Chapter 15

The type of woman to be admired is Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, eighty-four years old, filling Carnegie Hall with her wonderful voice, thrilling with admiration all of those who listened to her, reciting with the greatest mental power her splendid battle hymn, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord."

THERE is a woman who enjoys her life. It is safe to say that the eighty-fourth year of her existence is as happy as any year that preceded it.

She is an old woman, and to most women that means sorrow and dulness. But she is happy, admired and useful, BECAUSE SHE THINKS.

There are in the United States hundreds of thousands of splendid brains going to waste among our women, because they do not realize the duty of using, to the last, all the intellectual power within them.

WHEN WILL WOMAN'S MENTAL LIFE BEGIN?

It is pathetic to hear women of intelligence arguing in support of woman's claim to "equality" with man.

Of course, woman is really man's superior in important matters. She is vastly superior morally, beyond any question.

She does the greatest work in the world; she gives to earth its thinking population and creates every one of the great men that move civilization along. ----

But otherwise, in the way of MATERIAL accomplishment, woman cannot be said to equal man at present, and she cannot be said ever to have equaled him.

Many of the most intelligent women demand recognition for woman as equal or superior to man in all ways.

They are deeply hurt if in gentle, patient reply you ask them to mention a female equivalent to a Newton, Archimedes or Shakespeare. It annoys them to tell them that a million autopsies prove fundamental differences between male and female brains in favor of the former--at least as regards volume and depth of cerebral convolutions.

Sometimes, after you have listened to a proud, high-spirited woman trying to prove that women would equal men in material accomplishment, if only they had a chance, you get so sad that you find yourself helping her out--digging up De Sevignes, De Staels, and other "great" women who have made up in brains for what they perhaps lacked in femininity. ----

It is necessary to bear in mind that this earth, when man was turned loose upon it, was really a sort of desert island. It was a conglomeration of swamps, forests, deserts--all filled with wild beasts. Even the human beings, struggling feebly toward better days, were not far from the beasts at first. (They are not very far from them even now.)

Two kinds of work had to be done. The men had to fight, dig, hunt, drain marshes and murder each other.

The women had to SUPPLY THE MEN to do all the working and fighting and killing.

Beasts, wars, fevers killed off the sons of women almost as fast as they could bear them. Women must supply the demand for soldiers and workers and at the same time a surplus big enough to populate the globe. Thus far she has put on earth fourteen hundred millions of her own kind. Quite an achievement, we should say, when the career of a Napoleon or an Alexander called for a couple of million of men extra, or a plague like the black death, due to man's stupid lack of cleanliness, wiped out two-thirds of Europe's people. ----

Men were the material workers--of course they exceeded in material achievement the women nursing babies at home.

But woman, caring for her children, sacrificing her life for them, developed on earth the moral sentiments, started each generation on its career a little better than its predecessor. She could not do all this and do the material things as well. In fact, she could not even THINK except on matters very near to her cradle, or her affections.

Remember that throughout the world's history it has been the lot of a vast majority of women to be constantly caring for young infants, or young children. Families of twenty children, or even more, have been common. It is probable that woman from the beginning of our racial existence until now has been the mother of from fifteen to twenty-five children on an average.

The dullest mind can see what that means.

Atrocious suffering. Endless worry about the children. Constant warfare against the man's selfish brutality.

How could woman rear her twenty children and at the same time do other work? How could she keep every thought, every effort of her brain on her offspring and develop her mind in other ways at the same time?

Give a man one young child to take care of FOR ONE DAY, and when you return to him you find a semi-imbecile, half-tearful creature.

In every great man's life you hear some remark of this sort: "How can I work, Maria, if you let the children make such a noise?"

Well, how could the millions of Marias work with the children hanging to their skirts all through history? ----

But a better day is ahead for woman, and we are proud to point it out to her.

Wise men begin to wonder what we shall do when the earth is fully peopled? Shall we kill surplus babies, or what shall we do?

There will be no surplus babies. Nature will arrange that.

For every two human beings on earth two new ones will be born.

Wars will be ended. Common sense will have done away with the unnecessary illness which now robs millions of mothers.

No woman will have more than two children. Education will be understood. Women will not be slaves to their babies. They will be admired and thanked and made happy before the babies arrive --instead of being half ashamed, as at present.

The rearing of children will be simple. Each woman, instead of devoting twenty years of her life to child slavery, will have practically her whole life to devote to other things. She will be able to cultivate her mind. She will have more of a hold on Mr. Selfish Man, and he will have to pay more attention to her.

WOMAN'S hour of full mental development will arrive with the final and complete population of the globe, just as man's day of real mental growth will come after he shall have mastered the forces of nature and learned the elements of true social science.

----

Even then we do not anticipate that repulsive "equality" between men and women which is so much prated about.

The complete human being is not A MAN, nor is it A WOMAN. The COMPLETE human being is a man AND a woman. The TWO MAKE ONE. Each will contribute a share to the perfection of the whole. That was the way it was planned from the beginning, and we think we could prove it, if this column were six feet longer.

THE COW THAT KICKS HER WEANED CALF IS ALL HEART

An estimable and very intelligent lady criticises modern education, saying, "So much brain is forced into the girl nowadays that it crowds out her heart." ----

At the risk of shattering the foundations of romance and poetry, it must be said here once and for all that the heart has nothing whatever to do with the emotions. It is simply a pump, and a large part of its work consists in pumping blood to the brain. The greater the brain, the greater and more active the heart must be. A serpent, with little or no brain and a cold disposition all around, gets along very nicely with little or no heart.

Those who speak of the heart as opposed to the mind mean to speak of unreasoning sentiment as opposed to intellectual strength.

The lady quoted and many others say that the woman and mother should be all affection, and that development of the mind diminishes the affection.

We wish to lay down a few rules; we invite criticism.

The best thing, the only important thing about a woman, a man, a baby, or any other human being, is the intellect.

Affection is a beautiful thing, but affection is BORN in the brain and CONFINED to the brain.

A young woman looks at a splendid creature in a soldier's uniform. Her heart beats fast, and she imagines, as all antiquity has imagined, that the heart is the seat of the emotions. Nonsense!

The emotion is in the BRAIN, which has just received, through the optic nerve, a conception of the lovely vision in brass buttons. The heart is ordered to pump more blood to the head of the young girl, to supply mental activity and the becoming blush.

If you hear bad news you feel the effect on your heart; sometimes you fall unconscious. That is because the brain sensation is so strong as to interfere with the heart's action. You feel the shock that the brain sends to the heart. ----

The idea that cultivation of the mind interferes with a woman's moral, sentimental, or motherly qualities is foolish twaddle.

The idea that mere sentiment, ignorant, vague affection are sufficient without education to make a first-class human mother is false and feeble.

Have you ever seen a cow follow the wagon that carries her calf to the butcher shop? It is a very sad sight, the plaintive lowing of the poor mother as she follows behind begging for her child to be restored. Every farmer knows that there is no necessity for hitching the cow to the wagon when her calf is inside. She will follow that calf until she drops.

There is your loving, devoted mother without education. The cow's heart, to use the old expression, is all right. Her mental equipment is perfectly suited to a cow. Nature and society require that she should give the utmost love to her calf this year, and give all of that same love to another calf next year.

Bring back in three months that calf that she follows now with such pitiful appeals. If the weaned calf tries to re-establish the old relationship, its mother, "all heart and no head," will kick it in the ribs and then butt it across the lot. ----

It's all right for the COW to be all heart and no head; she does not need the higher education.

It is all right for the humble savage mother in the dark African jungle to be built on the same lines. Like the cow, all that she has to do is to take care of the baby until it is able to run around and forage for itself.

But the civilized mother, the woman who must do her duty in the present and in the future as well, requires a good mind, love based upon knowledge and a sense of justice, affection that follows the child from the cradle to maturity, gradually substituting for intense motherly physical care an equally intense and loving intellectual companionship and guidance. ----

It is important, of course, that mothers of all kinds, human or animal, should be cheerful, and above all healthy, able to feed their babies themselves and feed them well.

But as the brain in a human being is above the stomach, so the intellect in a mother is above the mere maternal affection inspired by babyhood.

The great mothers are those who, when they cease feeding the child's body, can begin to feed the child's brain.

The great men are great, and they were lucky, because they had mothers who did not cease to feed them when they were weaned, but kept on feeding them mentally into their manhood. ----

The woman with a big brain is the best IN EVERY WAY.

She is better before she is married, for she attracts the man of intelligence, and establishes a family of intelligent beings.

She is better as a young wife, because the ambition and intelligence in her call out the ambition and intelligence in her husband.

Hers is the happy home that needs no divorce lawyer. Pink cheeks, small feet, squeezed waists, curly hair and such things disappear or get tiresome. And all pink cheeks are very much alike, as Dr. Johnson said of the green fields.

But intelligence never gets tiresome; no two brains are ever at all alike if well developed. A woman of intelligence always develops new qualities; she can never be monotonous.

There is no such thing as too much education, although educating us primitive men and women is apt to develop unexpected littleness. and thus create prejudice. ----

Note this important fact: The bigger the brain, the bigger the heart, not only physically, but sentimentally and morally. It takes brain to feel real emotion; a well-developed mind to develop real sentiment, real affection.

A foolish, ignorant young woman may be pleasant enough to look at, but she is like a white, pink-eyed rabbit--ornamental, but a poor companion.

RESPECTABLE WOMEN WHO LISTEN TO "FAUST"

You know what happens in Gounod's great opera, "Faust," which is based on Goethe's work.

An old man--his name is Faust--yearns for youth. He gets the youth, makes the devil's acquaintance, sells his soul to the devil for the devil's help. In the opera the devil is politely called Mephistopheles. Everybody is beautifully dressed, from the devil and Faust, the peasant girls and the ballet dancers, to the old grandmothers, with their diamonds and pearls, in the boxes.

If you want to study human nature, you ought to look at the respectable old and young women at the opera while "Faust" is sung.

The centre of the whole thing is a young woman named Marguerite. When the curtain goes up she has the best of intentions, the best character, the prettiest of faces, and two long, yellow braids down her back. She is dressed very prettily indeed, and in the opera house she has a high-sounding name, like Melba, Nordica, Calve or Patti.

Every night that "Faust" is sung this young woman goes to the bad.

Every night that "Faust" is sung every woman in the audience sympathizes with Marguerite, who behaves so badly. Many shed tears over her misfortune. All forgive her, feel sorry for her, and know that she is not to blame.

The most severe old woman in the most expensive box would put her arms around Marguerite's neck and tell her not to fret. ----

How does that old lady act if on the way to her carriage she finds the sidewalk obstructed by some unfortunate creature who has Marguerite's sorrows without Marguerite's good clothes? Does she not say that it is an outrage for the police to allow such things?

Possibly she will observe that in the opera Marguerite has not a fair chance.

Faust has such beautiful silk tights, one leg striped and the other leg covered with spangles; and, besides, he has a devil to bring a box of jewels to tempt Marguerite.

But we should like to tell the conservative old lady that the erring housemaid whom she may have judged so severely had greater temptation and a better excuse than did Marguerite, even though she could not get her voice up quite so high.

Mephistopheles is just as busy with housemaids and poor, overworked shopgirls as with any Marguerite that ever lived. And his work is made easier by long hours, dull routine and hopeless future.

It is strange and sad that moral women find it so easy to sympathize with the Marguerite whose sins and life end in the beautiful "Anges purs, anges radieux" aria written by Gounod, and not with the Marguerite who ends in the hospital, the morgue and the Potter's Field.

It makes a great difference, apparently, to moral and virtuous women whether the erring Marguerite has a famous tenor on one side of her and a famous basso on the other, or whether she has on one side of her Bellevue Hospital and on the other side Blackwell's Island.

WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

In this country and throughout the world women progress toward the full possession of the ballot, and toward equality with men in educational facilities.

In one State after another women are beginning to practise law, they are obtaining new suffrage rights, they flock to newly opened schools and colleges.

In England and Scotland, but a few years ago, only a few men in the population were allowed to vote--money was the requisite quality. To-day, in those countries, women vote at county elections, and in many cases at municipal elections. In Utah, Colorado and Idaho women as voters have the same rights as men. They have certain rights as voters in nine other States. In the great Commonwealth of New Zealand, so far ahead of all the rest of the world in humanity and social progress, the wife votes absolutely as her husband does. ----

The woman who votes becomes an important factor in life, for a double reason. In the first place, when a woman votes the candidate must take care that his conduct and record meet with a good woman's approval, and this makes better men of the candidates.

In the second place, and far more important, is this reason:

When women shall vote, the political influence of the good men in the community will be greatly increased. There is no doubt whatever that women, in their voting, will be influenced by the men whom they know. But there is also no doubt that they will be influenced by the GOOD men whom they know.

Men can deceive each other much more easily than they can deceive women--the latter being providentially provided with the X-ray of intuitional perception.

The blustering politician, preaching what he does not practise, may hold forth on the street corner or in a saloon, and influence the votes of others as worthless as himself. But among women his home life will more than offset his political influence.

The bad husband may occasionally get the vote of a deluded or frightened wife, but he will surely lose the votes of the wives and daughters next door.

Voting by women will improve humanity, because IT WILL COMPEL MEN TO SEEK AND EARN THE APPROVAL OF WOMEN.

Our social system improves in proportion as the men in it are influenced by its good women.

As for the education of women, it would seem unnecessary to urge its value upon even the stupidest of creatures. Yet it is a fact that the importance of thorough education of girls is still doubted--usually, of course, by men with deficient education of their own and an elaborate sense of their own importance and superiority.

Mary Lyon, whose noble efforts established Mount Holyoke College, and spread the idea of higher education for women throughout the world, put the case of women's education in a nutshell. She said:

"I think it less essential that the farmers and mechanics should be educated than that their wives, the mothers of their children, should be."

The education of a girl is important chiefly because it means the educating of a future mother.

Whose brain but the mother's inspires and directs the son in the early years, when knowledge is most easily absorbed and permanently retained?

If you find in history a man whose success is based on intellectual equipment, you find almost invariably that his mother was exceptionally fortunate in her opportunities for education.

Well educated women are essential to humanity. They insure abler men in the future, and incidentally they make the ignorant man feel ashamed of himself in the present.

ASTRONOMY WOMAN'S FUTURE WORK

In the centuries to come, perhaps a thousand centuries from now, perhaps a little sooner, woman will get her chance on earth. Population will have reached its normal limit, and nature's wise law, dealing with a really civilized race, will automatically limit children to two in each family.

Schools and nurseries will be scientific and perfect. The care of children will be the duty of the State. Very poor women will be unknown, and unknown will be the woman burdened with the isolated care of children in an isolated household.

In those distant days woman will do her share of the world's intellectual and artistic work. Physical work of all kinds will have been practically annihilated by machinery. Our big, muscular bodies, developed hitherto with an eye to pursuing wild animals, carrying heavy burdens and fighting each other like dog-apes in the forest, will be refined and very different from their present brutality.

It will be an agreeable earth, a very agreeable and much improved human race. ----

Those millennial days, which are sure to come, will find us with our little earthly problems solved. We shall have outgrown our infancy, and, like a child that has learned to walk and balance itself, we shall understand the forces of nature and use them.

Our principal occupation will be harmonious life on this planet and persistent investigation of the marvels of the universe outside of our own little sphere.

As centuries have gone by on earth, power has dwelt with different classes of human beings. In the days of the Troglodytes, when one gentleman would crack another gentleman's thigh-bone to get at the marrow, the most important man of course was the one best able with physical force to murder his fellows. At various times the great explorer, the great military strategist, has been the most important of men. To-day the most important man is the organizer of industry. He is really the most important, not only in the size of his reward, but in the service which he renders. Nature gives the biggest reward to him who does the most important work.

A thousand centuries from now the most important human being will be the most efficient astronomer.

The man who shall bring us accurate news of other worlds will be welcomed as was Christopher Columbus or Drake or Raleigh in his day.

Women will be very important factors in astronomical research.

The work of the astronomer is especially the work of patience, of enthusiasm, of devotion.

Patience, enthusiasm and devotion are more highly developed in women than in men.

Already, in view of her extremely limited opportunities, woman has done admirably well in the field of astronomy. We note that it is a woman at Cambridge whose stellar photographs first located the new star in Perseus. In England, in Germany and in France women astronomers are doing work almost equal to that of the best men.

Everybody will remember the faithful labor of Herschel's sister, working all through the night and sleeping through the day, month after month and year after year, helping her great brother in his studies.

There is a kind of small-fry man who dislikes the idea of mental development among women. He is a mouselike kind of creature, so thoroughly conscious of his own smallness, so thoroughly in love with his own importance, that he dreads the intellectual woman, who makes him feel microscopic.

Despite the protests of such men, some of whom are editors, women are making progress. When they shall give to science, especially to astronomy, the passionate, devoted attention which they have given for ages to the care of children, they will rank among the highest on earth.

WOMAN'S VANITY IS USEFUL

We'll waste no time in proving that women, from the cradle to the grave, at all hours and all ages, are sincerely interested in their personal appearance.

No man should object to this--the constitutional guarantee referring to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness covers the ground fully.

But it is not enough for men NOT TO OBJECT to woman's various innocent vanities.

Every man should be delighted that women are vain. Each man should do what he can to keep the vanity alive.

FOR WOMAN'S VANITY, DEARLY BELOVED, IS THE ONE AND INDISPENSABLE PRESERVER OF HER HEALTH.

A woman cannot be pretty, according to her own notions, unless HEALTHY.

If too fat, she is not pretty--and she is miserable until, through self-control, she gets thin.

If too thin, she is not pretty. At present she has a crazy sort of idea that to be "skinny" is to be attractive. That is a passing delusion. In the long run women realize that there is nothing beautiful about a female living skeleton, and they strive through normal living to become normal.

Above all, no woman can have a good complexion unless she have good health and live normally. This one absorbing question of complexion does more for woman's health; it gives us more strong mothers, and more sensible girls, than all the preachings, beseechings, prayers and expostulations of all the world's male advisers.

A woman's instinct is to eat buckwheat cakes, adding boiling hot coffee and iced water. She likes to eat candy between meals, and her idea of a fine luncheon is lobster salad and ice cream. But small spots appear. Those fine pink cheeks get too pink or too pale, and sensible eating is adopted as a life rule.