has already taken place, and is merely unacknowledged and not yet put into words. It is only necessary for a man of our time of some little education to reflect on what flows from the views of the world he professes, to convince himself that the valuation of what is good and what is bad, what is praiseworthy and what is shameful, which by inertia still guides him in life, is in direct contradiction to his whole world-conception.
It is only necessary for a man of our time to detach himself for a moment from life as he lives it by inertia, and to regard it from aside and weigh it in accordance with his whole world conception, and he will be horrified at the definition of his life dictated by his world-conception.
Let us take as an example a young man (among the young the energy of life is stronger and self-consciousness more hazy) of the wealthy classes of whatever tendency. Every decent young man considers it a shame not to help an old man, a child, or a woman; he considers that in a common undertaking it is a shame to expose another man’s health or life to danger while avoiding it himself. Everyone considers it a shame and barbarous to do what Schuyler1 tells us the Kirghiz do during a storm: they send out their wives and old women to hold down the corners of the tent, while they themselves remain sitting in the tent drinking their kumys. Everybody considers it a shame to compel a feeble man to work for him, and an even greater shame at a moment of danger, on a burning ship for instance, for the stronger to shove aside the weaker and to climb first into the life-boat while leaving them in danger, and so forth.
All this they consider shameful, and in certain exceptional conditions would on no account do it; but in ordinary life just such deeds, and much worse ones, are hidden from them by temptations and they constantly commit them.
They need only reflect, to see and be horrified. A young man puts on a clean shirt every day.
Who washes them at the river?2 A woman, whatever condition she may be in, very often an old woman who might be the young man’s grandmother or mother, and who sometimes is ill. What would that young man himself call anyone who for a whim changed his shirt which was still clean, and sent a woman old enough to be his mother to wash it for him?
A young man keeps horses to show off, and they are broken in at danger to life by a man old enough to be his father or grandfather, while the young man himself mounts the horse only when the danger is passed. What does that young man call one who, avoiding it himself, puts another in danger and avails himself of the danger for his own pleasure?
And the whole life of the wealthy classes is made up of a series of such actions. The excessive work of old men, of children, and of women, and things done by others at risk to their lives not that we may be able to work, but for our whims, fill our whole life. A fisherman is drowned catching fish for us; washerwomen catch cold and die’ blacksmiths go blind; factory hands fall ill, and are mutilated by machines; wood-fellers are crushed
1 Eugene Schuyler (1840-90) was U.S.A. Secretary of Legation at Petersburg, 1873-6, and travelled in Central Asia in 1873.-A. M.
2 It is usual in Russia for a washerwoman when washing linen to take it to a river, stream, or pond, to rinse it.-A.M.
by falling trees; workmen fall from a roof, and seamstresses become consumptive. All real work is done with loss and peril of life. To hide this and not to see it is impossible. The one salvation in this situation, the one exit from it that a man of our time, shifting on to others the labour and peril of life, may not have, in accord with his own outlook on life, to call himself a scoundrel and a coward-is to take from others only what is essential for life, and himself to do real work at expense and risk to his own life.
A time will soon come, is already coming, when it will be a shame and a disgrace not only to eat a dinner of five courses served by footmen but to eat a dinner that has not been cooked by the hosts themselves; it will be a shame not only to drive out with fast trotters but even in a common cab when one can use one’s own legs; on work-days to wear clothes, boots, or gloves in which one cannot work, or to play on a piano costing £120 or even £5, while others, strangers, are having to work for one; or to feed a dog on milk and white bread while there are people who have no milk and bread; and to burn lights except to work by, or to heat a stove in which food is not cooked, while there are people who lack fire or light. To such a view we are inevitably and rapidly advancing. We already stand on the brink of that new life, and to establish that new view of life is the task of public opinion, and public opinion of that kind is rapidly forming itself it is women who form public opinion, and in our day women are particularly powerful.
CHAPTER XL
As is said in the Bible, to man is given the law of labour, to woman the law of child-bearing. Although with our science nous avons change tout ca, the law of the man as of the woman remains unaltered, as the liver remains in its place,-and the breach of it is still inevitably punished by death.
The only difference is that the general evasion of their duty by all men would be punished by death in such a near future as may be called the present, but the evasion of the law by all women would be punished in a more distant future. The general infringement of the law by all men destroys men at once, its infringement by all women destroys the next generation; but the evasion of the law by some men and some women does not destroy the human race, but deprives the offenders of their reasonable nature as human beings.
The neglect of the law by men began long ago in those classes which could coerce others and, ever widening, it has continued to the present time and has now reached to insanity-to an ideal of neglect of the law, to the ideal expressed by Prince Blokhin and shared by Renan and the whole educated world: machines are to do the work, while people will become bundles of nerves enjoying themselves. Evasion of her duty by woman used to be almost unknown.
It manifested itself only in prostitution and isolated crimes of abortion. Women of the wealthy classes continued to fulfil their law when the men had ceased to perform theirs, and consequently women’s influence became stronger and they continue to govern, and ought to govern, men who have infringed the law and consequently lost their reason.
It is often said that women (Parisian women, especially those who are childless) have become so bewitching, utilizing all the arts of civilization, that they have mastered man by their fascinations. This is not only wrong, but is just the reverse of the case. It is not the childless woman who has mastered man, but the mother, the one who has fulfilled the law of her nature while man has neglected his.
The woman who artificially makes herself barren and bewitches man by her shoulders and curls, is not a woman mastering man but a woman who, depraved by man, has descended to his level, like him has abandoned her duty, and like him has lost every reasonable perception of life.
From this mistake has arisen that wonderful nonsense called ‘women’s rights’.
The formula of those rights is this: ‘Ah! You, man,’ says the woman, ‘have violated your law of real work, and want us to bear the burden of ours. No! If that is so, then we, as well as you, can make a pretence of labour as you do, in banks, ministries, universities, academies, and studios; and like you we also wish to avail ourselves of other people’s work and to live only to satisfy our lusts under pretext of a division of labour.’
They say this and show in practice that they can make a pretence of work not at all worse, but even better, than men.
The so-called feminist question arose, and could only arise, among men who had infringed the law of real labour.
One has only to return to that law and the feminist question cannot exist.
A woman having her special, unquestionable, and unavoidable labour, will never demand the right to share also in man’s work in mines or in the ploughing field. She could demand only to share the sham labour of the wealthy classes.
The woman of our class was stronger than the man and still is stronger, not on account of her charms, not by her adroitness in making the same pharisaic pretence of work as man, but because she did not evade the law; because she bore that true labour at risk of life and
