A Miscellany of Men | Page 2

is that they
like each other. They seek each other: and awful as are the sins and
sorrows that often come of their mating, it was not such things that
made them meet. It is utterly astounding to note the way in which
modern writers and talkers miss this plain, wide, and overwhelming
fact: one would suppose woman a victim and nothing else. By this
account ideal, emancipated woman has, age after age, been knocked
silly with a stone axe. But really there is no fact to show that ideal,
emancipated woman was ever knocked silly; except the fact that she is
silly. And that might have arisen in so many other ways. Real
responsible woman has never been silly; and any one wishing to knock
her would be wise (like the streetboys) to knock and run away. It is
ultimately idiotic to compare this prehistoric participation with any
royalties or rebellions. Genuine royalties wish to crush rebellions.
Genuine rebels wish to destroy kings. The sexes cannot wish to abolish
each other; and if we allow them any sort of permanent opposition it
will sink into something as base as a party system.
As marriage, therefore, is rooted in an aboriginal unity of instincts, you
cannot compare it, even in its quarrels, with any of the mere collisions
of separate institutions. You could compare it with the emancipation of
negroes from planters--if it were true that a white man in early youth
always dreamed of the abstract beauty of a black man. You could
compare it with the revolt of tenants against a landlord--if it were true
that young landlords wrote sonnets to invisible tenants. You could
compare it to the fighting policy of the Fenians--if it were true that
every normal Irishman wanted an Englishman to come and live with
him. But as we know there are no instincts in any of these directions,
these analogies are not only false but false on the cardinal fact. I do not
speak of the comparative comfort or merit of these different things: I
say they are different. It may be that love turned to hate is terribly
common in sexual matters: it may be that hate turned to love is not
uncommon in the rivalries of race or class. But any philosophy about
the sexes that begins with anything but the mutual attraction of the
sexes, begins with a fallacy; and all its historical comparisons are as
irrelevant and impertinent as puns.

But to expose such cold negation of the instincts is easy: to express or
even half express the instincts is very hard. The instincts are very much
concerned with what literary people call "style" in letters or more
vulgar people call "style" in dress. They are much concerned with how
a thing is done, as well as whether one may do it: and the deepest
elements in their attraction or aversion can often only be conveyed by
stray examples or sudden images. When Danton was defending himself
before the Jacobin tribunal he spoke so loud that his voice was heard
across the Seine, in quite remote streets on the other side of the river.
He must have bellowed like a bull of Bashan. Yet none of us would
think of that prodigy except as something poetical and appropriate.
None of us would instinctively feel that Danton was less of a man or
even less of a gentleman, for speaking so in such an hour. But suppose
we heard that Marie Antoinette, when tried before the same tribunal,
had howled so that she could be heard in the Faubourg St.
Germain--well, I leave it to the instincts, if there are any left. It is not
wrong to howl. Neither is it right. It is simply a question of the instant
impression on the artistic and even animal parts of humanity, if the
noise were heard suddenly like a gun.
Perhaps the nearest verbal analysis of the instinct may be found in the
gestures of the orator addressing a crowd. For the true orator must
always be a demagogue: even if the mob be a small mob, like the
French committee or the English House of Lords. And "demagogue," in
the good Greek meaning, does not mean one who pleases the populace,
but one who leads it: and if you will notice, you will see that all the
instinctive gestures of oratory are gestures of military leadership;
pointing the people to a path or waving them on to an advance. Notice
that long sweep of the arm across the body and outward, which great
orators use naturally and cheap orators artificially. It is almost the exact
gesture of the drawing of a sword.
The point is not that women are unworthy of votes; it is not even that
votes are unworthy of