CHAPTER 16HUSBANDS, WIVES AND BUSINESS
ACCORDING to tradition woman was made for a helpmeet to man. In other words, when God had finished making man he found him incomplete, unable to exercise his dominion over the birds of the air and the beasts of the fields, and the winds and the waves and the law of gravitation, without somebody to help him do it.
God got a little too much dust in Adam's make-up. He turned out a bit too material, too given to facts and reason, too hard-headed and stony-hearted.
So God made woman to soften man's heart, quicken his brain, and help him increase and multiply and replenish the earth, subdue the earth, and make it blossom as the rose, for the benefit of all the people on the earth.
Wherefore the chief business of man is business.
He must subdue himself and devote himself to some good business that will help the world at the same time it brings in bread for himself and his helpmeet.
The wife's chief business is to supply the heart that man must have in order to do his best with his part of the world's business. The love of a woman softens the heart and vitalizes the head of that man in whose mixing God spilled a little too much dust.
The right woman softens and inspires a man to his best work. He puts heart and soul into his business for her sake — her heart and soul making alive his own, and both functioning through his head to get done his share of the business of the world. The business of Building a Bigger, Brighter, Better world for men and women to grow in.
Men and women grow by subduing themselves and devoting themselves to the making of a Bigger, Brighter, Better World. This is the Divine Order of Self-Expression.
And the proof of it is that there are exceptions. Some women are the men of the family, and some men are the women. But the Divine Order remains the same when he wears the petticoats and she the knicks.
The chief thing is that the man and the woman recognize that the serious business of life is his business and God's business. And that man and woman grow together as they subdue themselves and devote themselves to the man's business, which is God's business.
The man who keeps his business from his wife is shutting off his chief source of inspiration and advancement in business — provided she is not a fool.
The woman who doesn't recognize man's work as the serious business of both their lives, is gendering worms in the bud of her happiness and dry rot at the root of his business. The end is dust and ashes. Worse than man's beginning with too much mud in his make-up.
Business, all is business, says the man.
Love and attention, love and attention, all is love and attention, says the woman.
Love, all is Love, says the wise Man-and-Woman, who have found themselves and each other.
And behold in such there is no vanity. There is only truth, which is the life of love. And the man and the woman sing in each other's hearts forever.
Here is a letter I wrote to A. M. B. on this subject:
I think I know what James' point of view is. And you may not be extravagant now, but I miss my guess a long ways if you have not in the past been a pretty extravagant little girl — extravagant with money as well as with your own personal energy - and you are still reaping the benefits of the habits of thought which your extravagance set up in James' thinker.
And in his mind your expenditures are mere extravagance, while his expenditures are investments. There is truth in his point of view. His investments may be ill advised, that I do not know about. But the intent in him is the right one — the intent to put money away in investments that will bring returns for the future. I fancy James has a big extravagant family, and that some of them run bills that he doesn't know about until he gets the bill. I fancy those bills are a continual surprise to him, and a continual pain. And that a great many of them come in to him after he has made his plans for investments; I have no doubt that he overestimates his investments and underestimates his bills for living expenses.
And there is one of the places where a man's wife comes in. If she is the sort of wife that loves him and believes in him and hopes in him and prays in him, no matter what he does, nor where, nor when, she keeps so close to him that he heeds her advice.
If she stands off like the Pharisee, she cuts herself loose from him, and he ceases to look to her for advice or co-operation. Then he has to go it on his own judgment, and on his own resources. Therein he makes his mistake. No man can possibly make alone the success in life that he would make if he had the right sort of co-operation from his wife. The man and the wife are like the two hands, each one doing certain kinds of work, but neither one doing all the work. The only wife that can keep her husband from making the mistakes that any man will make if left to himself, is the sort of wife that loves him and believes in him, who upholds him from the center to the circumference, from the top to the bottom, from the beginning of time to the end, with increasing love and veneration.
My dear girl, there is too much individualism in your family; just as there is in mine. It isn't what I contribute especially to this family that makes it go so well; it is what William contributes in the way of understanding and the leaving of me free to pursue those avenues of self-expression which long habit seems to have made a necessity for me. There is too much of the boss and too little of the helpmeet, etc., and adorer in both you and me. Both I and you need revision. And nobody can revise us but ourselves. And we can only revise ourselves by getting right back to the ALL-GOOD and recognizing the all-good as the motive power of every other fellow, just as it is the motive power of ourselves. MARRIAGE AS A BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP >
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