The Principles of Ethics: In Two Volumes

1. Marital Beneficence

Ethics_V2_351-400.indd 353 2/15/12 10:25 AM CHAPTER 1 Marital Beneficence 428. In the history of humanity as written, the saddest part concerns the treatment of women; and had we before us its unwritten history we should find this part still sadder. I say the saddest part because, though there have been many things more conspicuously dreadful-cannibalism, the torturings of prisoners, the sacrificings of victims to ghosts and gods-these have been but occasional; whereas the brutal treatment of women has been universal and constant. If, looking first at their state of subjection among the semicivilized , we pass to the uncivilized, and observe the lives of hardship borne by nearly all of them-if we then think what must have gone on among those still ruder peoples who, for so many thousands of years, roamed over the uncultivated earth; we shall infer that the amount of suffering which has been, and is, borne by women, is utterly beyond imagination. As I have before pointed out, this ill-treatment of women has been an unavoidable concomitant of the chronic struggle for life among tribes, which is still going on in some places and once went on universally (sec. 335). The brutality fostered in men by their dealings with enemies, necessarily operated throughout their daily lives. The weakest went to the wall inside the tribe as well as outside the tribe. Utter absence of 353 Ethics_V2_351-400.indd 354 2/15/12 10:25 AM 354 The Ethics of Social Life: Positive Beneficence sympathy made it inevitable that women should suffer from the egoism of men, without any limit save their ability to bear the entailed hardships. Passing this limit, the ill-treatment, by rendering the women incapable of rearing a due number of children, brought about disappearance of the tribe; and we may safely assume that multitudes of tribes disappeared from this cause: leaving behind those in which the ill-treatment was less extreme. It must not be supposed, however, that the women who, throughout the past, had to bear all this misery, and in many places still have to bear it, were or are essentially better than the men. All along the brutality of nature has been common to the two; and, as we see in the love of torturing prisoners, is, among some of the North American tribes, even more pronounced in the women than in the men. The truth is simply that the unqualified and cruel egoism characterizing both, has worked out its evil results on those least able to resist. Hence the women have been compelled to carry all the burdens, do all the wearisome and monotonous work, remain unfed till their masters have satisfied themselves, and left to live on the remnants. Only during these later periods of human history, in which the destructive passions have not been so constantly excited by the struggle for existence between societies, small and large, has the treatment of women slowly become less brutal; and only during this same period has there been growing up in men, a perception that women have certain special claims upon them, and a sentiment responding to the perception. 429. Perhaps, however, it is going too far to ascribe this softening of conduct to any consciousness of its propriety. Little by little character has changed; and the accompanying amelioration in the behavior of men to women, leading to gradual modifications of customs, has had no recognized sanction beyond the authority of these customs. Such and such privileges are now conceded to women, partly because immediate sympathy prompts, and partly because social con- Ethics_V2_351-400.indd 355 2/15/12 10:25 AM Marital Beneficence 355 ventions direct; but there is recognized in no definite way the true ethical basis for this better treatment. In preceding chapters we have several times seen that beyond the equalization which justice imposes upon us, by putting to the liberties of each limits arising from the liberties of all, beneficence exhorts us to take steps towards a further equalization. Like spheres of action having been established, it requires us to do something towards diminishing the inequalities of benefits which superior and inferior severally obtain within their spheres. This requirement has first to be fulfilled in the relations between men and women. Leaving aside all questions concerning mental powers, it is undeniable that in respect of physical powers, women are not the equals of men...