The Morality of Woman, and Other Essays — John Shaqi
The Morality of Woman, and Other EssaysKey, Ellen
Philosophy
The Morality of Woman, and Other Essays
Key, Ellen
Women -- Social and moral questions
An intense feeling of life, a sense of plenitude, entirety, of the
complete development of the powers of the potentialities--this
constitutes happiness. Children have more possibilities of happiness
than adults, for they can experience this feeling of joy of life more
undividedly and immediately. They should utilize these possibilities of
happiness while the parents have partial power over their life. Soon
enough must they on their own initiative attempt, accomplish, bleed; and
herein no one of all the influences of education has even approximately
the significance of this: that the individual be not overtrained, that
he have still strength enough to live. That means: to suffer his own
sorrow, to enjoy his own happiness, to perform his own work, to think
his own thoughts, to be able to devote himself absolutely and
entirely--the sole condition of being able to work, to love and to die.
It is a deep psychological truth that the kingdom of heaven belongs to
the children. For no one attains the highest that life offers in any
other way than by simplicity, unworldliness and the power of devoting
his whole being without reserve to his object. This is the strength of
the child nature. If a mother by education has preserved this holy
strength and developed it to a conscious power, then she has given to
mankind not only a new being but a new personality.
But the education in the family, just as in the school, is tending in
the opposite direction. The destruction of the personality is therefore
the great evil of the time.
* * * * *
Yet man is fortunately a vigorous organism. And those, whose personality
has been bowed or repressed by education, could raise themselves again
and create freedom for their development if they were aware of the value
of this freedom.
Few beings and so likewise few women can be exceptional. But if only a
few are destined for a great personality, yet nevertheless most can, in
spite of the errors of education, develop a certain degree of
personality, if they are deeply, earnestly concerned in it.
For everything is interrelated. No one lives unpunished by a second
hand. We cannot advance intellectually by borrowing, without becoming
also morally less scrupulous. We are today unjust to a book, a picture,
a drama, because we pronounce judgment upon it according to the words of
others, or because we do not dare to show the pleasure it gives us, in
case the critic has not granted us permission to be pleased, or because
we feign indignation we do not feel, but which others require of us in
the name of taste or morality. Tomorrow, in the same way, we shall be
unjust or dishonest to man, or to our own feeling--an injustice or a
dishonesty which can have influence over the destiny of a whole life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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