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When one sees women and dogs harnessed together dragging carts about the streets; when one sees women doing the lighter work of sweeping up leaves and collecting rubbish in the forests and on the larger estates; doing the gardening work in Saxony and other places; when one sees them by the hundreds working bare-legged in the beet-fields in Silesia and elsewhere throughout Germany; when one reads "Viele Weiber sind gut weil sie nicht wissen wie man es machen muss um böse zu sein," and "Der Mann nach Freiheit strebt, das Weib nach Sitte," two phrases from the German classics, Lessing and Goethe; when one recalls the shameless carelessness of Goethe's treatment of all women; of how his love-poems were sometimes sent by the same mail to the lady and to the press; and the unrestrained worship of Goethe by the German women of his day; when one sees time and time again all over Germany the women shouldered into the street while the men keep to the sidewalk; when one sees in the streets, railway carriages, and other public conveyances, the insulting staring to which every woman is subjected if she have a trace of good looks, one realizes that at any rate Madame Necker was not writing of German women.
This sphere takes its name from Sitte, that custom ruling in the community which is felt by the individual not as a command from without, but as his own nature. Here the good appears as the spirit of the family and of the people, pervading individuals as its substance.
No man among them, of what degree or dignitie so euer he be: requireth forme chaire, stoole, or other kinde of seate to sitte vpon. But foldinge bothe him selfe and his clothes, aftre a mooste comely sorte: rucketh downe vpon the grounde, not muche vnlike to the sitting of our gentlewomen ofte times here in Englande.
Embrouded was he, as it were a mede, All ful of freshe floures, white and rede; Singing he was, or floyting alle the day, He was as freshe as is the moneth of May. Short was his goune, with sleves long and wide, Wel coude he sitte on hors, and fayre ride, He coude songes make, and wel endite, Juste and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write.
For a man to sitte with his wyfe in open sighte, or to ride with any woman behinde him: amongest them ware a wondre. Maried couples neuer dally together in the sighte of other, nor chide or falle out. But the menne beare alwaies towarde the women a manly discrete sobrenes, and the women, towarde them a demure womanlie reuerence.
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