VI

It is now advisable to consider attentively the statement that creative women need new and independent moral values since conventional morality expresses a man’s standpoint rather than a woman’s. If the latter part of this statement can be proved, that conventional morality is necessarily masculine, then the first part must inevitably be accepted.

It has already been postulated that women derive their greatest strength from unconscious life and are concerned with growth. Their energies and interests turn spontaneously towards the living human beings upon whom their influence is exerted. This influence, because it is largely unconscious, is not rational but emotional; when it is directed positively towards other people it is best described as love. Creative love is the fundamental attribute of womanhood, as perhaps creative thought is of manhood. Its aim is to foster harmony and strength in the individual.

Woman thus sees humanity as a collection of individuals of whom no two are identical, growing separately like trees in a common direction, expressing in visible forms, each of which is significant, a common unseen life. If one may use a rough symbolism, women see humanity in vertical lines, while men see it in horizontal strata. The perfection of each individual is women’s business, and the combination of individuals into social systems is man’s business. These two aspects of life are necessarily continuous and inseparable: the difference between them here, as throughout, is one of emphasis. Women emphasise the wholeness of the individual in himself; men, the relation of the individual to his neighbours. It follows that women cannot disregard or eliminate anything which manifests itself in the life of the individual. Man resembles a tree only by analogy; he cannot be lopped of his branches; he can achieve strength and harmony only by carrying everything with him. Nothing is accidental or superfluous in his behaviour; virtues and vices are alike significant. From this point of view whatever prevents the harmony of the complete individual is bad; but it cannot be cut off, it must be fused into the whole, if possible. Woman therefore cannot shirk any issue or turn from the investigation of any human impulse, whatever its nature. She believes in the significance and continuity of all that life which passes into human consciousness, and to her goodness and badness are relative terms, depending on the nature of the immediate problem. Thus she cannot believe in original sin, although she recognises mistakes. Man, on the other hand, believes in the significance of his systems which cut across life horizontally, and he desires to fit the individual into his patterns. Whatever disrupts his patterns is bad and must be cut off. This condition naturally is uniform in its operation, and therefore badness is a constant quantity, something definite which can be written down in a code of prohibitions. Nonconformity with the law is original sin, and arouses his indignation. But as there are many systems, each system has its own code of offences and penalties, and each casts out its own offenders. The Church excommunicates them, the State imprisons them, Society boycotts them, professional bodies expel them; they are dishonoured and ignored, thrust out of the system whose stability they threaten. We penetrate to the very heart of the difference between men and women when we observe that the outcast, whose individuality is formally denied by his fellows, remains none the less an individual to the women who love him. Obviously a morality which satisfies the one point of view does not satisfy the other.

The morality honoured by men is thus a morality designed to preserve the systems which men create. Because it upholds the values of consciously organised life it distrusts the impulses of unconscious life, which it calls original sin, or personifies as a devil. Less civilised and more impulsive races are easily suspected of being direct agents of the devil, as are also the adherents of rival or opposing systems. Women, because they are natural supporters of spontaneous action, are particularly to be distrusted, and masculine morality, as we have seen, imposes a still more stringent code on women than on men. So it happened that Eve, a creative woman vindicating the importance of individual moral values and of an individual conscience that should make each man the equal of God, was necessarily abhorrent to an organised theology. So in the United States it happens that the earnest business man regards negroes and Socialists as public dangers; and in exactly the same way in Scotland the earnest Calvinist believes that Roman Catholics are damned. The follower of a systematic morality has always a black list. Each system produces its own code of offences for nonconformity, and its moral standards are therefore valid only for itself: they are not necessarily religious or universal.

In such a morality the individual is considered only as one who conforms or does not conform to the code required, never as an individual in himself. Further, because it distrusts the spontaneity of unconscious impulses, systematic morality believes that all individuals are bad in their hearts, that they are good only when they are afraid to be bad, and that penalties for badness must be sufficiently grievous to frighten them. Thus systematic morality depends upon fear of punishment. The kind of punishment imposed has only an arbitrary relation to the nature of the offence committed, and no relation at all to the psychological problems in which the offender is involved: it is designed merely to make him suffer, and, if he persists in offending, to remove him. The public school imposes its two hundred or its four hundred “lines” or so many strokes with the birch, or resorts to expulsion; the State fines varying sums, or imprisons for varying periods, or resorts to capital punishment; the business firm reprimands, or fines, or resorts to dismissal. In each case the system and the code which supports it are more important than the life of the individual. Morality of this kind, when it is perfectly developed, is quite impersonal; its abstract impersonality is revered by men as an ideal, which they call Justice.

This systematic morality with its impersonal judgments, its definite codes, its uniformly graded punishments, and its unquestioning repudiation of the offender is a logical pendant to the systems which men create. It is precisely what is usually called conventional morality, and it is essentially masculine in its attitude to the individual. Women, if they are to create free and harmonious individuals, cannot sacrifice an individual to a code; they cannot agree that goodness is only the fear of punishment; they cannot believe in the efficacy of external punishment, and they cannot permit the offender to be cut off. To the creative woman an offender is a question which she must try to answer. Her morality must be psychological rather than punitive, personal rather than impersonal, and fundamentally religious. It is clear that many actions which systematic morality considers bad must appear good to the creative woman, and inversely what she considers good must often be condemned by systematic morality.

Women must therefore create their own independent moral values. It may be objected that if each woman creates her own morality the result will be confusion. This objection, however, arises out of a misapprehension. It is not the business of women to condemn or to punish, or to exact conformity with any definite code of conduct: it is their business to understand the processes at work in the human soul and to help each individual to the fullest and most harmonious expression of his powers. There will always be enough men in the world to secure the existence of systematic morality; any confusion produced by the action of women will be only the rich confusion of life itself. Besides, creative love is not mere sympathy or even affection; if women cannot sacrifice an individual to a code they are equally unable to sacrifice their intuitions about the human race to an individual. Creative love demands a high discipline from those who would exercise it.