Page:B20442294.djvu/304

276 her. One cannot prove the existence of a sense of guilt in woman by the mortifications to which "devotees" and "penitents" subject themselves. It is these extreme cases of self-discipline which make one suspicious. Doing penance proves, in most cases, that the doer has not overcome his fault, that the sense of guilt has not really entered consciousness; it appears really to be much rather an attempt to force repentance from the outside, to make up for not really feeling it.

The difference between the conviction of guilt in hysterical women and in men, and the origin of the self-reproaches of the former, are of some importance. When the hysterical woman realises that she has done or thought something immoral, she tries to rectify it by some code which she seeks to obey and to substitute in her mind in place of the immoral thought. She does not really get rid of the thought which is too deeply rooted in her nature; she does not really face it, try to understand it, and so purge herself of it. She simply, from point to point, case by case, tries to adhere to the moral code without ever transforming herself, reforming her idea. The moral character in the woman is elaborated bit by bit; in the male right conduct comes from moral character. The vow re-models the whole man; the change takes place in the only possible way, from within outwards, and leads to a real morality which is not only a justification by works. The morality of the woman is merely superficial and is not real morality.

The current opinion that woman is religious is equally erroneous. Female mysticism, when it is anything more than mere superstition, is either thinly veiled sexuality (the identification of the Deity and the lover has been frequently discussed, as, for instance, in Maupassant's "Bel-Ami," or in Hauptmanns "Hannele's Himmelfahrt") as in numberless spiritualists and theosophists, or it is a mere passive and unconscious acceptance of man's religious views which are clung to the more firmly because of woman's natural disinclination for them. The lover is readily transformed