General View of Positivism — Chapter 4 The Influence Of Positivism Upon Women Part 4

Thus the theory of marriage, as set forward by the Positivist, becomes totally independent of any physical motive.

It is regarded by him as the most powerful instrument of moral education; and therefore as the basis of public or individual welfare.

It is no overstrained enthusiasm which leads us to elevate the moral purity of marriage.

We do so from rigorous examination of the facts of human nature.

All the best results, whether personal or social, of marriage may follow, when the union, though more impassioned, is as chaste as that of brother and sister.

The sexual instinct has no doubt something to do in most cases with the first formation of the passion; but it is not necessary in all cases to gratify the instinct.

Abstinence, in cases where there is real ground for it on both sides, will but serve to strengthen mutual affection.

[Woman’s mission as a mother] We have examined the position of Woman as a wife, without supposing her to be a mother.

We shall find that maternity, while it extends her sphere of moral influence, does not alter its nature.

As a mother, no less than as a wife, her position will be improved by Positivism.

She will have, almost exclusively, the direction of household education.

Public education given subsequently, will be little but a systematic development of that which has been previously given at home.

[Education of children belongs to mothers.

They only can guide the development of character] For it is a fundamental principle that education, in the normal condition of society, must be entrusted to the spiritual power; and in the family the spiritual power is represented by Woman.

There are strong prejudices against entrusting the education of children to mothers: prejudices springing from the revolutionary spirit of modern times.

Since the close of the Middle Ages, the tendency has been to place the intellect above the heart.

We have neglected the moral side of education, and I have given undue importance to its intellectual side.

But Positivism having superseded this revolutionary phase by demonstrating the preponderance of the heart over the intellect, moral education will resume its proper place.

Certainly the present mode of instruction is not adopted for Woman’s teaching.

But their influence over the education of the future will be even greater than it was in the Middle Ages.

For in the first place, in every part of it, moral considerations will be paramount; and moreover, until puberty, nothing will be studied continuously except Art and Poetry.

The knights of old times were usually brought up in this way under feminine guidance, and on them most assuredly it had no enervating influence.

The training can hardly be supposed less adapted to a pacific than to a warlike state of society.

For instruction, theoretical and practical, as distinguished from education, masters are no doubt necessary.

But moral education will be left entirely to women, until the time arrives for systematic teaching of moral science in the years immediately preceding majority.

Here the philosopher is necessary.

But the chief duties of the philosopher lie with adults; his aim being to recall them, individually or collectively, to principles impressed on them in childhood, and to enforce the right application of these principles to special cases as they may arise.

That part of education which has the greatest influence on life, what may be called the spontaneous training of the feelings, belongs entirely to the mother.

Hence it is, as I have already observed, of the greatest importance to allow the pupil to remain with his family, and to do away with the monastic seclusion of our public schools.

The peculiar fitness of women for inculcating these elementary principles of morality is a truth which every true philosopher will fully recognize.

Women, having stronger sympathies than men, must be better able to call out sympathies in others.

Men of good sense have always felt it more important to train the heart than the head;

and this is the view adopted by Positive Philosophy.

There is a danger of exaggerating the importance of system and of forgetting the conditions on which its utility depends; but the Positivist is preserved from this danger by the peculiar reality of his philosophy.

In morals, even more than in other subjects, we can only systematize what has existed previously without system.

The feelings must first be stimulated to free and direct action, before we attempt to bring them under philosophic discipline.

And this process, which begins with birth, and lasts during the whole period of physical growth, should be left for women to superintend.

So specially are they adapted for it, that failing the mother, a female friend, if well chosen, and if she can make herself sufficiently a member of the family, will in most cases do better than the father himself.

The importance of the subject can only be appreciated by minds dominated, as women’s minds are, by feeling.

Women can see, what men can seldom see, that most actions, and certainly the actions of youth and childhood, ought not to be judged in themselves so much as by the tendencies which they show or by the habits to which they lead.

Viewed with reference to their influence on character, no actions are indifferent.

The simplest events in a child’s life may serve as an occasion for enforcing the fundamental principle by which the early as well as later stages of Positivist education should be directed; the strengthening of Social Feeling, the weakening of Self-love.

In fact, actions of an unimportant kind are precisely those in which it is easiest to appreciate the feelings which prompted them; since the mind of the observer, not being occupied with the consequences of such actions, is more free to examine their source.

Moreover, it is only by teaching the child to do right in small things that he can be trained for the hard inward struggle that lies before him in life; the struggle to bring the selfish instincts more and more completely under the control of his higher sympathies.

In these respects the best tutor, however sympathetic his nature, will be always far inferior to a good mother.

A mother may often not be able to explain the reason of the principle on which she acts, but the wisdom of her plans will generally show itself in the end.

Without formal teaching, she will take every opportunity of showing her children, as no other instructor could show them, the joy that springs from generous feelings, and the misery of yielding to selfishness.

From the relation of mother we return by a natural transition to Woman’s position as a wife.

The mother, though her authority of course tends to decrease, continues to superintend the growth of character until the ordinary age of marriage.

Up to that time feminine influence over Man has been involuntary on his part.

By marriage he enters into a voluntary engagement of subordination to Woman for the rest of his life.

Thus he completes his moral education.

Destined himself for action, he finds his highest happiness in honourable submission to one in whom the dominant principle is affection.

Positivism holds out to woman a most important sphere of public and private duty.

This sphere, as we may now see, is nothing but a larger and more systematic development of the qualities by which she is characterized.

Her mission is so uniform in its nature and so clearly defined, that there seems hardly room for much uncertainty as to her proper social position.

It is a striking instance of the rule which applies universally to all human effort; namely, that the order of things instituted by man ought to be simply a consolidation and improvement of the natural order.

[Modern sophisms about Women’s rights.

The domesticity of her life follows from the principle of Separation of Powers] In all ages of transition, as in our own, there have been false and sophistical views of the social position of Woman.

But we find it to be a natural law that Woman should pass the greater part of her life in the family; and this law has never been affected to any important extent.

It has always been accepted instinctively, though the sophistical arguments against it have never yet been adequately refuted.

The institution of the family has survived the subtle attacks of Greek metaphysics, which then were in all the vigour of their youth, and which were acting on minds that had no systematic principles to oppose to them.

Therefore, profound as the intellectual anarchy of the present day may be, we need not be seriously alarmed when we see that nothing worse comes of it than shallow plagiarisms from ancient utopias, against which the vigorous satire of Aristophanes was quite enough to rouse general indignation.

True, there is a more complete absence of social principles now, than when the world was passing from Polytheism to Monotheism; but our intellectual powers are more developed than they were then, and in moral culture our superiority is even greater.

Women in those times were too degraded to offer even the opposition of their silence to the pedants who professed to be taking up their cause; the only resistance offered was of a purely intellectual kind.

But happily in modern times the women of the West have been free; and have consequently been able to manifest such unmistakable aversion for these ideas, and for the want of moral discipline which gives rise to them, that, though still unrefuted philosophically, their mischievous effects have been neutralized.

Nothing but women’s antipathy has prevented the practical outrages which seem logically to follow from these subversive principles.

Among our privileged classes the danger is aggravated by indolence; moreover, the possession of wealth has a bad influence on women’s moral nature.

Yet even here the evil is not really very deep or widely spread.

Men have never been seriously perverted, and women still less so, by flattery of their bad propensities.

The really formidable temptations are those which act upon our better instincts, and give them a wrong direction.

Schemes which are utterly offensive to female delicacy will never really be adopted, even by the wealthier classes, who are less averse to them than others.

The repugnance shown to them by the people, with whom the mischief that they would cause would be irreparable, is far more decided.

The life which working people lead makes it very clear to both sexes what the proper position of each should be.

Thus it will be in the very class where the preservation of the institution of the family is of the greatest importance, that Positivists will find the least difficulty in establishing their theory of the social position of women, as consequent on the sphere of public and private duty which has been here assigned to them.

Looking at the relation of this theory to other parts of the Positive system, we shall see that it follows from the great principle which dominates every other social problem, the principle of separating spiritual and temporal power.

That Woman’s life should be concentrated in her family, and that even there her influence should be that of persuasion rather than that of command, is but an extension of the principle which excludes the spiritual power from political administration.

Women, as the purest and most spontaneous of the moral forces of society, are bound to fulfil with rigorous exactness all the conditions which the exercise of moral force demands.

Effectually to perform their mission of controlling and guiding our affections, they must abstain altogether from the practical pursuits of the stronger sex.

Such abstinence, even when the arrangements of society may leave it optional, is still more desirable in their case than in the case of philosophers.

Active life, incompatible as it is with the clearness and breadth of philosophic speculation, is even more injurious to delicacy of feeling, which is women’s highest claim to our respect and the true secret of their influence.

The philosophic spirit is incompatible with a position of practical authority, because such a position occupies the mind with questions of detail.

But to purity of feeling it is even more dangerous, because it strengthens the instincts of power and of gain.

And for women it would be harder to avoid the danger of such a position than for men.

Abounding as they do in sympathy, they are generally deficient in energy, and are therefore less able to withstand corrupting influences.

The more we examine this important subject, the clearer it becomes that the present condition of women does not hamper them in their true work; that, on the contrary, it is well calculated to develop and even improve their highest qualities.

The natural arrangements of society in this as in other respects are far less faulty than certain blind declaimers would have us believe.

But for the existence of strong material forces, moral force would soon deteriorate, because its distinctive purpose would be gone.

Philosophers and proletaries would soon lose their intellectual and moral superiority by the acquisition of power.

On women its effect would be still more disastrous.

From instances in the upper classes of society, where wealth gives them independence, and sometimes unfortunately even power, we see but too clearly what the consequences would be.

And this is why we have to look to the poorer classes for the highest type of womanly perfection.

With the people sympathy is better cultivated, and has a greater influence upon life.

Wealth has more to do with the moral degradation of women among the privileged classes than even idleness and dissipation.

[The position of the sexes tends to differentiation rather than identity] Progress, in this respect as in every other, is only a more complete development of the pre-existing Order.

Equality in the position of the two sexes is contrary to their nature, and no tendency to it has at any time been exhibited.

All history assures us that with the growth of society the peculiar features of each sex have become not less but more distinct.

By Catholic Feudalism the social condition of women in Western Europe was raised to a far higher level.

But it took away from them the priestly functions which they had held under Polytheism; a religion in which the priesthood was more occupied with Art than with Science.

So too with the gradual decline of the principle of Caste, women have been excluded more and more rigidly from royalty and from every other kind of political authority.

Again, there is a visible tendency towards the removal of women from all industrial occupations, even from those which might seem best suited to them.

And thus female life, instead of becoming independent of the Family, is being more and more concentrated in it; while at the same time their proper sphere of moral influence is constantly extending.

The two tendencies so far from being opposed, are inseparably connected.

Without discussing the absurd and retrograde schemes which have been recently put forward on the subject, there is one remark which may serve to illustrate the value of the order which now exists.

If women were to obtain that equality in the affairs of life which their so-called champions are claiming for them without their wish, not only would they suffer morally, but their social position would be endangered.

They would be subject in almost every occupation to a degree of competition which they would not be able to sustain.

Moreover, by rivalry in the pursuits of life, mutual affection between the sexes would be corrupted at its source.

[Woman to be maintained by Man] Leaving these subversive dreams, we find a natural principle which, by determining the practical obligations of the Active to the Sympathetic sex, averts this danger.

It is a principle which no philosophy but Positivism has been sufficiently real and practical to bring forward systematically for general acceptance.

It is no new invention, however, but a universal tendency, confirmed by careful study of the whole past history of Man.

The principle is, that Man should provide for Woman.

It is a natural law of the human race; a law connected with the essentially domestic character of female life.

We find it in the rudest forms of social life; and with every step in the progress of society its adoption becomes more extensive and complete.

A still larger application of this fundamental principle will meet all the material difficulties under which women are now labouring.

All social relations, and especially the question of wages, will be affected by it.

The tendency to it is spontaneous; but it also follows from the high position which Positivism has assigned to Woman as the sympathetic element in the spiritual power.

The intellectual class, in the same way, has to be supported by the practical class, in order to have its whole time available for the special duties imposed upon it.

But in the case of women, the obligation of the other sex is still more sacred, because the sphere of duty in which protection for them is required, is the home.

The obligation to provide for the intellectual class, affects society as a whole; but the maintenance of women is, with few exceptions, a personal obligation.

Each individual should consider himself bound to maintain the woman he has chosen to be his partner in life.

There are cases, however, in which men should be considered collectively responsible for the support of the other sex.

Women who are without husband or parents should have their maintenance guaranteed by society; and this not merely from compassion for their dependent position, but with the view of enabling them to render public service of the greatest moral value.

The direction, then, of progress in the social condition of woman is this: to render her life more and more domestic; to diminish as far as possible the burden of out-door labour; and so to fit her more completely for her special office of educating our moral nature.

Among the privileged classes it is already a recognized rule that women should be spared all laborious exertion.

It is the one point in the relations of the sexes in which the working classes would do well to imitate the habits of their employers.

In every other respect the people of Western Europe have a higher sense of their duties to women than the upper classes.

Indeed there are few of them who would not be ashamed of the barbarity of subjecting women to their present burdensome occupations, if the present state of our industrial system allowed of its abolition.

But it is chiefly among the higher and wealthier classes that we find those degrading and very often fraudulent bargains, connected with unscrupulous interference of parents in the question of marriage, which are so humiliating to one sex and so corrupting to the other.

Among the working classes the practice of giving dowries is almost extinct; and as women’s true mission becomes more recognized, and as choice in marriage becomes less restricted, this relic of barbarism, with all its debasing results, will rapidly die out.

With this view the application of our theory should be carried one step further.

Women should not be allowed to inherit.

If inheritance be allowed, the prohibition of dowries would be evaded in a very obvious manner by discounting the reversionary interest.

Since women are to be exempt from the labour of production, capital, that is to say, the instruments of labour produced by each generation for the benefit of the next, should revert to men.

This view of inheritance, so far from making men a privileged class, places them under heavy responsibilities.

It is not from women that any serious opposition to it will proceed.

Wise education will show them its value to themselves personally, as a safeguard against unworthy suitors.

But, important as the rule is, it should not be legally enforced until it has become established on its own merits as a general custom, which every one has felt to conduce to the healthy organization of the Family as here described.