Once we learn that individuals were all evolved by
Nature for the sake of the race, we shall understand why they have been
so evolved in their personal characteristics that in living their own
lives and fulfilling themselves they best fulfil Nature's remoter
purpose.
To this universal and necessary law, without which life could not
persist anywhere in any of its forms, woman is no exception; and therein
is the reply to those who fear a statement in new terms of the old
proposition that women must give themselves up for the sake of the
community and its future. Here it is true that whosoever will give her
life shall save it. Women must indeed give themselves up for the
community and the future; and so must men. Since women differ from men,
their sacrifice takes a somewhat different form, but in their case, as
in men's, the right fulfilment of Nature's purpose is one with the right
fulfilment of their own destiny. There is no antinomy. On the contrary,
the following pages are written in the belief and the fear that women
are threatening to injure themselves as individuals--and therefore the
race, of course--just because they wrongly suppose that a monstrous
antinomy exists where none could possibly exist. "No," they say, "we
have endured this too long; henceforth we must be free to be ourselves
and live our own lives." And then, forsooth, they proceed to try to be
other than themselves and live other than the lives for which their real
selves, in nine cases out of ten, were constructed.
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