CHAPTER 9.

Our Relations and Theirs

What I’m trying to show here is that with these women the whole

relationship of life counted in a glad, eager growing-up to join the

ranks of workers in the line best loved; a deep, tender reverence for

one’s own mother--too deep for them to speak of freely--and beyond that,

the whole, free, wide range of sisterhood, the splendid service of the

country, and friendships.

To these women we came, filled with the ideas, convictions, traditions,

of our culture, and undertook to rouse in them the emotions which--to

us--seemed proper.

However much, or little, of true sex-feeling there was between us, it

phrased itself in their minds in terms of friendship, the one purely

personal love they knew, and of ultimate parentage. Visibly we were not

mothers, nor children, nor compatriots; so, if they loved us, we must be

friends.

That we should pair off together in our courting days was natural to

them; that we three should remain much together, as they did themselves,

was also natural. We had as yet no work, so we hung about them in their

forest tasks; that was natural, too.

But when we began to talk about each couple having “homes” of our own,

they could not understand it.

“Our work takes us all around the country,” explained Celis. “We cannot

live in one place all the time.”

“We are together now,” urged Alima, looking proudly at Terry’s stalwart

nearness. (This was one of the times when they were “on,” though

presently “off” again.)

“It’s not the same thing at all,” he insisted. “A man wants a home of

his own, with his wife and family in it.”

“Staying in it? All the time?” asked Ellador. “Not imprisoned, surely!”

“Of course not! Living there--naturally,” he answered.

“What does she do there--all the time?” Alima demanded. “What is her

work?”

Then Terry patiently explained again that our women did not work--with

reservations.

“But what do they do--if they have no work?” she persisted.

“They take care of the home--and the children.”

“At the same time?” asked Ellador.

“Why yes. The children play about, and the mother has charge of it all.

There are servants, of course.”

It seemed so obvious, so natural to Terry, that he always grew

impatient; but the girls were honestly anxious to understand.

“How many children do your women have?” Alima had her notebook out now,

and a rather firm set of lip. Terry began to dodge.

“There is no set number, my dear,” he explained. “Some have more, some

have less.”

“Some have none at all,” I put in mischievously.

They pounced on this admission and soon wrung from us the general fact

that those women who had the most children had the least servants, and

those who had the most servants had the least children.

“There!” triumphed Alima. “One or two or no children, and three or four

servants. Now what do those women _do?_”

We explained as best we might. We talked of “social duties,”

disingenuously banking on their not interpreting the words as we did; we

talked of hospitality, entertainment, and various “interests.” All the

time we knew that to these large-minded women whose whole mental outlook

was so collective, the limitations of a wholly personal life were

inconceivable.

“We cannot really understand it,” Ellador concluded. “We are only half

a people. We have our woman-ways and they have their man-ways and their

both-ways. We have worked out a system of living which is, of course,

limited. They must have a broader, richer, better one. I should like to

see it.”

“You shall, dearest,” I whispered.

“There’s nothing to smoke,” complained Terry. He was in the midst of a

prolonged quarrel with Alima, and needed a sedative. “There’s nothing to

drink. These blessed women have no pleasant vices. I wish we could get

out of here!”

This wish was vain. We were always under a certain degree of

watchfulness. When Terry burst forth to tramp the streets at night he

always found a “Colonel” here or there; and when, on an occasion of

fierce though temporary despair, he had plunged to the cliff edge with

some vague view to escape, he found several of them close by. We were

free--but there was a string to it.

“They’ve no unpleasant ones, either,” Jeff reminded him.

“Wish they had!” Terry persisted. “They’ve neither the vices of men, nor

the virtues of women--they’re neuters!”

“You know better than that. Don’t talk nonsense,” said I, severely.

I was thinking of Ellador’s eyes when they gave me a certain look, a

look she did not at all realize.

Jeff was equally incensed. “I don’t know what ‘virtues of women’ you

miss. Seems to me they have all of them.”

“They’ve no modesty,” snapped Terry. “No patience, no submissiveness,

none of that natural yielding which is woman’s greatest charm.”

I shook my head pityingly. “Go and apologize and make friends again,

Terry. You’ve got a grouch, that’s all. These women have the virtue

of humanity, with less of its faults than any folks I ever saw. As for

patience--they’d have pitched us over the cliffs the first day we lit

among ’em, if they hadn’t that.”

“There are no--distractions,” he grumbled. “Nowhere a man can go and cut

loose a bit. It’s an everlasting parlor and nursery.”

“And workshop,” I added. “And school, and office, and laboratory, and

studio, and theater, and--home.”

“_Home!_” he sneered. “There isn’t a home in the whole pitiful place.”

“There isn’t anything else, and you know it,” Jeff retorted hotly. “I

never saw, I never dreamed of, such universal peace and good will and

mutual affection.”

“Oh, well, of course, if you like a perpetual Sunday school, it’s all

very well. But I like Something Doing. Here it’s all done.”

There was something to this criticism. The years of pioneering lay far

behind them. Theirs was a civilization in which the initial difficulties

had long since been overcome. The untroubled peace, the unmeasured

plenty, the steady health, the large good will and smooth management

which ordered everything, left nothing to overcome. It was like a

pleasant family in an old established, perfectly run country place.

I liked it because of my eager and continued interest in the

sociological achievements involved. Jeff liked it as he would have liked

such a family and such a place anywhere.

Terry did not like it because he found nothing to oppose, to struggle

with, to conquer.

“Life is a struggle, has to be,” he insisted. “If there is no struggle,

there is no life--that’s all.”

“You’re talking nonsense--masculine nonsense,” the peaceful Jeff

replied. He was certainly a warm defender of Herland. “Ants don’t raise

their myriads by a struggle, do they? Or the bees?”

“Oh, if you go back to insects--and want to live in an anthill--! I tell

you the higher grades of life are reached only through struggle--combat.

There’s no Drama here. Look at their plays! They make me sick.”

He rather had us there. The drama of the country was--to our

taste--rather flat. You see, they lacked the sex motive and, with it,

jealousy. They had no interplay of warring nations, no aristocracy and

its ambitions, no wealth and poverty opposition.

I see I have said little about the economics of the place; it should

have come before, but I’ll go on about the drama now.

They had their own kind. There was a most impressive array of pageantry,

of processions, a sort of grand ritual, with their arts and their

religion broadly blended. The very babies joined in it. To see one of

their great annual festivals, with the massed and marching stateliness

of those great mothers, the young women brave and noble, beautiful and

strong; and then the children, taking part as naturally as ours would

frolic round a Christmas tree--it was overpowering in the impression of

joyous, triumphant life.

They had begun at a period when the drama, the dance, music, religion,

and education were all very close together; and instead of developing

them in detached lines, they had kept the connection. Let me try again

to give, if I can, a faint sense of the difference in the life view--the

background and basis on which their culture rested.

Ellador told me a lot about it. She took me to see the children, the

growing girls, the special teachers. She picked out books for me to

read. She always seemed to understand just what I wanted to know, and

how to give it to me.

While Terry and Alima struck sparks and parted--he always madly drawn

to her and she to him--she must have been, or she’d never have stood the

way he behaved--Ellador and I had already a deep, restful feeling, as

if we’d always had one another. Jeff and Celis were happy; there was no

question of that; but it didn’t seem to me as if they had the good times

we did.

Well, here is the Herland child facing life--as Ellador tried to show

it to me. From the first memory, they knew Peace, Beauty, Order, Safety,

Love, Wisdom, Justice, Patience, and Plenty. By “plenty” I mean that the

babies grew up in an environment which met their needs, just as young

fawns might grow up in dewy forest glades and brook-fed meadows. And

they enjoyed it as frankly and utterly as the fawns would.

They found themselves in a big bright lovely world, full of the most

interesting and enchanting things to learn about and to do. The people

everywhere were friendly and polite. No Herland child ever met the

overbearing rudeness we so commonly show to children. They were People,

too, from the first; the most precious part of the nation.

In each step of the rich experience of living, they found the instance

they were studying widen out into contact with an endless range of

common interests. The things they learned were _related_, from the

first; related to one another, and to the national prosperity.

“It was a butterfly that made me a forester,” said Ellador. “I was about

eleven years old, and I found a big purple-and-green butterfly on a low

flower. I caught it, very carefully, by the closed wings, as I had been

told to do, and carried it to the nearest insect teacher”--I made a note

there to ask her what on earth an insect teacher was--“to ask her its

name. She took it from me with a little cry of delight. ‘Oh, you blessed

child,’ she said. ‘Do you like obernuts?’ Of course I liked obernuts,

and said so. It is our best food-nut, you know. ‘This is a female of the

obernut moth,’ she told me. ‘They are almost gone. We have been trying

to exterminate them for centuries. If you had not caught this one, it

might have laid eggs enough to raise worms enough to destroy thousands

of our nut trees--thousands of bushels of nuts--and make years and years

of trouble for us.’

“Everybody congratulated me. The children all over the country were told

to watch for that moth, if there were any more. I was shown the history

of the creature, and an account of the damage it used to do and of how

long and hard our foremothers had worked to save that tree for us. I

grew a foot, it seemed to me, and determined then and there to be a

forester.”

This is but an instance; she showed me many. The big difference was that

whereas our children grow up in private homes and families, with every

effort made to protect and seclude them from a dangerous world, here

they grew up in a wide, friendly world, and knew it for theirs, from the

first.

Their child-literature was a wonderful thing. I could have spent years

following the delicate subtleties, the smooth simplicities with which

they had bent that great art to the service of the child mind.

We have two life cycles: the man’s and the woman’s. To the man there is

growth, struggle, conquest, the establishment of his family, and as much

further success in gain or ambition as he can achieve.

To the woman, growth, the securing of a husband, the subordinate

activities of family life, and afterward such “social” or charitable

interests as her position allows.

Here was but one cycle, and that a large one.

The child entered upon a broad open field of life, in which motherhood

was the one great personal contribution to the national life, and all

the rest the individual share in their common activities. Every girl I

talked to, at any age above babyhood, had her cheerful determination as

to what she was going to be when she grew up.

What Terry meant by saying they had no “modesty” was that this great

life-view had no shady places; they had a high sense of personal

decorum, but no shame--no knowledge of anything to be ashamed of.

Even their shortcomings and misdeeds in childhood never were presented

to them as sins; merely as errors and misplays--as in a game. Some of

them, who were palpably less agreeable than others or who had a real

weakness or fault, were treated with cheerful allowance, as a friendly

group at whist would treat a poor player.

Their religion, you see, was maternal; and their ethics, based on the

full perception of evolution, showed the principle of growth and the

beauty of wise culture. They had no theory of the essential opposition

of good and evil; life to them was growth; their pleasure was in

growing, and their duty also.

With this background, with their sublimated mother-love, expressed in

terms of widest social activity, every phase of their work was modified

by its effect on the national growth. The language itself they had

deliberately clarified, simplified, made easy and beautiful, for the

sake of the children.

This seemed to us a wholly incredible thing: first, that any nation

should have the foresight, the strength, and the persistence to plan

and fulfill such a task; and second, that women should have had so much

initiative. We have assumed, as a matter of course, that women had

none; that only the man, with his natural energy and impatience of

restriction, would ever invent anything.

Here we found that the pressure of life upon the environment develops in

the human mind its inventive reactions, regardless of sex; and further,

that a fully awakened motherhood plans and works without limit, for the

good of the child.

That the children might be most nobly born, and reared in an environment

calculated to allow the richest, freest growth, they had deliberately

remodeled and improved the whole state.

I do not mean in the least that they stopped at that, any more than

a child stops at childhood. The most impressive part of their whole

culture beyond this perfect system of child-rearing was the range of

interests and associations open to them all, for life. But in the field

of literature I was most struck, at first, by the child-motive.

They had the same gradation of simple repetitive verse and story that we

are familiar with, and the most exquisite, imaginative tales; but where,

with us, these are the dribbled remnants of ancient folk myths and

primitive lullabies, theirs were the exquisite work of great artists;

not only simple and unfailing in appeal to the child-mind, but _true_,

true to the living world about them.

To sit in one of their nurseries for a day was to change one’s views

forever as to babyhood. The youngest ones, rosy fatlings in their

mothers’ arms, or sleeping lightly in the flower-sweet air, seemed

natural enough, save that they never cried. I never heard a child cry in

Herland, save once or twice at a bad fall; and then people ran to help,

as we would at a scream of agony from a grown person.

Each mother had her year of glory; the time to love and learn, living

closely with her child, nursing it proudly, often for two years or more.

This perhaps was one reason for their wonderful vigor.

But after the baby-year the mother was not so constantly in attendance,

unless, indeed, her work was among the little ones. She was never

far off, however, and her attitude toward the co-mothers, whose proud

child-service was direct and continuous, was lovely to see.

As for the babies--a group of those naked darlings playing on short

velvet grass, clean-swept; or rugs as soft; or in shallow pools of

bright water; tumbling over with bubbling joyous baby laughter--it was a

view of infant happiness such as I had never dreamed.

The babies were reared in the warmer part of the country, and gradually

acclimated to the cooler heights as they grew older.

Sturdy children of ten and twelve played in the snow as joyfully as ours

do; there were continuous excursions of them, from one part of the land

to another, so that to each child the whole country might be home.

It was all theirs, waiting for them to learn, to love, to use, to serve;

as our own little boys plan to be “a big soldier,” or “a cowboy,” or

whatever pleases their fancy; and our little girls plan for the kind of

home they mean to have, or how many children; these planned, freely and

gaily with much happy chattering, of what they would do for the country

when they were grown.

It was the eager happiness of the children and young people which first

made me see the folly of that common notion of ours--that if life was

smooth and happy, people would not enjoy it.

As I studied these youngsters, vigorous, joyous, eager little creatures,

and their voracious appetite for life, it shook my previous ideas so

thoroughly that they have never been re-established. The steady level of

good health gave them all that natural stimulus we used to call “animal

spirits”--an odd contradiction in terms. They found themselves in an

immediate environment which was agreeable and interesting, and before

them stretched the years of learning and discovery, the fascinating,

endless process of education.

As I looked into these methods and compared them with our own, my

strange uncomfortable sense of race-humility grew apace.

Ellador could not understand my astonishment. She explained things

kindly and sweetly, but with some amazement that they needed explaining,

and with sudden questions as to how we did it that left me meeker than

ever.

I betook myself to Somel one day, carefully not taking Ellador. I did

not mind seeming foolish to Somel--she was used to it.

“I want a chapter of explanation,” I told her. “You know my stupidities

by heart, and I do not want to show them to Ellador--she thinks me so

wise!”

She smiled delightedly. “It is beautiful to see,” she told me, “this

new wonderful love between you. The whole country is interested, you

know--how can we help it!”

I had not thought of that. We say: “All the world loves a lover,” but

to have a couple of million people watching one’s courtship--and that a

difficult one--was rather embarrassing.

“Tell me about your theory of education,” I said. “Make it short and

easy. And, to show you what puzzles me, I’ll tell you that in our theory

great stress is laid on the forced exertion of the child’s mind; we

think it is good for him to overcome obstacles.”

“Of course it is,” she unexpectedly agreed. “All our children do

that--they love to.”

That puzzled me again. If they loved to do it, how could it be

educational?

“Our theory is this,” she went on carefully. “Here is a young human

being. The mind is as natural a thing as the body, a thing that grows,

a thing to use and enjoy. We seek to nourish, to stimulate, to exercise

the mind of a child as we do the body. There are the two main divisions

in education--you have those of course?--the things it is necessary to

know, and the things it is necessary to do.”

“To do? Mental exercises, you mean?”

“Yes. Our general plan is this: In the matter of feeding the mind,

of furnishing information, we use our best powers to meet the natural

appetite of a healthy young brain; not to overfeed it, to provide such

amount and variety of impressions as seem most welcome to each child.

That is the easiest part. The other division is in arranging a properly

graduated series of exercises which will best develop each mind; the

common faculties we all have, and most carefully, the especial faculties

some of us have. You do this also, do you not?”

“In a way,” I said rather lamely. “We have not so subtle and highly

developed a system as you, not approaching it; but tell me more. As

to the information--how do you manage? It appears that all of you know

pretty much everything--is that right?”

This she laughingly disclaimed. “By no means. We are, as you soon found

out, extremely limited in knowledge. I wish you could realize what a

ferment the country is in over the new things you have told us; the

passionate eagerness among thousands of us to go to your country and

learn--learn--learn! But what we do know is readily divisible into

common knowledge and special knowledge. The common knowledge we have

long since learned to feed into the minds of our little ones with no

waste of time or strength; the special knowledge is open to all, as

they desire it. Some of us specialize in one line only. But most take up

several--some for their regular work, some to grow with.”

“To grow with?”

“Yes. When one settles too close in one kind of work there is a tendency

to atrophy in the disused portions of the brain. We like to keep on

learning, always.”

“What do you study?”

“As much as we know of the different sciences. We have, within our

limits, a good deal of knowledge of anatomy, physiology, nutrition--all

that pertains to a full and beautiful personal life. We have our botany

and chemistry, and so on--very rudimentary, but interesting; our own

history, with its accumulating psychology.”

“You put psychology with history--not with personal life?”

“Of course. It is ours; it is among and between us, and it changes with

the succeeding and improving generations. We are at work, slowly and

carefully, developing our whole people along these lines. It is glorious

work--splendid! To see the thousands of babies improving, showing

stronger clearer minds, sweeter dispositions, higher capacities--don’t

you find it so in your country?”

This I evaded flatly. I remembered the cheerless claim that the human

mind was no better than in its earliest period of savagery, only better

informed--a statement I had never believed.

“We try most earnestly for two powers,” Somel continued. “The two that

seem to us basically necessary for all noble life: a clear, far-reaching

judgment, and a strong well-used will. We spend our best efforts, all

through childhood and youth, in developing these faculties, individual

judgment and will.”

“As part of your system of education, you mean?”

“Exactly. As the most valuable part. With the babies, as you may have

noticed, we first provide an environment which feeds the mind without

tiring it; all manner of simple and interesting things to do, as soon

as they are old enough to do them; physical properties, of course, come

first. But as early as possible, going very carefully, not to tax the

mind, we provide choices, simple choices, with very obvious causes and

consequences. You’ve noticed the games?”

I had. The children seemed always playing something; or else, sometimes,

engaged in peaceful researches of their own. I had wondered at first

when they went to school, but soon found that they never did--to their

knowledge. It was all education but no schooling.

“We have been working for some sixteen hundred years, devising better

and better games for children,” continued Somel.

I sat aghast. “Devising games?” I protested. “Making up new ones, you

mean?”

“Exactly,” she answered. “Don’t you?”

Then I remembered the kindergarten, and the “material” devised by

Signora Montessori, and guardedly replied: “To some extent.” But most

of our games, I told her, were very old--came down from child to child,

along the ages, from the remote past.

“And what is their effect?” she asked. “Do they develop the faculties

you wish to encourage?”

Again I remembered the claims made by the advocates of “sports,” and

again replied guardedly that that was, in part, the theory.

“But do the children _like_ it?” I asked. “Having things made up and

set before them that way? Don’t they want the old games?”

“You can see the children,” she answered. “Are yours more

contented--more interested--happier?”

Then I thought, as in truth I never had thought before, of the dull,

bored children I had seen, whining; “What can I do now?”; of the little

groups and gangs hanging about; of the value of some one strong spirit

who possessed initiative and would “start something”; of the children’s

parties and the onerous duties of the older people set to “amuse the

children”; also of that troubled ocean of misdirected activity we call

“mischief,” the foolish, destructive, sometimes evil things done by

unoccupied children.

“No,” said I grimly. “I don’t think they are.”

The Herland child was born not only into a world carefully prepared,

full of the most fascinating materials and opportunities to learn, but

into the society of plentiful numbers of teachers, teachers born and

trained, whose business it was to accompany the children along that, to

us, impossible thing--the royal road to learning.

There was no mystery in their methods. Being adapted to children it was

at least comprehensible to adults. I spent many days with the little

ones, sometimes with Ellador, sometimes without, and began to feel a

crushing pity for my own childhood, and for all others that I had known.

The houses and gardens planned for babies had in them nothing to

hurt--no stairs, no corners, no small loose objects to swallow, no

fire--just a babies’ paradise. They were taught, as rapidly as

feasible, to use and control their own bodies, and never did I see such

sure-footed, steady-handed, clear-headed little things. It was a joy

to watch a row of toddlers learning to walk, not only on a level floor,

but, a little later, on a sort of rubber rail raised an inch or two

above the soft turf or heavy rugs, and falling off with shrieks of

infant joy, to rush back to the end of the line and try again. Surely we

have noticed how children love to get up on something and walk along it!

But we have never thought to provide that simple and inexhaustible form

of amusement and physical education for the young.

Water they had, of course, and could swim even before they walked. If I

feared at first the effects of a too intensive system of culture, that

fear was dissipated by seeing the long sunny days of pure physical

merriment and natural sleep in which these heavenly babies passed their

first years. They never knew they were being educated. They did not

dream that in this association of hilarious experiment and achievement

they were laying the foundation for that close beautiful group feeling

into which they grew so firmly with the years. This was education for

citizenship.