Society has failed in its primary function of preserving life. But society has hitherto been controlled by men only, and men have always been more interested in producing death, than in preserving life. Bergson shows that man, who is so knowing when he deals with the tangible dead life of machines, is quite unseeing when confronted with the intangible life of humans. We have yet to see whether Bergson's "man" should also include woman. Had one-tenth part of the money spent by society in producing death--and we, in this country, are spending five million pounds sterling for that purpose every day--been spent on investigations as to the best methods of preserving life, the world might have reached a higher stage of evolution than its present phase of militarism. But Nature, in her beneficence, generally arranges that side by side with the poisonous plant, the antidote shall grow, and thus, side by side with the growth of militarism, has also grown the woman's movement.
The care of life, before and after birth, has been given by God, and by man, to woman. Woman has hitherto protected the concrete life of individuals; must she not now, in an enlarged sphere, also protect the abstract life of humankind?
Democracy, in which pacifists had placed high hopes, has failed as a protective social force; but democracy is not yet democracy, for it consists of men only, and democratic men do not differ from other men in instinct.
The Scriptures say that it was a woman who first had courage to taste the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (symbol of the dawn of human consciousness). That woman was, at the time, blamed by both God and man; but man certainly would not, if he could, go back to the state of sub-conscious life from which she delivered him, and God, if He is all-powerful, permitted the deliverance.
And now the Tree of Life, of spiritual life, or super-consciousness, still stands in the unwalled garden, waiting for some daring soul to force an entrance, to taste of its fruit, and live for ever. With prophetic insight, the poets of Genesis predicted the order of salvation: first, the Tree of Knowledge, material knowledge, and then the Tree of Life, spiritual life. But they tell us, that the way to the Tree of Life, is past the flaming sword, which turns north, south, east, and west; and we, in these days, can well believe it. Now man, with his physical force, has failed to extinguish the flame, which flames at this moment more forbiddingly than ever. Man has failed, but may not this be because the force required for the extinction of the flame, is not physical, but spiritual? And now woman, who has not her own interests, but the interests of human kind, at heart, suggests, with all humbleness, that if human kind is ever to reach the Tree of Life, the spiritual power of woman must be added to the physical force of man, in a determined effort to extinguish that flaming sword--for ever and ever. Amen.