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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Who is to blame that this equality of the sexes is not attained? Nobody. This is one of the hardest truths for human nature to accept. Given an evil, an abuse, something contrary to present light, and the mind takes this as a challenge to find somebody to blame; and when the curse is rolled off, even on to a serpent, the mind experiences a sense of relief, just as when the unknown quantity in an algebraic problem is found. Nobody is to blame. This is one of the problems to be worked out; it is a stage in the evolution of the spiritual man. Men are as much interested in it as women. The complete emancipation of women will be as one has said, the regeneration of man.
Nothing is more unworthy of us, in the working out of this problem, than an appeal to the conduct of life in the orders of animals below man, to prove either the equality or the inequality of male and female in humanity. We know the argument: The male bird sings louder and sweeter than the female; therefore woman can not be a poet. In most mammals the male is stronger, more vigorous, more beautiful, and the female has the chief care of the young; therefore a woman can not understand politics. Why not collect data on the opposite side? The male of the American ostrich sits on the eggs, hatches them out and takes principal charge of the young. A species of spider has been discovered of which the female devours her consort when he is of no further use to her. These things prove nothing. Our progress is away from nature. What is' natural in this sense is not the best.
When women are wholly persons and not property, when they seek freely the development of all their gifts and powers, then marriage will not be barter and home will not be a place of escape from the world to the woman, but it will be the highest product of men and women at their best and purest.
I have emphasized the rights of women in this ideal family, but there is a right of man which needs a fuller recognition from this generation—the right of a man to be as virtuous as a woman.
I deprecate the emphasis laid today upon woman’s work, woman’s faith and woman’s enthusiasm for humanity. Does it not point to a day when the sexes may be arrayed against each other, not on the old basis of strength versus subtility, of brains versus no brains, but on the basis of religion versus materialism, of spirituality versus animalism. If the old order, the pagan ideal, of such antagonism between the sexes as made of the man a tyrant and of the woman a toy, a slave, was fundamentally wrong, and held the race down, surely an antagonism which makes of the woman a worshiping, spiritual being, and of the man a money-making, prayerless machine, is equally fatal to the hopes of that crowning race which shall arise when the ideal man shall be mated with the ideal woman, like perfect music set to noble words. Have I over-stated the danger? In whose hands are the benevolences of our churches, their missionary work, their prayer-meetings? We talk timidly of giving woman the ballot. Let us beware lest she monopolize all that makes human affairs worth voting about. There is no man’s cause that is not woman’s; there is no woman’s cause that is not man’s. “ If either be small, slight natured, miserable, how shall the race grow?” It is time for men and women to realize that the home, the church, the state and the world are theirs, that they must rise or sink together, “ dwarfed or godlike, bond or free.” The children of the ideal home must not only boast of the precepts of a godly mother, but of the example of a godly father. To this end the ideals of manhood must be made high like those of womanhood. There must not be two standards of conduct in the home—one seemly for the little boy, unseemly for the little girl. The same social verdict must be pronounced against sinners, against purity, man and woman, closed doors to vice in either sex, open doors of help to repenting sinners of either sex.
But the last and best characteristic of the ideal home will be the realization by its makers and members that it is not an end in itself. The fire of the family life, the soul-culture gained in the duties and affections of the home, these must be as fuel to the flame which is kindled on the hearthstone to give light and heat to the darkness