Under our present civilisation, and mainly owing to the unnatural relation of the sexes, which has unduly emphasised certain qualities of excessive femininity, sex-feeling has been at once over-accentuated and under-disciplined. Thus, an extreme outward sex-attraction has come to veil but thinly a deep inward sex-antipathy, until it seems almost impossible that women and men can ever really understand one another. Herein lie the roots, as I believe, of much of the brutal treatment of women by men and the contempt in which too often they are held. For what is the truth here? In this so-called "duel of sex," while woman's moral equality has not been recognised, women have employed their sex-differences as the most effective weapon for compassing their own ends, and men in the mass—unmindful of the truth that love is an understanding of the contrasted natures, a solution of the riddle—have wished to have it so. What significance arises out of this in the so-much-lauded cry, "Woman's influence!" "By thy submission rule," really means in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, "Rule by sex-seduction and flattery." Yes, we women cannot burk the truth—the seduction and flattery of man by woman is writ large over the face of our present society, it speaks in our literature and in our art. It is to this prostitution of love that sex-differences have carried us.

There is, of course, nothing new in these conditions; and there have always been times when men have rebelled against this sexual tyranny of woman. Misogyny is an old story. It is Euripides who betrays to us the real meaning of such revolt. In a fragment of his we read, The most invincible of all things is a woman! Men are so little sure of themselves that they fear suffering from woman an annihilation of their own personality. There is nothing surprising in this; rather it is one of Nature's laws that may not be overlooked, traceable back to that first coalescence when the female cellule absorbs the male. In one way or another, for Nature's ends or for her own, the female will always absorb the male—the woman the man; she is the river of life, he but the tributary stream. Paracelsus long ago gave utterance to the profound truth, "Woman is nearer to the world than man." Hence the army of misogynists—a Schopenhauer, a Strindberg, a Weininger, even a great Tolstoi, alike moved in a rebellion of disillusion, or satiety, against the power of woman that has been turned into turbid channels of misusage. Thence, too, the hateful Christian doctrine of the fundamentally sinful, evil, devilish nature of woman.

This rebellion of men, and their efforts to free themselves from the thrall of women has been of little avail. We have reached now a new stage in the age-long conflict of the sexes—the rebellion of the woman. There has come a time when the old cry, "Woman, what have I to do with you?" is being changed. It is woman who is whispering to herself and to her sisters, and, as she gains in courage, crying it aloud, "Men, what have we to do with you? We belong to ourselves." It is to this impasse in the confusion and antagonism of the present moment of transition that sex-differences are bringing us.

In face of this we may well pause.

What to do is another matter. But I am mainly concerned just now in trying to see facts clearly. And to me it often seems that woman is in grave danger to-day of becoming intoxicated with herself. She stands out self-affirming, postulating her own—or what she thinks to be her own—nature. In her, perhaps too-sudden, awakening to an entirely new existence of a free personality, an over-consciousness of her rights has arisen, causing a confusion of her instincts, so she fails to see the revelation begotten in her inmost self.

There is no getting away from the truth that there is this vital organic distinction between woman and man; and further, that this sexual difference does, and it is well that it should, find its expression in a large number of detailed characters of femaleness and maleness, various in value, some, perhaps, trivial, and some important. These characters are natural in origin and natural also in having survived ages of eliminative selection. But the point I want to make clear is that, side by side with these fundamental differences, have arisen in women a number of what may be called coercive differentiations, inconsistent with, and absolutely hurtful to the natural distinctions, being destructive to the love and understanding of woman and man, and not less destructive to the vigour of the race. This misdifferentiation of women, it is true, is passing, but the progressive gain in this direction is counterbalanced by a new and hardly less grave danger.

I am dealing here with what seems to me to be a perilous quicksand in woman's struggle for free development. To hear many women talk it would appear that the new ideal was a one-sexed world. A great army of women have espoused the task of raising their sex out of subjection. For such a duty the strength and energy of passion is required. Can this task be performed if the woman to any extent indulges in sex—otherwise subjection to man. Sexuality debases, even reproduction and birth are regarded as "nauseating." Woman is not free, only because she has been the slave to the primitive cycle of emotions which belong to physical love. The renunciation, the conquest of sex—it is this that must be gained. As for man, he has been shown up, women have found him out; his long-worn garments of authority and his mystery and glamour have been torn into shreds—woman will have none of him.

Now obviously these are over-statements, yet they are the logical outcome of much of the talk that one hears. It is the visible sign of our incoherence and error, and in the measure of these follies we are sent back to seek the truth. Women need a robuster courage in the face of love, a greater faith in their womanhood, and in the scheme of Life. Nothing can be gained from the child's folly in breaking the toys that have momentarily ceased to please. The misogamist type of woman cannot fail to prove as futile as the misogamist man. Not "Free from man" is the watch-cry of women's emancipation that surely is to be, but "Free with man."

Let us pass to a somewhat different instance—the perversion of the natural instincts of woman which has led to the attempt to establish what has been called a "third sex,"[317] a type of woman in whom the sexual differences are obscured or even obliterated—a woman who is, in fact, a temperamental neuter. Economic conditions are compelling women to enter with men into the fierce competition of our disordered social State. Partly due to this reason, though much more, as I think, to the strong stirring in woman of her newly-discovered self, there has arisen what I should like to call an over-emphasised Intellectualism. Where sex is ignored there is bound to lurk danger. Every one recognises the significance of the advance in particular cases of women towards a higher intellectual individuation, and the social utility of those women who have been truly the pioneers of the new freedom; but this does not lessen at all the disastrous influence of an ideal which holds up the renunciation of the natural rights of love and activities of women, and thus involves an irreparable loss to the race by the barrenness of many of its finest types. The significance of such Intellectuals must be limited, because for them the possibility of transmission by inheritance of their valuable qualities is cut off, and hence the way is closed to a further progress. And, thus, we are brought back to that simple truth from which we started; there are two sexes, the female and the male, on their specific differences and resemblances blended together in union every true advance in progress depends—on the perfected woman and the perfected man.

FOOTNOTES:

[313] See Havelock Ellis, "The Sexual Impulse in Woman," Psychology of Sex, Vol. III. p. 181, who gives this quotation from Marro.

[314] See page 111.

[315] Haddon, "Western Tribes of Torres Straits," Journal of the Anthropological Society, Vol. XIX., Feb. 1890; cited by Ellis, op. cit., p. 185.

[316] See page 66.

[317] E. von Wolzogen gives this name, The Third Sex, to a romance in which he describes a kind of barren, stunted woman, capable, however, of holding her place in all work in competition with men. The writer compares these types of women to the workers among ants and bees. See p. 62. I have quoted from Iwan Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Times, p. 13.



CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IX

APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING CHAPTER WITH SOME FURTHER REMARKS ON SEX DIFFERENCES

I.—Women and Labour

A further examination of the sexual differences—The knowledge we have gained does not enable us definitely to settle the problem—The necessity of considering Nurture—Woman's character to some extent the result of circumstance, to some extent organic—The difficulties of the problem—Standards of comparison—Incompleteness of our knowledge—New researches on sex-differences—The confusion of opinions—Women and men different, but neither superior to the other—The position of women in society to-day—The increasing surplus of women—How can a remedy be found?—Woman's place in the home—The changes in modern conditions—Women and labour—The damning struggle for life—Sweated work—Women's wages—The marketable value of woman's sex—This the explanation of the smallness of women's wages—The prostitute better paid than the worker—Woman's strength as compared with man's—Are women really the weaker sex?—Woman's work capacity equal to man's, but different—The Spanish women—The intolerable conditions of labour in commercial countries—Women more deeply concerned than men—The real value of women's work—This must be recognised by the State—The social service of child-bearing—The primary and most important work of women—The present revolt of women—How far is this justifiable—A caution and some reflections.

II.—Sexual Differences of the Mind and the Artistic Impulse in Women

The mental and psychical sexual differences—Ineradicability of these—Can they be modified or disregarded?—The masculine and feminine intellectual qualities—Caution necessary in making any comparison—Example, a tenacious memory—Is this a feminine characteristic?—Woman's intuition—Its value—Each sex contributes to the thought power of the other—The artistic impulse—Is genius to be regarded as an endowment of the male?—An examination of the grounds for this view—Untenability of the opinion of the greater variational tendency of men—The question needs reopening—The influence of environment and training on woman's mind—What woman can, or can not, do as yet unproved—Woman's talent for diplomacy—The separation between the mental life of the sexes—The result on woman's mind—The revolt against repression—Woman as she is represented in literature—The woman of the future—Woman the cause of emotion in men—Part played by women in early civilisations—What men learnt from them—Woman's emotional endowment—Her affectability and response to suggestion—These the qualities essential to success in the arts—A comparison between the qualities of genius and the qualities of woman—This opens up questions of startling significance—What women may achieve in the future—Some suggestions as to the effect of the entrance of women into the arts.

III.—The Affectability of Woman—Its Connection with the Religious Impulse

Woman's aptitude for religion—Her need for a protection—Relation between the sexual and religious emotions—Deprivation of love and satiety of love the sources of religious needs—Religious prostitution—Religio-erotic festivals—Sexual mysticism in Christianity—The lives of the saints—Religious sexual perceptions—Their influence on the emotional feminine character—A personal experience—The association between love and salvation—The same sense of the eternal in the religious and the sexual impulse—Asceticism—Its origin in the sexual emotions—Preoccupation of the ascetic with sex needs—The transformation of the sex-impulse into spiritual activities—Examples—The modern ascetic—The fear of love—This the ultimate cause of the contempt of woman—Example of Maupassant's priest—In love the way of salvation.



CHAPTER IX

APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING CHAPTER WITH SOME FURTHER REMARKS ON SEX DIFFERENCES

I.—Women and Labour

"The fullest ideal of the woman-worker is she who works not merely or mainly for men as the help and instrument of their purpose, but who works with men as the instrument yet material of her purpose."—GEDDES AND THOMPSON.

When we come to consider the detailed differences between woman and man, a sharp separation of them into female qualities and male qualities no longer squares with the known facts. Any attempt to lessen the natural differences, as also to weaken at all the attractions arising from this divergence, must be regarded with extreme distrust. There is a real and inherent prejudice against the masculine woman and the feminine man. It is nevertheless necessary very carefully to discriminate between innate qualities of femaleness and maleness and those differences that have been acquired as the direct result of peculiarities of environmental conditions. It is certain that many differences in the physical and mental capacity of women must be referred not to Nature but to Nurture, i.e. the effects of conditions and training. Let me give one concrete case, for one clear illustration is more eloquent than any statement. Long ago Professor Karl Vogt pointed out that women were awkward manipulators. Thomas, in Sex and Society, answers this well: "The awkwardness in manual manipulation shown by these girls was surely due to lack of practice. The fastest type-writer in the world is to-day a woman; the record for roping steers (a feat depending on manual dexterity rather than physical force) is held by a woman." I may add to this an example of my own observation. In a recent International Fly and Bait Casting Tournament, held at the Crystal Palace, a woman was among the competitors, and gave an admirable exhibition of skill in salmon fly-casting. In this competition she threw one cast 34 feet and two of 33 feet, making an aggregate of 100 yards, which gained her the prize over the male competitors. It has also been recently stated that women show equal skill with men in shooting at a target.

It is plain that the more we examine the question of sex-differences the more it baffles us. The only safeguard against utter confusion and idleness of thought is to fall back on the common-sense view that woman is what she is largely, because she has lived as she has, and further, that in the present transition no arbitrary rules may be laid down by men as to what she should, or should not, can, or cannot do. Even in fear of possible danger to be incurred, woman must no longer be "grandfathered." The scope of this chapter is to make this clear.

It is no part of my purpose, even if it were possible for me within the limits at my command, to enter into an examination of all the numerous statements and theories with regard to the real or supposed secondary sexual characters of woman. For though the practical utility of such detailed knowledge is obvious, while there is no certainty of opinion even among experts to fix the distinctions between the sexes, it is wiser in one who, like myself, can claim no scientific knowledge to avoid the hazard of any conclusion. I confess that a most careful study of the many differing opinions has left me in a state of mental confusion. One is tempted to adopt those views that fit in with one's own observations and to neglect others probably equally right that do not do this. What is wanted is a much larger number of careful experiments and scientific observations. Some of these have been made already, and their value is great, but the basis is still too narrow for any safe generalisations. All kinds of error are clearly very likely to arise. I may, perhaps, be allowed to state my surprise, not to say amusement, at the conviction evidenced by some male writers in their estimate of the character of my sex. I find myself given many qualities that I am sure I have not got, and deprived of others that I am equally certain I possess. Thus, I have found myself wondering, as I sought sincerely to find truth, whether I am indeed woman or man? or, to be more exact, whether the female qualities in me do not include many others regarded as masculine? This has forced the thought—is the difference between the sexes, after all, so complete?

I am aware that what I am now saying appears to be in contradiction with my other statements. I cannot help it. The fact is, that truth is always more diverse than we suspect. This is a question that reaches so deeply that apparent contradiction is sometimes inevitable. We find we are rooted into outside things, and we melt away, as it were, into them, and no woman or man can say, "I consist absolutely of this or that"; nor define herself or himself so certainly as to be sure where the differences between the sexes end and the points of contact begin. Many qualities of the personality appear no more female than male; no more belonging to the woman than the man. And yet, underlying these common qualities there is a deep under-current in which all our nature finds expression in our sex.

Science has of late years advanced far in this matter, yet it has not much more than begun. There is, as yet, no approximation to unanimity of decision, though the way has been cleared of many errors. This is all that has really been done by the ablest observers, who seem, however, unwilling, if one may say so without presumption, to accept the conclusions to which their own experiments and observations would seem to point. Take an illustration. The early certitude on the sex-differences in the weight of the brain and in the proportion of the cerebral lobes has been completely turned upside down. The long believed opinion of the inferiority of the woman in this direction has been proved to be founded on prejudice, fallacies, and over-hasty generalisations, so that now it is allowed that the sexual differences in the brain are at most very small. An even more instructive example arises from the ancient theory that there was a natural difference in the respiratory movements of the sexes. Hutchinson even argued that this costal breathing was an adaptation to the child-bearing function in woman. Further investigations, however, with a wider basis and more accurate methods—and one may surely add more common-sense—have changed the whole aspect of the matter. This difference has been proved to be due, not to Nature at all, but wholly to the effect of corset-wearing and woman's conventional dress. There is, it would seem, no limit to the quagmire of superstition and error into which sex-difference have drawn even the most careful inquirers if once they fail to cut themselves adrift from that superficial view of Nature's scheme, by which the woman is considered as being handicapped in every direction by her maternal function.

Enough has now been said to indicate the complication of the facts, to say nothing of their practical application. I must refer my readers for further details to convenient summaries of the sexual differences, in Havelock Ellis's Man and Woman; Geddes and Thomson's Sex and Evolution; Thomas's Sex and Society; and H. Campbell's Differences in the Nervous Organisation of Men and Women: the first of these is a treasure store of facts, and may be regarded as the foundation of all later research; the last is, perhaps, the most generally interesting, certainly it is the most favourable in its estimate of women. Dr. Campbell urges with much force the fallacy of many popular views. He does not seem to believe in the fundamental origin of maleness and femaleness, holding them rather to be secondary and derived, the result, in fact, of selection.

I have already sufficiently guarded against being supposed to have any desire to establish identity between woman and man. I do, however, object to any general conclusion of an arbitrary and excessive sex-separation, without the essential preliminary inquiry being made as to the effects of conditions and training; that is, whether the opportunities of development have been at all equal. But here, to save falling into a misconception, it is necessary to point out that I do not say the same opportunities, but equal. This difference is so important that, risking the fear of being tedious, I must restate my belief in the unlikeness of the sexes. As Havelock Ellis says, "A man is a man to his very thumbs, and a woman is a woman down to her little toes." What I do mean, then, is this: Have the opportunities of the woman to develop as woman been equal to the opportunities of the man to develop as man? It is on this question, it seems to me, that our attention should be fixed.

Leaving for a little any attempt to find out in what directions this development of woman can be most fully carried out, let us now clear our way by glancing very briefly at certain plain facts of the actual position of women as they present themselves in our society to-day.

In 1901 there were 1,070,000 more women than men in this country; this surplus of women has increased slowly but steadily in every census since 1841! Thus, those who hold (as all who look straight at this matter must) that the essential need for the normal woman are conditions that make possible the fulfilment of her sex-functions, are placed in an awkward dilemma when they wish to restrict her activities to marriage and the home. By such narrowing of the sexual sphere they are not taking into consideration the facts as they exist to-day. In a society where the women outnumber the men by more than a million, it is sufficiently evident that justice can be done to these primary needs of woman only by adopting one of two courses, the placing of women in a position which secures to them the possession of property, or, if their dependence on the labours of men is maintained, the recognition of some form of polygamy. Here is no advocacy of any sexual licence or of free-love, but I do set up a claim for free motherhood, and however great the objections that may, and, as I think, must be raised against polygamy, I am unhesitating in stating my belief that any open and brave facing of the facts of the sex relationship is better than our present ignorance or hypocritical indifference, which is spread like a shroud over our national conditions of concealed polygamy for men, side by side with enforced celibacy and unconcealed prostitution for a great number of women. The most hopeful sign of the woman's movement is a new solidarity that is surely killing the fatalism of a past acquiescing in wrongs, and is slowly giving birth to a fine spiritual apprehension of the great truth that what concerns any woman concerns all women, and, I would add, also all men. This last—that there can be no woman's question that is not also a man's question—is so essentially a part of any fruitful change in our domestic and social relationship that women must not permit themselves for a moment to forget it. It is the very plain things that so often we do overlook.

So it becomes clear that the parrot cries "Woman's Place!" "Woman's Sphere!" "Her place is the home!" have lost much, even if not all, their significance. For, in the first place, it is obvious that under present conditions there are not enough homes to go round; and second, even if we neglect this essential fact, women may well answer such demands by saying "much depends on the character and conditions of the home we are to stay in." It was a many-sided home of free and full activity in which woman evolved and wherein for long ages she worked; a home, in fact, which gave free opportunities for the exercise of those qualities of constructive energy that women, broadly speaking, may be said to possess. The woman's so-called natural position in the home is not now natural at all. The conditions of life have changed. Everything is drifting towards separation from worn-out conditions. We are increasingly conscious of a growing discontent at waste. The home with its old full activities has passed from women's hands. But woman's work is not less needed. To-day the State claims her; the Nation's housekeeping needs the vitalising mother-force more than anything else.

The old way of looking at the patriarchal family was, from one point of thought, perfectly right and reasonable as long as every woman was ensured the protection of, and maintenance by, some man. Nor do I think there was any unhappiness or degradation involved to women in this co-operation of the old days, where the man went out to work and the woman stayed to do work at least equally valuable in the home. It was, as a rule, a co-operation of love, and, in any case, it was an equal partnership in work. But what was true once is not true now. We are living in a continually changing development and modification of the old tradition of the relationship of woman and man. It is very needful to impress this factor of constant change on our attention, and to fix it there. To ignore it, and it is too commonly ignored, is to falsify every issue. "The Hithertos," as Mr. Zangwill has aptly termed them, are helpless. Things are so, and we are carried on; and as yet we know not whither, and we are floundering not a little as we seek for a way. The women of one class have been forced into labour by the sharp driving of hunger. Among the women of the other class have arisen a great number who have turned to seek occupation from an entirely different cause; the no less bitter driving of an unstimulating and ineffective existence, a kind of boiling-over of women's energy wasted, causing a revolt of the woman-soul against a life of confused purposes, achieving by accident what is achieved at all. Between the women who have the finest opportunities and the women who have none there is this common kinship—the wastage not so much of woman as of womanhood.

Let us consider for a moment the women who have been forced into the cheating, damning struggle for life. There are, according to the estimate of labour experts, 5,000,000 women industrially employed in England. The important point to consider is that during the last sixty years the women who work are gaining numerically at a greater rate than men are. The average weekly wage paid is seven shillings. Nine-tenths of the sweated work of this country is done by women. I have no wish to give statistics of the wages in particular trades; these are readily accessible to all. Unfortunately the facts do not allow any exaggeration; they are saddening and horrible enough in themselves. The life-blood of women, that should be given to the race, is being stitched into our ready-made clothes; is washed and ironed into our linen; wrought into the laces and embroideries, the feathers and flowers, the sham furs with which we other women bedeck ourselves; it is poured into our adulterated foods; it is pasted on our matches and pin-boxes; stuffed into our furniture and mattresses; and spent on the toys we buy for our children. The china that we use for our foods and the tins in which we cook them are damned with the lead-poison that we offer to women as the reward of labour.

It is these wrongs that the mothers with the fathers of the race have to think out the way to alter. There is no one among us who is guiltless in this matter. Things that are continuously wrong need revolutionising, and not patching up.

What, then, is the real cause of the lowness of remuneration offered to women for work when compared with men? Thousands of women and girls receive wages that are insufficient to support life. They do not die, they live; but how? The answer is plain. Woman possesses a marketable value attached to her personality which man has not got. This enables her to live, if she has children, to feed them, and also not infrequently to support the man, forced out of work by the lowness of the wages she can accept. The woman's sex is a saleable thing. Prostitution is the door of escape freely opened to all women. It is because of the reserve fund thus established that their honest wages suffer. Not all sweated women are prostitutes. Many are legally married, they exist somehow; but the wages of all women are conditioned by this sexual resource. It can be readily seen that this is a survival of the patriarchal idea of the property value of woman. To-day it affords a striking example of the conflict between the old rights of men with the rising power of women. The value of woman is her sexual value; her value as a worker is as yet unrecognised, except as a secondary matter. You may refuse to be convinced of this. Yet the fact remains that our society is so organised that women are more highly paid and better treated as prostitutes than they are as honest workers.

I shall say no more on this question here, as I propose to deal with prostitution more fully in a later chapter. I would, however, point out that what I have said in no way implies an opinion that women should be driven out of the labour market. This is as unfair as that they should be driven into it. It is the conditions of labour that must be changed. I am not even able to accept the opinion that the strength of woman is necessarily less than that of man, only that it is different. It is, in fact, just this difference that is so important. If woman's capacity in work was the same as men's no great advantage could arise from women's entrance into the work of the State. It might well lead to even worse confusion. It is the special qualities that belong to woman that humanity is waiting for. Just as at the dawn of civilisation society was moulded and in great measure built up by women, then probably unconscious of their power and the end it made towards, so, in the future, our society will be carried on and humanised by women, deliberately working for the race, their creative energy having become self-conscious and organised in a final and fruitful period of civilisation.

I want to look a little further into this question of the strength of woman as compared with the strength of man. On the whole it seems right to say that the man is the more muscular type, and stronger in relation to isolated feats and spasmodic efforts. But against this may be placed the relative greater tenacity of life in women. They are longer lived, alike in infancy and in old age; they also show a greater power of resisting death. The difference in the incidence of disease, again, in the two sexes is far from furnishing conclusive evidence as to the greater feebleness of women. Their constitution seems to have staying powers greater than the man's. The theory that women are "natural invalids" cannot be accepted. Every care must be taken to guard against any misdifferentiation of function in the kind of work women are to do, but there is no evidence to prove that healthy work is less beneficial to women than to men. Indeed, all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Even in the matter of muscular power it is difficult to make any absolute statement. The muscular development of women among primitive peoples is well known. Japanese women will coal a vessel with a rapidity unsurpassable by men. The pit-brow women of the Lancashire collieries are said to be of finer physical development than any other class of women workers. I have seen the women of Northern Spain perform feats of strength that seem extraordinary.

It is worth while to wait to consider these Spanish women, who are well known to me. The industrial side of primitive culture has always belonged to women, and in Galicia, the north-west province of Spain, the old custom is still in active practice, owing to the widespread emigration of the men. The farms are worked by women, the ox-carts are driven by women, the seed is sown and reaped by women—indeed, all work is done by women. What is important is that these women have benefited by this enforced engaging in activities which in most countries have been absorbed by men. The fine physical qualities of these workers can scarcely be questioned. I have taken pains to gain all possible information on this subject. Statistics are not available, because in Galicia they have not been kept from this point of view. I find, however, that it is the opinion of many eminent doctors and the most thoughtful men of the province, that this labour does not damage the health or beauty of the women, but the contrary, nor does it prejudice the life and health of their children. As workers they are most conscientious and intelligent, apt to learn, and ready to adopt improvements. From my personal observations I can bear witness that their children are universally well cared for. What impressed me was that these women looked happy. They are full of energy and vigour, even to an advanced age. They are evidently happy, and the standard of beauty among them will compare favourably with the women of any other nation. I once witnessed an interesting episode during a motor-ride in the country. A robust and comely Gallegan woman was riding a ancas (pillion fashion) with a young caballero, probably her son. The passing of our motor-car frightened the steed, with the result that both riders were unhorsed. Neither was hurt, but it was the woman who pursued the runaway horse. She caught it without assistance and with surprising skill. What happened to the man I cannot say. When I saw him he was standing in the road brushing the dust from his clothes. I presume the woman returned with the horse to fetch him.

Women were the world's primitive carriers. In Galicia I have seen women bearing immense burdens, unloading boats, acting as porters and firemen, and removing household furniture. I saw one woman with a chest of drawers easily poised upon her head, another woman bore a coffin, while another, who was old, carried a small bedstead. A beautiful woman porter in one village carried our heavy luggage, running with it on bare feet, without sign of effort. She was the mother of four children, and her husband was at the late Cuban war. She was upright as a young pine, with the shapeliness that comes from perfect bodily equipoise. I do not wish to judge from trivial incidents, but I saw in the Gallegan women a strength and a beauty that has become rare among women to-day. I recall a conversation with an Englishman I met at La Coruna, of the not uncommon strongly patriotic and censorious type. We were walking together on the quay; he pointed to a group of the Gallegan burden-bearers, who were unloading a vessel, remarking in his indiscriminate British gallantry, "I can't bear to see women doing work that ought to be done by men." "Look at the women!" was the answer I made him.

It is, of course, impossible to compare the industrial conditions of such a country as Spain with England. We may associate the position of women in Galicia with some of the old matriarchal conditions. Women are held in honour. There is a proverb common over all Northern Spain to the effect that he who is unfortunate and needs assistance should "seek his Gallegan mother." Many primitive customs survive, and one of the most interesting is that by which the eldest daughter in some districts takes precedence over the sons in inheritance. In no country does less stigma fall upon a child born out of wedlock. As far back as the fourth century Spanish women insisted on retaining their own names after marriage. We find the Synod of Elvira trying to limit this freedom. The practice is still common for the children to use the name of the mother coupled with that of the father, and in some cases, alone, showing the absence of preference for the paternal descent.[318] The introduction of modern institutions, and especially the empty forms of chivalry, has lowered the position of women. Yet there can be no question that some feature of the ancient mother-right customs have left the imprint on the domestic life of the people. Spanish women have, in certain directions, preserved a freedom and privilege which in England has never been established and is only now being claimed.[319]

How completely all difficulties vanish from the relationship of the sexes where society is more sanely organised—with a wiser understanding of the things that really matter. The question is not: are our women fit for labour? but this: are the conditions of labour in England fit either for women or men? The supply of cheap labour on which the whole fabric of our society is built up is giving way—and it has to go. We have to plan out new and more tolerable conditions for the workers in every sort of employment. But first we have to organise the difficult period of transition from the present disorder.

I will not dwell on this. I would, however, point out that women must be trained and ready to take their part with men in this work of industrial re-organisation. They are even more deeply concerned than men. The conditions of under-payment for woman's work are not restricted to sweated workers; it is the same in skilled work, and in all trades and professions that are open to women. For exactly the same work a lower rate of payment is offered. Female labour is cheap, just as slave labour is cheap, the woman is not considered as belonging to herself.

There is no question here of the real value of woman's labour. The cry of man to woman under the patriarchal system has always been, and still for the most part is, "Your value in our eyes is your sexuality, for your work we care not." But mark this! The penalty of this false adjustment has fallen upon men. For women, in their turn, have come to value men first in their capacity as providers for them, caring as little for the man's sex-value as men care for woman's work-value. From the moment when woman had to place the economic considerations in love first, her faculties of discrimination were no more of service for the selection of the fittest man. Here we may find the explanation of the kind of men girls have been willing to marry—old men, the unfit fathers, the diseased. Yes, any man who was able to do for them what they have not been allowed to do for themselves. And it is the race that suffers and rots; the sins of the mother must be visited on the child.

It is clear, then, there is one remedy and one alone. This separation of values must cease. All women's work must be paid at a rate based on the quality and quantity of the work done; not upon her sexuality. I do not mean by this that there should be any ignoring of woman's special sex-function; to do this, in my opinion, would be fatal. The bearing of fit children is woman's most important work for the State. The economic stress which forces women into unlimited competition with men is, I am certain, harmful. Women do not do this because they like it, but because they are driven to it.

The true effort of women, I conceive, should be centred on the freeing of the sexual relationship from the domination of a viciously directed compulsion, and from the hardly less disastrous work-struggle of sex against sex. The emancipated woman must work to gain economic recognition, not necessarily the same as the man's, but her own. It is to the direct interest of men to stop under-cutting by women; but the way to do this is not to force women out of labour, compelling their return to the home—that is impossible—rather it rests in an equal value of service being recognised in both sexes. The fully developed woman of the future is still to be, and first there must be a time of what may well prove to be dangerous experiments. This may be regretted, it cannot be avoided. The finding out of new paths entails some losing of the way.

Women have to find out what work they can best do; what work they want to do, and what work men want them to do. I must insist, against all the Feminists, on this factor of men's wishes being equally considered with woman's own. It may not safely be neglected. Woman without man at her side, after obtaining her freedom, will advance even less far than man has advanced with his freedom, without her help. To deny this is to show an absurd misunderstanding of the problem. Neither the male-force alone, nor the female-power is sufficient; no theory of sex-superiority shall prevail. The setting up of women against men, or men against women, to the disadvantage of one or the other, belongs to a day that is over. We must recognise that both the work of women and the work of men are in equal measure essential to satisfy the needs of the State; the force of both sexes must be united to plan and carry out those measures of reform now called for by the new ideals of a civilised humanity. It is only by loosening all the chains of all women and all men alike that the inherent energies of the world's workers can be set free for the eventual ennobling of the race.

There is a fundamental difference in respect to the modes of energy in woman and man. Is it, then, too much to hope for, that in the enlightened civilisation, whose dawn is even now breaking the darkness, we shall recognise and use this difference in work-power and claim from women the kinds of labour they can give best to the State; and reward them for doing this in such a way that their primary social service of child-bearing is in no way impaired? But as yet the day is not. There is an outlook that causes foreboding. The female sex is in a dangerous state of disturbance. New and strange urgencies are at work amongst us, forces for which the word "revolution" is only too faithfully appropriate. Little is being done to allay these forces, much conspires to exasperate them. Whither are they taking us? To this we women have to find an answer.

Other questions force themselves as wisely we wait to think. What will women do when they have gained the voice to control the attitude the State shall assume in the regulation of their work? Will their decisions be founded on wide knowledge, that recognises all the facts and accepts the responsibilities and restrictions that any true freedom for their sex entails, or will it be merely continued revolt, tending to embitter and intensify the struggle of sex against sex? Will their action reveal the wise patience, the sympathy and understanding of the mother, or will it prove to be the illogical, short-sighted, and bewildered behaviour of the spoilt child? No one can answer these questions. Hitherto, it has seemed that women stand in danger of losing sight of great issues in grasping at immediate gains. Goaded by the wrongs they see so plainly waiting to be righted, they are in such a desperate hurry. But "hurry" should not belong to the woman's nature. There is a "grasp" quality of this age that can bring nothing but harm to women. It is a great thing to be a woman, greater, as I believe, than to be a man. For the first time for long ages women are beginning again to understand this and all that it signifies. Women and not men are the responsible sex in the great things of life that really matter. They are that "Stubborn Power of Permanency" of which Goethe speaks. The female not only typifies the race, she is the race. It is man who constitutes the changing, the experimenting, sex. Thus, woman has to be steadier than man, yes, and more self-sacrificing. She may not safely escape from her work as "the giver," and if she does not give in life, she must give in something. We have got to do more than bear men, we have to carry them with us through life—our sons, our lovers, our husbands. We must free them now as well as ourselves, if our freedom is to count for anything. Let us not, then, in any impatience, neglect to pause, to prepare, to be ready, that the pregnancy of the present may bring fair birth when the days are fulfilled. For, after all, what shall it profit women if, in gaining the world, they lose themselves?

II.—Sexual Differences in Mind and the Artistic Impulse in Women

"The most secret elements of woman's nature, in association with the magic mystery of her organisation, indicate the existence in her of peculiar and deep-lying creative ideas."—THEODOR MUNDT.

What is true of the physical differences between women and men is true also of the mental differences. We may readily accept the saturating influence of sex on woman's mind. I mean a deep-lying distinction, not superficial and to be explained away as due to outside things, but based on the essential fact of her womanhood—her capacity for maternity. But the impracticability of making any definite statement as to the exact nature or extent of such mental sexual differentiation is evident. First must be cleared up the difficulty of distinguishing between those differences that are fundamental and constitutional as being directly dependent on the woman character and those that have, or seem to have, arisen through distinction of training or environment, which may be termed evolutionary differences, and are likely to be changed by altered conditions. Even the trained biologist is unable to draw an undisputed line of demarcation between the two kinds of differences, and, even if it were drawn, the conclusion would not help us very much. For with regard to these evolutionary differences that are liable to change many questions have to be considered. Can they safely be modified or disregarded? Do we want them changed? Will the alteration really be of benefit to women? Only such qualities as can be proved clearly to be mis-differentiations—i.e. directly harmful—can be contemptuously dismissed. Thus the problem is an extraordinarily difficult one. I can only touch its outer fringe.

It is held that men have greater mental variability and more originality, while women have greater stability and more common sense. In this connection may be noticed the characteristic male restlessness; man is probably more inclined to experiment with his body and his mind and with other people, while woman's constitution and temper is relatively more conservative. It is held that women have the greater integrating intelligence, while men are stronger in differentiation. The thinking power of woman is deductive, that of man inductive; woman's influence on knowledge is thus held to be indirect rather than direct. But women have greater receptive powers, retain impressions better and have more vivid and surer memories; for which reason women are generally more receptive for facts than for laws, more for concrete than for general ideas. The feminine mind shows greater patience, more open-mindedness and tact, and keener insight into character, greater appreciation of subtle details and, consequently, what we call intuition. The masculine mind, on the other hand, tends to a greater height of sudden efforts, of scientific insight and experiment, greater frequency of genius, and this is associated with an unobservant or impatient disregard of details, but a stronger grasp of general ideas.

Now it is easy to make comparisons of this kind, but to accept them as at all final calls for great caution. Let me take, as an instance, the opinion so continuously affirmed, that women are distinguished by good memories, in particular, for details. Now to regard this as necessarily a mental sexual character is entirely to mistake the facts. A tenacious memory for details that are often quite unimportant, belongs to all people of limited impressions and unskilled in thought; it maybe noticed in all children. Without a wide experience of life and practice in constructive thinking the mind inevitably falls back on fact-memory. I knew an agricultural labourer who could only tell his age by reckoning the years he had been dung-spreading. Thus a good memory for details may be a sign of an untrained mind. It is an entirely different thing from that acuteness of true memory, which ensures the retention of all experiences that have made an impression on the mind, with a corresponding rejection of what has failed to interest. Thus before anything can be said with regard to this memory power of woman, we have to decide on what it depends—i.e. is it really a mental quality of woman, or is it simply dependent on, and brought about by, the circumstances of her life and a limited experience? But to answer this question I shall wait till later in this chapter.

It would be easy to follow a similar train of argument with regard to each of these mental differences of the sexes. Few women have yet entered even the threshold of the mental world of men, and those who have done this stand in the position of strangers or visitors. To be in it, in any true sense, would be to be born into it and to live in it by right; to absorb the same experiences, not consciously and by special effort, but unconsciously as a child absorbs words and learns to speak. Whenever this happens, and not till then, shall we be in a position to compare positively the mental efficiency of woman with men. At present no more can be affirmed than that the differences in woman's mental expression are no greater than they must be in view of the existing differences in their experience. And I am not sure, even if such similarity of mental life were possible, that it would be of benefit to women. Indeed, I am almost sure that it would not. What is needed is an ungrudging recognition of the value of the special feminine qualities. This would do much to lessen the regrettable competition that undoubtedly prevails at present, which is due, it seems to me, to the foolish denial of the value of any save masculine characteristics in our art, as also in our public and professional life.

But leaving this point for the present, there is another question arising from this first that also brings me doubt. Few will deny that women are more instinctive than logical; more intuitive than cerebral. Men find their conclusions by searching for and observing facts, while women, to a great extent, arrive at the same end by instinct. They know, rather than know how, or why, they know. Now, too often we hear these qualities of woman treated with contempt. Is this wise? What I doubt is this: when women by education and evolution have been able to learn and to practise the inductive process of reasoning—if, indeed, they do come to do this—will they lose their present faculty of gaining conclusions by instinct? I believe that they must do so to a large extent, and I am not convinced that the gain would at all fully make up for the loss. Looking at human conduct, it is regulated quite as much by instinct as by reason. I think it will be impossible to prevent this being so, and if this is true, woman's instinct may remain of greater service to her than the gaining of a higher reasoning faculty. The true distinction between the psychology of woman and man is as the difference between feeling and thought. Woman thinks through her emotions, man feels through his brain. This is obviously an exaggeration, but it will show what I mean by the different process of thought that, broadly speaking, is usual to the two sexes. Mistakes are, of course, made by both processes, but more often, as I believe, by reasoning than by instinct—this is probably because I am a woman. But it is certain that each sex contributes to the thought-power of the other, each is indispensable to the other, on the mental plane no less than on the physical.

The importance of the above will become obvious when we consider, as we will now do, the artistic impulse in woman. Strange difficulties have been raised on all sides concerning the occurrence of genius among women. It seems to be accepted that in respect of artistic endowment the male sex is unquestionably superior to the female. Havelock Ellis, for instance, in dealing with this question says, "The assertion of Moebius[320] that the art impulse is of the nature of a male secondary sexual character, in the same sense as the beard, cannot be accepted without some qualification, but it may well represent an approximation of the truth." By some it is held that genius is linked with maleness: that it represents an ideal masculinity in the highest form; and from genius the feminine mind must, therefore, be excluded. But in truth it is not easy to credit such assumptions, or to see the strangeness of the difficulties in an exact opposite view, if we understand the significance of those qualities of femaleness which are allowed to women by those who most deny to her the possibility of genius. Such a denial serves only to show the absurd presumption of present knowledge of this kind in its hope to solve a problem so difficult.

Let me try to sift out the facts. And first we must inquire on what grounds this opinion is based. I have already alluded to the general belief in the greater degree of variability in men, which, if established, would on the psychical side involve an accentuated individualism and hence a greater possibility of genius. This view has been supported by John Hunter, Burdach, Darwin, Havelock Ellis, and others. Ellis, in the chapter on "The Artistic Impulse" in Man and Woman, says, "The rarity of women artists of the first rank is largely due to the greater variational tendency of men." Now, this biological fact is certainly of great importance, if it can be proved. But can it? It has recently been contested by anthropologists at least as distinguished as those who have given it their support. Manouvrier, Karl Pearson, Frossetto, and especially Guiffrida-Ruggieri have brought forward evidence to prove the fallacy of this belief in the slighter variability and infantile character of woman. Now, it is clearly impossible for me in the space at my command to go into the conclusions brought forward on both sides of this difficult question. What I want to make clear is that this greater variability of man has not been established, and therefore cannot be accepted as a condition of male genius. I am glad to be able to give a statement on this question by Professor Arthur Thomson, which will sufficiently show that my opinion is not put forward wantonly and without due consideration, but that it coincides with the conclusion of one who is an acknowledged leader in the advanced biological study of the sexes.

Professor Thomson writes thus[321]—

"We would guard against the temptation to sum up the contrast of the sexes 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 constitution gives free play to the expression of variations, which are kept latent in the female constitution. 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 passage 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 assume 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 sexes.

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 pass, 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 sexual 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 sex-bias which marks so strikingly men's statements on this subject of mental sex-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-assertion 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 God. 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 attitudes 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 sexes 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 participated 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 sexes 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 passed over for assumptions that cannot be proved.

The revolt against repression has taken amongst many women another form of abandonment to lives of sexual 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 sex; around her rage seas of stormy passions, 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; assuredly 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 Buecher,[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 thrashing 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 passion 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 passion, 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 sexes. 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 distinguishing 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 puberty" 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 assume 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 passing 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 sexual functions, how can it have been possible to employ such power in the arts in a society where the natural use of her sex 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 aptitude 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 circumstances 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 constitutional 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 class. 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-amusement 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 passed 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 sexual 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 sexual 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 relationship, 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 space 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.