Women -- Economic conditions; Women -- Employment; Women -- Social and moral questions
But leaving out even such extreme instances of diversity, the mere
division in culture and mental habits, dividing individuals of the same
race but of different classes, tends largely to exclude the possibility
of at least the nobler and more enduring forms of sex emotion. The
highly cultured denizen of a modern society, though he may enter into
passing and temporary and animal relations with the uncultured peasant
or woman of the street, seldom finds awakened within him in such cases
the depth of emotion and sympathy which is necessary for the enjoyment
of the closer tie of conjugal life; and it may be doubted whether the
highest, most permanent, and intimate forms of sexual affection ever
exist except among humans very largely identical in tastes, habits
of thought, and moral and physical education. (In Greece at a certain
period (as we have before noted) there does appear to have been a
temporary advance of the male, so far in advance of the female as to
make the difference between them almost immeasurable; but he quickly
fell back to the level of the woman.) Were it possible that the entrance
of woman into the new fields of labour should produce any increased
divergence between man and woman in ideals, culture, or tastes, there
would undoubtedly be a dangerous responsibility incurred by any who
fostered such a movement.
But the most superficial study of human life and the relation of the
sexes negates such a conception.
The two sexes are not distinct species but the two halves of one whole,
always acting and interacting on each other through inheritance, and
reproducing and blending with each other in each generation. The human
female is bound organically in two ways to the males of her society:
collaterally they are her companions and the co-progenitors with her
of the race; but she is also the mother of the males of each succeeding
generation, bearing, shaping, and impressing her personality upon them.
The males and females of each human society resemble two oxen tethered
to one yoke: for a moment one may move slightly forward and the other
remain stationary; but they can never move farther from each other than
the length of the yoke that binds them; and they must ultimately
remain stationary or move forward together. That which the women of one
generation are mentally or physically, that by inheritance and education
the males of the next tend to be: there can be no movement or change in
one sex which will not instantly have its co-ordinating effect upon the
other; the males of tomorrow are being cast in the mould of the women of
today. If new ideals, new moral conceptions, new methods of action are
found permeating the minds of the women of one generation, they will
reappear in the ideals, moral conceptions, methods of action of the men
of thirty years hence; and the idea that the males of a society can ever
become permanently farther removed from its females than the individual
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