The simpler the differential quality of good and evil, the
more absolute and merciless it grows. In this ethical code there are
no extenuating circumstances. As according to it the wife belongs to
her husband, she who gives herself to another does wrong. There are no
discussions, no considerations, or reflections,--there is the right
hand for the righteous, the left for the sinners, God's mercy above
all,--but nothing between, no intermediate place.
It is the code of the honest villager, so simple that people like me
do not understand it. It seems to us that human life and human souls
are too complex to find room in it. Unfortunately we have not found
anything to replace it, and consequently we flutter here and there
like stray birds, in loneliness and alarm.
The greater part of our women still hold fast to that code. Even those
who occasionally stray from it do not permit themselves a momentary
doubt as to its truth and sacredness. Where it begins, reasoning
leaves off.
The poets erroneously represent woman as an enigma, a living Sphinx.
Man is a hundred times more of an enigma and a Sphinx. A healthy woman
that is not hysterical may be either good or bad, strong or weak, but
she has more spiritual simplicity than man. Forever and all times the
Ten Commandments are enough for her, whether she live according to
their tenets, or through human frailty set them aside.
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