“You can see the children,” she answered. “Are yours more contented — more interested — happier?”
Then I thought, as in truth I never had thought before, of the dull, bored children I had seen, whining; “What can I do now?”; of the little groups and gangs hanging about; of the value of some one strong spirit who possessed initiative and would “start something”; of the children’s parties and the onerous duties of the older people set to “amuse the children”; also of that troubled ocean of misdirected activity we call “mischief,” the foolish, destructive, sometimes evil things done by unoccupied children.
“No,” said I grimly. “I don’t think they are.”
The Herland child was born not only into a world carefully prepared, full of the most fascinating materials and opportunities to learn, but into the society of plentiful numbers of teachers, teachers born and trained, whose business it was to accompany the children along that, to us, impossible thing — the royal road to learning.
There was no mystery in their methods. Being adapted to children it was at least comprehensible to adults. I spent many days with the little ones, sometimes with Ellador, sometimes without, and began to feel a crushing pity for my own childhood, and for all others that I had known.
The houses and gardens planned for babies had in them nothing to hurt — no stairs, no corners, no small loose objects to swallow, no fire — just a babies’ paradise. They were taught, as rapidly as feasible, to use and control their own bodies, and never did I see such sure-footed, steady-handed, clear-headed little things. It was a joy to watch a row of toddlers learning to walk, not only on a level floor, but, a little later, on a sort of rubber rail raised an inch or two above the soft turf or heavy rugs, and falling off with shrieks of infant joy, to rush back to the end of the line and try again. Surely we have noticed how children love to get up on something and walk along it! But we have never thought to provide that simple and inexhaustible form of amusement and physical education for the young.
Water they had, of course, and could swim even before they walked. If I feared at first the effects of a too intensive system of culture, that fear was dissipated by seeing the long sunny days of pure physical merriment and natural sleep in which these heavenly babies passed their first years. They never knew they were being educated. They did not dream that in this association of hilarious experiment and achievement they were laying the foundation for that close beautiful group feeling into which they grew so firmly with the years. This was education for citizenship.
CHAPTER 10. Their Religions and Our Marriages
It took me a long time, as a man, a foreigner, and a species of Christian — I was that as much as anything — to get any clear understanding of the religion of Herland.
Its deification of motherhood was obvious enough; but there was far more to it than that; or, at least, than my first interpretation of that.
I think it was only as I grew to love Ellador more than I believed anyone could love anybody, as I grew faintly to appreciate her inner attitude and state of mind, that I began to get some glimpses of this faith of theirs.
When I asked her about it, she tried at first to tell me, and then, seeing me flounder, asked for more information about ours. She soon found that we had many, that they varied widely, but had some points in common. A clear methodical luminous mind had my Ellador, not only reasonable, but swiftly perceptive.
She made a sort of chart, superimposing the different religions as I described them, with a pin run through them all, as it were; their common basis being a Dominant Power or Powers, and some Special Behavior, mostly taboos, to please or placate. There were some common features in certain groups of religions, but the one always present was this Power, and the things which must be done or not done because of it. It was not hard to trace our human imagery of the Divine Force up through successive stages of bloodthirsty, sensual, proud, and cruel gods of early times to the conception of a Common Father with its corollary of a Common Brotherhood.
This pleased her very much, and when I expatiated on the Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and so on, of our God, and of the loving kindness taught by his Son, she was much impressed.
The story of the Virgin birth naturally did not astonish her, but she was greatly puzzled by the Sacrifice, and still more by the Devil, and the theory of Damnation.
When in an inadvertent moment I said that certain sects had believed in infant damnation — and explained it — she sat very still indeed.
“They believed that God was Love — and Wisdom — and Power?”
“Yes — all of that.”
Her eyes grew large, her face ghastly pale.
“And yet that such a God could put little new babies to burn — for eternity?” She fell into a sudden shuddering and left me, running swiftly to the nearest temple.
Every smallest village had its temple, and in those gracious retreats sat wise and noble women, quietly busy at some work of their own until they were wanted, always ready to give comfort, light, or help, to any applicant.
Ellador told me afterward how easily this grief of hers was assuaged, and seemed ashamed of not having helped herself out of it.
“You see, we are not accustomed to horrible ideas,” she said, coming back to me rather apologetically. “We haven’t any. And when we get a thing like that into our minds it’s like — oh, like red pepper in your eyes. So I just ran to her, blinded and almost screaming, and she took it out so quickly — so easily!”
“How?” I asked, very curious.
“‘Why, you blessed child,’ she said, ‘you’ve got the wrong idea altogether. You do not have to think that there ever was such a God — for there wasn’t. Or such a happening — for there wasn’t. Nor even that this hideous false idea was believed by anybody. But only this — that people who are utterly ignorant will believe anything — which you certainly knew before.’”
“Anyhow,” pursued Ellador, “she turned pale for a minute when I first said it.”
This was a lesson to me. No wonder this whole nation of women was peaceful and sweet in expression — they had no horrible ideas.
“Surely you had some when you began,” I suggested.
“Oh, yes, no doubt. But as soon as our religion grew to any height at all we left them out, of course.”
From this, as from many other things, I grew to see what I finally put in words.
“Have you no respect for the past? For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?”
“Why, no,” she said. “Why should we? They are all gone. They knew less than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them — and unworthy of the children who must go beyond us.”
This set me thinking in good earnest. I had always imagined — simply from hearing it said, I suppose — that women were by nature conservative. Yet these women, quite unassisted by any masculine spirit of enterprise, had ignored their past and built daringly for the future.
Ellador watched me think. She seemed to know pretty much what was going on in my mind.
“It’s because we began in a new way, I suppose. All our folks were swept away at once, and then, after that time of despair, came those wonder children — the first. And then the whole breathless hope of us was for THEIR children — if they should have them. And they did! Then there was the period of pride and triumph till we grew too numerous; and after that, when it all came down to one child apiece, we began to really work — to make better ones.”
“But how does this account for such a radical difference in your religion?” I persisted.
She said she couldn’t talk about the difference very intelligently, not being familiar with other religions, but that theirs seemed simple enough. Their great Mother Spirit was to them what their own motherhood was — only magnified beyond human limits. That meant that they felt beneath and behind them an upholding, unfailing, serviceable love — perhaps it was really the accumulated mother-love of the race they felt — but it was a Power.
“Just what is your theory of worship?” I asked her.
“Worship? What is that?”
I found it singularly difficult to explain. This Divine Love which they felt so strongly did not seem to ask anything of them— “any more than our mothers do,” she said.
“But surely your mothers expect honor, reverence, obedience, from you. You have to do things for your mothers, surely?”
“Oh, no,” she insisted, smiling, shaking her soft brown hair. “We do things FROM our mothers — not FOR them. We don’t have to do things FOR them — they don’t need it, you know. But we have to live on — splendidly — because of them; and that’s the way we feel about God.”
I meditated again. I thought of that God of Battles of ours, that Jealous God, that Vengeance-is-mine God. I thought of our world-nightmare — Hell.
“You have no theory of eternal punishment then, I take it?”
Ellador laughed. Her eyes were as bright as stars, and there were tears in them, too. She was so sorry for me.
“How could we?” she asked, fairly enough. “We have no punishments in life, you see, so we don’t imagine them after death.”
“Have you NO punishments? Neither for children nor criminals — such mild criminals as you have?” I urged.
“Do you punish a person for a broken leg or a fever? We have preventive measures, and cures; sometimes we have to ‘send the patient to bed,’ as it were; but that’s not a punishment — it’s only part of the treatment,” she explained.
Then studying my point of view more closely, she added: “You see, we recognize, in our human motherhood, a great tender limitless uplifting force — patience and wisdom and all subtlety of delicate method. We credit God — our idea of God — with all that and more. Our mothers are not angry with us — why should God be?”
“Does God mean a person to you?”
This she thought over a little. “Why — in trying to get close to it in our minds we personify the idea, naturally; but we certainly do not assume a Big Woman somewhere, who is God. What we call God is a Pervading Power, you know, an Indwelling Spirit, something inside of us that we want more of. Is your God a Big Man?” she asked innocently.
“Why — yes, to most of us, I think. Of course we call it an Indwelling Spirit just as you do, but we insist that it is Him, a Person, and a Man — with whiskers.”
“Whiskers? Oh yes — because you have them! Or do you wear them because He does?”
“On the contrary, we shave them off — because it seems cleaner and more comfortable.”
“Does He wear clothes — in your idea, I mean?”
I was thinking over the pictures of God I had seen — rash advances of the devout mind of man, representing his Omnipotent Deity as an old man in a flowing robe, flowing hair, flowing beard, and in the light of her perfectly frank and innocent questions this concept seemed rather unsatisfying.
I explained that the God of the Christian world was really the ancient Hebrew God, and that we had simply taken over the patriarchal idea — that ancient one which quite inevitably clothed its thought of God with the attributes of the patriarchal ruler, the grandfather.
“I see,” she said eagerly, after I had explained the genesis and development of our religious ideals. “They lived in separate groups, with a male head, and he was probably a little — domineering?”
“No doubt of that,” I agreed.
“And we live together without any ‘head,’ in that sense — just our chosen leaders — that DOES make a difference.”
“Your difference is deeper than that,” I assured her. “It is in your common motherhood. Your children grow up in a world where everybody loves them. They find life made rich and happy for them by the diffused love and wisdom of all mothers. So it is easy for you to think of God in the terms of a similar diffused and competent love. I think you are far nearer right than we are.”
“What I cannot understand,” she pursued carefully, “is your preservation of such a very ancient state of mind. This patriarchal idea you tell me is thousands of years old?”
“Oh yes — four, five, six thousand — every so many.”
“And you have made wonderful progress in those years — in other things?”
“We certainly have. But religion is different. You see, our religions come from behind us, and are initiated by some great teacher who is dead. He is supposed to have known the whole thing and taught it, finally. All we have to do is believe — and obey.”
“Who was the great Hebrew teacher?”
“Oh — there it was different. The Hebrew religion is an accumulation of extremely ancient traditions, some far older than their people, and grew by accretion down the ages. We consider it inspired— ‘the Word of God.’”
“How do you know it is?”
“Because it says so.”
“Does it say so in as many words? Who wrote that in?”
I began to try to recall some text that did say so, and could not bring it to mind.
“Apart from that,” she pursued, “what I cannot understand is why you keep these early religious ideas so long. You have changed all your others, haven’t you?”
“Pretty generally,” I agreed. “But this we call ‘revealed religion,’ and think it is final. But tell me more about these little temples of yours,” I urged. “And these Temple Mothers you run to.”
Then she gave me an extended lesson in applied religion, which I will endeavor to concentrate.
They developed their central theory of a Loving Power, and assumed that its relation to them was motherly — that it desired their welfare and especially their development. Their relation to it, similarly, was filial, a loving appreciation and a glad fulfillment of its high purposes. Then, being nothing if not practical, they set their keen and active minds to discover the kind of conduct expected of them. This worked out in a most admirable system of ethics. The principle of Love was universally recognized — and used.
Patience, gentleness, courtesy, all that we call “good breeding,” was part of their code of conduct. But where they went far beyond us was in the special application of religious feeling to every field of life. They had no ritual, no little set of performances called “divine service,” save those religious pageants I have spoken of, and those were as much educational as religious, and as much social as either. But they had a clear established connection between everything they did — and God. Their cleanliness, their health, their exquisite order, the rich peaceful beauty of the whole land, the happiness of the children, and above all the constant progress they made — all this was their religion.
They applied their minds to the thought of God, and worked out the theory that such an inner power demanded outward expression. They lived as if God was real and at work within them.
As for those little temples everywhere — some of the women were more skilled, more temperamentally inclined, in this direction, than others. These, whatever their work might be, gave certain hours to the Temple Service, which meant being there with all their love and wisdom and trained thought, to smooth out rough places for anyone who needed it. Sometimes it was a real grief, very rarely a quarrel, most often a perplexity; even in Herland the human soul had its hours of darkness. But all through the country their best and wisest were ready to give help.
If the difficulty was unusually profound, the applicant was directed to someone more specially experienced in that line of thought.
Here was a religion which gave to the searching mind a rational basis in life, the concept of an immense Loving Power working steadily out through them, toward good. It gave to the “soul” that sense of contact with the inmost force, of perception of the uttermost purpose, which we always crave. It gave to the “heart” the blessed feeling of being loved, loved and UNDERSTOOD. It gave clear, simple, rational directions as to how we should live — and why. And for ritual it gave first those triumphant group demonstrations, when with a union of all the arts, the revivifying combination of gr
eat multitudes moved rhythmically with march and dance, song and music, among their own noblest products and the open beauty of their groves and hills. Second, it gave these numerous little centers of wisdom where the least wise could go to the most wise and be helped.
“It is beautiful!” I cried enthusiastically. “It is the most practical, comforting, progressive religion I ever heard of. You DO love one another — you DO bear one another’s burdens — you DO realize that a little child is a type of the kingdom of heaven. You are more Christian than any people I ever saw. But — how about death? And the life everlasting? What does your religion teach about eternity?”
“Nothing,” said Ellador. “What is eternity?”
What indeed? I tried, for the first time in my life, to get a real hold on the idea.
“It is — never stopping.”
“Never stopping?” She looked puzzled.
“Yes, life, going on forever.”
“Oh — we see that, of course. Life does go on forever, all about us.”
“But eternal life goes on WITHOUT DYING.”
“The same person?”
“Yes, the same person, unending, immortal.” I was pleased to think that I had something to teach from our religion, which theirs had never promulgated.
“Here?” asked Ellador. “Never to die — here?” I could see her practical mind heaping up the people, and hurriedly reassured her.
“Oh no, indeed, not here — hereafter. We must die here, of course, but then we ‘enter into eternal life.’ The soul lives forever.”
“How do you know?” she inquired.
“I won’t attempt to prove it to you,” I hastily continued. “Let us assume it to be so. How does this idea strike you?”
Again she smiled at me, that adorable, dimpling, tender, mischievous, motherly smile of hers. “Shall I be quite, quite honest?”
“You couldn’t be anything else,” I said, half gladly and half a little sorry. The transparent honesty of these women was a never-ending astonishment to me.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 114
