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THREE THINGS

BY

ELINOR GLYN



PUBLISHERS
HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO.
NEW YORK



Copyright, 1915, by
HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO., INC.

_All rights reserved, including the translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian_

THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

      INTRODUCTION
    I THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
   II THE GOSPEL OF COMMON SENSE
  III MARRIAGE
   IV AFTER MARRIAGE
    V SHOULD DIVORCE BE MADE EASIER?
   VI THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MOTHERHOOD
  VII THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MOTHERHOOD. SECOND PAPER




INTRODUCTION


I have called this little collection of articles which I have written
"THREE THINGS" because to me there seem to be just three essentials to
strive after in life. Truth--Common Sense and Happiness. To be able to
see the first enables us to employ the second, and so realise the
third. And in these papers I have tried to suggest some points which
may be of use to others who, like myself, are endeavouring to reason
out ideas to a good end.

How often one sees people who could be very happy, and who yet with
incredible blindness and stupidity are running their heads against
stone walls (or feather beds!) and destroying all chance of peace for
themselves, their mates, and their households!

Everything is very simple when it is analysed down to what nature
meant in the affair--and by doing this one gets a broader perspective.

For instance, nature meant one thing in the connection of man and
woman--and civilisation has grafted quite another meaning into it, and
the two things are often at war in the State called marriage! In the
chapters devoted to this subject I have tried to exploit some points
which are not generally faced, in the hope that if understood they
might help towards Happiness.

The thing which more than half of humanity seems to forget is _the end
they have in view_! They desire something really ardently, and yet
appear incapable of keeping their minds from straying into side
issues, which must logically militate against, and probably prevent,
their desire's accomplishment. This is very strange! A woman for
instance profoundly desires to retain a man's love when she sees it is
waning--but her wounded vanity causes her to use methods of reproach
and recrimination towards him, calculated certainly to defeat her end,
and accelerate his revolt.

I feel that in publishing this little collection in America I must ask
indulgence for the parts which seem to touch upon exclusively English
aspects of the subjects under discussion--because the main ideas apply
to humanity in general and not to any particular country. The paper on
Divorce is of course written from an English point of view, but its
suggestions may be of some use to those who are interested in the
question of divorce in the abstract, and are on the alert as to the
results of its facilities in America. I do not presume to offer an
opinion as to its action there; and in this paper am not making the
slightest criticism of the American divorce laws--only stating what
seems to me should rule all such questions in any country,
namely,--Common sense and consideration for the welfare of the
community.

Above all things I am an incorrigible optimist! and I truly believe
that the world is advancing in every way and that we are already in
the dawn of a new era of the understanding, and the exploitation for
our benefit of the great forces of nature. But we of the majority of
non-scientists, were until so lately sound asleep to any speculative
ideas, and just drowsed on without thinking at all, that it behooves
us now that we are awake in the new century to try to see straight and
analyse good and evil.

In my papers on the Responsibility of Motherhood I may be quite out of
touch with American ideas--but I will chance that in the hope that
some parts of them may be of service, taken broadly.

                                                  ELINOR GLYN.
    PARIS, 1914.




I

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH


The Old order changeth, giving place to New; and it would be well to
realise this everlasting fact before we decide that the world is
waxing evil, and the times are waxing late. And who can say that out
of the seething of the present some noble and glorious ideals of life
for men and women may not spring?

Surely it is unwise to read in the writing upon the wall, as so many
do, only a pessimistic presage of inevitable death. If there is
writing for students of evolution to read, then it should be taken as
a warning indication which direction to avoid and which to take.
Unrest is a sign, not of decay, but of life. Stagnation alone gives
warning of death.

And there are a number of facts to be faced before we can give an
opinion either way.

The first of these is, that all civilised nations are endeavouring to
stamp out ignorance and disease, and that an enormous advance in this
direction can be observed in the last fifty years. And, taking a
general view of the civilised peoples, a far greater number of their
units now lead less dreadful and degraded lives.

And surely these indications of mankind's advancement are as plain as
are some other signs of decline.

The stirring up of the masses by insufficient education is bound to
produce unrest, and until the different elements have assorted
themselves into their new places in the scheme of things, how can
there be tranquillity? All is out of balance, and has disturbed the
machinery of the country's life, for the time being. But if the aim
has been for enlightenment, the eventual outcome must be good.

All scum in a boiling pot rises to the top, and makes itself seen,
concealing the pure liquid beneath, until it is skimmed off. And so we
have political demagogues shouting the untenable fallacy that all men
are equal, together with other flamboyant nonsense; and hooligan
suffragists smashing windows. But all these are only the scum upon the
outside of a great upward movement in mankind, and are not to be taken
as the incontestable proof of the vicious condition of the whole mass.

The spirit that is abroad, though one of great unrest, is not one of
decadence, but of progress. But it would be folly not to admit that
there are aspects of it which presage disaster unless directed, just
as the pot will boil over if not watched.

It may be interesting to scrutinise, with unemotional common sense,
some of the causes of the present state of things, and perhaps from
this investigation come to some conclusions as to their remedy or
encouragement.

Nature, whether human, animal, or vegetable, will not be hurried, or
she produces the abnormal. Until about a hundred years ago everything
seemed to be moving on with a very slow and gradual evolution. Some
things changed a little, others it would seem, not at all. And then,
after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Science and
Invention appeared to join hands, and, with small beginnings,
gradually assuming mammoth proportions, to revolutionise the very
universe. The result has been to make life easy to a class which
formerly had to work hard for the bare necessities of existence. With
this came education. The lowest of the people were taught to read and
write, and the most ill-chosen and elementary book-knowledge was flung
upon unploughed soil, unprepared for its reception. Nature was
hurried, and began to produce, not fair flowers at once, but the
abnormal and diseased. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

The education these crude minds received was not of the sort to show
them their ignorance, and implant in them a noble desire for more
teaching, so as to achieve a gradual advancement, but was just
sufficient to stir up discontent with what was, and produce countless
square pegs, clamouring to get into round holes for which they were
unfitted.

Mechanical inventions did away with numbers of home duties, and even
the meagre education the masses then received was enough to cause them
to throw grave doubts upon the accepted religion of the country. The
timid souls were released from the fear of hell, as a powerful factor
for the determining of their actions. The bold felt they would have
the support and sympathy of numbers of their fellows in breaking up
old beliefs, and the intelligent of both kinds refused to swallow many
of the dogmas any longer.

Thus the bridle which, through the Christian ages, had guided mankind,
became as a mere thread. And all these loosened steeds ran wild and
are still running wild, until enlightenment shall come to them, and
they will perceive that each individual is responsible to God for
himself.

The cry that the churches are emptying is perhaps true; and if it is a
fact, then of what use to lament it? It would be more logical to
search for the cause. If people do not come of their own accord, there
is no law to oblige them to do so. Consequently, if the churches wish
for their return, it is their business to provide fare which will
induce them to take this course.

Education has encouraged men and women to think for themselves, and
the religiously minded, who would willingly remain under some
guidance, have begun to perceive how very wide apart Christ's
beautiful teaching is from the interpretation of it which they often
receive in church; while the others, who had never any religious
aspirations at all, are glad that the weight of public opinion and
custom no longer forces them into irksome attendance. To fill churches
with worshippers drawn there largely through hope of Heaven or fear of
Hell, or because it was considered respectable and custom bound them
to conform to its mandates, surely could not have been very acceptable
to God. And the percentage who went truly to pour forth their love and
worship, are still pouring it forth, because it came, and comes, from
their hearts whether they attend church or no.

The modern spirit is full of what Edmond Holmes calls the desire to
ask the teacher or person in authority for his credentials. And if
these are not entirely satisfactory, the influence he can hope to
wield will be nil.

To deplore anything that may happen to a country, or to ourselves, is
waste of time. We should search for the reason of it, and if it proves
to be because there is some ineradicable cause, intelligence should
then be used to better the condition which results. Worship of
something glorious and beyond ourselves will always swell the human
heart, and if the accepted forms of the religion of a country can no
longer produce this emotion, it is not because the human heart is
changing, but because there is something in those forms which no
longer fulfils its mission.

The cry of the fear of the net of Rome is futile also. People drift to
where they belong, and Rome seems to offer to take all spiritual
responsibility from the shoulders of her children. It gives them an
emotional satisfaction which brings comfort to all, and amongst these
any of hysterical nature probably become far happier and better
citizens under her wing than they would otherwise have been. No nets
will catch the expanding soul which is rising out of its paltry self
into ideals nearer to God.

During the earlier days when religion held sway in England over at
least nine-tenths of female lives, superfluous women were content as a
rule to lead grey, uneventful existences, making no more mark on their
time than if they had been flocks of sheep. But with the breakdown of
this force, and greater freedom of ideas, they have brought themselves
into prominence--the scum as a shrieking sisterhood, and the pure
elements unobtrusively, as leaders of countless noble works.

Meanwhile, in every class of the community the desire "to move" is
felt. Travelling, formerly the luxury of the rich, now is indulged in
by an ever-increasing company. The aspect of family life is changed,
and amusement is within the reach of all.

It is not reasonable to suppose with this total alteration in the view
of existence, that many things that we held beautiful and sacred
should not have gone by the board--things such as filial respect,
gentle manners, chivalry, obedience. We are undoubtedly in an
unpleasant state of incompletion as a nation to-day, but by no means
in one of decadence. And if only the two great dangers do not swamp
us--a mawkish and hysterical humanitarianism, and the heedless pursuit
of pleasure as the only end--the upward tendency of progress is bound
to go on. Inventions, aided by science in all its ramifications, have
made life pleasant, and all these benefits have come too quickly for
the recipients to be prepared to receive them with calm. Their
equilibrium is disturbed, and they are led into exaggerations, and so
the ugly side of the spirit of the Great Unrest is born. But,
underneath, the English people are a sane, healthy stock in mind and
body, and when education has opened their minds and broadened their
understanding, they will surely allow their birthright of common sense
among the nations to have sway again. Instead of standing aside and
lamenting that times are evil and that the nation is going down hill,
it behoves all thinking people to gather their forces together and
seriously apply themselves to consider how they can better this
condition of things. In their daily life they can do so by setting up
a high standard of sanity and right behaviour, by the encouragement of
fine aims and high ends, by the firm avoidance of hypocrisy and
hysterical altruism, and by intelligent explanation to those under
their care of the reason why individual responsibility is necessary
for the welfare of the community at large.

And a most important lesson for every one to learn is the law of cause
and effect. The great rush of modern life is apt to produce an
inconsequence of action. Anything good or bad is indulged in without
time for thought as to its result. But the law of the boomerang is
immutable, and its action goes on for ever--_what we send out we
receive again, sooner or later, for good or ill_.

The first principle of that great and wonderful wave of "New Thought"
which is sweeping over America, and is beginning to find some
understanding in this country, is that the responsibility of each
individual's well-being rests with himself, and that his environment
is the result of what his consciousness has been able to attract to
himself.

And, as no one limits us but ourselves, as soon as a man's
consciousness begins strongly to create in his own mind new and better
conditions, he will inevitably draw them to himself in fact. From God
there can emanate nothing but Good. It is the individual's own action
which brings his punishment, or reward. If this fundamental principle
could be investigated by responsible scientists, unhampered by
theological influences, and with no prejudice as to the idea's being
regarded as a mere _culte_, its exactness could perhaps be
mathematically proved beyond a cavilling doubt. Possibly then the
doctrine might be allowed to be taught in the public schools, to the
everlasting benefit of the growing race.

To say the least of it, it would inculcate an immense self-respect.

There should not be, and I believe there is not, any law which can
prevent the lowest in the land from rising to the highest place--_if
he is fitted for it_. It is the ceaseless cry of the unfit unit for
some situation above his capabilities, which is a distressing feature
of modern life. But, even in this, the spirit shown in the desire to
rise is good; while if he had the will to fit himself for what he
aspires to, it would be splendid and great. And these are the men and
women who succeed, no matter what avocations they may be engaged in.
The others, the shouters, only hamper the wheels of progress and fall
eventually as the dust in the ruts.

Formerly there was a hard line drawn between "gentlemen" and common
men. And there were all sorts of things that, however bad he might be,
a "gentleman" did not do; or if he did commit these actions, his
punishment was swift. He was obliged to face the ordeal of a duel, or
he received the cut direct from his own class.

These ideas of behaviour, accompanied by the responsibility for the
welfare of numbers of tenants upon his property--responsibility very
often nobly sustained--produced in the old English aristocrat a very
fine specimen indeed. And from him downwards in all the social
classes, a high tone of honour was maintained. But now the democratic
idea is sweeping away these classes and these standards. The State is
taking the power for good from the individual, and the machine is
crushing the man; so it behooves all serious thinkers more than ever
to use their logical common sense to supply the place once occupied by
the old ideals. Nothing is so arrogant as ignorance--and loud shouting
ever concealed an empty pate.

Part of the crude spirit of the Great Unrest of to-day manifests
itself by the effort of those beneath to demonstrate _in words_ that
they are the equals of those above them. And, pitiful and ridiculous
as this is, the spirit arose in good. It is because those underneath
_desire_ to be the equals of those above them, that they use the only
means their limited understandings provide them with, to try to obtain
their ends. You never hear of numbers of people shouting that they are
the equals of the tramp in the street!

So it shows that even in this, the Great Unrest is an uplifting force.
And when reason and education have directed its current, surely we may
hope that we shall arise again as a nation, like a giant refreshed
with wine.

The study of the atavism of races, the study of heredity, the study of
the influence of the welfare of the mother upon her unborn child, are
all useful and expanding studies for ordinary thinking minds, and are
quite within the scope of the average intelligence. But the modern
hatred of all restraint--another failing born in the good of desire
for freedom--makes it difficult to preach any course of action which
would involve curtailment of time or pleasure.

You often hear people say about some misfortune, "Just as I expected,
such and such happened," and they do not stop to realise that their
expectancy helped the thing which they feared, to materialise. No one
can deny the force of imagination. Its existence has been abundantly
proved. For instance, there was a case which was in the newspapers
some time ago, of the guard on a Russian train who believed he was
locked into the cold-storage van, and wrote a letter describing how he
was being frozen to death. And he was actually found dead in the
morning, although the temperature of the car had never gone below
freezing point!

People will readily credit this, but will ridicule the idea that their
own imaginations are daily helping or hindering their own and others'
lives.

Marconi demonstrated that messages can be transmitted by wireless
telegraphy, and his discovery became a thing of commercial value. So
it was believed in as nothing marvellous, but merely as a new
departure of science. Yet the numberless proofs of other currents
beyond our actual sight which manifest themselves each day in every
life, and influence it, are unconsidered quantities, if not actually
denied.

But there they are; and though, as the demonstration of an exact
science, they are laughed to scorn, their force is unconsciously
admitted in a hundred cant phrases, such as, "He was under an evil
influence,"--"She makes you feel better because she is so cheerful,"
etc., etc.--Both these things here alluded to as forces are
intangible, and yet are real proofs of the power of imagination.

This shows how tremendously important it is never to allow our
imagination to run into prognostications of evil, either in
predictions for our country, for ourselves, or for our friends. Each
unit should try to help the great force for good by sending forth
strong positive thoughts for its upliftment.

Think, for a moment, under what a terrible shadow the soul of
Christian man has lain for these many hundred years! Ever since the
doctrine of original sin was forced upon his belief, his soul has come
into the world handicapped by millions of thought-currents expecting
it to do evil, unless continuously controlled and curtailed and
punished into a semblance of good! It cannot be wondered at, then,
that sometimes these forces become too strong for it, and it does fall
into sin. But what an insult to God, the source of all love and beauty
and holiness, to suppose He would permit a tarnished atom of Himself
to reach the exquisite world He has created!

All who wish for enlightenment upon this subject, and as to how they
should view their children and their race, should read Edmond Holmes's
masterly work upon elementary education, "What Is, and What Might Be."

We cannot stop the force which our own action, in giving education to
the lowest people, has put in motion, and which has produced, from
their status upward, the "Great Unrest." We can hardly even hope to
control it; but we can and must do all in our power to guide and
direct it into channels for the good and glory of our dear country,
making it, as the fire Prometheus stole from heaven, an incentive to
noble actions and great ends.

Could not the people with large influence, who are interested in this
matter, band together and discuss some scheme for the sending out of
lecturers all over England who would explain, with common sense
entirely stripped of all politics or religion, to the rising
generation, the vast importance of individual responsibility--the duty
of all citizens--the glory of helping the great force aright?
Explanations, in a practical and simple form, would do more than a
thousand laws, or all the thunders from the pulpit or the platform. If
the children in every school could be made to feel they are all little
men and women, full of God's gift of a soul, able and willing to help
the raising of their country, they would soon graft a new spirit into
their homes. They would respond as readily as do the hundreds of brave
men who volunteer for active service, and probable death, to reinforce
a fire-brigade, or a life-boat's crew. Children are so wise when their
fine instincts are appealed to.

If only this fundamental principle could be understood--that each
individual has in this life, or some former one, attracted to himself
the exact environment that he is now in--and that it lies only with
himself whether he remains in it, or lifts himself out of it, there
would be no more class hatred, no more railing against hard luck and
injustice, but a steady increase of betterment all over the world.

The unfortunate thing is, that nearly all writers and talkers and
lecturers, who are enthusiasts, and therefore really believe in what
they are preaching, have so little common sense.

They carry away their readers or audiences for the moment upon the
current of their own divine enthusiasm, but when their utterances come
to be measured by the cold light of fact, the logical conclusions are
so faulty, that the whole, which contained many thoughts of great and
beautiful worth, is dismissed as the ravings of a dreamer, and ceases
to have any effect.

The main attribute of any religion, of any ethical teaching, of any
principle--to be of use to men and women at the present stage of their
development--_must_ be incontestable common sense. Ridiculous
sentimentality should be ruthlessly crushed, and investigation of the
meaning of Nature should be strenuously encouraged. And with clear
eyes we should try to see the truth. Let those born fighters who like
fighting for fighting's sake, and who now wage war against windmills,
being armed with prejudice and false conceptions of man's place in
relation to God, turn their belligerent powers to the demolition of
the double-headed Hydra, Hypocrisy and Deceit.

It is the duty of every true man and woman at this hour of their
country's day to begin to THINK, to weigh for himself or herself the
meanings of the signs of the times, to use their critical faculties,
to face facts honestly, unhampered by prudery, convention, or the
doctrines of the Church. And then they will see for themselves that
the Great Unrest is a force, the direction of which, for good or ill,
lies in their own hands. And according to the way they fulfil the
responsibility entailed upon them in this matter, they or their
children will reap the reward, or pay the price. The Great Unrest in
its seething is still molten metal, which can be poured into what
mould we will.

To call this Great Unrest a sign of decadence and a presage of
destruction, would be as fallacious as to say that electricity is an
entirely mischievous force. Both are mischievous when undirected, and
both are glorious when used for good.

The test of the expansion of man's soul is the extent of its outlook.
The puny spirit sees an hour or two ahead; the more advanced probably
conceives plans to benefit himself and his loved ones day by day. The
developed soul desires the good of his country. But the soul that is
infinite and emancipated sees into eternity and demands of God the
regeneration of humanity.




II

THE GOSPEL OF COMMON SENSE


Of all the attributes which we of the twentieth century should most
strenuously encourage, that of common sense ranks first, in the face
of the hysteria which threatens to weaken, if it does not swamp, all
the wonderful new spirit of progress which is abroad.

Common sense applied to everything alone can restore our equilibrium
as a nation, because as the years of this new century go on hysteria
seems to increase. Nothing in the way of a public event can happen,
from the just condemnation of a criminal for some atrocious crime, to
the sinking of an ocean mammoth ship, but a large section of the
public makes an outcry inspired by altruism or so-called
humanitarianism, both developing into hysteria.

Let us look at the reason of this carefully, and we shall see that
this state of things is the direct result of an irresponsible
employment of the gigantic power of thought. Some few excitable brains
start an idea, the circulation of which is made possible by the modern
facilities for expression in the press. And because the majority of
readers do not think for themselves, they are drawn into the current
of unrest which has thus been suggested to their imagination, each
individual augmenting its strength until it grows into a torrent of
folly.

This proves the tremendous importance it is to a nation that each of
its units should realise his own responsibility in regard to this
matter. The moment that such a thing could be accomplished--that is,
that the understanding of the power of thought could be brought home
to people--there are millions of sound, honest folk who would
deliberately try to use their possession of it for the good of
themselves and the race, and who would bring up their children to do
likewise.

The wave of complete materialism which passed over Europe during what
we call the Victorian period discouraged any personal investigation of
forces beyond what could actually be proved by the senses. Numberless
examples of natural phenomena were laughed to scorn as the illusions
of the ignorant. People read their Bibles, wherein there are countless
instances shown of the power of thought, and never dreamed of applying
the teaching to themselves. How such a materialistic age ever accepted
Christ's miracles is a matter for wonderment, although now, looked at
from the point of view of those who have investigated the currents of
nature, the miracles are merely a proof of Jesus' divine understanding
of these currents and forces in their greatest measure. We modern
people are only as yet at the experimental stage, and hedged in by
timidity and custom, but there is no reason why we should not advance
if we desire to do so.

Think how the power of thought showed itself about the _Titanic_
disaster! There is no need now to go over its hysterical effects upon
us on land, how in our misery and anxiety we praised and blamed from
excitable imagination, before any actual facts could be known to
justify either course. But let us instead try to imagine what in its
glorious form it did upon that great ship on the night of her
overwhelming.

Everything seems to have been calm and in fair order. Why? Because it
has been now proved that the majority of those on board did not
_think_ the ship could sink. Only a limited number of men _knew_ that
she not only could, but _would_, and these glorious and splendid souls
did their duty to the last, with the awful knowledge of certain death
in their hearts. Their names should be written in letters of
gold--heroes, indeed! But, meanwhile, the power of thought had kept
all calm, and had permitted the saving of the women and children
without panic.

Think for a moment what would have happened if the passengers of all
classes had been aware, from the first moment of the collision, that
all were bound to go down who could not find places in the boats. The
power of thought would then have created a mad panic of fear which no
officers' pistols could have kept in check, and which might have
produced a rush upon the lifeboats which would have swamped them all.
But as it was, the power of thought in the few individuals who
realised the general peril, was used by them in a godlike suppression
of their own emotion, which produced an answering vibration of calm in
the majority under their care.

I do not want to refer to the awful story except in so far as it is a
concrete illustration of what I wish to write about--the power of
thought examined with common sense in its relation to the happiness of
each individual, and the responsibility of its employment by each
individual for the benefit of the community--not from the desire to
use this opportunity to circulate propaganda for any of the new
ethical teachings, but simply from a common-sense point of view to see
what good we can get out of a belief that is, I suppose, common to
them all.

Now let us consider what most of us do actually know about this power
of thought. We all are aware that no picture can be painted, no
machinery invented, before a clear vision of it has been realised in
the creator's brain. Not a single conscious action can be put into
motion and force without its having first occurred to the imagination.
The painter's hand and brush would be of no avail undirected by his
brain or mind, which has first mentally visualised what it wishes to
create in fact. Draw the analogy from this, and you will see that what
you think about must have an enormous bearing upon your life. If
thought, when inspired by desire, is strong enough to cause the hand
to reproduce the vision of the imagination of the artist, this is an
incontestable proof that thought is a very strong force indeed. You
will agree with this if you--each individual who is reading these
words--begin to examine yourself with truth.

Admitted, then, that you perceive the force of thought. Now consider
what miserable thinking is likely to bring you. It, according to the
analogy above, can only eventually attract for you _in fact_ the
miserable conditions that you have dwelt upon in imagination. If, on
the contrary, you think constantly of fine and prosperous things, you
must by this reasoning, be connecting yourself with the currents which
can bring them in their material form.

Therefore, every time you say "I am ill," or think "I am ill," are you
not helping the illness to materialise? because the power of thought,
which you cannot deny as the initial cause of every action, has then
been turned to aid the condition of ill health.

Supposing for some cause you really are ill, why then help this evil
state to augment by your thoughts? Rather impede its progress as far
as you can by creating good-thought conditions.

You may reply, "But I am constantly doing this, and yet nothing good
comes." Pause and use your common sense by remembering that for
twenty--thirty--forty years perhaps, when you did not analyse matters,
you were laying up for yourself numberless stumbling-blocks by wrong
thinking, which according to the law we are discussing must be
surmounted before you can start on a clear road. And the reason why
you do not immediately receive the result of your good thoughts is
that you are still under the action of your bad ones. But if you
recognise this law of the power of thought, you need not incur for
yourself any further debts to pay.

And to recognise it as a law you have only to use your common sense to
see that it is not conceivable that thoughts can have no effect
outside your own brain. They cannot be wasted and go into nothingness,
they _must_ strike some answering vibration somewhere, and it is
surely rational to suppose they will strike the kindred vibration
rather than some totally different one, as the Marconi messages strike
the pole in tune to them. At least, it is worth while trying to
believe this, because if you can it will make you happier.

Alas! I am not a scientist who can dogmatically prove every fraction
of my beliefs. I only want to awaken my readers to think for
themselves upon this interesting subject, for the facts are there for
us all to investigate, unaided by scientists, if we will.

So without any more argument, shall we take it for granted that you
are with me thus far, and have seen my point? Yes. Then let us examine
what our thoughts do for us.

For example, let us suppose a man has a disease which is believed to
be incurable. His thoughts tell him so constantly, and the thoughts of
his friends, often expressed in words, convince him still further of
his misfortune. He is certain nothing he can do will make it better,
and any remedy that is applied will only meet with failure. He has
made his mental picture of an incurable disease; and so he is helping
the material result to accomplish itself. But, as hope springs eternal
in the human breast, he still goes from doctor to doctor for fresh
advice, while unconsciously nullifying the benefit he might receive
from doing so by his attitude of mind in holding the belief that
nothing can cure him. We must all of us know of cases like this, and
have seen the gradual increase in the person's illness.

Now supposing that the starting-point is the same; the disease
certainly is there, but the man is determined not to aid and augment
this state of things, so whenever the thought presents itself that he
has an incurable disease he persistently banishes it and replaces it
with one that he will grow well. He will be aiding that condition; he
will be making himself the pole in tune to receive the answering
vibrations of his mental picture. He will know that he must be drawing
to himself every chance that science has up till this time of the
world's day been able to invent or discover for the betterment of such
a disease as his. He will know that he is giving nature a free hand,
and as far as he is able, he is opening every door to the probability
that he may grow well. Now, if we admit the power of thought, we must
admit it has power to go both these ways. Is it not worth while trying
to think good things for ourselves, then, instead of evil ones?

It does not seem possible, as I understand some assert, that by mere
thinking and believing we can cure even a broken arm. Because,
although the principle may be right in its eventuality, no one on
earth can be quite advanced enough yet to draw these forces to himself
sufficiently strongly to demonstrate it as Christ did. But we are at
the stage when, by our thoughts, we can certainly aid physical means
of betterment. Thus when we or our friends are ill, it lies in our own
hands whether we will aid or <DW44> our or their recovery.

Long years ago, before any of these psychic waves were discussed or
given the least credence, I remember a very celebrated American doctor
telling me, as a curious fact, that he often got his patients over the
crisis of typhoid fever by telling them cheerfully beforehand that the
dangerous moment was passed, and they were not to worry over the
seemingly worse physical sensations they were perhaps about to
experience--these were only the reaction. In that way, he said, he
removed the amount of fear from the mind of the patient which
otherwise might have been enough to cause the extra exertion to the
heart which would have proved fatal at the critical moment. The power
of thought, you see, and nothing else, then saved them.

To continue this line of reasoning in mental, not physical, things.
Supposing you feel angry and resentful towards some one, and you send
out thoughts of hate and ill-will. The pole in tune to such feelings
in that person will answer and return them to you, and a condition of
evil will be created. But supposing that, when perhaps the justly
angry and resentful thoughts present themselves, you replace them
instantly with kind and loving ones. You will have disconnected
yourself with the evil thoughts of the other person, they can no
longer reach you, and if he has any good in him you will have
connected yourself with that good, and so peace can be established.

All this is common sense, which is the only attitude of mind with
which to approach any new suggestion that we may get benefit from it,
and not through our arrogant ignorance dismiss it as nonsense, until
we have proved it to be such. A hundred years ago the telephone would
have been considered either as magic or the vapourings of a madman if
an individual had tried to explain it. We say that "France is
developing a new spirit," we say "A wave of discontent seems to be
passing over such and such a community," we are thus unconsciously
admitting the power of forces beyond the perceptible. Why cannot we
instantly grasp, then, what the power of our everyday thought is doing
for us, and how careful we should be in its direction to avoid
augmenting the current of foolish and harmful ones--because unity is
strength. There are many grains of good to be got out of all new
ethical teachings, if only they can be sifted by common sense. The
unfortunate part is, that very often it is only the faddists who
expound them, and they go off at a tangent. One reads several pages of
illuminating matter, and then, perhaps, one comes upon a chapter
devoted to proving that mankind must train itself to live upon nuts or
uncooked vegetables! Or that the only way to learn concentration is
for the pupil to school himself mentally to stare for so many minutes
at an imaginary spot in the solar plexus!

Common sense revolts, although many may not be sufficiently trained to
make the deduction that if God, the omnipotent, original,
all-dominating dynamo, gave the flesh of bird, beast and fish, and the
fruits and vegetables of the earth for mankind to feed upon, it is a
little ridiculous for one sect to eliminate as food all but the
special part of these aliments of which it approves. Thus, common
sense being affronted, all the rest of the teaching is likely to fall
upon stony ground and only be received by the faddists in tune to this
particular argument. No theory for the betterment of mankind will
succeed now with the mass of people or make any lasting mark upon time
unless its basic principle can stand practical dissection.

So that upon this subject of the power of thought, all that any one at
the present stage can do, no matter what his own personal beliefs may
be, is to try and awaken people to think about it themselves and make
their own investigations; to open a window for any soul to look
through and see what he can get from it for himself. Because, as yet,
the scientists and psychologists have not been sufficiently interested
in the idea to endeavour to prove and demonstrate it as an exact
science beyond all controversy. When this has been done, the
intelligent will credit it because they are convinced, and the
ignorant because they follow the others without reason.

All I hope to do by writing this article is to point out that the
power of thought is a vital factor in our lives, and can really affect
every hour of them for good or ill.

Thousands of people who read the new ethical or religious books which
are abroad, and even exploit their propaganda--thousands who attend
the various meetings and services and lectures of the different
societies, be they "New Thought" or any of the others on more or less
the same lines--never dream of applying the teachings to a single
ordinary thing, and still go on with their tempers and melancholy and
flurry and fuss, just as they did before they ever heard of the idea
that they can control and eliminate these things. An enormous majority
of the public are frightened at the very name of a new religion or
ethical teaching, and think it wrong even to investigate what it
teaches. But the broad-minded are unafraid of any knowledge, and can
gain good by knowing about all developments of human thought, provided
they approach each point with common sense and without hysteria,
dismissing the idea of what we are accustomed to call the
supernatural, and realising that everything has a perfectly natural
explanation when it can be understood, and it is only our ignorance
which makes us shy at it.

And so I would appeal to those who credit this power of thought to
employ it responsibly, and to realise that they are all God's atoms in
the great scheme of things, and must use their personal force as a
contribution to the vast thought-waves which can advance, or which,
when ill directed, can sweep away a nation.




III

MARRIAGE


It is an interesting subject--and one which has touched, or will
probably touch, most of our lives, therefore it may not be
unprofitable to study it a little, and what it means and what it
should mean; because, in the present upheaval of all our old beliefs,
marriage, as a sensible institution, is being attacked upon many
sides.

It is extremely easy to pull down a house, but it requires skill and
special training to rebuild it again; and before dragging the roof off
and demolishing the walls, it would be wiser to have made a distinct
plan and provided the materials ready for the reconstruction of a new
habitation, that the rain and the wind may not overcome us when we
have no shelter for our heads. But this is what the attackers of
marriage have failed to do as yet. Here are three facts which we can
begin by looking at.

_Firstly._ Some kind of union between man and woman, consolidated by
the law, is necessary for the continuation of a race in vigour and
moral upliftment.

_Secondly._ It is admitted by great philosophers and deep thinkers
that the welfare of the community is of more importance than the
fluctuating desires of the individual.

_Thirdly._ A fine ideal, however impossible of attainment, is a force
for good to be held up before the eyes of the mass of the people, who,
however much actual education has advanced, are still too unendowed
with personal brain to have any judgment themselves--their capacities
only allowing them to see the effects of things upon their immediate
surroundings without perceiving the causes, and therefore leaving them
incapable of judging what could be good for the country, the race, or
humanity in general.

After all these centuries, legal marriage still holds, because no one
has been able to suggest any other union which could take its place
without bringing chaos. And it seems more than likely that no one will
ever be sufficiently inspired so to do! Thus let us now consider the
present legal marriage as still being a stable fact, and see how we
can make the best of it. In it there are two things which both man and
woman forget--or refuse to face--and which are perhaps the chief
causes of most unhappiness. Man forgets that his kind _words_ of love
and sympathy matter far more to the actual happiness of the woman than
any of his _deeds_: because words fill and satisfy her imagination,
which is active whenever she is alone; and kind deeds, with few or
indifferent words, make very little impression upon it. Woman
forgets--or will not face--the fact that man is by nature a polygamous
animal. There is no use in arguing about this and saying he ought not
to be, and that it is a horrible idea. It is a physiological fact, and
to dispute it is to criticise the Almighty's scheme for ensuring a
continued population. That man should have polygamous instincts is
essential for this scheme to work against any odds.

Whatever we choose to say in contradiction to this resolves itself
into empty words, the fact of nature remaining. It would be just as
sensible to try to argue that, because we do not like to drink sea
water, it has no business to be salt! and to decide that it is _not_
salt! and that we will not recognise that _it is_ salt! The ocean
would just laugh at us, and remain briny! And no doubt Nature laughs
at silly woman too, when she tries to judge man without understanding
the elementary principle of creation.

This being grasped clearly, it must be seen that monogamous marriage
is _an ideal state_, not a _natural state_, and it must be admitted to
be such, and lived up to as an ideal, not undertaken with the notion
that fidelity in man is _natural_, and infidelity an _unnatural_
thing. It is the other way about because of the fundamental instincts
of man, which continuously and subconsciously suggest to him the
necessity for self-preservation, and in its larger sense
self-preservation means species-preservation.

Woman, on the other hand, although unconsciously inspired by this same
fundamental instinct of species-preservation, is not naturally
polygamous, or rather polyandrous, because such a state would militate
against this end by eventually destroying pure offspring. She only
becomes so under certain conditions. Fidelity, then, is, so to speak,
a natural state for woman, and she has not to fight against any
fundamental instinct of her sex in order to preserve it--she has only
to resist perverted desire, which is an exotic growth, the outcome of
civilisation. Thus fidelity is much harder for man, who, to succeed in
being faithful, is obliged to dominate a natural instinct, which is a
far more difficult thing to do than to fight against an exotic desire;
because all natural things are governed by inexorable and eternal
laws, and are not at the mercy of circumstance. Thus the natural
instinct of man is at work all the time in continuous activity--and
the exotic desire of woman is intermittent, and the result of
circumstance.

Of course, all this has been said before by every serious thinker, and
I am only reiterating these facts because the general readers may have
forgotten them, and I must bring them to their recollection to make
the rest of our discussion upon marriage clear.

These nature instincts being admitted, we can get on to a survey of
legal marriage. At first, it must have been an affair of expediency.
The woman was probably expected to be faithful, and brute force took
care that she was so, or that she immediately paid the price of
possible contamination of offspring by being killed. She was expected
to be faithful for a natural reason, not for a spiritual or
sentimental one; the reason being, as already inferred, to ensure the
purity of the offspring. Man had no need to be faithful to one woman
to secure this end, and never, in consequence, dreamed of being so.

All through Pagan times infidelity in man was rampant and recognised,
and not looked upon as sin. And when woman became civilised enough to
have exotic desires, she lost her natural instinct, that of
preservation of pure offspring, and became liable to vagrant fancies
and often a vicious creature.

Then the Church arrived and turned marriage into a sacrament;
presumably with the noble intention of trying to elevate man and
overcome his carnal nature. Man outwardly conformed, and, with his
whole soul's desire to be true and to uplift himself, each individual
who really believed no doubt did war with his instincts, and numbers
probably succeeded in conquering them. While woman, always a creature
of more delicate nervous susceptibilities, flung herself with furore
under the influences of spiritual things, and in the truly devout
cases overcame her grafted desires and returned to natural instincts.
But in beings of both sexes who were unconvinced by religion,
infidelity continued to flourish, as it does even to this day. A man
who truly believes that he is sinning in being unfaithful, and who
understands that outside opinion is nothing in the soiling of his own
soul, but that the matter is between himself and God, will always be
faithful _in body_ to a woman he has wedded, whether he cares for her
or not. But a man who has not this conviction, and who does not live
in this intimate relation to God, has no reason to hold him from
indulging his natural instinct, except the fear of being found out,
and when his sagacity has suggested safeguards against this, his
instinct will certainly give itself expression. It is all a question
of personal belief. There are numbers of good and honest characters
who do not feel convinced that entire fidelity in man to one woman was
intended by the Creator, and who therefore feel no degradation in the
latitude they allow themselves. It is not for us to argue which are
right and which are wrong, but to stick to the subject of marriage and
how it can perhaps be made happier in these present days, when all
other conditions of life are changing, by a better comprehension of
fundamental instincts and laws of nature.

Woman has developed so far that generally she thinks she is (and
sometimes she really is!) a reasonable and balanced creature, with
strong individuality--and personal tastes and likes and dislikes. She
is now ill-fitted to keep them all in subservience to man, unless he
is her intellectual master. She may have wedded only because the
emotion of sex (not understood as such, and called by a number of
other names such as "love," "devotion," "attraction") forced her at
one of its powerful moments to take a physical mate--totally unsuited
to her moral calibre. But she has knelt at the altar and sworn vows
before God--and perhaps has fulfilled woman's original mission in the
world, and become the mother of children--so what is to be done to
rectify her mistake and its unhappy consequences?

She must look the whole circumstances of it in the face and ask
herself whether she herself threw dust in her own eyes as regards the
character of her husband, whether he deceived her in this, or whether
they just drifted together, each to blame as much as the other,
through the attraction of sex and the cruelty of ignorance. She may
regret it a thousandfold--but she has done the thing of her own free
will, no one forced her to wed the man; she may have done so
unwillingly in some cases--and for ulterior motives, but at all events
she was consenting and not dragged to church resisting, and so if she
is sensible she will use the whole of her intelligence to make the
best of it. She will look to the end of her every action and her every
thought. Will brooding over her "rights," and the wrongs he has
inflicted, mend them? Will it do anything but give her vanity--the
satisfaction of self-pity? Certainly not.

If she has really evolved enough to wish to impose her opinions and
individuality upon her household or the community, she will have
realised that the welfare of the home for which she is responsible,
and the community to which she belongs, are, or ought to be, of far
more consequence to her than her own personal emotions. Therefore she
must ask herself whether she has any right to upset the happiness of
the one, and the conception of good of the other, by indulging in
personal quarrels and bickerings, or open scandal with her mate. A
really noble and unselfish woman would never consider her personal
emotion before her duty to God and to her neighbour. It is because the
outlook of woman is as a rule so pitifully narrow and self-centred
that she often makes a useless and unhappy wife, and shipwrecks her
own and others' futures.

Man has gone on with his brute force, and his physical and mental
attraction, and his tastes and beliefs and aspirations very much the
same for thousands of years. Numbers of them were brutes then, and
numbers are brutes still and will remain so. It is only woman who has
so incredibly changed, and after staying immeasurably behind in
importance and in intellectuality for countless centuries, now seeks
to equal if not outstep man in all things. It would be well for man to
wake up to the fact that he is now wedding a woman with every sense
and nerve and conception of life far in advance of what his mother
believed herself to be capable of--and so his methods towards her in
return must not be as his father's were. If man wishes to have the
good, domestic, obedient wife his father--perhaps one should go
farther back and say grandfather!--expected--and got--he must either
choose a timid weakling who becomes just his echo, or he must learn to
treat the modern woman as a comrade, a being who mentally can
understand and follow his aspirations and even assist him in his
desires, a creature to respect and consult, and whom he cannot rule
just because he is a man and she is a woman--but can only do so, and
bring her to obedience, when he has shown her his intellectual
superiority and his wisdom.

Woman is as willing to be ruled as ever she was--she always adores a
master; but she has grown too intelligent to bow her head just because
a man is a _man_--he must be _the man_. Man is naturally fighting for
his old omnipotence, which he possessed regardless of his personal
endowment, simply because he was a male creature--and the foolish
section of woman is fighting man, with bombs and tricks and frantic
words, instead of _convincing_ him by her wisdom and attainments, by
her demonstrations of knowledge of life and its duties and
responsibilities, that she has grown at last indeed fitted to be
treated as an equal and a comrade, not as a plaything and a slave.

Who does not respect a woman who fulfils all her obligations with
grace and charm, whose house is well ordered, whose friends are well
entertained by her fine mind, and whose children are well brought up
and full of understanding? She is indeed more precious than rubies and
far more full of influence for the good of her community than she who
shouts of rights and wrongs and votes and such-like. The first woman
could control a hundred votes, and help a government, but the second
can only clog the wheels of the sex's advancement.

Now we get back to marriage!

And the first and foremost thing to be understood is that it is a
frightful responsibility to undertake, and that all those who enter
into this bond lightly and for frivolous motives, or from just
drifting, will be made by fate to pay the price.

Think of it! Two people stand up and swear before God to continue to
love one another until death do them part. They solemnly stand there
and make vows about an emotion over which they have no more control
than they have over the keeping of the wind in the south. They have
only control, if they have strong wills, over its demonstration. And
then in nine cases out of ten neither thinks for a moment afterwards,
of his or her responsibility _of trying to make possible_ the
observance of these vows, by keeping alight the flame of love in the
other's heart. A man utterly disillusions a woman and then blames her,
not himself, for her ceasing to care for him, and being eventually
attracted by some one else! A woman disgusts or bores a man, and then
bewails her sad lot, and calls the man a brute for being indifferent,
and a shameful creature for looking elsewhere for consolation! In all
marriages there is no one to blame or praise for unhappiness or
happiness but the two individuals themselves. It is his fault--or
misfortune--if she no longer cares, and likewise hers in the parallel
case--and it is owing to the weakness of either if outside
circumstances have been able to interfere. Thus to ensure happiness
there must be a tremendous sense of personal responsibility, and there
should be understanding of life and understanding of nature instincts
and understanding of sex instincts; and a ruthless tearing away of the
false values which a Victorian age grafted upon religion, narrowing
the mind of woman as to man's needs--and narrowing man's conception of
woman's mental capacity.

No woman must ever forget in her relation to man that "he who pays the
piper calls the tune," and in this I am not only speaking literally of
shekels of gold and silver, but of the power incorporated in certain
personalities; and man, if he chose to exert it, has always _force
majeure_ at his command in the last extremity, although in these days
of Herculean young women he may lose even this in time!

Before undertaking to play that most difficult part of wife, every
girl ought to ask herself, Does she really care for the man enough to
make her use her intelligence to understand him, and to try to keep
him loving her? Or if she does not personally care enough for him to
trouble about this--will the situation of her husband in the world
satisfy her, and make the bondage, unleavened by love, of the care of
house, servants, and possible children, worth while?

Before undertaking the situation she ought to look at every aspect of
the case, and question herself searchingly upon her own aims and ends,
and if the actual facts will or will not fit in with them. Having made
up her mind that for one reason or another it is for her happiness to
take a certain man for her mate, she ought then sedulously to
cultivate all the aspects of the condition which can conduce to peace
and to the attainment and enjoyment of that end. She must not forget
that the man has paid her the highest honour a man can pay a woman. He
has selected her to be his life's companion. He proposes in nine cases
out of ten, to provide her with a home and a position in life, and to
take upon himself the responsibility of her maintenance (when the
woman has money of her own this question is different naturally). But
in all cases the man in asking her to marry him has shown that
something in her--or in her possessions--makes her appear worth the
giving up of his liberty. So she owes him just as much as the thing he
took her for. If for her money, and she knows it is for that, and she
has been sufficiently humble to accept him on those terms--she owes
him money. If for love--she owes him at least the outside observances
of love. If he has pretended love and it is for some other motive, his
Nemesis will fall upon himself in the disillusion and contempt he will
inspire. But in all cases the woman, through want of intelligence or
pure misfortune, has crossed the Rubicon with him; she has allowed him
to teach her the meaning of dual life--she has put it into his power
with her to create future lives. She cannot, for any price or any
prayers, recross that fatal stream. So for all reasons of common
sense--and above all, sense of responsibility to the community--she
had better make the best of her bargain.

Likewise, man should pause and think, Is it merely because I cannot
obtain this woman upon any other terms that I am offering her
marriage? Have I respect for her? Do I think she will bring happiness
into my house as well as pleasure to my body? Is she suited to my
brain capacity when I am not exalted by physical emotion? Am I going
to curb my selfishness and behave decently towards her?

If he cannot answer these questions satisfactorily he may know that he
is undertaking a hundred-to-one chance of peace and happiness. But if
the physical desire is stronger than all these considerations, then he
must _know and realise_ that whatever happens _he must never blame the
woman_. He has succumbed to the most material and alas! the most
hideously strong force in nature--not because the woman tempted him,
as it has been the fashion for man to say since the days of Adam--but
because there is something in himself which is so weak that it cannot
listen to the promptings of the spirit when the body calls.

In each and every case it is a man's duty to be kind and courteous to
a woman who is his wife. He has made her so by his free vows before
God (because no one can be forced to the altar against his absolute
will in these days), or he has made her so by vows and business
agreement, according to the laws of his country, before the Registrar.
In either case he has made her his legal wife and the possible mother
of his children--units unborn who can affect the welfare of his
country. He has, then, his great duties towards her. If she was a
girl, he has taken from her that which nothing on earth can restore;
he has made her into another being. He has been instrumental in making
her--this other human soul--accept responsibilities, and he is bound
as an honourable man to school himself so as to be able to help the
mutual happiness and peace of their dual existence. And if he wishes
to be obeyed, loved, and respected, he has to look to himself that he
inspires obedience, love, and respect in his mate. She will not
experience these feelings to order; and fear alone, or some other and
lower motive, would make her simulate them. Man must not forget that
nothing simulated can last. Truth alone remains at the end of the
year.

No marriage can be certain of continuing happy which has been entered
into in the spirit of taking a lottery ticket. But most marriages
could be fairly happy if both man and woman looked the thing squarely
in the face and made up their minds that they would run together in
harness as two well-trained carriage horses, both knowing of the pole,
both pulling at the collar and not over-straining the traces, both
taking pride in their high stepping and their unity of movement. How
much more dignified than to make a pitiful exhibition of
incompatibility like two wild creatures kicking and plunging, and
finally upsetting the vehicle they had agreed to draw?

I would like to discuss now the problem of whether or not marriage
could be made happy no matter how it starts, by using common sense,
but the deep interest of the whole subject has made my pen already
cover too much space and I must refrain in this chapter.

Only, men and women who read this, do not pass it by, but stop and
_think_ before you plunge, through the giving and the taking of a
wedding ring, into happiness or misery.




IV

AFTER MARRIAGE


Considering the instability of all our tastes and desires and the
almost total want of personal discipline which prevails in the present
day, it is really remarkable that the legal marriage goes on even as
well as it does!--but that the state could be much happier is patent
to any understanding, and it may be interesting to look at one or two
aspects of it, and see from whence comes the discord. A woman enters
into matrimony for various reasons, but, in the majority of cases in
England and America at least, it is because she is, or fancies she is,
in love with the man at the time. He, therefore, if this is so, starts
with an enormous power over her, which, if he chooses to keep it, will
enable him to turn their future life in any way he will, because the
greatest desire even of the most strong-minded and domineering woman
when in love is to please the man. A woman only becomes indifferent as
to whether or no she is doing this when she no longer cares.
Therefore, it is the man's business to keep her in this state if he
wants his home to be happy. The first thing for him to realise is that
she cannot remain in love with him by her own will, any more than she
can cease to love him by her own will--these states are produced in
her by something in himself. And if he discontinues using the arts and
attractions which awakened her love, he cannot expect it to continue
its demonstration, any more than a kettle will go on boiling if the
heat beneath is removed from it. This argument, of course, applies to
both sexes. Unfortunately, in a great many cases of marriage, the
simple attraction of sex has been the unconscious motive which has
caused the man to enter the bond, and naturally, when he has gained
his wishes he ceases to endeavour consciously to attract the woman.
And then one of two things happens; either she grows to love him more
for a time, because of that contrariness in human beings which always
puts abnormal value upon the thing which is slipping out of reach--or
she herself becomes indifferent; and then it is a mere chance if they
both, or either of them, possess character and a sense of duty as to
how the marriage goes along. We will take the case of a union when
both parties are in love when they start, and really desire that their
marriage should remain happy. Each ought to decide that he or she will
do his or her uttermost to continue to put forth those charms which
enchanted the mate before the ceremony. No one would expect the bloom
to remain upon grapes if he carelessly rubbed it off, but both man and
woman are extraordinarily surprised and disgusted when they find their
partners are no longer in love with them, and at once blame them for
fickleness, instead of examining themselves to see what caused this
ceasing to care--what they did--or omitted to do--which made
themselves no longer able to call forth love from their mates. And
until it can be grasped that all emotion of love is produced by
something consciously or unconsciously possessed by the other
person--and that it is not in the power of the individual to order
himself to feel it, or not to feel it, but that only the demonstration
of the state is in his power--unions will go on with mutual
recriminations and the hitting of the heads against a stone wall.

Some natures are naturally fickle and unstable--and no matter how good
and sweet the partner may be, they break away. These cases are
misfortunes, but in analysing the facts the actual responsibility
cannot be laid at the doors of such people, since they could not _by
will_ have kept the sensation of love for their partners, any more
than by will they could have ceased to care for them. They could only
_by will_ have been able to control the expression of their feelings.
I seem to be reiterating this point to the verge of tiresomeness, but it
is so vitally important to understand, because its non-comprehension
produces such injustice. If John _by his will_ were able to make
himself remain in love with Mary, and failed to do so, then she might
have a right to blame him because he had sworn that he would at the
altar. But as he cannot command his actual emotion, she can only blame
him for infidelity of the body, since of that, at least, it is
possible he could be master. But, alas! Mary very seldom realises
this, and reproaches John for ceasing _to feel loving_ towards her!
which is as sensible on her part as to reproach him for the skies
pouring rain. John, on his side, in like case does the same thing,
because he also has not understood the truth. A valuable point for
both to keep in remembrance is that the attraction of sex is the basis
of all "being in love." However ennobled the emotion may become
afterwards, it always starts with that. (This fact is explained and
elaborated in the conversation between the Russian and the Clergyman
in my story, "The Point of View.") If common sense is used in thinking
about this matter, it will be seen that if this was not the foundation
of "being in love" the emotion would be calm, and like that of brother
and sister. So, admitting that this is the foundation, it can be
understood how important a part it plays in the happiness of two
people bound together by law for life, and how important it is to the
woman to endeavor to continue to make herself lovable in the eyes of
the man--and _vice versa_--_it is of supreme importance to whichever
of them cares the most_. When the thing starts equally, the man nearly
always cools the soonest, because of his fundamental instincts, and
the force of satiation. He then probably goes on liking his
wife--perhaps he admires and respects her intellect, but the thrill
which used to come when her hand even touched his hand is no longer
there, and he only feels emotion towards her _when he is in the mood,
which would make him feel it towards any woman_ who happened to be
there at the moment. And just in the measure that he was passionate
towards his wife, so he will be the easy or difficult prey of a new
emotion. And if this aspect of the case distresses the woman, she must
look to her guns--so to speak--and use the whole of her intelligence
to regain her hold over his affection. She will not improve matters by
lamenting or reproaching the man. If it does not distress her, then
she can congratulate herself that a time of peace has come!

A woman must face the fact that man is a totally different creature
from herself, governed by other instincts, which can be best explained
by realising them in animals in their boldest nature aspect, _i.e._ a
male dog at times will tear down any barrier that is within his
personal strength to enable him to get to his mate, and a female dog
will fight through unheard-of obstacles to reach her puppies. Here is
a plain illustration of the different ruling original instincts in
animals, and human beings are only the highest form of animal, given
by God a more developed soul and a choice of action, but still
influenced by fundamental nature instincts, which, beneath all the
training of civilisation, unconsciously still direct their actions and
affect their point of view. Civilisation, on its good side, teaches
man to overcome his bodily desires and to keep them in check, but not
to eliminate them, to do which would militate against the Creator's
scheme of things. Civilisation on its evil side has frequently
perverted woman's natural instinct, so that in numbers of cases the
wonderful devotion of the animal to her young has become numb in her,
or dead. If only all women would bravely face these facts of nature
instincts in themselves and in men, they would approach marriage with
much broader-minded views, and would have a much greater chance of
happiness, because they would realise that they must be lenient to man
in the matter of his fidelity to them; and if man realised these
instincts, he would enter marriage knowing he must make a fight with
nature to keep the vows he has sworn, and so he would be on his guard
against the first inclination to stray, instead of an easy prey to it.
For, as it is, there is a recognised unwritten law among most men that
honour must always be kept with "the other woman," but that it is not
necessary with a wife. A man's honour towards a woman is only certain
of holding with his inclinations--that is: A married to B will be
unfaithful to her with C--which is technically dishonour. He will not
consider that, but will tell any lie to protect C and stick to her,
because his sense of honour has gone with his inclination. He feels he
must "never give away C to B," although he experiences no qualm in
having already tacitly "given away" B to C, by his very part of taking
C for his mistress. B is also a woman, but only his wife! He has not
been the least aware of it, but his sense of honour has followed his
inclination, in a way it would never do over a business arrangement
with another man. To give a parallel case in a business arrangement: A
makes a bargain with B that he will deal with him alone; he then finds
he likes the goods of C better than those of B--but no honest
tradesman would think of breaking his contract even secretly with B
and dealing with C, for, if he did, he would know himself that he was
dishonest, and that all his fellows who knew he had done this thing
would despise and ostracise him. But a man when deceiving his wife not
only generally feels no shame himself, but knows his male friends will
probably not think the worse of him for it. There is not the slightest
use in arguing about these facts, any more than, as I said in my first
paper upon marriage, there is in arguing about fundamental instincts,
and it would be well for women to realise this elastic, unwritten law
of honour in men towards them, and so not expect, at the present state
of man's evolution, that they will receive anything different. They
must never forget that this adjustable sense of honour springs from
the same fundamental male instinct we spoke of--and therefore cannot
be turned round by women and applied to their own cases, because the
same instincts do not come into force with them. Woman must always
remember that _man is conquering primitive nature in being faithful to
her at all_, and therefore she ought, if she desires that he shall be
so, to look to her own every point of attraction to make it possible
(if not easy!) for him to fulfil her desire. I must reiterate again
that it is wiser to remember that it is civilisation alone
(civilisation embracing development of moral sense, and religious
sense, and the force of custom) which keeps him from straying whenever
he feels inclined, and that all she can do to prevent it is to
redouble her own attractions, and to help the women of the future by
instilling into her own sons' minds the idea that, as marriage is _an
ideal and not a natural state_, the man who enters into it must be
prepared to school himself to live up to an ideal, and control his
vagrant emotions. To teach the boys a new and higher sense of honour
is the only possible way to alter matters, as a grown man is seldom
changed. In marriage, both partners must understand that they are
undertaking to do a most difficult thing in vowing to live together
and love for ever! Whichever cares the most will have to use
_intelligence_ to keep the other--and if it is the woman who is
unfortunate enough to occupy this position, she generally absolutely
sacrifices herself to gratify the man's smallest wish, and so makes
herself cheap. She should use her wits and keep a firm hand over
herself so as not to let herself become in his eyes of no importance.

Selfishness is another basic instinct of man, caused because he was
originally and unquestionably Lord of Creation, and only in the
countries where men are in the majority are the greater number of them
unselfish even now to woman. In England, where women are in the
majority, selfishness in every male child is fostered from his cradle.
So women must not indiscriminately condemn every man as being selfish,
as though it was his personal fault; they must look to the cause, and
condemn that if they want to, or, better still, try to eradicate it in
the future by influencing their own sons to desire to be chivalrous
and unselfish to the woman of the next generation. In this way they
would help to raise the standard of honour and responsibility in
humanity in general.

The most selfish man is not often selfish to the woman whom he is in
love with. While she excites these emotions, however he shows his
cloven hoof to the rest of the household, he will not show it to her.
And even when he ceases to be in love, if his wife has filled him with
respect and admiration for her, he will hardly dare to exhibit his bad
qualities. You will see a man with the most odious character showing
only the nicest ways to some particular person, when he wishes to
stand well with that person. Therefore, to deal successfully with a
selfish man, it ought to be obvious to a woman that the only effectual
method to employ is to seek to create in his mind _the desire to
please her_. If only men could understand that to be kind and
courteous to their wives in the home would give them much greater
liberty abroad, they would greatly add to the happiness of most
marriages. It is her daily life which matters to a woman, because, as
a rule, her brain is not developed enough to be looking ahead to the
great questions of the day; and to have joy in her home is her earthly
paradise.

Nearly all love marriages begin with too much emotion and too little
self-control, and so become shipwrecked upon the rocks of satiety and
indifference. Young people undertake the most risky experiment in the
world as lightly and unpreparedly as they would go on a summer
holiday!

It must be understood that all these arguments are used from the
standpoint of supposing the married pair start with love. When they do
not, but are entering into a marriage simply from expediency, their
minds are generally calm, they have no illusions, and are therefore
free to use that judgment which they would employ over any business
affair of their lives, and often, therefore, they get along very well.
But these cannot be considered as ideal marriages, or likely to
produce highly endowed children. And in England, at least, such unions
are the exception and not the rule.

Broadly speaking, to make any marriage happy each partner ought
deliberately to use every atom of his or her intelligence to think out
the best method to live in sympathy with the mate, and should not
simply be set upon expressing his or her own personality, regardless
of the other. Chain any two animals together and watch the result!
Nothing will teach what marriage means more effectually. It is only
when the two poor beasts are of one mind that their chains do not
gall. But human beings are above animals in this, that they have wills
and talents and aspirations, and can judge of good and evil, so that
their happiness or misery is practically in their own hands, and to
quote an immortal remark of a French writer--"If as much thought were
put into the making a success of marriage as is put into the mixing of
a salad, there would be no unhappy unions!"




V

SHOULD DIVORCE BE MADE EASIER?


However much some of us may feel that divorce can never touch our
personal lives, at least the question of it in regard to the nation
must always be interesting; and now, with the Majority and Minority
report of the Royal Commission still ringing in every one's ears, it
seems a moment to suggest some points of view upon the matter. To
those people entirely influenced by religion as it is expounded from
the laws laid down by the Church, there can be nothing to say,
because, in the first place, their belief in the infallibility of
these laws and the influence of their pastors ought certainly to keep
them from sinning at all; and if sinned against, ought to enable them
to bear the pain without murmur. But there are a vast number of our
countrymen and women who do not consider the dogmas of religion and
are not entirely imbued with respect for the laws of the Church, while
nevertheless being good and honest citizens. It depends upon each
person's point of view.

In this paper, as in my former ones upon Marriage, I want only to take
the subject from the standpoint of common sense, while with reverence
I admit that if the moral conscience could be awakened by any
religious convictions whatever, so that it would keep each individual
from sinning, that would be the true solution of the problem. But,
while seeking to enforce its laws in opposition to the laws of the
State, the teaching of the Church seems somehow not to have been able
to retain much hold over the general conscience which, ever since the
first secular law came into being, has availed itself of the relief so
afforded to free itself from galling shackles. The point, then, to
look at sensibly is not whether divorce is right or wrong in itself,
but what sort of effect the making of it easier or less easy would
have upon the nation. There does not seem to be the slightest use in
applying any arguments to the subject which do not take into
consideration the immeasurable upheaval in ideas, manner of living,
relaxation of personal discipline, and loss of religious control which
have taken place since the last reform was made. The luxury of
existence, the rapid movement from place to place permitted by
motor-cars, the emancipation of women, the general supposed necessity
of indulging in amusements, have so altered all the notions of life,
and so excited and encouraged interest in sex relationships, that the
old idea of stability and loyalty in marriage is shaken to its
foundations. The temptations for people to err are now a thousand-fold
greater than they were fifty years ago, and very few young people are
brought up with ideas of stern self-control at all. This being the
case, it would seem that the only rational standpoint to view the
question of divorce reform or divorce restriction from is the one
which gives the vastest outlook over each side's eventuality,
realising present conditions and tendencies to be as they are, and not
as they were, or ought to be. The forces which produced these
conditions are not on the decline, but, if anything, on the increase,
and must therefore be reckoned with and not ignored. What are they
likely to bring in the future? Still greater intolerance of all
restraint, still more desire for change? And if this is so, will it
have been wiser to have made the law harder or more lenient? That is
the question we shall soon, as a people, have to try to decide.

In setting out to look calmly at the subject of divorce, no good can
be arrived at by studying isolated cases, inasmuch as surely there can
be no divided opinion upon the fact of the cruelty of some of them,
and the certainty of their betterment by divorce. The one and only aim
to keep in view is what will be best for the whole people, and no
other aspect should ever influence the true citizen in making up his
mind upon so vital a question. Thus surely we ought each one of us to
ask himself or herself to look ahead, and try to imagine what would be
the result to our nation of relaxing the severity of the present
divorce law--or of increasing it. Of the effects of its present
administration we can judge, so it ought to be no impossible task to
work from that backwards or forwards.

But to look at any subject dispassionately, without the prejudice of
religion or personal feeling, is one of the hardest things to
accomplish. These two forces always make people take views as
unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, regardless of
totally altered conditions and requirements of mankind. I hold a brief
for neither side, and in this paper I only want to suggest some points
of view so as to help, perhaps, some others to look at the matter with
justice, as I have tried to look at it myself. It would seem to me
that divorce as a means of ridding oneself of one partner merely to be
happier with another must surely always be wrong, because it must
entail the degradation of conscious personal motive, in the knowledge
that one had taken advantage of a law to gain an end, and to help one
to break a vow solely for one's own gratification. The enormous
responsibility of so taking fate into their own hands would frighten
most people, if they gave themselves time to think--but they do not.
Nine-tenths of them have no compunction in breaking vows, because they
do not realise that by making them they have connected themselves with
currents and assumed responsibilities the consequences of which to
themselves they cannot possibly eventually avoid, no matter how they
may try temporarily to evade them.

It would seem to me that divorce for the rich and educated should be
made as difficult as possible, and the pleas investigated mercilessly,
to discover if any advantage has been taken of legal quibbles for
ulterior ends; but that the judge should grant decrees instantly when
habitual drunkenness, madness, or anything which degrades and lowers a
household or community is proved against the defendant. It would seem
to me that divorces for the poor should be facilitated in every way,
if this difference to those of the rich could possibly be
accomplished, so that the hideous cruelty and encouragement of vice
(cases of which are so admirably set forth in the pamphlets issued by
the Divorce Law Reform Union) could be summarily dealt with, and
relief and peace conferred upon the innocent party. Because the lives
of the poor are too filled with work to be as easily influenced by
personal emotion as the lives of the rich, and the lower level of
their education and standard of manners admits of such far greater
unkindness and brutality in their actions than in a higher class; and
thus they are the more entitled by justice to relief and protection
than the highly endowed and developed section of society who can
better take care of themselves. It seems to me to be a crying
injustice that the law of divorce can only be administered by paying
exorbitant fees for it; and that if the separation of two human beings
who are admittedly bound together by law can be accomplished by law
and that the breaking of the marriage vow is a sin against the law,
then the poorest in the land have an absolute right that this law
should be put into execution for them without special payment, just as
they have now a right to the Law's working for them to catch offenders
who steal their goods, or who break business contracts with them. It
would seem that this is a frightful case of there being one law for
the rich and one for the poor, and that it is a blot upon the boasted
equity and fairness of English justice. How glorious it would be if
all lawyers could be remunerated equally by the State! It would do
away with a thriving industry perhaps, but it might be a great aid to
real justice being arrived at, and not as things now are, when whoever
can pay the cleverest pleader has the best chance of winning the case.
But to get back to the views of divorce!

It would seem to me that the vital and essential question all persons
wishing for divorce ought to ask themselves is, "What is my motive in
desiring this freedom?" They should search their very souls for the
truth. If it is because the position has not only become intolerable
to themselves, but is a menace to their children or society, then they
should know that they are acting rightly in trying their utmost to be
free; but if the real reason is that they may legally indulge in a new
passion, then they may be certain that if they take advantage of a law
designed for the benefit of a race, and use it to their own baser
ends, they are invoking most dangerous forces to militate against
their own eventual unhappiness. No one who is in a position where his
or her good or bad example will be followed has any right to indulge
in any personal feelings to the influencing in a harmful way of his or
her public actions. This is the true meaning of that finest of all old
sayings, "_Noblesse oblige_." To me it would seem to be a frightful
sin for a man or woman for personal motives to degrade an order or a
community.

So this is the standpoint I would suggest every one looking at divorce
from: "Will the thing bring good or harm?--not to me who am only a
unit, but to that wider circle of my family and my country?" And if
common sense assures him or her that no good can come of it, then the
true citizen should not hesitate to bear the pain of refraining.

It would seem to me to be wrong to allow any personal feeling at all
to influence one to divorce, no matter what the cruelty of the
circumstances or the justice of the grievance one had, _if by so doing
the children of the marriage were injured in any way, or that the
prestige of an order or the honour of a family were lowered by one's
action_; but that were the husband or wife a shame and degradation to
the children or the family, the individual would be entirely justified
in divorcing, and would be helping the good of the State by preventing
the guilty and debased partner from committing further harm. Common
sense is always the truest wisdom, but it has often unhappily had to
be cloaked and hampered either by spiritual superstition, prejudice,
or ignorance. So that when a flagrant case which corrupts a whole
neighbourhood cries aloud to common sense to remove it by divorce,
there are found hundreds of good and worthy people to oppose this on
the ground that the Church does not sanction such proceeding! If the
State religion administered by the Church cannot inculcate higher
principles in its members, so as to prevent them from sinning, it
would obviously seem to be more fair to allow the statesmen and
sociologists to have a free hand in their attempt to better the
morality of England than for the Church to use the vast influence it
still possesses to the stultifying of these plans. The homely proverb
of the proof of the pudding being in the eating seems to be plainly
shown here. The religious teaching has failed to influence the people
to refrain from sin and to discountenance divorce, proving that its
method of imparting knowledge and obtaining influence over the modern
mind is no longer effectual, and common sense would suggest changing
the method to ensure the desired end. There is a story told of a
French regiment in the early days of conscription. A certain size of
boots had been decided upon for recruits, and this decision had worked
very well when the young men were drawn from the town, where the feet
were comparatively small, but when countryside youths became the
majority, the boots they were given were an agony to them, and
constant complaints were the result, with, however, no redress.
Omnipotent head-quarters had decided the size! And that was the end of
it! And it was not until nearly the whole regiment was in hospital
with sore feet that it entered the brain of the officials that it
might be wiser for France to regulate the size of the boots of the
regiment to the feet of the wearers. Why, then, cannot the Church
devote all its brain and force to evolving some new form of teaching
which will, so to speak, "fit the feet of the wearers"? Then all
questions of divorce could be settled by noble and exalted feeling and
desire to do right and elevate the nation. But meanwhile, with the
growth and encouragement of individualism, every little unit is giving
forth his personal view (as I am doing in this paper!), perhaps many
of them without the slightest faculty for looking ahead, or knowledge
of how to make deductions from past events, or other countries'
experiences; and the Church is preaching one thing, and the State
another, the Majority report taking a certain view, and the Minority a
different one--and we are all at sea, and the supreme issue of it all
seems to be fogged.

An enormous section of the public, and almost all women it would seem,
are of opinion that divorce should be granted for the same reason to
women as it is now to men. But surely those who hold this view cannot
understand that fundamental difference in the instincts of the sexes
which I tried to show as forcibly as I could in my former articles
upon Marriage. Infidelity in man cannot be nearly such a degradation
to his own soul as infidelity in woman must be to hers, because he is
following natural impulses and she is following grafted ones. A woman
must feel degraded in her body and soul when she gives herself to _two
men_ at the same time, a husband and a lover; but a man, when he
strays, if it has any moral effect upon him at all, probably merely
feels some twinges on account of breaking his word, and the fear of
being found out. The actual infidelity cannot degrade him as much as
it generally degrades a woman, and may be only the yielding to strong
temptation at a given moment, and have no bearing upon the kind home
treatment he accords his wife and children, or the tenor of his
domestic life. The eventuality of what this law would bring should be
looked at squarely. And it is rather a pitiful picture to think of the
entire happiness of a home being upset because a wife, without
judgment or the faculty of making deductions, discovering a single
instance of illicit behaviour in her husband, sees fit to, and is
enabled by law, to divorce him. It may be argued that the fear of this
would make him mend his ways; but did fear ever curb strong natural
instincts for long?--instincts as strong as hunger, or thirst, or
desire to sleep? Fear could only curb such for a time, and then
intelligence would suggest some new and cunning method of deceit, so
as to obtain the desired end. The only possible way to ensure fidelity
in a man is by influencing him to _wish_ to remain faithful, either by
fond love for the woman or deep religious conviction or moral opinion
that not to do so would degrade his soul. The accomplishment of this
end would seem to be either in the hands of the woman or in the
teaching of the Church--and cannot be brought about by law. Law can
only punish offenders; it cannot force them to keep from sin. When a
man is unfaithful habitually, it amounts to cruelty, and even with the
present law the woman can obtain relief on that ground.

In looking at a single case of infidelity in a woman, a man would be
wise to question himself to see if he has not been in some measure
responsible for it--by his own unkindness or indifference, and in not
realising her nature; and if his conscience tells him he is to blame,
then he ought never to be hard upon the woman. He ought also very
seriously to consider the circumstances, and whether or no his
children or his family will be hurt by the scandal of public
severance, as they should be more important to him than his personal
feelings. Tolerance and common sense should always hold wounded vanity
and prejudice in check. How often one sees happy and united old
couples who in the meridian of their lives have each looked elsewhere,
but have had the good taste and judgment to make no public protest
about the matter, and thus have given each other time to regain
command of vagrant fancies and return to the fold of convention!

With so many different individual views upon the right and wrong of
divorce, it is impossible for either side--the divorce reform or the
divorce restriction supporters--to state a wholly convincing case
against the other. The only possible way to view the general question
is, as I said before, to keep the mind fixed upon the main issue,
_that of what may possibly be best for the nation_, having regard to
the ever-augmenting forces of luxury and liberty and democracy and
want of discipline which are holding rule.

Lack of space prevents me from trying to touch upon the numerous other
moot points in divorce, so I will only plead that, when each person
has come to a definite and common-sense conclusion, unclouded by
sentiment or prejudice, he or she may not hesitate to proclaim his or
her conviction aloud, so that the law of the land may be reorganised
to the needs of present-day humanity and help it to rise to the
highest fulfilment.




VI

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MOTHERHOOD


As far as the necessities for it go in the animal world, nearly all
animals have a very strong sense of the responsibility of
motherhood--unless they have become over-civilised, or live under
unnatural circumstances. A striking example of the consequences of the
latter state of being is shown by "Barbara," that thrillingly
attractive Polar bear in the Zoo, whose twelfth and thirteenth infants
were only the other day condemned to follow their brothers and sisters
to an early grave through their parents'--and especially their
mother's--gross stupidity about their bringing-up and welfare. And we
who are human animals, given by God conscious souls, ought to realise
the fact that civilisation and pampered environment have enormously
blunted our natural instincts in this respect, just as they have
Barbara's, and so we should try to restore the loss by consciously
cultivating our understanding of the subject and deliberately
realising the tremendous responsibilities we incur by bringing
children into the world. When we think about the matter quietly, the
magnitude of it is almost overwhelming, and yet there are hundreds and
thousands of women who never give it a serious thought! They have some
vague idea that to have children is the inevitable result of
matrimony, and that if they pay others to feed and clothe the little
creatures, and give them some instruction in the way that they should
go, their own part of the affair is finished. That, until a child is
grown to an age to judge for itself, the parents will be held
responsible for their stewardship of its body and soul at the great
tribunal of God does not strike them, and it is only perhaps when the
boomerang of their neglect has returned to them and blasted them with
calamity that they become conscious of their past negligence.

In this article I do not propose to touch upon the father's side of
the question, important as it is, but shall confine myself to the
mother's, because this has always been one of my deep preoccupations
to think out the meaning of it all, and how best to fulfil the trust.
Obviously the sole aim of true motherhood is the moral and physical
welfare of the child, and to accomplish this end we should understand
that it is quite impossible to lay down any set rule, or go by any
recognised and unchangeable method. For in one age certain precepts
are taught which are obsolete in the next, because science and the
improvement of mechanical aids to well-being advance with such giant
strides. But if we keep _the end_ in view it is simple enough to see
that common sense and discrimination, unclouded by custom or sentiment
or superstition, can accomplish miracles. The circumstances of the
particular case must always govern the method to be used in order to
obtain the same given end, no matter what the station in life of the
parents. Thus every mother, from the humblest to the highest, ought to
think out how she can best procure her child moral and physical
welfare _according to her means_.

In the lives of the very poor the only thing to be done for the
betterment of the understanding of the responsibility of motherhood
seems to be to teach the simplest rules of hygiene which animals know
by instinct, and after that for the State to take care of the children
as much as possible. For this very strange fact is in operation,
namely, that while Nature leaves an insatiable desire to create life,
she allows civilisation to rob human beings of instinctive knowledge
of how to preserve it in its earliest stages, and that the human
mother is of all creation the only one entirely at the mercy of
imparted knowledge as regards the proper treatment of her offspring.

Into the conception of the duties of motherhood among the very poor we
cannot go in this short paper--the subject is too vast--so we must
confine ourselves to discussing those of a higher class where, having
the means to do well, the responsibilities are far greater. I want, if
I can, to open a window, as it were, upon the outlook of the general
responsibility of motherhood and let each class apply what it gathers
of the meaning, if it wishes, to its own circumstances.

It is the aim and end of a thing which is of sole importance; in this
case the aim and end being the happiness and welfare of the child. And
that is the point which I want to harp upon, the necessity of keeping
the goal in view and of not wandering off into side issues. It was for
the sake of the end, namely, obtaining happiness, that I tried to show
in my articles upon marriage how common sense might secure this
desired state. And it was to _the end_ of what might be best for
England that I pleaded for the necessity of using fair judgment over
the question of facilitating or restricting divorce. And it is now to
_the end_ of helping the coming race to be fine and true that I want
to talk about the responsibility of motherhood.

Let us take the subject from the very beginning.


PRE-NATAL INFLUENCES

The thought for the child should commence with the first knowledge of
its coming birth. A tremendous control of self, and emotions, and
foolish habits, and a stern command of nerves should be the
prospective mother's constant effort, as science has proved that all
pre-natal influences have such powerful effect upon the child; and,
surely, if any woman stopped to think of the colossal responsibility
she has undertaken in having become the vehicle to bring a soul from
God to earth, she would at least try to employ as much intelligence in
the fulfilment of her obligation as she puts into succeeding in any of
the worldly pursuits in life. Think of the hours some women spend in
painful discipline by going through exercises to keep their figures
young and their faces beautiful--the massage! the cures! and the
"rests" they take to this end--but who let their waiting time for
motherhood be passed in a sort of relaxation of all control--getting
into tempers, indulging in nerves, over-smoking, or tiring themselves
out with excitement without one thought for the coming little one,
except as an inevitable necessity or a shocking nuisance. During this
period the wise woman ought to study such matters as heredity. She
ought to view the characteristics of her own and her husband's
families, and then firmly determine to counteract the objectionable
features in them by making her own mind dwell upon only good and fine
attributes for her child. She ought to try to keep herself in perfect
health by using common sense, and, above all, she should _determine_
to fight and conquer the nervous emotions which more or less beset all
women at such time. She ought to encourage happy and loving relations
with her husband, and try in every way to be in herself good and
gentle and brave. It is the most important moment in the whole of a
woman's life for self-discipline, because of the prodigious results of
all her moods and actions upon the child, and yet, as I said before,
it is one of the commonest sights to see a woman who at other times is
a very good sort of creature, simply letting herself go and becoming
an insupportable bore to her husband and the whole house, with her
perverseness and her nerves and her fads.

If they could analyse causes, what bitter reproaches many poor little
diseased, neurotic children might truly throw at their irresponsible
mothers for endowing them with these evils before birth.


THE CASE OF TWO WOMEN

When the child is born--again it is only its welfare which should be
thought of by the mother, and not what custom or family opinion would
enforce. To me it seems that no mother ought to undertake any of the
so-called duties of a mother that she is incapable of performing to
the advantage of the child, who would be better cared for by employing
highly trained service. She should only force herself to do her best
in uncongenial tasks if circumstances make it impossible for her to
obtain a better nurse or teacher for her infant than she herself could
be. She must constantly keep _the end_ in view, so as to stamp out
prejudice and out-of-date methods; especially she should guard against
making the child suffer for her own fads and experiments. I believe I
shall better illustrate what I mean by "keeping the end in view" if I
give a few concrete examples, instead of trying to explain in the
abstract.

Here is one example.

There were two women of my acquaintance, one of whom had an exquisitely
obedient, perfectly brought-up little girl of five who was her
constant thought, and a baby of two months. This mother could afford
an excellent nurse, and left all the physical care of the infant to
her, concentrating her intelligence upon wise general supervision, and
upon the training of the little girl whose dawning character was her
study. The other mother had two very ill-behaved, disobedient children
of five and seven, and a baby of three months. She spent her time
washing and dressing the infant, fussing over it and caressing it from
morning to night, and interfering with the paid nurse, who well knew
her duties. She was also quite indifferent to her appearance, and
wearied her husband to death with her over-domesticity. But she felt
herself to be a perfect and affectionate wife and mother, and strongly
censured the other woman when she admitted that she had never washed
or dressed her baby, and was even rather nervous when she held it in
case she should hurt its tender neck and head. But the proof that the
first woman was a true and good guardian of God's gift to her was in
the finely trained little girl, and the proof of the second woman's
undevelopment from the animal stage was in her concentrated and, in
the circumstances, unnecessary preoccupation with the infant, to the
entire neglect of the character training of the elder children. Had
they both been so poor that actual physical care of the infants
devolved solely upon each mother, the first would have used all her
intelligence to discover the sensible and common-sense way to carry
out her duties, and the second would have continued using any obsolete
method she had been accustomed to, while she lavished silly fuss and
attention upon the baby.


FORE-THOUGHT FOR BEAUTY

The first woman had _the end_ in view; the second did not look ahead
at all, but simply indulged her own selfishly animal instincts,
without a thought of what would be best for her child.

The apparently "good" mothers might be divided into two classes--the
animal mothers and the spiritual mothers. The animal mothers are
better than indifferent, and therefore abnormal, mothers, but are far
below spiritual mothers, for they, the animal mothers, are only
obeying natural instincts which have happily survived in them, but
obeying them only as animals do, without reason or conscience. And the
spiritual mother uses her common sense and tries to secure the
continual welfare of her child, looking ahead for all eventualities,
from matters of health to personal appearance, as well as character
training and soul elevation.

Numbers of women think that if they follow out the same lines of
bringing-up for their children as are the recognised ones employed by
their class they have fully done their duty, and that if the children
do not profit by the stereotyped lessons of religion and behaviour
that have been imparted to them by proper teachers it is the fault of
the children, and a misfortune which they, the mothers, must bear with
more or less resignation.

But indeed this is not so.

Let us take a spiritual mother's duties in rotation, beginning with
the most material. After bringing into the world the healthiest infant
her common sense has been able to secure, she should guard against any
physical disability accruing to it that she can prevent. In all
matters of health she should either make a great study of the subject
herself, or employ trained aid to its accomplishment; but beyond this
there are other things which, if she neglects them, the boy or girl
could reproach her for afterwards and with reason. One is the
fore-thought for beauty. How many boys' whole personal appearances are
ruined by standing-out ears! How many little girls' complexions are
irretrievably spoilt by unsuitable soap having been used which has
burnt red veins into their tender cheeks. These two small examples are
entirely the fault of the mother and do not lie at the door of
uncorrected habits in the children themselves. No boy's ears need
stick out; there are caps and every sort of contrivance yearly being
improved upon to obviate this disfigurement. No girl need have
anything but a beautiful skin if her mother uses intelligence and
supervises the early treatment of it. Because if she has _the end_ in
view, the mother will know that her little boy or girl will probably
grow up and desire affection and happiness, and that beauty is a means
not to be discounted to obtain these good things, and, for the
securing of them, is relatively as important as having a well-endowed
mind.


THE SPIRITUAL MOTHER

When the first dawning characteristics begin to show, the spiritual
mother's study of heredity will begin to stand her in good stead, for
she must never forget that every expressed thought and action of a
small child shows the indication of some undeveloped instinct, and
should be watched by a sensible mother, so that she may decide which
one to encourage and which one to curb, and, if possible, eradicate.
Should there be some strong inherited tendency which is not good, then
her most careful care and influence will be needed. There is not the
slightest use in making rules and then leaving their enforcement to
servants and governesses--the true mother should see that her child
thoroughly understands what it is being asked to do, and why it is
being asked to do it. She should appeal to its intelligence from
earliest days, and make it comprehend it is for its own benefit. For
children cannot when very young be influenced by high moral
considerations which come with maturer years, but only by personal
gain or fear--and if ruled by fear they invariably become deceitful.
It is a spiritual mother's business to show interest in all her
child's tastes and occupations, and to supervise and direct them into
the best channels, and if she has several children she should watch
each one's idiosyncrasies and not imagine that the same method will do
for them all. What good gardener would treat a rose-tree in the same
fashion which he does a tulip bulb? The spiritual mother should think
out for herself, guided by what she sees are their personal needs, the
best method of instructing her children in true morality--that is,
honour and truth, and freedom from all hypocrisy and deceit. She
should not be influenced by any set-down rules of religion or dogma,
or by any precepts she may have been taught herself in her youth, if
they no longer convey conviction because of the change in time,
otherwise she will be following custom and losing sight of _the end_.
She should make her children understand that the soiling of their own
souls by committing mean actions is the greatest sin, and that what
other people think or do not think of them is of no consequence, but
the only vital things are what God thinks and they think of
themselves. Hundreds of children's afterlives are shipwrecked because
they were only taught all the dry dogmas and seemings of religion, and
the real meaning was never explained to them. I know a rigorously
strict clergyman's family where the children are taught and conform to
all the observances of their father's church, and yet a falser, more
paltry set of young creatures could not be found--they have never had
it explained to them that it is impossible to hoodwink God. For a
perfect example of the religious spirit _not to_ employ towards
children, all mothers ought to read the immortal scene between Trilby
before she dies and Mrs. Bagot--when the narrow woman expresses her
puny views and Trilby puts forth her broad and true ones. It is so
incredibly stupid to use obsolete methods which can never obtain the
desired end just because the dominion of custom is still strong upon
us, and we have not been intelligent enough to grasp and benefit by
the spirit of the age. For all mothers must realise that they can
never dominate the spirit of the age, and must either make vain fights
with it, and be conquered to their loss, or must make terms with it
and use it in its brightest and best aspect. The spirit of this age is
a totally different one to the spirit of their own childhood's age. It
is shorn of reverence and unquestioning obedience to elders, and is an
independent creature who will only obey through conviction of good or
personal benefit. Children are unerring and pitiless judges of those
placed over them, and how can a mother, just because she is a mother,
expect respect and reverence in her children if she earns their
contempt by her conduct and selfishness?

It is the spiritual mother's duty to instil chivalry towards the other
sex into her little sons from earliest years, by making them polite to
herself and to their sisters. She should, before they go to school and
when they return for the holidays, endeavour to influence them into
liking cleanliness and care of their persons, especially when with
ladies. She should try to make these little men so happy and
contented, so certain of sympathy and understanding that home spells
heaven for them and remains the dearest memory of their lives, and for
her little girls, over whom she has a far vaster influence, she should
polish their minds, explain all the true and pure principles of
life--teach them the value of self-control and self-respect, and watch
for and encourage all their graces, so that when they arrive at the
ages of seventeen and eighteen they may be fitted in all points to
shine in whatever world they belong to, and take their places among
the best of their class. Space forbids me to go on longer, although
the subject seems only just to have been begun, so large is its sphere
of action, but I must give one last concrete example of two women's
methods, to enforce my meaning of the importance of _the end_.

Both sent their girls to the same school, where every accomplishment
was taught and the highest tone prevailed that the masters could
inculcate. The first mother showed deep interest in the holidays, in
all her child's lessons, directed and encouraged her, opening her
understanding and broadening her point of view, while she attended to
every physical grace. She explained how her child should apply the
knowledge she acquired during term, so that it should grow
interesting, and as far as it lay in her power she endeavoured that
her daughter should be fitted with every charm and attraction which
could procure for her later on a larger selection from which to choose
her partner in life. The other mother let her girl run wild during the
holidays, and allowed her to feel that all she learned was just an
irksome duty to be forgotten the moment school was over. Her
appearance, her gentle manners, her refinement, her point of view,
were all left to take their own chance, from the mistaken idea that it
would encourage vanity and egotism in the girl to discuss these things
with her--and that she, the mother, had done all that was required of
her in simply providing a good education! This second mother had
completely lost sight of the end, you see, and was unconsciously only
thinking of herself and not of her child at all.

And this--to think of the welfare of the child and allow no other
point to obscure this--is the whole meaning of the responsibility of
motherhood.




VII

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MOTHERHOOD. SECOND PAPER


What I always wish to impress upon the readers who are kind enough to
be interested in the articles which I write is to keep the end aimed
at in view. So in this second paper upon the responsibility of
motherhood, I must begin by reiterating this necessity.

No mother has a right to drift and trust to chance for the welfare of
her children, and however they develop, for good or ill, she must in
greater or lesser degree be held responsible.

The period when animals cease all interest in and care for their
offspring only commences when these latter can safely be left to look
after themselves; and so it should be with human beings. But, judging
the ages relatively of animals and mankind, numbers of human mothers
entirely neglect their progeny long before they have come even to the
fledgling stage! How often in society one sees women of forty-five and
younger with daughters of fifteen to twenty, about whose real
characters and souls they know nothing! They have always been too busy
with their own personal interest to give the time and sympathy
required for a real mother's understanding of her children. Servants
and governesses have been the directors through the most critical
period of the girls' lives, and it is merely a piece of luck if they
have imbibed no ill from them.

There are numbers of worthy and innocent women married to men whose
characters have certain forcible and unpleasant traits, which are more
than likely to be reproduced in their children, but from the limited
education these good creatures have received, and the absence of all
habit of personal analysation of cause and effect, they never realise
that it is their bounden duty to be on the lookout for the first signs
of the hereditary traits appearing, and the necessity for using
special care and influence to counteract them.

A woman (unless too vain) knows very well her own failings and her own
good qualities, and can, if she is wise, suppress or encourage them
when they show in her children; but she cannot trace the
characteristics of remote ancestors, or even be certain of what her
husband has on his side endowed their joint offspring with, so her
duty is to be on the watch from the very commencement, and to use her
intelligence as she already uses it in every ordinary affair in life.

People of even the most mediocre understanding are quite sensible
enough to select the right implements to carry on any work that they
have undertaken. A woman about to sew a fine piece of muslin does not
dash haphazard into her work-basket and pick out any needle which
comes first, and any thread, coarse or fine, which is handy. She would
know very well that her work would be a sorry affair if she did so,
and that, on the contrary, she must choose the exact fineness of both
thread and needle to sew this particular bit of stuff satisfactorily,
the ones she may have employed an hour before upon firm cloth being of
no use for muslin.

She is keeping _the end_ in view.


LOOKING AHEAD

But countless numbers of mothers never understand that any different
method is necessary with different children; they just go on in the
old way they have been taught when young themselves, if they trouble
at all about the matter.

Every woman who has a child ought to ask herself these questions: Who
is responsible for this child being in the world? Am I and my husband
responsible, or is the child responsible itself? The answers are
ridiculously obvious, and, when realised, the remembrance of them
should entail grave obligations upon the parents.

The mother should look ahead and try to determine whether or no what
seems to be showing as the result of the ideas of up-bringing in the
past fifteen years is good or bad.

The main features of that system being the relaxation of all
discipline and the cessation of the inculcation of self-control,
because the standards suddenly became different. Formerly, to perform
Duty (spelt with a big D!) was the only essential matter in life, and
to obtain happiness was merely a thing by the way. In the past fifteen
years the essential goal sought after has been happiness, and duty has
been merely the thing by the way. But a very large number of the
mothers of England have not perhaps begun to develop sufficient scope
of brain to enable them to judge what will eventually bring happiness;
they can only see the immediate moment, and to indulge their
children's every desire seems to be the simplest way. But they forget
that during this short and impressionable stage of life all strength
and will-power and self-control ought to be enforced and encouraged,
to enable the loved children to withstand hardships and to attract
happiness in the long after years. A mother should ask herself if it
is worth while, in securing a joyous and irresponsible childhood and
adolescence, to leave her children at the end of them unarmed and at
the mercy of every adverse blast. The great dangers which seem to be
resulting from the system of upbringing in the last fifteen years are
that at seventeen or eighteen most young people are satiated with
pleasure and blase with life, while they have no definite aim or end
of achievement in view, and absolutely no sense of duty or
responsibility to the community.


THE FIRST OBLIGATION

It would seem to me that a mother's first obligation is to enforce
discipline, and to teach self-control from the earliest infancy with
the fondest loving care, and to transmit that sense of responsibility
for noble citizenship into her children which should have been her own
guiding star.

But, again, to do so she must not employ obsolete methods without
taking into account the spirit of the age which has aroused a sense of
personal liberty in the youngest child, and makes it refuse to accept
rules and regulations on trust. It must be convinced that they are for
its good, or it will only bow to them by fear, learn to deceive, and
remain rebellious and determined at the first opportunity to throw off
the yoke and go its own way. I will give a concrete case of what I
mean upon this point, to show how even a good woman can misunderstand
the real meaning of the responsibility of motherhood, and by her
method of upbringing can allow misfortune to fall upon her young
family.

Here is a lady of the highest rank, who comes of a steady and worthy
stock, and who has been brought up herself strictly and well. She
marries a man of great position, but with rather wild blood in his
veins. She has no modern ideas of only desiring a small family; she
wishes to and intends to do her duty to her state, and is by no means
set upon personal amusement.

As the years go on she becomes the mother of four boys and two girls.
She engages the best nurses for them, and, later on, the best
governesses and tutors. The children are taught their catechism on
Sundays and are drilled as those of their class into having good
outward manners and behaviour. They are given orders without
explanations, which they are expected to obey unquestioningly, and
they are duly punished when they are disobedient. They see their
parents at stated hours each day, and are seemingly a well-regulated
and satisfactory young brood.

The good woman and great lady's time is naturally much occupied with
social duties, and duties to her husband's tenants, and to various
charities and good works in which she is interested. She fulfils all
these admirably, and is generally held in affection and respect. All
the children have been treated exactly the same by her, although she
knows that her husband has a dishonourable, gambling, scapegrace
brother who has had to be sent to Australia, and that her husband
himself has had tastes, the reverse of orthodox where his emotions
were concerned, though happily he has not jeopardised the family
fortunes as his brother would have done had he been head. All the
children have been so well brought up and instructed in the tenets of
the Church that she feels quite placid and sure that she has done all
that could be expected of her, and is horribly surprised and
distressed when disasters presently occur. She looks upon them as the
will of God and fate, but feels in no way to blame personally.


A HATRED OF PREACHING

It had never struck her intelligence that boys with such heredity in
them should have been specially influenced and directed from earliest
youth towards ideas of the finest honour and proudest responsibility
in keeping unblemished their ancient name; that all the stupidities
and follies of gambling should have been pointed out to them; that the
certain temptations which are bound to beset the path of those in
their position should have been fully explained to them--all this done
in a simple, common-sense fashion which would convince their
understanding. She had never thought that it would be wise to make
them clearly comprehend why they should try to resist bad habits and
youthful lusts of the flesh--not so much from the point of view that
such things are sins, as because science and experience have shown
that the indulgence in them spoils health and brain and pleasure in
manhood. Boys are creatures full of common sense, and their education
in public schools broadens and helps their understanding of logical
sequences, if only things are explained to them without mystery and
too much spiritual emphasis being put upon them. They so hate being
preached at! No young, growing person in normal animal health and
spirits can be guided and coerced to resist the desires of the body
_solely_ by religious and moral teaching; he must have some definite
reward and gain upon this earth held out to him as well; there must be
some tangible reason for abstinence to convince his imagination and
strengthen his will. And the gain he is offered if he resists certain
temptations is that he will grow strong and powerful, and the better
able, when his judgment is ripe enough to discriminate properly, to
enjoy real pleasures later on. When the adolescent spiritual self
begins to rule him, then the moral point can be more forcibly pressed
home; but it is quite futile while he is at the growing animal stage.

Our good and highly placed mother of whom we are speaking has never
thought of any of these laws of cause and effect, as applied to her
own nearest and dearest, although she is accustomed to think out
schemes for the betterment and development of her Girls' Friendly
societies, or for furthering her husband's political interests in the
country.


INHERITED CHARACTER

She sees good little well-behaved daughters coming down in "the
children's hour" and receives favourable reports from the governesses,
and has no idea, or even any speculation about what strange and new
thoughts and emotions may be commencing to germinate in their brains.
Mildred has perhaps inherited her father's _volage_ nature where the
other sex are concerned, and early shows tendencies which ought to be
sympathetically checked and directed. Catherine has got a strong touch
of Uncle Billy's unscrupulousness, and is often deceitful and
scheming, with a wonderful aptitude for the nursery dominoes and other
games of chance. But both, taught by Fraulein or Mademoiselle--and
that good old Nurse Timson!--only show their mother their sweetest
side when in her company, and are meek, well-behaved little mice,
influenced to be thus not from any moral conviction--because if that
were so they would be good at all times as well--but swayed by the
certain knowledge of personal physical gain if they make a good
impression upon mother, and certain punishment and unpleasantness from
the governesses if they do not. All goes along smoothly until the
rising sap of nature begins to dominate their lives; then some outward
and visible sign of their inherited tendencies begins to show, the
force causing its expression being stronger for the time than any
other thing.

One of the boys gambles, and goes to the Jews for money. The eldest
son and heir, who has never had the wiles of women revealed and
explained to him, or the temptations which are bound to be thrust upon
him because of his great position in the world pointed out to him,
succumbs to the fascinations and falls into the snares of a cunning
chorus girl. Our good mother and great lady has steadily avoided even
admitting that there can be sex questions in life, and has rigorously
banished all possible discussion of them as not being a subject which
should be talked of in any nice family. She has never given any
especial teaching to arouse pride in his old name in her eldest son,
or impressed the great responsibility there is in the worthy
guardianship of the fine position God has endowed him with. He has
just been allowed to drift with the rest, and, unwarned and unarmed,
has fallen in the first fight with his physical emotions.


INSTINCTS UNCHECKED

A third son is apparently the darling of the gods; he is full of
charm. But, fearing that the gambling propensities of his second
brother should come out in him also, his parents keep him with special
strictness and very short of money. The same absence of all
explanations of the meaning of things has been his portion as well as
that of his brothers and sisters. He has never been enlightened as to
the possible workings of heredity, and shown how that as the vice of
gambling is in the blood it will require special will-power to
overcome it. None of these things has been pointed out to him, and so,
being restive at restraint and worried for money, he soon slips into
easy ways, and often allows women to help him in his difficulties.
Uncle Billy's instincts and his own father's have combined in him.
Both could have been checked and diverted into sane channels with
loving foresight and knowledge and sympathy.

The fourth son goes early into the Navy, and the discipline and the
inheritance of his mother's more level qualities turn him into a
splendid fellow; but this is mere chance, and cannot be counted as
accruing from his mother's care.

Here is a case where every outward circumstance seemed to be
propitious, and where both parents were good and respected members of
their class and race. But neither had the intelligence to realise an
end, or consciously to keep it in view; they were solely ruled by
tradition and what seemed to them--especially the mother--to be the
proper and well-established religious methods for the bringing up of
their children. So the remorseless laws of cause and effect rolled on
their Juggernaut car and crushed the victims.

Now, if this mother had had the end--that of her children's happiness
and welfare--really in view, she would have questioned herself as to
the best methods of obtaining that end, and would not have been
content just to go on with the narrow ideas which had held sway in her
own day, and which had perhaps then succeeded very well, because, as I
said before, they were aided by the two forces now stultified--namely,
a tremendous discipline and a spirit of the age which brought no
suggestion of a struggle for personal liberty to young minds. Had she
thought out all these things, she would have understood the
responsibilities of motherhood in their real sense, and not only in
the sense which the outward appearance judges good. She would have
poured love and sympathy on each one of her children separately and
individually, since she was the half-cause of their coming to earth.
She would have studied each one's character, and with determined
concentration have inculcated the necessary pride in fine actions in
them, knowing what their pitfalls would be likely to be. She would
have taught the simple religion of respect for the loan God has made
in giving their bodies a soul, and she would have watched for possible
signs of ill, and would finally have guided each one through the
dangerous age on to the time when every man and woman must answer for
himself and herself.

Heredity is sometimes stronger than even the wisest bringing up; but
who can say how many families might not have been saved and kept
together by a prudent and understanding mother's love?

There is a story, which exactly illustrates the point of the
importance of keeping _the end_ in view, told of the Iron Duke in the
Peninsular War. I cannot remember the exact details, and they are of
no consequence. The point is this: There was a certain tremendously
obstinate Spanish general whom the Duke (then Sir Arthur Wellesley)
found very difficult to lead. The moment had arrived when it was
absolutely necessary for success that this general should move his
troops to a certain position. He was a man filled with his own
importance, and he refused huffily to do so unless the English chief
went down upon his knees to him!

The Iron Duke is reported to have replied to this message in some such
words as these: "Good Lord! the winning of the day is the essential
thing, not the resisting of the man's vanity! I'll go down upon my
knees with pleasure if that will make him move his troops!" He did,
and the Spanish general conceded the request and the day was won.

The great commander and astute Englishman had _the end_ in view, you
see, whereas the lesser brain of the Spaniard would have sacrificed
the battle for a personal whim, having lost sight, in his vanity, of
the importance of the main issue.

How many parents do this day after day and year after year, clinging
to obsolete methods, trying to rule by worn-out precepts, all
because--when you come to analyse it--their own sense of importance
really matters to them more than their children's welfare, and no one
has opened their eyes to see themselves and their actions in the true
light.

Although the case which I have just given of the seemingly good mother
was drawn from the highest class, and so at first sight might not be
said to apply to lesser grades, yet I want to show that this is not
so, but that the same principle applies to the most modest little
family.

Every mother should study how best she can develop and elevate the
souls which by her own part-action she has brought into being, and
make that aim her first thought--for surely the satisfaction of the
feeling that one has succeeded in training one's own children to high
ideals and the attainment of happiness would be greater in old age
than any gratification from the acquirement of social supremacy or
realised personal ambitions.

I would implore every mother, of any class, ruthlessly to reject all
the rules which she has been taught for the guidance of her family,
_unless she has proved with common sense that they can be profitably
applied to each particular case_. I would ask her to keep to no
transmitted axiom, _unless it comes up to the requirements of the
ever-changing and ever-advancing day_. There is only one unchangeable
and immutable command which we should follow, and this is that we
should not soil our souls, or render them up to God degraded and
smirched when we go hence upon that journey from whence no man
returneth.

In summing up both my articles upon the responsibility of motherhood,
I find that in this second one I have made two statements which might
read as contradictions. Firstly, I spoke of young people requiring
personal gain to be held out to them as a reason for committing, or
refraining from committing, certain actions; and then, a paragraph or
two afterwards, I gave the illustration of the little girls' good
behaviour to their mother as being only caused by the fact that it was
more to their advantage so to behave. What I meant to show was that
while boys are young and full of the rising impulses of nature they
very rarely can have acquired sufficient spiritual belief to make them
refrain from indulging in certain pleasures--or what seem pleasures to
them--merely because they have been told these pleasures are wrong.
For instance, on the subject of smoking. What boy will stop smoking by
being told it is wrong and that he is sinning by his disobedience? But
there are many intelligent ones who will not indulge in it if it is
explained to them that smoking will stop their growth and make them
less likely to succeed in the cricket eleven, or, later, in the
college eight. At that period the mind cannot look into unseen worlds,
and is mainly occupied with realities from day to day, and therefore
is more likely to be influenced by a simple explanation of what
physical harm or what good in the immediate future will be the result
of actions.

The little girls' behaviour to their mother is really an example of
this same rule, only the principle for their action was not good,
being merely temporary and strictly limited gain, and not that they
should, as in the case of the boys, grow into fine, strong and healthy
people, more able to enjoy life in the future.

There is another statement which I have constantly made which possibly
might be twisted or misunderstood, and that is the one of the
importance of the end. There are people who would turn it into the
Jesuitical motto of "The end justifies the means." That is not what I
wished to convey at all, but that if an end is good--and the main
object, admittedly, is to obtain it--then there is no use in using
methods which once might have accomplished this, but which no longer
are practical because of the changed conditions, and if continued in
will only lose all possibility of success.

How many fathers and mothers in past days have driven their offspring
to disgrace and even death by adhering to harsh, Puritanical systems,
out of date even at that time! And how many more to-day let them slip
into the same abysses by their too indulgent rule!

As I have said, over and over again, the proof of any pudding is in
the eating of it; so let every mother _examine her methods with her
children by this standard: Are the children developing in moral and
physical welfare by those which she is using, or are they
retrogressing?_ Is she employing tact to guide their young fierce
spirits, or is she trying to crush them by old-fashioned rules?

Questions such as these ought to be honestly asked by each mother of
herself, and if the answer proves that retrogression is in progress,
then she should not be so incredibly stupid as to continue in her old
lines, but should examine herself and see how she can find the right
new ones for her particular cases. La Rochefoucauld was wise when he
said that vanity was at the root of most human mistakes. If a woman is
not willing to undertake the true responsibility of motherhood, then
she had far better be that sad thing which is a growing quantity in
modern civilisation, namely, a childless wife devoted to dogs.
Hundreds of selfish, neurotic females show the utmost unselfish
devotion to wretched little pet animals, when the slightest
self-denial asked of them for little human atoms is more than they can
accord. What does this mean? Is it a writing upon the wall?





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Three Things, by Elinor Glyn

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