let us note this: the man cut the 
 woman from her former numerous pos- 
 sibilities of occupation, sustenance, culti- 
 vation, and concentrated her entirely upon 
 himself. The man as private individual 
 became the woman's content, occupation 
 and maintenance, — a. perfectly natural 
 323 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 fruit of advanced individualization; the 
 man as private individual felt himself 
 with the lapse of time too much a beast 
 of burden, — a further fruit of individual- 
 ization ; and as he could not straightway 
 assign his superfluous sisters, cousins, 
 aunts, sisters-in-law and distant feminine 
 relations to the poor-house, he directed 
 them for general maintenance to the 
 public. 
 
 Our teachers of political economy, and 
 social philosophers of English and Social- 
 Democratic origin express it thus: the 
 nian ought no longer to tyrannize over 
 the woman and hinder the unfolding of 
 her mental abilities. He must unselfishly 
 assist her in all her struggles for inde- 
 pendence and self-maintenance. Then 
 he has her off his neck. 
 
 The next thing is to find for the woman 
 paid work, which is reckoned in money 
 value after the manner of masculine labor, 
 in place of the unpaid, i. e., woman's 
 household work, which has hitherto been 
 paid only with natural maintenance. And 
 the shaken off parasites now run about in 
 all directions seeking men's work, true to 
 the suggestion given them by man. For 
 if the idea had originated with woman — 
 324 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 the woman of womanly feeling and con- 
 sciousness — she could never have fallen 
 upon this way ; she would have sought to 
 create woman's work, performable by 
 women, and in woman's peculiar depart- 
 ments. If this whole movement had 
 really arisen out of the womanly necessity 
 for inner and outer unfolding, it would 
 involuntarily and spontaneously have set 
 up the productive labor of woman as the 
 first postulate, and just as involuntarily 
 and spontaneously have defined wherein 
 the productive work of woman consists, 
 how it is executed, and what conditions 
 are necessary for its fruitful consumma- 
 tion. Nothing of this sort has taken place. 
 
 II 
 
 In what does woman's productive labor 
 consist? 
 
 As I write this question I am surprised 
 that it has not been raised before, either 
 by the women or the men; and for the 
 following reasons : 
 
 Firstly: In order to meet the woman's 
 need of work, we must decide clearly for 
 which branches she is especially fitted. 
 
 Secondly: In order to avoid the intru- 
 sion of women into the departments more 
 325 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 natural to man and better filled by him, 
 we must fix the distinguishing qualities of 
 masculine and feminine work, and discard 
 those branches in which woman's service 
 is inferior. 
 
 Thirdly: We must know in what 
 departments the woman is superior to the 
 man, and hence reserve this work for her, 
 so far as possible. 
 
 Fourthly : It is a question of a certain 
 quality of performance, not merely of 
 work alone, but of productive work; i. e., 
 no longer the service of an individual for 
 a certain return, no longer a mere wage 
 relation, but such that by its very con- 
 stitution a surplus arises out of it which 
 contributes to the public weal and is 
 indispensable for its preservation. 
 
 Fifthly : Has there an3rwhere been any 
 conception of a work for women as pro- 
 ductive? It seems to me there is no such 
 conception, since it is desired to open to 
 women all branches in free competition, 
 which therefore excludes protection in her 
 own especial branches, if there be any, 
 and turns them over to neglect and 
 destruction. 
 
 In fact these special spheres have been 
 given over to neglect in a narrow sense 
 326 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 throughout this century, in a broader 
 sense for centuries. How do people sup- 
 pose that this lack of consideration for 
 woman's peculiar gifts and talents must 
 react upon women? Do they suppose 
 woman can thus unfold upon all sides, 
 can become conscious of herself, or dis- 
 close and bring into action her whole 
 nature? Do they suppose that woman 
 really is just as the man of to-day knows 
 her, or pretends to know her? — or as she 
 knows or feigns to know herself? Do 
 they imagine she has so completely 
 attained possession of herself, that she 
 can now expand also into distant spheres 
 common to both sexes? Whoever be- 
 lieves, can continue as heretofore, but 
 there are always some who will not so 
 believe. 
 
 On the contrary, we are just at a point 
 where — in comparison with other periods 
 — men know increasingly less of women, 
 and women know but little of themselves. 
 Why? Because the opportunities for 
 knowledge are undermined. For a long 
 time woman has been considered simply 
 as material for entertainment and trans- 
 plantation. The woman fared so well 
 thus that she became remarkably inade- 
 327 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 quate in her special departments; from 
 which the conclusion is drawn that she is 
 fitted in a high degree for other depart- 
 ments. Into the preparatory mill then, 
 and emerge as doctors, lawyers, people's 
 representatives, agitators and various 
 other high officers. 
 
 We do not in the least thereby discover 
 wherein the woman's productive labor, 
 which can be performed by her only, 
 consists. 
 
 The best work which the woman can 
 create, and in which her productivity is 
 complete, undiminished and enduring, — 
 is the child. Of what avail is it to me 
 that I am able to take the highest honors, 
 have the slenderest waist, write the best 
 books, in which even something like a 
 new thought appears, if I have sickly 
 children? In the children, the mother's 
 value is revealed. If the children are not 
 quite what they should be, and there are 
 no reasons for thinking the father to 
 blame, — ^then there is something wrong 
 with the mother. 
 
 What is it that is wrong with the 
 
 mother in most cases? It is a failure of 
 
 health previous to the mother-calling. 
 
 This is a manifestation belonging pecu- 
 
 328 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 liarly to the second half of this century. 
 It made its appearance side by side with 
 the later marriages, not only for the man 
 but also for the young "girl in all coun- 
 tries. Towards the South, the divergence 
 from the earlier custom is less great; 
 towards the North the difference in- 
 creases to as much as ten years later 
 than was the custom formerly. It is no 
 longer considered either a fine or moral 
 thing to marry a "child." She must not 
 become a mother too early ; she must be 
 "mature" enough to be capable of "self- 
 determination." But before she has 
 attained this maturity the "child" has 
 begun to lose vigor. 
 
 There was a time when the twentieth 
 year was anxiously anticipated by the 
 young girl: "Twenty years old," said 
 mamma's best friend, "and no husband 
 yet!" Now even the best family friends 
 have become more tolerant. "She will 
 soon be thirty," they say, "she has not 
 much more time to lose. ' ' In this ciirrent 
 coiiception there is more physiology and 
 psychology than one thinks. The 
 twenties are in marked degree years of 
 lassitude ; we can all observe that in one 
 another. For the young women who 
 329 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 are not broken or withered in these, the 
 curve goes upward again with the thirtieth 
 year. The reasons for this are unwill- 
 ingly touched upon, because a not unes- 
 sential part of our present moral and social 
 structure rests upon their concealment. 
 But they are not unknown to almost 
 every wide-awake woman, and the in- 
 stinctive consciousness of them promotes 
 not a little the decline in health. 
 
 There must still be many families 
 which can remember a grandmother or 
 great grandmother, married at fifteen, 
 who was active, even in her old age, as a 
 cheerful, benign and experienced woman. 
 When these characteristics are spoken of 
 now among her grandchildren, it is in 
 tones implying "notwithstanding," with 
 a ring of pity; those times were still 
 very crude, you know! If the great- 
 grandmother could speak, it would per- 
 haps be also in tones of pity, — these new 
 times are so strange. 
 
 In the young girl of healthy vitality, 
 the period between fifteen and seventeen 
 is really her blossoming time. Every one 
 perceives the fragrance which hangs 
 about her whole young being, making 
 the insignificant charming, the homely 
 330 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 engaging, and first revealing beauty. 
 The bloom of the skin, the sparkle of the 
 eyes, the slender, graceful suppleness of 
 the body, — everything is blooming health 
 and elasticity. People imagine this is 
 something purely physical, which changes 
 so quickly on that very account ; but how 
 if it changes so swiftly because it is more 
 psychical than physical, — an almost in- 
 stant unfolding of all the expansive ca- 
 pacities for complete womanly feeling, in 
 which there is as yet no reflective thought? 
 Why does the blood come and go so 
 quickly in her cheeks? Because she 
 undergoes great bodily agitation? Or 
 because presentiments, ideas which are 
 knowledge, connections of sympathy not 
 yet become thoughts, glide through the 
 soul of the young girl at the slightest out- 
 ward provocation? Why does she feel 
 this loud, tumultuous heart-beating at the 
 approach or greeting of a man, which 
 becomes still louder because she fears it 
 may be heard? Why does she so often 
 drop her eyes and grow confused? Why 
 are her slender hands so warm and moist 
 that the crochet-needle rusts in them? 
 Why does she always turn her hand- 
 kerchief between them as if to dry them, 
 331 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 when a man offers his hand in greeting? 
 Why does she often grow pale under a 
 glance, so pale and so suddenly that one 
 thinks her about to faint? Are these only 
 physical appearances, without her knowl- 
 edge? — or does she know only too well 
 and blush or pale with double violence 
 because she fears it can be read in her 
 face? Many believe the former, and the 
 mothers always say excusingly — "She is 
 still so innocent, she is still quite child- 
 ish. " I believe that "she" is perhaps 
 never again in her life so little childish 
 as then. The years when people no 
 longer think her childish are quite fre- 
 quently a great step backwards towards 
 childishness. 
 
 In this short time of blossoming — and 
 perhaps only then in fullness — everything 
 in the young girl is in readiness. There 
 is readiness of soul and mind, — a capacity 
 for intuitive understanding, for unre- 
 strained devotion, and unbroken instinct. 
 Nothing is perverse in her, and she is 
 still so pliant that nothing tears wounds 
 in her. Her interest and inclination, 
 anxiously hidden and kept secret so far 
 as she is able, turn chiefly toward elderly 
 men. Why? Because they have more 
 332 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 time to give her, more mental and 
 spiritual attention than the young man, 
 wholly occupied with himself and making 
 demands for himself. A marriage, how- 
 ever, between such a young girl and an 
 elderly man would bring with it horror 
 so spontaneous and convulsive that in a 
 lifetime perhaps the memory would not 
 vanish from the nerves. For it was not 
 the senses alone which spoke so loudly; 
 it was the yearning, softening woman- 
 soul. The young girl is bound to the 
 young man by likeness of physical 
 development, which excludes observation 
 and terror and does not allow the natural 
 to become a thing of reflection; but in 
 capacity the young man is himself still 
 wanting, and thus upon the physical union 
 follows so often in youthful marriages a 
 void, — and out of that void, grief and 
 strife, — in case no positive calls of duty 
 create for them both intervals of rest 
 from one another. 
 
 Out of the emptiness of remaining 
 unnoticed, — and the inner life of the 
 young girl remains in those years almost 
 without exception unnoticed, by many 
 from ignorance, and by the few from 
 shyness, — out of this emptiness of useless 
 
 333 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 blossoming arises a depression, for the 
 quality of which it is hard to find the 
 right name. It is an indifference, a 
 limpness. The young woman is no 
 longer quick and nimble as formerly; she 
 feels a slackness in her muscles, some- 
 thing like sand under the skin, which 
 makes her arms and legs heavy, and 
 something soft in the back, like a cushion 
 instead of a backbone. 
 
 She prefers to sit still and her eyes 
 become dull and dreamy — ^languishing 
 we call it, but it is not that, it is disap- 
 pointment ; so far as I understand it, it is 
 the very deepest disappointment of her 
 whole life, penetrating bod)' and soul, for 
 it springs from the feeling of a dissolving 
 unity. The woman never again possesses 
 herself so completely ; she is never again so 
 susceptible mentally, so awake, so capable, 
 never again so pliant bodily, so strong and 
 ready. The years which now follow, the 
 actual years of marriage, find her often 
 physically indisposed and mentally de- 
 pressed. She likes to engross herself 
 with externals and takes them seriously, 
 whether she discusses her toilet or the sub- 
 ject of her studies, in case she interests 
 herself in the latter. The spontaneous, 
 334 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 individual, lightning-swift comprehension, 
 the inward possession are gone. She has 
 no longer the energy for this, nor the 
 interest. Men say then — "She is not of 
 a sensuous nature." Or, "She is so 
 gentle." Alas, she is only indifferent ; 
 she "takes things as they come." 
 
 In this condition, she becomes a mother 
 and transmits to her children that which 
 she has. "She is so pleasant," say the 
 many. ' 'There is really something dead 
 in her," say the few. It is a condition 
 without instinct; rectitude of judgment 
 always, but the expression of the per- 
 sonal unity is lost. Being and acting 
 from within outwards, the spontaneous 
 sense of the true is broken. In its place 
 are wilfulness, assertions, judgments read 
 or heard, whether upon a matter of fash- 
 ion or a way of life ; something excitable, 
 strained, unnerved grows ever more 
 visible. Under the pressure of this con- 
 dition the children come into existence 
 and grow up. These are their first im- 
 pressions, the physical reflex action of the 
 mother's condition upon the forming 
 foetus, upon the sense, eye and feeling of 
 the little creature in its development. 
 
 The being of the child in the first ten 
 
 335 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 years is only a connected reflex action. 
 It is of very little moment what we teach 
 it, what we require of it, what we imprint 
 upon its mind; what we are is every- 
 thing. It will mold itself after us, — from 
 within outwards. It will never more be 
 free from it, even though it later con- 
 siders and reacts consciously. 
 
 Her children are the woman's produc- 
 tive work. In them becomes manifest 
 what the innermost substance of the 
 mother was, what her natural capital 
 was worth. The productive labor of the 
 woman does not consist in educating her 
 children, as people in this century have 
 believed and upon which many women 
 have exerted all their energies. Educa- 
 tion is external work. But what is not in 
 them cannot be brought out of them ; at 
 most only a simulation can be attained. 
 The woman's productive work is not 
 above all a thing wherein much can be 
 achieved by will, intention, effort, design 
 or training, — the productive work of the 
 woman is her inner nature, her inborn 
 character, her warm soul, her good heart, 
 her healthy blood, her unbroken strength, 
 her untiring energy, directness, buoyancy 
 and freshness. 
 
 336 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 When the mother does not rise like the 
 sun over her child, warming so that every 
 tiny limb stretches with pleasure, gladden- 
 ing with her glance and smile like a peep 
 into the bright morning, waking and 
 alluring forth all that is good and strong 
 and happy and healthy, — ^then she may 
 have very many excellent qualities and 
 her child may also have many excellent 
 qualities, but qualified for life he will 
 never quite be. He has been led astray 
 and will lead astray in great things or 
 small ; he will be insatiable and insuflScient, 
 rough or dull, or if he is so constituted that 
 he can overcome all that was unpleasant 
 and diseased in his childhood, a thorn 
 always remains in his side, and always a 
 certain unskill in him. He could not suck 
 himself full of healthy blood and warming 
 sun. 
 
 But the times are now such that women 
 not only become mothers later than 
 before and when they are more worn 
 out, but that the best endowed, strong- 
 est, most vigorous, best equipped young 
 women, both mentally and spiritually, 
 devote themselves to becoming self-sup- 
 porting in the most varying ways. The 
 conditions compel this in all classes, 
 337 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 from the minister's daughter to the farm- 
 maid. With the maid, motherhood does 
 not so readily feel the pressure ; with the 
 others it is fairly excluded. As earners 
 and learners they pass the years which, 
 as I have shown, are the richest years. 
 They develop and cultivate, meanwhile, 
 certain sides in themselves, — the under- 
 standing, perhaps also faculties of 
 thought, and what capital they possess, — • 
 spirit, temperament, judgment, talents, 
 they make of use for themselves. They 
 barter their own capital and consume it 
 at the same time. If then later, in their 
 "maturity," they come to have children, 
 how many slumbering gifts, how much 
 untouched capital can they give them? 
 It is already used, bartered, coined. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The real demand of our time is that 
 woman should enter into possession of 
 herself. What we women have all at once 
 and bitterly felt is that we are cut off. 
 We feel as if there were one united 
 determination to hem us in all around. 
 First in the parental home, where our 
 real self is held back and something non- 
 essential developed; then as women, we 
 338 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 feel it in the attitude of men, even the 
 best of them. If we seek our own path 
 we find indeed a calling, an activity, a 
 distinction, but here also all is hindrance, 
 hindrance, hindrance, always the same; 
 we are driven back into ourselves. 
 
 What is it within us which yearns so to 
 expand and is not comprehended in its 
 present forms, which is only quieted 
 and relieved in one way ; i. e. , more and 
 more with every birth and every child? 
 Is it a surplus which we ourselves cannot 
 use or exhaust in living, which is only 
 given us to transmit as a heritage to new 
 generations? Is it the surplus which is 
 indispensable to patient carrying of the 
 fruit and to willing and happy fostering 
 of the tiny, new, living creature? 
 
 Thus we always come back, however 
 we may stray, to the two questions: 
 Must the women crowd the labor-market 
 of the man? Shall the best endowed 
 woman-material be diverted from the 
 productive labor of woman, — or only 
 render a minimized service therein? 
 
 Is not the evolution of humanity 
 dependent in a great degree upon mak- 
 ing use of such material in the service of 
 the race and species? And do we not 
 
 339 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 see in the European youth for some 
 decades back, a deterioration and dull- 
 ness which may be connected with the 
 fact that not the best constituted and 
 richest natures are sought out or stand 
 ready for disposal as mothers, but often 
 the most inferior instead? 
 
 But what is to be done with those who 
 are left over; who, for one reason or 
 another, are not drawn into the true pro- 
 ductive work of woman? Is it supposable 
 that under favorable economic and social 
 conditions an equilibrium will be reached 
 so that there will be practically no super- 
 fluous ones? 
 
 I believe not. 
 
 The number of women who never 
 become wives will certainly remain very 
 large in all ages, as has always been the 
 case for hundreds and thousands of years. 
 I think it is more likely to increase than 
 to diminish. This depends upon both 
 man and woman. It also depends upon 
 the fact that every moderation of feeling 
 and refining of temperament bring with 
 them a decrease in the outburst of sexual 
 life, especially in the great mass of man- 
 kind. The highly gifted and they who 
 stand nearest to nature have far more 
 340 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 urgent need of the sexual satisfaction and 
 suffer far deeper injury without it than 
 the average character. To many men mar- 
 riage will always be forbidden by the cir- 
 cumstances and external activity of their 
 lives, without making them celibates in 
 consequence. We cannot hope to change 
 this. The problem, then, is to find occu- 
 pation for the spinsters who are the prod- 
 uct of these circumstances, — occupation 
 which shall be complementary to man's 
 work, not competitive with it. There is 
 no possibility of this at present; for. the 
 work of the unmarried woman must first 
 become productive if it is to be useful 
 to society and satisfying to herself. In 
 what would the productive work of the 
 unmarried woman consist? 
 
 It must be rooted in the fulfilment of 
 her mother vocation, in the setting free 
 of her motherly feeling, if not in the flesh, 
 then in the mind and soul. 
 
 Among the many who do not become 
 mothers, there is always a small elect 
 body who voluntarily and early renounce 
 a life of happiness for themselves in order 
 to devote themselves wholly and entirely 
 to a life for others. This they can only 
 do in an isolated and individual fashion. 
 341 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 Our time has no institutions for this pur- 
 pose. In the Middle Ages there were 
 plenty of them, but they fell with the 
 economic system upon which they were 
 founded. Since those times we have the 
 everlasting impoverishment of whole 
 classes of the people and whole districts. 
 No rise in wages can help them up ; no 
 State assistance guide them, no amount 
 of private charity prove effectual; they 
 are those individuals and classes which 
 fall away from the tmited interests of the 
 existing social structure. They spread 
 themselves among the social-democratic 
 and trades-union associations and form 
 the sediment of the large cities and 
 merge into the endless "deserving poor" 
 and the undeserving criminal class; but 
 the student of human nature and brother 
 of mankind asks where the. blame begins 
 and ends. Innocent culpables are the 
 majority of the depraved, the idle and 
 the criminal; sacrifices to the form of 
 society and to sudden social and economic 
 changes. They exist in the country, in 
 the industrial districts, in the mining 
 regions, as well as in the crowded cities. 
 And to the same fate are destined the 
 children which they bear. 
 342 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 The State has shown itself in, competent 
 to furnish with employment, to provide 
 for, or to "elevate" these classes. Shel- 
 ters, night-asylums, soup-kitchens and 
 laborers' colonies, do not work. Some- 
 thing more is needed; something which 
 seems to have disappeared in our day, but 
 which nevertheless is swelling every- 
 where so strongly that sooner or later it 
 will burst the weakening crust of self- 
 seeking in our hearts; the feeling, "I 
 cannot enjoy, so long as my brother 
 hungers; I cannot be happy while, in my 
 sister, my flesh and blood weeps; I can- 
 not caress my children and see another 
 mother's children near by starve or go to 
 ruin." 
 
 There will always be women who early 
 and voluntarily renounce life for them- 
 selves to live in the lives of others, 
 because of the very nature of women, 
 which is enthusiastic, and because of that 
 still deeper feeling in the substance of 
 the women : None of us lives unto her- 
 self ; we are but vessels, bearers of others' 
 contents; we carry our own or others' 
 fruit. 
 
 Here is the sphere in which a mighty 
 work of organization, the reestablish- 
 
 343 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 ment of society, may be carried on; a 
 work which till now has always failed, 
 whether undertaken by the State or by 
 private individuals, because it requires 
 entire and limitless devotion of the indi- 
 vidual and strictly administered and 
 exact organization of brotherhoods and 
 sisterhoods; because also it demands 
 large capital. For the money, we need 
 have no fear. Great donations are con- 
 stantly being made for such senseless mis- 
 sions as plainly indicate the perplexity of 
 the giver, — "What shall I do with my 
 money?" Moreover one of the singular 
 characteristics of our time is the complete 
 scattering of gigantic fortunes such as 
 were unknown in earlier times. To obtain 
 possession of the capital of these childless 
 rich people, and use it for the benefit of 
 the needy, or in other words to allow the 
 innocently or guiltily acquired plunder to 
 flow back to the plundered and so expiate 
 a part of the crime which this heaping 
 up of wealth denotes, — that would be a task 
 which increasing numbers would enter 
 into, both now and in the future, some 
 as givers, others as administrators. 
 
 There is still an utter lack of institutions 
 fitted to carry on such an undertaking. 
 344 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 We lack organizations which could give 
 such institutions life and permanency. 
 They must consist of systematized organ- 
 izations, from those of extremest austerity 
 to those of utmost mildness, according to 
 the difficulties and requirements of the 
 office to be fulfilled and the grade sus- 
 tained. One thing must be excluded 
 from all other grades; the trifling pre- 
 tension of all idle charity. 
 
 The poor girl who has to choose be- 
 tween murdering her illegitimate child at 
 birth, or letting it slowly languish and 
 die "under foster care," an outcast from 
 society, from whom the wives and 
 daughters of the better classes chastely 
 turn away their pure glances, should 
 stand nearest to the altar of the Virgin 
 and Child; over her may the Mother of 
 God first spread her mantle, and may the 
 first symbol of the universal motherhood 
 of women be raised in her service. Let 
 the devotion of the chosen feminine youth 
 who will set themselves apart for human 
 service be dedicated to these children who 
 would else be murdered or allowed to 
 perish. Let it be a sisterhood of life 
 with all its horrors — no cloister service or 
 young ladies' club — which shall spread 
 345 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 from land to land in countless branches. 
 Here, in these institutions the woman- 
 physician may work free from competition 
 with the man ; woman may conduct the 
 apothecary shops, may climb to the 
 highest administrative positions, manage 
 telephone, telegraph, postal and book- 
 keeping departments; nurse the women, 
 care for the children, rearing and instruct- 
 ing them, educate the young girls, and 
 finally, establish in the places of old 
 civilizations now run to waste, colonies 
 of working-people, colonies in which 
 all that is unqualified to endure will of 
 itself perish, and all that is qualified, 
 become doubly so. To these mother- 
 institutions, countless others would be 
 added. Hospitals, kitchens for the poor, 
 all manner of nursing institutions, organ- 
 ized labor intelligence of the care of the 
 poor might grow up from such a root. 
 
 The woman who devotes herself wholly 
 to the service of others enjoys, at least 
 in civilized lands, protection and venera- 
 tion, even among the lower classes. 
 These sisterhoods should be austere to 
 themselves; to measure the morality of 
 others and require an equal return for the 
 good they do, this is not their business. 
 346 
 
WOMAN'S PRODUCTIVE WORK 
 
 It is still less their business to plague 
 the people for whom they provide food 
 and shelter with singing and praying, 
 preaching, and the demands of the con- 
 fessional. They must be sisters among 
 sisters, each chosen with a sure psycholog- 
 ical view to fitness for her position, from 
 the most gifted to the very humblest 
 member; they must be colonizers in the 
 wilderness of civilization, those of less 
 means and less abilities achieving a cer- 
 tain work, the women of higher rank or 
 endowments fulfilling a life -mission, 
 bound to celibacy by their calling, like 
 every woman in a bread-winning trade. 
 
 This may seem a dream, and yet only 
 a few decades perhaps and the dream 
 becomes a reality. There was once a 
 time when the mstitutions for the service 
 of humanity were mild and full of com- 
 passion, but the hearts were hard; it 
 needed fearful pressure and unheard-of 
 threats to move them. Now the hearts 
 are tender and willing, the officials' cruel- 
 ties are done away with and private ones 
 are rare. No one now looks upon the suffer- 
 ings of his neighbor with enjo3anent, and 
 the descendants of those who stimulated 
 themselves by cruelties are gone. Sel- 
 347 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN 
 
 fishness has been refined; the injustice 
 which is now done, the defrauding which 
 takes place, must seek direct ways. No 
 one wishes to see the misery for which he 
 is to blame. The tortures which we now 
 prepare for one another arise chiefly from 
 misunderstandings and antagonism, com- 
 ing from insufficient knowledge. We 
 must go back again to instinct, or rather 
 we must go forward to a finer instinct, 
 for instinct is the basis of all psychology. 
 And psychology is not only a science of 
 knowledge; it is an offspring of the 
 nerves and feeling. A period of thought 
 which has lasted four hundred years, has 
 now gone by; a period of feeling is 
 approaching, and with it comes the time 
 of the woman. 
 
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