Motherhood and the Relationships of the SexesHartley, C. Gasquoine (Catherine Gasquoine)
Philosophy
Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes
Hartley, C. Gasquoine (Catherine Gasquoine)
Mothers; Sex; Women -- Social and moral questions
There was, of course, another side—a side which most gladly I
acknowledge. No movement that was founded merely on excitement would
have overcome difficulties as the Suffrage movement did, nor could its
members have worked and suffered as they did for a common end. There was
always much even in the most mistaken militancy that was generous, ardent
and wholesome. But these useful qualities were deformed by a want of
proportion and sanity; by feelings run riot that made women impatient of
all restraints, overweeningly sure of themselves, and incapable of facing
troublesome facts or foreseeing the most certain consequences of their
own actions. There is nothing here that should surprise us.
In many cases, perhaps in all, emotion is the sole and strong guide of
our actions. At least, I am sure this is true of women. What we do is to
invent reasons to justify acts to which we are impelled by some emotion
arising from an instinctive need. I do not see how this can be avoided,
nor do I at all regard it in itself as evil. Reason by itself too often
is an excuse for doing nothing; it is the excuse of all those who take
infinite care not to see in case they may come to feel. Reason alone
never does anything; it is too reasonable. The necessary thing is first
to feel. And the only possible method of guiding emotion is to realise
its force and to use it successfully; not to take cover fearfully in
avoidance of feeling.
There is, indeed, a very deep reason for this human need for emotion.
The springs of our actions may be traced back in almost all cases to
certain excitements arising from some need or desire of whose existence
in ourselves we are in nine cases out of ten quite unconscious, but
which (unless dammed up when the fear of an escape is always great and
imminent) will find an expression in characteristic instinctive acts. And
the most forcible human excitements are fear and anger: these exercise an
energising influence on body and mind often leading to the accomplishment
of quite extraordinary acts. Periods of intense excitement will yield a
consciousness of overwhelming strength, so that the individual reaches a
state of self-forgetfulness in which almost anything may be done. Almost
every one must at some time have experienced this super-strength. And
what is important to note is that at an opportunity for exercising these
emotions, the most peaceable people have felt the stir of the primitive
instincts of hate and fear, of anger and the desire to destroy and to
hurt. They have developed—often to their own surprise—the destructive
capacities of the fight-loving, danger-braving animal. And when such
emotions seize on individuals in groups, their effect is greatly
intensified and is felt by many who would be only slightly susceptible to
such emotions when isolated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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