Chapter VII

The Position of Women as Influencing Ethics

The Forerunner: Vol. V, No. 7 (p. 187-193)

July 1914

If ethics is as simple a science as here stated; if we, as social creatures, tend to develop a natural instinct for the ethics necessary to our best growth, as do other social creatures; and if, again, we have an unquestioned supremacy in intelligence and in will power; it seems remarkable indeed that our behavior is so blindly evil.

To understand it we need to bear in mind that our superior intelligence has never been turned upon ethics as a science, and has been, on the contrary, definitely employed in maintaining most unethical ideas and habits.

Moreover, in the steadily increasing complexity of our social life, we have a conflicting pressure of influences, with results spreading far beyond our perception.

The reason that an early social group lives up to what ethical standards it has is not due merely to their simplicity, or the ease of fulfillment; but to the fact that no other influences are at work in the tribal activities to offset and contradict them.

The only broad differences in ethics in savage life is between men's conduct and women's; these are enforced to this day by deep-seated hereditary instincts that what is right for the one must be wrong for the other. This we show plainly by urging different conduct upon little boys and little girls.

The relation of a child of either sex to the family or to the community is precisely the same. There can be no sex ethics at that age. Yet we, blindly carrying on the traditions of remote savagery, laugh at little boys if they play with dolls, or at little girls if they want to run and climb as boys do.

We say it is "instinctive" and are proud of it. It is "instinctive," and we ought to be ashamed of it. An instinct is nothing but a hereditary habit. Are we to carry on the mental habits of primitive savages forever and ever?

As soon as a more specialized stage of life is reached, each new economic relation develops its own ethics; and these spread like circles from a stone thrown in the water. Let us study some of these effects.

Beginning with that broad division of sex and the arbitrary ethical values based upon it, we find in the earliest stages of human life, the woman naturally evolving industry of various primitive sorts, and the man first specializing along lines of essential maleness.

The inevitability of this is clear when we realize that the female is the race type and the male the sex type. Her feminine attributes, aside from the physiological processes of motherhood, are merely the race attributes, bent to the service of the child. In that service the human mother progresses in human power and skill, while her mate, for a long time, exercised only the combative activities peculiar to his sex, with the predatory efforts common to all carnívora. His growing human power and skill manifested itself in these lines only, for long ages.

"Man's work" was to hunt and fight. Everything in the line of productive industry was "woman's work." The effect on our early ethical perceptions was deeply marked—we feel it yet.

One of the most essentially male characteristics is personal pride; the spirit peacefully shown in the strutting peacock, and more aggressively in the triumphant bellow of the conquering bull or stag. To emulate, to conquer, to rear a proud head high above one's fallen rival–this is the line of masculine effort in pursuit of his mate.

So long as food was gained by hunting, this conquering instinct came into play in daily use; he pursued his prey as ardently as if it was his female; and, incidentally, his female as if she was his prey.

When organized warfare raised all this to a power beyond that of other animals; when to his own song of conquest was added the praise of his comrades in arms; there developed in the human male a spirit of unmeasured pride. So strong was this feeling that he made an abstract ideal of it; and cheerfully surrendered every other pleasure in life for—Glory.

Glory had no place with the squaw. She was useful, transcendentally useful, but never glorious. Her pride was in her children, especially in her male children, who might be glorified. Her own activities meanwhile, the essentially human ones of productive industry, developed in her virtues far more valuable to social progress than most of his; but they were not valued–being women's.

In a primitive people this was not only explicable, but unavoidable. That a highly developed race like ourselves should still be influenced by these ancient feelings requires more explanation.

Observe its continuing effects.

The woman's activities developed patience, industry, ingenuity, the beginnings of specialization, the loving serviceability that makes for comfort. With this was required of her obedience and submission, and a meekness and modesty best fitted to contrast with masculine pride. When Henry the VIII sent his ambassador to woo for him Christina of Sweden, she was not only reported as beautiful and intelligent, but "seldom have I seen a lady more shamefaced," wrote the delighted visitor.

As the next great stage in industrial development consisted in the introduction of masculine slavery; as this period of slave labor covers our entire history, being still the economic system among more millions of people than those which have outgrown it, it is no wonder that our ethical values in industrial relations are a little mixed.

Man, the pursuer, the combatant, the conqueror, had small respect for the servile woman or for the captive of his bow and spear who gave him labor as the price of life.

Because of an age-old servile womanhood, and a system of chattel slavery almost as old, we have an ingrained contempt for some of the most valuable human qualities, and an exorbitant pride in others whose value has long since departed.

In a time when most of our food had to be caught and killed the virtues of the hunter had great economic value. In a time when a primitive masculinity, fed and clothed by slave labor, ran riot in warfare the world over, and filled the air with the noise of the captains and the shouting, military virtues had value, too.

But since the shepherd and the farmer came; since the human brain and hand began to Make instead of to Destroy, the best service of society comes from those who feed and clothe and shelter us, who steadily pour into the world the fruit of our human creativeness; the products of art and industry in which we live.

If only our minds had been clear and unprejudiced! But they never were. They are not yet.

Our living progress is accompanied, for good or ill, by a mighty company of the dead. For one new-found fact we have the memory of a thousand old ones. For one new-seen truth we have the remembered multitude of a million lies. Our minds are equipped from the past. Our standards of judgment are retroactive.

Further, since we have the power of making abstractions, such as this "Glory," and of attaching to an abstraction such superhuman increment of fervid admiration as to make it outweigh all other considerations; we have slowly emerged from the darkness of the past, always putting our highest ethical values on things outgrown.

In the light of this interpretation it is easy to see how Christian ethics has been so slow in finding expression–or even acceptance.

Here came a religion preaching the virtues of women–the virtues of slaves. Was a world of males, warriors and masters all, to accept such teaching?

They never have, to more than the slightest extent. To the slaves and the women it was easy—they had been practicing those virtues before—they had to.

In the profound sociological insight of Jesus we see Him setting his single splendid force, that power of Perceived Truth, against all authority, to show us what are really the right lines of human conduct.

But the ethical standards of the past were too strong for him. The church that slowly grew upon the faith of his followers has to this day failed in establishing any general recognition of Christian ethics; merely enforcing the alleged Christian doctrines under a system of eternal reward and punishment.

We can never recognize ethical values suited to our race and time till we learn to understand instead of believing, and to disabuse our minds of that incrusted mass of historic and prehistoric ideas which make human progress the limping, painful, pitiful thing it is.

Consider now, with a fresh mind.

Here is Humanity to-day.

It has to perform many acts, in order to live and grow.

Which of these many acts we do perform are right, which wrong, and why?

That we must decide by studying their relative value to social life and progress. For this are we possessed of intellect; by this are we possessed of intellect for intellect only grows with use. When we use as much intelligence in studying ethics as we do in studying mathematics we shall know more about it; but even now, with the brain of any able girl or boy of twelve to sixteen, we ought to be able to see the simple facts.

First, this human race of ours obviously lives in large numbers, held together by the interchange of services.

(Virtue No. 1. To serve another.)

Second, the stage of development and rate of progress is to be measured by the quantity and quality of those services.

(Virtue No. 2. To widen and improve social service.)

Third, it has been proven, over and over, that certain conditions of individual liberty tend to promote social service;

That Truth is essential to social service;

That Courage is essential to social service;

That Justice is essential to social service;

And so on, and so on-a list we all know and recognize to some degree. But we have not based them on social service, and so do not get their relative value.

Beyond the whole brotherhood of these recognized virtues come the new ones we are only beginning to think about, as intellectual honesty, for instance, and that pre-eminent necessity of an open mind.

The closed mind, the conservative, is as vicious a thing as cumbers human life; not an ultimate evil like those last-stage sins of theft or murder; but a causative evil, an evil condition, a sort of arthritis deformans of the mind. It may not be painful. The sufferer is numb, paralyzed, slowly turned to bone.

This "conservatism," of which most people are still proud, is that quality which most definitely prevents social growth. Those who esteem it imagine that if it were not for them the world would "go too fast," would "fly off at a tangent," and other peculiar dreams. Natural growth has nothing to do with "tangents." You do not hang weights on a tree to keep it from growing too fast. That there may be wrong new ideas as well as right ones is true enough, but both are to be decided by examination-not by shutting one's eyes.

If the previous method or condition is the best, by all means preserve it, but preserve it from choice-on proof of superiority-not merely because it is the oldest.

This general vice of conservatism, which in advanced stages is known as apathy and recognized, even by conservatives, as evil, is a natural result of two things; the external relation of master and slave, which enforces submission, and an inactive mind; and these abstractions of Faith and Obedience, with the theory of completed revelation which turns that Faith and Obedience forever backward. And all these trace back to the dominance of service; man over woman, and that of conqueror over captive-the twin bases of all slavery.

It is a most interesting thing to see the human mind, growing normally, lift its standards of ethics from age to age; always checked by the fixed limits of religion, of economic condition, and of the sex relation.

Every enduring religion has gradually evolved its scale of ethics; Faith and Obedience usually first, as essential to the maintenance of that religion, of course.

Every new religion, sprouting out of the old, as new things must, has altered that Faith, refused that Obedience only to set them up again later, for its own preservation.

It is only a few hundred years since the mind of the world was set free, free to think for itself, to study, to find out; and hardly a century since that mind, turning at last upon the living facts instead of dead words, found the only subject matter for true thought.

Ancient ethics rested upon What God Had Said-according to this, that, or the other authority; discussion of authority not the least part of the trouble. Modern ethics is founded upon what God has done-and is still doing.

God, meaning the Law of the Universe-The Way it Works-is something we may study forever; it does us good.

Ethics is the limited, practical, proven knowledge of God's law in our work-in the processes of human living.

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Because human living requires the best and fullest service from each of us, therefore any relation which interferes with such service is wrong.

Here we come to the oldest error in our long list; the subjection of women to the service of men.

Any wrong position, wrong relation, of one member or organ to the others, is a source of disease. You have but to tie a string tightly around a finger, to sit on your foot, to have a prolapsed stomach or a floating kidney, to realize this. If the thing is misplaced it works wrong.

A relative position which may be right at one stage of growth may become increasingly wrong as growth continues. Here is where conservatism, always striving to preserve the have-beens, has so mischievously retarded progress and maintained disease.

The ancient theory of "division of labor between the sexes" which left her safe with the children in the cave or tree-hut, or working with the other women, while he went forth to hunt the mammoth with his fellows, or to make long chase alone, was a good working theory—then.

It was "right" in a period prehistorically remote.

That it should still be quoted in time of peace, among green pastures and fertile fields, or in orderly cities, shows as conclusively as anything could that the human mind is indeed "wax to receive, and marble to retain."

The theory that woman's only duty is to her family, which worked very well when there was no other social group—becomes increasingly mischievous as society grows more and more complex and efficient, and she, with her limited range of ethical values, lags farther and farther behind.

The squaw, doing her family duty, is doing all the duty there is, so to speak.

The woman of to-day, doing only her family duty, leaves undone all the duties of city, state and nation-fails utterly to grasp the ethics of her time.

Man, solemnly believing that he must be master in his own house, worked steadily against that individual liberty for her, which is the basic need of all social development, even while he strove for it in his own person.

By maintaining this authority he maintains its coefficient of submission, which keeps the world inert and helpless when most it needs to act.

By the ancient cult of Masculine Superiority he keeps alive both in himself and her an arbitrary honor for certain qualities, certain acts; and a corresponding dishonor for others, all without regard to their social values.

By the grotesque absurdity of a double code of ethics for members of the same race, these primitive sex views of ours succeed in maintaining the kind of mind that can believe two opposite things at the same time-a characteristic impressive as an exhibition, but singularly useless to the progress of humanity.

Among all the varied effects upon our life of the emergence of women into full humanity, none is more vitally important than the resultant change in our perception of ethics.

Many see this in regard to the virtue of chastity only; it has a far wider application. Chastity is by no means the sole virtue of women, though it has for long been so regarded. The virtues of women are those common to the human species, with the benevolent devotion of motherhood added. That benevolence, given room to grow as it has grown among the ants for instance, would inevitably develop into universal benevolence.

It has not been given room to grow.

It has been made a minor process, second always to the demands made upon the wife. Notice the exhortation of St. Paul and St. Peter as to the duties of wives. They are bidden to submit to their husbands in all things, yes, most explicitly: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord."

This cheerful putting himself into the place of God in regard to the woman he has married is as good an instance as could be given of the false ethical standards due to the subjection of women.

Nowhere else in nature do we find any male creature assuming this attitude of inordinate superiority; we must account for it in the human race by some new condition peculiar to our kind.

As a matter of fact, there is not, and never has been, anything in man's behavior to warrant the assumption that he is more Godlike than she is; nor do his special sins and weaknesses bear out the theory.

But he has assumed it, for thousands upon thousands of years; and that one piece of incredible injustice is enough to unbalance our power of ethical perception.

Her position tends to maintain in her a blind submission, an unthinkable acceptance of authority, quite inimical to any individual thought; and his position only proves again that mastery is as evil in effect as slavery.

Here he has had always this woman to wait upon him, this loving, patient servant. Looking down upon her he has looked down on service. That service, widening out into all our crafts and trades, is still despised. The ages of woman-service and of slave-service makes us still, with those inherited ideas of ours, despise the working class.

To work, to really make something useful, or to carry it about, is to us ignominious. That way no "glory" lies.

It is true, of course, that in mere physical heredity the serf was the descendant of the slave, and the tradesman is the descendant of the serf. In Europe, where serfdom is still close at hand, the attitude towards "tradespeople" is scarcely more respectful than toward "laborers."

With us, where pioneer conditions made labor conspicuously important and hard to get, we have a somewhat different feeling, and, coincidently, we have more honor for women also.

But this physical descent is by no so powerful as the psychic heredity, which hands down forever the necessarily limited views of the past.

We have seen that the dependent position of women keeps down the growth of independent thought. No servant class can develop freely. At the same time the man's position of mastery keeps strong in him ancient habits of irresponsible dominance. Neither attitude is favorable to progress in thought, and without progress in thought we can make none in ethics.

A clear judgment and a strong self-sustaining will are necessary to promote right conduct. Neither the god-husband nor the slave-wife is likely to develop either.

It will be apparent that in carrying out ethical perceptions into conduct we need the power of the individual will in self-restraint and self-compulsion. Even if we had no load of false ideas to bewilder and paralyze us, we have always the task of following new truths into new habits; always the need for power to turn what we used to do into what we ought to do now.

The living soul, conscious and alert in its temporary lodgement in this bunch of inheritances, needs to be steadily awake, checking here, pruning there, cultivating this, eliminating that, helping the culture grow.

Our living soul looking out freshly from the eyes of each child born to us, finds itself fairly smothered in ancient tendencies; tendencies which should have been pruned gradually away long since by capable ancestors.

Some are born kleptomaniacs, some dipsomaniacs-we can recognize such sharply marked disabilities as these. But most of us are born as heavily handicapped by any number of tendencies, not so conspicuous, but quite as mischievous.

Where we should have brave keen minds, capable of thinking for ourselves, we have tame, dim, submissive ones, trained in long acceptance of authority.

Where we should have the capacity for judging social relations and the values of social conduct, we have only the capacity for judging personal and family relations, and measure conduct by those limited relations.

Where we should have the ability to handle our own lives, checking wrong habits and training right ones as one checks and trains a horse, we have, as weakness from the woman side, either a brainless submissiveness or an equally brainless wilfulness; and from the man's side, that universal self-indulgence which comes from being too much served.

Being "as the Lord" to one's wife does not develop self-control.

In these several ways does the subject position of women affect our ethics; both in the power to understand and the power to apply. In that main ground of all true ethical perception, the recognition of social life as a whole, we are almost hopelessly blinded by this old race custom which says: "Woman's place is the home," and has kept her, all these ages, out of the normal human relationships.

In the next step of recognition, which sees the mutual interdependence of all our activities, and the essential dignity and value of each, we are blinded again by the primitive division of "man's work" and "woman's work," and the accumulated honor and dishonor arbitrarily attached to each.

In the growth of those precious qualities, free brave individual thinking and acting upon one's best judgment, we are hampered incredibly by this worldwide condition in which half humanity is made to submit to the other half.

Many people hold that women keep maintain old religions—their timidity— back progress by their tendency to their conservatism. It is not women, but the artificial position of women which does these things.

Men, on the other hand, not only "their own masters," but masters of the women and children, have developed in pride and comparative freedom; striving with one another for more achievements and more glory; yet all their progress continually undermined by the self-indulgent habits which are inevitably bred by having other people as inseparable servants. To be submitted to in all things, even by one person, is not strengthening to the moral nature.

There dawns upon us to-day the greatest moral awakening the world has ever known. The "hunger and thirst after righteousness" is a natural social instinct. Righteousness is merely the best way for humanity to live. It means a constant increase in power, in prosperity, in health and happiness and peace of mind.

But ethical values are only to be appreciated by free strong minds, minds capable above all of appreciating our group nature, our organic inter-relation.

Such minds should be common to us all.

That they are not, is mainly due to the conditions we have been surveying; to the paralyzing effect of prematurely crystallized religions, and the perverting effect of this basic error in the relation of the sexes.

The full freedom of woman and her participance in all normal race-activities will on the one hand allow free T growth at last to the essentially human qualities; and, on the other hand, give similar freedom to the mind, that we may see and understand at last the laws of human life.

(To be Continued.)