Part 6

The actual evidence that has been gathered on this question is still uncertain and fragmentary. While it does not yet establish anything definitely, it points to rather surprising conclusions. In all cases investigated the discovered differences in variability have been very slight, and if they balance either way tend to prove a greater variability among women. Neither sex need have a monopoly of either imbeciles or geniuses, but women may yet be found to be slightly more favored with both!

The first painstaking investigation in this field was made by Dr. Karl Pearson who published his interesting results as one essay in his _Chances of Death and Other Studies in Evolution_ in 1897. Under the heading “Variation in Man and Woman” (Vol. I, pp. 256-377), written as a polemical attack upon Havelock Ellis’s stand in this theory, he set forth results of measurements upon men and women in seventeen anatomical characteristics. He obtained his data from statistics already collected, from measurements of living men and women, and from post-mortem and archeological examinations. Female variability (coefficients of variation) proved greater in eleven of these seventeen characteristics, male in six. He concluded among other things that “there is ... no evidence of greater male variability, but rather of a slightly greater female variability. Accordingly the principle that man is more variable than woman must be put on one side as a pseudo-scientific superstition until it has been demonstrated in a more scientific manner than has hitherto been attempted.”

To round out this evidence Doctors Leta Hollingworth and Helen Montague measured 20,000 infants at their birth in the maternity wards of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. They sought to discover whether environmental influences played any determining rôle in producing the results obtained by Pearson from measurements upon adults. From the ten anatomical measurements made upon these babies they found that “in all cases the differences in variability are very slight. In only two cases does the percentile variation differ in the first decimal place. In these two cases the variability is once greater for males and once greater for females.” (“The Comparative Variability of the Sexes at Birth,” _American Journal of Sociology_, Vol. XX, 1914-1915, pp. 335-370.)

The findings on anatomical variability do not, of course, necessarily prove anything about differences in the range of mental ability. They do, however, suggest the probability of parallel results and such studies as have been made tend, on the whole, to bear this out. All the recent work in this field (and it is still fragmentary) seems to point at least to equal mental variability among men and women. In 1917, Terman and others in their “Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale for Measuring Intelligence” investigated this problem among school children from five to fourteen years old. They obtained the Intelligence Quotients of 457 boys and 448 girls and compared these I.Q.’s with teachers’ estimates and judgments of intelligence and work and with the age grade distribution of the sexes for the ages of 7 to 14. After making all necessary qualifications, they concluded that the tests revealed a small superiority in the intelligence of the girls that “probably rests upon a real superiority in intelligence, age for age.” But “apart from the small superiority of the girls, the distribution of intelligence shows no significant differences in the sexes. The data offer no support to the wide-spread belief that girls group themselves more closely about the median or that extremes of intelligence are more common among boys” (p. 83).

Dr. Hollingworth, again, has made a study of mental differences for adults. She has summarized the results of recent studies in sex differences in mental variability and in tastes, perceptions, interests, etc. Her conclusions on this score are interesting: “(1) The greater variability of males in anatomical traits is not established, but is debated by authorities of perhaps equal competence. (2) But even if it were established, it would only suggest, not prove, that men are more variable in mental traits also. The empirical data at present available on this point are inadequate and contradictory, and if they point either way, actually indicate greater female variability....” (“Variability as Related to Sex Differences in Achievement,” _American Journal of Sociology_, Vol. XIX, pp. 510-530, Jan., 1914.)

It seems hardly safe scientifically, therefore, to restrict women to the average levels in education and work and profession on the ground that eminence is beyond their range. But if the female geniuses have not been cut off by a comparatively narrowed range of mental ability, where are they? Certainly history does not reveal them in anything like satisfactory number. And it is now that women may bring forward their third weapon of attack. The female geniuses may have been missing not because of an inherent lack in the make-up of the sex, but because of the oppressive, restrictive cultural conditions under which women have been forced to live.

The important rôle played by cultural conditions in the cultural achievement of various nations and races has been noted with increasing emphasis by the newer schools of sociology and anthropology. No scholar can now defend unchallenged a thesis of “lower or higher races” by urging the achievements of any race as an index of its range of mental ability. Culture grows by its own laws and the high position of the white race may be as much a product of favorable circumstances as of exceptional innate capacities. Similarly the expression taken by the genius of various nations appears to vary strikingly. This is especially impressive in the realm of music. The Anglo-Saxon peoples are singularly lacking in great musical composers. Neither Britain nor America, nor indeed any of the northern countries have contributed one composer worthy of mention beside the Beethovens and Wagners and Chopins of this art. Indeed the great names in music are generally of German, Latin or Slavic origin. Yet no one thinks of urging this fact as evidence of an Anglo-Saxon failure of major creativeness. Instead we point to achievements in other fields or at most attempt to explain this peculiar lack by some external causation. Similarly all our impatience with the un-artistic approaches of the American people does not lead us to frame a theory of their lack of genius. There are many cultural factors to be considered first.

But as soon as we approach the problem of female genius, too many of us are apt to bring forward an entirely different kind of interpretation. We pass over the undoubted female geniuses lightly--granting Sappho and Bonheur and Brunn and Eliot and Brontë and Amster and Madame Curie and Caroline Herschel and perhaps even Chaminade and Clara Schumann and several others. We admit the undoubtedly significant parts women are playing in modern literature. But the question always remains.

Yet in no national or racial group have cultural influences exercised so restrictive an influence as among the entire female sex. Not only has the larger world been closed to them, not only has popular opinion assumed that “no woman has it in her,” but the bearing and rearing of children has carried with it in the past the inescapable drudgery of housework. And this is “a field,” as Dr. Hollingworth points out, “where eminence is not possible.”

It was Prudhon who sneered in response to a similar argument that “women could not even invent their distaff.” But we now know enough about the laws of invention to realize how unfair such sneering is. Professor Franz Boas and his school have long demonstrated that cultural achievement and mental ability are not necessarily correlated. For material culture, once it begins, tends to grow by accumulation and diffusion. Each generation adds to the existing stock of knowledge, and as the stock grows the harvests necessarily become greater. Modern man need have no greater mental ability than the men of the ice ages to explain why his improvements upon the myriad machines and tools that are his yield so much larger a harvest than the Paleolithic hunters’ improvements upon their few flint weapons and industrial processes. For, as Professor Ogburn has well shown (in “Social Change,” Part III) all invention contains two elements--a growing cultural base and inventive genius to work with the materials it furnishes. The number of new inventions necessarily grows with the cultural base. Even 50 times 100 make only 5000, but 2 times 1,000,000 make 2,000,000. Countless generations have added their share to the total material culture which is ours and which we shall hand down still more enriched to posterity.

It must be at once obvious that there has been no such cultural growth in housework. Housework has long remained an individualized, non-cumulative industry, where daughter learns from mother the old ways of doing things. The small improvements and ingenuities which most housewives devise seldom find their way into the whole stream of culture. Thus it is that the recent great inventions which are slowly revolutionizing this last stronghold of petty individualism have come from the man-made world. Workers in electricity could more easily devise the vacuum cleaner than the solitary housewife; the electric washer, parquet floors, the tin can, quantity production of stockings, wool, clothing, bread, butter, and all the other instruments that have really made possible women’s emancipation have naturally come not from women’s minds (any more than from men’s) but from the growth of culture and the minds that utilize that growth for further expansion.

Consequently, as women participate in the work of the world and win the right to acquire the results of past achievement in science and technique and art, we may expect their contributions to the social advance to appear in ever greater numbers. Until we give them this full chance to contribute, we have no right to explain the paucity of their gifts to society by inherent lacks. And it seems reasonable to expect that such a chance will render the old quest for female geniuses properly old-fashioned. For they will be there, these women--the able and talented and geniuses--working side by side with men, not as “very great men” nor as necessarily “depraved” nor in any way unusual. They will be there as human beings and as women.

Man and Woman as Creators

By Alexander Goldenweiser

Alexander Goldenweiser,

_psychologist and anthropologist, is a lecturer at the New School for Social Research in New York_.

MAN AND WOMAN AS CREATORS

BY ALEXANDER GOLDENWEISER

“A hen is no bird, a woman--no human,” says a Russian proverb. In this drastic formulation stands written the history of centuries. Woman’s claim to “human”ness was at times accepted with reservations, at other times it was boldly challenged and even to-day when woman’s legal, social, economic and political disabilities have been largely removed, woman’s acceptance in society as man’s equal remains dependent on a definition of the “equal.”

As in the case of the mental capacity of races, the question of woman’s intellectual status was never judged on its merits. Rather, it was accepted as a practical social postulate, then rationalized into the likeness of an inductive conclusion. The problem seems so replete with temptations for special pleading that a thoroughly impartial attitude becomes well-nigh impossible. However, let us attempt it!

Is woman psychologically identical with man? or, if there is a difference, is it one of superiority and inferiority? And of what practical significance is this issue to society?

Two ways of approach are open: subject men and women to psychological tests, or observe performance in life and, exercising due critical care, infer capacity.

Both methods have been tried. The first enjoys to-day a certain vogue: it is the method of science, of experimental psychology. Unfortunately, the findings of science in this field have to date resulted in precisely nothing. It was feasible to assume that woman was man’s equal in elementary sensory capacity, in memory, types and varieties of associations, attention, sensitiveness to pain, heat and cold, etc. Experimental psychology has confirmed these assumptions. But what of it? What can we make of it? Precisely nothing. What we are interested in is whether woman can think “as logically” as man, whether she is more intuitive, more emotional, less imaginative, more practical, less honest, more sensitive, a better judge of human nature. These, among many other interesting issues cannot even be broached by experimental psychology “within the present state of our knowledge.”

Remains the second method, to observe performance and infer capacity.

To examine in this fashion all the issues involved would require a small library. I select only one, creativeness. Is woman man’s equal in creativeness? The choice is justified by the highly controversial character of the issue as well as its practical bearings.

Two periods in the history of civilization lend themselves admirably for our purpose, the primitive and the modern.

The primitive world was not innocent of discrimination against woman. In social and political leadership, in the ownership and disposition of property, in religion and ceremonialism, woman was subjected to more or less drastic restrictions. It would, therefore, be obviously unfair to expect her creativeness in these fields to have equaled or even approximated that of man. Not so in industry and art, where division of labor prevailed, but no sex disability. As one surveys the technical and artistic pursuits of primitive tribes, woman’s participation is everywhere in evidence. The baskets of California, the painted pots of the Pueblos, the beaded embroideries of the Plains, the famous Chilkat blankets, the tapa cloth of Polynesia, all of these were woman’s handiwork. Almost everywhere she plans and cuts and sews and decorates the garments worn by women as well as men. Also, in all primitive communities she gathers the wild products of vegetation and transforms them into palatable foods. More than this, in societies that know not the plow woman is, with few exceptions, the agriculturist. It follows that the observations, skills, techniques and inventions involved in these pursuits must also be credited to woman.

It will be conceded that in primitive society woman’s record is impressive: wherever she is permitted to apply her creativeness she makes good, and the excellence of her achievement is equal to that of man, certainly not conspicuously inferior to his.

In evaluating these findings, however, it is important to take cognizance of the submergence of individual initiative by the tribal pattern, a feature characteristic of primitive life. This applies to men and women, to artisans and artists. Imaginative flights being cut short by traditional norms, the individualism and subjectivism of modern art are here conspicuous by their absence.

How does this record compare with a survey of the modern period?

Here again woman’s disabilities in the social, political and religious realms were so marked that creative participation was impossible. The same is true of architecture. Then come philosophy, mathematics, science, and sculpture, painting, literature, music and the drama. In philosophy and mathematics there is no woman in the ranks of supreme excellence. Even Sonya Kovalevsky, though a talent, was not a great mathematician. In science also, where women have done fine things, none are found among the brightest luminaries. It must be added, moreover, that the few women who have made their mark in the scientific field, notably Mme. Curie, have done so in the laboratory, not in the more abstract and imaginative domain of theoretical science.

At this point some may protest that the period during which women have had a chance to test their talents in philosophy, mathematics and science was too short, their number too small, and that here once more performance cannot fairly be used as a measure of possible achievement. We must heed this protest.

As to sculpture, painting, literature, music and the drama, I claim that woman’s protracted disabilities cannot in any way be held accountable for whatever her performance may be found to be. Women artists, musicians, writers and, of course, actresses, have been with us for a long time. Their number is large and on the increase. Whether married or single, they devote their energies to these pursuits quite unhampered by social taboos. There are in this field no taboos against women. In the United States, in fact, these occupations are held to be more suitable for women than for men.

But what do we find?

In painting and sculpture, no women among the best, although considerable numbers among the second best and below. There is no woman Rodin or Meunier or Klinger or Renoir or Picasso.

In literature the case for woman stands better. Here women have performed wonderfully, both in poetry and prose. If they have fallen short, it is only of supreme achievement.[2]

Finally we come to music and the stage. The case of music is admirably suited for our purpose, is really a perfect test case. What do we find? As performers, where minor creativeness suffices, women have equaled the best among men. As composers, where creativeness of the highest order is essential, they have failed. We have a Carreño or Novaes to match a Hofmann or Levitski, a Melba or Sembrich to match a Caruso or deReszke, a Morini or Powell or Parlow to match a Heifetz or Elman or Kreisler; but there is no woman to match a Beethoven or Wagner or Strauss or Mahler or Stravinsky, or Rachmaninoff--a composer-performer.

The situation in drama is almost equally illuminating. Here women have reached the top, have done it so frequently and persistently, in fact, as to challenge men, some think successfully so. But as dramatic writers the few women who tried have never succeeded to rise above moderate excellence. A Rachel or Duse can hold her own as against a Possart or Orlenyev, a Bernhardt looms as high as an Irving, Booth or Salvini; but there is no woman to compare with a Molière or Ostrovski or Rostand or Hauptmann or Chekhov or Kapek.

If now we glance once more at the primitive record the conclusion suggested by an analysis of music and the drama is greatly reënforced. In primitive society woman, whenever opportunity was given her, equaled man in creativeness; in modern society she has uniformly failed in the highest ranges. The results are not incompatible. As indicated before, in early days cultural conditions precluded the exercise of creativeness on the part of the individual except on a minor scale, in modern society major creativeness is possible and has been realized. Woman’s creative achievement reaches the top when the top is relatively low; when the top itself rises, she falls behind.

To analyze this fact further is no easy task. We may not assume, as some do, that the difference between major and minor creativeness lies in degrees of rationality. This is certainly erroneous. The true creator is what he is, not because of his rationality but because of what he does with it. The differentia, as I see them, are two: boldness of imagination and tremendous concentration on self. The creator, when he creates, is spiritually alone; he dominates his material by drawing it into the self and he permits his imagination, for once torn off the moorings of tradition and precedent, to indulge in flights of gigantic sweep. Imagination and personality exalted to the _n_th power--not rationality--are the marks of the highest creativeness.

In the possession of these traits, then, as here understood, woman is somehow restricted. She has them, of course, and exercises them, but not on the very highest level.

We might stop right here, but it is hard to suppress at least a tentative interpretation.

If the personality-imagination complex is where woman fails at the top, then it becomes _a priori_ probable that this difference between man and woman constitutes a remote sex characteristic. And if this is so, then it may prove worth our while to look for a corresponding difference on a level more directly connected with sex life. No sooner is this done than a difference does indeed appear, and it meets our expectations, for it lies in the direction of personality or self-concentration as well as of imagination. Woman is never so much “a part of” as when she loves, man never so “whole”; her self dissolves, his crystallizes. Also, woman’s love is less imaginative than man’s: man is more like what woman’s love makes him out to be than woman is like what man’s love makes her out to be. Relatively speaking, his love is romantic, hers realistic.

This difference in the diagnostic features of man’s love and woman’s love confirms our suspicion that the discrepancy in performance, where the personality-imagination complex is involved, constitutes a remote sex characteristic.

We must now turn once more to woman’s achievement in the different fields of cultural creativeness, for the variation in the degree of excellence reached by her provides a valuable clue as to where her strength lies. In an ascending series of woman’s achievements musical composition is at the bottom of the list, then come sculpture and painting, then literature (with a strange drop in dramatic writing), then instrumental and vocal performance; acting, finally, heads the list.

This order is most illuminating. The relative excellence of woman’s achievement is seen to rise with the concreteness of the task and the prominence of the technical and human elements. Creativeness is more abstract in music than in the plastic and graphic arts, more abstract in these than in literature; and in each case woman’s relative achievement increases as abstractness decreases. Even the peculiar drop in dramatic writing when compared with other forms of literature is explicable in terms of a more abstract sort of creativeness required by the formal elements of dramatic art. Again, the high position in the list of musical performers and actresses, must in part be ascribed to the importance of the technical element in these arts. The preeminence of the musical performers is probably entirely due to this factor, although the intrusion of the human element (performing for an audience) may also have a share in the result.

In the case of acting the human element is the most important factor, for here there is not only an audience to act to but the human content of the acting itself. The human orientation also accounts for the relatively high position of literature in the list when compared to sculpture and painting and to musical composition. Finally, the creativeness of musical performance and acting--two fields in which woman excels--is concrete when compared to that of literature, the arts and musical composition. Incidentally, a sidelight is thus thrown on the case of science where woman’s relative preeminence is found in the concrete and technical domain of the laboratory.

The preceding analysis leads to the conclusion that woman’s strength lies in the concrete as contrasted with the abstract, the technical as contrasted with the ideational, the human as contrasted with the universal and detached. This conclusion, it may be of interest to note, harmonizes perfectly with the general consensus of mankind, as expressed in lay opinion and the judgments of literary men.