The Truth About Woman Part 21

"We would guard against the temptation to sum up the contrast of the s.e.xes in epigrams. We regard the woman as relatively more anabolic, man as relatively more katabolic, and whether this biological hypothesis is a good one or not, it certainly does no social harm. But when investigators begin to say that woman is more infantile and man more senile, that woman is "undeveloped man" and man is "evolved woman," we get among generalisations not only unscientific but practically dangerous. Not the least dangerous of these generalisations is one of the most familiar, that man is more variable than woman, that the raw materials of evolution make their appearance in greatest abundance in man.

There seems to be no secure basis for this generalisation; it seems doubtful whether any generalisation of the kind is feasible. Prof. Karl Pearson has made seventeen groups of measurements of different parts of the body, in eleven groups the female is more variable than the male, and in six the male is more variable than the female. _Moreover the differences of variability are slight, less than those between members of the same race living in different conditions._ Furthermore, an elementary remark may be pardoned. Since inheritance is bi-parental, and since variation means some peculiarity in the inheritance, a greater variability in men, if true, would not mean that men had any credit for varying. The stimulus to variation may have come from the mother as well as the father.

_If proved it would only mean that the male const.i.tution gives free play to the expression of variations, which are kept latent in the female const.i.tution._ But what is probably true is that some variations find expression more readily in man and others more readily in woman."

The italics in the pa.s.sage are mine, for they make abundantly clear the falseness of the old view, and show how much the question needs reopening from the common-sense standpoint of opportunity. I shall, therefore, only restate my opinion that it is impossible to a.s.sume a fundamental difference in individuality as existing between woman and man until it can be proved that the same free-play to the expression has been common alike to both s.e.xes.

To me it seems probable that what Samuel Butler insists upon is true, and that the origin of variations must be looked for in the needs and experiences of the creature varying. But let this pa.s.s, as it opens up too large and difficult a question to enter upon here. The effects of environment and function must act as a kind of arbiter directing conduct and, in particular, mental expression. It is the very A B C of the question that appropriate training and opportunities of use are essential if any mind is to develop. Supply such mental stimuli to the boy and man, deny them to the girl and woman, and then call "the art impulse of the nature of a male secondary s.e.xual character," because woman has as yet played but a small and secondary part in any of the arts! The source of error is so plain that one can only wonder at the fallacies that have been accepted as truth. Thus, when one finds so just and careful an investigator as Havelock Ellis saying, "It is unthinkable that a woman should have discovered the Copernician system!" it can but be regarded as an example of that s.e.x-bias which marks so strikingly men's statements on this subject of mental s.e.x-differences. We may well ask, Why unthinkable? As answer I will give the finely just acknowledgment of Iwan Bloch on this very question. He refers to this statement of Havelock Ellis, and then says, "I need merely call to mind the widely known physical discoveries of Madame Curie, whose thoroughly independent work qualified her to succeed her husband as professor at the Sorbonne. We cannot, therefore, exclude the possibility that in the sphere of the natural sciences notable discoveries and inventions may be made in the future in consequence of the independent work of women."[322] To take another instance. We find the fact that so far women have gained very small distinction in music, contrasted with the great number of girls who are trained to play on musical instruments. But this is surely to show a complete misunderstanding of the question. It is like saying that the best preparation for a painter to know the colours reflected on water by a cloudy or sunny sky would be a course of optics. Music is at once the most imaginative and the most severely abstract of the arts, and the absence of women from music must be referred to deeper causes, which yet, it seems to me, are not far to seek.

Mind, I make no claim for women. I acknowledge fully that in all the arts, except in acting and in dancing, woman's achievement has been infinitely less than man's. There have been a few great women poets--notably a Sappho, many good writers of fiction, and some capable painters. But to bring forward these particular women and to try either to exaggerate or belittle their importance can serve nothing. This search for ability among women is absurd. It already exists widely, though unused or directed into channels of waste. Of this I am convinced. The thing that has been rare is opportunity. The fact that some few women have struggled up out of obscurity does not so much show that they possessed a special masculine superiority as that they have been less inextricably bound down than others by the conventional bonds of a man-ruled society. I believe that this could be proved in the case of every woman who has attained to fame. And there is another point. The women who have succeeded in bursting these bonds have, in most cases, done so at such great cost of energy and fighting, that their work is rendered crude and often valueless.

Self-a.s.sertion can never be the best preparation for achievement. All this narrows the mental horizon and tends to make the results gained superficial and unenduring. We have here the explanation of much that has been, and still is, futile in women's efforts.

The face of the world, however, is changing for women. It may be that the future will reveal creative ability in them as yet unsuspected. It is not safe to prophesy, and no one can say, as yet, just in what direction women will develop. It may prove that their special qualities will not find expression in the realm of imagination, but will be turned to diplomacy and to administration and financial work.

I simply affirm that what women can or cannot do is as yet unproved.

Throughout the ages of patriarchal faith one ideal of womanhood has been impressed upon the world, which is only now being shaken--the ideal of self-repression and submission to the will of man, of society, and of G.o.d. Women's minds have reflected only the minds of men. I think that much of the failure of women's work arises from the arrogance of men, who have always preferred the flattering image of woman in their own minds to woman herself. Woman has had to accept this. She could only realise herself through man, not with man, while he has been able to realise himself, either with her help or without her.

There is a wide difference between the mental and social att.i.tudes of men and women. Men have been responsible to society at large for their work and conduct, woman's outlook has been much narrower; she has been responsible to men, and has only touched outside life through them.

In this way women have developed on wrong lines. It is significant, for instance, how many women have written books under men's names.

Women's work and conduct has been largely restricted by this adjustment to men, with the result that not only their mental capacity and work-power has suffered, but their attention has been fixed, for the most part, to the enhancing of the attractiveness of their persons as an aid to hold men to their service. The feminine mind and interests have been set so strongly towards personal display that they will not easily be diverted. The clothes-peg woman is familiar to all: she gratifies any whim, well knowing that it is her male protector who will have to pay, not she. She will, on occasions, use her children for such base ends. She knows the game is in her hand. Even if the man resists her for a time, she understands how easily she can break down his objections by a seductive display of silk stockings! The character of woman as the inherent coquette is very deeply rooted. It is only a little more baneful to the freedom of the s.e.xes than that opposite pernicious side of woman as a sort of angel-child, which we all know to be such a preposterous pretence.

Nor do I think that the change from these conditions can, or will, be easy. Women may, and do, protest against the triviality of their lives, but emotional interests are more immediate than intellectual ones. Human nature does not drift into intellectual pursuits voluntarily, rather it is forced into them in connection with urgency and practical activities. It is much easier to be kept, dressed, and petted, than to work. Women have not partic.i.p.ated in the mental activities of men because it has not been necessary for them; to do this has been, indeed, a hindrance to their success. The contrast between the s.e.xes in this respect has been well compared by Thomas[323] to the relation of the amateur and the professional in games. "Women may be desperately interested and work to the limit of endurance at times; but, like the amateur, they enter into the work late, and have not had a lifetime of practice.... No one will contend that the amateur has a nervous organisation less fitted to the game than the professional; it is admitted that the difference lies in the constant practice." It is only in the case of woman that the obvious conclusion is pa.s.sed over for a.s.sumptions that cannot be proved.

The revolt against repression has taken amongst many women another form of abandonment to lives of s.e.xual preoccupation and intrigue.

Scan the history of woman as she is presented in our literature and drama, and you will find one expression of her character, one idea alone of her sphere. It is a point of such interest that I would like to linger upon it. Wherever woman enters she is a disturbing influence; she is the centre of emotional action, it is true, but with no recognised position in life outside of her s.e.x; around her rage seas of stormy pa.s.sions, which sometimes she calms, sometimes lashes into angrier foam. In a sense it may be said that she has scarcely an individual existence; it is solely in her relation to man that her nature is considered. If she works, or practises one of the arts, she does this only until marriage. It does not seem to be conceived as possible that she can follow work, as the artist must, for herself. It is curious how far we have been misled by that giving-power of woman, which, in part, is right and natural to her, but also, in much greater part, has been harmfully forced upon her. The creator's need to find expression is, I am certain, at least as strongly rooted in woman as in man, but no plant can attain to growth unless fitting nourishment is given to it. To ignore this leads very directly to deception. Thus we find Mr. Wells, usually so true in his insight, keeps up an old pretence and affirms in his latest novel, _Marriage_--

"They don't care for art or philosophy, or literature or anything except the things that touch them directly. And the work----? It's nothing to them. No woman ever painted for the love of painting, sang for the sounds she made, or philosophised for the sake of wisdom as men do."

So it is always. Without question it has been taken for granted by those who have depicted woman that her sole occupation is an emotional one; here alone is she justified in literature, as in life.

The fully complete woman of the future is still to be created; a.s.suredly she is not to be found among the women who have been portrayed so widely for us by recent writers. These are portraits arising out of the present confusion; as such they are interesting, but they are quite unreal in their relation to life. They show us women, and men too, in revolt. Often these women are really nothing more than feminist stump-orators preaching the doctrine of an unconsidered individualism: "Free Motherhood," "Free Love"--free anything, in fact. These portraits are far removed, indeed, from the perfected woman that is to be. We want something much more than this--woman with all sides of her nature adequately worked upon and fully developed.

Now, to look for a moment at the other side of the question. Woman has been the cause of emotion in men, the fine instrument by which the poet has sung and the musician played his exquisite music; the sculptor, the painter, the writer, all have drawn their inspiration from her. Have men, then, any right to pride themselves to such a degree on their achievement in the arts? Could they without woman have advanced anything like so far? And this becomes abundantly evident if we look a little deeper and back to the beginning of the arts. "Not,"

writes Karl Bucher,[324] "upon the steep summits of society did poetry originate, it sprang rather from the depths of the pure, strong soul of the people. Women have striven to produce it, and as civilised man owes to woman's work much the best of his possessions, so also are her thoughts interwoven in the spiritual treasure handed down from generation to generation."

A glance back at the beginnings of human civilisation show that women were equal, if not superior, to men in productive poetic activity. To a large extent men first learned from women the elements of the various handicrafts. I have already referred to this fact in the historical section, where we see the reasons whereby women lost their early control over the industrial arts. I wish to refer to a point of special importance now, which I find is brought forward, in this connection, by Iwan Bloch.[325] In the start of the industrial occupations, in sowing and thras.h.i.+ng and grinding the grain, in baking bread, in the preparation of food and drinks, of wine and beer, in the making of pots and baskets, and in spinning, the women worked together; and, as is common still among primitive peoples, these occupations were largely carried on in a rhythmical manner. From this co-operation of the women it resulted that they were the first creators of poetry and music. The men, on the other hand, hunted singly in the forests. The birth of their poetic activity followed only after they had monopolised the labours of material production.

Even to-day among many races the influence of woman's poetry can be followed for a long way into the literary period. I have myself witnessed something similar to this among the peasants in the rural districts of Spain. I have heard women in the evenings relate to one another and to their children the rich legends of their land, carrying on the old traditions that have come down from generation to generation, and thus creating among themselves a communion of heroes.

Then, again, these Spanish women seem never to cease from singing as they carry on their many and heavy labours. The women sing far more frequently than the men. Music is to them an instinctive means of expression; they do not learn it, it belongs to them, like dancing belongs to the natural child. And these folk songs, where the words are often improvised by the singer, seem to give utterance to natural out-door things--a symbol of the people's life, of its action, its work, very strong in its appeal, which blends so strangely joy with sadness. A special quality that often surprised me in these songs was the way in which the people translate and use the music of other countries. I have heard popular English tunes sung by the women as they work, which have ceased to be common in their sentiment and become full of a tenderness into which pa.s.sion has fallen; even slangy music-hall tunes take a new character, a lively brilliance that no longer is vulgar. This music is the true singing of the people, and if you would feel all the beauty of its appeal you must be in touch with the spirit that cries in it, with work, and pa.s.sion, and life.

It may seem that all this has taken us rather far away from our inquiry into the strength of the artistic impulse in women. The way, however, is largely cleared. We have proved that there is, at least, a possible mistake in the opinion that those experiments in creative expression, which we call variations, are necessarily inherent in the male, rather than in the female. Speaking biologically, we may regard woman, in common with man, as a potentially creative agent with a striving will, and thus able to change under the stimulus of appropriate opportunity.

Now, to look at the question for a moment in a different light--in relation to the special qualities that are facts of actual experience in woman's character as it is to-day. It is proved--if scientific determination of such qualities were necessary--that women are more sensitive to suggestion and receptive of outward influences; that they have keener affectability, and thus tend to be more emotional and, within certain limits, more imaginative than men. They react to both physical and psychical stimuli more readily, and it would seem that their brain action is more rapid. Experimental tests have shown that in respect of quickness of comprehension and intellectual mobility women are distinctly superior to men.

It is, of course, an open question how far all this is due to Nature and how far merely to education. Must we regard this emotional endowment of woman as permanent or alterable? Havelock Ellis has detected a decline in the emotivity of modern women under the influence of new conditions, especially as the result of the more healthy life and out-door games among girls. But he does not believe that any present or future change in activities can lead to a complete abolition of the emotional differences between the s.e.xes. These qualities are correlated with the essential physical function of women, and are probably in part of similar deep origin, and are therefore not likely to change. Nietzsche, as is well known, denies this emotional capacity of women, and considers them much more remarkable for their intelligence than for their sensitiveness and feeling. I believe, however, the view of Havelock Ellis to be the right one. Throughout Nature it would seem to be indispensable that the mother should have finer and quicker sensibility than the father.

The female selects the male that she may use him for the race. Women, for the reasons we have seen, have, as I believe, lost much of the fineness of their selective sensitiveness. But whether this greater emotional power in women has been weakened or not, it is--as all nature proves to us--an actual quality of the female, and in it we have, therefore, a positive ground to start from in estimating the potential artistic endowment of women.

Let us accept, then, this sensitiveness both physical and psychical, as at least the natural character of femaleness. How does it place women in her relation to the arts?

Consider what are the qualities essential to success in any one of the arts. Are not the most essential of these a quick reception of impressions, added to an acute memory for all that has been experienced? The poet and the writer can reach deeper into the nature of others, the architect, the sculptor, the painter can see more clearly, the musician hear more finely; and so it is with all the arts. Does not the genius, or even the man of talent, take his place as one who understands incomparably more than others; or, to express it a little differently, the genius is he who is conscious of most and of that most acutely. And what is it that enables him to do this, if it is not a greater sensitiveness and a finer response to every outward suggestion? It would seem, then, that genius must possess the emotional qualities that are the natural endowment of woman; while woman herself is to be excluded from genius. A conclusion that is plainly absurd.

The further we follow this the more striking the likeness between the qualities of genius and the high, nervous affectability of woman becomes. The intuition of woman is really direct vision and may mean only a quicker power of reasoning. Exactly the same quality must be acknowledged as distinguis.h.i.+ng the genius. He, too, _knows, rather than reasons how he knows_.

Take, again, the alleged superiority of the feminine mind in matter of memory. There is the same difference between the memory of the ordinary man and the man of genius. Mental recognition is proportional to the intensity of consciousness. Because the life of the genius is more continuously emotional--nearer, in fact, in its nature to the woman's--he is more ready to receive impressions and to keep them. And here we may note the incitement towards autobiography common to gifted men, which would seem to arise from the same psychological condition which forces women so strongly to self-revelations. So also with all the mental qualities we shall find, I believe, the same connection between the special characters of woman and those of genius. Woman's mental mobility, her tendency towards nervous outbursts, with a corresponding irritability and greater susceptibility to fatigue, except under the support of excitement, as also in the resulting qualities of her power of ready adaptation to changes of habits and response to new influences, her tact, her keener insight into character, her quickness in pity, her impulsiveness, her finer discrimination, her innate sense of symmetry or fitness--each of these qualities may be said to accord also with the character of genius, but no one among them is common to the ordinary man.

Even in so obvious a point as facial expression the same relation may be traced. It is a matter of constant observation that women's faces are more expressive than men's, showing greater mobility, through the instinctive response to suggestions from without and within. A similar mobility will be readily noted in the appearance of almost all men of special giftedness. The faces of such men rarely exhibit the stereotyped expressions that characterise most male countenances. No one mood leaves a permanent imprint on the features, for through the amplitude of feeling a new side of the mind is continuously revealed.

Faces with an unchanging expression belong really to people low in artistic endowment.

Of some significance, again, is the variability in the mental power of genius, leading to what may be called "a periodicity in production."

Goethe has spoken somewhere of "the recurrence of p.u.b.erty" in the artist. This idea may perhaps, without too much straining, be compared with the functional periodicity of woman. The periods in the life of a creative artist often a.s.sume the character of a crisis--a kind of climax of vital energy. Sterile years precede productive periods, to be followed by more barren years. The circle of activity is not broken, it is but interrupted; the years of apparent sterility really leading up to, and preparing for, the creative periods. I may point out here a thought in pa.s.sing in connection with the child-bearing functions of women. This is brought forward by many as the most serious objection to women being able to attain success in any of the arts. The objection is not really sound. No creative work can be carried on without interruptions. The important part in all such work is not to be uninterrupted, but to be able to begin again. The new experiences gained give new power; a fresh and wider view. And woman has in her supreme function of motherhood--an experience denied to men; this should give her greater, and not less, creative capacity.

What is really needed is the freedom, the training and the desire that shall direct expression, so that woman may enrich the arts with her own special experience.

It is useless to argue that woman's past record in the arts holds out no such promise. We know really very little about woman's genius. One thing is, however, certain: the only possible test of it is trial, for without this there is no basis of judgment, no means of deciding whether there be genius or no. If, as I believe, woman's creative capacity arises out of, and is essentially connected with, her s.e.xual functions, how can it have been possible to employ such power in the arts in a society where the natural use of her s.e.x has been restricted and not allowed a free expression?--a society, moreover, in which the pregnant woman has been regarded as an object of shame or ridicule.

To look at this question of woman's achievement in the arts in the old way is no longer possible. We have proved that the natural emotional endowment of woman is rich and varied. But there are two things necessary for achievement: inherent apt.i.tude and opportunity--that is, a favourable environment for expression, in which power may be directed into useful channels and saved from wastefully expending itself. To deny genius to women when the opportunity for its development has been absent is obviously unjust. The influence of education, and the stronger driving of habit and social opinion, must be taken into the account. Women have up till now been without two essential qualities necessary for creating--subjectivity and initiative. In practice they have not been able, or only very rarely, to get beyond imitation. Through the circ.u.mstances of their lives they have lacked the courage and conviction, even if opportunity had arisen, necessary for creative work. For the highest achievement in the arts they have missed the concentration, the severe devotion to work, the control of thought and complete self-restraint, which can come only from discipline, from long training, and freedom. Yet I make the claim that woman, from her const.i.tutional femininity, is a compound of all those qualities that genius demands. The channels of woman's energy have been everywhere choked. No great creative art has ever been produced by a subjugated cla.s.s. Art comes with freedom, with the strong incentive of the communal spirit, and with the sense of power. For centuries woman has been artificially individualised. Her special function of motherhood has remained unacknowledged as a communal work. Her emotional and mental capacities have been turned back upon herself and her immediate belongings, with the result that her social usefulness has been suppressed or thwarted. The emotional feelings of woman are ever pressing, and only need to be brought into stricter command in order to achieve. What women will accomplish no man can say.

One word more. Let us look in this new direction, the direction of the future, because it is there that this possible future entrance of women into the arts becomes important. We stand in the first rush of a new movement. It is the day of experiments. The extraordinary enthusiasm now sweeping through womanhood reveals behind its immediate fevered expression a great power of emotional and spiritual initiative. Wide and radically sweeping are the changes in woman's social outlook. So much stronger is the promise of a vital force, when they are free to enter and to work in the various departments of the arts. It is the commonest error to think of art as if it stood outside the other activities of life. Under the cloak of art much self-amus.e.m.e.nt and vulgar self-display tries to justify itself, and many mercenary interests are concerned in stinting its vitality. All living and valuable art is really communal. It must fit into its right place with all phases of human activities, and to do this it must have somewhere in it the social citizen spirit.

You see how women stand in this matter. The social ideal is becoming a very near ideal to women. And this quickening in her of the citizen spirit may well come to revive our art to a more true and social service. This is no idle fancy. Throughout the ages of patriarchal faith women have been confined in the home, so that an understanding of the needs of the home is in their blood. May not the old ideals remain for service and find expression in the new work? Much that has pa.s.sed with us as art has to be swept away. Let women bring this sense of home into our civic life, and surely it will be reflected in the arts. It is the sense of fitness to the common use and needs of the larger family of the State that has been almost wholly eliminated from our architecture, our statues, our paintings, our music, and much of our literature. The arts have withered and lost their vitality in our narrow and blighting commercial society.

I do not want to weary the reader with what can only be suggestions. I am certain, however, that this vital factor of the home cannot safely be excluded from the State. Consider any one of the old mediaeval towns, with its buildings, its cathedral, its churches, its halls, its homes--all that it contains a splendid witness to the civic life of its people. Contrast this with what we have been willing to accept as art in our industrial towns. In the old days the city was in a very literal sense the home of its citizens, now it is merely a centre of trade. Is it unfair to connect this with the subjection of women and the rush of male activities, that has destroyed the need of beauty and fitness which once was the possession of all? For art you must have human qualities, and you must have emotion. The time has come when we are yielding to the new forces, that yet are old. This age will leave its own track behind it, and those, who are beating out the way now, must start on the right path--freeing for the service of the future all the intellectual and emotional forces of women as well as men.

To think boldly, untrammelled by conventions from the past, to search sedulously for the truth within themselves and follow it fearlessly, this should be the faith of all those women who love art. Let them have the courage of their own deep emotions. Let them look forward into the future, instead of clinging timorously to the stone wall of their past imitation of men. Then, indeed, woman may be freed--able to give expression to those creative ideas which are wrapped up with the elements of her nature. But women must beware of sham emotion and lachrymose sentimentality. It is her own feelings she must voice, not the feelings that have been supposed to belong to her. Then, indeed, the work of women will begin to count. The two things most peculiar to woman--her pursuing-love of man and her need of a child, will find their expression in women's art.

It is an appalling commentary on the condition of our thoughts on this subject that the pregnant woman was but recently considered unfit to be represented in the statues placed on one of our public buildings.

How convincingly this speaks to women, "Be not ashamed of anything, but to be ashamed."

III.--_The Affectability of Woman--Its Connection with the Religious Impulse_

"Religion shares with the s.e.xual impulse the unceasing yearning, the sentiment of everlastingness, the mystic absorption into the depths of life, the longing for the coalescence of individualities in an eternally blessed union, free from earthly fetters."--IWAN BLOCH.

Now, this affectability, that we have found to be a characteristic feminine feature, leads us directly to an inquiry into the part religion has played in the lives of women, and to the wider consideration of the religious impulse in general, and its close connection with the s.e.xual instinct. I had intended to treat this subject in some detail, especially in relation to religious hypnotic phenomena, a matter of very deep significance in estimating woman's character. I should have liked, too, to have traced the influence of the early and late Christian teaching upon woman's mind, to have examined her position in the social and domestic relations.h.i.+p, and then to have contrasted this with the almost complete liberty and distinction enjoyed by women in Pagan culture. But the field opened up by these inquiries is too wide. The previous sections of this chapter have grown to such length that all that is possible to me now, if I am to have s.p.a.ce for the matters I want still to investigate, are a few scattered remarks and suggestions which seem to me to throw some light on this important side of woman's life.

No one will question woman's apt.i.tude for religion, whatever the opinion held as to what the organic basis of that apt.i.tude may be. If we accept that woman is more sensitive to suggestion, more emotional, and more imaginative in her nature, it is plain why religion affects her more deeply than men. The extraordinary way in which woman can be influenced by religious suggestion is similar in its nature to that saturation of her innermost thoughts with love, which is due in part, as I believe, to the special qualities of her s.e.x-functions, but also, in part, to the over-emphasised s.e.xuality produced in her by an artificial existence. Women have accepted religious beliefs as they have accepted man's valuation of temporal things, even although these may be utterly at variance with their nature and their desires.

It has been said that the disposition of woman makes her peculiarly conservative and uncritical of religious beliefs. Others suggest that there is a "specific religious sense" in women related with a higher standard of character. This I do not believe: it is part of the fiction of woman's superior morality. I think in most women is hidden an immense appet.i.te for life, an immense capacity for expenditure of force. She does not often dare to listen to these deeps within her soul; yet the insurgent voices fill her. There is in the life of most women something wanting, some general idea, some aim to hold life together. The effort of woman--often unconscious, but always present--to realise herself in love has forced her to practise duplicity and to accept dependence. And this sense of dependence in her on a protector, not always forthcoming, and, even when present, not always able to protect, has sent her in search of something outside and beyond the known and fallible, and has prepared her to accept with eagerness any professed revelation of the infallible unknown.

We have seen again and again in the course of our inquiry how deep and natural the s.e.x impulse is in woman, and this, combined with the much greater complexity of her s.e.xual life, renders her position peculiarly liable to be affected disastrously by any failure of love. It must be recognised that unbounded piety is often no more than a s.e.x symptom, proceeding from deprivation or from satiety of love, as also from love's failure in loveless marriage. It seems to me that this connection of the religious impulse with s.e.xuality is a very important thing for women to understand. In our achievement of facing the truth in the place of evasions about fundamental things, lies the path, I believe along which woman can escape, if ever she is to escape, from the confusion of purposes that distract her at present.

The intimate a.s.sociation between religious ideas and feelings and the s.e.xual life is abundantly proved by the history of all peoples. We first meet it in the widespread early practice of religious prost.i.tution, which has aptly been called "l.u.s.t sacrifice." It is even more manifest in the ancient religious erotic festivals. Of these we have examples in the festivals of Isis in Egypt, in the Dionysian and Eleusinian festivals of the h.e.l.lenes, in the Roman Baccha.n.a.lia and festival of Flora, and among the Jews in the feast of Baal-peor. In these festivals the frenzy of religious mysticism merges with the wildest s.e.xual licence. s.e.xual mysticism found its way also into Christianity, a fact to which the lives of the saints furnish an illuminating witness. And down to the present day we may notice its manifestations in the most diverse sects during any period of religious revival. We still meet with s.e.xual excesses under the shadow of faith, as, for instance, occurred in the late revival in Wales.

Havelock Ellis has laid stress on the leading significance of religious s.e.xual perceptions, and their special importance on the emotional feminine character. This subject is so deeply connected with women that I shall, I hope, be pardoned if I pause for a moment to relate a personal experience which may help to make this truth more clear.

In my girlhood I was strongly drawn to religion, partly through training and example, but more, as I now know, by the affectability of my strongly feminine temperament. My religious enthusiasm was so intense that often I was in a condition which must have been closely connected with erotic religious ecstasy. Salvation was the essential fact of my life; seeking for it brought me the excitement I unconsciously craved of conflicts and fulfilled desires. I sought for G.o.d as the pa.s.sionate woman seeks her lover. I recall a period--I was approaching womanhood--during which I prayed continuously and earnestly that it might be granted to me, as to the saints of old, to see G.o.d and the Risen Christ. For long I received no answer. This did not weaken my faith, but the great trouble of my mind became for long a consciousness of my own unworthiness. I began an absurd and childish system of self-punishments, and what I thought would lead to purification. Then there came a night--it was summer and I was looking from my window out at the beautiful evening sky--when my prayer was answered. I seemed, in very truth, to see G.o.d. From that time, and for long, I lived in extraordinary happiness. I am sure that I must have become hysterical. I felt that I was set apart by G.o.d; I conceived the idea of founding a new religious sect. That I made no attempt to do this was due to circ.u.mstances, which forced me into active work to gain my own living. Religion continued very largely in my life, but I was too healthily occupied to be favoured with any more visions. But the essential point in all this is its close connection with my s.e.xual development. So far I had never been in love. I believe that the natural s.e.x desires awakened consciously in me much later than is common. My need for religion lasted until my s.e.x needs were fully satisfied, then, little by little, it faded. I want to state the truth. I did not then trace, nor should I have understood, this connection. The knowledge came to me long years afterwards; how it does not matter, but I am certain that in me the religious impulse and the s.e.x impulse are one.

Love has in it much of the same supernatural element as religion. Both the s.e.x-act and the act of finding salvation come into intimate a.s.sociation with woman's need of dependence; hence arises the remarkable relation between the two, and that easy transition of s.e.xual emotion into religious emotion which is manifest in so many women. In both cases the surrender, the renunciation of personal will, is an experience fraught with pa.s.sionate pleasure. "Love," as H.G.

Wells has said, "is the individualised correlation of salvation, like that it is a synthetic consequence of conflict and confusions." It is true that few women render love the compliment of taking it seriously.

To many it is merely this: a little amus.e.m.e.nt, clothes, a home, money to buy new toys; some mild pleasure, a little chagrin, a little weariness, and then the end. They do not realise or ever desire love in its full joy of personal surrender. So, too, many women never, save in some time of personal bewilderment, desire or seek salvation. But such aimlessness brings its own emptiness, and women strain and seek towards the G.o.d-head. For the truth remains, woman's need of love is greater than man's need, and for this reason, where love fails her, her desire for salvation is deeper than man's desire. And here again, and once again, we see the difference between the s.e.xes. The woman pays the higher price for her implicit, unquestioning, and unconscious obedience to Nature. And society has made the payment still heavier.

Let us for this last pity women! The dice they have had to throw in the game of life is their s.e.x, and they have only been allowed one throw, and when they have thrown wastefully--yes, it is here that religion has entered into the game. It may almost be said to measure the failures and false boundaries in women's loves. The songs of love and the songs of faith are alike; and women act wors.h.i.+p as also they are often driven to act love. The woman who knows her own heart must know that this is true. And one cannot wish to see the opium of religion taken from women until the game is made a fairer one for them to play.

There is another point to consider.