Explore "Human Work" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We have seen, that in every living creature there is a close and vivid likeness between its spirit and its form, between body and soul. Given such a spirit and it tends to evolve such a form. Given such a form and it tends to evolve such a spirit. The form must limit and modify the spirit.
Fortunately forms can change; and spirit, to grow, continually discards old forms and makes new. If anything succeeds in fixing a given form unchanged, so is the spirit within it imprisoned and checked in growth forever. It is for this reason doubtless that the primal force has been so busy making its endless procession of forms. First we have the universe set whirling with great suns and their spattering planets; then the planet flames, crackles, cools, crusts over, and so fringes out in all manner of soft green, and following these we have life cut looser, freer, in animal forms; lastly the social.