Turn we now from the barbarian Past and the semi civilized Present to contemplate the promise of the Future. Is the current moral system destined to endure forever? Are we doomed to live perpetually in the shadow of the dual standard, with the canker of prostitution as its safety valve, or may we take heart in looking forward to an approaching order that will no longer do violence to our sense of equity, our sympathies and our reason? Is Theseus coming to deliver us from the Minotaur? Are new social forms to arise and supplant the decaying ones, as Evolution carries the race onward along its predetermined course?
Before these anxious queries could be answered in detail, an inventory would have to be
taken of the multitudinous causes now in action thruout society, and their distant effects
precisely calculated. The knowledge thus obtained would lift the veil concealing the future,
and allow our mind's eye to dwell on a vision of things lying unborn in the womb of Time. To
cope with such an undertaking, our limited faculty is utterly inadequate. Nowhere else is
causation so complex and so elusive as in the phenomena constituting social science. Even
the immediate effects of present causes can be outlined dimly and with great difficulty; the
remote effects are beyond computation.
This obstacle, however, does not deter our self styled
prophets. Seizing some factor now prominent in its influence, they proceed to construct a
definite future upon the basis of its present action, as if any cause will go on producing its
effects for all time, without being crossed and re-crossed by thousands of other causes working
out their thousands of effects. It is assumed that one thing will change while others will
remain unchanged.
Detailed prophecy is not attainable in social phenomena. All we can attempt is to point
out the more conspicuous forces and their probable immediate results, since ultimate results
are beyond the scope of human vision. In this cautious spirit of qualified prediction, we may
venture to indicate a few potent agencies at present active in working serious changes in our
social order, and incidentally playing havoc with our conventional sex morality.
Foremost among these agencies stands the emancipation of women. Two generations
have witnessed the elevation of woman from a subordinate position to a station of
approximate equality with man. In our day, when all occupations and professions have been
thrown open to women, and their complete conquest of suffrage rights is only a question of
years, it is difficult to realize that a few decades ago it was considered highly improper for a
woman to engage in any activity which took her outside of the narrow confines of the home.
The fetich of "womanliness" banished the entire sex from the broad field of business, from the
calling of law and of medicine, from the stage, and even from art and literature. All these,
together with war and politics, belonged to man's exclusive domain, while woman's time and
interests were to be partitioned mainly between the kitchen and the nursery. The bearing and
rearing of children was her duty to the race, and ample compensation for sacrificing her own
individuality. She was considered a mere child-bearing apparatus, as Bebel says.
And now, the daughters and grand daughters of those household drudges have broken
the spell of centuries, and are invading the trades, professions, arts and sciences, and forcing
man, their late master, into an attitude of self defence. Like a deposed sovereign, he is slowly
awakening to the bleak realization of forfeited power. His vassals, so meekly submissive but
yesterday, laugh at his commands in open defiance. But the habits of centuries are not easily
outgrown, and he will need much time to adjust himself to the new conditions. Human ideas
and sentiments do not change as rapidly as circumstances, and hence woman, no less than
man, is but slowly adapting her conduct to the novel acquisition of freedom. Hence, too,
occasional inevitable excrescences in her behavior.
Eventually, this process of readjustment, habitually repressing man's old pretensions, and
simultaneously encouraging woman's new aspirations, must bring about an approximate
equalization of rights and privileges, including those concerned with sex relations.
Meanwhile, we shall continue to witness the numerous compromises between old and new
ethical forms so characteristic of all transitional stages.