wOMAN

Rabindranath Tagore

WHEN male creatures indulge in their fighting propensity to kill one another Nature connives at
it, because. comparatively speaking, females are needful to her purpose, while males are barely
necessary. Being of an economic disposition she does not specially care for the hungry broods
who are quarrelsomely voracious and who yet contribute very little towards the payment of
Nature's bill. Therefore in the insect world we witness the phenomenon of the females taking it
upon themselves to keep down the male population to the bare limit of necessity.
But because greatly relieved of their responsibility to Nature, the males in the human world have
had the freedom of their occupation and adventures. The definition of the human being is said to
be that he is the tool-making animal. This tool-making is outside of Nature's scope. In fact, with
our tool-making power we have been able to defy Nature. The human male, having the most part
of his energies free, developed this power, and became formidable. Thus, though in the vital
department of humanity woman still occupies the throne given to her by Nature, man in the
mental department has created and extended his own dominion. For this great work detachment
of mind and freedom of movement were necessary.
Man took advantage of his comparative freedom from the physical and emotional bondage, and
marched unencumbered towards his extension of life's boundaries. In this he has travelled
through the perilous path of revolutions and ruins. Time after time his accumulations have been
swept away and the current of progress has disappeared at its source. Though the gain has ben
considerable yet the waste in comparison has been still more enormous, cespecially when we
consider that much of the wealth, when vanished, has taken away the records with it. Through
this repeated experience of disasters man has discovered, though he has not fully utilized, the
truth, that in all his creations the moral rhythm has to be maintained to save them from
destruction; that a mere unlimited augmentation of power does not lead to real progress, and
there must be balance of proportion, must be harmony of the structure with its foundation, to
indicate a real growth in truth.
This ideal of stability is deeply cherished in woman's nature. She is never in love with merely
going on, shooting wanton arrows of curiosityinto the heart of darkness. All her forces
instinctively work to bring things to some shape offulness, for that is the law of ife. In life's
movement though nothing is final yet every step has its rhythm of completeness. Even the bud
has its ideal of rounded perfection, so has the flower, and also the fruit. But an unfinished
building has not that ideal of wholenessin itself. Therefore if it goes on indefinitely in its growth
of dimensions, it gradually grows out of its standard of stability. The masculinecreations of
intellectual civilization are towers of Babel, they dare to defy their foundations and therefore
topple down over and over again. Thus human history is growing up over layers of ruins; it is not

a continuous life growth. The present war is an illustration of this. The economic and political
organizations, which merely represent mechanicai power, born of intellect, are apt to forget their
centres of gravity in the foundational world of life. The cumulative greed of power and
with the
possession which can have no finality of compieteness in itself, which has no harmony
Ideal of moral and spiritual pertection, must at last lay a violent hand upon its own

ponderousness of material.
 At the present stage of history civilization is almost exclusively masculine, a civ1l1zation ot
power, in which woman has been thrust aside in the shade. Therefore it has lost its balance and it
IS moving by hopping from war to war. Its motive forces are the forces of destruction, and its
ceremonials are cartied through by an appalling number of human sacrifices. This one-sided
Civilzation is crashing along a series of catastrophes at a tremendous speed because of its one-
Sidedness. And at last the time has arrived when woman must step in and impart her life rhythm
to this reckless movement of
power.
For woman's function is the passive function of the soil, which not only helps the tree to grow
but keeps its growth within limits. The tree must have life's adventure and send up and spread
out its branches on all sides, but all its deeper bonds ofrelation are hidden and held firm in the
soil and this helps it to live. Our civilization must also have its passive element.broad and deep
and stable. It must not be mere growth but harmony of growth. It must not be all tune but it must
have its time also. This time is not a barrier, it is what the banks are to the river, they guide into
of morass. It is
permanence the current which otherwise would lose itself in the amorphousness
rhythm, the rhythm which does not check the world's movements but leads them into truth and
beauty.
Woman is endowed with the passive qualities of chastity, modesty, devotion and power of self-
sacrifice in a greater measure than man is. It is the passive quality in nature which turns its
monster forces into perfect creations of beauty-taming the wild elements into the delicacy of
tenderness fit for the service of life. This passive quality has given woman that large and deep
of life. If life were all
placidity which is so necessary for the healing and nourishing and storing
down the next moment
spending, then it would be like a rocket, going up in a flash and coming
in ashes. Life should be like a lamp where the potentiality of light is far greater in quantity than
what appears as the flame. It is in the depth of passiveness in woman's nature that this

potentiality of life is stored.

restlessness is noticed
I have said elsewhere that in the woman of the Western worlda certain
which cannot be the normal aspect of her nature. For women who want something special and
violent in their surroundings to keep their interests active only prove that they have lost touch
condemn
with their own true world. Apparently, numbers of women as well as men in the West
the that are
things commonplace. They are always hankering after something which is out of the
common, straining their powers to produce a spurious originality that merely surprises though it
may not satisfy. But such efforts are not
a real sign of vitality. And they must be more injurious
vital strongly in them than men
to women than to men, because women have the power more
that around
have. They are the mothers of the race, and they have a real interest in the things
are

the race would perish

them, that are the common things of life; if they did not have that, then
like a mental drug habit,
f, by constantly using outside stimulation, they form something
become addicted to a continual dram-drinking of sensationalism, then they lose the natural high
of their womanhood, and their real power to
sensibility which they have, and with it the bloom
Sustain the human race with what it needs the most
when he finds in them some special gift of
A man's interest in his fellow-beings becomes real
interest in her fellow-beings because they are living
power or usefulness. but a woman feels
because of some particular purpose which they
can serve,
Creatures, are human, not
because they
which she has a special admiration And because
0 Some power which they possess and for
over our minds, her exuberance of vital interest
wOman has this power, she exercises such charm
 for the
is so speech, her laughter, her movement, everything graceful,
attractive that it makes her
note of gracefulness is in this harmony with all our surrounding interests.
of the
Fortunately for us, our everyday world has the subtle and unobtrusive beauty its wonders which
minds to realize
commonplace, and we have to depend upon our own sensitive in its
we find that the world
are invisible because spiritual. If we can pierce through the exterior,

commonplace aspects is a miracle.

this power,
We realize this truth intuitively through our power of love; and women, through
its ragged disguise of triviality,
discover that the object of their love and sympathy, in spite of
are common, then
has infinite worth. When have lost the power of interest in things that
women
natural sensibilities being deadened,
leisure frightens them with its emptiness, because, their
attention. Therefore they keep themselves
there is nothing in their suroundings to occupy their
it Our everyday world is like a
frantically busy, not in utilizing the time, but merely filling up.and the
in
who have the power serenity of attention
reed, its true value is not in itself,-but those women form
can hear the music which the
Infinite plays through its very emptiness. But when
be expected furiously to storm your
the habit of valuing things for themselves, then they may
to smother the
mind, to soul from her love-tryst of the eternal and to make you try
decoy your
by the unmeaning rattle of ceaseless
movement.
voice of the Infinite
I mean that the human
I do not mean to imply that domestic life is the only life for a woman.

be it full of the other activities of life, which are

world is the woman's world, be it domestic or
to organize.
human activities, and not merely abstract efforts