Part 17
Here is another striking example of a check on certain tendencies in humanity that apparently {262} nature does not approve of, or to avoid personifying a process, we had better say are not according to nature's laws. The small family does not perpetuate itself. It has certain natural disadvantages that work against it. It gradually disappears and the races of larger families maintain themselves. We need not have had recourse to Galton's and Pearson's principle in this matter, for we see the results of the small family in present-day history. France is decreasing in population. Our own Puritan families are dying out. American families generally of more than three generations are not perpetuating themselves. The teeming fertility of the poor immigrants who come to us is, with immigration itself, supplying our increase in population. Our nation is, as a result, gradually becoming something very different from what our forefathers anticipated.
What has apparently happened, then, in the history of feminine education and influence is that, whenever women became occupied with such modes of education, or the cultivation of phases of feminine influence that took them out of their houses, away from family life and far from the hearthstone, the particular classes of women who thus became interested did not propagate themselves, or propagated themselves to such a limited degree that, after a time, their kind disappeared to a great extent. The domestic woman with tendencies to care much more for her maternal duties than for any extra-domiciliary successes {263} propagated herself, raised her children with her ideals, cultivated domesticity and consciously or unconsciously fostered the mother idea as the main feature of woman's life and her principal source not only of occupation, but of joy in the living, of consolation and of genuine accomplishment. The tendency, as can readily be seen in our own time, of the other class of woman is largely to foster, often unconsciously, but of course often consciously also, the opposite notions. She talks of the slavery of child-raising, the limitations of the home woman, the drudgery of domestic life, forgetting that life is work and that the only happiness in life is to have work that you want to do, whatever it may be, but all this talk has its inevitable effect upon all but the born mother woman, and the result is the fad for public occupation instead of domestic life.
It is easy to see what the result of the opposite opinion is. Every tendency of the intellectual woman so-called is to repress such natural instincts as lead to the propagation of the race and the continuance of her kind. Of course it will be said that intellectual women are quite willing to have one or two children. First, this is not true for a great many of them. Secondly, for those who have one or two children losses by death and failure to marry in the second generation, because of conscious or unconscious discouragements and the exaggeration of ideas with regard to the danger of maternity, lead often to a complete {264} suppression of the family in the second or third generation.
Apparently the rule of history is that there are four or five generations of women interested in intellectual things particularly, who follow one another in these periods of special feminine education and exertion of influence outside of the home. Then there comes a distinct decadence of the feminist movement, because of the gradual diminution in number of women who are interested in such things, and then, while there are always certain women who develop great intellectual abilities which require a larger stage than the home for their display, and while there are always some who find an intellectual career or rather make it, very little is heard of feminism and women's claims. They are satisfied to rule their husbands, to raise their children, to be saints to their sons and elder sisters to their daughters, and the feminine world has its simple joys and not much fuss about rights.
It may seem far-fetched thus to appeal to a biological check or a great underlying natural law in a matter of this kind, but in recent years biology has so often been appealed to to justify unsocial conditions that its true application needs to be pointed out. We have heard, for instance, much of the struggle for life and the competition that is supposed to be inevitable in nature, while all the time it has apparently been forgotten that there is no struggle for life within the species {265} except when there is some disturbance of the ordinary order of nature, as in times of famine, or when a mother is foraging for her children. On the contrary, mutual aid is the rule within the species and there is no animal small or large, from the ant to the elephant, that does not help its kind and has not certain wonderful instincts for helpfulness, the origin of which we do not know, but which are founded in nature itself. Man justifies inhumanity to man by the supposed struggle for life, while all the time nature teaches us the opposite law.
Nature's way is that of elimination. Her interest is the race. She cares very little for the individual and guards only her great purpose of securing the propagation of the race. Apparently such intense preoccupation with the intellectual life as provides opportunity for serious education, for literary work and for the exertion of diffuse influence in a community, does not make for the propagation of the race or its proper preservation. We can see this easily in the world around us, in the limited progeny of those who live the intellectual or selfish life to the exclusion of racial interests. This is opposed to nature's purpose and she proceeds to eliminate those who stand in her way. This is not done by any cataclysmic process but by a law of nature. Those involved in the influence disturbing to her purpose eliminate themselves. This is as true for indulgence in toxic substances that produce certain personal {266} momentary good feelings, as for the more deliberate avoidance of certain of nature's burdens which brings about a certain negative pleasure at least by lessening the amount of pain that has to be borne and trouble to be endured. To these pains and troubles nature has attached some of the best of the compensations of life. The domestic joys are properly man's highest source of unalloyed pleasure without remorse.
Our review of the phases of feminine education and influence would seem to show that there has occurred a series of cycles about three centuries apart in the history of the race, during which women become very much occupied with things external to their household. Such cycles are represented by our own period, that of the Renaissance in the sixteenth century, that of the university period in the thirteenth century, and then that at Charlemagne's court earlier, though the barbaric conditions following the migration of nations probably did not allow a natural expression of the tendencies at this time. Earlier in history, in the first century before Christ and just after and in the fourth century before Christ in Greece, there had been, as we have pointed out, such cycles. During the intervening centuries there is a negative phase in the movement, so that feminism, under which is understood woman's expression of herself outside of her home and the exertion of her influence apart from her family and immediate friends, is very little in {267} evidence. During these times the domestic woman reasserts herself. During the positive phases of the movement she continues to have her children, the feminists do not, or at least not to the same extent. They and their kind are gradually eliminated, at least to a great degree, and so the negative phase comes on.
This is not an argument and is not meant as such. It is meant to be a scientific reading of the meaning of certain phases of the history of the race as they can be studied. I would be the last in the world to think that I could influence present-day activities by any such indications of a great law in the history of the race that takes three centuries from phase to phase. After all, who cares for a law that does not affect our generation, but at most the third and fourth succeeding generations, and the manifestation of whose phenomena can only be recognized in three-century periods?
What I have tried to do is to point out just what are the cycles of feminine influence and education in the world's history, and then to work out the reasons why, quite contrary to what might be expected, these phases have not continued, but are interrupted by periods of utter decadence of feminine influence or interest in public life and education. Perhaps in our time we are going to change all that. That is the feeling that we are prone to have. Others may have made progress and forgotten about it, or {268} may have made mistakes and been eliminated for them, but we are so consciously active in our affairs that we cannot think of ourselves as likely to suffer the fate of our predecessors. There is much of that feeling abroad in the present day, there has always been much of that feeling abroad in every other day, for each succeeding generation in its turn is perfectly sure that what it is doing means more than ever before, though it can see very clearly the mistakes made by its predecessors. It is somewhat like our feeling towards other persons and their accomplishments in life as compared to our own. Most of us are quite sure that whatever we are doing is quite significant, though we can see plainly that what most of our friends are doing, or are trying to do, is altogether trivial and insignificant.
In recent years we have come to realize more and more how much history needs to be studied in the light of biology. The decadence of Greece was probably due, to a great extent, to the bringing back by Alexander's conquering soldiers of malaria from the Orient, and thus the vanquished proved the ruin of their conquerors. The great plagues of the olden time which sometimes carried away nearly one-half the human race in a single visitation, were due to insect pests of various kinds, which all unknown to men conveyed the disease and diffused it widely. It will not be easy always to read the lessons of biology in history aright. Whether I have done so for you {269} or not, in this matter of the history of feminism, I cannot tell. The story, however, has been interesting to work out, and I do not think that its conclusions have ever been presented to the public in quite this form before. They are now presented not with the idea that they should be accepted as absolute, but for the criticism and consideration of those who are most vitally interested and who want to know all that can be known about the conditions surrounding woman's influence in the world and her place for good in the history of the race.
{270}
{271}
THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION
{272}
"It is your duty to see that your daughter loves study and work, securing this by the promise of rewards or some other means of emulation. Above all you must take care not to give her disgust for study for fear that this may continue as she grows older. Let her not learn in her childhood what she should unlearn later in life." --_Letter of St. Jerome to Leta, the wife of Toxolus, the son of St. Paula_.
"The sum of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence in which, when he grows up to manhood, he will have to be perfected." --Plato, _Laws_ (Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 174. Scribner, 1902.
"The minds of children are most of all influenced by the training they receive at home." --Pope Leo XIII.
{273}
THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION [Footnote 18]
[Footnote 18: The material for this address was gathered originally for the normal courses on the History of Education for many of the teaching sisterhoods in this country. In its present form it was the address to the graduates of St. Elizabeth's College, Convent Station, N. J., on the occasion of the celebration of the jubilee of the foundation of its teaching work.]
Lady Bachelors: I have had frequent occasions to address all sorts of bachelors on their graduation, of science and arts and letters and pedagogy, but this is my first opportunity to address ladies crowned, at least symbolically, with the laurel berries of the bachelorhood in art. We are apt to think of young ladies rather as masters of arts innumerable, and as needing no degree to attest their abilities. While I am glad, indeed, to address you as lady bachelors I do so with the fondest hope that you will all proceed to further degrees either academic or domestic and not remain in that nondescript class of bachelor-maids.
I should like to be able to tell you how much pleasure it gives me to have the privilege of addressing you on this Fiftieth Anniversary of the Foundation of St. Elizabeth's. There is an apt illustration of the Communion of Saints in your title as a college. Founded in honor of that noble, saintly American woman, Elizabeth Seton, {274} and yet called particularly after that Saint Elizabeth whom the Mother of the Lord set out to visit as the first act of her Motherhood of the Church, there always rises in my mind besides, the thought of that other Saint Elizabeth whom the Germans delight to call the dear Saint Elizabeth, who, though she died when she was scarcely twenty-four, has left a name undying in the annals of helpfulness for others.
This St. Elizabeth, whose name I recall with special willingness now that I see you ready to go out to do your world's work, lived in the midst of what has been until quite recent years the despised Middle Ages, out of which as little good might be expected as out of Nazareth in the olden time, yet she so stamped her personality on the world of her day that now the after-time, neglectful, as a rule, of the individual, so careless even of the world's (supposed) great ones, will not willingly let her name die. She is still with us as a great living force. They read a sketch of her life, I have heard, at the meeting of the Neighborhood House in New York within the last few months, as an incentive to that devotion to the needy that characterized her. She was a woman who thought not at all of herself, but all of others. As a consequence, mankind in its better moods has never ceased to turn to her. Evidently the formula for being remembered is to forget yourself. I am sure, however, that that has been brought home to you so well during your {275} years at St. Elizabeth's that it would, indeed, be bringing coals to Newcastle for me to say anything about it in the few minutes I have to talk to you.
What I have chosen to say to you refers to that higher Catholic education for women of which you are now going out as the representatives. I do it all the more readily because, through the kindness of your beloved teachers, I have had the privilege of co-operating a little in that education, for I appreciate that privilege very much.
Apparently a good many people cherish the idea that the Catholic Church is opposed to feminine education, or at least to the higher education of women as we know it now, and that in the past her influence has been constantly and consistently exerted against any development of this phase of human accomplishment. In the liturgy of the Church women are usually spoken of as the devout female sex, and it is supposed that the one effort of the Church itself, the unerring purpose of ecclesiastical authorities, was to prevent women from becoming learned lest they should lose something of their devoutness. Apparently it is forgotten that some of the greatest devotees in the Church, the saintly women who were held up to the admiration and emulation of their sisters in the after-time, women like St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Angela Merici, St. Jane Frances De Chantal and, above all, St. Teresa, {276} were eminently intellectual women as well as models of devotion.
This same idea as to the Church deliberately fostering ignorance has been quite common in the writings of certain types of historians with regard to other departments of education, and those of us who are interested in the history of medicine have been rather surprised to be told that, because the Church wanted to keep people in readiness to look to Masses and prayers and relics and shrines for the cure of their ailments,--and, of course, pay for the privilege of taking advantage of these,--the development of medicine was discouraged, the people were kept in ignorance and all progress in scientific knowledge was hampered. It is, indeed, amusing to hear this when one knows that for seven centuries the greatest contributors to medical science have been the Papal physicians, deliberately called to Rome, many of them, because they were the great medical scientists of their day, and the Popes would have no others near. For centuries the Papal Medical School was the finest in the world for the original research done there, and Bologna at the height of its fame was in the Papal States.
With so many other presumptions with regard to the position of the Church towards education, it is not surprising that there should be a complete misunderstanding of her attitude toward feminine education, an absolute ignoring of the realities of the history of education, which show {277} exactly the opposite of anything like opposition to be true. I have had a good deal to do in laboring at least to correct many false ideas with regard to the history of education, and, above all, with what concerns supposed Church opposition to various phases of educational advance. I know no presumption of opposition on the part of the Church to education that is so groundless, however, as that which would insist that it is only now with what people are pleased to call the breaking up of Church influence generally, so that even the Catholic Church has to bow, though unwillingly, to the spirit of the times and to modern progress, that feminine education is receiving its due share of attention. Most people seem to be quite sure that the first serious development of opportunities for the higher education of women came in our time. They presume that never before has there been anything worth while talking about in this matter. Just inasmuch as they do they are completely perverting the realities of the history of education, which are in this matter particularly interesting and by no means lacking in detail.
Whenever there is any question of Church influence in education, or of the spirit of the Church with regard to education, those who wish to talk knowingly of the subject should turn to the period in which the Church was a predominant factor in human affairs throughout Europe. This is, as is well known, the thirteenth century. The {278} Pope who was on the throne at the beginning of this century, Innocent III, is famous in history for having set down kings from their thrones, dictated many modifications of political policy to the countries of Europe whenever secular governments were violating certain great principles of justice, and in general, was looked up to as the most powerful of rulers in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs. A typical example of the place occupied by the Church is to be seen when Philip Augustus of France repudiated his lawful wife to marry another. Pope Innocent set himself sternly against the injustice, and the proud French King, at the time one of the most powerful sovereigns of Europe, had to take back the neglected wife from the Scandinavian countries, the distance and weakness of whose relatives would seem to make it so easy for a determined monarch to put her aside. When King John in England violated the rights of his people, Innocent put the country under an Interdict, released John's subjects from their allegiance and promptly brought the shifty Plantagenet to terms. The Pope at the end of the century, the great Boniface VIII, was scarcely less assertive of the rights of the Church and of the Papacy than the first of the thirteenth-century Pontiffs. While he was not so successful as his great predecessor in maintaining his rights, the policy of the Church evidently had not changed. Most of the Popes of the interval wielded an immense influence for good {279} that was felt in every sphere of life in Europe in their time.
Now it is with regard to this period that it is fair to ask the question, What was the attitude of the Church toward education? Owing to her acknowledged supremacy in spiritual matters and the extension of the spiritual authority even over the temporal authorities whenever the essential principles of ethics or any question of morals was concerned, the Church could absolutely dictate the educational policy of Europe. Now, this is the century when the universities arose and received their most magnificent development. The great Lateran Council, held at the beginning of the century, required every bishop to establish professorships equivalent to what we now call a college in connection with his cathedral. The metropolitan archbishops were expected to develop university courses in connection with their colleges. Everywhere, then, in Europe universities arose, and there was the liveliest appreciation and the most ardent enthusiasm for education, so that not only were ample opportunities provided, but these were taken gloriously and the culture of modern Europe awoke and bloomed wonderfully.
Some idea of the extension of university opportunities can be judged from the fact that, according to the best and most conservative statistics available, there were more students at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to the population of the England of that day, than there are {280} to the population of even such an educationally well provided city as Greater New York in the present year of grace 1910. This seems astounding to our modern ideas, but it is absolutely true if there is any truth in history. The statistics are provided by men who are not at all favorable to Catholic education or the Church's influence for education. At this same time there were probably more than 15,000 students at the University of Bologna, and almost beyond a doubt 20,000 at the University of Paris. We have not reached such figures for university attendance again, even down to the present. Students came from all over the world to these universities, but more than twenty other universities were founded throughout Europe in this century. The population was very scanty compared to what it is at the present time; there were probably not more than 25,000,000 of people on the whole continent. England had less than 3,000,000 of people and, as we know very well by the census made before the coming of the Armada, had only slightly more than 4,000,000 even in Elizabeth's time, some two centuries later.