The Forerunner, vol 1 | Page 5

1:13, 1:14)?Masthead tags (1:1, 1:3 - 1:7)?Quotation: Eugene Wood (1:7)?Advertisement: Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1:9 - 1:14) Advertisement: Calendula (1:1 - 1:3)?Advertisement: Confidential Remarks About Our Advertising (1:3) Advertisement: The Co-Operative Press (1:14)?Advertisement: The Crux (1:12 - 1:14)?Advertisement: Fels-Naptha Soap (1:1)?Advertisement: The Forerunner (1:1 - 1:3, 1:6 - 1:11)?Advertisement: Holeproof Hoisery (1:1)?Advertisement: Lowney's (1:1: 1:2)?Advertisement: Moore's Fountain Pen (1:1)?Advertisement: Soapine (1:2)?Advertisement: Some Of Our Exchanges (1:11 - 1:14)?Advertisement: Success Magazine (1:14)?Advertisement: A Summer Cottage (1:6, 1:7)?Advertisement: Things we wish to Advertise (1:3)?Advertisement: A Toilet Preparation (1:1)?Advertisement: Woman's Era (1:2)?Advertisement: Woman and Socialism (1:14)?Advertisement: The Woman's Journal (1:12 - 1:14)
WORKS REVIEWED
"The American Magazine", illustrations (1:1)?Jessie H. Childs, "The Sea of Matrimony" (1:3)?Stanton Coit, "Woman in Church and State" (1:9)?"The Common Cause," magazine (1:11)?Lavinia L. Dock, "Hygiene and Morality" (1:13)?"The Englishwoman," magazine (1:10)?"The Ethical World", magazine (1:9)?Cicely Hamilton, "Marriage as a Trade" (1:13)?Alexander Irvine, "From The Bottom Up" (1:11)?Mary Jonston, "The Wise Housekeeper" (1:13)?Ellen Key, "The Century of the Child" (1:14)?Ingraham Lovell, "Margharita's Soul" (1:2)?"Philemon's Verses" (author unknown) (1:5)?Sarah Harvey Porter, "The Life and Times of Anne Royall" (1:2) "The Progressive Woman," magazine (1:11)?Gerald Stanley Lee, "Inspired Millionaires" (1:7)?Prince Morrow, "Social Diseases and Marriage" (1:6)?Meredith Nicholson, "The Lords of High Decision" (1:5)?William Robinson, "Never Told Tales" (1:6)?Thomas W. Salmon, "Two Preventable Causes of Insanity" (1:10) Nancy Musselman Schoonmaker, "The Eternal Fires" (1:9)?Molly Elliot Sewell, "The Ladies' Battle" (1:14)?Ida Tarbell, "The American Woman" (1:8)?"To-day's Problems," various authors (1:13)?"The Union Labor Advocate," magazine (1:11)?"Votes for Women," magazine (1:11)?Lester F. Ward, "Pure Sociology" (1:12)?H. G. Wells, "Ann Veronica" (1:3)?Harvey White, "A Ship Of Souls" (1:12)?"The Woman's Journal" (1:3, 1:10)
THE FORERUNNER, VOLUME ONE
THE FORERUNNER
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE
BY
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN?OWNER AND PUBLISHER
1.00 A YEAR?.10 A COPY
Volume 1. No. 1?NOVEMBER, 1909?The Charlton Company, 67 Wall Street, New York?Copyright for 1909, C. P. Gilman
Said the New Minister: "I shall not give you a text this morning. If you listen closely, you will discover what the sermon is about by what I say."
THEN THIS
The news-stands bloom with magazines,?They flame, they blaze indeed;?So bright the cover-colors glow,?So clear the startling stories show,?So vivid their pictorial scenes,?That he who runs may read.
Then This: It strives in prose and verse,?Thought, fancy, fact and fun,?To tell the things we ought to know,?To point the way we ought to go,?So audibly to bless and curse,?That he who reads may run.
A SMALL GOD AND A LARGE GODDESS
The ancient iconoclast pursued his idol-smashing with an ax. He did not regard the feelings of the worshippers, and they, with similar indifference to his, promptly destroyed him.
The modern iconoclast, wiser from long experience, practices the kindergarten art of substitution; enters without noise, and dexterously replaces the old image with a new one.
Often the worshippers do not notice the change. They never spend their time in discriminating study of their idol, being exclusively occupied in worshipping it.
The task herein undertaken is not so easy. We can hardly expect to remove the particular pet deity of millions of people for thousands of years--an especially conspicuous little image at that, differing from other gods and goddesses; and substitute another figure, three times his size, of the opposite sex, and thirty years older--without somebody's noticing it.
Yet this is precisely what is required of us, by the new knowledge of to-day. We are called upon to dislodge what is easily the most popular god in the calendar, albeit the littlest; that fat fluttering small boy, congenitally blind, with his haphazard archery playthings; that undignified conception, type of folly change and irresponsible mischief, which so amazingly usurps the name and place of love. Never was there a more absurd misrepresentation.
Suppose we worshipped Fire, the great sun for our over-lord, all lesser lights in varying majesty, each hearth-fire as the genius and guardian of the home. So worshipping, suppose we chose, as ever present image of the great idea, to be pictured and sculptured far and wide, to fill all literature, to be accepted even by science as type and symbol of the Fire Divine--a match-box!
So slight, so transient, so comparatively negligible in importance, is the flickering chance-sown spark typified in this pretty chimera of flying immaturity, compared with the majestic quenchless flame of life and love we ought to worship.
We have taken the assistant for the principal, a tributary for the main stream; we have exalted Eros, the god of man's desire, and paid no heed to that great goddess of mother love to whom young Eros is but a running footman.
We are right to worship love, in all its wide, diverging branches; the love that is gratitude, love that is sympathy. love that is admiration, love that is gift and service; even the love that is but hunger--mere desire.
But when we talk of the Life Force, the strong stream of physical immortality, which has replaced form with form and kept the stream unbroken through