Alice Hubbard

“ Love radiates from the individual, as rays of light from its source.
When the lover wants to continue the ecstacy of the experience of unselfishness, prolong the forgetfulness of his sordid self, he does what? Just the opposite of what will secure for him this Nirvana! He begins to demand. He asks her to be forever near him, she asks him to forever stay, all in faith, believing that the soul-awakener is a person, when the person has only reminded the soul of an ideal. For a time this person keeps this ideal living before the soul of the lover. ”

“ So rare are the people capable of its expression that the whole world wonders and in awe has said that the Creator is Love.
And lovers have been set apart as belonging to the Great Mystery and revered in degree as is the Source of Love.
One of the phases of this manifestation in people is the desire to give. The lover withholds nothing from his beloved. There is one desire—to give all. Thus is the mind expanded until it reaches truth never before seen.
Love is the enlightener of the soul. It is the all-seeing eye that discovers the highest possibilities in man. ”

“ Love is a sacred mystery whose secret is as yet locked away from mortals. We recognize a few of its manifestations and dream of its power. We connect it in our thoughts with marriage and birth, but we assume its presence: we do not bring proof.
Love is spirit, and can not be analyzed nor understood. ”

“ So much service is given for so much money, and so much money for so much service.
Women are human beings, no more and no less than are men. They are just as human as men. They love freedom, independence and justice. ”

“ If a woman were an incompetent, unable to earn or provide for herself, it might be well to leave her finances wholly in the hands of her husband.
But women who have the right to give children to society are capable of taking care of themselves and financing their personal interests.
Mothers should be thus capable.
In marriage we must recognize the individuality in the partnership, just as we must the romance and the facts.
A helpless, dependent, undeveloped, sentimental woman is not an inspirer of ideals. The man absorbed and involved in business is not an awakener or reminder of the Perfect. ”

“ Woman and man are awakening, brain and heart.
Woman must have freedom to work, to think, to find happiness, to express herself. She must be accepted as a part of every part of this becoming Democracy. She must be accepted in the world as it is today. She belongs, not to the past, but to this present.
There is work that she alone can do, and to do this she must be economically free.
The freedom of woman is the most important of all subjects that statesmen and citizens can consider. ”

“ Nothing has been done to make a large family popular. The trend of the whole course of civilization has been and is to do anything but evolve citizens.
Of course, women are supposed to be too spiritually minded to want compensation in money for work done for love.
However, is any great work done that is not done for love of the work? No one writes, paints, plays, builds, prints, binds books, models in leather or clay, raises cattle, fruits, grains, but him who loves his work. There is little response in any part of life, other than to love. ”

“ When man can image a human being that fulfils the highest ideal he can create, the soul rejoices. Man forgets the imperfect in his ecstacy when contemplating the perfect. And when one human being sees another human being who reminds him, more or less, of his ideal, he is said to love. ”

“ One of the myths in marriage is to assume that business and business struggles do not enter into the lives of lovers. The fact is that business occupies much of the time of every honest man and honest woman. It is necessary to life. Without work, romance would cease, the human race would die. ”

“ Ecstacy continued, burns up life, and is not intended except for inspiration.
Love may continue with marriage, and it may not. Civilization has drifted us into conditions where it is difficult for romance to continue after the lovers enter into the business of life together.
Marriage is of universal interest. The weal or woe of the race is involved in it.
It is a natural incident in the lives of lovers; but the marriage of lovers, although an incident in love, becomes an event in their lives because of the business partnership, which phase they did not contemplate. ”

“ We talk about the glory of motherhood, but we do not act to the glory of motherhood.
The business of marriage is to develop citizens. The financial part of this partnership should receive the most careful attention of all people who are to marry. They should realize that they are assuming responsibilities great and unknown to them. They are leaving a simple life to enter into one vastly more complex. ”

“ Nature does not recognize it in the cosmic urge. So the meeting of man and woman on an intellectual plane, on a basis of the sweetest friendship imaginable, is the only condition by which Nature can [Pg 34] endure the social marriage tie—which so often binds, imprisons, and makes slaves.
Even at this time man considers that he owns a woman; that he has purchased her freedom, her will, her habits, her aspirations, her time, her love, her energies, her future, every activity of her life. She is in very truth under a master. And the woman, as well, usually considers this true. ”

“ We anathematize and practically kill a mother who has not conformed to our laws, irrespective of what Nature has said about it. We take her child from her, hide it, falsify about it, and then disown the mother if she demands the inherent rights of a mother. ”

“ If they marry, they must recognize the business in marriage and enter into the business partnership with true intelligence.
With no less intelligence must men understand that the contract in marriage can not be unilateral and bring benefit or happiness to either person, nor can the purpose of marriage be best accomplished.
Democracy in marriage is the Great Imperative. We would have a democratic form of government? Democracy must begin at the foundation of all government—the home. ”

“ The desire to give all of his earnings to the development of citizens may never have been his. He may not know nor care about the welfare and perpetuation of the state.
But Nature has not bound him hand and foot to Her plans. When, or if, his affection ceases for this woman who is dependent upon him for food, shelter and clothing, [Pg 51] he may use his own judgment about the woman’s and the children’s needs. So long as they escape the attention of the Humane Societies, the family is at his mercy. The woman and her work are dependent upon him just the same. ”

“ Men and women will not long be looking for ease, nor want to have what they do not earn.
When love calls, they will respond with intelligence, knowing that this is Nature’s voice, and therefore divine. They will rejoice in the most strenuous exercise of living. ”

“ All manufactories, all industries, reforms and civic improvements have originated in woman’s brain, evolved because of the mother-instinct of love.
From the city, human interest extended into the state, from the state into the nation. From the limitation of belonging to a nation, we shall sometime become citizens of the world.
A stateswoman or statesman is one [Pg 57] who is intelligently active in work that materially benefits the citizens of a state or nation.
The rights of citizenship naturally belong to all people who wish to and can contribute to the welfare of their fellow-man. ”

“ We affirm that the greatest work the state can do is to develop citizens. Perpetuity of the state is synonymous with perpetuity of the race. This is supposed to be Nature’s dearest desire—to perpetuate the race.
So it should be the dearest desire of statesmen, politicians, to perpetuate the state, and the state is the aggregation of its citizens. ”

“ But this living together has induced a thousand conditions that had nothing whatever to do with the ecstacy of the soul.
Young people do not realize how much economics has to do with every-day living until they are face to face with every-day life.
Earning money, the drudgery in housework, the personal habits of the individuals, intimate tastes and prejudices, are all foreign to the [Pg 20] awakening of ideals in the soul. The beloved, who was once an angel, becomes a wife, a weaver, a worker, a plain human being, subject to the shortcomings and ignorance that other human beings have. ”

“ We would consider two men ridiculous who entered into a business partnership, discussing with each other only the pleasure they anticipated in seeing each other so constantly as they would, working side by side each day. ”

“ If the woman expects the man simply to provide shelter, food, raiment, and the man expects a good cook, housekeeper and valet, and each fulfils his part of the expectation, there are few other demands.
Tenderness, kindness, attentions are asked for very moderately, and good service brings its own reward. Each understands the situation and has accepted this business arrangement with marriage. So there is no disappointment, no heartache. They get out of their marriage all they had expected. ”

“ The ideal and the real are interdependent in all phases of human life.
In marriage there is a myth that the twain are one flesh. But the two are two, just as surely as one and one make two, unless neither is worth counting.
It might not be such folly for a [Pg 77] woman to trust her happiness to a man, if any man could make any woman happy. But happiness is within the power of the individual alone. Nature intended it to be so. ”

“ OMAN is a human being before she is a mother and all the time she is a mother. And after her active work of motherhood is finished, she will still be a human being, subject to all the ambitions, hopes, desires and interests that humanity has. ”

“ Before her babe is born, Nature has absorbed the mother’s strength and charm that Her one purpose may be accomplished. Man finds it easy to neglect woman then. In fact, his honor, pride, fear and loyalty to a principle, one or all, are his safeguard and the mentor that holds him to duty when his wife is absorbed by motherhood. ”

“ Men and women have not evolved far. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.”
Higher ideals will lure humanity on and on to a higher state of intelligence, and to better living, to a more refined and nobler justice than we have yet imagined. ”

“ Daughters have inherited tendencies from their fathers as well as from their mothers, and all daughters have done this from prehistoric times to the present. Sons have belonged to mothers as well as to fathers. The race is one.
Women can not be limited in the expression of this great miracle of life which stirs her soul, as it stirs man’s. ”

“ Pay mothers for the work they do for the state. Give them the opportunity for economic freedom, that they may be self-respecting, and develop on equal terms with men.
The great need of the world is for better women and men—an evolving race. ”

“ It is admitted now by men and women that the laws of all countries of the world were made by men for men. They do not discriminate against women so seriously and so unjustly as did Moses, but the civil laws give wife and mother no chance for independence. ”

“ Any woman, whose husband dies, gives her time to the care of her children, no matter how poorly equipped she may be to earn a living for them in the world. She tries to do her own work, and besides that, what her husband did—maintain the family.
The state has made no provision for the care of potential citizens whose father has died, thereby cutting off the income which was once theirs. ”

“ This is why motherhood has become unpopular and a burden. The mother is in economics a pauper, a dependent, [Pg 69] at the mercy or bounty of one man.
The first use of a home was to care for children, to protect them. Women built the first houses and for this one purpose.
Modern houses are made for adults more than for children. They are places of luxury. The thought of a nursery is seldom in the minds of the makers of houses. The architect does not have for his recurring theme, “How will this add to the development of citizens?” ”

“ SOCIAL marriage is based on the idea of a high and lofty friendship, an indissoluble partnership, an intimacy of relationship unknown in any other phase of existence.
Such a marriage was not intended by Nature. A new element is introduced when a social marriage occurs of which Nature had no thought, and we should reckon with this, not without it. ”

“ The woman thinks, because she is owned, that there are certain rights connected with her husband which she also has. In the majority of cases the wife realizes her inferior strength when might makes right, and the husband is not trusted. ”

“ Leisure to think together and work together on things of mutual interest, is necessary to marriage, or there can be little love.
When lovers are independently dependent upon each other, it is a wonderful privilege to meet.
When lovers are economically free, as they were before marriage, there is no asking of favors nor demanding rights. ”