One
single unhappy marriage had shown me, like a sudden revelation, what
marriage in countless cases is, and how far from free the position of
woman still was.
But that woman should be oppressed in modern society, that the one-half
of the human race could be legally deprived of their rights, revealed
that justice in society, as it at present stood, was in a sorry state.
In the relations between the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor,
the same legalised disproportion would necessarily prevail as between
man and woman.
My thought pierced down into the state of society that obtained and was
praised so highly, and with ever less surprise and ever greater
disquiet, found hollowness everywhere. And this called my will to
battle, armed it for the fight.
VII.
From this time forth I began to ponder quite as much over Life as over
Art, and to submit to criticism the conditions of existence in the same
way as I had formerly done with Faith and Law.
In matters concerning Life, as in things concerning Art, I was not a
predetermined Radical. There was a great deal of piety in my nature and
I was of a collecting, retentive disposition. Only gradually, and step
by step, was I led by my impressions, the incidents I encountered, and
my development, to break with many a tradition to which I had clung to
the last extremity.
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