 | University of Virginia record October 1, 1914 |  |
EXTRACT FROM ADDRESS OF THE RT. REV. WM. CROSWELL
DOANE, D. D.
There must be individuality; the distinct character which differentiates
man from man, or machine from machine. For each is "after
its kind." And there is no waste of power so great, as when one
loses sight of this and sets the day laborer to adjust the niceties of
the chronometer, or puts the poet behind the plough. This is the
critical question of all. The power of a "Reaper" to tie up sheaves
with their own straw, with a delicacy of machinery alive almost to
its finger ends, would not be proven, if it were set to break stones
on the road. Nor would the capacity of the trip hammer be tested,
if it were used to drive the needle of the sewing machine.
What is it for; "What wilt thou have me do?" Purpose as the
test of power; object, intention, place and kind of work; this is
what I mean by individuality. "What she could;" "what she had;"
"what I can." I am sure that there never was a more important time
in all the world, to emphasize, and drive home into the minds and
consciences of women, this most important lesson. We are living
in a period of reaction, and reaction always means a tendency to
violent extremes. The slowly working leaven of Christianity for
eighteen hundred years, has been lifting women up from the low
level into which they fell in Eve, to the higher lines of life and
service to which they rose in Mary. One by one, openings and
opportunities for congenial and convenient service have been opened
up to her. One by one, the bars of the cage have been let down,
and the barriers of foolish custom have been taken away, which
And one by one, the false restraints and unwise discriminations
have been done away; until today, by the common consent,
by the Christianized instinct, by the chivalrous endeavor, of men,
womanhood—and nowhere more than in America—stands fairly out
upon that position of correlation and coequality with men, which
really was the purpose of Almighty God in the double creation;
which in no sense contradicts the divine intention of the primacy of
the first created, and the subordination of the second; but which utterly
destroys, and does away with, the false theory of superiority
and sovereignty on the one side, as meaning inferiority and subjection
on the other. And now the world is full of agitations, which
would destroy, if they could be carried out, that exquisite balance
which the revealed purpose of God, and the implanted and inherent
differences between men and women, indicate as the wise and true
relation between the two. Coequality, side-by-sideness, divided sovereignty,
the mutual superiority and subordination of influence and
control, the interdependence of the "man who is by the woman" and
"the woman who is of the man;" these are not only truths and
theories, but facts and realities; which can not be forgotten or disregarded
without serious injury and loss. Nobody who reads the
record of the Revelation rightly, or studies history or examines the
experience of his own life, can fail to feel that whatever distinctions
and differences there may be between the kind of mind, of capacity,
of character between the two sexes, there are no differences whatever
in the degree. But it is the falsest kind of logic which argues,
that, because the two sexes are equal in the sight of God, therefore,
they are interchangeable. All that the man can do, the woman can
not do. And, therefore, the talk today of "woman's rights," apart
from the falseness of the application of the word—for the rights of
either man or woman are fewer and far less important than their
duties—has this inherent fallacy; that it presupposes that because
their rights are equal, therefore they are the same. Surely, if one
takes the other and the better word, it is plain to the blindest, that
the duties of men and women are not the same; that the trend of
their tastes and capabilities is different; and that if the women are
to do the men's duties, their own duties must be left undone, or
done by those who are unfitted for and incapable of their discharge.
Nothing is wilder or stranger, than the misconception and disproportionateness
of all this theory. It is contradicted by the whole
material world in which we live; and in which, its own functions
are given and its own duties assigned to every separate plant and
tree and animal. Nor could a wilder confusion be produced than if,
by some blind force, these unthinking and unreasoning things should
set themselves to tasks, which have not been assigned them; and
for which they are not intended by their creation. And why, the
highest order of created things, to whom Almighty God has given
not only the consciousness of their peculiar different capacities, but
the plain and evident ability of recognizing the fact and reasoning
just why these lines of differences are drawn, should prove itself
duller and more stupid than the inanimate creation, is difficult to see.
Earnestly I beg that this lesson of the personal pronoun "I"—which
never in any language changes sex because of the equal individuality
of both sexes must be acknowledged as the fundamental principle
of character—may plant itself deeply in your conscience. You
may turn into the feminine gender that great sentence, "I can do
all that may become a woman; who dares do more is none." You
by the limitations or the enlargements of your capacity, by
the opportunities and occasions of your providential place in life.
And that will be the clue, which you may safely follow, as indicating
the lines along which every faculty of your nature is to be set,
with utmost intensity and directness of aim, to do "your duty in
the state of life into which it shall please God to call you."
I am urging the recognition of such limitations as God has set,
first in your sex, which are written in laws so plain and facts so
irresistible that only the blindest can fail to read and see them. The
utter misconception of equality of position, as though it meant sameness
of duty, between men and women, is among the facile follies
some instances by high motives, women who used to be quiet and
content to stand in their lot, are joining in the wretched unrest of
the effort, which, until recently, was in the hands of wild and unwomanly
fanatics, to unsex themselves and unsettle the peace of
the household, and prosperity of the world. I have a general dislike
and distrust of the term woman in the abstract. And in the
manner of its use it is most confusing. There are women and women,
as there are men and men. And the fond imagination that the evils
of unqualified suffrage given to men, which are the most dangerous
element in our American political world today, can be cured by
extending the evil to unqualified women, is the strangest delusion
that ever possessed the human mind. If it should be permitted,
which God forefend, the abstract woman may rejoice, but it will
be in the spirit of the maniac, who has laid waste the homes and
marred the happiness and murdered the hopes of women. Privilege,
courtesy, chivalry, respect, deference, consideration, will have melted
away. And there will come instead unseemly contests, selfishness,
the bitterness of partisanship, the dregs of stride and corruption,
incrimination and the demoralization of the deepest and highest and
dearest relations of society, while in its political effect it will only
multiply corrupt and irresponsible ballots, not to equal, but to outweigh
the intelligent suffrage of reputable women. Nothing will
be altered in results. Nothing will be gained in the issues. And the
irreclaimable mischief will have left its blight and scar on our social
life. Two-handed humanity (that is the figure of the man and
the woman in the body politic) has a right hand and a left hand,
each equal to the other, each needful to the other. But the hand
that is nearest the heart, the woman, is not used, and is not meant
to be used, to grasp the sword, the pen, the reins; not to seize the
rough difficulties and wring out of them the stern successes, of the
strife. They are both hands. They are equally hands. Each is
imperfect without the other, but their functions are apart and different.
Learn the divine, the human, the instinctive, the evident limitations
of your sex. And when you have filled out with "all you
can" the sphere of your allotted service, you will have not time, nor
strength, nor desire to reach out for other work to do.
| University of Virginia record October 1, 1914 | |