Let us not underestimate this: _we ourselves_, we free spirits, are already a "Transvaluation of all Values," an incarnate declaration of war against and triumph over all old concepts of "true" and "untrue."
The most precious discernments into things are the latest discovered: the most precious discernments, however, are the _methods_. _All_ methods, _all_ presuppositions of our present-day science, have for millenniums been held in the most profound contempt: by reason of them a person was excluded from intercourse with "honest" men--he pa.s.sed for an "enemy of G.o.d," a despiser of truth, a "possessed" person. As a scientific man, a person was a Chandala.... We have had the entire pathos of mankind against us--their concept of that which truth _ought_ to be, which the service of truth _ought_ to be: every "thou shalt" has been hitherto directed _against_ us. Our objects, our practices, our quiet, prudent, mistrustful mode--all appeared to mankind as absolutely unworthy and contemptible.--In the end one might, with some reasonableness, ask one"s self if it was not really an esthetic taste which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a _picturesque_ effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to operate strongly on their senses. Our _modesty_ was longest against the taste of mankind.... Oh how they made that out, these turkey-c.o.c.ks of G.o.d----.
The Christian concept of G.o.d--G.o.d as G.o.d of the sick, G.o.d as cobweb-spinner, G.o.d as spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of G.o.d ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low water in the descending development of the G.o.d-type. G.o.d degenerated to the _contradiction of life_, instead of being its transfiguration and its eternal _yea_! In G.o.d, hostility announced to life, to nature, to the will to life! G.o.d as the formula for every calumny of "this world,"
for every lie of "another world!" In G.o.d nothingness deified, the will to nothingness declared holy!
That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves the Christian G.o.d, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to speak of their taste. They ought to have got the better of such a sickly and decrepit product of _decadence_. There lies a curse upon them, because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts--they have _created_ no G.o.d since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new G.o.d! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an _ultimatum_ and _maximum_ of the G.o.d-shaping force, of the _creator spiritus_ in man, this pitiable G.o.d of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in which all _decadence_ instincts, all cowardices and la.s.situdes of soul have their sanction!
Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the commencement of the Bible--the story of G.o.d"s mortal terror of _science_? It has not been understood. This priest-book _par excellence_ begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he has only one great danger, consequently "G.o.d" has only one great danger.--
The old G.o.d, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection, promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even G.o.ds struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man--man is entertaining.... But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of G.o.d for the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he forthwith created other animals besides. The _first_ mistake of G.o.d: man did not find the animals entertaining--he ruled over them, but did not even want to be an "animal"--G.o.d consequently created woman. And, in fact, there was now an end of tedium--but of other things also! Woman was the _second_ mistake of G.o.d.--"Woman is in her essence a serpent, Hera"--every priest knows that: "from woman comes _all_ the mischief in the world"--every priest knows that likewise. _Consequently_, _science_ also comes from her.... Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.--What had happened? The old G.o.d was seized by a mortal terror. Man himself had become his _greatest_ mistake, he had created a rival, science makes _G.o.dlike_; it is at an end with priests and G.o.ds, if man becomes scientific!--_Moral_: science is the thing forbidden in itself--it alone is forbidden. Science is the _first_ sin, the germ of all sin, _original_ sin. _This alone is morality._--"Thou shalt _not_ know:"--the rest follows therefrom.--By his mortal terror G.o.d was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one _defend_ one"s self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer: away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to thoughts,--all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man _shall_ not think--and the "priest in himself" contrives distress, death, the danger of life in pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all _sickness_,--nothing but expedients in the struggle against science!
Distress does not _permit_ man to think.... And nevertheless! frightful!
the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the G.o.ds,--what to do!--The old G.o.d contrives _war_, he separates the peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another (the priests have always had need of war ...). War, among other things, a great disturber of science!--Incredible! Knowledge, the _emanc.i.p.ation from the priest_, augments even in spite of wars.--And a final resolution is arrived at by the old G.o.d: "man has become scientific,--_there is no help for it, he must be drowned!_" ...
--I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the _entire_ psychology of the priest.--The priest knows only one great danger: that is science,--the sound concept of cause and effect. But science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circ.u.mstances,--one must have _superfluous_ time, one must have _superfluous_ intellect in order to "perceive" ... _Consequently_ man must be made unfortunate,--this has at all times been the logic of the priest.--One makes out _what_ has only thereby come into the world in accordance with this logic:--"sin".... The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," have been devised _in opposition_ to science,--_in opposition_ to a severance of man from the priest.... Man is _not_ to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is _not_ to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is not to look at all, he is to _suffer_.... And he is so to suffer as to need the priest always. _A Saviour is needed._--The concepts of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation,"
and of "forgiveness"--_lies_ through and through, and without any psychological reality--have been contrived to destroy the _causal sense_ in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!--And _not_ an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ign.o.ble instincts! A _priest"s_ attack! A _parasite"s_ attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be brought about by the conceptual spectres of superst.i.tion, by "G.o.d," by "spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward, punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of perception has been destroyed--_the greatest crime against mankind has been committed._ Sin, repeated once more, this form of human self-violation _par excellence_, has been invented for the purpose of making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and n.o.bility of man; the priest _rules_ by the invention of sin.--
I _condemn_ Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To _do away with_ any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest expediency, it lived by states of distress, it _created_ states of distress in order to perpetuate _itself_ eternally.... The worm of sin for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this state of distress!-- ...."Humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To breed out of _humanitas_ a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of Christianity!--Parasitism as the _sole_ praxis of the Church; drinking out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anaemic ideal of holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality; the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that has ever existed,--against healthiness, beauty, well-const.i.tutedness, courage, intellect, _benevolence_ of soul, _against life itself_....
This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls, wherever there are walls,--I have letters for making even the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, _mean_,--I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind!
BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.
By PETER KROPOTKIN.
IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnaeus became a botanist while helping his father--a practical gardener--in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches--it rather favored them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family could "idle" at a wheelwright"s shop, so as to become later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.
We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labor, we have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The ma.s.ses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget the little they may have learned at school. As to the men of science, they despise manual labor. How few of them would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of manual labor to the height of a theory. "The man of science," they say, "must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer must apply them, and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented for him, not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot improve them: the scientific man and the scientific engineer will take care of the progress of science and industry."
It may be objected that nevertheless there is a cla.s.s of men who belong to none of the above three divisions. When young they have been manual workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy circ.u.mstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely there are such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have escaped the so-much-advocated specialization of labor, and it is precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But in old Europe at least, they are the exceptions; they are the irregulars--the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the screens so carefully erected between the cla.s.ses. And they are so few, in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry--and of science as well, as I am about to prove--that all over the world we hear complaint about the scarcity of precisely such men.
What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France, in Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will see that the substance of their complaint is this: "The worker whose task has been specialized by the permanent division of labor has lost the intellectual interest in his labor, and it is especially so in the great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he invented very much. Manual workers--not men of science nor trained engineers--have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and all that ma.s.s of machinery which has revolutionized industry for the last hundred years. But since the great factory has been enthroned, the worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot?
"At the outset of modern industry, three generations of workers _have_ invented; now they cease to do so. As to the inventions of the engineers, specially trained for devising machines, they are either devoid of genius or not practical enough. Those "nearly to nothings," of which Sir Frederick Bramwell spoke once at Bath, are missing in their inventions--those nothings which can be learned in the workshop only, and which permitted a Murdoch and the Soho workers to make a practical engine of Watt"s schemes. None but he who knows the machine--not in its drawings and models only, but in its breathing and throbbings--who unconsciously thinks of it while standing by it, can really improve it.
Smeaton and Newcomen surely were excellent engineers; but in their engines a boy had to open the steam valve at each stroke of the piston; and it was one of those boys who once managed to connect the valve with the remainder of the machine, so as to make it open automatically, while he ran away to play with other boys. But in the modern machinery there is no room left for nave improvements of that kind. Scientific education on a wide scale has become necessary for further inventions, and that education is refused to the workers. So that there is no issue out of the difficulty unless scientific education and handicraft are combined together--unless integration of knowledge takes the place of the present divisions." Such is the real substance of the present movement in favor of technical education. But, instead of bringing to public consciousness the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present discontent, instead of widening the views of the discontented and discussing the problem to its full extent, the mouth-pieces of the movement do not mostly rise above the shopkeeper"s view of the question.
Some of them indulge in jingo talk about crushing all foreign industries out of compet.i.tion, while the others see in technical education nothing but a means of somewhat improving the flesh-machine of the factory and of transferring a few workers into the upper cla.s.s of trained engineers.
Such an ideal may satisfy them, but it cannot satisfy those who keep in view the combined interests of science and industry, and consider both as a means for raising humanity to a higher level. We maintain that in the interests of both science and industry, as well as of society as a whole, every human being, without distinction of birth, ought to receive such an education as would enable him, or her, to combine a thorough knowledge of science with a thorough knowledge of handicraft. We fully recognize the necessity of specialization of knowledge, but we maintain that specialization must follow general education, and that general education must be given in science and handicraft alike. To the division of society into brain-workers and manual workers we oppose the combination of both kinds of activities; and instead of "technical education," which means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate the _education integrale_, or complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious distinction. Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system ought to be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving school at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should be endowed with a thorough knowledge of science--such a knowledge as might enable them to be useful workers in science--and, at the same time, to give them a general knowledge of what const.i.tutes the bases of technical training, and such a skill in some special trade as would enable each of them to take his or her place in the grand world of the manual production of wealth. I know that many will find that aim too large, or even impossible to attain, but I hope that if they have the patience to read the following pages, they will see that we require nothing beyond what can be easily attained. In fact, _it has been attained_; and what has been done on a small scale could be done on a wider scale, were it not for the economical and social causes which prevent any serious reform from being accomplished in our miserably organized society.
The experiment has been made at the Moscow Technical School for twenty consecutive years with many hundreds of boys; and, according to the testimonies of the most competent judges at the exhibitions of Brussels, Philadelphia, Vienna and Paris, the experiment has been a success. The Moscow school admits boys not older than fifteen, and it requires from boys of that age nothing but a substantial knowledge of geometry and algebra, together with the usual knowledge of their mother tongue; younger pupils are received in the preparatory cla.s.ses. The school is divided into two sections--the mechanical and the chemical; but as I personally know better the former, and as it is also the more important with reference to the question before us, so I shall limit my remarks to the education given in the mechanical section. After a five or six years" stay at the school, the students leave it with a thorough knowledge of higher mathematics, physics, mechanics, and connected sciences--so thorough, indeed, that it is not second to that acquired in the best mathematical faculties of the most eminent European universities. When myself a student of the mathematical faculty of the St. Petersburg University, I had the opportunity of comparing the knowledge of the students at the Moscow Technical School with our own. I saw the courses of higher geometry some of them had compiled for the use of their comrades; I admired the facility with which they applied the integral calculus to dynamical problems, and I came to the conclusion that while we, University students, had more knowledge of a general character, they, the students of the Technical School, were much more advanced in higher geometry, and especially in the applications of higher mathematics to the most intricate problems of dynamics, the theories of heat and elasticity. But while we, the students of the University, hardly knew the use of our hands, the students of the Technical School fabricated _with their own hands_, and without the help of professional workmen, fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to the last finely turned screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific apparatus--all for the trade--and they received the highest awards for the work of their hands at the international exhibitions. They were scientifically educated skilled workers--workers with university education--highly appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so much distrust science.
Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were these: In science, learning from memory was not in honor, while independent research was favored by all means. Science was taught hand in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the schoolroom was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid to the highest abstractions of geometry as a means for developing imagination and research. As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite different from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University, and differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft and to earn his existence as soon as possible, but the teaching of technical skill was prosecuted--according to a scheme elaborated by the founder of the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied also at Chicago and Boston--in the same systematical way as laboratory work is taught in the universities. It is evident that drawing was considered as the first step in technical education. Then the student was brought, first, to the carpenter"s workshop, or rather laboratory, and there he was thoroughly taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and joinery. No efforts were spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that branch--the real basis of all trades. Later on, he was transferred to the turner"s workshop, where he was taught to make in wood the patterns of those things which he would have to make in metal in the following workshops. The foundry followed, and there he was taught to cast those parts of machines which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after he had gone through the first three stages that he was admitted to the smith"s and engineering workshops. As for the perfection of the mechanical work of the students I cannot do better than refer to the reports of the juries at the above-named exhibitions.
In America the same system has been introduced, in its technical part, first, in the Chicago Manual Training School, and later on in the Boston Technical School--the best, I am told, of the sort; and in this country, or rather in Scotland, I found the system applied with full success, for some years, under the direction of Dr. Ogilvie at Gordon"s College in Aberdeen. It is the Moscow or Chicago system on a limited scale. While receiving substantial scientific education, the pupils are also trained in the workshops--but not for one special trade, as it unhappily too often is the case. They pa.s.s through the carpenter"s workshop, the casting in metals, and the engineering workshop; and in each of these they learn the foundations of each of the three trades sufficiently well for supplying the school itself with a number of useful things. Besides, as far as I could ascertain from what I saw in the geographical and physical cla.s.ses, as also in the chemical laboratory, the system of "through the hand to the brain," and _vice versa_, is in full swing, and it is attended with the best success. The boys _work_ with the physical instruments, and they study geography in the field, instruments in hands, as well as in the cla.s.s-room. Some of their surveys filled my heart, as an old geographer, with joy. It is evident that the Gordon"s College industrial department is not a mere copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I cannot help thinking that if Aberdeen has made that excellent move towards combining science with handicraft, the move was a natural outcome of what has been practised long since, on a smaller scale, in the Aberdeen daily schools.
The Moscow Technical School surely is not an ideal school.[1] It totally neglects the humanitarian education of the young men. But we must recognize that the Moscow experiment--not to speak of hundreds of other partial experiments--has perfectly well proved the possibility of combining a scientific education of a very high standard with the education which is necessary for becoming an excellent skilled laborer.
It has proved, moreover, that the best means for producing really good skilled laborers is to seize the bull by the horns, and to grasp the educational problem in its great features, instead of trying to give some special skill in some handicraft, together with a few sc.r.a.ps of knowledge in a certain branch of some science. And it has shown also what can be obtained, without over-pressure, if a rational economy of the scholar"s time is always kept in view, and theory goes hand in hand with practice. Viewed in this light, the Moscow results do not seem extraordinary at all, and still better results may be expected if the same principles are applied from the earliest years of education. Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we taught a ma.s.s of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to make us waste over it as much time as possible. Our present methods of teaching originate from a time when the accomplishments required from an educated person were extremely limited; and they have been maintained, notwithstanding the immense increase of knowledge which must be conveyed to the scholar"s mind since science has so much widened its former limits. Hence the over-pressure in schools, and hence, also, the urgent necessity of totally revising both the subjects and the methods of teaching, according to the new wants and to the examples already given here and there, by separate schools and separate teachers.
It is evident that the years of childhood ought not to be spent so uselessly as they are now. German teachers have shown how the very plays of children can be made instrumental in conveying to the childish mind some concrete knowledge in both geometry and mathematics. The children who have made the squares of the theorem of Pythagoras out of pieces of colored cardboard, will not look at the theorem, when it comes in geometry, as on a mere instrument of torture devised by the teachers; and the less so if they apply it as the carpenters do. Complicated problems of arithmetic, which so much hara.s.sed us in our boyhood, are easily solved by children seven and eight years old if they are put in the shape of interesting puzzles. And if the _Kindergarten_--German teachers often make of it a kind of barrack in which each movement of the child is regulated beforehand--has often become a small prison for the little ones, the idea which presided at its foundation is nevertheless true. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine, without having tried it, how many sound notions of nature, habits of cla.s.sification, and taste for natural sciences can be conveyed to the children"s minds; and, if a series of concentric courses adapted to the various phases of development of the human being were generally accepted in education, the first series in all sciences, save sociology, could be taught before the age of ten or twelve, so as to give a general idea of the universe, the earth and its inhabitants, the chief physical, chemical, zoological, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery of the _laws_ of those phenomena to the next series of deeper and more specialised studies. On the other side, we all know how children like to make toys themselves, how they gladly imitate the work of full-grown people if they see them at work in the workshop or the building-yard.
But the parents either stupidly paralyze that pa.s.sion, or do not know how to utilize it. Most of them despise manual work and prefer sending their children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin"s teachings about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the "lower cla.s.ses only." They thus do their best to render subsequent learning the more difficult.
The so-called division of labor has grown under a system which condemned the ma.s.ses to toil all the day long, and all the life long, at the same wearisome kind of labor. But if we take into account how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and how squandered is their labor, we must recognize that Franklin was right in saying that to work five hours a day would generally do for supplying each member of a civilized nation with the comfort now accessible for the few only, provided everybody took his due share in production. But we have made some progress since Franklin"s times. More than one-half of the working day would thus remain to every one for the pursuit of art, science, or any hobby he might prefer; and his work in those fields would be the more profitable if he spent the other half of the day in productive work--if art and science were followed from mere inclination, not for mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community organized on the principles of all being workers would be rich enough to conclude that every man and woman, after having reached a certain age--say of forty or more--ought to be relieved from the moral obligation of taking a direct part in the performance of the necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to devote himself or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of art, or science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of art and knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be fully guaranteed. And such a community would not know misery amidst wealth. It would not know the duality of conscience which permeates our life and stifles every n.o.ble effort. It would freely take its flight towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] What this school is now, I don"t know. In the last years of Alexander II."s reign it was wrecked, like so many other good inst.i.tutions of the early part of his reign.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
MOTHERHOOD AND MARRIAGE
By HENRIETTE FUERTH.
(_Translated from the German for_ MOTHER EARTH by ANNY MALI HICKS.)
Knowledge becomes understanding only when its scope includes the origin, the development and the conclusion of things.--Bachofen, "Right to Motherhood."
"THE future will endeavor to extend its power through its own ideas of facts and appearances, however unfamiliar these may seem, rather than to be influenced by a past and submerged civilization with a spirit far removed from its own."
There could hardly be a more appropriate introduction to our remarks on motherhood and marriage than these words of Bachofen"s, for there are few human relations whose traditional stages, taking through outside causes and effects an established form, have become eternal law and sacrament, as is the case in the realm of s.e.x relations. Motherhood and marriage! For most people these two conceptions are inseparably bound together, or, rather, are in ratio connected as their ideas of morality and religion are synonymous. Marriage in the Romish Church is a religious sacrament, and in the collective Christian and Jewish worlds the only s.e.x relation acknowledged as customary and possible, is the one based on a monogamous union. To work out logically from this standpoint, the only condition of motherhood which is socially justified, is that one which is the result of marital relations. In consequence motherhood without the consent of the State or the benefit of the clergy is just as logically condemned. And they who thus sit in judgment, flatter themselves to be the prophets of an advanced and enlightened era,--ingrafting their personal feelings and rights on the religious and lawful order of the universe. Or, in common parlance, and as our introduction so aptly put it, these good people wish to intend the domination of the ideas of their own time over all the past and into all the future. Marriage seems to them an everlasting inst.i.tution, a G.o.dly regulation, through which they can lend to their individual bias, the dignity of that which is humanly purest and highest. Consequently it also seems to them that the present form of marriage and its accompanying conditions for motherhood, resting as these do on the mutual consent of G.o.d and man, that these are to be in all eternity the permanent form of s.e.x relation.
But when we stop one moment only, to free ourselves from preconceived and obsolete ideas, and look at motherhood and marriage from the calm and unprejudiced standpoint of historical development and growth, how differently do these in reality appear. Many advanced thinkers have done this, and their views have here and there found adherents. Not so, however, with the average seeker for light and truth, who if he wish to succeed must stem the tide of prejudiced opinion.
But the day has come when, if all signs do not fail, spring is here, and a thousand and one buds of promise are pushing toward the light, when a wider and saner understanding of motherhood and marriage is at hand. And it is not an untimely spring either, not one which the treacherous sun of January calls forth only to blight with later snow and frost. No, it is the real light and life-giving spring, which comes when the sap begins to run, when the sun calls up smoky mists from out the brown earth, ready to enclose the seed, which shall bring forth summer flowers and autumn fruits.
And this same brown, misty earth, what a different aspect shall she present to her children, for whom conditions are so changed, with truer s.e.x relations, encompa.s.sing the ethical and spiritual needs of the free individual. Then only will it be _possible_ to base these needs and demands on the surrounding world of realities filled with material and spiritual phenomena.
But first it must be proven that the present form of marriage and its effect on motherhood is not necessarily permanent, but, like all else, subject to natural development and change. What indeed is the much talked of marriage bond of to-day,--which is considered the cornerstone of both Church and State? Is it something towards which the steps of development in nature and history all go? No seriously minded person could in truth make such a statement. In the plant and animal kingdoms, whose species evoke as do those of the human race, we find no examples of s.e.x relations to which the term marriage would apply. And this is also true of the historical development of man and social conditions. It is not marriage but motherhood which has given permanence to s.e.x relations wherever they appear. Motherhood standing at the source of life with its creative and ever recreative force.