William Ramsay Smith

“ Now, amidst all claims, disputes, wranglings, anomalies, injustices, is it possible after a similar fashion to revert to first principles, to return to nature after the thunder of ages of convention and listen to her still small voice in things pertaining to morals? Morality itself is subjected to rigorous examination, with some striking results by even the strictest moralists.
"The function of morality," says a modern university professor of sociology, "is to regulate the activities of associated life so that all may have what we call fair play." Morality means "live and let live." ”

“ We have not all the same structure, constitution, heredity, training, likings, ideals, talents, gifts, and there is no code of observances that will serve as a statement of specifically right and wrong actions for all. Ella Wheeler Wilcox says: "Where once I believed in a universal church for the world, I now believe in a separate creed for each soul, with the underlying basis of love for all created things as its foundation. Let each man worship in his own way and follow his own ideal of duty to God and humanity." ”

“ What you and I love—what we admire—what we aspire after—does not belong to industrialism; yet only in industrialism can any of us—even a Spencer, or Huxley, or Tennyson exist. We can do what is beautiful or right only by the aid of industrialism, unless, like Thoreau, we prefer to live in the woods. A larger morality will come—but only when competition ends. ”

“ I leave to you women the task of working out the woman's share in the fashioning of the latest begotten of the ages; in providing them with their bodily subsistence, their mental pabulum, their moral guidance; in having the first and largest opportunities of forming their habits and their characters. Woman's influence on the future men and women is paramount as well as primary. What do women require in order to use this influence for the best ends? ”

“ The timid little souls who live in a corner and keep out of harm's way by keeping out of the way of good, are not moral persons. They are not even harmless, for by their cowardice they inspire others with a similar lack of courage."
"Morality, in the most general sense, represents the code under which activities are best carried on, and is worked out in the school of experience." "At bottom, conscience, instinct, and intuition are but inductions from individual or race experience so swiftly drawn that we do not at first recognize their origin." ”

“ The tenderest humanity, like the lily, will at times, gradually and unostentatiously, push aside all sorts of palaeo-ethical traditions and neoethical conventions, and will put forth its fairest and purest flowers and bring forth its finest fruit, unstained and unashamed.
The utmost efforts of education in after-life may possibly be sufficient or may fail to free us from the trammels which the circumstances of our birth and early training have imposed upon us. ”

“ I promise to treat myself as an individual; to seek the good fortune of strength and beauty and accomplishment and goodness; to place human considerations before material considerations; to decline all profit gained at the expense of women and children ”

“ Is it possible that women and their sympathizers may be pointing at stones and asking for them, thinking they are loaves of bread the bread of life itself? If women got an eight-hours' household day; if they had every field of industrial and professional work open to them, with wages boards and all that these imply, competing with men in a free field and with no favour, and receiving equal wages for equal work ”

“ We do not ask that our ancient spinning-wheels be again resuscitated and placed in our hands; we do not demand that our old grindstones and hoes be returned to us; or that man should again betake himself entirely to his ancient province of war and the chase, leaving to us all domestic and civil labour. We do not even demand that society shall immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a child-bearer (deep and overmastering as lies the hunger for motherhood in every virile woman's heart!) ”

“ There are circumstances in which a woman may, with all decency and propriety, break through a life-long natural timidity or years of case-hardened constraint and unreservedly tell the man of her choice, "I love you with all my heart, better than anything or anyone in the world." In doing so she may transgress the conventions, but she is true to her best nature, and her action is morally right. "Morality," says an earnest thinker on this subject, "is not shown by any unavoidable obedience to codes—indeed, it's often shown in the breaking of them. ”

“ It is a curiously inverted view of morals, the view which regards as praiseworthy those narrow, inexperienced, poverty-stricken souls whose slender virtue consists in the evil they have omitted to do. To renounce the world, to renounce life, to renounce the self—this is not the path of the moral life. ”

“ For days, weeks, months, and even years, she may resist, fearing she knows not what, but something certainly that was not in the bond so far as her knowledge was concerned. Her lord reminds her of her vows to love, honour, and obey. Sooner or later she obeys. But love rakes together the scattered rags of his belongings and leaves the moral shambles in disgust, blinded with scalding tears ”

“ I am thinking of the possibilities of men and women as individuals, and of the forces that will make each the best possible. I ask whether a great deal of what is regarded as of primary importance in the reform movement is not really secondary; whether we are not looking too much at moonbeams and the scintillations of stars, and neglecting the sun's light and heat; whether, in many instances, we are not fixing our attention too much on the claims of many and diverse minorities and exceptions, and overlooking the great mass of humanity ”

“ In the great world of humanity some people at present are like mere animals; some show glimmerings of human emotion, some are capable of intellectual enjoyment, and a few are capable of all-round self-expression. ”

“ Now it involves the tragedy of a thousand other lives, the loss of all that is true and sacred in the family, and of all that is good and beautiful in the world and in life. How can any of us contrive to live or make a living without feeling the chilling, paralyzing, soul-withering influence of Mammon? ”

“ In the very nature of things her feelings must remain untold, her actions unexplained and very often misunderstood. How can she summon courage to tell her lover her constant hopes, her perpetual fears regarding love itself? ”

“ Now we desire to see mankind evolving a huge world of human beings,—a community composed of all sorts of individuals, every one, however, hastening the coming of the kingdom in himself and in others as a present possession; men, ever the workers, striving restlessly after their ideals of beauty, strength, and purity, not through meaningless renunciation or annihilation, but by expansion, extension, and elevation of their every faculty ”

“ Further, let it be recognized that in civilized and Christianized society, and especially where women are characterized by refinement and culture, there is in the relations of husbands and wives, probably, if not certainly, more real immorality, more disregard of human feelings and well-being and individual self-realization and the rights of others, than there is in any other mutual or social relationship.
Marriage is the result of children; children are not the result of marriage. Marriage instituted itself on account of the children's need of sustenance, protection, and training ”

“ To put an end to all these evils, the women desired only one boon, a great one no doubt, but one that would end all strife, save the race, and usher in a new Golden Age. They asked that from that time forward all boys and girls, the future men and women, should be conceived by women, nourished by their mothers' lifeblood until the time of birth, and then protected, guided, educated and guarded by them until they were able to look after themselves. ”

“ Another, a modern woman, orthodox as some may think to a fault, says: "In the process of evolution it is only with the coming of the sex relation that life is enabled to rise to higher forms." And women and men alike are beginning to realize that it is only through a re-statement of moral values of "right," "wrong," "chastity," "fidelity," in a radical and revolutional way, which must come about gradually, that we can hope to help the progress of the world by elevating individual men and women and purifying them through the power of altruistic or spiritual love. ”

“ Right and wrong change their significance, as all words do, with the growing intelligence of the race and with changed circumstances and changing sentiment. Every act must be judged in the light of its moral significance if it has any. Consider St. Paul's discussion of the question of eating and drinking. "The young man who marries a wife whom he cannot decently support, who brings children into the world whom he cannot decently provide for and equip, is an immoral person. The woman who becomes the partner of such enfeebling poverty must share the blame as well as the suffering." ”

“ Here is a woman, for example, who is good, sweet, beautiful. Since the being of the world, all life, all humanity, all progress has been working against evil and death in one line. The end of the line only is visible. ”

“ Other people, again, agitate for reform, which means for them legislative change in some particular, the passing of some parliamentary measure which may occasion more mischief than the condition it is meant to cure, Some, however, are beginning to deal with the whole question radically, by studying human nature, human institutions, systems of legislation, religions, civilizations, and social movements. And the most hopeful feature of the time is that this class of people includes both men and women. ”

“ Unexhausted and undiscovered are still man and man's world. Self-realization, to be a complete man with the body beautiful, the mind clear, the spirit radiant, is a man's chief duty; and he must himself be personally responsible for it." "No man can redeem his brother." We are not made; we make ourselves. ”

“ The past material conditions of life have gone for ever; no will of man can recall them; but this is our demand: We demand that, in that strange new world that is arising alike upon the man and the woman, where nothing is as it was, and all things are assuming new shapes and relations, that in this new world we also shall have our share of honoured and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labour of the Children of Woman. ”

“ I promise to further social welfare; to promote the idea that prosperity consists essentially in persons and only incidentally in things; to be true to this faith in public and in private, in work and in play ”

“ If we are to succeed in true reform, the reconstruction must be a gradual process: we —must build in a brick here and loosen a stone there, gain the confidence of a fellow creature here and forbear to offend one there, introduce necessary changes as occasion arises, educate individuals and endeavour to form a healthy public opinion as a preliminary to passing parliamentary and other measures. We must endeavour to do the utmost amount of good we can, having regard to present conditions and limitations, and recognizing the frailty of others while we ourselves gather strength. ”

“ Woman will become the custodian of the race, and never more, under any pressure, will be able to give birth to a less than holy child. When this point shall have been reached obstacles will go down as straws before the wind, or before a great fire. ”

“ Other people feel the unsatisfactoriness, the irksomeness, the unfairness of it all, and protest vehemently against conditions that are beginning to be insufferable. But they make no attempt to find what is wrong at the heart of things; much less do they care to set about helping to mend matters. With some people, the dear delight of putting wrong things right is not to be compared with the sweet satisfaction of having them as a perennial subject of complaint, to be used as a safety-valve to let off temper and discontent from any and every cause arising. ”

“ Elsewhere I have spoken at some length on the subject of man from the point of view of evolution, and have tried to give an outline of what should be taught to men and women on the subject. Let me give the evolutional view of women in another student's words: "Let us think of a sweet young pure girl, with the mother-soul in her but half-fledged ... According to evolutional philosophy, what is she? Not one, but countless myriads of millions of dead in one life manifestation—an incomprehensible Multiple, that has apeared but once in the order of the Cosmos, and never can apear again. ”

“ If the social movement, through which the most advanced women of our day are attempting to bring themselves into co-ordination with the new conditions of life, removes them immeasurably from certain types of the primitive male; the same movement equally removes the new male from the old female. The sexual tragedy of modern life lies, not in the fact that woman as such is tending to differ fundamentally from man as such ”