# The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 2/7. Concerning Womanhood (a lecture, 1873)

Contents
CONCERNING WOMANHOOD AND MANHOOD.
(A Lecture. 1873.)
In the treatment of my subject the question arose with which sex I should make the beginning, to which I should give precedence. The answer to this question would not embarrass me if I were to consult merely my taste or the injunctions of "gallantry." My hesitation arises from the story, especially the Christian story of the origin of the sexes. The Bible, the source of the prevailing wisdom and knowledge, accords priority to man, and traces the descent of woman directly from him, from one of his ribs. Notwithstanding the high authority, however, on which such genesis is based, it does not seem to me reasonable, for the simple reason that, according to general belief, man and woman are made to love each other. Montaigne says: "I should not like to be a woman because I could no longer love her then," and Lady Montaigne declared that ‘"‘the only reason why she should not wish to be a man is that she would then have to marry a woman." How then could a woman have any charm for a man if she were formed out of his bodily substance? Conceive of Adam kissing Eve, after having, only yesterday, carried her about ​him as a rib. And then the vexing rib as such! I have sought in vain to trace the meaning of the Biblical origin of woman, and could explain it only if man belonged to those beings whose best part 1s the cutlet. Perhaps this interpretation is also admissible, that the Bible meant to convey the impression that man's need of woman was so great that he would even "cut her out of his ribs," as we say, rather than do without her. But in that case it would have been more poetical and aesthetic to cut her out of his heart; however, at the time the Bible was written, aesthetics was as yet in a bad way.
The male origin of woman is, therefore, untenable, and if anyone insists on adhering to it, I would agree with him only if he meant to indicate thereby that man lost his most human part when woman was separated from him, and that that is the reason why he has remained as brutal and barbaric as he still shows himself to be on the average. Lessing says: "Nature wished to make of woman her masterpiece. But she made a mistake in the clay; she took too fine a quality." The fineness of the clay is certainly not one of man's defects; in that respect we shall still have to make the most strenuous efforts in order to become masterpieces. I attribute the fable of the paradisiacal genesis to the domineering ar-> rogance, with which man always condemns the weaker sex to dependence, and would even have it‘believe that it is indebted to him for its very existence. I, therefore, consider that interpretation of ​the Biblical story of the origin of woman as the most correct one, which sees in it the most strikingexpression of masculine egotism and despotism; in order to condemn woman to the most complete dependency upon himself, he traces her origin to his own sex, but at the same time, the cowardly barbarian is not ashamed, in the story of the "fall of man," to shift his own guilt on the shoulders of his own creature. The Christian myth of the origin of Eve corresponds to the Grecian myth of the birth of Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, from the head of Zeus, who, on his part, manifested his chief wisdom by shaking his locks, by the noise of thunder and lightning, and occasionally by amorous adventures with the daughters of the earth. But the noble Greeks, however, greatly they sinned against woman elsewhere, at least did her the honor to let the source of her intelligence be the brain of the highest God, while the vulgar Bible, out of a masculine bone, creates a being possessing so little intelligence that she must call a serpent and an appletree to her aid, to make the man understand that she is a woman. If both sexes did not come into existence simultaneously, or were formerly united into one, if one is to claim priority before the other, then this priority must be granted to the woman, by the logic of development, and if, according to the most recent theory of development, man has evoluted from the ape, it certainly was the female ape who first smiled a human smile, and who weaned her forest-mate ​from grinning and showing his teeth. Even Christianity cannot refrain from correcting the Biblical genesis by the story of the Virgin, who, without human aid, brought into the world the noblest of men, according to the Christian conception. Where is the man who would attempt, without the aid of a woman, to bring a Virgin Mary into the world?
Let us therefore place woman first, and let us prepare ourselves by a reflection upon womanhood for an adequate examination of manhood. But the object of this reflection cannot be to merely emphasize the difference between the two sexes; the object is rather to find the characteristic traits through which each sex presents itself in its ideal character, its greatest perfection; in other words, to learn to know the ideal woman as well as the ideal man. This task presents the peculiar difficulty that it cannot be solved in an objective sense, and without partnership, because, although both sexes are dependent upon each other, they have, in spite of their belonging together, different interests and different points of view. In truth, man and woman can only be judged objectively by a neuter. But since we have not yet reached this neutrality, since all that is possible, to us, is the peculiar point of view of the one sex with regard to the other, since neither sex exists for itself, but each for the sake of the other, or has significance only with relation to the other, therefore this relationship alone ought to determine the judgment, so that woman would be the ​competent judge of true manhood, and man the competent judge of true womanhood. It is a futile attempt to investigate why this dualism of the sexes must exist, and if it were not possible to have an organic world without this division; the fact is that the organic world does consist of male and female beings, who could not and would not exist without each other, and a sex "in itself" and "for itself," without relation to the other, is no more to be thought of than a thing in itself or for itself. Therefore, it is proper for each of the two parts to decide what qualities the other ought to have, in order to meet its expectations. According to this I ought to be content to express my opinions only on true womanhood, and to leave the judgment of my own sex to a representative of the other. But since, according to various signs, there is danger that a great part of the male sex, at least of the German tongue, is about to disappear, and all the world seems willing to leave it to its fate, I must, even in the interest ot the female sex, include the male in my observations, and do my duty in attempting to come to its rescue.
Another difficulty, besides the one resulting from. sexual one-sidedness that stands in the wav of finding an ideal of universal validity, is the diverging conceptions of various nations and finally of the single individuals. Every nation has a different ideal of womanhood, and among the individual men each one will be inclined to make that woman his ideal ​with whom he happens to have fallen in love. An average ideal of manhood could be established with much greater ease than one of womanhood. If a vote could be taken on the matter, then surely a bearded biped in uniform, that is, a trained homicide, skull-splitter, or first-class blood-and-iron man, would receive the majority among men. But which woman would receive the majority, whether it would be the Virgin Mary or the not Virgin Venus, I cannot tell in these Christian times. In this state of helplessness I am thrown upon my own taste, and if I follow this I have the encouraging consciousness that in at least one important particular, namely in regard to nationality, my judgment is no prejudice. Let Olympia — in order to give a name to the ideal woman — speak German, or French, or English, or Italian, or Spanish, I shall honor her equally if only she unites within herself those qualities which make of her the model female of the human species.
Even without being a materialist, I would have to begin with the physical personality in order to sketch the model female of the human species, and the first physical requirement is, of course, beauty. But what is beauty? Even if all the artists and philosophers, all the painters, sculptors and poets came to my aid, I would not be able to determine absolutely and exactly what feminine beauty consisted of. Shall I study it in Raphael's Madonna, or in the Venus of Medici? Neither of the two would call out my enthusiasm if I saw them bodily before me. This ​spirituality may infatuate, this sensual charm may intoxicate, but only intellect can inspire., As often as I visit a picture gallery I am astonished at the lack of intellect and imagination that most painters display in the choice of their subjects. Why has none of them yet had the idea of painting a modern Venus, that is, a model woman, who represents those qualities which the perfected taste, the superior conception of womanhood, and the more liberal views of a new era attribute to a female ideal, not only in the physical form, but also in the expression of the face? Artists have never been wanting in the representation of blameless physical forms, any more than they have been hampered for want of models, both living and copies; but where is the painter or sculptor, who has created a face that could belong to a modern Venus, that is, to a woman in whom the greatest physical charm was united with the highest expression of intellectual endowment. That such a work of art has not yet been created is due, in my Opinion, not only to a paucity of artistic imagination but also to the position of woman up to the present time. Whoever studies the statues of the antique Vents carefully must at once be struck by the meaninglessness of the face which shows itself especially in the unintellectual forehead, a significant fact for the thoughtful observers. The Greeks looked upon and treated woman in general as a subordinate being that existed only for the gratification of male desires. Therefore, physical charms had to furnish ​the chief points of excellence in their feminine ideal. For did they not designate the girdle of the goddess of love as the seat of her charms, and even give her the surname of Kallopygos, by which they glorified the beauty of her back? An expressive and intellectual face did not harmonize with the conception of a slave. Venus might be a ruler in so far as she could subdue men by her physical charms; but she must be a slave, like all women, in so far as she was not allowed to be intellectually equal to man, and thus, as an equal, to make the same claims upon him as he made upon her. In my opinion the contemptuous conception of woman in Grecian mythology is nowhere brought out more significantly than in the choice of a husband for the beautiful Venus. According to human and aesthetic logic it ought to have married her to Apollo, the god of beauty and of light; but instead of that, it gave her to his direct opposite, the god of ugliness and darkness, the blacksmith Hephaestos, or Vulcan, whose only qualification for a husband consisted in his ability to forge chains. To be sure, the sentiment of justice and common sense tried to correct this incongruity by allowing Venus to seek compensation in the society of Mars, Bacchus, and other friends; but, after all, the antique goddess of beauty, and of love, never really advanced beyond the position of a slave or a prostitute, be she called Urania or Vulgivaga. Wherever the mythology of the ancients accorded to woman a higher, an intellectual ​position or function, it left out love. Its goddess of wisdom was even a cold, inaccessible virgin. Who would nowadays hold up a woman as a model of wisdom who does not or cannot love? A woman without love, or ability to love, inspires as little interest as a man without valor and without aspiration. But as I have said before, woman's love ought, according to the more worthy conceptions of our age, not meet the passion of man passively, without intelligence, and without will; but in the consciousness of her equal sovereignty and dignity, she ought to demand and exchange choice for choice, passion for passion, devotion for devotion, adoration for adoration. But such a position can be thought of only as coupled with great intellectual endowment. Nevertheless the artists of our time still adhere to the models of antiquity, whose additional characteristic is that they celebrate feminine beauty more through sculpture than through painting, presumably because the former can better satisfy the sensual taste, by its plastic physical form, while the latter, with the same facial expression of intellectual insignificance, can produce only a very unsatisfactory effect. Were I to offer any suggestions to an artist, concerning the creation of a modern Venus, they would be something like the following:
For the physical form, as far as the head, you may choose among the customary models, if you will avoid excessive length of fingers, sloping shoulders, ​and the famous swan's neck — beauties of which only a lover of consumption can approve. Do not study only the conditions of beauty, but also those of health, even of strength, in so far as it is compatible with grace. Do not choose a decidedly national type, above all not a too northern character, and not a blonde Thusnelda. The northern element is more typical of the masculine, the southern of the feminine character. But for both a blending of the two is the foundation and condition of elevation and perfection. Let your picture have brown eyes and black hair; if you make the eyes blue, then let the color of the hair, eyebrows and eyelashes be a dark blonde, approaching to black. The complexion must not incline toward yellow or brown, but must, in spite of the dark hair and dark eyes, betray the predominance of rosy, Caucasian blood. Spare the red on cheeks and lips, but be not sparing of intellectual expression in the shape of the eyes, the mouth and the forehead.
Would not a picture of this sort, derived from the most advanced civilization and executed by a Praxiteles or Apelles of our time, to represent the modern Venus, make a different impression than the sea-born Venus of the ancients? Would she not be a nobler and more timely object of adoration than the unintellectual, comfortless and joyless Madonna? Would it not give a higher tone to the culture of the beautiful? Would it not, as the feminine ideal, help to elevate woman in general? ​Would not the idea of personifying the goddess of love, in union with intellectual endowment, give to love itself a higher sanction and help to destroy the dominant, although not openly avowed, conception, according to which love and intellect do not agree with each other in woman? Does not the conception, which men in general entertain of the destiny of woman, presuppose her intellectual inferiority? Do they not, even where they adore her beauty and loveliness, secretly look upon her intellect either with contempt or with jealousy? There is no true beauty which is not permeated with intelligence, and there is nothing more glorious in the world than a beautiful woman of intellect. But how many men have enough intellect, masculine and humane intellect, not to fear the feminine intellect where they extol and demand feminine beauty? Are not most of them inclined to attach the suspicion of unwomanliness to the intellectual endowments of a woman, merely because their instinct tells them that a gifted woman can and must lay claim to a higher position, and greater respect, than that of a slave to man? "The eternal womanly draws us on" — thus declaims every hero with a tuft of hair under his nose. A woman could answer him: "The eternal manly draws us down."
If I have so far coupled true womanliness with physical beauty I do not wish-to be understood that the former could not exist without the latter. Two chief requirements of true womanliness are grace ​and goodness, and both can suffice without physical beauty; they can even conciliate one with homeliness, or shall I say that they actually preclude homeliness? Just as there is no true physical beauty, without the expression of soul, so the expression of the soul can compensate for the lack of physical beauty. These two indispensable qualities, grace and goodness, can bestow advantages and charms to a woman under circumstances and at a period of life when a man sees his disappear or turn into their opposites. There are few fathers, who, at an advanced age, can still inspire their children with interest in them, while the filial love for a mother, especially that of sons, can increase with her age.
On this occasion I should also like to protest against the prejudice, confirmed by many facts, that the physical charms of a woman are a necessary condition for the duration of man's love. To be sure, it cannot be a matter of indifference to any man, whether the object of his regard retains or loses the agreeable appearance which she possessed in Schiller's "beautiful time of young love;" but if he cannot fold her in his arms as tenderly after she has become the emaciated inmate of the sickbed, as he embraced her on the bridal couch, then he lies when he asserts that he ever really loved her. But it is a sad fact that most men, as they are now educated, lose the capacity for true love, together with the true respect for women, before they have had any opportunity to test this love.
​So far, for the sake of realizing a picture of true womanliness, I have taken a point of view from which intellectual endowment is one of the indispensable attributes of woman. It is self-evident that this presupposes all the accompanying results of intellectual endowment, such as participation in all the achievements of education and science, interest in everything that is good and beautiful, the taking of an active part in the humanization of human society, the noble assertion of nature and truth in manners and life. Now let us see what will become of our ideal picture if we leave our point of view, to step down into the street, and place it face to face with reality, with the present. To the great annoyance of our musical or music-making German countrymen I once asked the question: "Need a musician have brains?" At the risk of incurring the illwill of the entire fair sex, I would like, in reviewing the great majority of our present female world, to put the question: "Must a woman have brains?" When I began my campaign of the so-called emancipation of woman in New York, twenty-two years ago, a German woman said to me: "What do you want with this‘emancipation? We women do not need to be emancipated. If my husband beats me, I scratch his eyes out." Well, this woman was modest enough to consider security against conjugal blows as sufficient emancipation, and had sense and courage enough to obtain this security for herself by means of her own natural weapons. But how many ​are there not, who will quietly submit to the blows, without thinking of the eyes of their affectionate executioner, and who nevertheless consider themselves emancipated? How many are there not who have never thought of rights, because they do not know what to do with them? How many are there, even among the cultured, who have brains enough to know that a man who does not accord to his wife equal rights with himself, in all things, cannot truly love her? But then these are domestic affairs belonging to the department of the interior. Let us step outside the door, and look at these candidates of emancipation on the street. There we shall be able to admire feminine brains, especially in two of its appendages by which women strive to assist nature. One will construct a monstrous elevation on her head, the other an even more monstrous elevation on another part, which nature has found best to deprive of the ornament with which it has embellished only animals. There might be some sense in the elevation on the head, as indicating a desire to enlarge, at least externally, that member, which is known as the seat of the understanding, and this is corroborated by the fact that those skulls which contain the least within them are wont to be loaded with the highest structures. But the passion of women to increase the opposite part by an appendage is all the more incomprehensible, because among animals it is the male sex that distinguishes itself by the size of its rear ornaments, as we can ​observe in the turkey, the peacock, and other tailbearing dignitaries. What is to become of our views of the feminine ideal, if we see even the model spectimens of the fair sex wander about the streets, the. delicate head adorned with a Babylonian tower, consisting of a collection of international hair and infusoria, and the curved model back ending in a mysterious elevation of drygoods and architectural designs, moving with strange contortions, and threatening changes of form, before which, if they really were a part of the person, the entire male sex would flee into the forest? At such a sight the question: "Must a woman have brains?" involuntarily changes into the question: "Can a woman have brains?' And yet nobody will maintain that "there is nothing to it." Fairy lore has told us of mermaids who are women above and fish below; but without straying into the realm of fancy we could say of most of our landmaids, they are grenadier above and dromedary below. And to complete the model woman as a monstrosity in the extreme, she also drags a silk or velvet train, of several yards, along her earthly pilgrimage, in order to bring home with her into her boudoir, redolent with patchuli, all the odors and delicacies of the public thoroughfare. George Sand, Ninon de l'Enclos, Heloise, Aspasia and all ye other women of intellect and taste, of aesthetic sense and feeling, save me from despairing of your living sisters, who, by such monstrous deformities and concessions, voluntarily and assiduously, without ​compuction and without shame, prostitute themselves into thoughtless and vulgar slaves of the most insane tyranny of fashion! And these want to be emancipated? Every tower of hair, and every "bustle" is the public exhibition of a protest against emancipation!
What a grand triumph for the opponents of woman's rights, when they see the pre-eminently fair sex abjure, not only all common sense, but also all sense of the beautiful and all good taste! And what humiliation, what an embarrassing position for the advocates of those rights, who, with the claim for equal rights, must at the same time assert and prove equal ability! But even in this predicament comfort and encouragement is not wanting. For without drawing parallels, without, for instance, contrasting woman's slavery to fashion, her passion for finery and gew-gaws, with the imitative passion of men for tobacco fumes and playing at soldiers, and thus balancing the two sides of the scales, or even causing them to fluctuate in favor of woman, we must admit that the time for a final test has not yet come for either sex. And if this holds of man, who could assert his rights and choose his task unhampered, how much more must it hold of woman, who has hitherto been without rights and without self-determination, and who, dragging with her the inheritance of thousands of years of dependence and degradation, has had no opportunity to arrive at a sovereign consciousness of her own ability, and ​could only become what man either directly or indirectly made of her through education and rulership! To demand qualities and to pass judgment on qualities in a state of slavery which only liberty can develop or destroy, would be to crown injustice by stupidity. Only the free woman can manifest the true nature of woman. The woman of the future will be an entirely different being from the woman of the present. What she may once be, what she may strive after and accomplish, we can even now realize by the aid of the example given us by several favored natures, and by the contrast between free conditions and the unfree conditions in which she moves and has her being. What a difference, for instance, between the aspirations and achievements of American and of German women! Women, brought up in the philistine, police and military atmosphere of Germany, have no idea of what women undertake and accomplish in America. Neither can we now have an adequate conception of that which American, and, it is to be hoped, also GermanAmerican women, will one day undertake and accomplish, when they can enter every arena which a free government opens to human aspirations, in the full possession of their rights and independence. Let us not be afraid that in an atmosphere of liberty womanliness will disappear. It will not commit suicide because it is permitted to unfold freely. Oppression, not liberty, destroys true womanliness, as it does true manliness. This so frequently expressed ​anxiety, translated into sincere language, is nothing more than the fear that masculine vulgarity must retreat before the civilizing influence of woman. In order to secure its existence and continued sole-rulership, this vulgarity strives to prevent woman from entering public life, by intimidating her with the false alarm that she will sacrifice or besmirch her nobler self, by associating with her former masters on a plane of equality. A very extraordinary way, this, of making the calling of a person the decisive judge in the matter of the exercise of human rights! Is it not strange that men do not trust women to decide for themselves what is womanly? Let them once learn to recognize and appreciate the true woman and it will be with pride, rather than anxiety, that they will behold woman entering the polls or the halls of legislation side by side with them. Before the woman who breaks her chains, before the free woman trembles not — the free man.
In the time when this shall have become the desire, the senseless clamor will also cease, that now still arises whenever woman tries to make her most personal property, her emotions and affections, her person and her happiness, independent of the tyrannical egotism of man, by asserting that inalienable right, which is wont to be called "free love." There are certain ruling prejudices and dogmas of habit, which, being favored by narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy, take on the character of a moral ban, because the intellectual arguments which could give ​them the power to convince are wanting. I should like to designate such dogmas and prejudices by the general name of rabble philosophy, and to this rabble philosophy belong also the denunciations and the sham indignation against "free love." "Free love' can surely not encounter any more hostile opposition than it meets with on the part of proprietors of harems. The Sultan of Constantinople will condemn it as true reprobateness, as a danger to society, as an underminer of all morality. Among the men of our present education there are not ten in a hundred who are not sultans at heart. Under the reign of free love, many a one who now triumphantly recites the list of Don Juan, would sing the sentimental.tune of "Lonely am I, all alone." When I hear a man denounce even the theory of free love as a crime, I suspect him of being in practice a friend of free lust. Free love, rightly understood, is nothing else than free marriage, that is, true marriage; but the conception of such a marriage completely excludes those abominations, which male egotism and male corruption try to connect with woman's free choice, in order to keep her in servitude by a false idea of duty. Whoever wishes to bind a woman by another tie than that of her free love, and thinks of deserving this love by something else than his own worthiness and reciprocal affection, is as much fool as despot, and has no idea of the most beautiful relationship, for which nature has fitted mankind. Having always treated.the love of a woman in a ​domineering manner, as a matter of duty, liberty alone can teach men the meaning and the price of true love. The free woman will teach them to regard that as a reward that must be earned, which in the unfree woman they had regarded as booty. With the liberation and elevation of woman we liberate and elevate ourselves. Indeed, I would almost say: Only in so far, as we men learn to understand and appreciate woman, are we true human beings. The full wealth and the complete significance of the relationship between man and woman only superior individuals have hitherto been able to grasp and to represent. We must look to the liberty of the future to bring it into more general consciousness. Love is more than the desire for sexual union, or the renewal of self in progeny; marriage is more than the means of setting up housekeeping and founding a family; the upward striving toward the "eternal womanly" is more than a dark longing for an object that may agreeably occupy the emotions and the imagination. It is the longing, equivalent to a noble life, toward the perfection of our being through the union with a being in harmony with ourselves; toward the complete satisfaction of our personality by becoming one with another personality, by a blending of souls that perfects both, as the blending of two metals results in a third that is superior to and more durable than either alone. It is finally the need that every nobler individual feels for the realization of the ideal, a ​realization which we look for in vain in every direction, and which life can offer us nowhere but in true Jove. Whithersoever a man's fancy, his discoveries, or aspirations, may lead him, nothing in the whole domain of nature can take the place of the relationship that true love unfolds to two thinking and harmonious beings. Such a double life alone is true life. Place man into nature alone, as its sole ruler, place all its secrets, all its pleasures at his disposal, make earth into a paradise or a heaven for him wherein every fabled splendor becomes a reality—still he will remain a stranger in his great realm, he will feel forsaken and impoverished with all his riches, he will despair in all his wisdom, his thought will search through all the spaces of the universe to find the something that he lacks, his fancy will strive to fill out the deadening void with the pictures of that which he longs for, and he will arraign nature, who has lavished her gifts upon him with the supplicating reproach, take everything from me, wherewith you have vainly sought to bless me, and give me instead that which you have denied me, the best, the most indispensable gift of all, give me a woman!
And if nature should then grant his wish, and he should hold in his arms the object of his desire, would it be with the Christian barbaric greeting, I will be "your master," that he would receive her?
Let us now turn from the pre-eminently "fair" to the pre-eminently "strong" sex. The appellation itself indicates that as grace is considered the chief ​attribute of womanliness, so strength is considered the chief attribute of manliness. But what is strength and which strength is of the right kind? Here we find ourselves placed before a delicate question. It must be answered relentlessly, even if the answer should be: What is considered by most men to be manly strength is nothing but animal nature, brutality and barbarity.
As in the case of woman, so let us in the case of man begin with the physique. But the chapter on beauty I must here skip entirely, since in this respect we can count upon the indulgence of women, who are more apt to be guided in their choice by minor qualities than we. It is not empty flattery if I say of them:
Beauty is not much to miss, Women's verdicts are not serious, One that no Thersites is, Often may cut out a Nireus.
Die Schoenheit wird nicht oft vermisst, Die Weiber sind nicht streng im Schaetzen, Und wenn du kein Thersites bist, Den Nireus kannst du leicht ersetzen.
It is, however, self-evident that we cannot look for an ideal of manliness in a crippled Liliputian, or a scrofulous weakling, but neither will Herculean limbs, a broad bull's neck, and the strong fists of a prize-fighter represent it. A vigorous, symmetrical ​body with sound organs, to which must be added—in contrast to woman—broad shoulders, with a corresponding chest, and narrow hips over legs which are neither too long nor bowed, that is the necessary material substratum for a manly intellect and character, for endurance and energy; but physical size as well as physical strength becomes doubtful as soon as they exceed the general standard to a marked degree. The usual outcome in such a case is that the animal and aggressive element predominates, and that the intellectual and humane element does not suffice to spiritualize the bodily organism correspondingly. How many physical giants have there been who were also intellectual giants? The human brain does not seem to grow beyond a certain measure. The largest male skulls that have been measured were twenty-four inches in circumference. If a skull of twenty-four inches can make a genius of a man six feet and less, then a skull of twenty-two inches on a seven-footer would stamp him as a partial idiot. I actually feel like warning people against men that are too tall as well as against those that are too stout. Tall men rarely are great men. In short, no one, desirous of entering the lists in a review of manliness, ought to be taller than six feet, and if any one can lift a weight of a thousand pounds it would be wise for him not to mention it, and if he can throw six opponents, he ought to be satisfied with two, so as not be banished from the ranks of respectable men and classed ​among the uncouth Cyclops and giants. The ancients made of their mythological representative of clumsy physical strength, Hercules, a stable-sweep, while they represented Apollo as their ideal of manliness, whose moderate physical dimensions corresponded to as much athletic strength and skill as he required.
In spite of this well-known type, however, the man with the strongest bones approaches most nearly to the vulgar, I am tempted to say the democratic ideal of manliness, and if a man should arise, who could pick his teeth with a church steeple, the priests themselves would proclaim him pope. In America he would be elected king in a frock coat for life, with an extra allowance for cloth for his immense coat, and extra grub-money for his unusual stomach. But in Germany, in the fatherland of Goethe and Schiller — ah! what an ideal successor to Barbarossa! Of course, he would then also have to have a corresponding beard, that would grow through the table, and down into Hades, so that the spirits of Father Arndt and Father Jahn could most submissively twitch it, by way of telegraphing their patriotic blessedness to him. What would a man be without a beard, and what especially would our Germans be without hair on their face? Hair is so essential and indispensable to them that they even transfer them from the face into the mouth, and have not only hair on their lips but "hair on their teeth." It surely cannot be very ​complimentary to a man, to receive his name from his beard instead of from his head. And yet Frederick the Red-Beard has become the German ideal of a ruler. Barbarossa would surely not have become such a popular figure if he had not had such a large red beard, and his present substitute, ad interim, in Berlin, has already been dubbed Barba blanca by German professors, in order to increase his popularity. Ifhis beard were likewise red, half of the populatron of Germany would now be inmates of the insane asylum, from sheer red-haired ecstacy, and would be playing Kyffhaeuser. A malicious democrat, to be sure, might be struck by quite a different thought. He might call attention to the fact that the most intellecual of the Hohenzollerns, Frederick II., and Frederick William IV., had no beards, but that the hero-emperor and this son, like their bushy brother, Victor Emanuel, let theirs grow into regular coachmen's beards, as if anxious to manifest thereby their ability to guide the wagon of state. What a mysterious thing it is, this hair in the face! With our first ancestors, the apes, who did not yet indulge in any reflections on womanhood and manhood, much less on humanity, and who had no women as yet, but only females, the latter, according to Darwin, also had hairy faces; but as the female gradually became a woman, the hair disappeared, and if we should now imagine our women with hairy cheeks, our hair would stand on end. Does the beardless face of the woman not indicate ​that the hairy face of the man is a survival of the time of bruteman? Does zt not suggest the conclusion, The more hair the less human being? It must not be inferred, however, that bald-headed men are the representatives of humanity. We also note that where inhumanity is cultivated most—namely, among soldiers, the beard, too, plays a great part, just as animals of prey, lions, bears, wolves, etc., distinguish themselves by the thickest and most shaggy furs. We cannot well imagine a true champion of the sword, a model policeman, a thoroughly qualified bailiff, without a bristling thicket under his nose wherein his commanding and swearing voice can break itself in a right threatening manner. If we could imagine all beards as suddenly exterminated we should involuntarily have to presuppose at the same time the abolition of wars, for hairless faces remind us of humanity, while the shaggy, rough appearance can be interpreted and justified only as a constant advertisement of a corresponding barbaric calling. It seems to me that if two armies of smoothly shaven faces were confronted with each other, they would hesitate to fire.
I cannot help thinking that the more men advance in intelligence and humanity, the more will they lose the hair in their faces. Also in this respect the intellectual and refined Greeks give us another eloquent hint. While they furnished all those gods to whom they attributed the coarser qualities and manifestations—Zeus, the thunderer, first of ​all—with an abundant growth of hair on the face, they represent their ideal of manliness, the god of light, of beauty and of the muses, without a beard. They spared him all the cheap, martial distinctions that remind one of coarseness, in order to let his intellect and character speak undisguised in all his lines and forms. The whole Apollo would now be distasteful to us if we were to conceive of him like one of our modern men, with cheeks, mouth and chin covered by a growth of hair, beneath which the lips would open like a hidden fissure in a rock that led into an underground cave, while the nose would protrude like a wind-brokey tree trunk from the underbrush. And now the aesthetic reflections to which such a hairy god of the muses would stimulate us, if, with the help of the achievements of our modern civilization, we should equip him: with all the consequences of a beard, among others such as remnants of food adhering from the just completed divine meal, flavored with the juice of the Olympian cigar, smoked after dessert, and perfumed with infernal tobacco-smoke—and then imagine this divine mouth, enriched by this threefold cosmetic, pressed upon the unsoiled lips of a horrified muse. Alas, our women submit to such kisses without being horrified. They are as great sufferers as their tobacco perfumed lords are aesthetic barbarians. Is there any more hostile contrast in the world than a tender kiss on a beautiful mouth, by the lip adorned with a tobacco-saturated brush? But they meet, ​nevertheless. Truly, man is always the greatest monster when he least thinks of it.
But is not, in spite of all aesthetics, a beard, especially a beard under the nose, considered to be just as indispensable an attribute of manliness as the fuming instrument called a pipe or cigar, with which even ten-year-old fire-eaters practice manliness, until they, like other volcanoes, emit smoke followed by an eruption? How very cheap is this manliness, whose credentials are a bush of hair and a cloud of smoke! Even the ancients felt that this pretentious growth of hair was a superfluous addition, or a cheap ornament, and they tried to get rid of it by the aid of burning nutshells and similar expedients. But since the razor has been invented, this greatly depreciated instrument of civilization, almost all intellectual men have attempted to free themselves of this animal distinction, and to show their human physiognomy openly to the world. We can no more think of a Rousseau or Voltaire, a Schiller and Goethe, a Lessing and Boerne, a Kant and Hegel, a Mozart and Beethoven with a mustache, or a Henry IV., than we can think of the hero-emperor, and his blood-and-iron men, without bristles in their faces. But this man of bristles cannot hide his taste for the barracks, even behind the diplomat, unlike that French ambassador to the Turkish court, who, when the Sultan made some remarks about his smooth face, answered: "If my master had known that the beard was considered the principal thing ​here he would have sent a billy-goat as ambassador."
If I could ascribe design to nature, I could see behind this freak of afflicting man with a beard no other motive than that of helping along the barber business, or of thwarting physiognomy. While our women show us all the feature of their face openly, so that we can read everything that nature has imprinted there in her own language, our overgrown countenance is to them, if not a book with seven seals, at least one with an obscure text, from which they perhaps read something very different than it really contains. Who knows but that many a bride, who goes to the altar with a bearded man, would think of divorce on reaching home, if her new husband should happen to get shaved on the way? If I were a girl, I should only accept my husband from the hands of the barber, and should at most show some leniency toward his side whiskers, for I should want to see his true face,and only the face without the beard is the true face. But I should certainly not allow the beard to decide his manliness. We see many a man, viewing his surroundings from out of his shaggy face like a lion, seeking whom he may devour; but after he has been under the barber's care, a most pathetically innocent and childlike physiognomy will perhaps smile at us, so that a mother might be tempted to offer her breast to the lion. Nature seems to have supplied many a man with a beard for no other reason than that no other ​man should be tempted to propose marriage to him. Nevertheless, these bushy men are all proud of their shagginess, as a sign of "manliness." Whoever is afflicted with a strong beard, very well, let him see how he can get along with it; but whoever is proud of his beard, he surely has nothing else of which he can be proud,
I have spent so much time over the physique of the male sex, and its most striking characteristic, because it furnishes the foundation for the coarse and stupid conceptions of manliness that have come down to us from past barbaric times, but are even now the prevailing notions of the great majority. If we suppose the bony framework of the male reduced to a moderate size, and the male faces deprived of their bearded addition, then the chief foundation for male brutality and conceit seems likewise to have disappeared. The soldier, as well as the rowdy, the tyrant of woman as well as the braggadocio, is lost to view, and the human being alone stands before us. But it is the human being that we have above all to deal with. Whenever, therefore, we investigate the requirements of true manliness, we must first of all answer the question: Can he be a true man, who is not, first of all, a true human being? And what is it to be a true human being? This last question I have attempted to answer in a special lecture on "Humanity." I must, therefore, be as brief as possible in its application to manliness. ​Although we must retain strength as a necessary attribute of manliness, we are yet bound to look for the distinctions of manliness in the intellectual and ethical domain, especially in an age when inventions and discoveries constantly tend to diminish the value of physical strength. It is in the work of its own destruction in murder at wholesale that it still plays a chief part. What a hopeless and disgusting thought this is that we must form our masculine ideal according to the ideas of a king of Prussia, or a similar military type! And yet how many men and women are there who would not bow before the uniformed, betressed, beribboned and bearded form of a barbarian, whose entire skill and knowledge, whose whole thinking and striving, consists in the senseless and bloody craft of murdering his fellowmen! The longer his list of slain, the greater the man; the more bullets he heard whistling past him, the more admirable his courage. Picked patriots harness themselves to his triumphal chariot, and virgins, all clad in white — O Lord, forgive them, they know not what they do! — strew flowers in the path of the monster. But whoever expresses his disgust at such manliness, and allows his disgust to increase with the size of the bloody deeds, who despises such courage as the brutal insensibility of a hardened barbarian, he is branded by the vulgar judgment of thoughtless slaves and patriots as an enemy of the people or fantastic crank. How very cheap would be ​manliness and manly courage if we had to concede it to all those who have stood in a "shower of bullets," or looked into the mouths of cannon! Every Russian musketeer would by this test occupy a higher plane than the noblest and most courageous tribune of the people. Let those be most highly appreciated as men who, although they are enemies of the murderous craft, still risk their lives against barbarians for humane ends; but so long as we do not place this bloody craft itself, and all those that do homage to it, together with their distinctions and heroic deeds, their glamour and their fame, under the ban of our contempt and disgust, so long as we do not acknowledge it to have a brutal rather than a manly character, so long have we no idea of true manliness. Where manliness shall and must still be decorated with blood, let it be at least with the blood of barbarians or tyrants.
But the contemptibility of these greatly admired models of manliness, reared in the barracks, becomes downright unfathomable, if we view them in the light of a combination of slaves and barbarians. What caricatures of men do those proud commanding heroes present who, in the thunder of cannons, gallop at the head of thousands of drilled homicides, in order to shrink back tremblingly before the glance of an august superior, and who would perish under the frown of a most gracious master! Even the most dreadful become caricatures like these through their servility. There is no ​more glaring antagonism and contrast than that between subject and man; but a uniformed subject, let him wear epaulets or shoulder flaps, who will allow himself to be drilled and butchered for a master, does not only renounce every manly and human dignity, he even sinks below the animal, for even the trained hound does not make an attack with the consciousness that he is using his teeth for his master. Only a free man, conscious of his sovereignty and individual aims, deserves the name of man, and below the republican there cannot be a true man any more than a true human being. So true as it is that there are still slaves in the world, so true is it that he can lay no claims to manliness who can live and sacrifice himself for a master. For our loved ones and friends, as well as for an imperiled right, or any other noble cause of our conviction, we may risk our lives without forfeiting the consciousness of manliness, and individuality; but to give it up for a master or idol, who sends us into the fire as his creatures and instruments, is the deepest degradation and prostitution of which a male being is capable. What a boon for mankind would it be if this great and simple truth could be made clear to all subjects! If the twenty millions of our male countrymen on the other side of the water, who have allowed themselves to be puffed up as masculine ideals, on account of their deeds of servile heroism, would but once become truly conscious of what it is to be a man, Germany would be a republic within twenty-four hours!
​Struggle, constant struggle is the soul of human life, but let the objects of the struggle be humane, and the weapons intellectual. Let us struggle with nature, through whose bounty we are able to achieve a more beautiful and a nobler existence. Let us likewise struggle with ourselves, in whom nature has repeated the play between its destructive and creative forces, in the strife between passion and reason. That man must be tedious and devoid of character who is not stirred by passions; but he who has not learned how to control himself becomes despicable and disgusting. Let us struggle with the necessities and adversities of life, which impose upon us the ordeal of remaining firm in our purposes and true to ourselves. Let us struggle with baseness, that would degrade everything that is beautiful and noble to its own level. Let us finally struggle with those numerous enemies, who live longer than the uniformed ones, and will never be exterminated — the enemies of intellectual progress, of the universal rights of man, of universal truth. This struggle will bring our strength and our courage to a nobler test than the raging turmoil of the battlefield, in which even the best is but a blind, unconscious murderer of unknown victims. Without courage there is no manliness, and cowardice is the death of manliness; but its highest courage is moral courage, the courage of truth, just as moral cowardice is the most shameful cowardice, and the lie is the most unmanly vice. Falsehood and manliness — ​who would undertake to harmonize the two? And yet how many are there who do not lie, with whom it is a point of honor, and a necessity of character, that their words shall always correspond to their thoughts, and their deeds to their words? How many, indeed, who as much as live up to the adage, which has become an everyday and popular motto: "A word, a man?" How many care whether they are acting manly or unmanly? Is it manly to be satisfied with half-way measures and compromises, in the antagonism of irreconcilable contrasts, while an unflinching principle calls for completeness and decision? Is it manly to wax enthusiastic over a cause while it is on parade, but to desert it later on, when action is called for? Is it manly by means of intrigue and hypocrisies, to indulge in a vain ambition, that finds higher satisfaction in external position, than in the consciousness of inner worth? Is it manly to devote all the activities of life merely to base gain, that leaves no inclination and no strength for nobler aspirations? Is it manly to flee from sensual enjoyment after the fashion of the ascetic, and is it manly to sink into debauchery? Is it manly to be a slave to woman, and is it manly to be a woman-hater? These and similar questions suggest their own answer as soon as they are put. But another, which will furnish us material for some final observations, we must consider more at length. It is the serious question: Is it manly to condemn woman to subordination and refuse to grant her equal rights? ​If even in general any want of magnanimity toward the defenseless, and the abuse of superior strength as a right against the weak, is considered unmanly, I know of nothing in the world that is more unmanly than the egotistic denial of equal rights to beings whose equal worth we cannot question, and who are, moreover, as indispensable to us as our own life, whom we, in a state of exaltation, elevate to angels and goddesses, and "at whose feet we lie," according to a common poetic expression of the Don Juans, in order to gain their favor. Is it perhaps more manly "to lie at the feet" of a being who is our inferior in rights than of one who is our equal? I should like to hear such a prostrate model of manliness deliver one of his usual declamations on the "feminine sphere," at the moment when, with humble mien, he is bending his knee before his adored. The sovereign master kneeling before the disfranchised slave, from whom, by cringing flattery, he would obtain a gracious smile, in order, later on, to turn against her as the brutal tyrant, the heartless deceiver! What model specimens of manliness! Any little goose with a pretty face can daily amuse herself with putting a grim-bearded lord of creation to the test, and then avenge her disfranchisement upon him by a scornful refusal. Indeed, nowhere does this proud manliness, that rises with so much sovereign dignity above the disfranchised woman, suffer shipwreck more frequently and more wretchedly, than in his dealings with this weak ​woman, without whom the "strong sex" would feel so desperately lonely that it would have to curse its own existence. Alas, that the greatest part of the curse still falls upon the weaker sex, whose deplorable lot of misery, grief and shame, in hundreds of millions of its degraded members, impeaches male brutality, baseness and want of conscience! If humanity is one hundred thousand years old we men have to atone to women for a wrong of one hundred thousand years' standing, and we can do that only if, by granting them equal rights most completely, we give them an opportunity of not only bettering their own lot, but also of helping to make us unworthy ones worthy of them. Who can realize the self-delusion of egotism that it requires not to be surprised at the monstrous contradiction of which man makes himself guilty in refusing rights, most obstinately and most invidiously, just there where he claims to be ruled by the most tender regards, and the most powerful affections! To the despised negro he grants his rights, because he is forced to do so by the stress of circumstances; to the adored woman he refuses them because she is not backed by an overpowering necessity that came to the aid of the negro. Even with the promptings of his most powerful, most irrepressible emotions, only force, and not a voluntary resolution, can bring him to acknowledge and grant rights which he cannot contest on any reasonable grounds. Does this not prove the shameful fact that the entire male ​sex, in blind egotism, insists on the same thousand-year-old, historical wrong, for the senseless and wicked allegation of which we have always reproach feudalists and princes? The thorough destruction of this egotism, the complete renunciation of every privilege, and the free union of the sovereign woman with the sovereign man that will result from it, will usher in a new, a nobler, more beautiful and happier life for humanity. It is not difficult to show that the degradation of woman is not only the chief symptom, but also the chief cause, of the social and moral corruption of society. Her elevation, however, will be its salvation and will ennoble the race in general. And, however we may meditate upon and construct a picture of a future humanity, its most beautiful adorment, and highest happiness, will consist in the nobler relationship between the two sexes, resulting from an equality of rights. Already Goethe declared woman to be the bearer of the ideal, which he missed in the masculine world, and minds who have been unable to perceive this have always shown themselves unable to reconcile human existence with the course of the world. Let me call attention to two notable personages of most modern times. The philosopher Schopenhauer was a woman-hater. An apostle of his, von Hartmann, a blase Berlinian, and son of a general, is a despiser of woman, who would grant man the privilege of ending his so-called love with the satisfaction of his sensual desire, to which the ​loving woman must of course submit. And what is the meaning, the moral, the logical outcome of the "pessimistic" philosophy of these two woman haters? In a word, the hopeless doctrine that it were better if the world did not exist at all, that really life is not worth living. Of course, life is not worth preservation, if we cannot appreciate its most beautiful part, or trample it under foot, as the brutality or satiety of men has hitherto done, in spite of all the poems and romances of love. Every philosophy of the world and of life which results in despair must be unsound, unnatural and false, since a contradiction, justifying such despair and its consequence, the self-destruction of that part of the world-life that we represent, is inconceivable. Everything that we, as thinking products of the world, require, must be attainable by us on the spot upon which we have been placed by its development. All phantasies about a heaven and another life are done away with for us. Outside of humanity there are for us no motives, no hopes, no future, no ideals. Here upon this planet our being must run its course, and our contentment be found. But where and with whom shall we find it but in living with our fellow-beings? And what nobler and more complete contentment could this life and all nature offer to man but the true love of man and woman? In this relationship must the aspirations and the outcomes of the reforms of the future find their sublime culmination, and their most beautiful success. To educate humanity not only for knowing ​and thinking, for working and creating, but also for loving, which our present groveling life seems designed to destroy, that will be the most beautiful and most profitable task of future society. But by education for love I do not mean instruction in the "art of loving," as was given by the frivolous Ovid, but an education which, beginning in youth, strives to secure all the conditions for true marriage, which will free love from all narrow-minded prejudices and hypocrisies, but will lead the free virgin into the arms of the uncorrupted man, and teach both to find their most beautiful destiny and their only true happiness in an intimate and lasting union. What we are now reforming and striving for will some time lead us to such an end, however distant its future may be, and however meager the hope that we our- selves may live to see it. That will neither discourage us or weaken our interest. In the realm of ideas is it not always the better future that we anticipate in thought which inspires and sustains our reformatory efforts? Do not the highest aims toward which the mind strives always lie beyond the grave? And has the striving, on that account, less of charm and of value? Where we ourselves live to see the accomplishment of that for which we have struggled, the reality always falls short of our expectations, and the residue that remains must then serve as an incentive to further aspiration; only that which we experience in thought, either by retrospection or prevision, do we experience wholly, undefiled and unobscured.