When El Ahmed held the pass all through the darkness while his women fled across the desert, and his foes feared to come to hand grips with him, not knowing he stood there dead,--propped against the spear he had thrust into his mortal wound to hold himself erect--there was no female revolt against the domination of men who were capable of deeds that so fired women's imaginations.
These may, after all, seem to be frivolous accusations--that men do not dress well; do not behave dramatically; but the signification of these seemingly capricious charges lies deeper than may appear. Man has been seized with a democratic ideal, and after applying it to political institutions has attempted to carry it into domestic application. He is relentlessly forcing a democracy of sex upon woman; industrially, mentally, and sentimentally. He refuses to gratify her imagination; he insists upon her development of that logical selfishness which underlies all democracy, and which is foreign to her nature. Now, nature has inexorably laid upon woman a certain share of the work that must be done in the world. In the course of ages humanity adjusted itself to its shared labours by developing the relation of master and defender, of dependent and loyal vassal. Sentiment had adorned it with a thousand graces and robbed the feudal relation of most of its hardships. Mutual responsibilities and mutual duties were cheerfully accepted.
Woman was obliged to perform certain duties, and these could only be made easy and agreeable by sentiment, by unselfishness. Man needed her ministrations as much as she needed his. He realized that sentiment was necessary to her happiness and he accepted the duty of preserving that sentiment of loyalty and admiration for himself which made her hard tasks seem easy when performed for a beloved master. He took upon himself that difficult task of being a hero to a person even more intimate than his valet. He took the trouble to please woman's imagination.
The hard democracy of to-day will take no note of the relation of master and dependent. Each individual has all the rights which do not come violently in contact with other's rights, and has no duties which are not regulated by the law. Unselfishness is not contemplated in its scheme. Every individual has a right to all the goods of life he can get.