THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXVII, Issue 287, 6 December 1893, Page 4

THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.

r Westminster Review. We think it |>ill be admitted that, if not the iirst, women have come to be the chief moulders of " Society," and that by them and for them it mainly exists ; and we feel Bure that we shall not be contradicted if we lay some of its shortcomings to their charge, and say that its frivolity and changeableness are the outcome of feminine impulsiveness, vanity, and love of display. "Women, as well as men, require both interest and power, and those ■who find and arc contented with them in the sanctuary of home are rare exceptions, hardly even to be found in the middle and lower classes, where, formerly, lack of means to procure enjoyment and change of scene rendered them most common. Interest of profession having been denied women of the upper classes, where even the bringing up of children lias always been in the hands of nurses and governesses, they took up the only role ■which was to their hand and suited to their superJicial training — viz., the art of pleasing and entertaining, and the consequent display of personal charms, conversation, and accomplishments. " Society " has become the great battlelield on which the fair sex concentrates all its attention for the subjugation of men : here, at least, women can exercise some power over their despots, if only transitory ; and here the forces of beauty assemble under the generalship of skilled matrons, •whose tactics are tho.se of old campaigners. Men acknowledge this law of Society's being, and, with eyes too often closed, rush on the field, Weary of the^son.tid cares of money-making, or the .sameness of spending, they seek amusement and excitement ; but their overworked and neglected brains require the bait held up in the way of pleasure to be glittering, light, easy to follow, new as far nowadays as the moneycreed wili allow, or dull if superlatively costly. Young people educated on their father's [gains, and springing from them as Minerva from the head of Jove, armed at all points, into a world "where they are able at once to hold their own, trouble themselves little in their Independence about the source from which they have emanated, or in the full-blown wisdom, innocent of budding, which disregards experience, and eclipses

old-fashioned methods — if they do not set themselves in opposition to the authors of their being, they patronise them from the heights they have attained, albeit by means of those they ungratefully despise. Society accepts ihese complacent and hall-marked interlopers, and with them suiters their elderly relatives to slip in, but reserves for the former her sweetest smiles, and regales herself with scant politeness on plunder of the latter. Society generally has hitherto looked askance at the movement that has taken by storm the gates of learning, and at those women who have led the van in their sex's progress. Those now in her midst who have hidden their leanings in this direction must have the courage of their convictions, and hold out the right hand of fellowship to the members of their sex who, from a dislike of contempt, patronage, or a feeling of incompatibility of pursuit and aim, as well as lack of the golden key, have held aloof from the world of frivolity. In the courts where money has long reigned supreme, the nucleus of a new order, founded on worth, highmindedness, and good fellowship shall then hold its own and make way. Too lorg has society, moneyridden, read Nature's law backwards, in trying to reduce its heterogeneous elements to a homogeneous mass, and the interposition of new forces will start that segregation which is a sign of healthy life. Doubtless, in the process, a large mass of frivolity will drift together and fall to the bottom, but it is better the stream should be cleansed than the vicious considered, who now contaminate Society far more than they are restrained by her dictum. Money has, by its levelling tendency, paved the way for the i-ecognition of the equality of worth. We do not believe that many will regret it, if with the past ages of Chivalry, of Puritanism, of Foppery, the age of Snobbism should soon lie. Are not they wearying of its arrogance, its bad manners, and its low moral tone ? Is there not a desire for something to take its place, and if it is J f ociety's role to follow the phase 'of her age, is not that light of sympathy, consideration, and philanthropy which has redeemed this century from its failings, already gilding the edge of her restless sea? Women, if they are to carry weight in this new ordering, must start a; basis of self-respect, and must no longer allow themselves to be the toys and dupes of men ; they must not let the voices of a pessimism, not yet lived down, daunt their courage, giving tongue to fears " that an assumption of equality with men will unsex them, and that strong mindedness will take the place of grace and modesty ; that scant politeness will be eked out by men to those who are self-sufficient, and that the undignified scramble of the sexes in general will make Society's pleasaunce a bear-garden." This threat has daunted many, but let women examine the scarecrow set set up to warn them oit' that tree of freedom and knowledge which unlike the tempation of Eden, has held out fruit freely to one half the human race, while it has refused it under penalty to the otner. Do women still believe in that forced chivalry which insists on their weakness that it may be protective, their feeble-mindedness that its fabricator's superiority may be tacitly acknowledged, their helplessness that its bestower may appropriate gratitude 'i May those who do awake realise that this is the caricature of true chivalry, bearing the same relation to the real, as the mock heroics of the eighteenth century did to the religiously sown chivalry of the Middle Ages. True chivalry, born of respect for its object, will be quite as ready to own allegiance to a healthy, able, self-respecting sovereign as to an artfully artless, exacting, and capricious queen. If not, if warped nature, stuned intellect, repressed individuality, encouraged frivolity, are to remain the hall-marks of womanhood, Heaven help Society ! Between the twenti-.th ami thirtieth year the risks to life are nearly the same in India as in England ; from the thirtieth to the fortieth those risks are nearly doubled in India ; while during residence between the fortieth and liftieth years the mortality of Jndia is quadruple that of England.