Page:Woman and her possibilities.djvu/41

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HER POSSIBILITIES
35

affections also makes possible the exercise of the most unbridled selfishness." 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. Men and women will work, each class doing what it can do best and most effectively: man will be, or will continue to be, the active worker, the creator in things physical, intellectual, and spiritual; woman will refine him, ennoble him, inspire him, make him enthusiastic, i.e., filled with God.

Our first parents, after the failure of an experiment in conjugal life without filial or parental relations or social duties,

"Hand in hand with wandering steps and slow
 Through Eden took their solitary way,"

from a paradise lost.

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; women, their comrades and companions, affectionate mates and devoted mothers, bringing their best into the world, self-discovering and self-revealing alike,