^^^^^•^^Ap^^^i;: •■> mi^-^. ■ ALBERT R MANN LIBRARY AT CORNPLL LTvnrVERSITY CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 924 076 285 232 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/cu31924076285232 THE /V\an-Made World OR. OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN CHARLTON COMPANY NEW YORK 1911 CopyrlBht 1911 by CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN Prialcd by The Co-Opentive PreH, New York Citr This hook is dedicated with reverent love and gratitude to Lester F. Waed Sociologist and Humanitarian, one of the •world's great men; a creative thinker to whose wide knowledge and power of vision we are indebted for a new grasp of the na- ture and processes of Society, and to whom all women are especially hound in honor and gratitude for his Gynaecocentric Theory of Life, than which nothing so important to humanity has heen advanced since the Theory of Evolution, and nothing so im- portant to women has ever heen given to the world. PREFACE Those who wish to study the underlying facts on which this book is based are referred to "Pure Sociology," by Lester F. Ward, chapter XIV, in which the Androcentric Theory of Life is fairly defined and con- trasted with the Gynaecocentric Theory. That this last is disputed by the majority of present day biologists will not surprise anyone who reads it and who is familiar with the nature of the human mind. All new scientific discoveries are slow of imi- versal acceptance; and anything so sub- versive of historic custom as this, involving so complete a change of attitude regarding the relations of the sexes to one another and to Society, cannot be expected to make rapid progress in popular belief. Time, study and experience may be trusted to establish the truth. Assuming the Gynaecocentric Theory to be the true one — ^that the female is the race type, and the male, originally but a sex type, reaching a later equality with the female, and, in the human race, becoming her master for a considerable historic period — this book gives a series of studies of the effect upon our human development of this unprece- dented dominance of the male, showing it to be by no means an unmixed good. In so utterly imtrodden a field, it is more than probable that errors may occur, and that, in view of the colossal injustice in- volved, some natural animus may occasion- ally be visible; but if any man be offended by such error in fact or feeling, let him ex- amine the many books that have been writ- ten about women. Men have written copiously about women, treating them always as females, with an offensiveness and falsity patent to modern minds. This book treats of men as males in contradistinction to their qualities as himaan beings, but never approaches for a moment the abusiveness and contempt that has been shown to women as females. It grants to men, today, a high preemi- nence over women in human development, but shows this preeminence to be a distinc- tion of humanity and not of sex, fuUy open to women if they use their human powers. When we learn to differentiate between humanity and masculinity we shall give honor where honor is due. CONTENTS PAGE I. As TO HUMANNESS 9 II. The Man-Made Family 26 III. Health and Beauty 44 IV. Men and Akt 70 V. Masculine Literature 87 VI. Games and Sports 107 VII. Ethics and Religion 126 VIII. Education 143 IX. "Society" and "Fashion". . . 163 X. Law and Government 178 XI. Crime and Punishment 193 XII. Politics and Warfare 208 XIII. Industry and Economics . . . 227 XIV- A Human World 244 CHAPTER I. AS TO HUMANNESS LET us begin, inoffensively, with sheep. The sheep is a beast with which we are all familiar, being much used in religious imagery; the com- mon stock of painters; a staple article of diet; one of our main sources of clothing, and an everyday symbol of bashfulness and stupidity. In some grazing regions the sheep is an object of terror, destroying grass, bush and forest by omnipresent nibbling; on the great plains, sheep-keeping frequently results in insanity, owing to the loneliness of the shep- herd, and the monotonous appearance and behavioi- of the sheep. By this poet, young sheep are preferred, the lamb gambolling gaily; unless it be in hymns, where "all we like sheep" are repeat- 10 THE MAN-MADE WORLD edly described, and much stress is laid upon the straying propensities of the animal. To the scientific mind there is special in- terest in the sequacity of sheep, their habit of following one another with automatic imitation. This instinct, we are told, has been developed by ages of wild crowded racing on narrow ledges, along precipices, chasms, around sudden spurs and comers, only the leader seeing when, where and how to jump. If those behind jumped exactly as he did, they lived. If they stopped to ex- ercise independent judgment, they were pushed off and perished; they and their judgment with them. All these things, and many that are simi- lar, occur to us when we think of sheep. They are also ewes and rams. Yes, truly; but what of it? All that has been said was said of sheep, genus ovis, that bland beast, compound of mutton, wool, and foolishness, so widely known. If we think of the sheep- dog (and dog-ess), the shepherd (and shep- herd-ess), of the ferocious sheep-eating bird of New Zealand, the Kea (and Kea-ess), all these herd, guard, or kill the sheep, both AS TO HUMANNESS 11 rams and ewes alike. In regard to mutton, to wool, to general character, we think only of their sheepishness, not at all of their ram- ishness or eweishness. That which is ovine or bovine, canine, feline or equine, is easily recognized as distinguishing that particular species of animal, and has no relation what- ever to the sex thereof. Returning to our muttons, let us consider the ram, and wherein his character differs from the sheep. We find he has a more quarrelsome disposition. He paws the earth and makes a noise. He has a tendency to butt. So has a goat — ^Mr. Goat. So has Mr. Buffalo. This tendency to plunge head foremost at an adversary — and to find any other gentleman an adversary on sight — does not pertain to sheep, to genus ovis; but to any male creature with horns. As "fimction comes before organ," we may even give a reminiscent glance down the long path of evolution, and see how the mere act of butting — passionately and per- petually repeated — ^born of the belligerent spirit of the male — produced horns! The ewe, on the other hand, exhibits love 12 THE MAN-MADE WORLD and care for her little ones, gives them milk and tries to guard them. But so does a goat — Mrs. Goat. So does Mrs. Buffalo and the rest. This mother instinct is no pecu- liarity of genus ovis, but of any female creature. Even the bird, though not a mammal, shows the same mother-love and mother- care, while the father bird, though not a but- ter, fights with beak and wing and spur. His competition is more effective through display. The wish to please, the need to please, the overmastering necessity upon him that he secure the favor of the female, has made the male bird blossom like a but- terfly. He blazes in gorgeous plumage, rears haughty crests and combs, shows drooping wattles and dangling blobs such as the turkey-cock affords; long splendid feathers for pure ornament appear upon him; what in her is a mere tail-effect be- comes in him a mass of glittering drapery. Partridge-cock, farmyard-cock, peacock, from sparrow to ostrich, observe his mien I To strut and languish; to exhibit every beauteaus lure; to sacrifice ease, comfort. AS TO HUMANNESS 13 speed, everything — to beauty — for her sake — ^this is the nature of the he-bird of any species ; the characteristic, not of the turkey, but of the cockl With drumming of loud wings, with crow and quack and bursts of glorious song, he woos his mate; displays his splendors before her; fights fiercely with his rivals. To butt — ^to strut — ^to make a noise — all for love's sake; these acts are common to the male. We may now generalize and clearly state : That is masculine which belongs to the male — ^to any or all males, irrespective of species. That is feminine which belongs to the fe- male, to any or all females, irrespective of species. That is ovine, bovine, feline, ca- nine, equine or asinine which belongs to that species, irrespective of sex. In our own species all this is changed. We have been so taken up Avith the phe- nomena of masculinity and femininity, that our common humanity has largely escaped notice. We know we are human, naturally, and are very proud of it; but we do not con- sider in what our humanness consists; nor how men and women may fall short of it, or 14 THE MAN-MADE WORLD overstep its bounds, in continual insistence upon their special differences. It is "manly" to do this; it is "womanly" to do that; but what a himian being should do imder the circumstances is not thought of. The only time when we do recognize what we call "common humanity" is in extreme cases, matters of life and death; when either men or women are expected to behave as if they were also human creatures. Since the range of feeling and action proper to hu- manity, as such, is far wider than that proper to either sex, it seems at first some- what remarkable that we have given it so little recognition. A little classification will help us here. We have certain qualities in common with inanimate matter, such as weight, opacity, resilience. It is clear that these are not human. We have other qualities in com- mon with all forms of life; cellular construc- tion, for instance; the reproduction of cells and the need of nutrition. These again are not human. We have others, many others, common to the higher mammals; which are not exclusively ours — are not distinctively AS TO HUMANNESS 15 human. What then are true human charac- teristics? In what way is the hvmian species distinguished from all other species? Our human-ness is seen most clearly in three main lines: it is mechanical, psychical and social. Our power to make and use things is essentially human; we alone have extra-physical tools. We have added to our teeth the knife, sword, scissors, mowing machine; to our claws the spade, harrow, plough, drill, dredge. We are a protean creature, using the larger brain power through a wide variety of changing weapons. This is one of our main and vital distinc- tions. Ancient animal races are traced and known by mere bones and shells, ancient human races by their buildings, tools and utensils. That degree of Brain development which gives us the human mind is a clear distinc- tion of race. The savage who can count a hvmdred is more hirnian that the savage who can count ten. More prominent than either of these is the social nature of humanity. We are by no means the only group-animal; that 16 THE MAN-MADE WORLD ancient type of industry the ant, and even the well-worn bee, are social creatures. But insects of their kind are found living alone. Human beings never. Our human-ness be- gins with some low form of social relation and increases as that relation develops. Hmnan life of any sort is dependent upon what Kropotkin calls "mutual aid," and hu- man progress keeps step absolutely with that interchange of specialized services which makes society organic. The nomad, living on cattle as ants live on theirs, is less human than the farmer, raising food by intelligently applied labor; and the exten- sion of trade and commerce, from mere vil- lage market-places to the world-exchanges of today, is extension of hvmian-ness as well. Humanity, thus considered, is not a thing made at once and unchangeable, but a stage of development; and is still, as Wells de- scribes it, "in the making." Our himian- ness is seen to lie not so much in what we are individually, as in our relations to one another; and even that individuality is but the result of our relations to one ajiother. It is in what we do and how we do it, rather AS TO HUMANNESS 17 than in what we are. Some, philosophically inclined, exalt "being" over "doing." To them this question may be put: "Can you mention any forms of life that merely 'is,' without doing anything?" Taken separately and physically, we are animals, genus homo; taken socially and psychically, we are, in varying degree, hu- man ; and our real history lies in the develop- ment of this human-ness. Our historic period is not very long. Real written history only goes back a few thou- sand years, beginning with the stone records of ancient Egypt. During this period we have had almost universally what is here called an Androcentric Culture. The his- tory, such as it was, was made and written by men. The mental, the mechanical, the social de- velopment, was almost wholly theirs. We have, so far, lived and suffered and died in a man-made world. So general, so un- broken, has been this condition, that to men- tion it arouses no more remark than the statement of a natural law. We have taken it for granted, since the dawn of civilization. 18 THE MAN-MADE WORLD that "mankind" meant men-kind, and the world was theirs. Women we have sharply delimited. Women were a sex; "the sex," according to chivalrous toasts; they were set apart for special services peculiar to femininity. As one English scientist put it, in 1888, "Women are not only not the race — ^they are not even half the race, but a sub-species told off for reproduction only." This mental attitude toward women is even more clearly expressed by Mr. H. B. Marriot-Watson in his article on "The American Woman" in the "Nineteenth Century" for June, 1904, where he says: "Her constitutional restlessness has caused her to abdicate those functions which alone excuse or explain her existence." This is a peculiarly happy and condensed expression of the relative position of women during our androcentric culture. The man was ac- cepted as the race type without one dis- sentient voice; and the woman — a strange, diverse creature, quite disharmonious in the accepted scheme of things — ^was excused and explained only as a female. AS TO HUMANNESS 19 She has needed volumes of such excuse and explanation; also, apparently, volumes of abuse and condemnation. In any library catalogue we may find books upon books about women: physiological, sentimental, didactic, religious — all manner of books about women, as such. Even to-day in the works of Marhohn — poor young Weininger, Moebius, and others, we find the same per- petual discussion of women — as such. This is a book about men — as such. It diflFerentiates between the human nature and the sex nature. It will not go so far as to allege man's masculine traits to be all that excuse or explain his existence; but it will point out what are masculine traits as distinct from human ones, and what has been the effect on our human life of the un- bridled dominance of one sex. We can see at once, glaringly, what would have been the result of giving all human affairs into female hands. Such an extraor- dinary and deplorable situation would have "feminized" the world. We should have all become "effeminate." See how in our use of language the case 30 THE MAN-MADE WORLD is clearly shown. The adjectives aiid de- rivatives based on woman's distinctions are alien and derogatory when applied to hu- man affairs; "effeminate" — ^too female, con- notes contempt, but has no masculine analogue; whereas "emasculate" — ^not enough male, is a term of reproach, and has no feminine analogue. "Virile" — ^manly, we oppose to "puerile" — childish, and the very word "virtue" is derived from "vir" — ^a man. Even in the naming of other animals we have taken the male as the race type, and put on a special termination to indicate "his female," as in lion, lioness; leopard, leop- ardess; while all our human scheme of things rests on the same tacit assumption; man be- ing held the human type; woman a sort of accompaniment and subordinate assistant, merely essential to the making of people. She has held always the place of a prepo- sition in relation to man. She has been con- sidered above him or below him, before him, behind him, beside him, a wholly relative ex- istence — "Sydney's sister," "Pembroke's mother" — ^but never by any chance Sydney or Pembroke herself. AS TO HUMANNESS 21 Acting on this assumption, all human standards have been based on male char- acteristics, and when we wish to praise the work of a woman, we say she has "a mascu- line mind." It is no easy matter to deny or reverse a universal assumption. The human mind has had a good many jolts since it began to think, but after each upheaval it settles down as peacefully as the vine-growers on Vesuvius, accepting the last lava crust as permanent ground. What we see immediately around us, what we are born into and grow up with, be it mental fiu^niture or physical, we as- sume to be the order of nature. If a given idea has been held in the hvmian mind for many generations, as almost all our common ideas have, it takes sincere and continued effort to remove it; and if it is one of the oldest we have in stock, one of the big, common, unquestioned world ideas, vast is the labor of those who seek to change it. Nevertheless, if the matter is one of im- portance, if the previous idea was a palpable 23 THE MAN-MADE WORLD error, of large and evil effect, and if the new one is true and widely important, the effort is worth making. The task here undertaken is of this sort. It seeks to show that what we have aU this time called "human nature" and deprecated, was in great part only male nature, and good enough in its place ; that what we have called "masculine" and admired as such, was in large part human, and should be applied to both sexes; that what we have called "feminine" and condemned, was also largely human and applicable to both. Our andro- centric culture is so shown to have been, and still to be, a masculine culture in excess, and therefore undesirable. In the preliminary work of approaching these facts it wiU be well to explain how it can be that so vdde and serious an error should have been made by practically all men. The reason is simply that they were men. They were males, and saw women as females — and not otherwise. So absolute is this conviction that the man who reads wiU say, "Of course! How else are we to look at women except as fe- AS TO HUMANNESS 23 males? They are females, aren't they?" Yes, they are, as men are males unquestion- ably; but there is possible the frame of mind of the old marquise who was asked by an English friend how she could bear to have the footman serve her breakfast in bed — to have a man in her bed-chamber — and re- plied sincerely, "Call you that thing there a man?" The world is full of men, but their prin- cipal occupation is human work of some sort ; and women see in them the human dis- tinction preponderantly. Occasionally some unhappy lady marries her coachman — ^long contemplation of broad shoulders having an effect, apparently; but in general women see the htmian creature most; the male creature only when they love. To the man, the whole world was his world; his because he was male; and the whole world of woman was the home; be- cause she was female. She had her pre- scribed sphere, strictly limited to her femi- nine occupations and interests; he had all the rest of life ; and not only so, but, having it, insisted on calling it male. 24 THE MAN-MADE WORLD This accounts for the general attitude of men toward the now rapid humanization of women. From her first faint struggles to- ward freedom and justice, to her present valiant efforts toward full economic and po- litical equality, each step has been termed "unfeminine," and resented as an intrusion upon man's place and power. Here shows the need of our new classification, of the three distinct fields of life — ^masculine, femi- nine and human. As a matter of fact, there is a "woman's sphere," sharply defined and quite different from his; there is also a "man's sphere," as sharply defined and even more limited; but there remains a common sphere — ^that of humanity, which belongs to both alike. In the earlier part of what is known as "the woman's movement," it was sharply opposed on the groimd that women would become "imsexed." Let us note in pass- ing that they have become unsexed in one particular, most glaringly so, and that no one has noticed or objected to it. As part of our androcentric culture, we may point to the peculiar reversal of sex AS TO HUM AN NESS 25 characteristics which makes the human fe- male carry the burden of ornament. She alone, of all human creatures, has adopted the essentially masculine attribute of special sex-decoration; she does not fight for her mate, as yet, but she blooms forth as the peacock and bird of paradise, in poignant reversal of nature's laws, even wearing mas- culine feathers to further her feminine ends. Woman's natural work as a female is that of the mother; man's natural work as a male is that of the father; their mutual relation to this end being a source of joy and well-being when rightly held: but hu- man work covers all our life outside of these specialities. Every handicraft, every pro- fession, every science, every art, all normal amusements and recreations, all govern- ment, education, religion; the whole living world of human achievement: all this is human. That one sex should have monopolized all human activities, called them "man's work," and managed them as such, is what is meant by the phrase "Androcentric Culture." 26 THE MAN-MADE WORLD CHAPTER II THE MAN-MADE FAMILY THE family is older than humanity, and therefore cannot be called a hmnan institution. A postoffice, now, is taholly human; no other creature has a postoffice, but there are families in plenty among birds and beasts; all kinds perma- nent and transient; monogamous, poly- gamous and polyandrous. We are now to consider the growth of the family in humanity; what is its rational de- velopment in himianness; in mechanical, mental and social lines; in the extension of love and service; and the effect upon it of this strange new arrangement — a masculine proprietor. Like all natural institutions the family has a purpose; and is to be measured pri- marily as it serves that purpose; which is. THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 27 the care and nurture of the young. To pro- tect the helpless little ones, to feed and shel- ter them, to ensure them the benefits of an ever longer period of immaturity, and so to improve the race — ^this is the original pur- pose of the family. When a natural institution becomes hu- man it enters the plane of consciousness. We think about it; and, in our strange new power of voluntary action, do things to it. We have done strange things to the family; or, more specifically, men have. Balsac, at his bitterest, observed, "Woman's virtue is man's best invention." Balsac was wrong. Virtue — ^the unswerving devotion to one mate — is common among birds and some of the higher mammals. If Balsac meant celibacy when he said virtue, why that is one of man's inventions — ^though hardly his best. What man has done to the family, speak- ing broadly, is to change it from an institu- tion for the best service of the child to one modified to his own service, the vehicle of his comfort, power and pride. Among the heavy millions of the unstirred 28 THE MAN-MADE WORLD East, a child — ^necessarily a male child — is desired for the credit and glory of the father, and his fathers; in place of seeing that all a parent is for is the hest service of the child. Ancestor worship, that gross reversal of all natural law, is of wholly androcentric origin. It is strongest among old patriarchal races; lingers on in feudal Europe; is to be traced even in America to-day in a few sporadic efforts to magnify the deeds of oiu* an- cestors. The best thing any of us can do for our ancestors is to be better than they were; and we ought to give our minds to it. When we use our past merely as a guide-book, and concentrate our noble emotions on the pres- ent and future, we shall improve more rapidly. The peculiar changes brought about in family life by the predominance of the male are easily traced. In these studies we must keep clearly in mind the basic masculine characteristics: desire, combat, self-expres- sion; aU legitimate and right in proper use, only mischievous when excessive or out of place. Through them the male is led to THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 39 strenuous competition for the favor of the female; in the overflowing ardour of song, as in nightingale and tom-cat; in wasteful splendor of personal decoration, from the pheasant's breast to an embroidered waist- coat; and in direct struggle for the prize, from the stag's locked horns to the clashing spears of the tournament. It is earnestly hoped that no reader will take offence at the necessarily frequent ref- erence to these essential features of male- ness. In the many books about women it is, naturally, their femaleness that has been studied and enlarged upon. And though women, after thousands of years of such discussion, have become a little restive under the constant use of the word female: men, as rational beings, should not object to an analogous study — at least not for some time — a few centuries or so. How, then, do we find these masculine tendencies, desire, combat and self-expres- sion, affect the home and family when given too much power? First comes the effect in the preliminary work of selection. One of the most uplift- 30 THE MAN-MADE WORLD ing forces of nature is that of sex selection. The males, numerous, varied, pouring a flood of energy into wide modifications, compete for the female, and she selects the victor; thus seeming to the race the new im- provements. In forming the proprietary family there is no such competition, no such selection. The man, by violence or by purchase, does the choosing — ^he selects the kind of woman that pleases him. Nature did not intend him to select; he is not good at it. Neither was the female intended to compete — she is not good at it. If there is a race between males for a mate — ^the swiftest gets her first; but if one male is chasing a mmaber of females he gets the slowest first. The one method improves our speed: the other does not. If males struggle and fight with one another for a mate, the strongest secures her; if the male struggles and fights with the female (a peculiar and unnatural horror, known only among hu- man beings), he most readily seciu'es the weakest. The one method improves our strength — ^the other does not. THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 31 When women became the property of men; sold and bartered; "given away" by their paternal owner to their marital owner; they lost this prerogative of the female, this primal duty of selection. The males were no longer improved by their natural com- petition for the female; and the females were not improved; because the male did not se- lect for points of racial superiority, but for such qualities as pleased him. There is a locality in northern Africa, where young girls are deliberately fed with a certain oily seed, to make them fat, — ^that they may be the more readily married, — as the men like fat wives. Among certain more savage African tribes the chief's wives are prepared for him by being kept in small dark huts and fed on "mealies" and mo- lasses; precisely as a Strasbourg goose is fattened for the gourmand. Now fatness is not a desirable race characteristic; it does not add to the woman's happiness of effi- ciency; or to the child's; it is merely an ac- cessory pleasant to the master; his attitude being much as the amorous monad ecstati- 32 THE MAN-MADE WORLD cally puts it, in Sill's quaint poem, "Five Lives," "0 the little female monad's lips ! O the little female monad's eyes ! O the little, little, female, female monad!" This ultra littleness and ultra f emaleness has been demanded and produced by our Androcentric Culture. Following this, and part of it, comes the effect on motherhood. This function was the original and legitimate base of family life; and its ample sustaining power throughout the long early period of "the mother-right;" or as we call it, the matri- archate; the father being her assistant in the great work. The patriarchate, with its pro- prietary family, changed this altogether; the woman, as the property of the man, was con- sidered first and foremost as a means of pleasure to him; and while she was still valued as a mother, it was in a tributary ca- pacity. Her children were now his; his property, as she was; the whole enginery of the family was turned from its true use to THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 33 this new one, hitherto unknown, the service of the adult male. To this day we are living under the in- fluence of the proprietary family. The duty of the wife is held to involve man-service as well as child-service; and indeed far more; as the duty of the wife to the husband quite transcends the duty of the mother to the child. See for instance the English wife staying with her husband in India and sending the children home to be brought up; because India is bad for children See our common , law that the man decides the place of resi- dence ; if the wife refuses to go with him to howsoever unfit a place for her and for the little ones, such refusal on her part consti- tutes "desertion" and is ground for divorce. See again the idea that the wife must re- main with the husband though a drunkard, or diseased; regardless of the sin against the child involved in such a relation. Public feeling on these matters is indeed changing; but as a whole the ideals of the man-made family still obtain. The effect of this on the woman has been 34 THE MAN-MADE WORLD inevitably to weaken and over-shadow her sense of the real purpose of the family; of the relentless responsibilities of her duty as a mother. She is first taught duty to her parents, with heavy rehgious sanction; and then duty to her husband, similarly but- tressed ; but her duty to her children has been left to instinct. She is not taught in girl- hood as to her preeminent power and duty as a mother; her young ideals are all of de- votion to the lover and husband, with only the vaguest sense of results. The young girl is reared in what we call "innocence"; poetically described as "bloom"; and this condition is held to be one of her chief "charms." The requisite is whoUy androcentric. This "innocence" does not enable her to choose a husband wisely; she does not even know the dangers that possibly confront her. We vaguely imagine that her father or brother, who do know, will protect her. Unfortimately the father and brother, under our current "double standard" of morality, do not judge the applicants as she would if she knew the nature of their oflfenses. THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 35 Furthermore, if her heart is set on one of them, no amount of general advice and op- position serves to prevent her marrying him. "I love him!" she says, sublimely. "I do not care what he has done. I wiU forgive him. I will save him!" This state of mind serves to forward the interests of the lover, but is of no advantage to the children. We have magnified the duties of the wife, and minified the duties of the mother; and this is inevitable in a family relation every law and custom of which is arranged from the masculine view- point. From this same viewpoint, equally essen- tial to the proprietary family, comes the re- quirement that the woman shall serve the man. Her service is not that of the associate and equal, as when she joins him in his busi- ness. It is not that of a beneficial combina- tion, as when she practices another business and they share the profits ; it is not even that of the specialist, as the service of a tailor or barber ; it is personal service — ^the work of a servant. In large generalization, the women of the 36 THE MAN-MADE WORLD world cook and wash, sweep and dust, sew and mend, for the men. We are so accustomed to this relation; have held it for so long to be the "natiu-al" relation, that it is difficult indeed to show it to be distinctly unnatural and injurious. The father expects to be served by the daughter, a service quite different from what he expects of the son. This shows at once that such service is no integral part of motherhood, or even of marriage; but is sup- posed to be the proper industrial position of women, as such. Why is this so? Why, on the face of it, given a daughter and a son, should a form of service be expected of the one, which would be considered ignominious by the other? The underlying reason is this. Industry, at its base, is a feminine function. The sur- plus energy of the mother does not manifest itself in noise, or combat, or display, but in productive industry. Because of her mother-power she became the first inventor and laborer; being in truth the mother of all industry as well as all people. Man's entrance upon industry is late a,nd THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 37 reluctant; as will be shown later in treating his eifect on economics. In this field of fam- ily hf e, his effect was as follows : Establishing the proprietary family at an age when the industry was primitive and domestic; and thereafter confining the woman solely to the domestic area, he thereby confined her to primitive industry. The domestic industries, in the hands of women, constitute a survival of our remotest past. Such work was "woman's work" as was all the work then known; such work is still considered woman's work because they have been prevented from doing any other. The term "domestic industry" does not define a certain kind of labor, but a certain grade of labor. Architecture was a domestic industry once — ^when every savage mother set up her own tepee. To be confined to domestic industry is no proper distinction of womanhood; it is an historic distinction, an economic distinction, it sets a date and limit to woman's industrial progress. In this respect the man-made family has resulted in arresting the development of half the world. We have a world wherein men. 38 THE MAN-MADE WORLD industrially, live*in the twentieth century; and women, industrially, live in the first — and back of it. To the same source we trace the social and educational limitations set about women. The dominant male, holding his women as property, and fiercely jealous of^ them, con- sidering them always as his, not belonging to themselves, their children, or the world; has hedged them in with restrictions of a thousand sorts; physical, as in the crippled Chinese lady or the imprisoned odalisque; moral, as in the oppressive doctrines of sub- mission taught by all oiu* androcentric re- ligions; mental, as in the enforced ignorance from which women are now so swiftly emerging. This abnormal restriction of women has necessarily injured motherhood. The man, free, growing in the world's growth, has mounted with the centuries, fiUing an ever wider range of world activities. The woman, bound, has not so grown; and the child is born to a progressive fatherhood and a stationary motherhood. Thus the man- made family reacts unfavorably upon the THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 39 child. We rob our children of half their social heredity by keeping the mother in an inferior position; however legalized, hal- lowed, or ossified by time, the position of domestic servant is inferior. It is for this reason that child culture is at so low a devel, and for the most part ut- terly unknown. To-day, when the forces of education are steadily working nearer to the cradle, a new sense is wakening of the im- portance of the period of infancy, and its wiser treatment; yet those who know of such a movement are few, and of them some are content to earn easy praise — and pay — ^by belittling right progress to gratify the preju- dices of the ignorant. The whole position is simple and clear; and easily traceable to its root. Given a proprietary family, where the man holds the woman primarily for his satisfaction and service — ^then necessarily he shuts her up and keeps her for these purposes. Being so kept, she cannot develop humanly, as he has, through social contact, social service, true social life. (We may note in passing, her passionate fondness for the child-game 40 THE MAN-MADE WORLD called "society" she has been allowed to en- tertain herself withal; that poor simiacrum of real social life, in which people decorate themselves and madly crowd together, chat- tering, for what is called "entertainment.") Thus checked in social development, we have but a low grade motherhood to offer our children; and the children, reared in the primitive conditions thus artificially main- tained, enter life with a false perspective, not only toward men and women, but toward life as a whole. The child should receive in the family, full preparation for his relation to the world at large. His whole life must be spent in the world, serving it well or ill; and youth is the time to learn how. But the androcentric, home cannot teach him. We live to-day in a democracy — ^the man-made family is a despotism. It may be a weak one; the despot may be dethroned and overmastered by his little harem of one; but in that case she becomes the despot — ^that is all. The male is esteemed "the head of the family"; it belongs to him; he maintains it; and the rest of the world is a wide hunting ground THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 41 and battlefield wherein he competes with other males as of old. The girl-child, peering out, sees this for- bidden field as belonging wholly to men- kind; and her relation to it is to secure one for herself — not only that she may love, but that she may live. He will feed, clothe and adorn her — she will serve him; from the sub- jection of the daughter to that of the wife she steps; from one home to the other, and never enters the world at all — Oman's world. The boy, on the other hand, considers the home as a place of women, an inferior place, and longs to grow up and leave it — for the real world. He is quite right. The error is that this great social instinct, calling for full social exercise, exchange, service, is con- sidered masculine, whereas it is human, and belongs to boy and girl alike. The child is affected first through the re- tarded development of his mother, then through the arrested conditions of home in- dustry; and further through the wrong ideals which have arisen from these condi- tions. A normal home, where there was hu- 43 THE MAN-MADE WORLD man equaKty between mother and father, would have a better influence. We must not overlook the effect of the proprietary family on the proprietor him- self. He, too, has been held back somewhat by this reactionary force. In the process of becoming human we must learn to recognize justice, freedom, human rights; we must learn self-control and to think of others; have minds that grow and broaden ration- ally; we must learn the broad mutual inter- service and unbounded joy of social inter- course and service. The pretty despot of the man-made home is hindered in his hu- manness by too much manness. For each man to have one whole woman to cook for and wait upon him is a poor education for democracy. The boy with a servile mother, the man with a servile wife, cannot reach the sense of equal rights we need to-day. Too constant consideration of the master's tastes makes the master selfish; and the assault upon his heart direct, or through that proverbial side-avenue, the stomach, which the dependent woman needs THE MAN-MADE FAMILY 43 must make when she wants anything, is bad for the man, as well as for her. We are slowly forming a nobler type of family; the union of two, based on love and recognized by law, maintained because of its happiness and use. We are even now ap- proaching a tenderness and permanence of love, high pure enduring love; combined with the broad deep-rooted friendliness and comradeship of equals; which promises us more happiness in marriage than we have yet known. It will be good for all the par- ties concerned — ^man, woman and child ; and promote our general social progress ad- mirably. If it needs "a head" it will elect a chair- man pro tem. Friendship does not need "a head." Love does not need "a head." Why should a family? 44 THE MAN-MADE WORLD CHAPTER III HEALTH AND BEAUTY AMONG the many paradoxes which we find in human life is our low average standard of health and beauty, compared with our power and knowledge. All creatures suffer from con- flict with the elements; from enemies with- out and within — ^the prowling devourers of the forest, and "the terror that walketh in darkness" and attacks the body from inside, in hidden millions. Among wild animals generally, there is a certain standard of excellence; if you shoot a bear or a bird it is a fair sample of the species; you do not say, "O what an ugly one!" or "This must have been an invalid!" Where we have domesticated any animal, and interfered with its natural habits, iUness has followed; the dog is said to have the most HEALTH AND BEAUTY 45 diseases second to man; the horse comes next; but the wild ones put us to shame by their superior health and the beauty that be- longs to right development. In our long ages of blind infancy we as- sume that sickness was a visitation from the gods; some still believe this, holding it to be a special perogative of divinity to afflict us in this way. We speak of "the ills that flesh is heir to" as if the inheritance was en- tailed and inalienable. Only of late years, after much study and long struggle with this old belief which made us submit to sickness as a blow from the hand of God, we are be- ginning to learn something of the many causes of our many diseases, and how to remove some of them. It is still true, however, that almost every one of us is to some degree abnormal; the features asymmetrical, the vision defective, the digestion unreliable, the nervous system erratic — ^we are but a job lot even in what we call "good health"; and are subject to a burden of pain and premature death that would make life hideous if it were not so ridiculously unnecessary. 46 THE MAN-MADE WORLD As to beauty — ^we do not think of ex- pecting it save in the rarely exceptional case. Look at the faces — the figures — ^in any crowd you meet; compare the average man or the average woman with the normal type of human beauty as given us in picture and statue; and consider if there is not some general cause for so general a condrtion of ugliness. Moreover, leaving our defective bodies concealed by garments; what are those gar- ments, as conducive to health and beauty? Is the practical ugliness of our men's attire, and the impractical absurdity of our wo- men's, any contribution to human beauty? Look at om- houses — are they beautiful? Even the houses of the rich? We do not even know that we ought to live in a world of overflowing loveliness; and that our contribution to it should be the loveliest of aU. We are so sodden in the dull ugliness of our interiors, so used to calling a tame weary low-toned color scheme "good taste," that only children dare frankly yearn for Beauty — and they are speedily educated out of it. HEALTH AND BEAUTY 47 The reasons specially given for our low standards of health and beauty are ignor- ance, poverty, and the evil effects of special trades. The Man with the Hoe becomes brother to the ox because of over-much hoe- ing; the housepainter is lead-poisoned be- cause of his painting; books have been writ- ten to show the injurious influence of nearly all our industries upon workers. These causes are sound as far as they go; but do not cover the whole ground. The farmer may be muscle-bound and stooping from his labor; but that does not account for his dyspepsia or his rheumatism. Then we allege poverty as covering all. Poverty does cover a good deal. But when we find even a half -fed savage better devel- oped than a well paid cashier; and a poor peasant woman a more vigorous mother than the idle wife of a rich man, poverty is not enough. Then we say ignorance explains it. But there are most learned professors who are ugly and asthmathic; there are even doctors who can boast no beauty and but moderate health; there are some of the petted children 48 THE MAN-MADE WORLD of the wealthy, upon whom every care is lavished from birth, and who still are ill to look at and worse to marry. AH these special causes are admitted, given their due share in lowering our standards, but there is another far more uni- versal in its application and its effects. Let us look back on our little ancestors the beasts, and see what keeps them so true to type. The type itself set by that balance of con- ditions and forces we call "natural selection." As the environment changes they must be adapted to it, if they cannot so adapt them- selves they die. Those who live are, by liv- ing, proven capable of maintaining them- selves. Every creature which has remained on earth, while so many less effective kinds die out, remains as a conqueror. The speed of the deer — ^the constant use of speed — ^is what keeps it alive and makes it healthy and beautiful. The varied activities of the life of a leopard are what have developed the sinuous gracile strength we so admire. It is what the creature does for its hving, its HEALTH AND BEAUTY 49 daily life-long exercise which makes it what it is. But there is another great natural force which works steadily to keep all animals up to the race standard; that is sexual selection. Throughout nature the male is the variant, as we have already noted. His energy finds vent not only in that profuse output of deco- rative appendages Ward defines as "mascu- line efforescence" but in variations not deco- rative, not useful or desirable at all. The female, on the other hand, varies much less, remaining nearer the race type; and her function is to select among these varying males the specimens most valuable to the race. In the intense masculine com- petition the victor must necessarily be stronger than his fellows; he is first proven equal to his environment by having lived to grow up, then more than equal to his fellows by overcoming them. This higher grade of selection also develops not only the charac- teristics necessary to make a living; but sec- ondary ones, often of a purely aesthetic na- ture, which make much of what we call beauty. Between the two^ all who live must 50 THE MAN-MADE WORLD be up to a certain grade, and those who be- come parents must be above it; a masterly arrangement surely! Here is where, during the period of our human history, we in our newborn conscious- ness and imperfect knowledge, have griev- ously interfered with the laws of nature. The ancient proprietary family, treating the woman as a slave, keeping her a prisoner and subject to the will of her master, cut her off at once from the exercise of those activities which alone develop and maintain the race type. Take the one simple quality of speed. We are a creature built for speed, a free swift graceful animal; and among savages this is still seen — ^the capacity for running, mile after mile, hour after hour. Running is as natural a gait for genus homo as for genus cervus. Now suppose among deer, the doe was prohibited from rimning; the stag con- tinuing free on the mountain; the doe living in caves and pens, xmequal to any exercise. The effect on the species would be, in- evitably, to reduce its speed. In this way, by keeping women to one HEALTH AND BEAUTY 51 small range of duties, and in most cases housebound, we have interfered with natural selection and its resultant health and beauty. It can easily be seen what the effect on the race would have been if all men had been veiled and swathed, hidden in harems, kept to the tent or house, and confined to the ac- tivities of a house-servant. Our stalwart la- borers, our proud soldiers, our athletes, would never have appeared imder such cir- cumstances. The confinement to the house alone, cutting women off from sunshine and air, is by itself an injury; and the range of occupation allowed them is not such as to develop a high standard of either health or beauty. Thus we have cut off half the race from the strengthening influence of natural selection, and so lowered our race standards in large degree. This alone, however, would not have had such mischievous effects but for our further blunder in completely reversing nature's or- der of sexual selection. It is quite possible that even under confinement and restriction women could have kept up the race level, passably, through this great fimction of se- 62 THE MAN-MADE WORLD lection; but here is the great fundamental error of the Androcentric Cultm-e. Assum- ing to be the possessor of women, their owner and master, able at mil to give, buy and sell, or do with as he pleases, man became the selector. It seems a simple change; and in those early days, wholly ignorant of natural laws, there was no suspicion that any mischief would result. In the light of modern knowl- edge, however, the case is clear. The woman was deprived of the beneficent action of natural selection, and the man was then, by his own act freed from the stem but ele- vating effect of sexual selection. Nothing was required of the woman by natural se- lection save such capacity as should please her master; nothing was required of the man by sexual selection save power to take by force, or buy, a woman. It does not take a very high standard of feminine intelligence, strength, skill, health, or beauty to be a houseservant, or even a housekeeper; witness the average. It does not take a very high standard of masculine intelligence, strength, skill, health HEALTH AND BEAUTY 53 or beauty to maintain a woman in that ca- pacity — ^witness the average. Here at the very root of our physiological process, at the beginning of life, we have perverted the order of nature, and are suf- fering the consequences. It has been held by some that man as the selector has developed beauty, more beauty than we had before; and we point to the charms of our women as compared with those of the squaw. The first answer to this is that the squaw belongs to a decadent race; that she too is subject to the man, that the comparison to have weight should be made between our women and the women of the matriarchate — an obvious impossibility. We have not on earth women in a state of nor- mal freedom and full development; but we have enough difference in their placing to learn that human strength and beauty grows with woman's freedom and activity. The second answer is that much of what man calls beauty in woman is not human beauty at all, but gross overdevelopment of certain points which appeal to him as a male. The excessive fatness, previously referred 54 THE MAN-MADE WORLD to, is a case in point; that being considered beauty in a woman which is in reality an element of weakness, inefficiency and ill- health. The relatively small size of women, deliberately preferred, steadfastly chosen, and so" built into the race, is a blow at real human progress in every particular. In our upward journey we should and do grow larger, leaving far behind us our dwarfish progenitors. Yet the male, in his unnatiu-al position as selector, preferring for reasons both practical and sentimental, to have "his woman" smaller than himself, has deliber- ately striven to lower the standard of size in the race. We used to read in the novels of the last generation, "He was a magnifi- cent specimen of manhood" — "Her golden head reached scarcely to his shoulder" — "She was a fairy creature — ^the tiniest of her sex." Thus we have mated, and yet ex- pected that by some hocus pocus the boys would all "take after their father," and the girls, their mother. In his efforts to im- prove the breed of other animals, man has never tried to deliberately cross the large HEALTH AND BEAUTY 55 and small and expect to keep up the standard of size. As a male he is appealed to by the ultra- feminine, and has given small thought to effects on the race. He was not designed to do the selecting. Under his fostering care we have bred a race of women who are physically weak enough to be handed about like invalids; or mentally weak enough to pretend they are — and to like it. We have made women who respond so perfectly to the force which made them, that they attach all their idea of beauty to those characteris- tics which attract men; sometimes humanly ugly without even knowing it. For instance, our long restriction to house-limits, the heavy limitations of our clothing, and the heavier ones of traditional decorum, have made women disproportion- ately short-legged. This is a particularly undignified and injurious characteristic, bred in women and inherited by men, most seen among those races which keep their women most closely. Yet when one woman escapes the tendency and appears with a normal length of femur and tibia, a normal 56 THE MAN-MADE WORLD height of hip and shoulder, she is criticized and called awkward by her squatty sisters! The most convenient proof of the inferior- ity of women in human beauty is shown by those composite statues prepared by Dr. Sargent for the World's Fair of '93. These were made from gymnasium measiu"ements of thousands of yoimg collegians of both sexes all over America. The statue of the girl has a pretty face, small hands and feet, rather nice arms, though weak; but the legs are too thick and short; the chest and shoulders poor; and the trunk is quite piti- ful in its weakness. The figure of the man is much better proportioned. Thus the effect on human beauty of mas- culine selection. Beyond this positive deteriorative effect on women through man's arbitrary choice comes the negative effect of woman's lack of choice. Bought or stolen or given by her father, she was deprived of the innately feminine right and duty of choosing. "Who giveth this woman?" we still inquire in our archaic marriage service, and one man steps forward and gives her to another man. HEALTH AND BEAUTY 57 Free, the female chose the victor, and the vanquished went unmated — and without progeny. Dependent, having to be fed and cared for by some man, the victors take their pick perhaps, but the vanquished take what is left; and the poor women, "marry- ing for a home," take anything. As a con- sequence the inferior male is as free to trans- mit his inferiority as the superior to give better qualities, and does so — ^beyond com- putation. In modern days, women are freer, in some countries freer than in others ; here in modern America freest of all; and the result is seen in our improving standards of health and beauty. Still there remains the field of inter-mas- cuhne competition, does there not? Do not the males still struggle together? Is not that as of old, a source of race advantage? To some degree it is. When life was sim- ple and our activities consisted mainly in fighting and hard work; the male who could vanquish the others was bigger and stronger. But inter-masculine competition ceases to be of such advantage when we enter the field of social service. What is required in or- 58 THE MAN-MADE WORLD ganlzed society is the specialization of the individual, the development of special tal- ents, not always of immediate benefit to the man himself, but of ultimate benefit to so- ciety. The best social servant, progressive, meeting future needs, is almost always at a disadvantage beside the well-established lower types. We need, for social service, qualities quite different from the simple masculine characteristics — desire, combat, self-expression. By keeping what we call "the outside world" so wholly male, we keep up mascu- line standards at the expense of himian ones. This may be broadly seen in the slow and painful development of industry and sci- ence as compared to the easy dominance of warfare throughout all history xmtil our own times. The effect of all this ultra masculine com- petition upon health and beauty is but too plainly to be seen. Among men the male idea of what is good looking is accentuated beyond reason. Read about any "hero" you please; or study the products of the illus- trator and note the broad shoulders, the HEALTH AND BEAUTY 59 rugged features, the strong, square de- termined jaw. That jaw is in evidence if everything else fails. He may be cross-eyed, wide-eared, thick-necked, bandy-legged — what you please; but he must have a more or less prognathous jaw. Meanwhile any anthropologist wiU show you that the line of human development is away from that feature of the bulldog and the alligator, and toward the measured dig- nity of the Greek type. The possession of that kind of jaw may enable male to con- quer male, but does not make him of any more service to society; of any better health or higher beauty. Further, in the external decoration of our bodies, what is the influence here of mascu- line dominance. We have before spoken of the peculiar position of our race in that the woman is the only female creature who carries the burden of sex ornament. This amazing reversal of the order of nature results at its mildest in a perversion of the natural feminine in- stincts of love and service, and an appear- ance of the masculine instincts of self-ex- 60 THE MAN-MADE WORLD pression and display. Alone among all fe- male things do women decorate and preen themselves and exhibit their borrowed plmnage (literally!) to attract the favor of the male. This ignominy is forced upon them by their position of economic depend- ence; and their general helplessness. As all broader life is made to depend, for them, on whom they marry, indeed as even the ne- cessities of life so often depend on their marrying someone, they have been driven into this form of competition, so alien to the true female attitude. The result is enough to make angels weep — and laugh. Perhaps no step in the evolu- tion of beauty went farther than our human power of making a continuous fabric; soft and mobile, showing any color and texture desired. The beauty of the human body is supreme, and when we add to it the flow of color, the ripple of fluent motion, that comes of a soft, light garment over free limbs — it is a new field of loveliness and delight. Naturally this should have filled the whole world with a new pleasure. Our garments, first under right natural selection develop- HEALTH AND BEAUT f 61 ing perfect use, under right sex selection de- veloping beauty ; and further, as our human aesthetic sense progresses, showing a noble symbolism; would have been an added strength and glory, a ceaseless joy. What is the case? Men, xmder a too strictly inter-masculine environment, have evolved the mainly useful but beautiless costume common to-day; and women — ? Women wear beautiful garments when they happen to be the fashion; and ugly garments when they are the fashion, and show no signs of knowing the difference. They show no added pride in the beautiful, no hint of mortification in the hideous, and are not even sensitive under criticism, or open to any persuasion or argument. Why should they be? Their condition, physical and mental, is largely abnormal, their whole passionate ab- sorption in dress and decoration is abnormal, and they have never looked, from a frankly human standpoint, at their position and its peculiarities, until the present age. In the effect of our wrong relation on the 63 THE MAN-MADE WORLD world's health, we have spoken of the check to vigor and growth due to the housebound state of women and their burdensome clothes. There follow other influences, similar in origin, even more evil in result. To roughly and briefly classify we may dis- tinguish the diseases due to bad air, to bad food, and that field of cruel mischief we are only now beginning to discuss — the diseases directly due to the erroneous relation be- tween men and women. We are the only race where the female depends on the male for a hvehhood. We are the only race that practices prostitution. From the first harmless-looking but ab- normal general relation, foUows the well recognized evil of the second, so long called "a social necessity," and from it, in deadly sequence, comes the "wages of sin"; death not only of the guilty, but of the innocent. It is no light part of our criticism of the Androcentric Culture that a society based on masculine desires alone, has willingly sac- rificed such an army of women; and has re- paid the sacrifice by the heaviest punish- ments. HEALTH AND BEAUTY 63 That the unfortunate woman should sicken and die was held to be her just pun- ishment; that man too should bear part pen- alty was found unavoidable, though much legislation and medical effort has been spent to shield him; but to the further conse- quences society is but now waking up. Sheltered by the customs and sanctions of a civilization built and upheld by his own sex, man has brought home to his helpless and innocent family the "wages of sin" — and paid them out most heavily. We are now beginning to learn what a percentage of blindness, of epilepsy, of many horrible forms of illness, idiocy and deformity, of sterility, of babies never born ahve, or dying in their cradles; and of the ruined health of wives, their subjection to surgical operation, their wretched lives:— is due to this terribly frequent offence. When a more human or less masculine standard of living is at last reached, we shall see these matters in their true light. The present purpose is not to pile up horrors, nor to give technical details; but to point out that this enormous 64 THE MAN-MADE WORLD share of disease and degeneracy is directly traceable to our Androcentric Culture. It is inconceivable that a civilization even half representing women, could so sin against Mother and Child; so poison the current of life at its very springs. No heavier single charge can be brought against a civilization in which women are dependent upon men than this; that, man, the "natural protector," has not only doomed to misery and ruin so large a num- ber of the protected; blamed and punished in them what he did not blame and punish in himself; then blamed their more fortunate sisters for this cruel judgment; and, above all, brought to the innocent and trusting wife and the helpless child, the penalty of his misdeeds. Much less impressive, but more wide spread are the other two lines in which our health is injured by this too masculine order. Modern therapeutics is now learn- ing how many of our disorders of the throat and lungs may be generally classified as "house-diseases." Certain bacteria flourish ceaselessly in the dusty heat of our houses, HEALTH AND BEAUTY 65 The more people are shut up and used to breathing impoverished air, the less able are they to meet natural temperatures. We become acchmated to bad air, as it were, and do not object, in church, car, theatre, crowded store, to the same atmosphere we are used to in our houses. Against the house habit strives the new knowledge of hygienist and physician, but the habit is older and wider than the knowledge, and we as a people submit our lungs to a degree of foul- ness, which were it offered in food, we should repudiate with horror. Now women are not natiu-ally cave dwellers any more than men. They have been confined to the house for reasons quite outside the needs of motherhood. Only to-day, within a lifetime, are we at last re- learning what a free outdoor hfe can do for the girl as well as the boy, a lesson lost since Sparta fell. The woman should compare in size and vigor with the man as the lioness with the lion, or the migrating mother stork with her mate. A house life is not good fox man, woman, or child; her enforced Umita- tions react on him and on their little ones. 66 THE MAN-MADE WORLD Among all the varied unpleasantnesses known to the doctor, he makes least prog- ress in opposing what are known as "food diseases." We suflFer enough in many ways ; but our difficulties with "the alimentary tract" are most common and least cured. Wise, strong, highly civilized are we, rich powerful, somewhat educated, yet from the slowly departing teeth to the rapidly re- moved appendix we seem helplessly open to disease. Whatever else we have learned in our long ascent, we have not learned what, where and how to eat. It is most singular. No other animal has such difficulty (ex- cept to some degree the ones we feed) . To- day we are bringing more knowledge to bear on this subject, we are trying to teach bet- ter food habits, but we do not recognize the constant universal cause of the trouble, which is simply this; that every man has one whole woman to cook for him. If he can afford it, he has more than one. "The way to a man's heart is his stomach," we are told; and he has for so long confounded the two HEALTH AND BEAUTY 67 that the words "Wife" and "Cook" are al- most synonymous to him. The dependent woman has this business of cooking as the one main way in which to show her love, to fulfill her service; and — alas! secure any special concessions she de- sires. "Tell me the secret of married happi- ness!" says the blooming bride-to-be to the sweet-faced grandmother. And that placid dame replies with unexpected fervor, "Feed the brute!" The point here suggested is that this method of feeding is not good for us. It is not healthy to have a loving servant always ministering to one's desires. Less devotion and more knowledge, less affection and a higher grade of skill, are needed in this great business of feeding the world. We cater to the appetite continuously. We know what John likes ; but we do not know in the least what the various chemicals we daily present to him do to his imhappy inside. Neither do we realize that this constant ministering service to the personal desires of men in the home is responsible, to a terrible extent, for 68 THE MAN-MADE WORLD their helpless self-indulgence in the world outside. The psychic eflfect of "Mother's cooking" is a thing we have not considered. No art, no science, no business, can grow far when kept to a domestic level, when the product of labor is for one person only, and is governed not by knowledge but by desire. The wife-servant, ministering de- votedly to her lord, has not served his best interests. A relation that is wrong at its base cannot work out right in any line. The health of the world is not ensured by making women the servants of men. To-day the human woman and the human man are alike able to discuss transmitting deformity and disease to their beloved ones. A new moral sense is called for here, and is slowly appearing among us. A moral sense that shall rate the mother's responsibilty in selecting the father of her children, and in securing to them a pure inheritance in con- stitution, far higher than the preservation of the hush-and-cover policy of our racial beginnings. Further than that we need a new judg- ment upon the oflPenders in this case; not HEALTH AND BEAUTY 69 merely as breakers of our present moral law, not merely as offenders against our social canons — an offense so light and fre- quent as to meet small rebuke ; but as plain criminals, chargeable with poisonings may- hem and murder. If a man gives his wife arsenic, he is held criminally responsible; if he shoots his child, or maims him with an axe. Wherein is a man less guilty who knowingly transmits disease to a trusting wife, who causes blind- ness and deformity and idiocy in his chil- dren, whose lightest offense is to bring ster- ility and merciful death? 70 THE MAN-MADE WORLD CHAPTER IV MEN AND ART AMONG the many counts in which women have been proven inferior to men in human development is the oft-heard charge that there are no great women artists. Where one or two are proudly exhibited in evidence, they are either pooh-poohed as not very great, or held to be the trifling exceptions which do but prove the rule. Defenders of women generally make the mistake of over-estimating their perform- ances, instead of accepting, and explaining, the visible facts. What are the facts as to the relation of men and women to art? And what, in especial, has been the effect upon art of a solely masculine expression? When we look for the beginnings of art. MEN AND ART 71 we find ourselves in a period of crude deco- ration of the person and of personal be- longings. Tattooing, for instance, is an early form of decorative art, still in practice among certain classes, even in advanced people. Most boys, if they are in contact with this early art, admire it, and wish to adorn themselves therewith; some do it, too, to later mortification. Early personal decoration consisted largely in direct muti- lation of the body, and the hanging upon it, or fastening to it, of decorative objects. This we see among savages still, in its gross and primitive forms monopolized by men, then shared by women, and, in our time, left almost wholly to them. In personal decora- tion, to-day, women are still near the savage. The "artists" developed in this field of art are the tonsorial, the sartorial, and all those speciahzed adorners of the body commonly known as "beauty doctors." Here, as in other cases, the greatest artists are men. The greatest milliners, the great- est dressmakers and tailors, the greatest hairdressers, and the masters and designers in all our decorative toilettes and acces- 73 THE MAN-MADE WORLD series, are men. Women, in this as in so many other lines, consume rather than pro- duce. They carry the major part of per- sonal decoration to-day; but the decorator is the man. In the decoration of objects, woman, as the originator of primitive indus- try, originated also the primitive arts; and in the pottery, basketry, leatherwork, needle- work, weaving, with all beadwork, dyeing, and embroideries of ancient peoples, we see the work of the woman decorator. Much of this is strong and beautiful, but its time is long past. The art which is part of indus- try, natural, simple, spontaneous, making beauty in every object of use, adding pleas- ure to labor and to life, is not Art with a large A, the Art which requires Artists, among whom are so few women of note. Art as a profession, and the Artist as a professional, came later; and by that time women had left the freedom and power of the matriarchate and become slaves in vary- ing degree. The women who were idle pets in harems, or the women who worked hard as servants, were alike cut off from the joy of making things. Where constructive work MEN AND ART 73 remained to them, art remained, in its early- decorative form. Men, in the proprietary family, restricting the natural industry of women to personal service, cut off their art with their industry, and by so much impov- erished the world. There is no more conspicuously pathetic proof of the aborted development of woman than this commonplace — their lack of a civ- ilized art sense. Not only in the childish and savage display upon their bodies, but in the pitiful products they hang upon the walls of the home, is seen the arrest in normal growth. After ages of culture, in which men have developed Architecture, Sculpture, Paint- ing, Music and the Drama, we find women in their primitive environment making flowers of wax, and hair, and worsted, doing mottoes of perforated cardboard, making crazy quilts and mats and "tidies" — as if they lived in a long past age, or belonged to a lower race. This, as part of the general injury to women dating from the beginning of our androcentric culture, reacts heavily upon the 74 THE MAN-MADE WORLD world at large. Men, specializing, giving their lives to the continuous pursuit of one line of service, have lifted our standard in aesthetic culture, as they have in other mat- ters; but by refusing the same growth to women, they have not only weakened and reduced the output, but ruined the market as it were, hopelessly and permanently kept down the level of taste. Among the many sides of this great ques- tion, some so terrible, some so pathetic, some so utterly absurd, this particular phase of life is especially easy to study and under- stand, and has its own elements of amuse- ment. Men, holding women at the level of domestic service, going on themselves to lonely heights of achievement, have f oimd their eif orts hampered and their attainments rendered barren and unsatisfactory by the amazing indiiference of the world at large. As the world at large consists half of women, and wholly of their children, it would seem patent to the meanest under- standing that the women must be allowed to rise in order to lift the world. But such has not been the method — ^heretofore. MEN AND ART 75 We have spoken so far in this chapter of the effect of men on art through their interference with the human growth of women. There are other sides to the ques- tion. Let us consider once more the essen- tial characteristics of maleness, and see how they have effected art, keeping always in mind the triple distinction between mas- culine, feminine and human. Perhaps we shall best see this difference by considering what the development of art might have been on purely human lines. The human creature, as such, naturally delights in construction, and adds decora- tion to construction as naturally. The cook, making little regular patterns round the edge of the pie, does so from a purely human instinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regular- ity, symmetry, repetition, and alternation. Had this natural social instinct grown unchecked in us, it would have manifested itself in a certain proportion of specialists — artists of all sorts — and an accompanying development of appreciation on the part of the rest of us. Such is the case in primitive art; the maker of beauty is upheld and 76 THE MAN-MADE WORLD rewarded by a popular appreciation of her work — or his. Had this condition remained, we should find a general level of artistic expression and appreciation far higher than we see now. Take the one field of textile art, for instance, that wide and fiuent medium of expression, the making of varied fabrics, the fashioning of garments and the decora- tion of them — all this is human work and human pleasure. It should have led us to a condition where every himian being was a pleasure to the eye, appropriately and beautifully clothed. Our real condition in this field is too patent to need emphasis; the stiff, black ugliness of our men's attire, the irritating variegated folly of our women's, the way in which we spoil the beauty and shame the dignity of childhood by modes of dress. In normal human growth, otu* houses would be a pleasiu-e to the eye; our furniture and utensils, all our social products, would blossom into beauty as natiu-aUy as they still do in those low stages of social evolution MEN AND ART 77 where our major errors have not yet borne full fruit. Applied art in all its forms is a human function, common to every one to some degree, either in production or apprecia- tion or both. "Pure art," as an ideal, is also human; and the single-hearted devotion of the true artist to this ideal is one of the high- est forms of the social sacrifice. Of all the thousand ways by which himianity is spe- cialized for inter-service, none is more exqui- site than this; the evolution of the social Eye, or Ear, or "Voice, the development of those whose work is wholly for others, and to whom the appreciation of others is as the bread of life. This we should have in a properly developed community; the pleas- ure of applied art in the making and using of everything we have, and then the high joy of the Great Artist, and the noble work thereof, spread far and wide. What do we find? Applied art at a very low level, small joy either for the maker or the user. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect few, who openly despise the 78 THE MAN-MADE WORLD unappreciative many. Art has become an occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more esoteric yearly. Let us now see what part in this vmde- sirable outcome is due to our Androcentric Culture. As soon as the male of our species assumed the exclusive right to perform aU social functions, he necessarily brought to that performance the advantages — and dis- advantages — of maleness, of those dominant characteristics, desire, combat, self-expres- sion. Desire has overweighted art in many visi- ble forms, it is prominent in painting and music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has pitifully degraded dancing. Combat is not so easily expressed in art, where even competition is on a high plane; but the last element is the main evil, self- expression. This impulse is inherently and ineradicably masculine. It rests on that most basic of distinctions between the sexes, the centripetal and centrifugal forces of MEN AND ART 79 the universe. In the very nature of the sperm-cell and the germ-cell we find this difference: the one attracts, gathers, draws in; the other repels, scatters, pushes out. That projective impulse is seen in the male nature everywhere, the constant urge toward expression, to all boasting and dis- play. This spirit, hke all things masculine, is perfectly right and admirable in its place. It is the duty of the male, as a male, to vary; bursting forth in a thousand changing modifications — ^the female, selecting, may so incorporate beneficial changes in the race. It is his duty to thus express himself — an essen- tially masculine duty; but masculinity is one thing, and art is another. Neither the mas- culine nor the feminine has any place in art — ^Art is Human. It is not in any faintest degree allied to the personal process of reproduction; but is a social process, a most distinctive social process, quite above the plane of sex. The true artist transcends his sex, or her sex. If this is not the case, the art suffers. Dancing is an early, and a beautiful art; direct expression of emotion through the 80 THE MAN-MADE WORLD body; beginning in sub-human type, among male birds, as the bower-bird of New Guinea, and the dancing crane, who swing and caper before their mates. Among early peoples we find it a common form of social expression in tribal dances of all sorts, religious, military, and other. Later it be- comes a more explicit form of celebration, as among the Greeks; in whose exquisite personal culture dancing and music held high place. But under the progressive eflforts of purely masculine dominance we find the broader himian elements of dancing left out, and the sex-element more and more empha- sized. As practiced by men alone dancing has become a mere display of physical agility, a form of exhibition common to aU males. As practiced by men and women together we have our social dances, so lack- ing in aU the varied beauty of posture and expression, so steadily becoming a pleasant form of dalliance. As practiced by women alone we have one of the clearest proofs of the degrading effect of masculine dominance — ^the dancing girl. MEN AND ART 81 In the frank sensualism of the Orient, this personage is admired and enjoyed on her merits. We, more sophisticated in this matter, joke shamefacedly about "the bald- headed row," and occasionally burst forth in shrill scandal over some dinner party where a lady clad in a veil and a bracelet dances on the table. Nowhere else in the whole range of life on earth, is this degradation found — the female capering and prancing before the male. It is absolutely and essentially his function, not hers. That we, as a race, pre- sent this pitiful spectacle, a natural art wrested to unnatural ends, a noble art degraded to ignoble ends, has one clear cause. Architecture, in its own nature, is least affected by that same cause. The human needs secured by it, are so human, so unes- capably human, that we find less trace of excessive masculinity than in other arts. It meets our social demands, it expresses in lasting form our social feeling, up to the highest; and it has been injured not so much by an excess of masculinity as by a lack of femininity. 82 THE MAN-MADE WORLD The most universal architectural expres- sion is in the home; the home is essentially a place for the woman and the child, yet the needs of woman and child are not expressed in our domestic architecture. The home is built on lines of ancient precedent, mainly as an industrial form; the kitchen is its work- ing centre rather than the nursery. Each man wishes his home to preserve and seclude his woman, his little harem of one; and in it she is to labor for his comfort or to manifest his ability to maintain her in idleness. The house is the physical expres- sion of the limitations of women; and as such it fills the world with a small drab ugli- ness. A dwelling house is rarely a beauti- ful object.' In order to be such, it should truly express simple and natural relations; or grow in larger beauty as our lives develop. The deadlock for architectural progress, the low level of our general taste, the ever- lasting predominance of the commonplace in buildings, is the natural result of the pro- prietary family and its expression in this form. In sculpture we have a noble art forcing MEN AND ART 83 itself into some service through many- limitations. Its check, as far as it comes under this line of study, has been indicated in our last chapter; the degradation of the human body, the vicious standards of sex- consciousness enforced under the name of modesty, the covered ugliness which we do not recognize, all this is a deadly injury to free high work in sculpture. With a nobly equal womanhood, stalwart and athletic, with the high standards of beauty and of decorum which we can never have without free womanhood, we should show a different product in this great art. An interesting note in passing is this: When we seek to express sculpturally our noblest ideas. Truth, Justice, Liberty, we use the woman's body as the highest human type. But in doing this, the artist, true to humanity and not biased by sex, gives us a strong, grand figure, beautiful indeed, but never decorated. Fancy Liberty in ruffles and frills, with rings in her ears — or nose. Music is injured by a one-side handling, partly in the excess of the one dominant masculine passion, partly by the general 84 THE MAN-MADE WORLD presence of egoism, that tendency to self- expression instead of social expression, which so disfigures our art; and this is true also of poetry. Miles and miles of poetry consist of the ceaseless outcry of the male for the female, which is by no means so overwhelming a feature of human Ufe as he imagines it; and other miles express his other feeUngs, with that ingenious lack of reticence which is at its base essentially masculine. Having a pain, the poet must needs pour it forth, that his woe be shared and sympathized with. As more and more women writers flock into the field, there is room for fine historic study of the difference in sex feeling, and the gradual emergence of the human note. Literature, and in especial the art of fiction, is so large a field for this study that it will have a chapter to itself; this one but touching on these various forms, and indi- cating hnes of observation. That best known form of art which to the lay mind needs no quaUfying descrip- tion — painting — ^is also a wide field; and cannot be done full justice to within these MEN AND ART 85 limits. The effect upon it of too much mas- culinity is not so much in choice of subject as in method and spirit. The artist sees beauty of form and color where the ordin- ary observer does not; and paints the old and ugly with as much enthusiasm as the young and beautiful — sometimes. If there is in some an over-emphasis of feminine attractions it is counterbalanced in others by a far broader line of work. But the main evils of a too masculine art lie in the emphasis laid on the self-expres- sion. The artist, passionately conscious of how he feels, strives to make other people aware of these sensations. This is now so generally accepted by critics, so seriously advanced by painters, that what is called "the art world" accepts it as established. If a man paints the sea, it is not to make you see and feel as a sight of that same ocean would, but to make you see and feel how he, personally, was affected by it; a matter surely of the narrowest importance. The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sen- sitive, necessarily, and full of the natural urge to expression of the sex, uses the 86 THE MAN-MADE WORLD medium of art as ingenuously as the part- ridge-cock uses his wings in drumming on the log, or the bull moose stamps and bellows ; not narrowly as a mate call, but as a form of expression of his personal sensa- tions. The higher the artist the more human he is, the broader his vision, the more he sees for hxmianity, and expresses for hiraianity, and the less personal, the less ultra-mas- culine, is his expression. MASCULINE LITERATURE 87 CHAPTER V MASCULINE LITERATURE WHEN we are offered a "woman's" paper, page, or column, we find it filled with matter supposed to appeal to women as a sex or class ; the writer mainly dwelling upon the Kaiser's four K's Kuchen, Kinder, Kirche, Kleider. They iterate and reiterate endlessly the discussion of cookery old and new, of the care of chil- dren, of the overwhelming subject of cloth- ing, and of moral instruction. All this is recognized as "feminine" literature, and it must have some appeal, else the women would not read it. What parallel have we in "masculine" literature? "None!" is the proud reply. "Men are people! Women, being 'the sex,' have their limited feminine interests, their feminine point of view, which must be provided for. 88 THE MAN-MADE WORLD Men, however, are not restricted — ^to them belongs the world's literature 1" Yes, it has belonged to them — ever since there was any. They have written it and they have read it. It is only lately that women, generally speaking, have been taught to read; still more lately that they have been allowed to write. It is but a little while since Harriet Martineau concealed her writing beneath her sewing when visi- tors came in — ^writing was "masculine" — sewing, "feminine." We have not, it is true, confined men to a narrowly constructed "masculine sphere," and composed a special literature suited to it. Their effect on literature has been far wider than that, monopoUzing this form of art with special favor. It was suited above all others to the dominant impulse of self-expression, and being, as we have seen, essentially and continually "the sex;" they have impressed that sex upon this art over- whelmingly; they have given the world a masculized literature. It is hard for us to realize this. We can readily see, that if women had always written MASCULINE LITERATURE 89 the books, no men either writing or reading them, that would have surely "feminized" our Kterature ; but we have not in our minds the concept, much less the word, for an over- masculized influence. Men having been accepted as himianity, women but a side-issue; (most literally if we accept the Hebrew legend!), whatever men did or said was human — and not to be criti- cized. In no department of life is it easier to controvert this old belief; to show how the male sex as such differs from the human type; and how this maleness has monopo- lized and disfigured a great social function. Human life is a very large affair; and literature is its chief art. We live, humanly, only through our power of communication. Speech gives us this power laterally, as it were, in immediate personal contact. For permanent use speech becomes oral tra- dition — a poor dependence. Literature gives not only an infinite multiplication to the lateral spread of communion but adds the vertical reach. Through it we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future. In its serviceable common forms it 90 THE MAN-MADE WORLD is the indispensable daily servant of our lives; in its nobler flights as a great art no means of human inter-change goes so far. In these brief limits we can touch but lightly on some phases of so great a sub- ject, and will rest the case mainly on the effect of an exclusively masculine handling of the two fields of history and fiction. In poetry and the drama the same influence is easily traced, but in the first two it is so baldly prominent as to defy objection. History is, or should be, the story of our racial life. What have men made it? The story of warfare and conquest. Begin at the very beginning with the carven stones of Egypt, the clay records of Chaldea, what do we find of history? "I, Pharaoh, King of Kings! Lord of Lords!" (etc. etc.), "went down into the miserable land of Kush, and slew of the inhabitants thereof an himdred and forty and two thousands!" That, or something like it, is the kind of record early history gives us. The story of Conquering Kings, whom and how many they killed and enslaved, the MASCULINE LITERATURE 91 grovelling adulation of the abased, the unlimited jubilation of the victor, from the primitive state of most ancient kings, and the Roman triumphs where queens walked in chains, down to our omnipresent soldier's monimients; the story of war and conquest — ^war and conquest — over and over, with such boasting and triumph, such cock-crow and flapping of wings as show most unmis- takably the natural source. All this will strike the reader at first as biased and unfair. "That was the way people lived in those days !" says the reader. No — ^it was not the way women lived. "Oh, women!" says the reader, "Of course not! Women are different." Yes, women are different; and men are different! Both of them, as sexes, differ from the hvunan norm, which is social life and all social development. Society was slowly growing in all those black, blind years. The arts, the sciences, the trades and crafts and professions, religion, philosophy, government, law, commerce, agriculture — all the human processes were going on as well as they were able, between wars. 92 THE MAN-MADE WORLD The male naturally fights, and naturally crows, triumphs over his rival and takes the prize — ^therefore was he made male. Male- ness means war. Not only so; hut as a male, he cares only for male interests. Men, being the sole arbiters of what should be done and said and written, have given us not only a social growth scarred and thwarted from the be- ginning by continual destruction; but a his- tory which is one unbroken record of courage and red cruelty, of triumph and black shame. As to what went on that was of real con- sequence, the great slow steps of the work- ing world, the discoveries and inventions, the real progress of humanity — ^that was not worth recording, from a masculine point of view. Within this last century, "the woman's century," the century of the great awakening, the rising demand for freedom, political, economic, and domestic, we are beginning to write real history, human his- tory, and not merely masculine history. But that great branch of literature — ^Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and all down later times, MASCULINE LITERATURE 93 shows beyond all question, the influence of our androcentric culture. Literature is the most powerful and neces- sary of the arts, and fiction is its broadest form. If art "holds the mirror up to nature" this art's mirror is the largest of all, the most used. Since our very life depends on some communication, and our prog- ress is in proportion to our fullness and freedom of communication, since real com- munication requires mutual understanding; so in the growth of the social consciousness, we note from the beginning a passionate interest in other people's Uves. The art which gives humanity conscious- ness is the most vital art. Our greatest dramatists are lauded for their breadth of knowledge of "human nature," their range of emotion and understanding; our greatest poets are those who most deeply and widely experience and reveal the feelings of the human heart; and the power of fiction is that it can reach and express this great field of human Ufe with no limits but those of the author. When fiction began it was the legitimate 94 THE MAN-MADE WORLD child of oral tradition, a product of natural brain activity; the legend constructed instead of remembered. (This stage is with us yet as seen in the constant changes in repetition of popular jokes and stories.) Fiction to-day has a much wider range; yet it is still restricted, heavily and most mischievously restricted. What is the preferred subject matter of jBction? There are two main branches found every- where, from the Romaunt of the Rose to the Purplish Magazine; — ^the Story of Adven- ture, and the Love Story. The Story-of- Adventure branch is not so thick as the other by any means, but it is a stiu-dy bough for all that. Stevenson and Kipling have proved its immense popularity, with the whole brood of detective stories and the tales of successful rascahty we call "pic- turesque." Our most popular weekly shows the broad appeal of this class of fiction. All these tales of adventure, of struggle and difficulty, of hunting and fishing and fighting, of robbing and murdering, catch- ing and punishing, are distinctly and essen- MASCULINE LITERATURE 95 tially masculine. They do not touch on human processes, social processes, but on the special field of predatory excitement so long the sole province of men. It is to be noted here that even in the over- whelming rise of industrial interests to-day, these, when used as the basis for a story, are forced into line with one, or both, of these two main branches of fiction; — conflict or love. Unless the story has one of these "interests" in it, there is no story — so holds the editor; the dictum being, put plainly, "life has no interests except conflict and love!" It is surely something more than a coin- cidence that these are the two essential features of masculinity — ^Desire and Com- bat — Love and War. As a matter of fact the major interests of life are in line with its major processes; and these — ^in our stage of human development — are more varied than our fiction would have us believe. Half the world consists of women, we should remember, who are types of himian hfe as well as men, and their major processes are not those of conflict and 96 THE MAN-MADE WORLD adventure, their love means more than mat- ing. Even on so poor a line of distinction as the "woman's column" offers, if women are to be kept to their four K's, there should be a "men's column" also, and all the "sport- ing news" and fish stories be put in that; they are not world interests, they are male interests. Now for the main branch — ^the Love Story. Ninety per cent, of fiction is in this line; this is pre-eminently the major interest of Ufe — ^given in fiction. What is the love- story, as rendered by this art? It is the story of the pre-marital struggle It is the Adventures of Him in Pursuit of Her — and it stops when he gets her ! Story after story, age after age, over and over and over, this ceaseless repetition of the Prelim- inaries. Here is Human Life. In its large sense, its real sense, it is a matter of inter-relation between individuals and groups, covering aU emotions, aU processes, all experiences. Out of this vast field of human life fiction arbit- rarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, as its necessary base. MASCULINE LITERATURE 97 "Ah! but we are persons most of all I" protests the reader. "This is personal experience — ^it has the universal appeal I" Take human life personally, then. Here is a Human Being, a life, covering some seventy years, involving the changing growth of many faculties; the ever new marvels of youth, the long working time of middle life, the slow ripening of age. Here is the human soul, in the human body. Living. Out of this field of personal life, with all of its emotions, processes, and experiences, fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, mainly of one sex. The "love" of our stories is man's love of woman. If any dare dispute this, and say it treats equally of woman's love for man, I answer, "Then why do the stories stop at marriage?" There is a current jest, revealing much, to this effect: The young wife complains that the hus- band does not wait upon and woo her as he did before marriage; to whi|Bh he rej^ili^es, 98 THE MAN-MADE WORLD "Why should I run after the street-car when I've caught it?" Woman's love for man, as currently treated in fiction is largely a reflex; it is the way he wants her to feel, expects her to feel. Not a fair representation of how she does feel. If "love" is to be selected as the most important thing in life to write about, then the mother's love should be the principal subject. This is the main stream, this is the general underlying, world-Ufting force. The "life-force," now so glibly chattered about, finds its fullest expression in motherhood; not in the emo- tions of an assistant in the preliminary stages. What has literature, what has fiction to offer concerning mother-love, or even con- cerning father-love, as compared to this vast volume of excitement about lover-love? Why is the search-light continually focused upon a two or three years space of Ufe "mid the blank miles roimd about?" Why indeed, except for the clear reason, that on a starkly masculine basis this is his one period of over- whelming interest and excitement. MASCULINE LITERATURE 99 If the beehive produced literature, the bee's fiction would be rich and broad, full of the complex tasks of comb-building and filling, the care and feeding of the young, the guardian-service of the queen; and far beyond that it would spread to the blue glory of the summer sky, the fresh winds, the end- less beauty and sweetness of a thousand thousand flowers. It would treat of the vast fecundity of motherhood, the educative and selective processes of the group- mothers, and the passion of loyalty, of social service, which holds the hive together. But if the drones wrote fiction, it would have no subject matter save the feasting, of many; and the nuptial flight, of one. To the male, as such, this mating instinct is frankly the major interest of life; even the belligerent instincts are second to it. To the male, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a passing interest. In nature's economy, his is but a temporary devotion, hers the slow processes of life's fulfillment. In humanity we have long since, not out- grown, but overgrown, this stage of feeling. In Human Parentage even the mother's 100 THE MAN-MADE WORLD share begins to pale beside that ever-grow- ing Social love and care, which guards and guides the children of to-day. The art of literature in this main form of fiction is far too great a thing to be whoUy governed by one dominant note. As life widened and intensified, the artist, if great enough, has transcended sex; and in the mightier works of the real masters, we find fiction treating of life, life in general, in all its complex relationships, and refusing to be held longer to the rigid canons of an andro- centric past. That was the power of Balzac — ^he took in more than this one field. That was the universal appeal of Dickens; he wrote of people, aU kinds of people, doing all kinds of things. As you recall with pleasure some preferred novel of this general favorite, you find yourself looking narrowly for the "love story" in it. It is there — for it is part of life; but it does not dominate the whole scene — any more than it does in life. The thought of the world is made and handed out to us in the main. The makers MASCULINE LITERATURE 101 of books are the makers of thoughts and feelings for the people in general. Fiction is the most popular form in which this world- food is taken. If it were true, it would teach us life easily, swiftly, truly; teach not by preaching but by truly re-presenting; and we should grow up becoming acquainted with a far wider range of life in books than could even be ours in person. Then meeting life in reaUty we should be wise — ^and not be disappointed. As it is, our great sea of fiction is steeped and dyed and flavored aU one way. A young man faces life — ^the seventy year stretch, remember, and is given book upon book wherein one set of feelings is contin- ually vocalized and overestimated. He reads forever of love, good love and bad love, natural and unnatural, legitimate and ille- gitimate ; with the unavoidable inference that there is nothing else going on. If he is a healthy young man he breaks loose from the whole thing, despises "love stories" and takes up life as he finds it. But what impression he does receive from fiction is a false one, and he suffers without know- 102 THE MAN-MADE WORLD ing it from lack of the truer, broader views of life it failed to give him. A young woman faces life — ^the seventy year stretch remember; and is given the same books — ^with restrictions. Remember the remark of Rochefoucauld, "There are thirty good stories in the world and twenty- nine cannot be told to women." There is a certain broad field of literature so grossly androcentric that for very shame men have tried to keep it to themselves. But in a milder form, the spades all named teaspoons, or at the worst appearing as trowels — ^the yoimg woman is given the same fiction. Love and love and love — ^from "first sight" to marriage. There it stops — ^just the flut- tering ribbon of announcement — "and lived happily ever after." Is that kind of fiction any sort of picture of a woman's life? Fiction, under our androcentric culture, has not given any true picture of woman's life, very httle of human life, and a disproportioned section of man's Hfe. As we daily grow more human, both of us, this noble art is changing for the better MASCULINE LITERATURE 103 so fast that a short hfetime can mark the growth. New fields are opening and new laborers are working in them. But it is no SAvift and easy matter to disabuse the race mind from attitudes and habits inculcated for a thousand years. What we have been fed upon so long we are well used to, what we are used to we like, what we like we think is good and proper. The widening demand for broader, truer fiction is disputed by the slow racial mind; and opposed by the marketers of literature on grounds of visible self-interest, as well as lethargic conservatism. It is difficult for men, heretofore the sole producers and consumers of literature; and for women, new to the field, and following masculine canons because aU the canons were masculine; to stretch their minds to a recognition of the change which is even now upon us. This one narrow field has been for so long overworked, our minds are so fiUed with heroes and heroes continually repeating the one-act play, that when a book like David Harum is offered the pubhshers refuse it 104 THE MAN-MADE WORLD repeatedly, and finally insist on a "heart interest" being injected by force. Did anyone read David Harum for that heart interest? Does anyone remember that heart interest? Has humanity no interests but those of the heart? Robert Ellesmere was a popular book — but not because of its heart interest. Uncle Tom's Cabin appealed to the entire world, more widely than any work of fiction that was ever written; but if anybody fell in love and married in it they have been forgotten. There was plenty of love in that book, love of family, love of friends, love of master for servant and servant for master; love of mother for child; love of married people for each other; love of humanity and love of God. It was extremely popular. Some say it was not literature. That opinion wiU live, hke the name of Empedocles. The art of fiction is being re-born in these days. Life is discovered to be longer, wider, deeper, richer, than these monotonous players of one tune would have us believe. The humanizing of woman of itself opens MASCULINE LITERATURE 105 five distinctly fresh fields of fiction: First, the position of the young woman who is called upon to give up her "career" — ^her humanness — for marriage, and who objects to it. Second, the middle-aged woman who at last discovers that her discontent is social starvation — ^that it is not more love that she wants, but more business in life: Third, the inter-relation of women with women — a thing we could never write about before because we never had it before: except in harems and convents: Fourth, the inter- action between mothers and children; this not the eternal "mother and child," wherein the child is always a baby, but the long drama of personal relationship; the love and hope, the patience and power, the lasting joy and triumph, the slow eating disap- pointment which must never be owned to a living soul — here are grounds for novels that a million mothers and many million children would eagerly read: Fifth, the new attitude of the full-grown woman, who faces the demands of love with the high standards of conscious motherhood. There are other fields, broad and bril- 106 THE MAN-MADE WORLD liantly promising, but this chapter is meant merely to show that our one-sided culture has, in this art, most disproportionately overestimated the dominant instincts of the male — Love and War — an offense against art and truth, and an injury to life. GAMES AND SPORTS lOr CHAPTER VI GAMES AND SPORTS ONE of the sharpest distinctions both between the essential char- acters and the artificial posi- tions of men and women, is in the matter of games and sports. By far the greater pro- portion of them are essentially masculine, and as such ahen to women; while from those which are humanly interesting, women have been largely debarred by their arbi- trary restrictions. The play instinct is common to girls and boys alike; and endures in some measure throughout life. As other young animals express their abounding energies in capri- cious activities similar to those followed in the business of living, so small children gambol, physically, like lambs and kids; and as the young of higher kinds of animals 108 THE MAN-MADE WORLD imitate in their play the more complex activities of their elders, so do children imitate whatever activities they see about them. In this field of playing there is no sex. Similarly in adult life healthy and happy persons, men and women, naturally express surplus energy in various forms of sport. We have here one of the most distinctively himian manifestations. The great accumu- lation of social energy, and the necessary limitations of any one kind of work, leave a hiunan being tired of one form of action, yet stiU uneasy for lack of full expression; and this social need has been met by our great safety valve of games and sports. In a society of either sex, or in a society without sex, there would still be both pleasure and use in games; they are vitally essential to human Ufe. In a society of two sexes, wherein one has dictated aU the terms of life, and the other has been confined to an extremely limited fraction of human living, we may look to see this great field of enjoy- ment as disproportionately divided. It is not only that we have reduced the GAMES AND SPORTS 109 play impulse in women by restricting them to one set of occupations, and over-taxing their energies with mother-work and house- work combined; and not only that, by our androcentric conventions we further restrict their amusements; but we begin in infancy, and forcibly differentiate their toys and methods of play long before any natural distinction would appear. Take that universal joy the doU, or puppet, as an instance. A small imitation of a large known object carries delight to the heart of a child of either sex. The worsted cat, the wooden horse, the little wagon, the tin soldier, the wax doll, the toy village, the "Noah's Ark," the omnipresent "Teddy Bear," any and every small model of a real thing is a delight to the yoimg human being. Of all things the puppet is the most intimate, the little image of another human being to play with. The fancy of the child, making endless combinations with these visible types, plays as freely as a kitten in the leaves; or gravely carries out some observed forms of life, as the kitten imitates its mother's hunting 110 THE MAN-MADE WORLD So far all is natural and human. Now see our attitude toward child's play — under a masculine culture. Regarding women only as a sex, and that sex as mani- fest from infancy, we make and buy for our little girls toys suitable to this view. Being females — ^which means mothers, we must needs provide them with babies before they cease to be babies themselves; and we expect their play to consist in an imitation of maternal cares. The doll, the puppet, which interests all children, we have rendered as an eternal baby; and we foist them upon our girl children by ceaseless millions. The doll, as such, is dear to the little boy as well as the girl, but not as a baby. He Hkes his jumping- jack, his worsted Sambo, often a genuine rag-doll; but he is discoiu*- aged and ridiculed in this. We do not expect the little boy to manifest a father's love and care for an imitation child — ^but we do expect the little girl to show maternal feehngs for her imitation baby. It has not yet occurred to us that this is monstrous. Little children should not be expected to show, in painful precocity, feelings which GAMES AND SPORTS 111 ought never to be experienced till they come at the proper age. Our kittens play at cat- sports, little Tom and Tabby together; but httle Tabby does not play she is a mother ! Beyond the continuous dolls and their continuous dressing, we provide for our little girls tea sets and kitchen sets, doll's houses, little workboxes — ^the imita- tion tools of their narrow trades. For the boy there is a larger choice. We make for them not only the essentially masculine toys of combat — all the enginery of mimic war; but also the models of human things, like boats, railroads, wagons. For them, too, are the comprehensive toys of the centuries, the kite, the top, the ball. As the boy gets old enough to play the games that require skill, he enters the world-lists, and the little sister, left inside, with her ever- lasting dolls, learns that she is "only a girl," and "mustn't play with boys — ^boys are so rough!" She has her doll and her tea set. She "plays house." If very active she may jump rope, in solitary enthusiasm, or in combination of from two to four. Her brother is playing games. From this time 112 THE MAN-MADE WORLD on he plays the games of the world. The "sporting page" should be called "the Man's Page" as that array of recipes, fashions and cheap advice is called "the Woman's Page." One of the immediate educational advan- tages of the boy's position is that he learns "team work." This is not a masculine characteristic, it is a human one; a social power. Women are equally capable of it by nature; but not by education. Tending one's imitation baby is not team-work; nor is playing house. The little girl is kept forever within the limitations of her mother's "sphere" of action; while the boy learns life, and fancies that new growth is due to his superior sex. Now there are certain essential distinc- tions in the sexes, which would manifest themselves to some degree even in normally reared children; as for instance the little male would be more given to fighting and destroying; the little female more to caring for and constructing things. "Boys are so destructive!" we say with modest pride — ^as if it was in some way a credit to them. But early youth is not the GAMES AND SPORTS 113 time to display sex distinction; and they should be discouraged rather than approved. The games of the world, now the games of men, easily fall into two broad classes — games of skill and games of chance. The interest and pleasure in the latter is purely human, and as such is shared by the two sexes even now. Women, in the innocent beginnings or the vicious extremes of this line of amusement, make as wild gamblers as men. At the races, at the roulette wheel, at the bridge table, this is clearly seen. In games of skill we have a different showing. Most of these are developed by and for men; but when they are allowed, women take part in them with interest and success. In card games, in chess, checkers, and the like, in croquet and tennis, they play, and play well if well-trained. Where they fall short in so many games, and are so wholly excluded in others, is not for lack of human capacity, but for lack of masculinity. Most games are male. In their element of desire to win, to get the prize, they are male : and in their universal attitude of competi- 114 THE MAN-MADE WORLD tion they are male, the basic spirit of desire and of combat working out through subtle modern forms. There is something inherently masculine also in the vmiversal dominance of the pro- jectile in their games. The ball is the one unescapable instrtmient of sport. From the snapped marble of infancy to the flying missile of the bat, this form endures. To send something forth with violence; to throw it, bat it, kick it, shoot it; this impulse seems to date back to one of the twin forces of the universe — ^the centrifugal and centripetal energies between which swing the planets. The basic feminine impxilse is to gather, to put together, to construct; the basic masculine impulse to scatter, to disseminate, to destroy. It seems to give pleasm-e to a man to bang something and drive it from him; the harder he hits it and the farther it goes the better pleased he is. Games of this sort will never appeal to women. They are not wrong; not neces- sarily evU in their place; our mistake is in considering them as human, whereas they are only masculine. GAMES AND SPORTS 115 Play, in the childish sense is an expression of previous habit; and to be studied in that light. Play in the educational sense should be encouraged or discoiu'aged to develop de- sired characteristics. This we know, and practice; only we do it under androcentric cannons; confining the girl to the narrow range we consider proper for women, and assisting the boy to cover life with the ex- pression of masculinity, when we should be helping both to a more human development. Our settled conviction that men are people — ^the people, and that masculine qualities are the main desideratmn in life, is what keeps up this false estimate of the value of our present games. Advocates of football, for instance, proudly claim that it fits a man for life. Life — from the wholly male point of view — ^is a battle, with a prize. To want something beyond measure, and to fight to get — ^that is the simple proposition. This view of life finds its most naive expression in predatory warfare; and stiU tends to make predatory warfare of the later and more human processes of industry. Be- cause they see life in this way they imagine 116 THE MAN-MADE WORLD that skill and practice in the art of fighting, especially in collective fighting, is so valu- able in our modern life. This is an archaism which would be laughable if it were not so dangerous in its effects. The valuable processes to-day are those of invention, discovery, all grades of in- dustry, and, most especially needed, the capacity for honest service and administra- tion of our immense advantages. These are not learned on the football field. This spirit of desire and combat may be seen further in all parts of this great subject. It has developed into a cult of sportsman- ship ; so universally accepted among men as of superlative merits as to quite blind them to other standards of judgment. In the Cook-Peary controversy of 1909, this canon was made manifest. Here, one man had spent a lifetime in trying to ac- complishing something; and at the eleventh hoiu* succeeded. Then, coming out in the rich triumph long deferred, he finds another man, of character well known to him, im- pudently and falsely claiming that he had done it first. Mr. Peary expressed himself, GAMES AND SPORTS 117 quite restrainedly and correctly, in regard to the effrontery and falsity of this claim — and all the country rose up and denounced him as "unsportsmanlike!" Sport and the canons of sport are so dom- inant in the masculine mind that what they considered a deviation from these standards was of far more importance than the ques- tion of fact involved; to say nothing of the moral obliquity of one lying to the whole world, for money; and that at the cost of another's hard-won triumph. If women had condemned the conduct of one or the other as "not good housewifery," this would have been considered a most puerile comment. But to be "unsportsman- like" is the unpardonable sin. Owing to our warped standards we glar- ingly misjudge the attitude of the two sexes in regard to their amusements. Of late years more women than ever before have taken to playing cards; and some, un- fortunately, play for money. A steady stream of comment and blame follows upon this. The amount of card playing among men — and the amount of money lost and 118 THE MAN-MADE WORLD won, does not produce an equivalent comment. Quite aside from this one field of dissipa- tion, look at the share of life, of time, of strength, of money, given by men to their wide range of recreation. The primitive satisfaction of hunting and fishing they maintain at enormous expense. This is the indulgence of a most rudimentary impulse; pre-social and largely pre-human, of no service save as it aifects bodily health, and of a most deterring influence on real human development. Where hunting and fishing is of real human service, done as a means of livelihood, it is looked down upon like any other industry; it is no longer "sport." The himian being kills to eat, or to sell and eat from the retiu-ns; he kills for the creature's hide or tusks, for use of some sort, or to protect his crops from vermin, his flocks from depredation; but the sports- man kiUs for the gratification of a primeval instinct, and under rules of an arbitrary cult. "Game" creatures are his prey; bird, beast or fish that is hard to catch, that requires some skill to slay; that will give GAMES AND SPORTS 119 him not mere meat and bones, but "the pleasure of the chase." The pleasure of the chase is a very real one. It is exemplified, in its broad sense in children's play. The running and catching games, the hiding and finding games, are always attractive to our infancy, as they are to that of cubs and kittens. But the long continuance of this indulgence among mature civiUzed beings is due to their masculinity. That group of associated sex instincts, which in the woman prompts to the patient service and fierce defence of the httle child, in the man has its deepest root in seeking, pursuing and catching. To himt is more than a means of obtaining food, in his long ancestry; it is to follow at any cost, to seek through all difficulties, to struggle for and secure the central prize of his being — a, mate. His "protective instincts" are far later and more superficial. To support and care for his wife, his children, is a recent habit, in plain sight historically; but "the pleasm-e of the chase" is older than that. We should remember that associate habits and impulses 120 THE MAN-MADE WORLD last for ages upon ages in living forms; as in the tree-climbing instincts of our earliest years, of simian origin; and the love of water, which dates back through unmeas- ured time. Where for millions of years the strongest pleasure a given organism is fitted for, is obtained by a certain group of activities, those activities will continue to give pleasure long after their earher use is gone. This is why men enjoy "the ardor of pursuit" far more than women. It is an essentially masculine ardor. To come easily by what he wants does not satisfy him. He wants to want it. He wants to hunt it, seek it, chase it, catch it. He wants it to be "game." He is by virtue of his sex a sportsman. There is no reason why these special instincts should not be gratified so long as it does no harm to the more important social processes; but it is distinctly desirable that we should understand their nature. The reason why we have the present over- whelming mass of "sporting events," from the ball game to the prize fight, is be- GAMES AND SPORTS 131 cause our civilization is so overwhelmingly masculine. We shall criticize them more justly when we see that all this mass of indulgence is in the first place a form of sex-expression, and in the second place a survival of instincts older than the oldest savagery. Besides our games and sports we have a large field of "amusements" also worth examining. We not only enjoy doing things, but we enjoy seeing them done by others. In these highly specialized days most of our amusement consists in paying two dollars to sit three hours and see other people do things. This in its largest sense is wholly human. We, as social creatures, can enjoy a thousand forms of expression quite beyond the personal. The birds must each sing his own song; the crickets chirp in millionfold performance ; but the human beings feels the deep thrill of joy in their special singers, actors, dancers, as well as in their own personal attempts. That we should find pleasure in watching one another is humanly natural, but what it is we watch. 122 THE MAN-MADE WORLD the kind of pleasure and the kind of per- formance, opens a wide field of choice. We know, for instance, something of the crude excesses of aboriginal Australian dances; we know more of the gross license of old Rome; we know the breadth of the jokes in medieval times, and the childish brutality of the buU-ring and the cockpit. We know, in a word, that amusements vary; that they form a ready gauge of character and culture; that they have a strong educa- tional influence for good or bad. What we have not hitherto observed is the predomi- nant masculine influence on our amusements. If we recall once more the statement with regard to entertaining anecdotes, "There are thirty good stories in the world, and twenty-nine of them cannot be told to women," we get a glaring sidelight on the masculine specialization in jokes. "Women have no sense of humor" has been frequently said, when "Women have not a masculine sense of humor" would be truer. If women had thirty "good stories" twenty-nine of which could not be told to men, it is possible that men, if they heard GAMES AND SPORTS 133 some of the twenty-nine, would not find them funny. The over-weight of one sex has told in our amusements as everywhere else. Because men are further developed in humanity than women are as yet, they have built and organized great places of amuse- ment; because they carried into their himianity their unchecked masculinity, they have made these amusements to correspond. Dramatic expression, is in its true sense, not only a human distinction, but one of our noblest arts. It is allied with the highest emotions; is religious, educational, patriotic, covering the whole range of human feeling. Through it we should be able continually to express, in audible, visible forms, alive and moving, whatever phase of life we most enjoyed or wished to see. There was a time when the drama led life; lifted, taught, inspired, enlightened. Now its main func- tion is to amuse. Under the demand for amusement, it has cheapened and coarsened, and now the thousand vaudeville and pic- ture shows give us the broken fragments of a degraded art of which our one main demand is that it shall make us laugh. 124 THE MAN-MADE WORLD There are many causes at work here; and while this study seeks to show in various fields one cause, it does not claim that cause is the only one. Our economic conditions have enormous weight upon our amuse- ments, as on all other human phenomena; but even under economic pressure the reac- tions of men and women are often dissimilar. Tired men and women both need amuse- ment, the relaxation and restful change of irresponsible gayety. The great majority of women, who work longer hours than any other class, need it desperately and never get it. Amusement, entertainment, recreation, should be open to us all, enjoyed by all. This is a human need, and not a distinction of either sex. Like most htmian things it is not only largely monopolized by men, but masculized throughout. Many forms of amusement are for men only; more for men mostly; all are for men if they choose to go. The entrance of women upon the stage, and their increased attendance at theatres has somewhat modified the nature of the performance; even the "refined vaudeville" now begins to show the influence of women. GAMES AND SPORTS 125 It would be no great advantage to have this department of human life feminized; the improvement desired is to have it less mascu- lized; to reduce the excessive influence of one, and to bring out those broad himian interests and pleasures which men and women can equally participate in and enjoy. 126 THE MAN-MADE WORLD CHAPTER VII ETHICS AND RELIGION THE laws of physics were at work before we were on earth, and con- tinued to work on us long before we had intelligence enough to perceive, much less understand, them. Our proven knowl- edge of these processes constitutes "the science of physics" ; but the laws were there before the science. Physics is the science of material relation, how things and natural forces work with and on one another. Ethics is the science of social relation, how persons and social forces work with and on one another. Ethics is to the human world what physics is to the material world; ignorance of ethics leaves us in the same helpless position in regard to one another that ignorance of ETHICS AND RELIGION 127 physics left us in regard to earth, air, fire and water. To be sure, people lived and died and gradually improved, while yet ignorant of the physical sciences; they developed a rough "rule of thumb" method, as animals do, and used great forces without understanding them. But their lives were safer and their improvement more rapid as they learned more, and began to make servants of the forces which had been their masters. We have progressed, lamely enough, with terrible loss and suffering, from stark savagery to our present degree of civiliza- tion ; we shall go on more safely and swiftly when we learn more of the science of ethics. Let us note first that while the underlying laws of ethics remain steady and reliable, human notions of them have varied widely and still do so. In diiferent races, ages, classes, sexes, different views of ethics obtain; the conduct of the people is modified by their views, and their prosperity is modified by their conduct. Primitive man became very soon aware that conduct was of importance. As 128 THE MAN-MADE WORLD consciousness increased, with the power to modify action from within, instead of help- lessly reacting to stimuli from without, there arose the crude first codes of ethics, the "Thou Shalt" and "Thou shalt not" of the blundering savage. It was mostly "Thou shalt not." Inhibition, the checking of an impulse proven disadvantageous, was an earlier and easier form of action than the later human power to consciously decide on and follow a course of action with no stimulus but one's own will. Primitive ethics consists mostly of tabus — ^the things that are forbidden ; and all our dim notions of ethics to this day, as well as most of our religions, deal mainly with forbidding. This is almost the whole of our nursery government, to an extent shown by the well- worn tale of the child who said her name was "Mary." "Mary what?" they asked her. And she answered, "Mary Don't." It is also the main body of our legal systems — ^a complex mass of prohibitions and preven- tions. And even in manners and conven- tions, the things one should not do far ETHICS AND RELIGION 129 outnumber the things one should. A general policy of negation colors our conceptions of ethics and religion. When the positive side began to be developed, it was at first in pvu*ely arbitrary and artificial form. The followers of a given religion were required to go through certain motions, as prostrating themselves, kneeling, and the like; they were required to bring tribute to the gods and their priests, sacri- fices, tithes, oblations; they were set httle special performances to go through at given times, the range of things forbidden was broad; the range of things conmianded was narrow. The Christian religion, practically interpreted, requires a fuller "change of heart" and change of life than any preced- ing it; which may account at once for its wide appeal to enlighten peoples, and to its scarcity of application. Again, in surveying the field, it is seen that as our grasp of ethical values widened, as we called more and more acts and tend- encies "right" and "wrong," we have shown astonishing fluctuations and vagaries in our 130 THE MAN-MADE WORLD judgment. Not only in our religions, which have necessarily upheld each its own set of prescribed actions as most "right," and its own special prohibitions as most "wrong;" but in our beliefs about ethics and our real conduct, we have varied absurdly. Take, for instance, the ethical concept among "gentlemen" a century or so since, which put the paying of one's gambling debts as a weU-nigh sacred duty, and the paying of a tradesman who had fed and clothed one as a quite negligible matter. If the process of gambling was of social service, and the furnishing of food and clothes was not, this might be good ethics; but as the contrary is true, we have to accoimt for this peculiar view on other groimds. Again, where in Japan a girl, to maintain her parents, is justified in leading a life of shame, we have a peculiar ethical standard difficult for Western minds to appreciate. Yet in such an instance as is described in "Auld Robin Gray," we see precisely the same code; the girl, to benefit her parents, marries a rich old man she does not love — which is to lead a life of shame. The ethical ETHICS AND RELIGION 131 view which justifies this, puts the benefit of parents above the benefit of children, robs the daughter of happiness and motherhood, injures posterity to assist ancestors. This is one of the products of that very early religion, ancestor worship ; and here we lay a finger on a distinctly masculine influence. We know little of ethical values during the matriarchate ; whatever they were, they must have depended for sanction on a cult of promiscuous but efficient maternity. Our recorded history begins in the patriarchal period, and it is its ethics alone which we know. The mother instinct, throughout nature, is one of unmixed devotion, of love and service, care and defense, with no self- interest. The animal father, in such cases as he is of service to the young, assists the mother in her work in similar fashion. But the human father in the family with the male head soon made that family an instrument of desire, and combat, and self-expression, following the essentially masculine impulses. The children were his, and, if males, valuable 133 THE MAN-MADE WORLD to serve and glorify him. In his dominance over servile women and helpless children, free rein was given to the growth of pride and the exercise of irresponsible tyranny. To these feelings, developed without check for thousands of years, and to the mental habits resultant, it is easy to trace much of the bias of om* early ethical concepts. Perhaps it is worth while to repeat here that the effort of this book is by no means to attribute a wholly evil influence to men, and a wholly good one to women; it is not even claimed that a purely feminine culture would have advanced the world more suc- cessfully. It does claim that the influence of the two together is better than that of either one alone; and in special to point out what special kind of injury is due to the exclusive influence of one sex heretofore. We have to-day reached a degree of human development where both men and women are capable of seeing over and across the distinctions of sex, and mutually work- ing for the advancement of the world. Our progress is, however, seriously impeded by what we may call the masculine tradition. ETHICS AND RELIGION 133 the unconscious dominance of a race habit based on this long androcentric period; and it is well worth while, in the interests of both sexes, to show the mischievous effects of the predominance of one. We have in our cities not only a "double standard" in one special line, but in nearly all. Man, as a sex, has quite naturally deified his own qualities rather than those of his opposite. In his codes of manners, of morals, of laws, in his early concepts of God, his ancient religions, we see masculinity written large on every side. Confining women wholly to their feminine functions, he has required of them only what he called feminine virtues; and the one virtue he has demanded, to the complete overshadowing of all others, is measured by wholly mascu- line requirements. In the interests of health and happiness, monogamous marriage proves its superior- ity in oxa race as it has in others. It is essen- tial to the best growth of humanity that we practice the virtue of chastity; it is a human virtue, not a feminine one. But in the mas- culine hands this virtue was enforced upon 134 THE MAN-MADE WORLD women under penalties of hideous cruelty, and quite ignored by men. Masculine ethics, colored by masculine instincts, always domi- nated by sex, has at once recognized the value of chastity in the woman, which is right; punished its absence unfairly, which is wrong; and then reversed the whole matter when applied to men, which is ridicu- lous. Ethical laws are laws — ^not idle notions. Chastity is a virtue because it promotes human welfare — ^not because men happen to prize it in women and ignore it themselves. The underlying reason for the whole thing is the benefit of the child; and to that end a pure and noble fatherhood is requisite, as well as such a motherhood. Under the limi- tations of a too mascuUne ethics, we have developed on this one line social conditions which would be absurdly funny if they were not so horrible. Religion, be it noticed, does not bear out this attitude. The immense human need of religion, the noble human character of the great religious teachers, has always set its ETHICS AND RELIGION 135 standards, when first established, ahead of human conduct. Some there are, men of learning and authority, who hold that the deadening im- mobility of our religions, their resistance to progress and relentless preservation of primitive ideals, is due to the conservatism of women. Men, they say, are progressive by nature; women are conservative. Women are more religious than men, and so preserve old religious forms unchanged after men have outgrown them. If we saw women in absolute freedom, with a separate religion devised by women, practiced by women, and remaining un- changed through the centuries; while men, on the other hand, bounded bravely for- ward, making new ones as fast as they were needed, this belief might be maintained. But what do we see? All the old religions made by men, and forced on the women whether they liked it or not. Often women not even considered as part of the scheme — denied souls — ^given a much lower place in the system — agoing from the service of their father's goods to the service 136 THE MAN-MADE WORLD of their husbands — Shaving none of their own. We see religions which make practically no place for women, as with the Moslem, as rigidly bigoted and unchanging as any other. We see also this: that the wider and deeper the religion, the more human, the more it calls for practical application — as in Christianity — ^the more it appeals to women. Further, in the diverging sects of the Christian religion, we find that its progres- siveness is to be measured not by the num- bers of its women adherents, but by their relative freedom. The women of America, who belong to a thousand sects, who f oUow new ones with avidity, who even make them, and who also leave them aU as men do, are women, as well as those of Spain, who remain contented Romanists; but in Amer- ica the status of women is higher. The fact is this: a servile womanhood is in a state of arrested development, and as such does form a ground for the retention of ancient ideas. But this is due to the con- dition of servihty, not to womanhood, that women at present are the bulwark of the ETHICS AND RELIGION ISI older forms of our religions is due to the action of two classes of men: the men of the world, who keep women in their restricted position, and the men of the church, who take every advantage of the limitations of women. When we have for the first time in history a really civilized womanhood, we can then judge better of its effect on religion. Meanwhile, we can see quite clearly the effect of manhood. Keeping in mind those basic masculine impulses — desire and com- bat — ^we see them reflected from high heaven in their religious concepts. Reward 1 Some- thing to want tremendously and struggle to achieve 1 This is a concept perfectly mascu- line and most imperfectly religious. A religion is partly explanation — a theory of Hfe; it is partly emotion — an attitude of mind; it is partly action — a system of morals. Man's special effect on this large field of human development is clear. He pictured his early gods as like to himself, and they behaved in accordance with his ideals. In the dimmest, oldest religions, nearest the matriarchate, we find great god- 138 THE MAN-MADE WORLD desses — ^types of Motherhood, Mother-love, Mother-care and Service. But under mas- culine dominance, Isis and Ashteroth dwindle away to an alluring Aphrodite — not Womanhood — for the Child and the World — ^but the incarnation of female at- tractiveness for man. As the idea of heaven developed in the man's mind it became the Happy Hunting Ground of the savage, the beery and gory Valhalla of the Norseman, the vuluptuous, many-houri-ed Paradise of the Mohanmie- dan. These are men's heavens all. Women have never been so fond of hunting, beer or blood; and their houris would be of the other kind. It may be said that the early Christian idea of heaven is by no means planned for men. That is true, and is perhaps the reason why it has never had so compelling an attraction for them. Very early in his vague efforts towards religious expression, man voiced his second strongest instinct — ^that of combat. His universe is always dual, always a scene of combat. Born with that impulse, exercising it continually, he naturally assiHned it to be ETHICS AND RELIGION 139 the major process in life. It is not. Growth is the major process. Combat is a useful subsidiary process, chiefly valu- able for its initial use, to transmit the physical superiority of the victor. Psychic and social advantages are not thus secured or transmitted. In no one particular is the androcentric character of our common thought more clearly shown than in the general deification of what are now described as "conflict stimuli." That which is true of the male creature as such is assumed to be true of life in general; quite naturally, but by no means correctly. To this universal masculine error we may trace in the field of religion and ethics the great devil theory, which has for so long obscured our minds. A God with- out an Adversary was inconceivable to the masculine mind. From this basic miscon- ception we find all our ideas of ethics dis- torted; that which should have been treated as a group of truths to be learned and habits to be cultivated was treated in terms of com- bat, and moral growth made an everlasting battle. This combat theory we may follow 140 THE MAN-MADE WORLD later into our common notions of discipline, government, law and punishment; here is it enough to see its painful effects in this pri- mary field of ethics and religion? The third essential male trait of self-ex- pression we may follow from its innocent natural form in strutting cock or stamping stag up to the characteristics we label vanity and pride. The degradation of women in forcing them to adopt masculine methods of personal decoration as a means of liveUhood, has carried with the concomitant of personal vanity; but to this day and at their worst we do not find in women the naive exultant glow of pride which swells the bosom of the men who march in procession with brass bands, in full regalia of any sort, so that it be gorgeous, exhibiting their glories to all. It is this purely masculine spirit which has given to our early concepts of Deity the un- admirable qualities of boundless pride and a thirst for constant praise and prostrate admiration, characteristics certainly unbefit- ting any noble idea of God. Desire, combat and self-expression all have had their un- avoidable influence on masculine rehgions. ETHICS AND RELIGION 141 What deified Maternity a purely feminine culture might have put forth we do not know, having had none such. Women are generally credited with as much moral sense as men, and as much religious instinct; but so far it has had small power to modify our prevailing creeds. As a matter of fact, no special sex attri- butes should have any weight in our ideas of right and wrong. Ethics and religion are distinctly human concerns ; they belong to us as social factors, not as physical ones. As we learn to recognize our humanness, and to leave our sex characteristics where they belong, we shall at last learn something about ethics as a simple and practical science, and see that religions grow as the mind grows to formulate them. If anyone seeks for a clear, simple, easily grasped proof of oiu' man-made ethics, it is to be found in a popular proverb. Strug- gling upward from beast and savage into humanness, man has seen, reverenced, and striven to attain various human virtues. He was willing to check many primitive impulses, to change many barbarous habits. 143 THE MAN-MADE WORLD to manifest newer, nobler powers. Much he would concede to Humanness, but not his sex — ^that was beyond the range of Ethics or Religion. By the state of what he calls "morals," and the laws he makes to regulate them, by his attitude in courtship and in marriage, and by the gross anomaly of mili- tarism, in aU its senseless waste of life and wealth and joy, we may perceive this little mascuhne exception: "All's fair in love and war." EDUCATION 143 CHAPTER VIII EDUCATION THE origin of education is maternal. The mother animal is seen to teach her young what she knows of life, its gains and losses; and, whether consci- ously done or not, this is education. In our human hfe, education, even in its present state, is the most important process. With- out it we could not maintain ourselves, much less dominate and improve conditions as we do; and when education is what it should be, our power will increase far beyond present hopes. In lower animals, speaking generally, the powers of the race must be lodged in each individual. No gain of personal experience is of avail to the others. No advantages remain, save those physically transmitted. The narrow limits of personal gain and per- 144 THE MAN-MADE WORLD sonal inheritance rigidly hem in sub-human progress. With us, what one learns may be taught to the others. Our life is social, col- lective. Our gain is for all, and profits us in proportion as we extend it to all. As the human soul develops in us, we become able to grasp more fully our common needs and advantages; and with this growth has come the extension of education to the people as a whole. Social fxmctions are developed under natural laws, like physical ones, and may be studied similarly. In the evolution of this basic social fimc- tion, what has been the effect of wholly mas- cuhne influence? The original process, instruction of indi- vidual child by individual mother, has been largely neglected in our man-made world. That was considered as a subsidiary sex- function of the woman, and as such, left to her instinct. This is the main reason why we show such great progress in education for older children, and especially for youths, and so httle comparatively in that given to younger ones. We have had on the one side the natural EDUCATION 145 current of maternal education, with its first assistant, the nursemaid, and its second, the "dame-school"; and on the other the influ- ence of the dominant class, organized in uni- versity, college and public school, slowly filtering downward. Educational forces are many. The child is born into certain conditions, physical and psychic, and "educated" thereby. He grows up into social, political and economic conditions, and is further modified by them. All these conditions, so far, have been of androcentric character; but what we call education as a special social process is what the child is deliberately taught and sub- jected to; and it is here we may see the same dominant influence so clearly. This conscious education was, for long, given to boys alone, the girls being left to maternal influence, each to learn what her mother knew, and no more. This very clear instance of the masculine theory is glaring enough by itself to rest a case on. It shows how absolute was the assumption that the world was composed of men, and men alone were to be fitted for it. Women were no 146 THE MAN-MADE WORLD part of the world, and needed no training for its uses. As females they were born and not made; as human beings they were only servants, trained as such by their servant mothers. This system of education we are out- growing more swiftly with each year. The growing humanness of women, and its recognition, is forcing an equal education for boy and girl. When this demand was first made, by women of unusual calibre, and by men suflSciently human to overlook sex-prejudice, how was it met? What was the attitude of woman's "natural protector" when she began to ask some share in human life? Under the universal assumption that men alone were himianity, that the world was masculine and for men only, the efforts of the women were met as a deliberate attempt to "unsex" themselves and become men. To be a woman was to be ignorant, imedu- cated; to be wise, educated, was to be a man. Women were not men, visibly; therefore they could not be educated, and ought not to want to be. EDUCATION 147 Under this androcentric prejudice, the equal extension of education to women was opposed at every step, and is still opposed by many. Seeing in women only sex, and not hmnanness, they would confine her exclusively to feminine interests. This is the masculine view, par excellence. In spite of it, the hmnan development of women, which so splendidly characterizes our age, has gone on ; and now both women's colleges and those for both sexes offer "the higher education" to our girls, as well as the lower grades in school and kindergarten. In the special professional training, the same opposition was experienced, even more rancorous and cruel. One would think that on the entrance of a few straggling and necessarily inferior feminine beginners into a trade or profession, those in possession would extend to them the right hand of fellowship, as comrades, extra assistance as beginners, and special courtesy as women. The contrary occurred. Women were barred out, discriminated against, taken advantage of, as competitors; and as women they have had to meet special danger and 148 THE MAN-MADE WORLD offence instead of special courtesy. An unforgetable instance of this lies in the at- titude of medical colleges toward women students. The men, strong enough, one would think, in numbers, in knowledge, in established precedent, to be generous, opposed the new- comers first with absolute refusal; then when the patient, persistent applicants did get inside, both students and teachers met them not only with imkindness and imfair- ness, but with a weapon ingeniously well chosen, and most discreditable — ^namely, obscenity. Grave professors, in lecture and clinic, as well as grinning students, used offensive language, and played offensive tricks, to drive the women out — a most androcentric performance. Remember that the essential masculine attitude is one of opposition, of combat; his desire is obtained by first overcoming a competitor; and then see how this domin- ant masculinity stands out where it has no possible use or benefit — ^in the field of educa- tion. AU along the line, man, long master of a subject sex, fought every step of EDUCATION 149 woman toward mental equality. Neverthe- less, since modern man has become hmnan enough to be just, he has at last let her have a share in the advantages of education; and she has proven her full power to appreciate and use these advantages. Then to-day rises a new cry against "women in education." Here is Mr. Bar- rett Wendell, of Harvard, solemnly claim- ing that teaching women weakens the intel- lect of the teacher, and every now and then bursts out a frantic sputter of alarm over the "feminization" of our schools. It is true that the majority of teachers are now women. It is true that they do have an influence on growing children. It would even seem to be true that that is largely what women are for. But the male assumes his influence to be normal, hvunan, and the female influence as wholly a matter of sex; therefore, where women teach boys, the boys become "effemi- nate" — a grievious fall. When men teach girls, do the girls become ? Here again we lack the analogue. Never has it occurred to the androcentric mind to conceive of 150 THE MAN-MADE WORLD such a thing as being too masculine. There is no such word! It is odd to notice that which ever way the woman is placed, she is supposed to exert this degrading influence; if the teacher, she effeminizes her pupils; if the pupil, she effeminizes her teachers. Now let us shake ourselves free, if only for a moment, from the androcentric habit of mind. As a matter of sex, the female is the more important. Her share of the processes which sex distinction serves is by far greater. To be feminine — ^if one were nothing else, is a far more extensive and dignified ofiice than to be masculine— and nothing else. But as a matter of hirnianity the male of our species is at present far ahead of the female. By this superior hxmianness, his knowledge, his skill, his experience, his organization and specialization, he makes and manages the world. All this is human, not male. AH this is open to the woman as the man by nature, but has been denied her during our androcentric culture. But even if, in a purely human process, EDUCATION 151 such as education, she does bring her special feminine characteristics to bear, what are they, and what are the results? We can see the masculine influence every- where still dominant and superior. There is the first spur. Desire, the base of the reward system, the incentive of self-interest, the attitude which says, "Why should I make an effort imless it will give me pleas- ure?" with its concomitant laziness, unwill- ingness to work without payment. There is the second spur. Combat, the competitive system, which sets one against another, and finds pleasure not in learning, not exercis- ing the mind, but in getting ahead of one's feUows. Under these two wholly masculine influences we have made the educational process a joy to the few who successfully attain, and a weary effort, with failure and contumely attached, to all the others. This may be a good method in sex-competition, but is wholly out of place and mischievous in education. Its prevalence shows the injuri- ous masculization of this noble social pro- cess. What might we look for in a distinctly 153 THE MAN-MADE WORLD feminine influence? What are these much- dreaded feminine characteristics? The maternal ones, of course. The sex instincts of the male are of a preliminary nature, leading merely to the union preced- ing parenthood. The sex instincts of the female cover a far larger field,' spending themselves most fully in the lasting love, the ceaseless service, the ingenuity and courage of efficient motherhood. To femin- ize education would he to make it more motherly. The mother does not rear her children by a system of prizes to be longed for and pursued; nor does she set them to compete with one another, giving to the conquering child what he needs, and to the vanquished, blame and deprivation. That would be "unfeminine." Motherhood does all it knows to give to each child what is most needed, to teach all to their fullest capacity, to affectionately and efficiently develop the whole of them. But this is not what is meant By those who fear so much the influence of women. Accus- tomed to a wholly male standard of living, to masculine ideals, virtues, methods and EDUCATION 153 conditions, they say — and say with some justice — that feminine methods and ideals would be destructive to what they call "man- liness." For instance, education to-day is closely interwoven with games and sports, all of an excessively masculine nature. "The education of a boy is carried on largely on the playground!" say the objectors to women teachers. Women cannot join them there; therefore, they cannot educate them. What games are these in which woman cannot join? There are forms of fight- ing, of course, violent and fierce, mod- ern modifications of the instinct of sex- combat. It is quite true that women are not adapted, or inclined, to baseball or foot- ball or any violent game. They are per- fectly competent to take part in all normal athletic development, the human range of agility and skill is open to them, as every- one knows who has been to the circus; but they are not built for physical combat; nor do they find ceaseless pleasure in throwing, batting or kicking things. But is it true that these strenuous games have the educational value attributed to 154 THE MAN-MADE WORLD them? It seems like blasphemy to question it. The whole range of male teachers, male pupils, male critics and spectators, are loud in their admiration for the "manliness" developed by the craft, courage, co-ordina- tive power and general "sportsmanship" developed by the game of football, for instance; that a few young men are killed and many maimed, is nothing in compari- son to these advantages. Let us review the threefold distinction on which this whole study rests, between mas- culine, feminine and human. Grant that woman, being feminine, cannot emulate man in being masculine — and does not want to. Grant that the masculine qualities have their use and value, as well as feminine ones. There still remains the human qualities shared by both, owned by neither, most important of all. Education is a human process, and should develop human quali- ties — ^not sex qualities. Surely our boys are sufficiently masculine, without needing a special education to make them more so. The error lies here. A strictly mascu- hne world, proud of its own sex and despis- EDUCATION 165 ing the other, seeing nothing in the world hut sex, either male or female, has "viewed with alarm" the steady and rapid growth of humanness. Here, for instance, is a boy visibly tending to be an artist, a musician, a scientific discoverer. Here is another boy not particularly clever in any line, nor ambitious for special work, though he means in a general way to "succeed"; he is, however, a big, husky fellow, a good fighter, mischievous as a monkey, and strong in the virtues covered by the word "sportsmanship." This boy we call "a fine manly fellow." We are quite right. He is. He is dis- tinctly and excessively male, at the expense of his humanness. He may make a more prepotent sire than the other, though even that is not certain; he may, and probably will, appeal more strongly to the excessively feminine girl, who has even less humanness than he; but he is not therefore a better citizen. The advance of civilization calls for human qualities, in both men and women. Our educational system is thwarted and 156 THE MAN-MADE WORLD hindered, not as Prof. Wendell and his like would have us believe, by "feminization," but by an over-weening maseulization. Their position is a simple one. "We are men. Men are himian beings. Women are only women. This is a man's world. To get on in it you must do it man-fashion — ^i.e., fight, and overcome the others. Being civ- ilized in part, we must arrange a sort of "civ- ilized warfare," and learn to play the game, the old crude, fierce male game of combat, and we must educate our boys thereto. No wonder education was denied to women. No wonder their influence is dreaded by an ultra-masculine culture. It will change the system in time. It will gradually establish an equal place in life for the feminine characteristics, so long be- littled and derided, and give pre-eminent dignity to the human power. Physical culture, for both boys and girls, will be part of such a modified system. All things that both can do together will be accepted as human; but what either boys or girls have to retire apart to practice will be EDUCATION 157 frankly called masculine or feminine, and not encouraged in children. The most important quahties are the human ones, and will be so named and hon- ored. Courage is a human quality, not a sex-quality. What is commonly called courage in male animals is mere belliger- ence, the fighting instinct. To meet an adversary of his own sort is a universal mas- culine trait; two father cats may fight fiercely each other, but both will run from a dog as quickly as a mother cat. She has courage enough, however, in defense of her kittens. What this world most needs to-day in both men and women, is the power to recog- nize our public conditions ; to see the relative importance of measures; to learn the pro- cesses of constructive citizenship. We need an education which shall give us facts in the order of their importance; morals and man- ners based on these facts; and train our per- sonal powers with careful selection, so that each may best serve the community. At present, in the larger processes of extra-scholastic education, the advantage 158 THE MAN-MADE WORLD is still with the boy. From infancy we make the gross mistake of accentuating sex in our children, by dress and aU its limitations, by special teaching of what is "ladylike" and "manly." The boy is allowed a freedom of experience far beyond the girl. He learns more of his town and city, more of machin- ery, more of life, passing on from father to son the truths as well as traditions of sex superiority. All this is changing before our eyes, with the advancing humanness of women. Not yet, however, has their advance affected, to any large extent, the base of all education; the experience of a child's first years. Here is where the limitations of women have checked race progress most thoroughly. Here hereditary influence was constantly offset by the advance of the male. Social selection did develop higher types of men, though sex-selection reversed still insisted on primitive types of women. But the edu- cative influence of these primitive women, acting most exclusively on the most suscep- tible years of life, has been a serious deter- rent to race progress. EDUCATION 159 Here is the dominant male, largely human- ized, yet still measuring life from male standards. He sees women only as a sex. (Note here the criticism of Europeans on American women. "Your women are so sexless !" they say, meaning merely that our women have human qualities as well as fem- inine.) And children he considers as part and parcel of the same domain, both inferior classes, "women and children." I recall in Rimmer's beautiful red chalk studies, certain profiles of man, woman and child, and careful explanation that the pro- portion of the woman's face and head were far more akin to the child than to the man. What Mr. Rimmer should have shown, and could have, by profuse illustration, was that the faces of boy and girl differ but slightly, and the faces of old men and women differ as little, sometimes not at all; while the face of the woman approximates the human more closely than that of the man; and the child, representing race more than sex, is naturally more akin to her than to him. The male preserves more primitive quahties, the hairiness, the more pugnacious jaws; the 160 THE MAN-MADE WORLD female is nearer to the higher human types. An ultra-male selection has chosen women for their femininity first, and next for qualities of submissiveness and patient serv- ice bred by long ages of servility. This servile womanhood, or the idler and more excessively feminine type, has never appreciated the real power and place of the mother, and has never been able to grasp or to carry out any worthy system of educa- tion for little children. Any experienced teacher, man or woman, will own how rare it is to find a mother capable of a dispas- sionate appreciation of educative values. Books in infant education and child culture generally are read by teachers more than mothers, so our public libraries prove. The mother-instinct, quite suitable and sufficient in animals, is by no means equal to the re- quirements of civilized life. Animal mother- hood finmshes a fresh wave of devotion for each new birth; primitive human mother- hood extends that passionate tenderness over the growing family for a longer period; but neither can carry education beyond its rudiments. EDUCATION 161 So accustomed are we to our world-old method of entrusting the first years of the child to the action of tmtaught, unbridled mother-instinct, that suggestions as to a bet- ter education for babies are received with the frank derision of massed ignorance. That powerful and brilliant writer, Mrs. Josephine Daskam Bacon, among others, has lent her able pen to ridicule and obstruct the gradual awakening of himian intelli- gence in mothers, the recognition that babies are no exception to the rest of us in being better off for competent care and service. It seems delightfully absurd to these reac- tionaries that ages of human progress should be of any benefit to babies, save, in- deed, as their more human fathers, spe- cialized and organized, are able to provide them with better homes and a better world to grow up in. The idea that mothers, more human, should specialize and organize as well, and extend to their babies these su- preme advantages, is made a laughing- stock. It is easy and profitable to laugh with the majority; but in the judgment of history, 163 THE MAN-MADE WORLD those who do so, hold uneviable positions. The time is coming when the hmnan mother will recognize the educative possibilities of early childhood, learn that the ability to rightly teach little children is rare and pre- cious, and be proud and glad to avail them- selves of it. We shall then see a development of the most valuable human qualities in our chil- dren's minds such as would now seem wildly Utopian. We shall learn from wide and long experience to anticipate and provide for the steps of the unfolding mind, and train it through carefully prearranged experi- ences, to a power of judgment, of self-con- trol, of social perception, now utterly un- thought of. Such an education would begin at birth; yes, far before it, in the standards of con- scious human motherhood. It would re- quire a quite different status of wifehood, womanhood, girlhood. It would be wholly impossible if we were never to outgrow our androcentric culture. "SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 163 CHAPTER IX. society" and "fashion" AMONG our many naive misbeliefs is the current fallacy that "society" is made by women; and that women are responsible for that peculiar social mani- festation called "fashion." Men and women alike accept this notion; the serious essayist and philosopher, as well as the novelist and paragrapher, reflect it in their pages. The force of inertia acts in the domain of psychics as well as physics ; any idea pushed into the popular mind with considerable force will keep on going until some opposing force — or the slow re- sistance of friction — stops it at last. "Society" consists mostly of women. Women carry on most of its processes, therefore women are its makers and mas- 164 THE MAN-MADE WORLD ters, they are responsible for it, that is the general belief. We might as well hold women responsible for harems — or prisoners for jaUs. To be helplessly confined to a given place or con- dition does not prove that one has chosen it; much less made it. No; in an androcentric culture "society," like every other social relation, is dominated by the male and arranged for his conveni- ence. There are, of course, modifications due to the presence of the other sex; where there are more women than men there are inevitable results of their influence; but the character and conditions of the whole per- formance are dictated by men. Social intercourse is the prime condition of human life. To meet, to mingle, to know one another, to exchange, not only definite ideas, facts, and feelings, but to experience that vague general stimulus and enlarged power that comes of contact — all this is essential to our happiness as well as to our progress. This grand desideratum has always been monopolized by men as far as possible. "SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 165 What intercourse was allowed to women has been rigidly hemmed in by man- made conventions. Women accept these conventions, repeat them, enforce them upon their daughters; but they originate with men. The feet of the little Chinese girl are bound by her mother and her nurse — ^but it is not for woman's pleasure that this crip- pling torture was invented. The Oriental veil is worn by women, but it is not for any need of theirs that veils were decreed them. When we look at society in its earher form we find that the pubUc house has al- ways been with us. It is as old almost as the private house; the need for association is as human as the need for privacy. But the public house was — and is — for men only. The woman was kept as far as possible at home. Her female nature was supposed to delimit her life satisfactorily, and her hu- man nature was completely ignored. Under the pressure of that human nature she has always rebelled at the social restric- tions which surrounded her; and from the women of older lands gathered at the well, 166 THE MAN-MADE WORLD or in the market place, to our own women on the church steps or in the sewing circle, they have ceaselessly struggled for the so- cial intercourse which was as much a law of their being as of man's. When we come to the modem special field that we call "society," we find it to consist of a carefuUy arranged set of processes and places wherein women may meet one another and meet men. These vary, of course, with race, country, class and period; from the clean licence of otir western customs to the strict chaperonage of older lands; but free as it is in America, even here there are bounds. Men associate without any limit but that of inclination and financial capacity. Even class distinction only works one way — ^the low-class man may not mingle with high- class women; but the high-class man may — and does — ^mingle with low-class women. It is his society — ^may not a man do what he wiU with his own? Caste distinctions, as have been ably shown by Prof. Lester F. Ward, are relics of race distinction; the subordinate caste was once ••SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 167 a subordinate race; and while mating, up- ward, was always forbidden to the subject race; mating, downward, was always prac- ticed by the master race. The elaborate shading of "the color line" in slavery days, from pure black up through mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, quinteroon, griffada, mustafee, mustee, and sang d'or — to white again; was not through white mothers — ^but white fathers, never too exclu- sive in their tastes. Even in slavery, the worst horrors were strictly androcentric. "Society" is strictly guarded — ^that is its women are. As always, the main tabu is on the woman. Consider carefully the relation between "society" and the growing girl. She must, of course marry; and her education, manners, character, must of course be pleas- ing to the prospective wooer. That which is desirable in young girls means, naturally, that which is desirable to men. Of all culti- vated accomplishments the first is "inno- cence." Beauty may or may not be forth- coming; but "innocence" is "the chief charm of girlhood." Why? What good does it do her? Her 168 THE MAN-MADE WORLD whole life's success is made to depend on her marrying; her health and happiness depends on her manying the right man. The more "innocent" she is, the less she knows, the easier it is for the wrong man to get her. As is so feehngly described in "The Sor- rows of Amelia," in "The Ladies' Literary Cabinet," a magazine taken by my grand- mother; "The only foible which the dehcate Amelia possessed was an unsuspecting breast to lavish esteem: Unversed in the secret villainies of a base degenerate world, she ever imagined aU mankind to be as spot- less as herself. Alas for Ameha! This fatal creduhty was the source of aU her mis- fortunes." It was. It is yet. Just face the facts with new eyes — ^look at it as if you had never seen "society" before; and observe the position of its "Queen." Here is woman. Let us grant that Mother- hood is her chief purpose. (As a female it is. As a hvmian being she has others!) Marriage is our way of safeguarding motherhood; of ensuring "support" and "protection" to the wife and children. "SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 169 "Society" is very largely used as a means to bring together young people, to promote marriage. If "society" is made and gov- erned by women we should naturally look to see its restrictions and encouragements such as would put a premium on successful maternity, and protect women — and their children — from the evils of ill-regulated fatherhood. Do we find this? By no means. "Society" allows the man all liberty — all privilege — all license. There are certain offences which would exclude him; such as not paying gambling debts, or being poor; but offences against womanhood — against motherhood — do not exclude him. How about the reverse? If "society" is made by women, for women, surely a misstep by a helplessly "innocent" girl, will not injure her standing! But it does. She is no longer "innocent." She knows now. She has lost her market value and is thrown out of the shop. Why not? It is his shop — ^not hers. What women may and may not be, what they 170 THE MAN-MADE WORLD must and must not do, all is measured from the masculine standard. A really feminine "society" based on the needs and pleasures of women, both as females and as human beings, would in the first place accord them freedom and knowl- edge; the knowledge which is power. It would not show us "the queen of the ball- room" in the position of a waU-flower unless favored by masculine invitation; unable to eat unless he brings her something; unable to cross the floor without his arm. Of aU blind stultified "royal sluggards" she is the archtype. No, a feminine society would grant at least equality to women in this, their so-called special field. Its attitude toward men, however, would be rigidly critical. Fancy a real Mrs. Grimdy (up to date it has been a Mr., his whiskers hidden in cap- strings) saying, "No, no, young man. You won't do. You've been drinking. The habit's growing on you. You'll make a bad husband." Or still more severely, "Out with you, sirl You've forfeited your right to marry! Go "SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 171 into retirement for seven years, and when you come back bring a doctor's certificate with you." That sounds ridiculous, doesn't it — for "Society" to say? It is ridiculous, in a man's "society." The required dress and decoration of "society"; the everlasting eating and drink- ing of "society," the preferred amusements of "society," the absolute requirements and absolute exclusions of "society," are of men, by men, for men — ^to paraphrase a thread- bare quotation. And then, upon all that vast edifice of masculine influence, they turn upon women as Adam did; and blame them for severity with their fallen sisters! "Women are so hard upon women!" They have to be. What man would "allow" his wife, his daughters, to visit and associate with "the fallen"? His esteem would be forfeited, they would lose their "social position," the girl's chance of marry- ing would be gone. Men are not so stern. They may visit the unfortunate women, to bring them help, sympathy, re-establishment — or for other 172 THE MAN-MADE WORLD reasons; and it does not forfeit their social position. Why should it? They make the regulation. Women are to-day, far more conspicu- ously than men, the exponents and victims of that mysterious power we call "Fashion." As shown in mere helpless imitation of one another's ideas, customs, methods, there is not much difference; in patient acquiescence with prescribed models of architecture, fur- niture, literature, or anything else; there is not much difference; but in personal decora- tion there is a most conspicuous difference. Women do to-day submit to more grotesque ugliness and absurdity than men; and there are plenty of good reasons for it. Confin- ing our brief study of fashion to fashion in dress, let us observe why it is that women wear these fine clothes at all; and why they change them as they do. First, and very clearly, the human female carries the weight of sex decoration, solely because of her economic dependence on the male. She alone in nature adds to the bur- dens of maternity, which she was meant for, this unnatural burden of ornament, which "SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 173 she was not meant for. Every other female in the world is sufficiently attractive to the male without trimmings. He carries the trimmings, sparing no expense of spread- ing antlers or trailing plumes; no mon- strosity of crest and wattles; to win her favor. She is only temporarily interested in him. The rest of the time she is getting her own, living, and caring for her own yoimg. But our women get their bread from their hus- bands, and every other social need. The woman depends on the man for her position in life, as well as the necessities of existence. For herself and for her children she must win and hold him who is the source of all supplies. Therefore she is forced to add to her own natural attractions this "dance of the seven veils," of the seventeen gowns, of the seventy-seven hats of gay delirium. There are many who think in one syllable, who say, "women don't dress to please men — ^they dress to please themselves — ^and to outshine other women." To these I would suggest a visit to some summer shore resort during the week and extending over Satur- 174 THE MAN-MADE WORLD day night. The women have all the week to please themselves and outshine one another; but their array on Saturday seems to indicate the approach of some new force or attraction. If all this does not satisfy I would then call their attention to the well-known fact that the yoimg damsel previous to marriage spends far more time and ingenuity in decoration than she does afterward. This has long been observed and deprecated by those who write Advice to Wives, on the ground that this difference in displeasing to the husband — ^that she loses her influence over him; which is true. But since his own "society," knowing his weakness, has tied him to her by law; why should she keep up what is after aU an imnatural exertion? That excellent magazine "Good House- keeping" has been running for some months a rhymed and illustrated story of "Miss Mehssa Clarissa McRae," an extremely dainty and well-dressed stenographer, who captured and married a fastidious young man, her employer, by the force of her arti- ficial attractions — and then lost his love after "SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 175 marriage by a sudden unaccountable sloven- liness — the same old story. If this is not enough, let me instance fur- ther the attitude toward "Fashion" of that class of women who live most openly and directly upon the favor of men. These know their business. To continually attract the vagrant fancy of the male, nature's born "variant," they must not only pile on arti- ficial charms, but change them constantly. They do. From the leaders in this profes- sion comes a steady stream of changing fash- ions ; the more extreme and bizarre, the more successful — and because they are successful they are imitated. If men did not like changes in fashion be assured these professional men-pleasers would not change them, but since Nature's Variant tires of any face in favor of a new one, the lady who would hold her sway and cannot change her face (except in color) must needs change her hat and gown. But the Arbiter, the Ruling Cause, he who not only by choice demands, but as a business manufactures and supplies this amazing stream of fashions ; again like Adam blames 176 THE MAN-MADE WORLD the woman — for accepting what he both demands and supplies. A further proof, if more were needed, is shown in this; that in exact proportion as women grow independent, educated, wise and free, do they become less submissive to men-made fashions. Was this improvement hailed with sympathy and admiration — crowned with masculine favor? The attitude of men toward those women who have so far presumed to "un-sex" them- selves is known to aU. They like women to be foolish, changeable, always newly attrac- tive; and while women must "attract" for a living — ^why they do, that's all. It is a pity. It is humiliating to any far- seeing woman to have to recognize this glar- ing proof of the dependent, degraded posi- tion of her sex; and it ought to be himiilia- ting to men to see the results of their mas- tery. These crazily decorated little crea- tures do not represent Womanhood. When the artist uses the woman as the type of every highest ideal; as Justice, Liberty, Charity, Truth — ^he does not repre- sent her trimmed. In any part of the world "SOCIETY" AND "FASHION" 177 where women are even in part economically independent there we find less of the absurd- ities of fashion. Women who work cannot be utterly absurd. But the idle woman, the Queen of Society, who must please men within their prescribed bounds; and those of the half -world, who must please them at any cost — ^these are the vehicles of fashion. 178 THE MAN-MADE WORLD CHAPTER X LAW AND GOVERNMENT IT IS easy to assume that men are natu- rally the lawmakers and law enforcers, imder the plain historic fact that they have been such since the beginning of the patriarchate. Back of law lies custom and tradition. Back of government lies the correlative activity of any organized group. What group-insects and group-animals evolve un- consciously and fulfill by their social instincts, we evolve consciously and fulfill by arbitrary systems called laws and govern- ments. In this, as in all other fields of our action, we must discriminate between the himianness of the fimction in process of development, and the influence of the male or female upon it. Quite apart from what LAW AND GOVERNMENT 179 they may like or dislike as sexes, from their diflFering tastes and faculties, lies the much larger field of human progress, in which they equally participate. On this plane the evolution of law and government proceeds somewhat as follows: The early woman-centered group organ- ized on maternal lines of common love and service. The early combinations of men were first a grouped predacity — organized hunting; then a grouped beUigerency — organized warfare. By special development some minds are able to perceive the need of certain lines of conduct over others, and to make this clear to their fellows; whereby, gradually, our higher social nature establishes rules and pre- cedents to which we personally agree to sub- mit. The process of social development is one of progressive co-ordination. From independent individual action for individual ends, up to interdependent social action for social ends we slowly move; the "devil" in the play being the old Ego, which has to be harmonized with the new social spirit. This social process, like all others, 180 THE MAN-MADE WORLD haAdng been in masculine hands, we may- find in it the same marks of one-sided spe- cialization so visible in our previous studies. The coersive attitude is essentially male. In the ceaseless age-old struggle of sex com- bat he developed the desire to overcome, which is always stimulated by resistance; and in this later historic period of his supremacy, he further developed the habit of dominance and mastery. We may instance the con- trast between the conduct of a man when "in love," as while courting; in which period he falls into the natural position of his sex towards the other — ^namely, that of a wooer; and his behavior when, with marriage, they enter the artificial relation of the master male and servile female. His "instinct of dominance" does not assert itself during the earlier period, which was a million times longer than the latter; it only appears in the more modern and arbitrary relation. Among other animals monogamous union is not accompanied by any such discordant and unnatural featiire. However recent as this habit is when considered biologically, it is as old as civiUzation when we consider it LAW AND GOVERNMENT 181 historically: quite old enough to be a serious force. Under its pressure we see the legal systems and forms of government slowly evolving, the general human growth always heavily perverted by the special masculine influence. First we find the mere force of custom governing us, the mores of the ancient people. Then comes the gradual appearance of authority, from the purely natural leadership of the best hunter or fighter up through the unnatural mastery of the patriarch, owning and governing his wives, children, slaves and cattle, and mak- ing such rules and regulations as pleased him. Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce ; wherein the average citi- zen knows nothing of the law, and cares only to evade it when he can, obey it when he must. In the household, that stunted, crip- pled rudiment of the matriarchate, where alone we can find what is left of the natural influence of woman, the laws and govern- ment, so far as she is responsible for them. 182 THE MAN-MADE WORLD are fairly simple, and bear visible relation to the common good, which relation is clearly and persistently taught. In the larger household of city and state the educational part of the law is grievously neglected. It makes no allowance for ignor- ance. If a man breaks a law of which he never heard he is not excused therefor; the penalty rolls on just the same. Fancy a mother making solemn rules and regulations for her family, telling the children nothing about them, and then punishing them when they disobey the imknown laws! The use of force is natural to the male; while as a human being he must needs legis- late somewhat in the interests of the com- munity, as a male being he sees no necessity for other enforcement than by penalty. To violently oppose, to fight, to trample to the earth, to triumph in loud bellowings of sav- age joy — ^these are the primitive male in- stincts; and the perfectly natural social instincts which leads to peaceful persuasion, to education, to an easy harmony of action, are contemptuously ranked as "feminine," or as "philanthropic" — ^which is almost as LAW AND GOVERNMENT 183 bad. "Men need stronger measures" they say proudly. Yes, but four-fifths of the world are women and children ! As a matter of fact the woman, the mother, is the first co-ordinator, legislator, administrator and executive. From the guarding and guidance of her cubs and kit- tens up to the longer, larger management of human youth, she is the first to consider group interests and co-relate them. As a father the male grows to share in these original feminine functions, and with us, fatherhood having become socialized while motherhood has not, he does the best he can,, alone, to do the world's mother- work in his father way. In study of any long established himian custom it is very difiicult to see it clearly and dispassionately. Our minds are heavily loaded with precedent, with race-custom, with the iron weight called authority. These heavy forces reach their most perfect expres- sion in the absolutely masculine field of war- fare," the absolute authority; the brain- less, voiceless obedience; the relentless penalty. Here we have male coercion 184 THE MAN-MADE WORLD at its height; law and government wholly arbitrary. The result is as might be ex- pected, a fine machine of destruction. But destruction is not a human process — ^merely a male process of eliminating the imfit. The female process is to select the fit; her elimination is negative and painless. Greater than either is the himian process, to develop fitness. Men are at present far more human than women. Alone upon their self -seized thrones they have carried as best they might the bur- dens of the state; and the history of law and government shows them as changing slowly but irresistibly in the direction of social improvement. The ancient kings were the joyous apotheosis of masculinity. Power and Pride were theirs; Limitless Display; Boundless Self-indulgence; Irresistible Authority. Slaves and courtiers bowed be- fore them, subjects obeyed them, captive women filled their harems. But the day of the masculine monarchy is passing, and the day of the human democracy is coming. In a democracy law and government both LAW AND GOVERNMENT 185 change. Laws are no longer imposed on the people by one above them, but are evolved from the people themselves. How absurd that the people should not be edu- cated in the laws they make; that the trailing remnants of blind submission should still becloud their minds and make them bow down patiently under the absurd pressure of outgrown tradition! Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from those above, but is an organization for public ser- vice of the people themselves — or wiU be when it is really attained. In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement;, law ceases to be authority and becomes co-or- dination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but be- cause we want to play the game. The rules of human conduct are for our own happiness and service — any child can see that. Every child will see it when laws are simplified, based on sociology, and taught in schools. A child of ten should be considered grossly 186 THE MAN-MADE WORLD uneducated who could not recite the main features of the laws of his country, state, and city; and those laws should be so simple in their principles that a child of ten could understand them. Teacher: "What is a tax?" Child: "A tax is the money we agree to pay to keep up our common advantages." Teacher: "Why do we all pay taxes?" Child: "Because the country belongs to all of us, and we must all pay our share to keep it up." Teacher : "In what proportion do we pay taxes?" Child: "In proportion to how much money we have." {Sotto voce:"0{ course.") Teacher: "What is it to evade taxes?" Child: "It is treason." {Sotto voce: "And a dirty mean trick.") In masculine administration of the laws we may follow the instinctive love of battle down through the custom of "trial by com- bat" — only recently outgrown, to our present method, where each contending party hires a champion to represent him, and these fight it out in a wordy war, with LAW AND GOVERNMENT 187 tricks and devices of complex ingenuity, enjoying this kind of struggle as they enjoy all other kinds. It is the old masculine spirit of govern- ment as authority which is so slow in adopt- ing itself to the democratic idea of govern- ment as service. That it should be a repre- sentative government they grasp, but repre- sentative of what? of the common will, they say; the will of the majority — ^never think- ing that it is the common good, the com- mon welfare, that government should repre- sent. It is the inextricable masculininty in our idea of government which so revolts at the idea of women as voters. "To govern:" that means to boss, to control, to have authority, and that only, to most minds. They cannot bear to think of the women as having control over even their own affairs; to control is masculine, they assume. See- ing only self-interest as a natural impulse, and the ruling powers of the state as a sort of umpire, an authority to preserve the rules of the game while men fight it out forever; they see in a democracy merely a wider 188 THE MAN-MADE WORLD range of self interest, and a wider, freer field to fight in. The law dictates the rules, the govern- ment enforces them, but the main business of life, hitherto, has been esteemed as one long fierce struggle; each man seeking for himself. To deliberately legislate for the service of aU the people, to use the govern- ment as the main engine of that service, is a new process, wholly human, and difficult of development under an androcentric cul- ture. Furthermore they put forth those naively androcentric protests — ^women cannot fight, and in case their laws were resisted by men they could not enforce them — therefore they should not vote! What they do not so plainly say, but very strongly think, is that women should not share the loot which to their minds is so large a part of politics. Here we may trace clearly the social heredity of male government. Fix clearly in your mind the first headship of man — ^the leader of the pack as it were — the Chief Hunter. Then the second head- LAW AND GOVERNMENT 189 ship, the Chief Fighter. Then the third head-ship, the Chief of the Family, Then the long line of Chiefs and Captains, War- lords and Landlords, Rulers and Kings. The Hunter hunted for prey, and got it. The Fighter enriched himself with the spoils of the vanquished. The Patriarch lived on the labor of women and slaves. All down the ages, from frank piracy and rob- bery to the measured toll of tribute, ran- som and indemnity, we see the same natural instinct of the hunter and fighter. In his hands the government is a thing to sap and wreck, to live on. It is his essential impulse to want something very much; to struggle and fight for it; to take all he can get. Set against this the giving love that comes with motherhood; the endless service that comes of motherhood; the peaceful admin- istration in the interest of the family that comes of motherhood. We prate much of the family as the unit of the state. If it is — why not run the state on that basis? Gov- ernment by women, so far as it is influenced by their sex, would be influenced by mother- hood; and that would mean care, nurture, 190 THE MAN-MADE WORLD provision, education. We have to go far down the scale for any instance of organ- ized motherhood, but we do find it in the hymenoptera; in the overflowing industry, prosperity, peace and loving service of the ant-hill and bee-hive. These are the most highly socialized types of life, next to ovu-s, and they are feminine types. We as human beings have a far higher form of association, with further issues than mere wealth and propagation of the species. In this human process we should never for- get that men are far more advanced than women, at present. Because of their hiunan- ness has come all the noble growth of civili- zation, in spite of their maleness. As human beings both male and female stand alike useful and honorable, and should in our governments be alike used and hon- ored; but as creatures of sex, the female is fitter than the male for administration of constructive social interests. The change in governmental processes which marks ovu* times is a change in principle. Two great movements convulse the world to-day, the woman's movement and the labor move- LAW AND GOVERNMENT 191 ment. Each regards the other as of less moment than itself. Both are parts of the same world-process. We are entering upon a period of social consciousness. Whereas so far almost all of us have seen life only as individuals, and have regarded the growing strength and riches of the social body as merely so much the more to fatten on; now we are beginning to take intelligent interest in our social nature, to imderstand it a httle, and to begin to feel the vast increase of happiness and power that comes of real Human life. In this change of systems a government which consisted only of prohibition and commands; of tax collecting and making war; is rapidly giving way to a system which intelligently manages our common interests, which is a growing and improving method of universal service. Here the socialist is perfectly right in his vision of the economic welfare to be assured by the socialization of industry, though that is but part of the new development; and the in- dividualist who opposes socialism, crying loudly for the advantage of "free competi- 192 THE MAN-MADE WORLD tion" is but voicing the spirit of the preda,- ceous male. So with the opposers of the suffrage of women. They represent, whether men or women, the male view-point. They see the women only as a female, utterly absorbed in feminine functions, belittled and ignored as her long tutelage has made her; and they see the man as he sees himself, the sole mas- ter of human affairs for as long as we have historic record. This, fortunately, is not long. We can now see back of the period of his supremacy, and are beginning to see beyond it. We are well imder way already in a higher stage of social development, conscious, well-organ- ized, wisely managed, in which the laws shall be simple and f oxmded on constructive prin- ciples instead of being a set of ring-regula- tions within which people may fight as they will; and in which the government shall be recognized in its fuU use; not only the sternly dominant father, and the wisely ser- viceable mother, but the real union of all people to sanely and economically manage their affairs. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 193 CHAPTER XI CRIME AND PUNISHMENT THE human concept of Sin has had its uses, no doubt; and our special invention of a thing called Punish- ment has also served a purpose. Social evolution has worked in many ways wastefuUy, and with unnecessary pain, but it compares very favorably with natural evolution. As we grow wiser; as our social conscious- ness develops, we are beginning to improve on nature in more ways than one; a part of the same great process, but of a more highly sublimated sort. Nature shows a world of varied and changing environment. Into this comes Life — ^pushing and spreading in every direc- tion. A pretty hard time Life has of it. In the first place it is dog eat dog in every direc- 194 THE MAN-MADE WORLD tion; the joy of the hunter and the most un joyous fear of the hunted. But quite outside of this essential danger, the environment waits, grim and imappeas- able, and continuously destroys the innocent myriads who fail to meet the one requirement of life — ^Adaptation. So we must not be too severe in self-condemnation when we see how foolish, cruel, crazily wasteful, is our attitude toward crime and punishment. We become socially conscious largely through pain, and as we begin to see how much of the pain is wholly of our own caus- ing we are overcome with shame. But the right way for society to face its past is the same as for the individual; to see where it was wrong, and stop it — ^but to waste no time and no emotion over past misdeeds. What is our present state as to crime? It is pretty bad. Some say it is worse than it used to be ; others that it is better. At any rate it is bad enough, and a disgrace to our civilization. We have murders by the thousand and thieves by the million, of all kinds and sizes; we have what we tenderly call "immorality," from the "errors of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 195 youth" to the sodden grossness of old age; married, single, and mixed. We have all the old kinds of wickedness and a lot of new ones, until one marvels at the purity and power of human nature, that it should carry so much disease and still grow on to higher things. Also we have punishment still with us ; private and public; applied like a rabbit's foot, with as little regard to its efficacy. Does a child offend? Punish it! Does a woman offend? Punish her! Does a man offend? Punish him! Does a group offend? Punish them! "What for?" some one suddenly asks. "To make them stop doing it!" "But they have done it!" "To make them not do it again, then." "But they do it again — and worse." "To prevent other people's doing it, then." "But it does not prevent them — ^the crime keeps on. What good is your punish- ment?" What indeed! What is the application of punishment to crime? Its base, its prehistoric base, is 196 THE MAN-MADE WORLD simple retaliation; and this is by no means whoUy male, let us freely admit. The instinct of resistance, of opposition, of retaliation, lies deeper than life itself. Its underlying law is the law of physics — action and reac- tion are equal. Life's expression of this law is perfectly natural, but not always profit- able. Hit your hand on a stone wall, and the stone wall hits your hand. Very good; you learn that stone walls are hard, and govern yourself accordingly. Conscious young humanity observed and philosophized, congratulating itself on its discernment. "A man hits me — I hit the man a little harder — ^then he won't do it again." Unfortunately he did do it again — a little harder still. The effort to hit harder carried on the action and reaction tiU society, hitting hardest of all, set up a system of legal punishment, of tmlimited severity. It imprisoned, it mutilated, it tortured, it killed; it destroyed whole families, and razed contumelious cities to the groimd. Therefore all crime ceased, of coiffse? No ? But crime was mitigated, surely ! Per- haps. This we have proven at last; that CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 197 crime does not decrease in proportion to the severest punishment. Little by little we have ceased to raze the cities, to wipe out the families, to cut off the ears, to torture; and our imprisonment is changing from slow death and insanity to a form of attempted improvement. But punishment as a principle remains in good standing, and is still the main reliance where it does the most harm — in the rearing of children. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" remains in belief, unmodified by the millions of children spoiled by the unspared rod. The breeders of racehorses have learned better, but not the breeders of children. Our trouble is simply the lack of intelhgence. We face the babyish error and the hideous crime in exactly the same attitude. "This person has done something off en- • 99 sive. Yes? — ^and one waits eagerly for the first question of the rational mind — ^but does not hear it. One only hears, "Ptinish him!" What is the first question of the rational mind? 198 THE MAN-MADE WORLD "Why?" Human beings are not first causes. They do not evolve conduct out of nothing. The child does this, the man does that, because of something; because of many things. If we do not like the way people behave, and wish them to behave better, we should, if we are rational beings, study the conditions that produce the conduct. The connection between our archaic sys- tems of punishment and oiu* androcentric culture is two-fold. The impulse of resist- ance, while, as we have seen, of the deepest natural origin, is expressed more strongly in the male than in the female. The tendency to hit back and hit harder has been fostered in him by sex-combat till it has become of great intensity. The habit of authority too, as old as our history; and the cumulative weight of all religions and systems of law and government, have furthermore built up and intensified the spirit of retaliation and vengeance. They have even deified this concept, in ancient reUgions, crediting to God the evil passions of men. As the small boy recited: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 199 "Vengeance. A mean desire to get even with your enemies: 'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord — I will repay.' " The Christian religion teaches better things; better than its expositors and upholders have ever understood — ^much less practised. The teaching of "Love your enemies, do good unto them that hate you, and serve them that despitefully use you and persecute you," has too often resulted, when practised at all, in a sentimental negation; a patheti- cally useless attitude of non-resistance. You might as well base a religion on a feather pillow ! The advice given was active: direct; con- crete. "Love !" Love is not non-resistance. "Do good!" Doing good is not non-resist- ance. "Serve!" Service is not non-resist- ance. Again we have an overwhelming proof of the far-reaching effects of our androcentric culture. Consider it once more. Here is one by nature combative and desirous, and not by nature intended to monopolize the management of his species. He assumes to 200 THE MAN-MADE WORLD be not only the leader, but the whole thing — to be humanity itself, and to see in woman as Grant Allen so clearly put it "Not only not the race ; she is not even half the race, but a sub-species, told off for piirposes of repro- duction merely." Under this monstrous assimfiption, his sex-attributes wholly identified with his human attributes, and overshadowing them, he has imprinted on every human institu- tion the tastes and tendencies of the male. As a male he fought, as a male human being he fought more, and deified fighting; and in a culture based on desire and combat, loud with strident self-expression, there could be but slow acceptance of the more human methods urged by Christianity. "It is a religion for slaves and women!" said the warrior of old. (Slaves and women were largely the same thing.) "It is a religion for slaves and women" says the advocate of the Superman, Well? Who did the work of all the ancient world? Who raised the food and garnered it and cooked it and served it? Who built the houses, the temples, the CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 201 aqueducts, the city wall? Who made the furniture, the tools, the weapons, the uten- sils, the ornaments — ^made them strong and beautiful and useful? Who kept the human race going, somehow, in spite of the constant hideous waste of war, and slowly built up the real industrial civilization behind that gory show? — Why just the slaves and the women. A rehgion which had attractions for the real human type is not therefore to be utterly despised by the male. In modern history we may watch with increasing ease the slow, sure progress of our growing humanness beneath the weak- ening shell of an all-male dominance. And in this field of what begins in the nursery as "discipline," and ends on the scaffold as "punishment," we can clearly see that blessed change. What is the natural, the human attribute? What does this "Love," and "Do good," and "Serve" mean? In the blundering old church, still androcentric, there was a great to-do to carry out this doctrine, in elaborate symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples. 202 THE MAN-MADE WORLD gathered for the occasion, was exhibited, and kings and cardinals went solemnly through the motions of serving them. As the Eng- Ush schoolboy phrased it, "Thomas Becket washed the feet of leopards." Service and love and doing good must always remain side issues in a male world. Service and love and doing good are the spirit of motherhood, and the essence of human life. Human life is service, and is not combat. There you have the nature of the change now upon us. What has the male mind made of Chris- tianity? Desire — ^to save one's own soul. Combat — ^with the Devil. Self-expression — ^the whole gorgeous outpouring of pageant and display, from the jewels of the high priest's breastplate to the choir of mutilated men to praise a male Deity no woman may so serve. What kind of mind can imagine a kind of god who would like a eunuch better than a woman? For woman they made at last a place — CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 203 the usual place — of renunciation, sacrifice and service, the Sisters of Mercy and their kind; and in that loving service the w^oman soul has been content, not yearning for cardinal's cape or bishop's mitre. All this is changing — changing fast. Everywhere the churches are broadening out into more service, and the service broadening out beyond a little group of widows and fatherless, of sick and in prison, to embrace its true field — all human life. In this new attitude, how shall we face the problems of crime? Thus: "It is painfully apparent that a certain percentage of our people do not function properly. They perform anti- social acts. Why? What is the matter with them?" Then the heart and mind of society is applied to the question, and certain results are soon reached; others slowly worked toward. First result. Some persons are so morally diseased that they must have hospital treat- ment. The world's last prison will be simply a hospital for moral incurables. They must 204 THE MAN-MADE WORLD by no means reproduce their kind — ^that can be attended to at once. Some are morally diseased, but may be cured, and the best powers of society will be used to cure them. Some are only morally diseased because of the conditions in which they are born and reared, and here society can save millions at once. An intelligent society will no more neglect its children than an intelligent mother will neglect her children; and will see as clearly that ill-fed, ill-dressed, ill-taught and vilely associated little ones must grow up gravely injured. As a matter of fact we make our crop of criminals, just as we make our idiots, blind, crippled, and generally defective. Every- one is a baby first, and a baby is not a crim- inal, unless we make it so. It never would be— in right conditions. Sometimes a per- vert is born, as sometimes a two-headed calf is born, but they are not common. The older, simpler forms of crime we may prevent with ease and despatch, but how of the new ones? — ^big, terrible, far-reaching, wide-spread crimes, for which we have as CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 205 yet no names; and before which our old system of anti-personal punishment falls helpless? What of the crimes of poisoning a community with bad food; of defiling the water; of blackening the air; of stealing whole forests? What of the crimes of work- ing little children; of building and renting tenements that produce crime and physical disease as well? What of the crime of living on the wages of fallen women — of hiring men to ruin innocent young girls ; of holding them enslaved and selling them for profit? (These things are only "misdemeanors" in a man-made world 1) And what about a crime like this; to use the public press to lie to the public for pri- vate ends? No name yet for this crime; much less a penalty. And this: To bring worse than leprosy to an innocent clean wife who loves and trusts you? Or this: To knowingly plant poison in an unborn child? No names for these; no "penalties'*; no conceivable penalty that could touch them. 306 THE MAN-MADE WORLD The whole punishment system falls to the ground before the huge mass of evil that confronts us. If we saw a procession of air ships flying over a city and dropping bombs, should we rush madly off after each one cry- ing, "Catch him! Punish him!" or should we try to stop the procession? The time is coming when the very word "crime" will be disused, except in poems and orations; and "pvmishment," both word and deed, be obliterated. We are beginning to learn a little of the nature of humanity; its goodness, its beauty, its lovingness; and to see that even its stupidity is only due to our foolish old methods of education. It is not new power, new light, new hope that we need, but to understand what ails us. We know enough now, we care enough now, we are strong enough now, to make the whole world a thousand fold better in a gen- eration; but we are shackled, chained, blinded, by old false notions. The ideas of the past, the sentiments of the past, the atti- tude and prejudice of the past, are in our way; and among them none more univer- sally mischievous than this great body of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 207 ideas and sentiment, prejudices and habits, which make up the offensive network of the androcentric cultiure. 208 THE MAN-MADE WORLD CHAPTER XII POLITICS AND WAKFAEE I GO to my old dictionary, and find; "PoKtics, 1. The science of govern- ment; that part of ethics which has to do with the regulation and government of a nation or state, the preservation of its safety, peace and prosperity; the defence of its exist- ence and rights against foreign control or conquest; the augmentation of its strength and resources, and the protection of its citi- zens in their rights; with the preservation and improvement of their morals. 2. The management of political parties; the ad- vancement of candidates to oflSce; in a bad sense, artful or dishonest management to secure the success of political measures or party schemes, political trickery." From present day experience we might POLITICS AND WARFARE 309 add, 3. Politics, practical; The art of organizing and handling men in large num- bers, manipulating votes, and, in especial, appropriating public wealth. We can easily see that the "science of gov- ernment" may be divided into "pure" and "applied" like other sciences, but that it is "a part of ethics" will be news to many minds. Yet why not ? Ethics is the science of con- duct, and pohtics is merely one field of con- duct; a very common one. Its connection with warfare in this chapter is perfectly legi- timate in view of the history of politics on the one hand, and the imperative modern issues which are to-day opposed to this estab- lished combination. There are many to-day who hold that politics need not be at all connected with warfare; and others who hold that politics is warfare from start to finish. In order to dissociate the two ideas com- pletely, let us give a paraphrase of the above definition, applying it to domestic management — ^that part of ethics which has to do with the regulation and government of 210 THE MAN-MADE WORLD a family; the preservation of its safety, peace and prosperity; the defense of its existence and rights against any stranger's interference or control; the augmentation of its strength and resources, and the protec- tion of its members in their rights; with the preservation and improvement of their morals. AU this is simple enough, and in no way masculine; neither is it feminine, save in this; that the tendency to care for, defend and manage a group, is in its origin maternal. In every himian sense, however, politics has left its maternal base far in the back- ground; and as a field of study and of action is as well adapted to men as to women. There is no reason whatever why men should not develop great ability in this department of ethics, and gradually learn how to pre- serve the safety, peace and prosperity of their nation; together with those other ser- vices as to resources, protection of citizens, and improvement of morals. Men, as human beings, are capable of the noblest devotion and efficiency in these mat- POLITICS AND WARFARE 211 ters, and have often shown them; but their devotion and efficiency have been marred in this, as in so many other fields, by the con- stant obtrusion of an ultra-masculine tend- ency. In warfare, per se, we find maleness in its absurdest extremes. Here is to be studied the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from the initial instinct of combat, through every form of glorious ostentation, with the loud- est possible accompaniment of noise. Primitive warfare had for its climax the possession of the primitive prize, the female. Without dogmatising on so remote a period, it may be suggested as a fair hypothesis that this was the very origin of our organized raids. We certainly find war before there was property in land, or any other property to tempt aggressors. Women, however, there were always, and when a specially androcentric tribe had reduced its supply of women by cruel treatment, or they were not born in sufficient numbers, owing to hard conditions, men must needs go farther afield after other women. Then, since the men of the other tribes naturally objected to losing 212 THE MAN-MADE WORLD their main labor supply and comfort, there was war. Thus based on the sex impulse, it gave full range to the combative instinct, and further to that thirst for vocal exultation so exquisitely male. The proud bellowings of the conquering stag, as he trampled on his prostrate rival, foimd higher expression in the "triumphs" of old days, when the con- quering warrior returned to his home, with victims chained to his chariot wheels, and trumpets braying. When property became an appreciable factor in life, warfare took on a new signifi- cance. What was at first mere destruction, in the effort to defend or obtain some himt- ing groimd or pasture; and, always, to secure the female; now coalesced with the acquisi- tive instinct, and the long black ages of predatory warfare closed in upon the world. Where the earliest form exterminated, the later enslaved, and took tribute; and for cen- tury upon century the "gentleman adven- turer," i. e., the primitive male, greatly pre- ferred to acquire wealth by the simple old POLITICS AND WARFARE 213 process of taking it, to any form of produc- tive industry. We have been much misled as to warfare by our androcentric literature. With a his- tory which recorded nothing else; a litera- ture which praised and an art which exalted it; a religion which called its central power "the God of Battles"— never the God of Workshops, mind you! — ^with a whole com- plex social structure man-prejudiced from center to circumference, and giving highest praise and honor to the Soldier; it is still hard for us to see what warfare really is in hvunan life. Some day we shall have new histories writ- ten, histories of world progress, showing the slow uprising, the development, the interser- vice of the nations; showing the faint beau- tiful dawn of the larger spirit of world-con- sciousness, and all its benefiting growth. We shall see people softening, learning, rising; see life lengthen with the possession of herds, and widen in rich prosperity with agriculture. Then industry, blossoming, fruiting, spreading wide; art, giving light and joy; the intellect developing with com- 214 THE MAN-MADE WORLD panionship and human intercourse; the whole spreading tree of social progress, the trunk of which is specialized industry, and the branches of which comprise every least and greatest line of himian activity and enjoy- ment. This growing tree, springing up wherever conditions of peace and prosperity gave it a chance, we shall see continually hewed down to the very root by war. To the later historian will appear through- out the ages, like some Hideous Fate, some Ctirse, some predetermined check, to drag down all our hope and joy and set life for- ever at its first steps over again, this Red Plague of War. The instinct of combat, between males, worked advantageously so long as it did not injure the female or the yoimg. It is a per- fectly natural instinct, and therefo^^e per- fectly right, in its place; but its place is in a pre-patriarchal era. So long as the animal mother was free and competent to care for herself and her yoimg; then it was an advan- tage to have "the best man win;" that is the best stag or lion; and to have the vanquished POLITICS AND WARFARE 215 die, or live in sulky celibacy, was no disad- vantage to any one but himself. Humanity is on a stage above this plan. The best man in the social structure is not always the huskiest. When a fresh horde of ultra-male savages swarmed down upon a prosperous young civilization, killed off the more civilized males and appropriated the more civilized females; they did, no doubt, bring in a fresh physical impetus to the race; but they destroyed the civilization. The reproduction of perfectly good sav- ages is not the main business of human- ity. Its business is to grow, socially; to de- velop, to improve; and warfare, at its best, retards himaan progress; at its worst, ob- literates it. Combat is not a social process at all; it is a physical process, a subsidiary sex process, purely masculine, intended to improve the species by the elimination of the unfit. Amusingly enough, or absurdly enough; when appKed to society, it eliminates the fit, and leaves the unfit to perpetuate the race! We require, to do our organized fighting, a picked lot of vigorous young males, the 216 THE MAN-MADE WORLD fittest we can find. The too old or too young; the sick, crippled, defective; are all left behind, to marry and be fathers; while the pick of the country, physically, is sent off to oppose the pick of another country, andkiU— kill— kiU! Observe the result on the population! In the first place the balance is broken — ^there are not enough men to go aroxmd, at home ; many women are left unmated. In primi- tive warfare, where women were promptly enslaved, or, at the best, polygamously mar- ried, this did not greatly matter — ^to the population; but as civilization advances and monogamy obtains, whatever eugenic bene- fits may once have sprung from warfare are completely lost, and aU its injuries remain. In what we innocently call "civihzed war- fare" (we might as well speak of "civilized cannibalism!") , this steady elimination of the fit leaves an ever lowering standard of par- entage at home. It makes a widening mar- gin of what we call "surplus women," mean- ing more than enough to be monogamously married; and these women, not being eco- nomically independent, drag steadily upon POLITICS AND WARFARE 217 the remaining men, postponing marriage, and increasing its burdens. The birth rate is lowered in quantity by the lack of husbands, and lowered in quality both by the destruction of superior stock, and by the wide dissemination of those dis- eases which invariably accompany the wife- lessness of the segregated males who are told off to perform our military functions. The external horrors and wastes of war- fare we are all familiar with : A. It arrests industry and all progress. B. It destroys the fruits of industry and progress. C. It weak- ens, hurts and kiUs the combatants. D. It lowers the standard of the non-combatants. Even the conquering nation is heavily in- jured; the conquered sometimes extermi- nated, or at least absorbed by the victor. This masculine selective process, when ap- plied to nations, does not produce the same result as when applied to single opposing animals. When little Greece was overcome it did not prove that the victors were su- perior, nor promote human interests in any way; it injured them. The "stern arbitrament of war" may 218 THE MAN-MADE WORLD prove which of two peoples is the better fighter, but it does not prove it therefore the fittest to survive. Beyond all these more or less obvious evils, comes a further result, not enough recognized; the psychic effects of military standard of thought and feeling. Remember that an androcentric culture has always exempted its own essential ac- tivities from the restraints of ethics, — "All's fair in love and war!" Deceit, trickery, ly- ing, every kind of skulking underhand effort to get information; ceaseless endeavor to outwit and overcome "the enemy"; these, with cruelty and destruction are character- istic of the military process; as weU as the much prized virtues of courage, endurance and loyalty, personal and public. Also classed as a virtue, and unquestion- ably such from the military point of view, is that prime factor in making and keeping an army, obedience. See how the effect of this artificial main- tenance of early mental attitudes acts on later development. True human progress requires elements quite other than these. If POLITICS AND WARFARE 319 successful warfare made one nation unques- tioned master of the earth, its social progress would not be promoted by that event. The rude hordes of Grenghis Khan swarmed over Asia and into Europe, but remained rude hordes; conquest is not civilization, nor any part of it. When the northern tribes-men over- whelmed the Roman culture they paralyzed progress for a thousand years or so; set back the clock by that much. So long as all Europe was at war, so long the arts and sciences sat still, or struggled in hid corners to keep their light alive. When warfare itself ceases, the physical, social and psychic results do not cease. Our whole culture is still hag-ridden by military ideals. Peace congresses have begun to meet, peace societies write and talk, but the monu- ments to soldiers and sailors (naval sailors of course), still go up, and the tin soldier remains a popular toy. We do not see Boxes of tin carpenters by any chance; tin farmers, weavers, shoemakers; we do not write our "boys' books" about the real bene- 220 THE MAN-MADE WORLD factors and servers of society; the adven- turer and destroyer remains the idol of an androcentric culture. In politics the military ideal, the mihtary processes, are so predominant as to almost monopolize "that part of ethics." The science of government, the plain wholesome business of managing a com- munity for its own good; doing its work, ad- vancing its prosperity, improving its morals — ^this is frankly understood and accepted as A Fight from start to finish. Marshall your forces and try to get in, this is the political campaign. When you are in, fight to stay in, and to keep the other fellow out. Fight for your own hand, like an animal; fight for your master like any hired bravo; fight always for some desired "victory" — - and "to the victors belong the spoils." This is not by any means the true nature of politics. It is not even a fair picture of pohtics to-day; in which man, the human being, is doing noble work for humanity; but it is the effect of man, the male, on politics. « Life, to the "male mind" (we have heard POLITICS AND WARFARE 231 enough of the "female mind" to use the analogue!) is a fight, and his ancient mili- tary institutions and processes keep up the delusion. As a matter of fact life is growth. Growth comes naturally, by multiplication of ceUs, and requires three factors to pro- mote it; nourishment, use, rest. Combat is a minor incident of life; belonging to low levels, and not of a developing influence socially. The science of politics, in a civilized com- mvmity, should have by this time a fine ac- cimiulation of simplified knowledge for dif- fusion in public schools; a store of practical experience in how to promote social ad- vancement most rapidly, a progressive econ- omy and ease of administration, a simplicity in theory and visible benefit in practice, such as should make every child an eager and serviceable citizen. What do we find, here in America, in the field of "politics?" We find first a party system which is the technical arrangement to carry on a fight. It is perfectly conceivable that a flourishing 233 THE MAN-MADE WORLD democratic government be carried on tmih- out any parties at all; pubKc functionaries being elected on their merits, and each pro- posed measure judged on its merits; though this sounds impossible to the androcentric mind. "There has never been a democracy with- out factions and parties!" is protested. There has never been a democracy, so far, — only an androcracy. A group composed of males alone, na- turally divides, opposes, fights; even a male church, under the most rigid rule, has its secret undercurrents of antagonism. "It is the human heart!" is again pro- tested. No, not essentially the human heart, but the male heart. This is so well recog- nized by men in general, that, to their minds, in this mingled field of politics and warfare, women have no place. In "civilized warfare" they are, it is true, allowed to trail along and practice their feminine function of nursing; but this is no part of war proper, it is rather the be- ginning of the end of war. Sometime it will strike our "funny spot," these strenuous ef- POLITICS AND WARFARE 223 forts to hurt and destroy, and these accom- panying efforts to heal and save. But in our politics there is not even pro- vision for a nursing corps ; women are ahso- lutely excluded. "They cannot play the game!" cries the practical politician. There is loud talk of the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its re- sultant darkening of fair reputations, the total imfitness of lovely woman to take part in "the rough and tumble of politics." In other words men have made a human institution into an ultra-masculine perform- ance; and, quite rightly, feel that women could not take part in politics as men do. That it is not necessary to fulfill this himian custom in so masculine a way does not occur to them. Few men can overlook the limi- tations of their sex and see the truth; that this business of taking care of our common affairs is not only equally open to women and men, but that women are distinctly needed in it. Anyone will admit that a government wholly in the hands of women would be helped by the assistance of men; that a 324 THE MAN-MADE WORLD gynaecocracy must, of its own nature, be one-sided. Yet it is hard to win reluctant admission of the opposite fact; that an an- drocracy must of its own natiu-e be one- sided also, and would be greatly improved by the participation of the other sex. The inextricable confusion of politics and warfare is part of the stumbling block in the minds of men. As they see it, a nation is primarily a fighting organization; and its principal business is offensive and defensive warfare; therefore the ultimatum with which they oppose the demand for political equal- ity — "women cannot fight, therefore they cannot vote." Fighting, when all is said, is to them the real business of life; not to be able to fight is to be quite out of the running; and ability to solve our growing mass of public problems; questions of health, of education, of morals, of economics; weighs naught against the ability to kill. This naive assumption of supreme value in a process never of the first importance; and increasingly injurious as society pro- gresses, would be laughable if it were not POLITICS AND WARFARE 235 for its evil effects. It acts and reacts upon us to our hurt. Positively, vre see the ill effects already touched on; the evils not only of active war; but of the spirit and methods of war; idealized, inculcated and practiced in other social processes. It tends to make each man-managed nation an actual or po- tential fighting organization, and to give us, instead of civilized peace, that "balance of power" which is like the counted time in the prize ring— only a rest between combats. It leaves the weaker nations to be con- quered" and "annexed" just as they used to be; with "preferential tariffs" instead of tribute. It forces upon each the burden of armament; upon many the dreaded con- scription; and continually lowers the world's resources in money and in life. Similarly in politics, it adds to the legiti- mate expenses of governing the illegitimate expenses of fighting; and must needs have a "spoils system" by which to pay its mer- cenaries. In carrying out the public policies the wheels of state are continually clogged by the "opposition"; always an opposition on 326 THE MAN-MADE WORLD one side or the other; and this slow wiggling uneven progress, through shorn victories and haggling concessions, is held to be the proper and only political method. "Women do not understand politics," we are told; "Women do not care for politics;" "Woman are unfitted for politics." It is frankly inconceivable, from the an- drocentric view-point, that nations can live in peace together, and be friendly and ser- viceable as persons are. It is inconceivable also, that, in the management of a nation, honesty, efficiency, wisdom, experience and love could work out good results without any element of combat. The "ultimate resort" is still to arms. "The will of the majority" is only respected on accoimt of the guns of the majority. We have but a partial civilization, heavily modi- fied to sex — ^the male sex. INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 227 CHAPTER XIII INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS THE forest of Truth, on the subject of industry and economics, is dif- ficult to see on account of the trees. We have so many Facts on this subject; so many Opinions; so many Traditions and Habits ; and the pressure of Immediate Con- ditions is so intense upon us all; that it is not easy to form a clear space in one's mind and consider the field fairly. Possibly the present treatment of the sub- ject will appeal most to the minds of those who know least about it; such as the Aver- age Woman. To her, industry is a day- long and lifelong duty, as well as a natural impulse; and economics means going with- out things. To such imtrained but also un- 328 THE MAN-MADE WORLD prejudiced minds it should be easy to show the main facts on these lines. Let us dispose of Economics first, as hav- ing a solemn scientific appearance. Physical Economics treats of the internal affairs of the body; the whole machinery and how it works; all organs, members, func- tions; each last and littlest capillary and leucocyte, are parts of that "economy." Nature's "economy" is not in the least "economical." The waste of life, the waste of material, the waste of time and effort, are prodigious, yet she achieves her end as we see. Domestic Economics covers the whole care and government of the household; the maintenance of peace, health, order, and morality; the care and noiuishment of chil- dren as far as done at home; the entire man- agement of the home, as well as the spending and saving of money; are included in it. Saving is the least and poorest part of it; especially as in mere abstinence from needed things; most especially when this abstinence is mainly "Mother's." How best to spend! time, strength, love, care, labor, knowledge. INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 239 and money — ^this should be the main study in Domestic Economics. Social, or, as they are used to call it, Political Economics, covers a larger, but not essentially different field. A family consists of people, and the Mother is their natural manager. Society consists of people — the same people — only more of them. All the people who are members of Society are also members of families — except some incu- bated orphans maybe. Social Economics covers the whole care and management of the people, the maintenance of peace and health and order and morality; the care of children, as far as done out of the home; as well as the spending and saving of the public money — all these are included in it. This great business of Social Economics is at present little understood and most poorly managed, for this reason; we ap- proach it from an individual point of view; seeking not so much to do our share in the common service, as to get our personal profit from the common wealth. Where the whole family labors together to harvest fruit and store it for the winter, we have legitimate 230 THE MAN-MADE WORLD Domestic Economics: but where one mem- ber takes and hides a lot for himself, to the exclusion of the others, we have no Domestic Economics at all — ^merely individual selfish- ness. In Social Economics we have a large, but simple problem. Here is the earth, our farm. Here are the people, who own the earth. How can the most advantage to the most people be obtained from the earth with the least labor? That is the problem of Social Economics. Looking at the world as if you held it in your hands to study and discuss, what do we find at present? We find people living too thickly for health and comfort in some places, and too thinly in others; we find most people work- ing too hard and too long at honest labor; some people working with damaging in- tensity at dishonest labor; and a few wretched paupers among the rich and poor, degenerate idlers who do not work at aU, the scum and the dregs of Society, work far too hard for what we do get. the comfort out of life we easily could; and INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 231 work far too hard for what we do get. Moreover, there is no peace, no settled se- curity. No man is sure of his hving, no mat- ter how hard he works, a thousand things may occur to deprive him of his job, or his income. In our time there is great excite- ment along this line of study; and more than one proposition is advanced whereby we may improve most, notably instanced in the world-covering advance of Socialism. In our present study the principal fact to be exhibited is the influence of a male cul- ture upon Social Economics and Industry. Industry, as a department of Social Eco- nomics, is little understood. Heretofore we have viewed this field from several wholly erroneous positions. From the Hebrew (and wholly androcentric) religious teach- ing, we have regarded labor as a curse. Nothing could be more absurdly false. Labor is not merely a means of supporting human life — ^it is human life. Imagine a race of beings living without labor! They must be the rudest savages. Human work consists in specialized in- dustry and the exchange of its products; 232 THE MAN-MADE WORLD and without it is no civilization. As indus- try develops, civilization develops; peace ex- pands; wealth increases; science and art help on the splendid total. Productive industry, and its concomitant of distributive industry cover the major field of human life. If our industry was normal, what should we see? A world full of healthy, happy people; each busily engaged in what he or she most enjoyed doing. Normal Specialization, like all our voluntary processes, is accompanied by keen pleasiu-e; and any check or inter- ruption to it gives pain and injury. Who- soever works at what he loves is well and happy. Whosoever works at what he does not love is ill and miserable. It is very bad economics to force unwilling industry. That is the weakness of slave labor; and of wage labor also where there is not full industrial education and freedom of choice. Under normal conditions we should see well developed, well trained specialists hap- pily engaged in the work they most enjoyed; for reasonable hours (any work, or play either, becomes injurious if done too long) ; ■ INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 233 and as a consequence the whole output of the world would be vastly improved, not only in quantity but in quality. Plain are the melancholy facts of what we do see. Following that pitiful conception of labor as a curse, comes the very old and androcentric habit of despising it as belong- ing to women, and then to slaves. As a matter of fact industry is in its ori- gin feminine; that is, maternal. It is the overflowing fountain of mother-love and mother-power which first prompts the hu- man race to labor; and for long ages men performed no productive industry at all; be- ing merely hunters and fighters. It is this lack of natural instinct for labor in the male of our species, together with the ideas and opinions based on that lack, and voiced by him in his many writings, religious and other, which have given to the world its false estimate of this great function, human work. That which is our very life, our greatest joy,, our road to all advancement, we have scorned and oppressed; so that "working people," the "working classes," 334 THE MAN-MADE WORLD "having to work," etc., are to this day spoken of Avith contempt. Perhaps drones speak so among themselves of the "working bees!" Normally, widening out from the moth- er's careful and generous service in the fam- ily, to careful, generous service in the world, we should find labor freely given, with love and pride. Abnormally, crushed under the burden of androcentric scorn and prejudice, we have labor grudgingly produced under pressure of necessity; labor of slaves imder fear of the whip, or of wage-slaves, one step higher, un- der fear of want. Long ages wherein hunt- ing and fighting were the only manly occu- pations, have left their heavy impress. The predacious instinct and the combative in- stinct weigh down and disfigure ovu" eco- nomic development. What Veblen calls "the instinct of workmanship" grows on, slowly and irresistibly; but the malign fea- tures of our industrial life are distinctly an- drocentric: the desire to get, of the hunter; interfering with the desire to give, of the mother; the desire to overcome an antagonist INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 235 — originally masculine, interfering with the desire to serve and benefit — originally femi- nine. Let the reader keep in mind that as hu- man beings, men are able to over-live their masculine natures and do noble service to the world; also that as human beings they are to-day far more highly developed than women, and doing far more for the world. The point here brought out is that as males their tmchecked supremacy has resulted in an abnormal predominance of masculine im- pulses in our human processes; and that this predominance has been largely injurious. As it happens, the distinctly feminine or maternal impulses are far more nearly in line with himian progress than are those of the male; which makes her exclusion from himian functions the more mischievous. Our current teachings in the infant sci- ence of PoUtical Economy are naively mas- culine. They assimie as unquestionable that "the economic man" will never do anything unless he has to; will only do it to escape pain or attain pleasure ; and will, inevitably, take all he can get, and do all he can to out- 336 THE MAN-MADE WORLD wit, overcome, and if necessary destroy his antagonist. Always the antagonist; to the male mind an antagonist is essential to progress, to all achievement. He has planted that root- thought in all the human world; from that old hideous idea of Satan, "The Adversary," down to the competitor in business, or the boy at the head of the class, to be superseded by another. Therefore, even in science, "the struggle for existence" is the dominant law — ^to the male mind, with the "survival of the fittest" and "the elimination of the unfit." Therefore in industry and economics we find always and everywhere the antagonist; the necessity for somebody or something to be overcome — else why make an eflFort? If you have not the incentive of reward, or the incentive of combat, why work? "Competi- tion is the life of trade." Thus the Economic Man. But how about the Economic Woman? To the androcentric mind she does not exist — ^women are females, and that's all; INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 237 their working abiUties are limited to per- sonal service. That it would be possible to develop in- dustry to far greater heights, and to find in social economics a simple and beneficial process for the promotion of himian life and prosperity, under any other impulse than these two. Desire and Combat, is hard in- deed to recognize — ^for the "male mind." So absolutely interwoven are our existing concepts of maleness and humanness, so sure are we that men are people and women only females, that the claim of equal weight and dignity in human affairs of the feminine in- stincts and methods is scouted as absurd. We find existing industry almost wholly in male hands; find it done as men do it; as- sume that that is the way it must be done. When women suggest that it could be done differently, their proposal is waved aside — ^they are "only women" — ^their ideas are "womanish." Agreed. So are men "only men," their ideas are "mannish"; and of the two the women are more vitally human than the men, by nature. 238 THE MAN-MADE WORLD The female is the race-type — ^the man the variant. The female, as a race-type, having the female processes besides, best performs the race processes. The male, however, has with great difficulty developed them, always heavily handicapped by his maleness; being in origin essentially a creature of sex, and so dominated almost exclusively by sex im- pulses. The human instinct of mutual service is checked by the masculine instinct of com- bat; the human tendency to speciaUze in la- bor, to rejoicingly pour force in lines of spe- cialized expression, is checked by the pre- dacious instinct, which will exert itself for reward; and disfigured by the masculine in- stinct of self-expression, which is an entirely different thing from the great human out- pouring of world force. Great men, the world's teachers and lead- ers, are great in humanness; mere maleness does not make for greatness imless it be in warfare — ^a disadvantageous glory 1 Great women also must be great in humanness; but their female instincts are not so subversive INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 239 of human progress as are the instincts of the male. To be a teacher and leader, to love and serve, to guard and guide and help, are weU in line with motherhood. "Are they not also in line with father- hood?" wiU be asked; and, "Are not the father's paternal instincts masculine?" No, they are not; they differ in no way from the maternal, in so far as they are beneficial. Parental functions of the higher sort, of the human sort, are identical. The father can give his children many advan- tages which the mother can not; but that is due to his superiority as a human being. He possesses far more knowledge and power in the world, the human world; he himself is more developed in himian powers and processes; and is therefore able to do much for his children which the mother can not; but this is in no way due to his masculinity. It is in this development of human powers in man, through fatherhood, that we may read the explanation of our short period of androcentric culture. So thorough and complete a reversal of previous relation, such continuance of what 240 THE MAN-MADE WORLD appears in every way an unnatural position, must have had some justification in racial advantages, or it could not have endured. This is its justification; the establishment of humanness in the male; he being led into it, along natural lines, by the exercise of pre- viously existing desires. In a male culture the attracting forces must inevitably have been, we have seen, De- sire and Combat. These masculine forces, acting upon human processes, while neces- sary to the uplifting of the man, have been anything but uplifting to civiUzation. A sex which thinks, feels and acts in terms of ■combat is difficult to harmonize in the smooth bonds of human relationship; that they have succeeded so well is a beautiful testimony to the superior power of race tendency over sex tendency. Uniting and organizing, crudely and temporarily, for the common hunt; and then, with progressive elaboration, for the common fight; they are now using the same tactics — and the same desires, un- fortunately — ^in common work. Union, organization, complex inter- service, are the essential processes of a grow- INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 241 ing society; in them, in the ever-increasing discharge of power along widening lines of action, is the joy and health of social life. But so far men combine in order to better combat; the mutual service held incidental to the common end of conquest and plunder. In spite of this the overmastering power of himianness is now developing among modern men immense organizations of a wholly beneficial character, with no purpose but mutual advantage. This is true human growth, and as such will inevitably take the place of the sex-prejudiced earlier processes. The human character of the Christian re- ligion is now being more and more insisted on ; the practical love and service of each and all; in place of the old insistence on Desire — for a Crown and Harp in Heaven, and Com- bat — ^with that everlasting Adversary. In economics this great change is rapidly going on before our eyes. It is a change in idea, in basic concept, in our theory of what the whole thing is about. We are beginning to see the world, not as "a fair field and no favor" — not a place for one man to get ahead of others, for a price; but as an estab- 242 THE MAN-MADE WORLD lishment belonging to us, the proceeds of which are to be applied, as a matter of course, to human advantage. In the old idea, the wholly masculine idea, based on the processes of sex-combat, the advantage of the world lay in having "the best man win." Some, in the first steps of enthusiasm for Eugenics, think so stiU; imagining that the primal process of pro- moting evolution through the paternity of the conquering male is the best process. To have one superior lion kill six or sixty inferior lions, and leave a progeny of more superior lions behind him, is all right — ^for lions; the superiority in fighting being aU the superiority they need. But the man able to outwit his fellows, to destroy them in physical, or ruin in finan- cial, combat, is not, therefore, a superior hu- man creature. Even physical superiority, as a fighter, does not prove the kind of vigor best calculated to resist disease, or to adapt itself to changing conditions. That our masculine culture in its effect on Economics and Industry is injurious, is clearly shown by the whole open page of INDUSTRY AND ECONOMICS 243 history. From the simple beneficent activ- ities of a matriarchal period we follow the same lamentable steps; nation after nation. Women are enslaved and captives are en- slaved; a military despotism is developed; labor is despised and discouraged. Then when the irresistible social forces do bring us onward, in science, art, commerce, and aU that we call civihzation, we find the same check acting always upon that progress ; and the really vital social processes of produc- tion and distribution, heavily injured by the financial combat and carnage which rages ever over and among them. The real development of the people, the forming of finer physiques, finer minds, a higher level of efiiciency, a broader range of enjoyment and accomplishment — ^is hin- dered and not helped by this artificially maintained "struggle for existence," this constant endeavor to eliminate what, from a masculine standard, is "unfit." That we have progressed thus far, that we are now moving forward so rapidly, is in spite of and not because of our androcentric culture. 244 THE MAN-MADE WORLD CHAPTER XIV A HUMAN "WOEID IN the change from the dominance of one sex to the equal power of two, to what may we look forward? What effect upon civihzation is to be expected from the equality of womanhood in the human race? To put the most natural question first — what wiU men lose by it? Many men are genuinely concerned about this; fearing some new position of subservience and dis- respect. Others laugh at the very idea of change in their position, reljring as always on the heavier fist. So long as fighting was the determining process, the best fighter must needs win; but in the rearrangement of processes which marks our age, superior physical strength does not make the poorer wealthy, nor even the soldier a general. The major processes of life to-day are quite within the powers of women; women A HUMAN WORLD 245 are fulfilling their new relations more and more successfully; gathering new strength, new knowledge, new ideals. The change is upon us; what will it do to men? No harm. As we are a monogamous race, there will be no such drastic and cruel selection among competing males as would eliminate the vast majority as unfit. Even though some be considered unfit for fatherhood, all himian life remains open to them. Perhaps the most important feature of this change comes in right here; along this old line of sex-selec- tion, replacing that power in the right hands, and using it for the good of the race. The woman, free at last, intelligent, recognizing her real place and responsibil- ity in life as a human being, will be not less, but more, efficient as a mother. She will understand that, in the line of physical evo- lution, motherhood is the highest process; and that her work, as a contribution to an improved race, must always involve this great function. She will see that right par- entage is the purpose of the whole scheme of sex-relationship, and act accordingly. U6 THE MAN-MADE WORLD In our time, his human faculties being sufficiently developed, civilized man can look over and around his sex limitations, and begin to see what are the true purposes and methods of human life. He is now beginning to learn that his own governing necessity of Desire is not the governing necessity of parentage, but only a contributory tendency; and that, in the interests of better parentage, motherhood is the dominant factor, and must be so considered. In slow reluctant admission of this fact, man heretofore has recognized one class of women as mothers; and has granted them a varying amount of consideration as such; but he has none the less insisted on main- taining another class of women, forbidden motherhood, and merely subservient to his desires; a barren, mischievous unnatural re- lation, wholly aside from parental purposes, and absolutely injurious to society. This whole field of morbid action wiU be elim- inated from human life by the normal de- velopment of women. It is not a question of interfering with or A HUMAN WORLD 247 punishing men; still less of interfering with or punishing women; but purely a matter of changed education and opportunity for every child. Each and all shall be taught the real na- ture and purpose of motherhood; the real nature and purpose of manhood; what each is for, and which is the more important. A new sense of the power and pride of woman- hood will waken; a womanhood no longer simk in helpless dependence upon men; no longer limited to mere unpaid house-service ; no longer blinded by the false morality which subjects even motherhood to man's dominance; but a womanhood which will recognize its pre-eminent responsibility to the human race, and live up to it. Then, with all normal and right competition among men for the favor of women, those best fitted for fatherhood will be chosen. Those who are not chosen will live single — ^per- force. Many, under the old mistaken notion of what used to be called the "social necessity" of prostitution, wiU protest at the idea of its extinction. 248 THE MAN-MADE WORLD "It is necessary to have it," they will say. "Necessary to whom?" Not to the women hideously sacrificed to it, surely. Not to society, honey-combed with dis- eases due to this cause. Not to the family, weakened and impov- erished by it. To whom then ? To the men who want it ? But it is not good for them, it promotes all manner of disease, of vice, of crime. It is absolutely and unquestionably a "social evil." An intelligent and powerful womanhood will put an end to this indulgence of one sex at the expense of the other and to the injury of both. In this inevitable change will lie what some men wiU consider a loss. But only those of the present generation. For the sons of the women now entering upon this new era of world life will be differently reared. They will recognize the true rela- tion of men to the primal process; and be amazed that for so long the greater values have been lost sight of in favor of the less. A HUMAN WORLD 249 This one change will do more to promote the physical health and beauty of the race; to improve the quality of children born, and the general vigor and purity of social life, than any one measure which could be pro- posed. It rests upon a recognition of moth- erhood as the real base and cause of the family; and dismisses to the limbo of all out- worn superstition that false Hebraic and grossly androcentric doctrine that the woman is to be subject to the man, and that he shall rule over her. He has tried this arrangement long enough — ^to the grievous injury of the world. A higher standard of happiness will result; equality and mutual respect between parents; pure love, imde- filed by self-interests on either side; and a new respect for Childhood. With the Child, seen at last to be the gov- erning pTirpose of this relation, with all the best energies of men and women bent on raising the standard of Kfe for all children, we shall have a new status of family life which win be clean and noble, and satisfying to all its members. The change in all the varied lines of hu- 250 THE MAN-MADE WORLD man work is beyond the powers of any pres- ent day prophet to forecast with precision. A new grade of womanhood we can clearly foresee; proud, strong, serene, independent; great mothers of great women and great men. These will hold high standards and draw men up to them; by no compulsion save nature's law of attraction. A clean and healthful world, enjoying the taste of life as it never has since racial babyhood, with homes of quiet and content — ^this we can foresee. Art, in the extreme sense, wiU perhaps always belong most to men. It would seem as if that ceaseless urge to expression, was, at least originally, most congenial to the male. But applied art, in every form, and art used directly for transmission of ideas, such as literature, or oratory, appeals to women as much, if not more, than to men. We can make no safe assumption as to what, if any, distinction there will be in the free human work of men and women, until we have seen generation after generation grow up imder absolutely equal conditions. In all our games and sports and minor so- A HUMAN WORLD 351 cial customs, such changes will occur as must needs follow upon the rising dignity allotted to the woman's temperament, the woman's point of view; not in the least denying to men the fullest exercise of their special pow- ers and preferences; but classifying these newly, as not human — ^merely male. At present we have pages or columns in our papers, marked as "The Woman's Page," "Of Interest to Women," and similar de- limiting titles. Similarly we might have dis- tinctly masculine matters so marked and specified; not assumed as now to be of gen- eral hvmian interest. The eflPect of the change upon Ethics and Religion is deep and vdde. With the en- trance of women upon full human life, a new principle comes into prominence; the principle of loving service. That this is the governing principle of Christianity is be- lieved by many; but an androcentric inter- pretation has quite overlooked it; and made, as we have shown, the essential dogma of their faith the desire of an enternal reward and the combat with an eternal enemy. The feminine attitude in life is wholly 253 THE MAN-MADE WORLD different. As a female she has merely to be herself and passively attract; neither to compete nor to pursue; as a mother her whole process is one of growth; first the de- velopment of the live child within her, and the wonderful nourishment from her own body; and then all the later cultivation to make the child grow; all the watching, teaching, guarding, feeding. In none of this is there either desire, combat, or self- expression. The feminine attitude, as ex- pressed in religion, makes of it a patient practical fulfillment of law; a process of large sure improvements; a limitless com- forting love and care. This full assurance of love and of power; this endless cheerful service; the broad pro- vision for all people; rather than the com- petitive selection of a few "victors;" is the natural presentation of religious truth from the woman's viewpoint. Her governing principle being growth and not combat; her main tendency being to give and not to get; she more easily and naturally lives and teaches these religious principles. It is for this reason that the broader, gentler teach- A HUMAN WORLD 353 ing of the Unitarian and Universalist sects have appealed so especially to women, and that so many women preach in their churches. This principle of growth, as applied and used in general human life, will work to far other ends than those now so painfully vis- ible. In education, for instance, with neither reward nor punishment as spur or bait; with no competition to rouse effort and animos- ity, but rather with the feeling of a gardener towards his plants; the teacher wiU teach and the children learn, in mutual ease and happiness. The law of passive attraction applies here, leading to such ingenmty in presentation as shall arouse the child's in- terest; and, in the true spirit of promoting growth, each child wiU have his best and fullest training, without regard to who is "ahead" of him, or her, or who "behind." We do not sadly measure the cabbage- stalk by the corn-stalk, and praise the corn for getting ahead of the cabbage — ^nor in- cite the cabbage to emulate the corn. We 354 THE MAN-MADE WORLD nourish each, to its best growth — ^and are the richer. That every child on earth shall have right conditions to make the best growth possible to it ; that every citizen, from birth to death, shall have a chance to learn all he or she can assimilate, to develop every power that is in them — for the common good; — ^this will be the aim of education, under human man- agement. In the world of "society" we may look for very radical changes. With all women full human beings, trained and useful in some form of work, the class of busy idlers who run about for- ever "entertaining" and being "entertained" will disappear as utterly as wiU the prosti- tute. N"o woman with real work to do could have the time for such petty amusements; or enjoy them if she did have time. No woman with real work to do, work she loved and was well fitted for, work honored and well-paid, would take up the Unnatural Trade. Genuine relaxation and recreation, aU manner of healthful sports aijd pastimes, beloved of both sexes to-day, will remain. A HUMAN WORLD 255 of course; but the set structure of "social functions" — so laughably misnamed — ^will disappear with the "society women" who make it possible. Once active members of real Society, no woman could go back to "society," any more than a roughrider could return to a hobbyhorse. New development in dress, wise, comfort- able, beautiful, may be confidently expected, as woman becomes more human. No fully human creature could hold up its head im- der the absurdities our women wear to-day — and have worn for dreary centuries. So on through all the aspects of life we may look for changes, rapid and far-reach- ing; but natural and all for good. The im- provement is not due to any inherent moral superiority of women; nor to any moral in- feriority of men; men at present, as more hiunan, are ahead of women in all distinctly human ways; yet their maleness, as we have shown repeatedly, warps and disfigures their humanness. The woman, being by na- ture the race-type, and her feminine fimc- tions being far more akin to human fimc- tions than are those essential to the male. 256 THE MAN-MADE WORLD will bring into human life a more normal influence. Under this more normal influence our present perversities of function will, of course, tend to disappear. The directly ser- viceable tendency of women, as shown in every step of their public work, will have small patience with hoary traditions of ab- surdity. We need but look at long recorded facts to see what women do — or try to do, when they have opportunity. Even in their crippled, smothered past, they have made valiant efforts — ^not always wise — ^in charity and philanthropy. In our own time this is shown through aU the length and breadth of our country, by the Woman's Clubs. Little groups of women, drawing together in human rela- tion, at first, perhaps, with no better pur- pose than to "improve their minds," have grown and spread; combined and federated; and in their great reports, representing hun- dreds of thousands of women — ^we find a splendid record of himian work. They strive always to improve something, to take care of something, to help and serve and A HUMAN WORLD 257 benefit. In "village improvement," in trav- eling libraries, in lectiu-e courses and ex- hibitions, in promoting good legislation; in many a line of noble eflFort our Women's Clubs show what women want to do. Men do not have to do these things tlirough their clubs, which are mainly for pleasure; they can accomplish what they wish to through regular channels. But the character and direction of the influence of women in himian affairs is conclusively es- tablished by the things they already do and try to do. In those countries, and in our own states, where they are already full citi- zens, the legislation introduced and pro- moted by them is of the same beneficent character. The normal woman is a strong creature, loving and serviceable. The kind of woman men are afraid to entrust with political power, selfish, idle, over-sexed, or ignorant and narrow-minded, is not normal, but is the creature of conditions men have made. We need have no fear of her, for she will disappear with the conditions which created her. In older days, without knowledge of the 358 THE MAN-MADE WORLD. natural sciences, we accepted Kfe as static. If, being born in China, we grew up with foot-bound women, we assumed that women were such, and must so remain. Born in India, we accepted the child- wife, the pitiful child-widow, the ecstatic suttee, as natural expressions of womanhood. In each age, each country, we have assumed life to be necessarily what it was — a moveless fact. All this is giving way fast in our new knowledge of the laws of life. We find that Growth is the eternal law, and that even rocks are slowly changing. Himian life is seen to be as dynamic as any other form; and the most certain thing about it is that it will change. In the light of this knowl- edge we need no longer accept the load of what we call "sin;" the grouped misery of poverty, disease and crime; the cumbrous, inefficacious, wasteful processes of life to- day, as needful or permanent. We have but to learn the real elements in humanity; its true powers and natural char- acteristics; to see wherein we are hampered by the wrong ideas and inherited habits of earlier generations, and break loose from A HUMAN WORLD 359 them — ^then we can safely and swiftly intro- duce a far nobler grade of living. Of all crippling hindrances in false ideas, we have none more vmiversally mischievous than this root error about men and women. Given the old androcentric theory, and we have an androcentric culture — ^the kind we so far know; this short stretch we call "his- tory;" with its proud and pitiful record. We have done wonders of upward growth — for growth is the main law, and may not be wholly resisted. But we have hindered, per- verted, temporarily checked that growth, age after age; and again and again has a given nation, far advanced and promising, sunk to ruin, and left another to take up its task of social evolution; repeat its errors — and its failure. One major cause of the decay of nations is "the social evil" — a thing wholly due to the androcentric culture. Another steady endless check is warfare — due to the same cause. Largest of all is poverty; that spreading disease which grows with our so- cial growth and shows most horribly when and where we are most proud, keeping step. 360 THE MAN-MADE WORLD. as it were, with private wealth. This, too, in large measure, is due to the false ideas on industry and economies, based, like the oth- ers menticoied, on a wholly masculine view of hfe. By changing our underiying theory in this matter, we change all the resultant as- sumption; and it is this alteration in our basic theory of life which is being urged. The scope and purpose of human life is entirely above and beyond the field of sex relationship. Women are himian beings, as much as men, by nature ; and as women, are even more sympathetic with hvmian processes. To develop human hfe in its true powers we need fuU equal citizenship for women. The great woman's movement and labor movement of to-day are parts of the same pressure, the same world-progress. An economic democracy must rest on a free womanhood; and a free womanhod in- evitably leads to an economic democracy. OOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN "WOMEN AND ECONOMICS" Since John Stuart Mill's essay there has been no book dealing with the whole position of women to approach it in originality of conception and brilliancy of exposition. — London Chronicle. The most significant utterance on the subject since Mill's "SubjectitMi of Women." —The Nation. It is the strongest book on the woman question that has yet been published. — Minneapolis Journal. A remarkable book. A work on economics that has not a dull page, — the work of a woman about women that has not a flippant word. — Boston Transcript. This book unites in a remarkable degree the charm of a brilliantly written essay with the inevitable logic of a proposition of Euclid. Nothing that we have read for many a long day can approach in clearness of conception, in power of arrangement, and in lucidity of expression the argument developed in the first seven chapters of this remarkable book. — Westminster Gazette, London. Will be widely read and discussed as the cleverest, fairest, most forcible presentation of the view of the rapidly increasing group who look with favor on the extension of industrial employment to women. —Political Science Quarterly. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.50. '■ Women and Economics '■ has been translated into Gennan, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Russian and Japanese. "CONCERNING CHILDREN" Wanted :— A philanthropist, to give a copy to every English-speaking parent. —The Times, New York. Should be read by every mother in the land. —The Press, New York. Wholesomely disturbing book that deserves to be read for its own sake. — Chicago Dial. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.25. ■'Concerning Children" has been translated into German, Dutch and Yiddish. HARLTON COMPANY, 67 Wall St., New York BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER" Worthy of a place beside some of the weird master- pieces of Hawthorne and Poe. — Literature. As a short story it stands among the most powerful produced in America. — Chicago News. By mail of Charlton Co., $0.50. "HUMAN WOIUC»» Charlotte Perkins Gilman has added a third to her great trilogy of books on economic subjects as they affect our daily life, particularly in the home. Mrs. Gilman is by far the most brilliant woman writer of our day, and this new volume, which she calls "Humam Work," is a glorification of labor. — New Orleans Picayune. Charlotte Perkins Gilman has been writing a new book, entitled "Human Work." It is the best thing that Mrs. Gilman has done, and it is meant to focus all of her previous work, so to speak. — Tribune, Chicago. In her latest volume, "Human Work," Charlotte Perkins Gilman places herself among the foremost students and elucidators of the problem of social economics. — San Francisco Star. It is impossible to overestimate the value of the in- sistence on the social aspect of human affairs as Mrs. Gilman has outlined it. — Public Opinion. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.00. CHARLTON COMPANY, 67 Wall St., New York BOOKS BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN "IN THIS OUR WORLD" There is a Joyous superabundance of life, of strength, of health, in Mrs. Oilman's verse, which seems born of the glorious sunshine and rich gardens of California. — Washington Times. The freshness, charm and geniality of her satire temporarily convert us to her most advanced views. — Boston Journal. The poet of women and for women, a new and prophetic voice in the world. Montaigne would have rejoiced in her. — Mexican Herald. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.25. "THE HOME" Indeed, Mrs. Oilman has not intended her book so much as a treatise for scholars as a surgical operation on the popular mind. — The Critic, New York. Whatever Mrs. Oilman writes, people read — approv- ing or protesting, still they read. — Republican, Springfield, Mass. Full of thought and of new and striking suggestions. Tells what the average woman has and ought not keep, what she is and ought not be. — Literature World. But it is safe to say that no more stimulating arraign- ment has ever before taken shape and that the argument of the book is noble, and, on the whole, convincing. — Congregationalist, Boston. The name of this author is a guarantee of logical reasoning, sound economical principles and progressive thought. — The Craftsman, Syracuse. By mail of Charlton Co., $1.00. •'The Home " has been translated into Swedish. CHARLTON COMPANY, 67 Wall St.. New York BOOKS BY Charlotte Perkins Oilman Moving the Mountain. A Utopia at short range. How we might change this country in thirty years, if we changed our minds first. Mrs. Oilman's latest book, like her earliest verse, is a protest against the parrot cry that "you can't alter human nature." By mail of Charlton Co |i.io What Diantha Did. A Novel. "What she did was to solve the domestic service problem for both mistress and maid in a southern Cali- fornia town. " "The Survey. ' ' "A sensible book, it gives a new and deserved com- prehension of the importance and complexity of house- keeping." "The Independent." "Mrs. Perkins Gilman is as full of ideas as ever, and her Diantha is a model for all young women." "Tne Englishwoman.'" " By mail of Charlton Co |i . lo THE CRUX This book maiks a distinct advance in Mrs. Oilman's power as a writer of fiction. It is a smooth, pleasant, natural sort of story, out of which suddenly blazes the new morality, saying: "Beware of a Biological Sin ; for that there is no forgiveness." It is a story expressly written for girls, yet there will be many who would by no means allow girls to have such knowledge, though it would save many girls. By mail of Charlton Co $l. lo Charlton Co., 67 Wall St., New York