Читать книгу What a Young Husband Ought to Know - Stall Sylvanus - Страница 11

"As unto the bow the cord is,

So unto the man is woman.

Though she bends him, she obeys him;

Though she draws him, yet she follows:

Useless each without the other."

Woman might be said to be, both in the family and in society, the centripetal force, insuring permanency, attracting and drawing to herself and within herself, thus preventing, in the family and in society, the tendency to fly from the centre and to produce chaos. Man is life's centrifugal force. The impetuosity and velocity of his nature tend to throw everything from the centre. His influence is to prevent gravitation from drawing everything to a given point, where all would become a state of rest. While woman keeps life stable, man keeps it from stagnation; but it requires the reciprocal influence of each to secure that harmony which God intended. Woman's stability unmodified by man's influence would tend to result in complete rest, which would mean stagnation and death. Man's greater impetuosity would lead to instability, unrest, and possible chaos. As, in nature, the centrifugal and centripetal forces equalize and balance themselves, swaying the spheres in fixed orbits, so the influences of men and women upon each other, both in the family and in society, help to secure and maintain an even balance. While opposite in tendency, they are yet of equal necessity and of equal value. Each is essential to the perfection and completeness of the other, and perfect unity is only secured by the union of the two.

The reciprocal influences of men and women are oftentimes noticed in old couples who have passed thirty or forty years together in peace and harmony, each living year after year under the moulding power of the other, and each being moulded by the surroundings and influences which have wrought upon the other. Year after year they become more alike in form, feature and expression. Their views and opinions become increasingly harmonized, until there comes also to be a mental resemblance. That they have lived in the midst of the same surroundings and breathed the same air, have eaten the same kind of food, have shared each other's joys and pleasures, have laughed and wept together, have been under the formative influences of the same conditions, tend in a measure to this increasing likeness; but under the reciprocal influences each has lost a portion of this more pronounced personality and taken upon himself or herself the physical, intellectual and moral features of the other. Their union has constantly tended to unity.

In religious matters there is also a noticeable difference between men and women. Generally, woman responds more readily to religious teachings and influences, and by nature she manifestly follows the Master's leadings more closely than her male companion; and there are good reasons evident why this should be so. With the uninterrupted duties of the household, which are oftentimes even multiplied on Sundays, it is necessary that a moral sense correspondingly more acute should prompt her to overcome the difficulties which beset her in her approach to the sanctuary, and God has given her that added moral force which is designed to enable her to overcome the increased resistance which she meets in the performance of her religious duties. There are times also when, in the discharge of her special duties as wife and mother, for weeks, and even for months, she is called upon to minister to others in sickness, or give herself to the care of infant children; and were it not for the larger endowment of her devotional nature, these repeated and prolonged but enforced absences from God's house would result in the formation of a fixed habit which would eventually wholly keep the majority of women from attendance upon all religious assemblies.

But in view of the important fact that God has more largely entrusted the moral and religious training of the children to the mother, we need to think but for a moment to understand what would be the result if her own nature was not endowed with sufficient strength to enable her to overcome every barrier, and to rise to the higher plane of duty and responsibility in this matter. The exceptional instances of mothers who are themselves deficient in their moral nature and neglectful of religious duties, and who, on that account, fail utterly in the moral and religious training of their children, are quite sufficient to illustrate what would be the condition in the home, in the Church, the community, and the State, if God had not endowed woman with a stronger moral nature and a keener sense of religious obligation than is found in man. It is by this more active moral sense in woman that the religious poise and balance of the family is maintained; and its benign results are often seen, not only in the children, but in the husband as well.

The complemental differences in the intellectual and moral natures of men and women are as essential to the highest and best development of the entire nature of each as the complemental physical and sexual differences of each are indispensable to that union in which the two are made one in the child which is begotten of the father and born of the mother.

This reflexive and reciprocal influence of each sex upon the other to the mutual modification and advantage of both is clearly seen in the nation, as well as in the life of the family. This thought is beautifully presented by Margaret Warner Morley in her book entitled "Life and Love": "In the lower life, and in savages, the community in its characteristics approaches the masculine type; it is selfish, egoistic, unstable, variable. The herd of buffalo, for illustration, roams about in search of food and water, charging relentlessly and destroying whatever enemy comes in its way. The savage tribe often has no fixed abode, but roams about from place to place; where it has a home it is, as a rule, given to frequent war with its neighbors, and is liable to be uprooted by a stronger foe and absorbed, and thus lost, or it may be destroyed or compelled to move on. While this is true in the savage community as a whole, that is, considered as a nation, a unit; in its internal organization, on the other hand, it is essentially feminine in its characteristics; its habits are simple, stable, not liable to change. It makes no inventions, elaborates no complex machinery."

In civilized life, the opposite characteristics predominate. The community as a whole constantly takes upon itself the best characteristics of the feminine type. It becomes stable, less given to change. It does not seek war, but prefers peace, becomes more and more quiescent and altruistic.

While these external changes are discernible, corresponding changes take place in the internal national life. The civilized nation tends to move away from the feminine toward the masculine type. Inventions and innovations constantly change the order of things. National existence is established, but the existence of the individual calls for a more vigorous struggle. Competitions become fierce, and the struggle between labor and capital becomes more intense, and the exertion of personal energy merges into an effort to secure prestige and place, wealth and power; consequently the higher faculties generally obtain their larger development.

In this approach toward the feminine type the community as a whole parts with some of its less desirable masculine expressions; it becomes modified, less angular. The desire for war departs, courage remains, and energy finds expression in new and nobler directions. But while these changes are taking place, the community does not discard all its masculine characteristics. It simply parts with the lower or least desirable of each, while the best elements of both are united in the new manifestation.

To quote further from Miss Morley's interesting paragraphs: "Certain changes which mark the advanced community as a whole, necessarily, and in no less degree, mark the individuals composing it. The sexes are not sharply distinguished from each other in the intellectual and emotional realms. On the whole, men as a class probably show a preponderance of what may be termed masculine characteristics, as greater egoism, variability, activity; but these masculine characteristics have been modified, lessened, effeminized, so to speak. In the higher type of man the best and highest feminine characteristics have been fused with the best and highest masculine characteristics. The fighting instinct, for instance, has become moral courage; the tendency to vary expresses itself in great intellectual development; instability and restlessness have become intellectual rather than physical qualities, leading to notable inventions and discoveries.

"Brave and gentle, strong and tender, inventive and patient, the finest type of man owes his superiority to the transforming and illuminating power of his inheritance of womanly qualities.

"In the higher type of woman the best and highest masculine characteristics have been fused with the best and highest development of the feminine characteristics. Altruism, for instance, has been rationalized and guarded by the exercise of greater reasoning power; stability, or inertia, has been lessened and prevented from forming an insurmountable barrier to progress. The tendency to vary has been strengthened; the more negative nature has progressed to a more positive condition. Courage, inventiveness and greater strength of intellectual perception have been fostered in civilized woman. Her submission to man gradually lessens before the upward progress of her mind. She places herself as his equal—as the other half, without which his half-life cannot be complete.

"Nor does this borrowing of the characteristics of each by the other mean the merging of the two sexes into one,—the obliteration of sex difference, and hence of sex attraction. It means the elevation of man by developing his masculine qualities in the direction of their highest possibilities, and by adding to manhood a new charm, a subtle grace, an irresistible beauty. It means the elevation of woman by the development of her womanly qualities in the direction of their highest possibilities, and by adding to womanhood a new power, a deeper, more far-reaching sympathy, an ineffable glow and a nobler beauty.

"The mind is a mighty solvent; through it the two sexes have been united in an intellectual union, from which has been born a new man with the dominant masculine characteristics developed in the noblest direction, and enriched by union with feminine characteristics, and a new woman with the feminine characteristics grandly developed and enhanced by what was once in the province of masculine knowledge and activity."

In harmony with what we have been considering in this chapter, it is eminently proper to discuss briefly the reciprocal sexual tempers and tendencies of married men and women. While the discussion of the various modifications of these differences does not belong to this chapter, yet the recognition of the fact itself and a noting of the beneficial, reactionary and reciprocal effects are pre-eminently in place just at this point.

The active nature of the sperm of the male and the passivity which distinguishes the ovum of the female characterize the two sexes from the beginning to the end of their existence. The greater activity of the sperm, the quickened pulse of the male child at birth, the more restless nature of the boy-baby, his running, climbing, active life throughout childhood and adolescence—these traits characterize not only his boyhood, his days of developing manhood, but his marital relations as well.

With rare exceptions, both of person and of instances, in married life all the sexual aggressiveness is with the male. Wives seldom seek the closer embraces of their husbands. They are generally indifferent; often absolutely averse. With the husband, while in perfect health, the conditions are quite the opposite; and the wisdom of the Creator is manifest in the fact that were the wife equally quickened by the same amative tendencies, the male nature would be called into such frequent and continuous exercise that the power of reproduction would be either totally destroyed or so impaired that the race would degenerate into moral, intellectual and physical pigmies. God has made the passivity of the wife the protection of her husband and a source of manifold blessing to their children.

Upon the other hand, her uninterrupted and entire neglect of the sexual relation is wisely overcome, to the advantage of the wife, by her husband's greater sexual activity, while at the same time her restraining passiveness is made his safeguard and security. Each brings into the married relation inclinations and propensities which are to modify the other, to the mutual benefit of both.

If husbands and wives only knew and adequately realized these facts, and harmonized their thought and conduct toward each other accordingly, much of the discord, estrangement and consequent unhappiness in married life would be eliminated and disappear. When both alike recognize these differences and the Wisdom which has made them to differ, and when each is willing to accept the modifying influence of the other in the manner in which God has intended, the discord and misery which blight thousands of lives and destroy such multitudes of homes will give place to a benediction and blessing which will restore to earth a larger measure of the happiness of Eden.

But before closing this chapter upon the complemental differences between the two sexes, it will be interesting to observe some remarkable similarities in the reproductive organs themselves, and to note how, in that infinite wisdom which is marvelous in our eyes, God has so modified their form and office that the external organs of reproduction in man become the internal and seemingly different organs of reproduction in woman.

To understand the full significance of what we have briefly to say upon this subject it will be well to recall the fact that in man and animals even those physical characteristics which may be regarded as strictly feminine are present in a rudimentary form in the male, and vice versa. Let a single instance suffice. The paps and breasts of the male are but the diminutive and dormant breasts and nipples of the female; and this is true not only with man, but with the lower animals.

The male not only simulates but really possesses in rudimentary form all the parts and powers which characterize the fuller development in the opposite sex.

That this is true is demonstrated by the cases of abnormal sexual development which at long intervals are born in different lands, and by the occasional instances in heathen countries where old men, after prolonged stimulation of the breasts, are made effectively to serve as nurses for infants.

As the pelvic bone in man and woman is modified by the various changes of form which adapt it to the different necessities of each sex, so in a large measure are the reproductive organs, primarily, the same in men and women.

If you enlarge the curve of the pelvic frontal, then press the scrotum or sack of the male upward into the body, it will correspond to the vagina and the womb of the female. Move the testicles to the right and the left and you have their counterparts, the ovaries, while the spermatic cords form the Fallopian tubes for the passage of the completely formed ovum from the ovaries to the womb. Without materially disturbing its position, diminish the sexual member of the male and you have the clitoris of the female.

It is readily seen that with these changes of position, together with slight modifications of form and function, those parts which to the unobservant and the unthoughtful seem wholly different in the two sexes are, after all, discovered to be only diversified forms of the same thing.

But this very fact, however, invests the study of this subject with increased interest, and displays in an unexpected manner the wonderful wisdom which characterizes everything that God has created; for as these organs take upon themselves the modifications of either sex, every other organ and faculty that together constitute the individual must be so modified as to adjust the physical, intellectual, social and moral natures into harmonious unity of personality.