Herland Charlotte Perkins Gilman (ebook and pdf reader TXT) đ
- Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Then studying my point of view more closely, she added: âYou see, we recognize, in our human motherhood, a great tender limitless uplifting forceâ âpatience and wisdom and all subtlety of delicate method. We credit Godâ âour idea of Godâ âwith all that and more. Our mothers are not angry with usâ âwhy should God be?â
âDoes God mean a person to you?â
This she thought over a little. âWhyâ âin trying to get close to it in our minds we personify the idea, naturally; but we certainly do not assume a Big Woman somewhere, who is God. What we call God is a Pervading Power, you know, an Indwelling Spirit, something inside of us that we want more of. Is your God a Big Man?â she asked innocently.
âWhyâ âyes, to most of us, I think. Of course we call it an Indwelling Spirit just as you do, but we insist that it is Him, a Person, and a Manâ âwith whiskers.â
âWhiskers? Oh yesâ âbecause you have them! Or do you wear them because He does?â
âOn the contrary, we shave them offâ âbecause it seems cleaner and more comfortable.â
âDoes He wear clothesâ âin your idea, I mean?â
I was thinking over the pictures of God I had seenâ ârash advances of the devout mind of man, representing his Omnipotent Deity as an old man in a flowing robe, flowing hair, flowing beard, and in the light of her perfectly frank and innocent questions this concept seemed rather unsatisfying.
I explained that the God of the Christian world was really the ancient Hebrew God, and that we had simply taken over the patriarchal ideaâ âthat ancient one which quite inevitably clothed its thought of God with the attributes of the patriarchal ruler, the grandfather.
âI see,â she said eagerly, after I had explained the genesis and development of our religious ideals. âThey lived in separate groups, with a male head, and he was probably a littleâ âdomineering?â
âNo doubt of that,â I agreed.
âAnd we live together without any âhead,â in that senseâ âjust our chosen leadersâ âthat does make a difference.â
âYour difference is deeper than that,â I assured her. âIt is in your common motherhood. Your children grow up in a world where everybody loves them. They find life made rich and happy for them by the diffused love and wisdom of all mothers. So it is easy for you to think of God in the terms of a similar diffused and competent love. I think you are far nearer right than we are.â
âWhat I cannot understand,â she pursued carefully, âis your preservation of such a very ancient state of mind. This patriarchal idea you tell me is thousands of years old?â
âOh yesâ âfour, five, six thousandâ âevery so many.â
âAnd you have made wonderful progress in those yearsâ âin other things?â
âWe certainly have. But religion is different. You see, our religions come from behind us, and are initiated by some great teacher who is dead. He is supposed to have known the whole thing and taught it, finally. All we have to do is believeâ âand obey.â
âWho was the great Hebrew teacher?â
âOhâ âthere it was different. The Hebrew religion is an accumulation of extremely ancient traditions, some far older than their people, and grew by accretion down the ages. We consider it inspiredâ ââthe Word of God.âââ
âHow do you know it is?â
âBecause it says so.â
âDoes it say so in as many words? Who wrote that in?â
I began to try to recall some text that did say so, and could not bring it to mind.
âApart from that,â she pursued, âwhat I cannot understand is why you keep these early religious ideas so long. You have changed all your others, havenât you?â
âPretty generally,â I agreed. âBut this we call ârevealed religion,â and think it is final. But tell me more about these little temples of yours,â I urged. âAnd these Temple Mothers you run to.â
Then she gave me an extended lesson in applied religion, which I will endeavor to concentrate.
They developed their central theory of a Loving Power, and assumed that its relation to them was motherlyâ âthat it desired their welfare and especially their development. Their relation to it, similarly, was filial, a loving appreciation and a glad fulfillment of its high purposes. Then, being nothing if not practical, they set their keen and active minds to discover the kind of conduct expected of them. This worked out in a most admirable system of ethics. The principle of Love was universally recognizedâ âand used.
Patience, gentleness, courtesy, all that we call âgood breeding,â was part of their code of conduct. But where they went far beyond us was in the special application of religious feeling to every field of life. They had no ritual, no little set of performances called âdivine service,â save those religious pageants I have spoken of, and those were as much educational as religious, and as much social as either. But they had a clear established connection between everything they didâ âand God. Their cleanliness, their health, their exquisite order, the rich peaceful beauty of the whole land, the happiness of the children, and above all the constant progress they madeâ âall this was their religion.
They applied their minds to the thought of God, and worked out the theory that such an inner power demanded outward expression. They lived as if God was real and at work within them.
As for those little temples everywhereâ âsome of the women were more skilled, more temperamentally inclined, in this direction, than others. These, whatever their work might be, gave certain hours to the Temple Service, which meant being there with all their love and wisdom and trained thought, to smooth out rough places for anyone who needed it. Sometimes it was a real grief, very rarely a quarrel, most often a perplexity; even in Herland the human soul had its hours of darkness. But all through the country their best and wisest were ready to give help.
If the difficulty
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