Grand Rapids herald. [volume] (Grand Rapids, Mich.) 1892-1959, 1892-02-14
SEX IN OUR MORALS
Octave Thanet Discusses Diff
ferent Ideas of Morality
NOW HELD BY MEN AND WOMEN
The Difference Is One Of Education. But
Women Are Naturally More
Faithful Than Men.

SetSutot u8u t8Cus
Any one that has reached what are
uphemistically termed the years Of
discretion. must have noticed how diff
ferens 10 the feminine and ulascuhne
point OF view in morale. To look ON
the two sides OF one adjective. honest;
an honest woman is woman who Is
faithful to her marriage vow; an hon.
est man il man who can be trus,ed
with other peoples money and his own
word. The honest woman sometimes
tells lies. an honest man 10 sometim es
false to his wife.
Certain virtues have come to be the
necessary furniture of women's minds;
just as certain other virtues have come
TO belong especially TO men.
There is no blinking u; in some i'm.
portant respects, the average ''goo6
woman il inferior 10 the average
"good mani" in fact, man making no
pretcns0ns TO saintllness will recoil
from \ turpituds in politics or finaEce
that does not STIR . hair of his good
wife's head. 1t il shocking, if one
looks ut the matter dispassionately, TO
view how women charge down on any
moral obstacle in the way of what they
believe moral change for the better;
and, commonly, that social plan, that
legislation commends itself to them as
best. which will promise the most reck-
lessly.
Everybody will recall Mrs. Howc's
bank. But did the creduhty OF her
dupes exceed 80 greatly that of the
women politicians who expect laws TO
enforce themselves, or of the women
phllanthropists who expect to make all
men thrifty and virtuous by abolishlng
the punishment OF. improyidence and
vice? Women's notions of citizenship
are crude and meagre, rs might be ex-
pected.
/ know of q man of brilliant gifts,
with great future before him, who
was ignominiously pushed from public
life, because he could not explain
charges of bribery. really this friends
believe to this day belonging to his
wife, and not to be completely rcfuted
unless he implicated her. He was
quite ignorant of the whole business,
until the thunderbolt fell.
This wife was as false to her husband
as it was possible to be. She ruined
HIS career, she smirched his life. Yet,
in the usual sense of the word, she,
though q young, beautiful, and adj
mired woman, was absolutely faithful
to HIM.
/ doubt whether she ever realized
that she had done anything odious and
wicked. She was bitterly grieved and
mortified, OF course; but it was for the
resu!t, not for her own crime-which,
TO be sure. she never called by that
name.
Consider, also, for . moment, with
what case women condene- pubic Of
lenses in their husbands, especially il
such moral obliquity makes them pros
porous. Women with the medieval
virtues, who would 60 70 the stake for
their religion, who keep their marriage
vow imniaculately, will be the happy
ahd conteDted wives of politicians that
deserve the pillory or 'financiers that
deserve the gailows. Now, = virtu0us
man could not be happy with an &C
compsished robber for his wife, ne mat
ter how confident he might feel that
she would outwit the constable! But a
virtuous woman qulets her conscience
by not knowing anything about bust
ness, or by the assurance that the news
papers tell lies.
And who doesn't know the good
woman that is republican because
her husband owns . wooden mill, and
her equally good neighbor that is q
democrat because she paid fifty cents q
yard more for her new gown
Considerations like these have 4 right
to influence people. but do they have
all the rights?
Is the welfare of the odd sixty mil.
lions Of her countrymen rot to be recs.-
oned ia the matter by the good weman
who pfays every Sunday, IN one form
of words or another. for ''all sorts and
conditions of men,"
from ignorance. Women are petty
tsnd pettlness is next-door neighbor TO
selfishness, If il doesn't room in the
came house), because their minds have
been chained to getty things. Women
are dishonerable. because of eli the
virtues honor has the least commerce.
IN women have been put under q kind
Of Strasbourg goOse-liver treatment for
two thousand years.
depend on the affections, those virtues
are faithfully cultivated by women. So
far rs those virtues 90, they are better
than men. They do not even feel GER
tain OF the more boisterous temptations.
Few men. also, can bear pain with q
wouaa's fortitude. Men generally arc
not 50 unsclfish as women.
On the other hand, magnanimity is Z
masculine rather than feminine vir-
tue. There are women that are large
minded. There are women that are
honorable. So there are women that
can be generous and even fharder and
rarer virtuel) just TO their enemies.
only speak for the majority.
As TO courage, women are supposed
to be Drawer morally than men. and
men physically Drawer than women;
but - one reflects on the ahlect terror
N which most good women live, IL
(, what the mysterious they vii; say; and
on the ccolness that women usually
show in peril. when the railway train
| piunges INTO horrors. like the recent
ACCIDENT on the Old Gloomy road, or the
I vessel burns on the water, ike the de-
ttructson Of the Mississippi steamer,
| where tie eoiored stewafdess Was the
most efficient hero on board, or durine
hidsous SEASONS of pestilence, like Tie
| yel.os fever summer, Ia Memphis
| when the dellcsteiy reared gentle.
| women OF the Protestant aisterhood
we're nurses, cooks. washsrwomen, and
| eharwomen for white and HACK suf
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