Chapter 6

MENDELISM AND WOMANHOOD

We are accustomed to think of Mendelism as simply a theory of heredity, by which term we should properly understand the relation between living generations. Now Mendelism is certainly this, but I believe that it is vastly more. Already the claim has been made, though not, perhaps, in adequate measure, by the Mendelians, and I am convinced that their title to it will be upheld. Mendelism has already effected a really epoch-making advance in our knowledge of heredity--the relations between parents and offspring; but we shall learn ere long that it has yet more to teach us regarding the very constitution of living beings. As modern chemistry can analyse a highly complex molecule into its constituent elementary atoms, so the Mendelians promise ere long to enable us to effect an _organic analysis_ of living creatures. For many decades past theory has perceived that, in the germ-cells whence we and the higher animals and plants are developed, there must exist--somewhere intermediate between the chemical molecule and the vital unit, the cell itself--units which Herbert Spencer, the first and greatest of their students, called physiological or constitutional units. Since his day they have been re-discovered--or rather re-named--by a host of students, including Haeckel, Weismann, and many of scarcely less distinction. The Mendelian "factors," as I maintain must be clear to any student of the idea, are Spencer's physiological units. Of course neither Spencer nor any one else, until the re-discovery of Mendel's work, had any notion at all of the remarkable fashion in which these units are treated in the process whereby germ-cells are prepared for their great destiny. The rule, as we now know, is that one germ-cell contains any given unit, while another does not. The process of cell-division, whereby the germ-cells or gametes[5] are made, is called gameto-genesis. Somewhere in its course there occurs the capital fact discovered by Mendel and called by him segregation. A cell divides into two--which are the final gametes. One of these will definitely contain the Mendelian factor, and the other will be as definitely without it. Definite consequences follow in the constitution of the offspring; and such is the Mendelian contribution to heredity. But we must see that these inquiries cannot be far pursued without telling us vastly more than we ever knew before of not only the relation between individuals of successive generations, but the very structure of the individuals themselves. It is by the study of heredity that we shall learn to understand the individual. For instance, experimental breeding of the fowl reveals the existence of the brooding instinct as a definite unit, which enters, or does not enter, into the composition of the individual, and which is quite distinct from the capacity to produce eggs. Here is a definite distinction suggested, for the case of the fowl, between two really distinct things which, for several years past, I have called respectively physical and psychical motherhood. The analysis will doubtless go far further, but already the facts of experiment help us to realize the composition of the individual mother--for instance, the number of possible variants, and the non-necessity of a connection between the capacity to produce children and the parental instinct upon which the care of them depends, and without which entire and perfect motherhood cannot be.

The Mendelians are teaching us, too, that their "factors," the units of which we are made, are often intertangled or mutually repellent. If such-and-such goes into the germ-cell, so must something else; or if the one, then never the other. There may thus be naturally determined conditions of entire womanhood; just as one may be externally a woman, yet lack certain of the fractional constituents which are necessary for the perfect being. Complete womanhood, like genius--rarer though not more valuable--depends upon the co-existence of _many_ factors, some of which may be coupled and segregated together in gameto-genesis, while others may be quite independent, only chance determining the throw of them. And the question of incompatibility or mutual repulsion of factors is of the gravest concern; as, for instance, if it were the case--and the illustration is perhaps none too far-fetched--that the factor for the brooding instinct and the factor for intellect can scarcely be allotted together to a single cell.

This question of compatibilities is illustrated very strikingly by the case of the worker-bee. There is as yet no purely Mendelian interpretation of this case, Mendel's own laborious work upon heredity in bees having been entirely lost, and practically nothing having been done since. Yet, as will be evident, the main argument of Geddes and Thomson leads us to a similar interpretation of this case in terms of compatibility.

The worker-bee is an individual of a most remarkable and admirable kind, from whom mankind have yet a thousand truths to learn. She is distinguished primarily by the rare and high development of her nervous apparatus. In terms of brain and mind, using these words in a general sense, the worker-bee is almost the paragon of animals. The ancients supposed that the queen-bee was indeed the queen and ruler of the hive. Here, they thought, was the organizing genius, the forethought, the exquisite skill in little things and great, upon which the welfare of the hive and the future of the race depend. But, in point of fact, the queen-bee is a fool. Her brain and mind are of the humblest order. She never organizes anything, and does not rule even herself, but does what she is told. She is entirely specialized for motherhood; but the thinking, and the determination of the conditions of her motherhood, are in the hands of other females, also highly specialized, and certainly the least selfish of living things--_yet themselves sterile, incapable of motherhood_.

Observe, further, that these wonderful workers, so highly endowed in terms of brain, are amongst the children of the queen, herself a fool; and that it was the conditions of nourishment, the conditions of environment or education, which determined whether the young creatures should develop into queens or workers, fertile fools or sterile wits. We have here an absolute demonstration that environment or nurture can determine the production of these two antithetic and radically opposed types of femaleness.

Now, amongst the bees, this high degree of specialization works very well. How old bee-societies are we cannot say. We do know, at any rate, that bees are invertebrate animals, and therefore of immeasurable antiquity compared with man. No one can for a moment question the eminent success of the bee-hive; and that success depends upon the extreme specialization of the female, so as in effect to create a third sex. Further, we know that nurture alone accounts for this remarkable splitting of one sex into two contrasted varieties.

I have little doubt that a process which is, at the very least, analogous, is possible amongst ourselves; nay more, that such a process is already afoot. In Japan they have actually been talking of a deliberate differentiation between workers and breeders; such differentiation, though indeliberate, is to be seen to-day in all highly civilized communities. Is it likely to be as good for us as for the bee-hive? And, granted its value as a social structure, is it, even then, to be worth while?

No one can answer these questions, though I venture to believe that it is something to ask them. So far as the last is concerned, we must not admit the smallest infringement of the supreme principles that every human being is an end in himself or herself, and that the worth of a society is to be found in the worth and happiness of the individuals who compose it.

Can we, as human beings, regard a human society as admirable because it is successful, stable, numerous?

The question is a fundamental one, for it matters at what we aim. As it becomes increasingly possible for man to realize his ideals, it becomes increasingly important that they shall be right ones; and there is a risk to-day that the growth of knowledge shall be too rapid for wisdom to keep pace with. We are reaching towards, and will soon attain in very large and effective measure, nothing less than a _control of life_, present and to come. It may well be that a remodelling of human society upon the lines of the bee-hive is feasible. It was his study of bees that made a Socialist of Professor Forel, certainly one of the greatest of living thinkers; and his assumption is that in the bee-hive we have an example largely worthy of imitation. But he would be the first to admit that, as the ordinary Socialist has yet to learn, the nature of the society is ultimately determined by the nature of the individuals composing it. It follows that the bee-society can be completely, or, at all events substantially, imitated only by remodelling human nature on the lines of the individual bee. This is very far from impossible; there is a plethora of human drones already, and we see the emergence of the sterile female worker. But is such a change--or any change at all of that kind--to be desired?

_The Terms of Specialization._--It surely cannot be denied that there may be a grave antagonism between the interests of the society and those of the individual. It is a question of the terms of specialization or differentiation. In the study of the individual organism and its history we discern specialization of the cell as a capital fact. Organic evolution has largely depended upon what Milne-Edwards called the "physiological division of labour." In so far as organic evolution has been progressive, it has entirely coincided with this process of cell-differentiation. That is the clear lesson which the student of progress learns from the study of living Nature. Let him hold hard by this truth, and by it let him judge that other specialization which human society presents.

For this primary and physiological division of labour has its analogue in a much later thing, the division of labour in human society, upon which, indeed, the possibility of what we call human society depends. And it is plain that the time has come when we must determine the price that may rightly be paid for this specialization. Assuredly it is not to be had for nothing. Dr. Minot considers that death, as a biological fact, is the price paid for cell-differentiation. Now surely the death of individuality is the price paid for such specialization as that of the workman who spends his life supervising the machine which effects a single process in the making of a pin, and has never even seen any other but that stage in the process of making that one among all the "number of things" of which the world is full. Here, as in a thousand other cases, it has cost a man to make an expert.

How far we are entitled to go we shall determine only when we know what it is that we want to attain.

If we desire an efficient, durable, numerous society, there are probably no limits whatever that we need observe in the process of specialization. Pins are cheaper for the sacrifice of the individual in their making. In general, the professional must do better than the amateur; the lover of chamber music knows that a Joachim or Brussels Quartet is not to be found everywhere. Specialization we must have for progress, or even for the maintenance of what the past has achieved for us; but we shall pay the right price only by remembering the principle that all progress in the world of life has depended on cell-differentiation. If we prejudice that we are prejudicing progress.

Now nothing can be more evident than that, in some of our specializations of the individual for the sake of society, we are _opposing_ that specialization within the individual which, it has been laid down, we must never sacrifice. And so we reach the basal principle to which the preceding argument has been guiding us. It is that the specialization of the individual for the sake of society may rightly proceed to any point short of reversing or aborting the process of differentiation within himself. Every individual is an end in himself; there are no other ends for society; and that society is the best which best provides for the most complete development and self-expression of the individuals composing it.

But how, then, is the division of labour necessary for society to be effected, the reader may ask? The answer is that the human species, like all others, displays what biologists call variation--men and women naturally differ within limits so wide that, when we consider the case of genius, we must call them incalculable, illimitable. The difference of our faces or our voices is a mere symbol of differences no less universal but vastly more important. It is these differences, in reality, that are the cause of the development of human society and of that division of labour upon which it depends. In providing for the best development of all these various individuals we at the same time provide for the division of labour that we need; nor can we in any other fashion provide so well. Thus we shall attain a society which, if less certainly stable than that of the bees, is what that is not--progressive, and not merely static; and a society which is worth while, justified by the lives and minds of the individuals composing it.

We are not, then, to make a factitious differentiation of set purpose in the interests of society and to the detriment of individuals. We are not to take a being in whom Nature has differentiated a thousand parts, and, in effect, reduce him, in the interests of others, to one or two constituents and powers, thus nullifying the evolutionary course. But we shall frame a society such as the past never witnessed, and we shall achieve a rate of progress equally without parallel, by consistently regarding society as existing for the individual, and not the individual for society, and by thus realizing to the full his characteristic powers _for himself and for society_.

In so far as all this is true it is true of woman. It has long been asserted that woman is less variable than man; but the certainty of that statement has lately lost its edge. It is probably untrue. There is no real reason to suppose that woman is less complex or less variable than man. She has the same title as he has to those conditions in which her particular characters, whatever they be, shall find their most complete and fruitful development. There is no more a single ideal type of woman than there is a single ideal type of man. It takes all sorts even to make a sex. It has been in the past, and always must be, a piece of gross presumption on man's part to say to woman, "Thus shalt thou be, and no other." Whom Nature has made different, man has no business to make or even to desire similar. The world wants all the powers of all the individuals of either sex. On the other hand, no good can come of the attempt to distort the development of those powers or to seek conformity to any type. Much of the evil of the past has arisen from the limitation of woman to practically one profession. Even should it be incomparably the best, in general, it is by no means necessarily the best, or even good at all, for every individual. Men are to be heard saying, "A woman ought to be a wife and mother." It is, perhaps, the main argument of this book that, for most women, this is the sphere in which their characteristic potencies will find best and most useful expression both for self and others; but that is very different from saying that every woman ought to be a mother, or that no woman ought to be a surgeon. We may prefer the maternal to the surgical type, and there may be good reason for our preference; but the surgeon may be very useful, and, useful or not, the question is not one of ought. Thoughtful people should know better than to make this constant confusion between what ought to be and what is. Let us hold to our ideals, let us by all means have our scale of values; but the first question in such a case as this is as to what _is_. In point of fact all women are not of the same type; and our expression of what ought to be is none other than the passing of a censure upon Nature for her deeds. We may know better than she, or, as has happened, we may know worse.

VII

BEFORE WOMANHOOD

We have seen that the sex of the individual is already determined as early as any other of his or her characters, though the realization of the potentialities of that sex may be much modified by nurture, as in the contrasted cases of the queen bee and the worker bee. Children, then, are already of one sex or other, and though our business in the present volume is not childhood of either sex, a few points are worth noting before we take up the consideration of the individual at the period when the distinctive characteristics of sex make their effective appearance.

Despite the abundance of the material and the opportunities for observation, we are at present without decisive evidence as to the distinctiveness of sex in any effective way during childhood. Here, as elsewhere, we have to guard ourselves against the influences of nurture in the widest sense of the word; as when, to take an extreme case, we distinguish between the boy and the girl because the hair of the one is cut and of the other is not. The natural, as distinguished from the nurtural, distinctions at this period are probably much fewer than is supposed. It is asserted--to take physical characters first--that the girl of ten gives out in breathing considerably less carbonic acid than her brother of the same age, thus foreshadowing the difference between the sexes which is recognized in later years. If this fact be critically established it is of very great interest, showing that the sex distinction effectively makes its presence felt in the most essential processes of the body. But we should require to be satisfied that the observations were sufficiently numerous, and were made under absolutely equal conditions, and with due allowance for difference in body-weight. They would be the more credible if it were also shown that the number of the red blood corpuscles were smaller in girls than in boys in parallel with the difference between the sexes in later years.

Children of both sexes have fewer red blood corpuscles in a given quantity of blood and a smaller proportion of the red colouring matter, or hæmoglobin, than adults. Women have very definitely fewer red blood corpuscles than men, and a smaller proportion of hæmoglobin, and their blood is more watery. According to one authority this difference in the hæmoglobin can be observed from the ages of eleven to fifty, but not before. The specific gravity of the blood is found to be the same in both sexes before the fifteenth year. Thereafter, that of the boy's blood rises, and between seventeen and forty-five is definitely higher than in women of the corresponding age. It thus seems quite clear that, as we should expect, these differences in the blood, which are certainly, as Dr. Havelock Ellis says, fundamental, make their appearance definitely at puberty--a fact which supports the view that fundamental differences of practical importance between the two sexes before that age are not to be found. Careful comparative study of the pulse of children is hitherto somewhat inconclusive, though it is well known that the pulse is more rapid in women than in men.

On the other hand, it seems clear as regards respiration that as early as the age of twelve there are definite differences between the sexes. Several thousands of American school children were examined, and between the ages of six and nineteen the boys were throughout superior in lung capacity. The girls had almost reached their maximum capacity at the age of twelve, and thereafter the difference, till then slight, rapidly increased.[6] It appears that from eight to fifteen years of age a boy burns more carbon than a girl, the difference, however, being not great. But at puberty the boy proceeds to consume very nearly twice as much carbon per hour as his sister.

Perhaps the matter need not be pursued further. It is sufficient for us to recognize that puberty is really the critical time, and that in the consideration of womanhood we may, on the whole, be justified in looking upon the problem of the girl before that age as almost identical with her brother's. Yet we must be reasonably cautious, since our knowledge is small, and there is some by no means negligible evidence of fundamental physiological differences between the sexes before puberty, relatively slight though these may be. Therefore, though on the whole we need make few distinctions between the girl and her brother, and though we are doubtless wrong in the magnitude of the practical distinctions which we have often made hitherto, yet we must remember that these are going to be different beings, and that the main principles which determine our nurture of womanhood may be recalled when we are doubtful as to practice in the care of the girl child.

Physiological distinctions, we have seen, probably exist during these early years, but are of less importance than we sometimes have attached to them, and of no importance at all compared with what is to come. Psychological distinctions, we may believe, are still more dubious. For instance, it is generally believed that the parental instinct shows itself much more markedly in girls than in boys, and the commonly observed history of the liking for dolls is quoted in this connection. As this instinct bears so profoundly upon the later life of the individual, and as we may reasonably suppose the child to be the mother of the woman as well as the father of the man, the matter is worth looking at a little further.

But, in the first place, it has been asserted that the doll instinct has really nothing whatever to do with the parental instinct in either sex. Psychologists, whom one suspects of being bachelors, tell us that what we really observe here is the instinct of acquisition: it really does not matter what we give the child, though it so happens that we very commonly present it with dolls; it is the lust of possession that we satisfy, and in point of fact one thing will satisfy it as well as another.

The evidence against this view is quite overwhelming. We might quote the universal distribution of dolls in place and in time as revealed by anthropology. Wherever there is mankind there are dolls, whether in Mayfair or in Whitechapel, Japan, the South Sea Islands, Ancient Egypt or Mexico. Further, there is the observed behaviour of the child, opportunities for which have presumably been denied to the psychologists whose opinion has been quoted. The only objection to the theory that the child will be content with the possession of anything else as well as of a doll is the circumstance that the child is not so content, but asks for a doll for choice, and will lavish upon any doll, however diagrammatic, an amount of love and care which no other toy will ever obtain. Further, if the child has opportunities for playing with a real baby, it will be perfectly evident, even to the bachelor psychologist, that the doll was the vicarious substitute for the real thing.

But now, what as to the comparative strength of this instinct in the two sexes? Here we must not be deceived by the effects of nurture, environment, or education. Though finding, as we do, that the little boy enjoys playing with his dolls as his sister does, we refrain from buying dolls for him, and may indeed, underestimating the importance of human fatherhood, declare that dolls are beneath the dignity of a boy though good enough for his sister. He, destined rather for the business of destroying life, so much more glorious than saving it, must learn to play with soldiers. In this fashion we at least deprive ourselves of any opportunity of critically comparing the strength and the history of the instinct in the two sexes.

There is good reason to suppose that the distinction between the psychology of the boy and that of the girl in these early years is very small. If boys are not discouraged they will play with dolls for choice, just as their sisters do, and may be just as charming with younger brothers or sisters. Nor is it by any means certain that this misleading of ourselves is the worst consequence of the common practice. It is possible that we lose opportunities for the inculcation of ideals which are of the highest value to the individual and the race. I am reminded of the true story of a small boy, well brought up, who, being jeered at in the street by bigger boys because he was carrying a doll, turned upon his critics with the admirable retort--slightly wanting in charity, let us hope, but none the less pertinent--"None of you will ever be a good father."

Thus, on the whole, one is inclined to suppose that the general resemblance in facial appearance, bodily contour, and interests which we observe in children of the two sexes, indicates that deeper distinctions are latent rather than active. This is much more than an academic question, for if our subject in the present volume were the care of childhood, it is plain that we should have to base upon our answer to this question our treatment of boy and girl respectively. Probably we are on the whole correct in instituting no deep distinction of any kind in the nurture, either physical or mental, of children during their early years. Nor can there be any doubt, at least so far, as to the rightness of educating them together, and allowing them to compete, in so far as we allow competition at all, freely both in work and in games.

However this may be, there comes at an age which varies somewhat in different races and individuals, a period critical to both sexes, in which the factors of sex differentiation, hitherto more or less latent, begin conspicuously to assert themselves. Here, plainly, is the dawn of womanhood, and here, in our consideration of woman the individual, we must make a start. If we recall the tentative Mendelian analysis already referred to, we may suppose that the "factor" for womanhood begins to assert itself, at any rate in effective degree, at this period of puberty, when a girl becomes a woman; and that its most effective reign is over at the much later crisis which we call the change of life or climacteric. In other words, though sex is determined from the first, and though certain of its distinctive characters remain to the end, we may say that our study of womanhood is practically concerned with the years between twelve or thirteen, and forty-five or fifty. Before this period, as we have suggested, the distinction between the sexes is of no practical importance so far as _regimen_ and education are concerned. After this period also it is probable that the difference between the two sexes is diminished, and would be still more evidently diminished were it not for the effects which different experience has permanently wrought in the memory. We begin our practical study, then, of woman the individual, with the young girl at the age of puberty; and we must concern ourselves first with the care of her body.

VIII

THE PHYSICAL TRAINING OF GIRLS

We shall certainly not reach right conclusions about the physical training of girls unless we rightly understand what physical training does and does not effect, and what we desire it should effect. This applies to all education--that our aim be defined, that we shall know "what it is we are after," and it applies pre-eminently to the education, both physical and mental, of girls.

Now it will be granted, in the first place, that by physical training--whether in the form of gymnastics or games or what not--we desire to produce a healthier and more perfectly developed body. Some will add a stronger body, but as this term has two meanings constantly confused, it really contains the crux of the question. Stronger may mean stronger in the sense of resistance to disease or fatigue or strain of any kind, or it may mean stronger in the sense of the capacity to perform feats of strength. It being commonly assumed that vitality and muscularity are identical, this distinction is, on that assumption, merely academic and trivial. But as muscularity and vitality are not identical, and have indeed very little to do with each other, and as muscularity may even in certain conditions prejudice vitality, the distinction is not academic but all-important. I freely assert that it is substantially ignored by those who concern themselves with physical training, whether of boys or girls or recruits, all the world over.

Though a woman is naturally less muscular than a man, her vitality is higher. This seems to be a general truth of all female organisms. The evidence is of many orders. Thus, to begin with, women live longer, on the average, than men do. In the light of our modern knowledge of alcohol, however, we cannot regard this fact by itself as conclusive, since the average age attained by men is undoubtedly considerably lowered by alcohol, and of course to a much greater extent than obtains in the case of women. But women recover better from poisoning, such as occurs in infectious disease, and they are far more tolerant of loss of blood, as indeed they have to be. The same applies to loss of sleep or food, and to injurious influences generally. These indisputable proofs of superior vitality co-exist with much inferior muscularity, and are conclusive on the point. If men would make observations among themselves and think for a moment, they would soon perceive how foolish they are in crediting the assumptions of the strong men who so successfully persuade the public that the great thing is for a man to have big muscles. Men, muscular by nature, and still more so by nurture, are often in point of fact really weak compared with much less muscular men who, though they cannot put forth so much mechanical energy at a given moment, can yet endure fifty times the fatigue or stress or poisoning of any order. From the point of view of any sound physiology there is no comparison at all between the absurd strong man and the slight Marathon runner of small muscles but splendid vitality. If we are to test vitality in muscular terms at all--that in itself being a quite indefensible assumption--we must do so in terms of endurance, and not in terms of horse power or ass power, at any given moment.

If, then, vitality be our aim in physical training, and not muscularity as such, nor in any degree except in so far as it serves vitality, it is plain that we shall to some extent reconsider our methods.

Pre-eminently will this apply to the girl. Just because she is now becoming a woman, her vital energies are in no small degree pledged for special purposes of the highest importance, from which we cannot possibly divert them if we desire that she shall indeed become a woman. Thus, though muscular exercise of any kind is certainly not to be condemned, we must be cautious; for, in the first place, muscular exercise is no end in itself; in the second, the production of big muscles by exercise is no end in itself; and in the third place, all muscular exercise is expenditure of energy in those outward directions which are not characteristic of womanhood, and which must always be subordinated to those interests that are.

At this period of which we are speaking there are constructions of the most important kind going on in the girl's body, compared with which the construction of additional muscular tissue is of much less than no importance. These building-up processes are, we know, characteristic of the woman. Their right inception is a matter of the greatest importance. They involve the actual accumulation of food material and the building up of it into gland cells and other highly organized tissues upon which complete womanhood depends. These all-important concerns are prejudiced by excessive external expenditure, and thus the care necessary for the boy at puberty is a thousandfold more necessary for the girl, though the obvious changes in her appearance and her voice may be much less marked. Greater and more costly constructions are afoot in her case than her brother's, grossly though these facts are at present ignored in what we are pleased to call education, both physical and mental.

If we are to decide what kinds of physical exercise will be most desirable, we must come to some conclusion as to what is the object of our labours, it being granted that muscular activity and the making of big muscles are not ends in themselves. The answer to this question is to be found in what I have elsewhere called the new asceticism.

In tracing the history of animal progress, we find that it coincides with and has consisted in the emergence of the psychical and its predominance over the physical. The history of progress is the history of the evolving nervous system. Muscles are the servants of the nervous system. In man progress has reached its highest phase in that the nervous system, which at first was merely a servant of the body, has become the essential thing, so that the brain is the man. The old asceticism was at least right in regarding the soul as all-important, though it was utterly wrong in considering the interests of soul and body to be entirely antagonistic, and in teaching that for the elevation of the soul we must outrage, mutilate, and deny the body. The new asceticism accepts the first principle of the old, but bases its practice on a truer conception of the relations between mind and body. The greater part of the body is composed of muscles, and it is with muscles that physical training is concerned. On our principles, then, any system of physical training worth a straw must have primary reference to the brain, since the body, including the muscles, is only the servant of the ego or self which resides in the brain. For this reason, if for no other, the development of muscle as an end in itself is beneath human dignity; the value of a muscle lies not in its size or strength, but in its capacity to be a useful and skilful agent of the brain.

The exceptions to this rule are furnished by precisely those muscles which the usual forms of physical training and gymnastics ignore and subordinate to the development of the muscles of the limbs. It does matter very much that man or woman shall have the heart, which is the most important muscle in the body, and the muscles of respiration in good order. These muscles are directly necessary for life, and are therefore servants of the brain, even though they are not in any appreciable degree the direct agents of its purposes. Any kind of physical exercise then which, while developing the muscles of the arm, for instance, throws undue strain upon the heart or involves the fixation of the chest for a considerable period--as occurs in various feats of strength, whether with weights or upon bars or the like--is _ipso facto_ to be condemned. It is now recognized that in the training of soldiers much harm is often done in this way to the essential muscles, while others, more conspicuous but of relatively no importance, are being developed.

But before we consider in detail what kinds of exercise and with what accompaniment may be permitted for the muscles of the limbs, it is well that we should agree upon some method of deciding as to the quantity of such exercise. We cannot go by such measures as hours per week, for individuals vary. We must find some criterion which will guide us for each individual. The pendulum has swung in this regard from one extreme to another. Both extremes were adopted and permitted because in our guidance of girlhood we ignored facts of physiology, and, notably, because educators had not a clear conception of what it was that they desired to attain. By the consent of all who have given any attention to the subject, the great educational reformer of the nineteenth century was Herbert Spencer, and not the least of his services was his liberation of girls from the extraordinary _regimen_ of fifty years ago. There needs no excuse for a long quotation from the volume in which, just short of half a century ago, Herbert Spencer discussed this matter. Thereafter we may observe how the pendulum has swung to the other extreme:--

"To the importance of bodily exercise most people are in some degree awake. Perhaps less needs saying on this requisite of physical education than on most others; at any rate, in so far as boys are concerned. Public schools and private schools alike furnish tolerably adequate play-grounds; and there is usually a fair share of time for out-door games, and a recognition of them as needful. In this, if in no other direction, it seems admitted that the promptings of boyish instinct may advantageously be followed; and, indeed, in the modern practice of breaking the prolonged morning's and afternoon's lessons by a few minutes' open-air recreation, we see an increasing tendency to conform school-regulations to the bodily sensations of the pupils. Here, then, little need be said in the way of expostulation or suggestion.

"But we have been obliged to qualify this admission by inserting the clause in so far as boys are concerned. Unfortunately, the fact is quite otherwise with girls. It chances, somewhat strangely, that we have daily opportunity of drawing a comparison. We have both a boys' school and a girls' school within view; and the contrast between them is remarkable. In the one case nearly the whole of a large garden is turned into an open, gravelled space, affording ample scope for games, and supplied with poles and horizontal bars for gymnastic exercises. Every day before breakfast, again towards eleven o'clock, again at mid-day, again in the afternoon, and once more after school is over, the neighbourhood is awakened by a chorus of shouts and laughter as the boys rush out to play; and for as long as they remain, both eyes and ears give proof that they are absorbed in that enjoyable activity which makes the pulse bound and ensures the healthful activity of every organ. How unlike is the picture offered by the Establishment for Young Ladies! Until the fact was pointed out, we actually did not know that we had a girls' school as close to us as the school for boys. The garden, equally large with the other, affords no sign whatever of any provision for juvenile recreation; but is entirely laid out with prim grass-plots, gravel-walks, shrubs, and flowers, after the usual suburban style. During five months we have not once had our attention drawn to the premises by a shout or a laugh. Occasionally girls may be observed sauntering along the paths with their lesson-books in their hands, or else walking arm-in-arm. Once, indeed, we saw one chase another round the garden; but, with this exception, nothing like vigorous exertion has been visible.

"Why this astonishing difference? Is it that the constitution of a girl differs so entirely from that of a boy as not to need these active exercises? Is it that a girl has none of the promptings to vociferous play by which boys are impelled? Or is it that, while in boys these promptings are to be regarded as stimuli to a bodily activity without which there cannot be adequate development, to their sisters Nature has given them for no purpose whatever--unless it be for the vexation of schoolmistresses? Perhaps, however, we mistake the aim of those who train the gentler sex. We have a vague suspicion that to produce a robust physique is thought undesirable; that rude health and abundant vigour are considered somewhat plebeian; that a certain delicacy, a strength not competent to more than a mile or two's walk, an appetite fastidious and easily satisfied, joined with that timidity which commonly accompanies feebleness, are held more lady-like. We do not expect that any would distinctly avow this; but we fancy the governess-mind is haunted by an ideal young lady bearing not a little resemblance to this type. If so, it must be admitted that the established system is admirably calculated to realize this ideal. But to suppose that such is the ideal of the opposite sex is a profound mistake. That men are not commonly drawn towards masculine women is doubtless true. That such relative weakness as asks the protection of superior strength is an element of attraction we quite admit. But the difference thus responded to by the feelings of men is the natural, pre-established difference, which will assert itself without artificial appliances. And when, by artificial appliances, the degree of this difference is increased, it becomes an element of repulsion rather than of attraction.

"'Then girls should be allowed to run wild--to become as rude as boys, and grow up into romps and hoydens!' exclaims some defender of the proprieties. This, we presume, is the ever-present dread of schoolmistresses. It appears, on inquiry, that at Establishments for Young Ladies noisy play like that daily indulged in by boys is a punishable offence; and we infer that it is forbidden, lest unladylike habits should be formed. The fear is quite groundless, however. For if the sportive activity allowed to boys does not prevent them from growing up into gentlemen, why should a like sportive activity prevent girls from growing up into ladies? Rough as may have been their play-ground frolics, youths who have left school do not indulge in leap-frog in the street, or marbles in the drawing-room. Abandoning their jackets, they abandon at the same time boyish games, and display an anxiety--often a ludicrous anxiety--to avoid whatever is not manly. If now, on arriving at the due age, this feeling of masculine dignity puts so efficient a restraint on the sports of boyhood, will not the feeling of feminine modesty, gradually strengthening as maturity is approached, put an efficient restraint on the like sports of girlhood? Have not women even a greater regard for appearances than men? and will there not consequently arise in them even a stronger check to whatever is rough or boisterous? How absurd is the supposition that the womanly instincts would not assert themselves but for the rigorous discipline of schoolmistresses!

"In this, as in other cases, to remedy the evils of one artificiality, another artificiality has been introduced. The natural, spontaneous exercise having been forbidden, and the bad consequences of no exercise having become conspicuous, there has been adopted a system of factitious exercise--gymnastics. That this is better than nothing we admit, but that it is an adequate substitute for play we deny."

The pendulum has indeed swung across from those days to these of the hockey-girl, not to mention the girl who throws a cricket-ball and bowls very creditably overhand. There can be no doubt that this state of things is vastly better than that was, yet, as one has endeavoured to insist, this also has its risks. Apart from the question as to the particular game or form of exercise, we must be guided in each case by the first signs of anything approaching undue strain. We must look out for lack of energy, for a lessening of joy in the exercise and of spontaneous desire therefor. Fatigue that interferes with appetite, digestion, or sleep is utterly to be condemned.

_The Specific Criterion._--Such criteria apply, of course, equally to either sex, though it is more important to be on the look-out for them in the case of the developing girl. But in her case there is another criterion, which is of special importance, because it concerns not only her development as an individual, but her development as a woman. That criterion is furnished us by the menstrual function. It may safely be said that that exercise is excessive and must be immediately curtailed which leads to the diminution of this function, much more to its disappearance. I would, indeed, urge this as a test of the highest importance, always applicable to whatever circumstances. Defect in this respect should never be looked upon lightly; it may, indeed, be a conservative process, as in cases of anæmia, but the cause which produces such an effect is always to be combated.

_The Kinds of Exercise._--Given, then, this most important test as to the quantity of exercise of whatever kind--a test which indeed applies no less to mental exercise--we may pass on to consider the kinds of exercise best suited for the girl, it being premised that any one of them, however good in itself and in moderation, is capable of being pursued to excess, and that the danger of this is specially noticeable in the case of the girl, because, as we have seen, the effects of excess are more serious in her case, and also because girls are very apt to take things up with immense keenness, and sometimes, in even greater degree than their brothers, to devote themselves too much to the competitive aspect of things. The girl should certainly be content to play a game for the joy of it, and be scarcely less happy to lose than to win if her side has played the game and made a good fight of it. The competitive element is excessive in almost all sports to-day, and it is especially to be deplored in the games of girls, who are so liable to overstrain and so apt to take trifles to heart.

In what has been already said and in the end of our quotation from Herbert Spencer, it will be evident that purposeful games rather than exercises are to be commended. There is indeed no comparison for a moment possible between Nature's method of exercise, which is obtained through play, and the ridiculous and empty parodies of it which men invent. The truth is that Nature is aiming at one thing, and man at another. Man's aim, for reasons already exploded, is the acquirement of strength; Nature's is the acquirement of skill. It is really nervous development that Nature is interested in when she appears to be persuading the young thing to exercise its muscles. Man notices only the muscular contractions involved, thinks he can improve upon Nature, and invents absurdities like dumb-bells.

It is the nervous system by which we human beings live. Our voluntary muscles are agents of the will, agents of purpose; and while strength is a trifle, skill is always everything. We know now that it is impossible to carry out any human purpose by the contraction of one muscle or even one group of muscles. Even when we merely bend the arm we are doing things with the muscles which extend it, and when we raise it sideways we are modifying the whole trunk in order to preserve the balance. We have only to watch the clumsiness of an infant or a small child to realize how much skill the nervous system has to acquire. This skill may be mainly expressed as co-ordination, the balanced use of many muscles for a purpose and, as a rule, their co-ordinated use with one of the senses, more especially vision, but also touch and hearing.

This is the first of the physiological reasons why games and play of all sorts are so incomparably superior to the use of dumb-bells and developers, where movement and increase of muscular strength are made ends in themselves; whereas in play we are making relations with the outside world, responding to stimuli, educating our nerve muscular apparatus as an instrument of human purpose.

It is in part true to suppose that the play of children expresses an overflow of superfluous energy, but a still deeper and much more important conception of play is that which recognizes in it Nature's method of nervous development, the attainment of control and co-ordination, the capacity of quick and accurate response to circumstances and obedience to the will. Compare, for instance, the girl who has played games, avoiding danger as she crosses the road, with another whose youth has been made dreary by dumb-bells. It may freely be laid down, then, that systems of physical training are good in proportion as they approximate to play, and bad in proportion as they depart from it; and, further, that the very best of them ever devised is worthless in comparison with a good game. This evidently does not refer to, say, special exercises for a curved back.

However, systems of physical training we shall still have with us for a long time to come, and perhaps the mere difficulty of finding room for games makes them necessary, though it may be noted in passing that the last touch of absurdity is accorded to our frequent preference for exercises over games when we conduct the exercises in foul air and prefer them to games in the open air. If exercises we are to have, then they must at least be modelled so as to come as near as possible to play in the two essentials. The first of these has already been mentioned--the preference of skill to strength as an object.

The second, though less obvious, is no less important. What is the most palpable fact of the child's play? It is enjoyment. We have done for ever with the elegant morality which grown-up people, very particular about their own meals, used to impose upon children, and which was based upon the idea that everything which a child enjoys is therefore bad for it. We are learning the elements of the physiology of joy. We find that pleasure and boredom have distinct effects upon the body and the mind, notably in the matter of fatigue. Careful study of fatigue in school children has shown that the hour devoted to physical exercise of the dreary kind under a strict disciplinarian may, instead of being a recreation, actually induce more fatigue than an hour of mathematics. If, then, we cannot allow the girl to play, but must give her some kind of formal exercise, we must at least make it as enjoyable as possible. There are Continental systems of gymnastics which do not believe in the use of music because, forsooth, they find that the music diminishes the disciplinary effect! Such an argument dismisses those who adduce it from the category of those entitled to have anything to do with young people. They should devote themselves to training the rhinoceros, these martinets; the human spirit is not for their mauling. In point of fact one of the redeeming features of physical training is the use of music, which goes far to supply the pleasure that accrues from the natural exercise of games, and greatly reduces the fatigue of which the risk is otherwise by no means inconsiderable. We leave this subject, then, for the nonce, having arrived at the conclusion that the objects of physical training are skill and pleasure rather than strength and discipline; that the system is best which is nearest to play; and that the use of music is specially to be commended.

But, as we have said, artificial physical training at its best is not to be compared with the real thing; more especially if, as is usually the case, the real thing has the advantage of being practised in pure air. We must ask ourselves, then, what sort of games are suitable for girls, and to what extent, if at all, mixed games are desirable. We must first remind ourselves of the proviso that any game may be played to excess, whether physical excess or mental excess, the risk of both of these being involved when the competitive element is made too conspicuous. If this risk be avoided there is no objection, perhaps, to even such a vigorous game as hockey in moderation for girls. The present writer has observed mixed hockey for many years, and finds it impossible to believe that the game should be condemned for girls, but he has always seen it under conditions where the game was simply played for the fun of the thing, and that makes a great difference.

It is certainly open to argument whether, in such a game as hockey, it is not better, on the whole, that girls shall play by themselves, but, as has been urged elsewhere, there is a good deal to be said for the meeting of the sexes elsewhere than in the artificial conditions of the ball-room, since these mixed games widen the field of choice for marriage and provide far more natural and desirable conditions under which the choice may be made. There can be no question that an epoch has been created by the freedom of the modern girl to play games, and to enjoy the movements of a ball, as her brother does. The very fact of her pleasure in games indicates, to those who do not believe that the body is constructed on essentially vicious principles, that they must be good for her. The mere exercise is the least of the good they do. The open air counts for more, as does the development of skill, and the girl's opportunity of sharing in that moral education which all good games involve and which there is no need to insist upon here. Amongst the many things alleged against woman as natural defects by those who have never for a moment troubled to distinguish between nature and nurture, are an incapacity to combine with her sisters, petty dishonour in small things, a blindness to the meaning of "playing the game." It is similarly alleged by such persons against the lower classes that they also do not know how to "play the game," and do not understand the spirit of true sportsmanship, preferring to win anyhow rather than not at all. But those who conduct the Children's Vacation Schools in London--that remarkable arrangement by which children are damaged in school time and educated in holidays--are aware that in a short time children of any class can be taught to "play the game," if only they can be made to see it from that point of view. So also women can learn to combine, to be unselfish, to avoid petty deceits even in games, to obey a captain and to accept the umpire's decision, when they are taught, as we all have to be taught, that that is playing the game.

These immense virtues of the new departure must by no means be forgotten in the course of the reaction which is bound to occur, and is indeed necessary, against the contemporary practice of trying to demonstrate that boys and girls are substantially identical. He who pleads for the golden mean is always abused by extremists of both parties, but is always justified in the long run, and this is a case where the golden mean is eminently desirable, being indeed vital, which is much more than golden. Safety is to be found in our recognition of elementary physiological principles, assuming from the first that though it is not difficult to turn a girl into something like a boy, it is not desirable; and especially in attending carefully, in the case of each individual, to the indications furnished by that characteristic physiological function, interference with which necessarily imperils womanhood.

The organism is a whole; it reacts not only to physical strain but to mental strain. There are parts of the world, including a country no less distinguished as a pioneer of education than Scotland, where serious mental strain is now being imposed upon girls at this very period of the dawn of womanhood, when strain of any kind is especially to be deplored. Utterly ignoring the facts of physiology, the laws and approximate dates of human development, official regulations demand that at just such ages as thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen large numbers of girls--and picked girls--shall devote themselves to the strain of preparing for various examinations, upon which much depends. Worry combines to work its effects with those of excessive mental application, excessive use of the eyes at short distances, and defective open-air amusement. The whole examination system is of course to be condemned, but most especially when its details are so devised as to press thus hardly upon girlhood at this critical and most to be protected period. Many years ago Herbert Spencer protested that we must acquaint ourselves with the laws of life, since these underlie all the activities of living beings. The time is now at hand when we shall discover that education is a problem in applied biology, and that the so-called educator, whether he works destruction from some Board of Education or elsewhere, who knows and cares nothing about the laws of the life of the being with whom he deals, is simply an ignorant and dangerous quack.

What has been said about the reaction against excess in the physical education of girls applies very forcibly to excess in their mental education. We are undoubtedly coming upon a period when more and more will be heard of the injurious consequences of such ill-timed preparation for stupid examinations as has been referred to; and there will be not a few to sigh for the return to the bad old days which a certain type of mind always calls good. Here, again, we must find the golden mean, recognizing that the danger lies in excess, and especially in ill-timed excess. We shall further discover that if we desire a girl to become a woman, and not an indescribable, we must provide for her a kind of higher education which shall take into account the object at which we aim. It will be found that there are womanly concerns, of profound importance to a girl and therefore to an empire, which demand no less of the highest mental and moral qualities than any of the subjects in a man's curriculum, and the pursuit of which in reason does not compromise womanhood, but only ratifies and empowers it.

_Muscles worth Developing._--When men and women are carefully compared, it is found that women, muscularly weaker as a whole, are most notably so as regards the arms, the muscles of respiration, and the muscles of the back. The muscles of the legs, and especially of the thighs, are relatively stronger. In these facts we can find some practical guidance. The muscles of all the limbs may be left comparatively out of account; whether naturally weak or naturally strong they are of subordinate importance. On the other hand, it is always worth while to cultivate the muscles of respiration, as it is always worth while to keep the heart in good order. Again, the weakness of the muscles of the back, and more especially in the case of the growing girl, is not a thing to be accepted as readily as the weakness of the biceps and the forearm muscles. Various observers find a proportion of between 85 per cent. and 90 per cent. of those suffering from lateral curvature of the spine to be girls, the great majority of these cases occurring between the ages of ten and fifteen. Everywhere it is our duty to prevent such cases, and everywhere physical training will find only too abundant opportunities for endeavouring to correct them. It may be doubted perhaps whether we may rightly follow Havelock Ellis in attributing woman's liability to backache to the relative weakness of the muscles of the back, for we know how often this symptom depends upon not muscular but internal causes peculiar to woman. On the other hand, we may certainly follow Havelock Ellis when he says, regarding this lateral curvature of the spine, from which so many girls and women suffer: "There can be no doubt that defective muscular development of the back, occurring at the age of maximum development, and due to the conventional restraints on exercises involving the body, and also to the use of stays, which hamper the freedom of such movements, is here a factor of very great importance." We shall not here concern ourselves with the details of practice, but the principle is to be laid down that perhaps second only in importance to the right development of the heart and the muscles of respiration is that of the muscles of the back.

Always, however, we are apt to judge by the obvious and to value it unduly. Nature makes the biceps and the muscles of the forearm naturally the weakest in woman compared with man, but it is just the bending of the elbow that makes a good show on a horizontal bar or rope; and so we devote too much time to the training of these muscles in our girls, with the results which make such creditable exhibitions at the end of the session, while we forget the muscles of the back, the right development of which is far more valuable, but does not lend itself to display.

In this connection it is to be added last, but not least, that special importance attaches in woman to those muscles which one may perhaps call the muscles of motherhood. It is common experience amongst physicians to find the appropriate muscularity defective at childbirth in women the muscles of whose limbs may have been very highly developed. Thus Dr. Havelock Ellis, amongst other evidence, quotes that of a physician, who says: "In regard to this interesting and suggestive question, it does seem a fact that women who exercise all their muscles persistently meet with increased difficulties in parturition. It would certainly seem that excessive development of the muscular system is unfavourable to maternity. I hear from instructors in physical training, both in the United States and in England, of excessively tedious and painful confinements among their fellows--two or three cases in each instance only, but this within the knowledge of a single individual among his friends. I have also several such reports from the circus--perhaps exceptions. I look upon this as a not impossible result of muscular exertion in women, the development of muscle, muscular attachments, and bony frame leading to approximation to the male."

In his lectures ten years ago, the distinguished obstetrician, Sir Halliday Croom, now professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh, used to criticise cycling on this score, not as regards its development of the muscles of the lower limbs, but as tending towards local rigidity unfavourable to childbirth. It may be doubted, perhaps, whether longer and wider experience of cycling by women warrants this criticism, but it is probably worth noting.

On the other hand, while exercise of certain muscles may interfere obscurely or mechanically with motherhood, we are to remember that the muscles of the abdomen are indeed the accessory muscles of motherhood, and therefore specially to be considered. According to Mosso of Turin, it is only in modern times that civilized woman shows the comparative weakness of these muscles which is indeed commonly to be found. There is verily no sign of it in the Venus of Milo, as any one can see. That statue represents very highly developed abdominal muscles in a woman less notably muscular elsewhere. The muscles lie near the skin, the disposition of fat being very small, yet the woman is distinctively maternal in type, and every kind of æsthetic praise that may be showered upon the statue may be supplemented by the encomiums of the physiologist and the worshipper of motherhood. It is highly desirable that, in physical training to-day, attention should be paid to the development of the abdominal muscles. Holding the abdomen together by means of a corset may serve its own purpose, but does less than nothing in the crisis of motherhood. The corset indeed conduces to the atrophy of the most important of all the voluntary muscles for the most important crisis of a woman's life. "Some of the slower Spanish dances" are commended for the development of the abdominal muscles, but one would rather recommend swimming, the abandonment of the corset, and, if the gymnasium is to be used, some of the various exercises which serve these muscles, however little they may serve to exploit the apparatus of the gymnasium when visitors are invited.

There is no occasion in the present volume to discuss in detail any such thing as a course of physical exercises, but it is a pleasure, and, for the English reader, a convenience to direct attention to the Syllabus of Physical Exercises for Public Elementary Schools, issued by the English Board of Education in 1909.[7] After nearly forty years of folly, the dawn is breaking in our schools. It is evident that the Board of Education has followed the best medical advice. Indeed, now that medical knowledge is actually represented upon the Board, and represented as it is, there is no need to go far. The principles which have been laid down in previous pages are abundantly recognized in this admirable syllabus. The exercises recommended for the nation's children are based upon the Swedish system of educational gymnastics. But it is fortunately recognized that that system requires modification, since "freedom of movement and a certain degree of exhilaration are essentials of all true physical education. Hence it has been thought well not only to modify some of the usual Swedish combinations in order to make the work less exacting, but to introduce games and dancing steps into many of the lessons." "The Board desire that all lessons in physical exercises in public elementary schools should be thoroughly enjoyed by the children." "Enjoyment is one of the most necessary factors in nearly everything which concerns the welfare of the body, and if exercise is distasteful and wearisome, its physical as well as its mental value is greatly diminished." An interesting paragraph on music recognizes its value in avoiding fatigue, but underestimates, perhaps, the desirability of including music for use at later years as well as for infant classes.

The syllabus contains admirably illustrated exercises in detail. They are earnestly to be commended to the reader who is responsible for girlhood, and notably to those who are interested in the formation and conducting of girls' clubs. The syllabus is excellent in the attention paid to games, in the commendation of skipping and of dancing. The following quotation well illustrates the spirit of wisdom which is at last beginning to illuminate our national education:--"The value of introducing dancing steps into any scheme of physical training as an additional exercise especially for girls, or even in some cases for boys, is becoming widely recognized. Dancing, if properly taught, is one of the most useful means of promoting a graceful carriage, with free, easy movements, and is far more suited to girls than many of the exercises and games borrowed from boys. As in other balance exercises, the nervous system acquires a more perfect control of the muscles, and in this way a further development of various brain centres is brought about.... Dancing steps add very greatly to the interest and recreative effect of the lesson, the movements are less methodical and exact, and are more natural; if suitably chosen they appeal strongly to the imagination, and act as a decided mental and physical stimulus, and exhilarate in a wholesome manner both body and mind."

Plainly, our educators have begun to be educated since 1870.

Of course, there is dancing and dancing. The real thing bears the same relation to dancing as it is understood in Mayfair, as the music of Schubert does to that of Sousa. The ideal dancing for girls is such as that illustrated by the children trained by Miss Isadora Duncan. Some of these girls were seen for a short time at the Duke of York's Theatre in London not long ago, and the American reader, rightly proud of Miss Duncan, should not require to be told what she has achieved. Just as we are learning the importance of games and play, so that a syllabus issued by the Board of Education instructs one how to stand when "giving a back" at leap-frog, so also we shall learn again from Nature that dancing of the natural and exquisite kind, never to be forgotten or confused with imitations by any one who has seen Miss Duncan's children, must be recognized as a great educative measure--educative alike of mind, body, ear, and eye, and better worth while for any girl of any rank than volumes of fictitious history concocted by fools concerning knaves.

_Girls' Clubs._--Allusion has been made to girls' clubs, and one may be fortunate enough to have some readers who may feel inclined to partake in the splendid work which may be done by this means. It requires high qualities and a certain amount of expert knowledge. Much of the latter can be obtained from the little book recommended above. For the rest, it is worth while briefly to point out what the girls' club may effect, and why it is so much needed.

It has been insisted that puberty is a critical age because it means the dawn of womanhood. It is critical in both sexes, not only for the body but also for the mind. It is now that the intellect awakes; it is now that the real formation of character begins. We often talk about spoilt children at three or four, but any kind of making or marring of character at such ages can be undone in a few weeks or less--that is, in so far as it is an effect of training and not of nature that we are dealing with. The real spoiling or making is at that birth of the adult which we call puberty. During adolescence the adult is being made, and everything matters for ever. This is true of physique, of mind, and of character. The importance of this period is recognized by modern churches in their rite of Confirmation, and it was recognized by ancient religions, by Greeks and by Romans. Our national appreciation of it is expressed by our devotion of vast amounts of money and labour to the child, until the all-important epoch is reached, when we wash our hands of it. We educate away, for all we are worth, when what is mainly required is plenty of good food and open air; and we have done with the matter when the age for real education arrives. In time to come our neglect of adolescence in both sexes, more especially in girls, will be marvelled at, and many of the evils from which we suffer will cease to exist because the fatal and costly economy of the practical man is dismissed as a delusion and a sham, and it is perceived that whether for the saving of life or for the saving of money, adolescence must be cared for.

Meanwhile, it behoves private people who care about these things to do what they can. If they rightly influence but ten girls, it was well worth doing. The girls' club is a very inexpensive mode of social activity. Practically the only substantial item of expenditure is the hire of a gymnasium, say for two evenings in a week. The girls' dresses can be made at home at quite a trivial cost. The primary attraction would be the gymnasium. It must, of course, contain a piano, not necessarily one on which Pachmann would play, but a piano nevertheless. There is also required a pianist, not necessarily a Pachmann. Two girls are better than one to run such a club. They will not find it difficult to obtain material to work upon. They must acquire at a Polytechnic, or perhaps they have acquired themselves at school, some knowledge of how to conduct the work and play of the gymnasium. It will depend upon the conductors of the club how far its virtues extend. Much elementary hygiene may be taught as well as practised, and if it confine itself only to matters of ventilation, clothing, care of the teeth and feet, it is abundantly worth while. It is often possible to get medical men or women to come and talk to the girls, and in the best of these clubs there will be some more or less conscious and overt preparation in one way and another for matters no less momentous alike for the individual and the race than marriage and motherhood.

_Girls' Clothing._--There is little good to be said about much of the clothing of girls and women. All clothing should of course be loose, on grounds which have been fully gone into in the previous volume on personal hygiene. A woman's headgear is perhaps too often the only article of her dress which conforms to this rule. It is good that the stimulant effect of air, and air in motion, upon the skin should be as widely extended as is compatible with sufficient warmth and decency. Thus most women wear far too many clothes, apart from the question of tightness. A woman handicaps herself seriously as compared with a man, in that, while she is much less muscular, her clothes are often so much heavier. All this applies with great force to girls. The following quotation from the syllabus referred to above is worth making:--

"_A Suitable Dress for Girls._--A simple dress for girls suitable for taking physical exercises or games consists of a tunic, a jersey or blouse, and knickers. The tunic and knickers may be made of blue serge, and, if a blouse is worn, it should be made of some washing material.

The tunic, which requires two widths of serge, may be gathered or, preferably, pleated into a small yoke with straps passing over the shoulders. The dress easily slips on over the head, and the shoulder straps are then fastened. It should be worn with a loose belt or girdle. In no case should any form of stiff corset be used.

The knickers, with their detachable washing linen, should replace all petticoats. They should not be too ample, and should not be visible below the tunic. They are warmer than petticoats and allow greater freedom of movement.

Any plain blouse may be worn with the tunic, or a woollen jersey may be substituted in cold weather.

With regard to the cost of such a dress, serge may be procured for 1s. 6d. to 2s. per yard. For the tunic some 2 to 2-1/2 yards are usually required, and for the knickers about 1-1/2 to 2 yards. It may be found possible in some schools to provide patterns, or to show girls how to make such articles for themselves. Such a dress, though primarily designed for physical exercises, is entirely suitable for ordinary school use.

Though it is, of course, not practicable to introduce this dress into all Public Elementary Schools, or in the case of all girls, yet in many schools there are children whose parents are both willing and able to provide them with appropriate clothing. The adoption of a dress of this kind, which is at the same time useful and becoming, tends to encourage that love of neatness and simplicity which every teacher should endeavour to cultivate among the girls. And as it allows free scope for all movements of the body and limbs, it cannot fail to promote healthy physical development."

IX

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN

In the last chapter brief reference was made to the effects of ill-timed mental strain. Our principles have already led us to the conclusion that there are special risks for girls involved in educational strain, and that is, of course, equally true whatever the curriculum. But that being granted, it is necessary to draw very special attention to a new movement in the higher education of women which is based upon the principle that a woman is not the same as a man; that she has special interests and duties which require no less knowledge and skill than those with which men are concerned. A tentative experiment in this direction has already, we are assured, altered the whole attitude towards life of those girls who partook in it, and there is no question that we now see the beginning of a new epoch in the higher education of women upon properly differentiated lines such as have been utterly ignored in the past. I refer to the "Special Courses for the Higher Education of Women in Home Science and Household Economics," which now form part of the activities of the University of London at King's College. "The main object of these courses," we are told, "is to provide a thoroughly scientific education in the principles underlying the whole organization of 'Home Life,' the conduct of Institutions, and other spheres of civic and social work in which these principles are applicable." The lecturers are mainly highly qualified women, and the courses are extremely thorough and comprehensive. The following are the subjects which are dealt with: economics and ethics, psychology, biology, business matters, physiology, bacteriology, chemistry, domestic arts, sanitary science and hygiene, applied chemistry and physics.[8]

It will be seen that there is no underrating here of the capacities of women. The courses are not limited merely to cooking and washing, though these are most carefully gone into. It is a far cry from them to psychology and ethics or "A Sketch of the Historical Development of the Household in England." One can imagine the joy with which girls, largely nourished on the husks which constitute most of the educational curricula of boys, will turn to a series of lectures on Child Psychology, that deal with the general course of mental development in the child, with interest and attention, the processes of learning, mental fatigue and adolescence. The highest capacities of the mind in women are not ignored when we find included a course of which the special text-book is Spencer's "Data of Ethics." One can imagine also that the course on the elements of general economics, with its study of wealth and value and price, the laws of production and distribution, may bring into being a kind of housewife who, whether or not eligible for Parliament, would certainly be a much more desirable member thereof than nine-tenths of the prosperous gentlemen who daily record their opinions there upon matters they know not of. All who care at all for womanhood or for England must rejoice in the beginnings of this revised version of higher education for women which, for once in a way, finds London a pioneer. We must have such courses all over the country. Every father who can afford it must give his girls the incalculable benefit of such opportunities. The girl thus educated will glory in her womanhood, and will help to gain for it its right estimation and position in the state.

But it is to be pointed out that such courses as these, admirable though they be, are yet not everything. The influence of our great national deity, which is Mrs. Grundy, is apparent still. It is not specifically recognized that the highest destiny of a woman is motherhood, though in such courses as this motherhood will doubtless be served directly and indirectly in many ways. There is, nevertheless, required something more--something indeed no less than conscious, purposeful education for parenthood. The chief obstacle in the way of this ideal is Anglo-Saxon prudery, and, perhaps, the reader will not be persuaded that education for parenthood is our greatest educational need to-day, more especially for girls, until he or she has been persuaded of the magnitude of the preventable evils which flow from our present neglect of this matter. In the following chapter, therefore, one may point out what prudery costs us at present, and indeed, the reader may then be persuaded that education for parenthood, or, as it may be called, eugenic education, is, perhaps, the most important subject that can be discussed to-day in any book on womanhood.

X

THE PRICE OF PRUDERY

Just after we had succeeded in getting the Notification of Births Act put upon the Statute Book, the present writer occupied himself in various parts of the country in the efforts which were necessary to persuade local authorities to adopt the provisions of that Act. Addressing a meeting of the clergy of Islington, he endeavoured to trace back to the beginning the main cause of infant mortality, and endeavoured to show that that lay in the natural ignorance of the human mother, about which more must later be said. In the discussion which followed, an elderly clergyman insisted that the causes had not been traced far enough back, maternal ignorance being itself permitted in consequence of our national prudery.

Ever since that day one has come to see more and more clearly that the criticism was just. Maternal ignorance, as we shall see later, is a natural fact of human kind, and destroys infant life everywhere, though prudery be or be not a local phenomenon. But where vast organizations exist for the remedying of ignorance, prudery indeed is responsible for the neglect of ignorance on the most important of all subjects. Let it not be supposed for a moment that in this protest one desires, even for the highest ends, to impart such knowledge as would involve sullying the bloom of girlhood. It is not necessary to destroy the charm of innocence in order to remedy certain kinds of ignorance; nor are prudery and modesty identical. Whatever prudery may be when analyzed, it seems perfectly fair to charge it as the substantial cause of the ignorance in which the young generation grows up, as to matters which vitally concern its health and that of future generations. Let us now observe in brief the price of prudery thus arraigned.

There is, first, that large proportion of infant mortality which is due to maternal ignorance, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter. At present we may briefly remind ourselves that the nation has had the young mother at school for many years; much devotion and money have been spent upon her. Yet it is necessary to pass an Act insuring, if possible, that when she is confronted with the great business of her life--which is the care of a baby--within thirty-six hours the fact shall be made known to some one who, racing for life against time, may haply reach her soon enough to remedy the ignorance which would otherwise very likely bury her baby. Prudery has decreed that while at school she should learn nothing of such matters. For the matter of that she may even have attended a three-year course in science or technology, and be a miracle of information on the keeping of accounts, the testing of drains, and the principles of child psychology, but it has not been thought suitable to discuss with her the care of a baby. How could any nice-minded teacher care to put such ideas into a girl's head? Never having noticed a child with a doll, we have somehow failed to realize that Nature, her Ancient Mother and ours, is not above putting into her head, when she can scarcely toddle, the ideas at which we pretend to blush. Prudery on this topic, and with such consequences, is not much less than blasphemy against life and the most splendid purposes towards which the individual, "but a wave of the wild sea," can be consecrated.

This question of the care of babies offers us much less excuse for its neglect than do questions concerned with the circumstances antecedent to the babies' appearance. Yet we are blameworthy, and disastrously so, here also. Prudery here insists that boys and girls shall be left to learn anyhow. That is not what it says, but that is what it does. It feebly supposes not merely that ignorance and innocence are identical, but that, failing the parent, the doctor, the teacher, and the clergyman--and probably all these do fail--ignorance will remain ignorant. There are others, however, who always lie in wait, whether by word of mouth or the printed word, and since youth will in any case learn--except in the case of a few rare and pure souls--we have to ask ourselves whether we prefer that these matters shall be associated in its mind with the cad round the corner or the groom or the chauffeur who instructs the boy, the domestic servant who instructs the girl, and with all those notions of guilty secrecy and of misplaced levity which are entailed; or with the idea that it is right and wise to understand these matters in due measure because their concerns are the greatest in human life.

After puberty, and during early adolescence, when a certain amount of knowledge has been acquired, we leave youth free to learn lies from advertisements, carefully calculated to foster the tendency to hypochondria, which is often associated with such matters. Of this, however, no more need now be said, since it scarcely concerns the girl.

It is the ignorance conditioned by prudery that is responsible later on for many criminal marriages; contracted, it may be, with the blind blessing of Church and State, which, however, the laws of heredity and infection rudely ignore. Parents cannot bring themselves to inquire into matters which profoundly concern the welfare of the daughter for whom they propose to make what appears to be a good marriage. They desire, of course, that her children shall be healthy and whole-minded; they do not desire that marriage should be for her the beginning of disease, from the disastrous effects of which she may never recover. But these are delicate matters, and prudery forbids that they should be inquired into; yet every father who permits his daughter to marry without having satisfied himself on these points is guilty, at the least, of grave delinquency of duty, and may, in effect, be conniving at disasters and desolations of which he will not live to see the end.

Young people often grow fond of each other and become engaged, and then, if the engagement be prolonged--as all engagements ought to be, as a general rule--they may find that, after all, they do not wish to marry. Yet the girl's mother, an imprudent prude, may often in this and other cases do her utmost to bring the marriage about, not because she is convinced that it means her daughter's highest welfare and happiness, but because prudery dictates that her daughter must marry the man with whom she has been so frequently seen; hence very likely lifelong unhappiness, and worse.

Society, from the highest to the lowest of its strata, is afflicted with certain forms of understood and eminently preventable disease, about which not a word has been spoken in Parliament for twenty years, and any public mention of which by mouth or pen involves serious risk of various kinds. Here it is perhaps not necessary for us to consider the case of the outcast, and of the diseases with which, poor creature, she is first infected, and which she then distributes into our homes. Our present concern is simply to point out that prudery, again, is largely responsible for the continuance of these evils at a time when we have so much precise knowledge regarding their nature and the possibility of their prevention. Medical science cannot make distinctions between one disease and another, nor between one sin and another, as prudery does. Prudery says that such and such is vice, that its consequences in the form of disease are the penalties imposed by its abominable god upon the guilty and the innocent, the living and the unborn alike, and that therefore our ordinary attitude towards disease cannot here be maintained. Physiological science, however, knowing what it knows regarding food and alcohol, and air and exercise and diet, can readily demonstrate that the gout from which Mrs. Grundy suffers is also a penalty for sin; none the less because it is not so hideously disproportionate, in its measure and in its incidence, to the gravity of the offence. These moral distinctions between one disease and another have little or no meaning for medical science, and are more often than not immoral.

It would be none too easy to show that the medical profession in any country has yet used its tremendous power in this direction. Professions, of course, do not move as a whole, and we must not expect the universal laws of institutions to find an exception here. But though they do not move, they can be moved. It is when the public has been educated in the elements of these matters, and has been taught to see what the consequences of prudery are, that the necessary forces will be brought into action. Meanwhile, what we call the social evil is almost entirely left to the efforts made in Rescue Homes and the like. Despite the judgment of a popular novelist and playwright, it is much more than doubtful whether Rescue Homes--the only method which Mrs. Grundy will tolerate--are the best way of dealing with this matter, even if the people who worked in them had the right kind of outlook upon the matter, and even if their numbers were indefinitely multiplied. Every one who has devoted a moment's thought to the matter knows perfectly well that this is merely beginning at the end, and therefore all but futile. I mention the matter here to make the point that the one measure which prudery permits--so that indeed it may even be mentioned upon our highly moral stage, and passed by the censor, who would probably be hurried into eternity if M. Brieux's _Les Avariés_ were submitted to him, and who found "Mrs. Warren's Profession" intolerable--is just the most useless, ill-devised, and literally preposterous with which this tremendous problem can be mocked.

This leads us to another point. It is that the means of our education, other than the schools, are also prejudiced by prudery. Upon the stage there is permitted almost any indecency of word, or innuendo, or gesture, or situation, provided only that the treatment be not serious. Almost anything is tolerable if it be frivolously dealt with, but so soon as these intensely serious matters are dealt with seriously, prudery protests. The consequence is that a great educative influence, like the theatre, where a few playwrights like M. Brieux, and Mr. Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Granville Barker, and Mr. John Galsworthy, might effect the greatest things, is relegated by Mrs. Grundy to the plays produced by Mr. George Edwardes and other earnest upholders of the censorship.

Publishers also, while accepting novels which would have staggered the Restoration Dramatists, can scarcely be found, even with great labour, for the publication of books dealing with the sex question from the most responsible medical or social standpoints.

It is just because public opinion is so potent, and, like all other powers, so potent either for good or for evil, that its present disastrous workings are the more deplorable. It is not unimaginable that prudery might undergo a sort of transmutation. As I have said before, we might make a eugenist of Mrs. Grundy, so that she might be as much affronted by a criminal marriage as she is now by the spectacle of a healthy and well-developed baby appearing unduly soon after its parents' marriage. The power is there, and it means well, though it does disastrously ill. Public opinion ought to be decided upon these matters; it ought to be powerful and effective. We shall never come out into the daylight until it is; we shall not be saved by laws, nor by medical knowledge, nor by the admonitions of the Churches. Our salvation lies only in a healthy public opinion, not less effective and not more well-meaning than public opinion is at present, but informed where it is now ignorant, and profoundly impressed with the importance of realities as it now is with the importance of appearances.

So much having been said, what can one suggest in the direction of remedy? First, surely it is something that we merely recognize the price of prudery. Personally, I find that it has made all the difference to my calculations to have had the thing pointed out by the clerical critic whose eye these words may possibly meet. It is something to recognize in prudery an enemy that must be attacked, and to realize the measure of its enmity. In the light of some little experience, perhaps a few suggestions may be made to those who would in any way join in the campaign for the education and transmutation of public opinion on these matters.

First, we must compose ourselves with fundamental seriousness--with that absolute gravity which imperils the publication of a book and entirely prohibits the production of a play on such matters. There is something in human nature beyond my explaining which leads towards jesting in these directions. An instinct, I know, is an instinct; of which a main character is that its exercise shall be independent of any knowledge as to its purpose. We eat because we like eating, rather than because we have reckoned that so many calories are required for a body of such and such a weight, in such and such conditions of temperature and pressure. It is not natural, so to say, just because man is in a sense rather more than natural, that we should be provident and serious, self-conscious, and philosophic, in dealing with our fundamental instincts. But it is necessary, if we are to be human: and only in so far as, "looking before and after," we transcend the usual conditions of instinct, are we human at all.

The special risk run by those who would deal with these matters seriously--or rather one of the risks--is that they will be suspected, and may indeed be guilty, of a tendency to priggishness and cant. Youth is very likely not far wrong in suspecting those who would discuss these matters, for youth has too often been told that they are of the earth earthy, that these are the low parts of our nature which we must learn to despise and trample on, and youth knows in its heart that whatever else may or may not be cant, this certainly is. So any one who proposes to speak gravely on the subject is a suspect.

Meetings confined to persons of one sex offer excellent opportunities. Much can be done, if the suspicion of cant be avoided, by men addressing the meetings of men only which gather in many churches on Sunday afternoons, and which have a healthy interest in the life of this world and of this world to come, as well as in matters less immediate. It seems to me that women doctors ought to be able to do excellent work in addressing meetings of girls and women, provided always that the speaker be genuinely a woman, rightly aware of the supremacy of motherhood.

Most of us know that it is possible to read a medical work on sex, say in French, without any offence to the æsthetic sense, though a translation into one's native tongue is scarcely tolerable. This contrasted influence of different names for the same thing is another of those problems in the psychology of prudery which I do not undertake to analyze, but which must be recognized by the practical enemy of prudery. It is unquestionably possible to address a mixed audience, large or small, of any social status, on these matters without offence and to good purpose. But certain terms must be avoided and synonyms used instead. There are at least three special cases, the recognition of which may make the practical difference between shocking an audience and producing the effect one desires.

Reproduction is a good word from every point of view, but its associations are purely physiological, and it is better to employ a word which renders the use of the other superfluous and which has a special virtue of its own. This is the term parenthood, a hybrid no doubt, but not perhaps much the worse for that. One may notice a teacher of zoology, say, accustomed to address medical students, offend an audience by the use of the word reproduction, where parenthood would have served his turn. It has a more human sound--though there is some sub-human parenthood which puts much of ours to shame--and the fact that it is less obviously physiological is a virtue, for human parenthood is only half physiological, being made of two complementary and equally essential factors for its perfection--the one physical and the other psychical. Thus it is possible to speak of physical parenthood and of psychical parenthood, and thus not only to avoid the term reproduction, but to get better value out of its substitutes. One may be able to show, perhaps, that in the case of other synonyms also a hunt for a term that shall save the face of prudery may be more than justified by the recovery of one which has a richer content. Terms are really very good servants, if they are good terms and we retain our mastery of them. Let any one without any previous practice start to write or speak on "human reproduction," and on "human parenthood, physical and psychical," and he will find that, though naming often saves a lot of thinking, as George Meredith said, wise naming may be of great service to thought.

In these matters there is to be faced the fact of pregnancy. Here, again, is a good word, as every one knows who has felt its force or that of the corresponding adjective when judiciously used in the metaphorical sense. The present writer's rule, when speaking, is to use these terms only in their metaphorical sense, and to employ another term for the literal sense. I should be personally indebted to any reader who can inform me as to the first employment of the admirable phrase, "the expectant mother." The name of its inventor should be remembered. In any audience whatever--perhaps almost including an audience of children, but certainly in any adult audience, whether mixed or not, medical or fashionable, serious or sham serious--it is possible to speak with perfect freedom on many aspects of pregnancy, as for instance the use of alcohol, exposure to lead poisoning, the due protection at such a period, by simply using the phrase "the expectant mother," with all its pregnancy of beautiful suggestion. Here, again, our success depends upon recognizing the psychical factor in that which to the vulgar eye is purely physiological--not that there is anything vulgar about physiology except to the vulgar eye.

For myself, the phrase "the expectant mother" is much more than useful, though in speaking it has made all the difference scores of times. It is beautiful because it suggests the ideal of every pregnancy--that the expectant mother shall indeed _expect_, look forward to the life which is to be. Her motto in the ideal world or even in the world at the foundations of which we are painfully working, will be those words of the Nicene creed which the very term must recall to the mind--_Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi sæculi_.

Let any one who fancies that these pre-occupations with mere language are trivial or misplaced here take the opportunity of addressing two drawing-rooms under similar conditions, on some such subject as the care of pregnancy from the national point of view. Let him in the one case speak of the pregnant woman, and so forth, and in the other of the expectant mother. He will be singularly insensitive to his audience if he does not discover that sometimes a rose by any other name is somehow the less a rose. The more fools we perhaps, but there it is, and in the most important of all contemporary propaganda, which is that of the re-establishment of parenthood in that place of supreme honour which is its due, even such "literary" debates as these are not out of place.

Sex is a great and wonderful thing. The further down we go in the scale of life, whether animal or vegetable, the more do we perceive the importance of the evolution of sex. The correctly formed adjective from this word is sexual, but the term is practically taboo with Mrs. Grundy. Only with caution and anxiety, indeed, may one venture before a lay audience to use Darwin's phrase, "sexual selection." The fact is utterly absurd, but there it is. One of the devices for avoiding its consequences is the use of sex itself as an adjective, as when we speak of sex problems; but the special importance of this case is in regard to the sexual instinct, or, if the term offends the reader, let us say the sex instinct. Here prudery is greatly concerned, and our silence here involves much of the price of prudery. Now since the word sexual has become sinister, we cannot speak to the growing boy or girl about the sexual instinct, but we may do much better.

For what is this sexual instinct? True, it manifests itself in connection with the fact of sex, but essentially that is only because sex is a condition of human reproduction or parenthood. It is this with which the sexual instinct is really concerned, and perhaps we shall never learn to look upon it rightly or deal with it rightly until we indeed perceive what the business of this instinct is, and regard as somewhat less than worthy of mankind any other attitude towards it. Of course there are men who live to eat, yet the instincts concerned with eating exist not for the titillation of the palate but for the sustenance of life; and, likewise, though there are those who live to gratify this instinct, it exists not for sensory gratification, but for the life of this world to come. Can we not find a term which shall express this truth, shall be inoffensive and so doubly suitable for the purposes of our cause?

The term reproductive instinct is often employed. It is vastly superior to sexual instinct, because it does refer to that for which the instinct exists; but it hints at reproduction, and though Mrs. Grundy can tolerate the idea of parenthood, reproduction she cannot away with. We cannot speak of it as the parental instinct, because that term is already in employment to express the best thing and the source of all other good things in us. Further, the sexual instinct and the parental instinct are quite distinct, and it would be disastrous to run the possibility of confusing them--one the source of all the good, and the other the source of much of the evil, though the necessary condition of all the good and evil, in the world.

For some years past, in writing and speaking, I have employed and counselled the employment of the term "the racial instinct." This seems to meet all the needs. It avoids the tabooed adjective, and if it fails to allude at all to the fact of sex, who needs reminding thereof? It is formed from the term race, which prudery permits, and it expresses once and for all that for which the instinct exists--not the individual at all, but the race which is to come after him. Doubtless its satisfaction may be satisfactory for him or her, but that does not testify to Nature's interest in individuals, but rather to her skill in insuring that her supreme concern shall not be ignored, even by those who least consciously concern themselves with it.

These are perhaps the three most important instances of the verbal, or perhaps more than verbal, issues that arise in the fight with prudery. One has tried to show that they are not really in the nature of concessions to Mrs. Grundy, but that the terms commended are in point of fact of more intrinsic worth than those to which she objects. Other instances will occur to the reader, especially if he or she becomes in any way a soldier in this war, whether publicly or as a parent instructing children, or on any other of the many fields where the fight rages.

It is not the purpose of the present chapter to deal with that which must be said, notwithstanding prudery, and in order that the price of prudery shall no longer be paid. But one final principle may be laid down which is indeed perhaps merely an expression of the spirit underlying the foregoing remarks upon our terminology. It is that we are to fly our flag high. We may consult Mrs. Grundy's prejudices if we find that in doing so we may directly serve our own thinking, and therefore our cause. This is very different from any kind of apologizing to her. All such I utterly deplore. We must not begin by granting Mrs. Grundy's case in any degree. Somewhere in that chaos of prejudices which she calls her mind, she nourishes the notion, common to all the false forms of religion, ancient or modern, that there is something about sex and parenthood which is inherently base and unclean. The origin of this notion is of interest, and the anthropologists have devoted much attention to it. It is to be found intermingled with a by no means contemptible hygiene in the Mosaic legislation, is to be traced in the beliefs and customs of extant primitive peoples, and has formed and forms an element in most religions. But it is not really pertinent to our present discussion to weigh the good and evil consequences of this belief. Without following the modern fashion, prevalent in some surprising quarters, of ecstatically exaggerating the practical value of false beliefs in past and present times, we may admit that the cause of morality in the humblest sense of that term may sometimes have been served by the religious condemnation of all these matters as unclean, and of parenthood as, at the best, a second best.

But for our own day and days yet unborn this notion of sex and its consequences as unclean or the worser part is to be condemned as not merely a lie and a palpably blasphemous one, grossly irreligious on the face of it, but as a pernicious lie, and to be so recognized even by those who most joyfully cherish evidence of the practical value of lies. Whatever may have been the case in the past or among present peoples in other states of culture than our own, no impartial person can question that during the Christian Era what may be called the Pauline or ascetic attitude on this matter has been disastrous; and that if the present forms of religion are not completely to outlive their usefulness, it is high time to restore mother and child worship to the honour which it held in the religion of Ancient Egypt and in many another. If the mother and child worship which is to be found in the more modern religions, such as Christianity, is to be worth anything to the coming world it must cease to have reference to one mother and one child only; it must hail every mother everywhere as a Madonna, and every child as in some measure deity incarnate. By no Church will such teaching be questioned to-day; but if it be granted the Churches must cease to uphold those conceptions of the superiority of celibacy and virginity which, besides involving grossly materialistic conceptions of those states, are palpably incompatible with that worship of parenthood to which the Churches must and shall now be made to return.

All this will involve many a shock to prudery; to take only the instance of what we call illegitimate motherhood, our eyes askance must learn that there are other legitimacies and illegitimacies than those which depend upon the little laws of men, and that if our doctrine of the worth of parenthood be a right one it is our business in every such case to say, "Here also, then, in so far as it lies in our power, we must make motherhood as good and perfect as may be."

These principles also will lead us to understand how differently, were we wise, we should look upon the outward appearances of expectant motherhood. In his masterpiece, Forel--of all living thinkers the most valuable--has a passage with which Mrs. Grundy may here be challenged. It is too simple to need translating from the author's own French:[9]--

"La fausse honte qu'out les femmes de laisser voir leur grossesse et tout ce qui a rapport à l'accouchement, les plaisanteries dont on use souvent à l'égard des femmes enceintes, sont un triste signe de la dégénérescence et même de la corruption de notre civilization raffinée. Les femmes enceintes ne devraient pas ce cacher, ni jamais avoir honte de porter un enfant dans leur ventre; elles devraient au contraire en être fières. Pareille fierté serait certes bien plus justifiée que celle des beaux officiers paradant sous leur uniforme. Les signes extérieurs de la formation de l'humanité font plus d'honneur à leurs porteurs que les symboles de sa destruction. Que les femmes s'imprègnent de plus en plus de cette profonde vérité! Elles cesseront alors de cacher leur grossesse et d'en avoir honte. Conscientes de la grandeur de leur tâche sexuelle et sociale, elles tiendront haut l'étendard de notre descendance, qui est celui de la véritable vie à venir de l'homme, tout en combattant pour l'émancipation de leur sexe."

This passage recalls one of Ruskin's, which is to be found in "Unto This Last":--

"Nearly all labour may be shortly divided into positive and negative labour--positive, that which produces life; negative, that which produces death; the most directly negative labour being murder, and the most directly positive the bearing and rearing of children; so that in the precise degree in which murder is hateful on the negative side of idleness, in that exact degree child-rearing is admirable, on the positive side of idleness."

Here is the right comment upon the swaggering display of the means of death and the hiding as if shameful of the signs of life to come. What has Mrs. Grundy to say to this? Will she consider the propriety of urging in future that it is murder and the means of murder, and the organized forces of capital and politics making for murder, that must not be mentioned before children, and must be hidden as shameful from the eyes of men; and while a woman may still glory in her hair, according to that spiritual precept of St. Paul: "But if a woman have long hair it is a glory to her; for her hair is given her for a covering," perhaps she may be permitted even to glory in her motherhood, contemptible as such a notion would doubtless have seemed to the Apostle of the Gentiles.

XI

EDUCATION FOR MOTHERHOOD

It is our first principle in this discussion that the individual exists for parenthood, being a natural invention for that purpose and no other. It has been shown further that this is more pre-eminently true of woman than of man, she being the more essential--if such a phrase can be used--for the continuance of the race. If these principles are valid they must indeed determine our course in the education of girls. Some incidental reference has already been made to this subject, but the matter must be more carefully gone into here. We have seen that there are right and wrong ways of conducting the physical training of girls, according as whether we are aiming at muscularity or motherhood. We have seen also that there is a thing called the higher education of women, apparently laudable and desirable in itself, which may yet have disastrous consequences for the individual and the race.

In a book devoted to womanhood, and written at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the reader might well expect that what we call the higher education of women would be a subject treated at great length and with great respect. Such a reader, turning to the chapter that professedly deals with the subject, might well be offended by its brevity. It might be asked whether the writer was really aware of the importance of the subject--of its remarkable history, its extremely rapid growth, and its conspicuous success (in proving that women can be men if they please--but this is my comment, not the reader's). Nor can any one question that the so-called higher education of women is a very large and increasingly large fact in the history of womanhood during the last half century in the countries which lead the world--whither it were perhaps not too curious to consider. Further, this kind of education does in fact achieve what it aims at. Women are capable of profiting by the opportunities which it offers, as we say. This is itself a deeply interesting fact in natural history, refuting as it does the assertions of those who declared and still declare that women are incapable of "higher education," except in rare instances. It is important to know that women can become very good equivalents of men, if they please.

Further, this higher education of women--and we may be content to accept the adjective without qualification, since it is after all only a comparative, and leaves us free to employ the superlative--may be and often is of very real value in certain cases and because of certain local conditions, such as the great numerical inequality of the sexes in nearly all civilized countries. It is valuable for that proportion of women, whatever it be, who, through some throw of the physiological dice, seem to be without the distinctive factor for psychical womanhood, the existence of which one has tentatively ventured to assume. These individuals, like all others, are entitled to the fullest and freest development of their lives, and it is well that there shall be open to them, as to the brothers they so closely resemble, opportunities for intellectual satisfaction and self-development. Therefore, surely, by far the most satisfactory function of higher education for women is that which it discharges in reference to these women. Their destiny being determined by their nature, and irrevocable by nurture, it is well that, though we cannot regard it as the highest, we should make the utmost of it by means of the appropriate education.

Only because sometimes we must put up with second bests can we approve of higher education for women other than those of the anomalous semi-feminine type to which we have referred. At present we must accept it as an unfortunate necessity imposed upon us by economic conditions. So long as society is based economically, or rather uneconomically, upon the disastrous principles which so constantly mean the sacrifice of the future to the present, so long, I suppose, will it be impossible that every fully feminine woman shall find a livelihood without some sacrifice of her womanhood. This is a subject to which we must return in a later chapter. Meanwhile it is referred to only because its consideration shows us some sort of excuse, if not warrant, for the higher education of woman, even though in the process of thus endowing her with economic independence, we disendow her of her distinctive womanhood, or at the very least imperil it; even though, more serious still, we deprive the race of her services as physical and psychical mother.

We have seen that there is just afoot a new tendency in the higher education of women, and it is indeed a privilege to be able to do anything in the way of directing public attention to this new trend. In reference thereto, it was hinted that though this newer form of higher education for woman is a great advance upon the old, and is so just because it implies some recognition of woman's place in the world, yet for one reason or another it falls short of what this present student of womanhood, at any rate, demands. As has been hinted further, probably those responsible for the new trend are by no means unaware that, though their line is nearer to the right one, the direct line to the "happy isles" has not quite been taken. But great is Mrs. Grundy of the English, and those who devised the new scheme--one is willing to hazard the guess--had to be content with an approximation to what they knew to be the ideal. That is why we devoted the last chapter to the question of prudery, inserting that between a discussion of the "higher education" of women and the present discussion, which is concerned with the _highest education_ of women.

Words are only symbols, but, like other symbols, they are capable of assuming much empire over the mind. Man, indeed, as Stevenson said, lives principally by catchwords, and though woman, beside a cot, is less likely to be caught blowing bubbles and clutching at them, she also is in some degree at the mercy of words. The higher education of women is a good phrase. It appeals, just because of the fine word higher, to those who wish women well, and to those who are not satisfied that woman should remain for ever a domestic drudge. The phrase has had a long run, so to say, but I propose that henceforth we should set it to compete with another--the highest education of women. Whether this phrase will ever gain the vogue of the other even a biased and admiring father may well question. But if there is anything certain, having the whole weight of Nature behind it, and only the transient aberrations of men opposed thereto, it is that what I call the highest education of women will be and will remain the most central and capital of society's functions, when what is now called the higher education of women has gone its appointed way with nine-tenths of all present-day education, and exists only in the memory of historians who seek to interpret the fantastic vagaries of the bad old days.

Perhaps it is well that we should begin by freeing the word education from the incrustations of mortal nonsense that have very nearly obscured its vitality altogether. Before we can educate for motherhood, we must know what education is, and what it is not. We must have a definition of it and its object; in general as well as in this particular case, otherwise we shall certainly go wrong. Perhaps it may here be permitted to quote a paragraph from a lecture on "The Child and the State," in which some few years ago I attempted to express the first principles of this matter:--

"Now, as a student of biology, I will venture to propose a definition of education which is new, so far as I know, and which I hope and believe to be true and important. Comprehensively, so as to include everything that must be included, and yet without undue vagueness, I would define education as _the provision of an environment_. We may amplify this proposition, and say that it is the provision of a fit environment for the young and foolish by the elderly and wise. It has really scarcely anything in the world to do with my trying to make you pay for the teaching to my children of dogmas which I believe, and you deny. It neither begins nor ends with the three R's; and it does not isolate, from that whole which we call a human being, the one attribute which may be defined as the intellectual faculty. It is the provision of an environment, physical, mental, and moral, for the whole child, physical, mental, and moral. That is my _definition_ of education. Now, what are we to say of the _object_ of education? In providing the environment--from its mother's milk to moral maxims--for our child, what do we seek? Some may say, to make him a worthy citizen, to make him able to support himself; some may say, to make him fit to bear arms for his king and country; but I will give you the object of education as defined by the author of the most profound and wisest treatise which has ever been written upon the subject--Plato, Locke, and Milton not forgotten. 'To prepare us for complete living,' says Herbert Spencer, 'is the function which education has to discharge.' The great thing needed for us to learn is how to live, how rightly to rule conduct in all directions under all circumstances; and it is to that end that we must direct ourselves in providing an environment for the child. _Education is the provision of an environment, the function of which is to prepare for complete living._"

Perhaps the only necessary qualification of the foregoing is that, though it refers specially to the child, yet the need of education does not end with childhood, becoming indeed pre-eminent when childhood ends. So we may apply what has been said in the case of the girl, and we shall find it a sure guide to the highest education of women.

First, education being the provision of an environment in the widest sense of that very wide word, always misused when it is used less widely, we must be sure that in our scheme we avoid the errors of past or passing schemes which concern themselves only with some aspect of the environment, and so in effect prepare for something much less than complete living. It is not sufficient to provide an environment which regards the girl as simply a muscular machine, as is the tendency, if not actually the case, in some of the "best" girls' schools to-day; it is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as merely an intellectual machine, as in the higher education of women; it is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as a sideboard ornament, in Ruskin's phrase, such as was provided in the earlier Victorian days. In all these cases we are providing only part of the environment, and providing it in excess. None of them, therefore, satisfies our definition of education, which conceives of environment as the sum-total of all the influences to which the whole organism is subjected--influences dietetic, dogmatic, material, maternal, and all other.[10]

Who will question that, according to this conception of education, such a thing as the higher education of women must be condemned as inadequate? No more than a man is woman a mere intellect incarnate. Her emotional nature is all-important; it is indeed the highest thing in the Universe so far as we know. The scheme of education which ignores its existence, and much more than fails to provide the best environment for it, is condemnable. But the scheme of education which derides and despises the emotional nature of woman, looking upon it as a weakness and seeking to suppress it, is damnable, and has led to the damnation--or loss, if the reader prefers the English term--of this most precious of all precious things in countless cases.

The only right education of women must be that which rightly provides the whole environment. The simpler our conception of woman, the more we underrate her complexity and the manifoldness of her needs, the more certainly shall we repeat in one form or another the errors of our predecessors.

Complete living is a great phrase; perhaps not for a lizard or a mushroom, but assuredly for men and women. Perhaps it involves more for women even than for men; indeed it must do so if we are to adhere to our conception of women as more complex than men, having all the possibilities of men in less or greater measure, and also certain supreme possibilities of their own. Whatever complete living may mean for men, it cannot mean for women anything less than all that is implied in Wordsworth's great line--

"Wisdom doth live with children round her knees."

That line was written in reference to the unwisdom of a man, Napoleon, the greatest murderer in recorded time, and I believe it to be true of men, but it is pre-eminently true of women. There needs no excuse for quoting from Herbert Spencer, since we have already accepted his definition of the subject of education, a notable passage which is perhaps at the present time the most needed of all the wisdom with which that great thinker's book on education is filled:--

"The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed improvement of our systems in respect both of matter and manner, the most pressing desideratum, to prepare the young for the duties of life, is tacitly admitted to be the end which parents and schoolmasters should have in view; and, happily, the value of the things taught, and the goodness of the methods followed in teaching them, are now ostensibly judged by their fitness to this end. The propriety of substituting for an exclusively classical training, a training in which the modern languages shall have a share, is argued on this ground. The necessity of increasing the amount of science is urged for like reasons. But though some care is taken to fit youth of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that, for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value is that it constitutes the education of a gentleman; and while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties, not an hour is spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all responsibilities--the management of a family. Is it that the discharge of it is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not; of all functions which the adult has to fulfil, this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No; not only is the need for such self-instruction unrecognized, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of all others in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed."

If we were wise enough, therefore, we should recognize all education, in the great sense of that word, to be _as for parenthood_. That ideal will yet be recognized and followed for both sexes, as it has for long been followed, consciously as well as unconsciously, by that astonishing race which has survived all its oppressors, and is in the van of civilization to-day as it was when it produced the Mosaic legislation. The time is not yet when one could accept with a light heart an invitation to lecture on fatherhood to the boys at Eton. Boys to-day are taught by each other, and by those who give them what they call "smut jaws," that what exists for fatherhood, and thus for the whole destiny of mankind, is "smut." When such blasphemies pass for the best pedagogic wisdom, to preach parenthood as the goal of all worthy education is to run the risk of being looked upon as ridiculous. But the time will come when the hideous Empire-wrecking Imperialisms of the present are forgotten, and when we have a new Patriotism--which suggests, first and foremost, as that word well may, the duty of fatherhood; and then, perhaps, "smut jaws" will not be the phrase at Eton for discussion of those instincts which determine the future of mankind.

But girls are our present concern, and we may indeed hope that, though the day is still far when the motto of Eton will be education as for fatherhood, yet the ideal of education as for motherhood may yet triumph wherever girls are taught within even a few years to come. On all sides to-day we see the aberrations of womanhood in a hundred forms, and the consequences thereof. Wrong education is partly, beyond a doubt, to be indicted for this state of things, and the right direction is so clearly indicated by nature and by the deepest intuitions of both sexes that we cannot much longer delay to take it.

Perhaps the reader will have patience whilst for a little we discuss the facts upon which right education for motherhood must be based. Some may suppose that by education for womanhood is meant simply one form or other of instruction; say, for instance, in the certainly important matter of infant feeding. At present, however, I am not thinking of instruction at all, but of education--the leading forth, that is to say, in right proportion and in right direction of the natural constituents of the girl. If we are to be right in our methods we must have some clear understanding of what those constituents are, and we must therefore address ourselves now to getting, if possible, clear and accurate notions of the material with which we have to deal; in other words, we must discuss the psychology of parenthood. We shall perhaps realize then that though the instruction of mothers in being is very necessary and very important, that comes in at the end of our duty, and that we shall never achieve what we might achieve unless we begin at the beginning.

XII

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT

The deeds of men and women proceed from certain radical elements of their nature, some evidently noble, others, when looked at askew, apparently ignoble. These elements are classed as instinctive. We are less intelligent than we think. Reason may occupy the throne, but the foundations upon which that throne is based are not of her making. To change the image, reason is the pilot, not the gale or the engine. She does not determine the goal, but only the course to that goal. We are what our nature makes us; our likes and our dislikes determine our acts, and we are guided to our self-determined ends by means of our intelligence. More often, indeed, we use our intelligence merely to justify to ourselves the likes and dislikes, the action and the inaction, which our instinctive tendencies have determined.

Many of our natural instincts, impulses, and emotions bear only remotely upon our present inquiry; as, for instance, the instinct of flight and the emotion of fear, the instinct of curiosity and the emotion of wonder, the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger. Certain others, however, are not merely radical and permanent parts of our nature, but determine human existence, the greater part of its failures and successes, its folly and wisdom, its history and its destiny. Two of these--the parental and racial instincts--we must carefully consider here, and also, very briefly, a supposed third, the filial instinct. I am inclined to question whether such a specific entity as the filial instinct exists at all; it is rather, I believe, a product, by transmutation, of the parental instinct which, in its various forms and potencies and through the tender emotion which is its counterpart in the affective realm of our natures, is the noblest, finest, and most promising ingredient of our constitution.

_Instinct and Emotion._--We must be sure, in the first place, that we have a sound idea of what we mean by the word "instinct." It is absurd, for instance, to speak of "acquiring a political instinct"--or any other. That is the most erroneous possible use of the word. An instinct is eminently something which cannot be "acquired"; it is native if anything is native; as native as the nose or the backbone. Instincts may be developed or repressed; it is the great mark of man that in him they may even be transmuted--but _acquired_ never.

When we come to examine the laws of activity we find that, on the application of certain kinds of stimulus, there are certain very definite responses, and these we call instinctive. If the arm or the leg of a sleeper be stroked or touched, or a cold breath of air blows thereon, it will be withdrawn, and such withdrawal is what we call a reflex action. Now, an instinctive action, as Herbert Spencer saw long ago, is a "complex reflex action." It differs from a simple reflex, a mere twitch, such as winking, but it is a complicated, and possibly prolonged, action, which is, at bottom, of the nature of a reflex. One may instance the instinct of flight, which is correlated with fear. In crossing the street we hear "toot, toot," and we run. We do not ratiocinate, we run. All the primary instincts of mankind act similarly. Take, for contrast, the instinct of curiosity. Consider a child watching a mechanical toy; the impulse of this instinct of curiosity is such that he goes to the thing and examines it. By means of the transmutation, which it is the prerogative of man to effect, this instinct may work out into a lifetime devoted to the study of Nature. There is an unbroken sequence from the interest in the unknown which we see in a kitten or a child up to that which triumphs in a Newton or a Darwin.

Thus we begin to learn that human nature is largely a collection of instincts, more or less correlated, and that at bottom we act on our instincts--in accordance with certain innate predilections, likings, and dislikings with which we were born, and which we have inherited from our ancestors. Indissolubly associated therewith is what we call emotion. For instance, in the exercise of the instinct of curiosity we feel a certain emotion, which we call wonder. There is an ignoble wonder and there is a noble wonder; but whether it be an astronomer watching the stars, or the crowd at a cinematograph show, there exists an association between the emotion of wonder and the instinct of curiosity. Dr. McDougall, of Oxford, elaborated some few years ago, and has now established, an extremely important theory of the relation between instinct and emotion. He has shown that our emotions are correlated with our instincts; that the emotion is the inward or subjective side of the working of the instinct. Thus an instinct is more than a "complex reflex action"; it is more than merely that, on hearing something, or seeing something, certain muscles are thrown into action, because along with the action there is emotion, and this is a natural and necessary correlation. We should do well to carry about with us, as part of our mental furniture, this idea of the correlation between instinct and emotion.

Now, if it be true that man is not primarily a rational animal, if he be rather, _au fond_, a bundle, an assemblage, _an organism of instincts_, it behoves us to recognize in ourselves and in others the primary instincts, because from them flows all that goes to make up human nature, whether it be good or evil. Amongst these, certainly, is the parental instinct.

Let us first consider its development in the individual, for this bears on the question when to begin education for motherhood. We find it very early indeed. It is commonly asserted that the doll instinct is the precursor, the infantile and childish form, of the parental instinct. Some psychologists, as we have already noted, assure us that this is wrong, that a small child will be just as content to play with anything else as with a doll; that the child gets fond of its possession, and that what we are really witnessing is the instinct of acquisitiveness. The rest may reason and welcome, but those who are fathers know. We have only to watch a child to learn that it very soon differentiates its doll, or rather, the shapeless mass it calls its doll, from other things. Try with your own children and see if you can get them to like anything else as well as they like a doll. They will not. There are few settled questions as yet in psychology, but we may certainly be sure that the parental instinct and its associated emotion may be unmistakably displayed as the master-passion in a child who is not yet two years old. In a case where the possibility of imitation was excluded I have seen a little girl adore a small baby, stroke its hands, whisper quasi-maternal sweet nothings to it--"mother it," in short--as plainly as I have seen the sun at noon; and there is no reason to suppose that this deeply impressive spectacle was exceptional.

The parental instinct is connected subtly with the racial instinct; and it is undisputed that, except in utterly degraded persons, the object of the feelings which are associated with the racial instinct becomes the object of the feelings which are associated with the parental instinct. The object of the emotion of sex becomes also the object of tender emotion. Thus "love," in its lower sense, becomes exalted by Love in the noble sense.

There is also in us an instinct of pugnacity, which especially appears when the working of any other instinct is thwarted. We know that the parental instinct when thwarted, as in the tigress robbed of her whelps, shows itself in pugnacity--even in the female, which commonly has no pugnacity; and in the emotion of anger. It is a reasonable supposition that the fine anger, the passion for justice, the passion against, say, slavery or cruelty to children--that these indignations which move the world are at bottom traceable to the workings of the outraged parental instinct. When we have tender emotion towards a child, or towards an animal, whatever it be, this is really the subjective side of the working of the parental instinct. Now, tender emotion is what has made and makes everything that is good in the individual, and in human society. It is the basis of all morality--all morality that is real morality--everything that permits us to hold up our heads at all, or to hope for the future of the race. That is why the study of the parental instinct, its correlate or source, is as important and serious as any that can be imagined.

Let us begin by a quotation from Dr. McDougall, author of the best and most searching account of this instinct yet written:--

"The maternal instinct, which impels the mother to protect and cherish her young, is common to almost all the higher species of animals. Among the lower animals the perpetuation of the species is generally provided for by the production of an immense number of eggs or young (in some species of fish a single adult produces more than a million eggs), which are left entirely unprotected, and are so preyed upon by other creatures that on the average but one or two attain maturity. As we pass higher up the animal scale, we find the number of eggs or young more and more reduced, and the diminution of their number compensated for by parental protection. At the lowest stage this protection may consist in the provision of some merely physical shelter, as in the case of those animals that carry their eggs attached in some way to their bodies. But, except at this lowest stage, the protection afforded to the young always involves some instinctive adaptation of the parent's behaviour. We may see this even among the fishes, some of which deposit their eggs in rude nests and watch over them, driving away creatures that might prey upon them. From this stage onwards protection of offspring becomes increasingly psychical in character, involves more profound modification of the parent's behaviour, and a more prolonged period of more effective guardianship. The highest stage is reached by those species in which each female produces at a birth but one or two young, and protects them so efficiently that most of the young born reach maturity; the maintenance of the species thus becomes in the main the work of the parental instinct. In such species the protection and cherishing of the young is the constant and all-absorbing occupation of the mother, to which she devotes all her energies, and in the course of which she will at any time undergo privation, pain, and death. The instinct becomes more powerful than any other, and can override any other, even fear itself; for it works directly in the service of the species, while the other instincts work primarily in the service of the individual life, for which Nature cares little.... When we follow up the evolution of this instinct to the highest animal level, we find among the apes the most remarkable examples of its operation. Thus in one species the mother is said to carry her young one clasped in one arm uninterruptedly for several months, never letting go of it in all her wanderings. This instinct is no less strong in many human mothers, in whom, of course, it becomes more or less intellectualized and organized as the most essential constituent of the sentiment of parental love. Like other species, the human species is dependent upon this instinct for its continual existence and welfare. It is true that reason, working in the service of the egotistic impulses and sentiments, often circumvents the ends of this instinct and sets up habits which are incompatible with it. But when that occurs on a large scale in any society, that society is doomed to rapid decay. But the instinct itself can never die out save with the disappearance of the human species itself; it is kept strong and effective just because those families and races and nations in which it weakens become rapidly supplanted by those in which it is strong.

"It is impossible to believe that the operation of this, the most powerful of the instincts, is not accompanied by a strong and definite emotion; one may see the emotion expressed unmistakably by almost any mother among the higher animals, especially the birds and the mammals--by the cat, for example, and by most of the domestic animals; and it is impossible to doubt that this emotion has in all cases the peculiar quality of the tender emotion provoked in the human parent by the spectacle of her helpless offspring. This primary emotion has been very generally ignored by the philosophers and psychologists; that is, perhaps, to be explained by the fact that this instinct and its emotion are in the main decidedly weaker in men than women, and in some men, perhaps, altogether lacking. We may even surmise that the philosophers as a class are men among whom this defect of native endowment is relatively common."

Dr. McDougall goes on to show how from this emotion and its impulse to cherish and protect spring generosity, gratitude, love, true benevolence, and altruistic conduct of every kind; in it they have their main and absolutely essential root without which they would not be. He argues that the intimate alliance between tender emotion and anger is of great importance for the social life of man, for "the anger invoked in this way is the germ of all moral indignation, and on moral indignation justice and the greater part of public law are in the main founded."[11]

The reader may be earnestly counselled to acquaint himself with Dr. McDougall's book, which, in the judgment of those best qualified, definitely advances the science of psychology in its deepest and most important aspects.

_The Transmutation of Instinct._--The last thing here meant by the transmutation of instinct is that by any political alchemy it is possible--to quote Herbert Spencer's celebrated aphorism--to get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. But it is the mark of man, the intelligent being, that in him the instincts are plastic, and even capable of amazing transmutations. In the lower animals there is instinct, but that instinct is an almost completely fixed, rigid, and final thing. In ourselves there is a limitless capacity for the development, the humanization of instinct along many lines, as when the primitive infantile curiosity works out into the speculations of a thinker. In other words, _we_ are educable, the lower animals are not, or only within very narrow limits.

Yet in one respect the lower animals have the advantage over us. Their instincts are often perfect. We cannot teach a cat anything about how to look after a kitten; but parallel instincts amongst ourselves, though not less numerous or potent, are not perfected, not sharp-cut. In the cat there is no need for education; in woman there is eminent need for it. Indeed it is the lack of education that is largely responsible for our large infant mortality; not that woman is inferior to the cat, but that, being not instinctive but intelligent, she requires education in motherhood.

Human instincts in general are capable of modification; sometimes they may take bizarre forms, and so we find that there are people without children of their own--more commonly women--who will have twenty cats in the house and look after them, or who will devote their whole lives to the cause of the rat or the rabbit, or whatever it may be, while the children of men are dying around them. These things are indications of the parental instinct centred on unworthy objects. It is a common thing to laugh at these aberrations--thoughtlessly, may we not say? While orphans are to be found, we should do better if we try to bring together the woman who needs to "mother" and the child who needs to be "mothered."

Conduct is at least three-fourths of life, and the great business of education is the direction of conduct. We have seen how modern psychology illuminates what has been so long dark, by directing us to our instincts as the sources of our needs, and by showing us that it is the possibility of the education of instinct which essentially distinguishes us from the lower animals.

We must therefore distinguish between education for motherhood and education or instruction in motherhood. It is very important that a woman should know the elements of infant feeding, but it is more important that, in the first place, her whole life before she becomes a mother--nay, even before she chooses her child's father--shall centre in the education of her instincts for motherhood. Finding good evidence, as we do, of the maternal instinct at a very early age, and recognizing its importance in conduct and in the formation of ideals long before the marriage age, we are justified in discussing the maternal instinct here instead of postponing it, as some might argue, until after we have discussed marriage. There is nothing which I wish to assert more strongly than that we are radically wrong in this postponement, which is indeed our customary practice. Partly because we are blind, partly because of our most imprudent prudery, we ignore and pervert the due sequence of development, but here I deliberately prefer to follow the indications of nature, and to discuss the maternal instinct now because, in the matter of the education of girls, this is precisely the most important subject that can be named.

Let us now note some popular misconceptions which cumber our minds and often interfere with the work of the reformer.

To begin with what is perhaps the oldest of these, though indeed scarcely entitled to the appellation of popular, let us assure ourselves once and for all that we are talking about a fact natural, innate, not acquired. The modern criticism of ancient notions of human nature, such as those expressed in the theologians' conception of "conscience," has inclined some to the view that our best feelings are indeed not at all innate. No one can for a moment analyze conscience without observing the immense disparity between the facts and the theologians' theory. And thus we are apt to fall into the opposite error of supposing that our impulses towards good action are entirely the products of education, training, public opinion, and so forth. Let the reader refer, for instance, to such a celebrated work as John Stuart Mill's "Utilitarianism," and it will be seen how wide of the mark it was possible for even a great thinker to go, when his ideas of mind were unguided by the light of evolution. Even in the greatest writer of that time not a syllable do we find as to the parental instinct. "As is my own belief," says Mill, "the moral feelings are not innate but acquired." Yet we have seen convincing evidence which teaches us that the moral feelings spring essentially from the root of the parental instinct, without which mankind could not continue for another generation, and than which there is nothing more fundamental and essential in any type of human nature that can persist.

The importance of noting this can be clearly stated. We are here dealing with something which is not for us to implant, but which is already part of the plant, so to speak, and which it is for us to tend. Like other innate features of mankind, its transmission from generation to generation is notably independent of the effects of education, the effects of use and disuse. This is a difficult thing of which to persuade people, but it is the fact. Education, environment, training, opportunity, habit, public opinion, social prejudice--all these and such other influences may and do affect the maternal instinct in the individual for good or for evil. No fact is more certain or important, and that is precisely why we must study this instinct. But the effect upon the individual does not involve any effect upon the native constitution of the individual's children. From age to age the general facts and features of the human backbone persist. We do not expect to find notable differences between the generations in such a radical feature of our constitution, no matter what particular habits of posture, play, and the like we adopt. The maternal instinct is scarcely less fundamental; it is certainly no whit less essential for the species. It is the very backbone of our psychological constitution. Thus it is nonsense to assert that, for instance, women are becoming less motherly, if by this is meant that the maternal instinct is failing. That bad education may affect it for evil no one can question, but we must distinguish between nature and nurture. We may be perfectly confident that so far as the _natural_ material of girl-childhood and girlhood is concerned, there is no falling off; there will not, for there cannot, be any falling off either in the quality or in the quantity of the maternal instinct. On the contrary, it can, and will later be shown that through the action of heredity this instinct will be strengthened in the future, just in so far as motherhood becomes more and more a special privilege of those women in whom this instinct is strong, and who become mothers for the _only good reason_--that they love to have children of their own.

I protest, then, against many critics, especially those who used to raise their now silent voices in opposition to the beginnings of the infant mortality campaign a few years ago, that we who criticize modern motherhood and find in its defects the causes of many and great evils, as we do, are asserting nothing whatever against the women of this day as compared with the women of former days, so far as their natural constitution is concerned; and if we criticize the results of bad education, that is mainly criticism of the blindness, the stupidity, and the carelessness of men, who are responsible for the parodies of education and the misdirection of ideals which have so grossly afflicted, and still afflict, childhood and girlhood in all civilized communities.

Yet, again, there is another misconception of the maternal instinct as it exists in our own species, which is still more serious in its results. The argument is that, not only does the maternal instinct exist, but it is a sure guide to its possessor, who therefore requires no instruction--least of all at the hands of men. A woman being a woman knows all about babies, a man being a man knows nothing. Against this error the present writer has endeavoured to inveigh for many years past, and it is always retorted that insistence upon the ignorance of mothers is a very unwarrantable piece of discourtesy. It is nothing of the sort. Native ignorance is the mark of intelligence. It is just because instinct in us has not the perfection of detail which it has in, say, the insects, that it is capable of that limitless modification which shows itself in educated intelligence, and all that educated intelligence has achieved and will yet achieve. It may be permitted to quote from a former statement of this point:--[12]

"The mother has only the maternal instinct in its essence. That could not be permitted to lapse by natural selection, since humanity could never have been evolved at all if women did not love babies. But of all details she is bereft. She has instead an immeasurably greater thing, intelligence, but whilst intelligence can learn everything it has everything to learn. Subhuman instinct can learn nothing, but is perfect from the first within its impassable limits. It is this lapse of instinctive aptitude that constitutes the cardinal difficulty against which we are assembled. The mother cat not merely has a far less helpless young creature to succour, but she has a far superior inherent or instinctive equipment; she knows the best food for her kitten, she does not give it 'the same as we had ourselves'--as the human mother tells the coroner--but her own breast invariably. None of us can teach her anything as to washing her kitten, or keeping it warm. She can even play with it and so educate it, in so far as it needs education. There are mothers in all classes of the community who should be ashamed to look a tabby cat in the face."

The human mother has instinctive love and the uninstructed intelligence which is the form, at once weak and incalculably strong, that instinct so largely assumes in mankind. This cardinal distinction between the human and all sub-human mothers is habitually ignored, it being assumed that the mother, as a mother, knows what is best for her child. But experience concurs with comparative psychology in showing that the human mother, just because she is human, intelligent, which means more than instinctive, does not know. This is the theory upon which all our practice is to be based, and upon which the need for it mainly depends. We must never forget the cardinal peculiarity of human motherhood, its absolute dependence upon education, needless for the cat, needed by the human mother in every particular, small and great, since she relies upon intelligence alone, which is only a potentiality and a possibility until it be educated. Educate it, and the product transcends the cat, and not only the cat, but all other living things. As Coleridge said--

"A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive."

Perhaps the foregoing will make it clear that to insist upon the natural ignorance of the human mother and upon the necessity for adding instruction to the maternal instinct, and even to make comparisons with the cat (which are, in point of fact, quite worth making, even though some women resent them) is in no way to depreciate or decry womanhood, but simply to demonstrate that it is human and not animal, suffering from the disabilities or necessities which are involved in the possession of the limitless possibilities of mankind.

What, then, is it in our power to do; and how are we to do it? It may be argued that if the maternal instinct is a thing which cannot be made or acquired, our study of it has little relation to practice. But indeed it is eminently practical.

For, in the first place, this priceless possession, this parental instinct and tenderness, is inheritable. We know by observation amongst ourselves that hardness and tenderness are to be found running through families--are things which are transmissible. Let us, then, make parenthood the most responsible, the most deliberate, the most self-conscious thing in life, so that there shall be children born to those who love children, and only to those who love children, to those who have the parental instinct naturally strong, and who will, on the average, transmit a high measure of it to their offspring. In a generation bred on these principles--a generation consisting only of babies who were loved before they were born--there would be a proportion of sympathy, of tender feeling, and of all those great, abstract, world-creating passions which are evolved from the tender emotion, such as no age hitherto has seen.

It was necessary to insert this eugenic paragraph because it expresses the central principle of all real reform, as fundamental and all-important as it is unknown to all political parties, and I fear to nearly all philanthropists as well. But, for the present, our immediate concern is the application, if such be possible, of our knowledge of the parental instinct to the education of girls. Being indeed an instinct it can be neither made nor acquired, but, like every other factor of humanity that is given by inheritance, it depends upon the conditions in which it finds itself. Education being the provision of an environment, there is no higher task for the educator than to provide the right environment for the maternal instinct in adolescence. We are to look upon it as at once delicate and ineradicable. These are adjectives which may seem incompatible, yet they may both be verified. Any one will testify that, in a given environment, say that of high school or university or that of the worst types of what is called society, the maternal instinct may then and there, and for that period, become a nonentity in many a girl. Hence we are entitled to say that it is delicate; much more delicate, for instance, than what we have agreed to call the racial instinct, which is far more imperious and by no means so easily to be suppressed.

But, on the other hand, just because this is an instinct, part of the fundamental constitution, and not a something planted from without, it is ineradicable. I doubt whether even in the most abandoned female drunkard it would not be possible to find, when the right environment was provided, that the maternal instinct was still undestroyed. One is, of course, not speaking of that rare and aberrant variety of women in whom the instinct is naturally weak--naturally weak as distinguished from the atrophy induced by improper nurture.

Our business, then, having recognized, so to speak, the natural history of this instinct, and further, having come to realize its stupendous importance for the individual and the race, is to tend it assiduously as the very highest and most precious thing in the girls for whom we care. As educators we must seek to provide the environment in which this instinct can flourish. It is a good thing to be an elder sister, not merely because the girl has opportunities of learning the ways of babies and the details of their needs, but for a far deeper reason. Babies do have very detailed and urgent needs, but these can be learnt without much difficulty, and, if necessary, at very short notice. More important is it for the whole development of the character and for the making of the worthiest womanhood that an elder sister is provided with an environment in which her maternal instinct can grow and grow in grace.

Much might be said on this head as to some of our present educational practices. The kind of educationist with whom no one would trust a poodle for half an hour may and does constantly assume, on a scale involving millions of children, from year to year, that all is well if the girl be taken from home and put into a school and made to learn by heart, or at any rate by rote, the rubbish with which our youth is fed even yet in the great name of education: though perchance whilst she is thus being injured in body and mind and character, she might at home be playing the little mother, helping to make the home a home, serving the highest interests of her parents, her younger brothers and sisters and herself at the same time--not to mention the unborn. Such a protest as this, however, will be little heeded. There is no political party which cares about education or even wants to know in what it consists. The most persistent and clever and resourceful of those parties--of which, I fear, the Fabian Society is far too good to be representative--only half believes in the family, and is daily, and ever with more lamentable success, seeking to substitute for the home some collective device or other precisely as rational as that scheme of Plato's whereby the babies were to be shuffled so that no mother should recognize her own baby, while the fathers, need it be said, were to be as gloriously irresponsible as under the schemes for the endowment of motherhood. "Socialism intervenes between the children and the parents.... Socialism in fact is the State family. The old family of the private individual must vanish before it, just as the old waterworks of private enterprise, or the old gas company. They are incompatible with it." Thus Mr. H. G. Wells.

Whilst this sort of thing passes for thinking, it is a task that has little promise in it to demand a return to the study of human nature, and insist that only by obeying it can we command it, as Bacon said of Nature at large. Meanwhile the madness proceeds apace; nursery-schools, wretched parody of the nursery, are advocated at length in even Fabian tracts, and the writer who suggests that an elder sister may be receiving the highest kind of education in staying at home and helping her mother, would sound almost to himself like an echo from the dead past did he not know that neither a Plato nor a million tons of moderns can walk through human nature or any other fact as if it were not there.

Whatever be our duty to the girl of the working-classes, no man can deny the importance of performing it aright. She will become the wife of the working-man. From her thus flows most of the birth-rate. If our education of her is wrong, it is a very great wrong for millions of individuals and for the whole of society. But let us look at the case of her more fortunate sister.

The girl of the more fortunate classes is certain to be well cared for in the matter of air and food and light and exercise. We have already seen how this matter of exercise requires to be qualified and determined as for motherhood--that is, unless we desire most suicidally to educate all the most promising stocks of the nation out of existence. But now what do we owe to her in the matter of providing the right kind of intellectual, moral, spiritual, psychical environment? It is a pity to flounder with so many adjectives, but nearly all the available ones are forsworn and fail to express my meaning. Let us, however, speak of the spiritual environment, seeking to free that word from all its lamentable associations of superstition and cant, and to associate it rather with a humanized kind of religion that deals with humanity as made by, living upon, and destined for, this earth, whatever unseen worlds there may or may not be to conquer.

It is our business, then, to provide the spiritual environment in which the maternal instinct is favoured and seen to be supremely honourable. If in the "best" girls' schools ideas of marriage and babies are ridiculed, the sooner these schools be rubbed down again into the soil, the better. There is no need to substitute one form of cant for another, but it is possible--possible even though the head-mistress should be a spinster, for whom physical motherhood has not been and never will be--to incorporate in the very spirit of the school, as part of its public opinion, no less potent though its power be not consciously felt, the ideals of real and complete womanhood, which mean nothing less than the consecration of the individual to the future, and the belief that such consecration serves not only the future but also the highest satisfaction of her best self.

If it were our present task to define and specify the details of a school in which girls should be educated for womanhood, for motherhood, and the future, it would not be difficult, I think, to show how the services of painting and sculpture, of poetry and prose, should be enlisted. A word or two of outline may be permitted.

There is, for instance, a noble Madonna of Botticelli which is supremely great, not because of the skill of the painter's hand, nor yet the delicacy of his eye, but because of the spirit which they express. Botticelli speaks across the centuries, and is none other than an earlier voice uttering the words of Coleridge, teaching that a mother is the holiest thing alive. The master may or may not have perceived that the Madonna was a symbol; that what he believed of one holy mother was worth believing just in so far as it serves to make all motherhood holy and all men servants thereof. The painter can scarcely have looked at his model and appreciated her fitness for his purpose without realizing that he was concerned with depicting a truth not local and unique, but universal and commonplace. Whether or not the painter saw this, we have no excuse for not seeing it. Copies of such a painting as this should be found in every girls' school throughout the world.

Girls learn drawing and painting at school, and these are amongst the numerous subjects on which the present writer is entitled to no technical or critical opinion. But he sometimes supposes that a painting is not necessarily the worse because it represents a noble thing, and that it may even be a worthier human occupation to portray the visage of a living man or woman than the play of light upon a dead wall or a dead partridge. It might even be argued by the wholly inexpert that if the business of art is with beauty, the art is higher, other things being equal, in proportion as the beauty it portrays is of a higher order. Thus in the painting of women, the ignorant commentator sometimes asks himself in what supreme sense it was worth while for an artist to expend his powers upon the portrait of some society fool who could pay him twelve hundred pounds therefor; or in what supreme sense a painter can be called an artist who prefers such a task, and the flesh-pots, to the portrayal of womanhood at its highest. There are attributes of womanhood which directly serve human life, present and to come--attributes of vitality and faithfulness, attributes of body and bosom, of mind and of feeling, which it is within the power of the great artist to portray; and it is in worthily portraying the greatest things, and in this alone, that he transcends the status of the decorator.

It is worth while also to refer here to sculpture; something can be taught by its means. The Venus of Milo is not only a great work of art; it is also a representation of the physiological ideal. Its model was a woman eminently capable of motherhood. The corset is beyond question undesirable from every point of view, and it may be of service by means of such a statue as this to teach the girl's eye what are the right proportions of the body. She is constantly being faced with gross and preposterous perversions of the female figure as they are to be seen in the fashion plates of every feminine journal. It is as well that she should have opportunities of occasionally seeing something better.

A note upon the corset may not be out of place here. We know that its use is of no small antiquity. We have lately come to learn that civilization stepped across to Europe from Asia, using Crete as a stepping-stone; and in frescoes found in the palace of Minos, at Knossos, by Dr. Arthur Evans, we find that the corset was employed to distort the female figure nearly four thousand years ago, as it is to-day. There must be some clue deep in human nature to the persistence of a custom which is in itself so absurd. Those who have studied the work of such writers as Westermarck, and who cannot but agree that on the whole he is right in the contention that each sex desires to accentuate the features of its sex, will be prepared to accept Dr. Havelock Ellis's interpretation of the corset. By constricting the waist it accentuates the salience of the bosom and hips. This may simply be an expression of the desire to emphasize sex, but it may with still more insight be looked upon, as the latter writer has suggested, as the insertion of a claim to capacity for motherhood. This claim is of course unconscious, but Nature does not always make us aware of the purposes which she exercises through us. Now, though the corset serves to draw attention to certain factors of motherhood, in point of fact it is injurious to that end, and is on that highest of all grounds to be condemned. I return to the point that possibly the direct and formal condemnation of the corset may be in some cases less effective than the method, which must have some value for every girl, of placing before her eyes representations of the female figure, showing beauty and capacity for motherhood as completely fused because they are indeed one. Constrain the girl to admit that that is as beautiful as can be, and then ask her what she thinks the corset applied to such a figure could possibly accomplish.

Surely the same principle applies to what the girl reads. Some of us become more and more convinced that youth, being naturally more intelligent than maturity, prefers and requires more subtlety in its teaching. In addressing a meeting of men, say upon politics, a speaker's first business is to be crude. He has no chance whatever unless he is direct, unqualified, allowing nothing at all for any kind of intelligence or self-constructive faculty in the minds of his hearers. Let any one recall the catchwords, styled watchwords, of politics during the last ten or twenty years, and he will see how men are to be convinced.

But it is all very well to treat men as fools, provided that you do not say so--the case is different with young people, and certainly not less with girls than with boys. Mr. Kipling, in one of those earlier moments of insight that sometimes almost persuade us to pardon the brutality which year by year becomes more than ever the dominant note of his teaching, once told us of the discomfiture of a member of Parliament, or person of that kind, who went to a boys' school to lecture about Patriotism, and who unfurled a Union Jack amid the dead silence of the disgusted boys. He forgot that, for once, he was speaking to an intelligent audience, which demands something a little less crude than the kind of thing which wins elections and makes and unmakes governments and policies.

There is certainly a lesson here for those who are entrusted with the supreme responsibility, so immeasurably more political than politics, of forming the girl's mind for her future destiny. Suggestion is one of the most powerful things in the world, but we must not forget that inverted form of it which has been called contra-suggestion. We all know how the first shoots of religion are destroyed on all sides in young minds by contra-suggestion. Crude, ill-timed, unsympathetic, excessive, religious teaching and religious exercises achieve, as scarcely anything else could, exactly the opposite of that which they seek to attain. Thus it is not here proposed that we should take any course at home or at school which should have the result of making motherhood as nauseous to the girl's mind through contra-suggestion, as it easily could be made if we did not set to work upon judicious lines.

If we are in any measure to gain, by means of books, our end of forming right ideals in the girl's mind, I am certain that we must not expect to accomplish much with the help of any but very great writers. We may very well doubt the substantial value for the purpose of anything written for the purpose. Such books may be of value for the teacher; they may possibly be of value in disposing of curiosity that has become overweening or even morbid, but their value as preachments I much question. The kind of writing upon which the young girl's mind will be nourished in years to come is best represented by the lecture on "Queens' Gardens" in Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies," though in that magnificent and immortal piece of literature there is nowhere any direct allusion to motherhood as the natural ideal for girlhood. Yet if only one girl in a hundred who read that lecture can be persuaded, in the beautiful phrase to be found there, that she was "born to be love visible," how excellent is the work that we shall have accomplished! A chapter might well be devoted entirely to the teaching of Wordsworth regarding womanhood. We need scarcely remind ourselves that this great poet owed an immeasurable debt to his sister, and in lesser, though very substantial, degree to his wife and daughters. He has left an abundance of poetry which testifies directly and indirectly to these influences. This poetry is not only utterly lovely as poetry; at once sane and passionate, steadying and thrilling, but it is also not to be surpassed, I cannot but believe, as a means for rightly forming the ideals of girlhood. Every year sees an inundation of new collections of poetry. The anthologist might do worse than collect from Wordsworth a small, but precious and quintessential volume under some such title as "Wordsworth and Womanhood." One would do it oneself but that literary people of a certain school regard it as an impertinence that any one who believes in knowledge should intrude into their sphere. Wordsworth, it is true, said that "poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science." But most literary people are so busy writing that they have no time to read, and they forget these sayings of the immortal dead. Yet that is just a saying which directly bears upon the present contention. We must be very careful lest we insult and outrage girlhood with our physiology, not that physiology is either insolent or outrageous, but that girlhood is girlhood. It is the "breath and finer spirit" of our knowledge of sex and parenthood that we must seek to impart to her. Poetry is its vehicle, and the time will come when we shall consciously use it for that great purpose.

But we cannot expect the adolescent girl to be content even with Ruskin and Wordsworth. She must, of course, have fiction, and under this heading there is more or less accessible to her every possibility in the gamut of morality, from the teaching of such a book as "Richard Feverel" down to the excrement and sewage that defile the railway book-stalls to-day under the guise of "bold, reverent, and fearless handling of the great sex problems." The present writer is one of those old-fashioned enough to believe that it matters a great deal what young people read. We are all hygienists nowadays, and very particular as to what enters our children's mouths. But what is the value of these precautions if we relax our care as to what enters their minds?

It is my misfortune to be scarcely acquainted at all with fiction, and I can presume to offer no detailed guidance in this matter. The name of Mr. Eden Phillpotts must certainly be mentioned as foremost among those living writers who care for these things. In the Eugenics Education Society it was at one time hoped to see the formation of a branch of fiction in the library which might form the nucleus of a catalogue, well worth disseminating if only it could be compiled, of fiction worthy the consumption of girlhood. Perhaps it would hardly be necessary for the present writer to protest that the didactic, the unnaturally good, the well-meaning, the entirely amateur types of fiction, including those which ignore the facts of human nature, and, above all, those which decry instead of seeking to deify the natural, would find no place in this catalogue. It is possible, though I much doubt it, that there may be many books unknown to me of the order and quality of "Richard Feverel." At any rate, that represents in its perfection--save, perhaps, for the unnecessary tragedy of its close, which the illustrious author himself in conversation did not find it quite possible to defend--the type of novel whose teaching the Eugenist and the Maternalist must recommend for the nourishment of youth of both sexes.

As has been already hinted, discourses on how to wash a baby are less in place here; and in the following chapter the argument will be set forth in detail that the sequence of the common schemes for the education of girlhood and womanhood is, in one essential respect, logically and practically erroneous.

XIII

CHOOSING THE FATHERS OF THE FUTURE

We live in a social chaos of which the evolution into anything like a cosmos is scarcely more than incipient. In such a case the reformer has to do the best he may; in the only possible sense in which that phrase can be defended, he has to take the world as he finds it. Heartless heads will of course be found to comment upon the logical error of his ways, to which his only reply is that, while they stand and comment, what can be done he now will do.

In this whole matter of the care and culture of motherhood--which is, verily, the prime condition, too often forgotten, of the care and culture of childhood--we have to do what we can, when and as we can. We live in a society where mankind, held individually responsible for all other acts whatsoever, is held entirely irresponsible for the act of parenthood which, being more momentous than any other, ought to be held more responsible than any other. Marriage, the precedent condition of most parenthood, is thus regarded as the concern of the individuals and the present. Individuals and the present therefore decide what marriages shall occur; but by some obscure fatality which no one had thought of, the future appears upon the scene: and when it is actually present, or rather not only present but visible, the responsibility for it is recognized. We have not yet gone so far as to see that a girl may be a good mother, in the highest sense, in her choice of a mate. But as things are, it is agreed that we are to act like blind automata, as improvident and irresponsible as the lower fishes, until the actual birth of the future. The philosophic truth that the future is nascent in the present--a truth so genuinely philosophic that it is also practical--is still hidden from us, and thus we are faced, in town and country alike, with ignorant motherhood, set to the most difficult, responsible, and expert of tasks--the right nurture of babyhood; babyhood, a ridiculous subject for grown men, yet somehow the condition of them and all their doings.

In this state of affairs, those who began the modern campaign against infant mortality, or rather that small section of them who were not to be beguiled by secondaries, such as poverty, alcoholism, and the like, set to work to remedy maternal ignorance. Having been engaged in this campaign for many years, one is not likely to decry it now, nor is there any occasion to do so. The movement for the instruction of motherhood and for the instruction even of girls in the duties of actual motherhood, is now not only started but making real progress, and will assuredly prosper.

But here our business is to think a little in front of action done and doing, and we shall very soon discover that there is more for public opinion yet to learn, while we may be very certain that this last lesson will be less easily learnt than the former was, for it is based upon evidence much less obvious. I have long maintained that the movement against infant mortality must precede in logic and in practice movements for the physical training of boys and girls, for the medical inspection and treatment of school children, and so forth. Relatively to these I have always asserted that the right care of babies has the immense superiority that it means beginning at the beginning, but I have always denied that it means beginning at the absolute beginning, if such a phrase be permitted.

Given the world as it is, the conditions of marriage as they are, the economic position of woman, the power of prudery, and the conventional supposition that babies occur by providential dispensation, we must act as if we really made the assumption that human parenthood, until the moment of birth, is as irresponsible as any sequence of events in the atmosphere or the world of electrons. But we who are thinking in front for humanity must make no such assumption. We must look forward to and hasten the time when we can act upon the _true_ assumption, which is that the more the knowledge the greater the responsibility, and more especially that our knowledge of heredity, so far from abolishing human responsibility--as the enemies of knowledge declare--immeasurably extends and deepens it. In the present volume we are proceeding upon the true assumption, and therefore in the study of womanhood we must now proceed, in defiance of conventional assumptions, to study the responsibility and duties of motherhood _as they exist for maidenhood_. To this end, it will be necessary that we remind ourselves of certain great biological facts which are of immense significance for mankind, and are doubtless indeed more important in their bearing upon ourselves than upon any other living species.

The first of these is the fact of heredity; the second the fact that hereditary endowment, whether for good or for evil, or, as is the rule, both for good and for evil, goes vastly further than any one has until lately realized, in determining individual destiny. These are amongst the first principles of Eugenics or race culture, and as they have been discussed at length elsewhere, one may here take them for granted. Scarcely less important is the fact that the conditions of mating in the sub-human world--conditions which beyond dispute make for the continuance, the vigour, the efficiency, and therefore the happiness of the species--are largely modified amongst ourselves in consequence of certain human facts which have no sub-human parallel. The parallels and the divergences between the two cases are both alike of the utmost significance, and cannot be too carefully studied. It will here be possible, of course, merely to look at them as briefly as is compatible with the making of a right approach to the subject now before us, which is the girl's choice of a husband.

But in right priority to the question of choice, we may for convenience discuss first the marriage age. The choice at one age may not be the choice at another, and in any case the question of the marriage age is so important for the individual woman, and so immensely effective in determining the composition of any society, that we cannot study it too carefully.

XIV

THE MARRIAGE AGE FOR GIRLS

Let us clearly understand, in the first place, that in this chapter we discuss principles and averages, and that, supposing our conclusions be accepted as true, they cannot for a moment be quoted as decisive in their bearing upon special cases. The impartial reader will not suppose that such folly is contemplated, but those who discuss and advocate new views very soon learn that many readers are not impartial, and that for one cause or another they do not fail of misrepresentation. This is not a case, then, of "science laying down the law," and ordering this individual to marry at this age, and that not to marry at another; and yet though this rigorous individual application of our principles is absurd, they are none the less worth formulating, if it be possible.

The question before us is very far from simple: it is not in the nature of human problems to be simple, the individual and society being so immeasurably complex. We have to consider far more points than occur on first inspection. We have to ascertain when the average woman becomes fit for marriage. But we must remember that we are dealing with marriage under the conditions imposed by law and public opinion. Therefore, fit for mating and fit for marriage are not synonymous, and to ascertain the age of physiological fitness for mating, though an important contribution to our problem, is not the solution of it. We have further to consider how the taste and inclination of the individual vary in the course of her development. We have to ask ourselves at what age in general she is likely to make that choice which her maturity and middle age will ratify rather than for ever regret. We have to consider the relations of different ages to motherhood, both as regards the quality of the children born, and as regards their probable number under natural conditions. These are questions which certainly affect the individual's happiness profoundly, and yet that is the least of their significance. Again, we have to observe how the constitution of society varies as regards the age of its members, according as marriage be early or late. In the former case more generations are alive at the same time, and in the latter case fewer. The increasing age at marriage would have more conspicuous results in this respect if it were not for the great increase in longevity; so that, though the generations are becoming more spread out, we may have as many representatives of different generations alive at the same time as there used to be; but of course there is the great difference that society is older as a whole. This is a fact which in itself must affect the doings and the prospects of civilization. An assemblage of people in the twenties will not behave in the same way as those in the forties. The probable effect must be towards conservatism, and increasing rigidity. It is a question to be asked by the historian of civilization how far these considerations bear upon the history of past empires.

Another and most notable result of the modified relation between the generations which ensues from increasing the age at marriage, is that the parents, under the newer conditions, must necessarily be, on the average, psychologically further from their children. The man who first becomes a father at twenty-five, shall we say, may well expect still to have something of the boy in him at thirty, especially as children keep us young. He is thus a companion for his child and his child for him. The same is true of women. It is good that a woman who still has something of girlhood in her should become a mother. When the marriage age is much delayed, people of both sexes tend to grow old more quickly than if they had children to keep them young, and then when the children come the psychological disparity is greater than it ought to be--greater than is best either for parents or children.

Before we consider the question of individual development, let us note the general trend of the marriage age. There is no doubt that this is progressively towards a delay in marriage. We have only to study the facts amongst primitive races, and in low forms of civilization, to see that increase in civilization involves, amongst other things, increasing age at marriage. In his book, "The Nature of Man," Professor Metchnikoff quotes some statistics, now very nearly fifty years old, showing the age at first marriage in various European countries. The figure for England was nearly 26 for males and 24.6 for females; in France, Norway, Holland, and Belgium the figures for both sexes were considerably higher, the average age in Belgium being very nearly 30 for men and more than 28 for women. In England the age has been rising for many years past, and probably stands now at about 28 for men and 26 for women. It need hardly be pointed out that this increase in the age of marriage is one of the factors in the fall of the birth-rate, which is general throughout the leading countries of the world, proceeding now with great rapidity even in Germany.

On the whole, it is further true that the marriage age rises as we ascend from lower to higher classes within a given civilization, though a very select class among the wealthy offer an exception to this.

Now nothing is more familiar to us all than that there is a disharmony, as Professor Metchnikoff puts it, between these ages for marriage and the age at which the development of the racial instinct is unmistakable and parenthood is indeed possible. The tendency of civilization is to increase this disharmony, and it is impossible to believe that this tendency can be healthy either for the civilization or for the individual.

Still concerning ourselves with the more general aspects of the question, let it be observed that, as regards men, this unnatural delay of marriage very frequently brings consequences which, bearing hardly on themselves, later bear not less hardly on hapless womanhood. The later the age to which marriage is delayed, the more are men handicapped in their constant struggle to control the racial instinct under the unnatural conditions in which they find themselves. The great majority of men fail in this unequal fight, and of those who fail an enormous number become infected by disease, with which, when they marry, they infect their wives, sometimes killing them, often causing them lifelong illness, often destroying for ever their chances of motherhood, or making motherhood a horror by the production of children that are an offence against the sun. These are facts known to all who have looked into the matter, but there is no such thing as decent public opinion on the subject, and the author or speaker who dares to allude to them takes his means of living, if not his life, into his hands.

No doubt men are largely responsible themselves for the rising marriage age, but women are also responsible in some measure. This must mean on the whole an injury to themselves as individuals, to their sex, and to society. Both sexes demand a higher standard of living; the man spends enough in alcohol and tobacco, as a rule, to support one or two children, and then says he is too poor to marry. There is everything to be said for the doctrine that people should be provident, and should bring no more children into the world than they are able to support; but before we accept this plea in any particular case, we should first inquire how the available income is being spent. At present, every indication goes to show that we are following in the track of all our predecessors, spending upon individual indulgence that which ought to be dedicated to the future, and thereby compromising the worth or the possibility of any future at all.

In the light of these considerations and many more, some of which we shall later consider, I deplore and protest against with all my heart, as blind, ignorant, and destructive, the counsel of those women, some of them conspicuous advocates of the cause of woman's suffrage--in which I nevertheless believe--who advise women to delay in marriage, or who publish opinions throwing contempt upon marriage altogether. Later, we must deal in detail with marriage; here we are only concerned with the marriage age. It will then be argued that the conditions of marriage must sooner or later be modified in so far as they are at present inacceptable to a certain number of women of the highest type. This may be granted without in any degree accepting the deplorable teaching of such writers as Miss Cicely Hamilton, in her book entitled "Marriage as a Trade." Every individual case requires individual consideration, and no less than any individual case ever yet received. But in general those women who counsel the delay of the marriage age are opposing the facts of feminine development and psychology. They are indirectly encouraging male immorality and female prostitution, with their appalling consequences for those directly concerned, for hosts of absolutely innocent women, and for the unborn. Further, those who suppose that the granting of the vote is going to effect radical and fundamental changes in the facts of biology, the development of instinct, and its significance in human action, are fools of the very blindest kind. Some of us find that it needs constant self-chastening and bracing up of the judgment to retain our belief in the cause of woman's suffrage, of the justice and desirability of which we are convinced, assaulted as we almost daily are by the unnatural, unfeminine, almost inhuman blindness of many of its advocates.

We have constantly to remind ourselves that our immediate concern and duty are not with the world as it might be, or ought to be, or will be, but with the world as it is. There are many good arguments, admirably adapted to an imaginary world, why the marriage age should be increased. But these forget the possible, nay the inevitable, consequences, if such an increase show itself in one nation and not in another, in one class of society and not in another. It is a good thing, and it is the ideal of the eugenist, as I ventured to formulate some years ago, that every child who comes into the world should be desired, designed, and loved in anticipation. But if in France, shall we say, such a tendency begins to obtain a generation earlier than it does in Germany, there will come to be a disparity of population which, continuing, must inevitably mean sooner or later the disappearance of France.

Or again, difference in the marriage age in different classes within a given community has very notable consequences, as Sir Francis Galton showed in his book, "Hereditary Genius," and later, in more detail, in his "Inquiries into Human Faculty." He shows that, other things being equal, the earlier marrying class or group will in a few generations breed down the others and completely supplant them. If the natural quality of the one class differ from that of the other, the ultimate consequences will be tremendous. It has been proved up to the hilt that in Great Britain these differences in marriage in different classes exist, and that, on the whole, the marriage age varies directly as the means of support for the children, to say nothing of natural and transmissible differences in different classes. One can only, therefore, repeat what was said some time ago in contribution to a public discussion on this subject that, "considering the present distribution of the birth-rate, nothing strikes a more direct blow at the future of England than that which tends to increase the marriage age of the responsible, careful, and provident amongst us whilst the improvident and careless multiply as they do."

Let us now consider another possible factor in this question, and then we must proceed to look at the individual woman as the question of the marriage age affects her.

_The Marriage Age and the Quality of the Children._--Both from the point of view of the race and from that of the individual who desires happy parenthood it is necessary to learn, if possible, how the age of the parents affects the quality of their offspring. If motherhood is to be a joy and a blessing, the children must be such as bring joy and blessing. My provisional judgment on this matter is that we are at present without anything like conclusive evidence proving that the age of the parents affects the quality of their children.

Let us look at some of the arguments which have been advanced. The school of biometricians, represented most conspicuously in latter years by Professor Karl Pearson, have desired us to accept certain conclusions which are singularly incompatible with the opinion of their illustrious founder, Sir Francis Galton, in favour of early marriages among those of sound stock. By their special procedure, as rigorously critical in the statistical treatment of _data_ as it is sweetly simple in its innocent assumption that all _data_ are of equal value, they have proposed to show that the elder members of a family are further removed from the normal, average, or mean type than the younger members. This, according to them, may sometimes work out in the production of great ability or genius in the eldest or elder members, but oftener still shows itself in highly undesirable characters, whether of mind or of body, the latter often leading to premature decease. There is hence inferred a powerful argument against the limitation of families, which means a disproportionate increase amongst the aberrant members of the population.

This argument really offers as good an example as can be desired of the almost unimaginable ease with which these skilful mathematicians allow themselves to be confused. Their inquiry has ignored the age of the parents at marriage--or, better still, at the births of their respective children--and has assumed that the number of the family was the all-important point: a good example of that idolatry of number as number which is the "freak religion" of the biometrician. Supposing that the conclusion reached by this method be a true one--which it would need more credulity than I possess to assert--we must conclude that, somehow, primogeniture, as such, affects the quality of the offspring, and, on the other hand, that to be born fifth or tenth or fifteenth involves certain personal consequences of a special kind. Evidently we here approach less sophisticated forms of number-worship, as that which attached a superstitious meaning to the seventh son of a seventh son.

It seems, therefore, necessary to point out--surprising though the necessity be--that, if the biometrical conclusion be valid, what it demonstrates must surely be not the occult working of certain changes in the germ-plasm, for instance, of a father, because a certain number of his germ-cells, after separation from his body, have gone to form new individuals (changes which would not have occurred if those germ-cells had perished!), but rather a correlation between the _age_ of the parents and the quality of their offspring. How cleverly the biometricians have involved one muddle within another will be evident not only from considering the evident absurdity of supposing--as their argument, analyzed, necessarily supposes--that a man's body can be affected by the diverse fates of germ-cells that have left it, but also when we observe that one of the commonest and most obvious causes of the reduction in the size of families is the increasing age at marriage of both sexes. Two persons may thus marry and become parents at the age of say thirty, their child ranking as first-born, of course, in the biometricians' tables; but had they married ten years sooner, a child born when the parents were thirty might rank as the tenth child, and would be so reckoned by the biometricians. One does not need to be a biologist to perceive that conclusions based upon assumptions so uncritical are worth nothing at all, and it is tempting to suggest that the biometricians are so called, on a principle long famous, because they measure everything but life.

It is plainly unnecessary, therefore, for us to trouble about collecting the innumerable instances where children late in the family sequence have turned out to be illustrious, or have proved to be idiots. It is unnecessary because the most obvious criticism of the contention before us disposes of the proof upon which it is sought to be based. Nevertheless, of course, though the particular contention about the size of the family must necessarily be meaningless, unless, as is so very improbable, it should be shown some day that the bearing of children affects the maternal organism in some way so as to cause subsequent children to approximate ever nearer to the type of the race; yet it is quite conceivable, though quite unproved, that the age of the parents involves changes in the body which affect, for good or for evil, either the construction or the general vigour of the germ-cells. As to this nothing is known, but a great weight of evidence suggests that little importance, if any, can be attached to this question. Women marrying at forty or more may give birth to splendid specimens of humanity or to indifferent ones, and the same may be said of the girl of seventeen, though as to this more must be said. Similarly, also, it is impossible to make any general contrasts between the offspring of fathers of eighteen or fathers of eighty. Correlations may exist, but we know nothing of them yet.

Our conclusion then is that, with regard to the quality of the children of any given mother, we cannot say that she should marry at any particular age, within limits, rather than another. On the other hand, it is evident that if she be highly worthy of motherhood we shall desire her to have a large family, and therefore must encourage her early marriage, as the late Sir Francis Galton so long maintained.

_Physical Fitness for Marriage._--We must carefully distinguish between the question we have just been discussing and that of the marriage age from the mother's point of view. We shall find that the best age for marriage, so far as this question is concerned, is neither puberty, on the one hand, nor the average marriage age amongst civilized women, on the other hand.

If things were as we should like them to be, there would be a harmony between the occurrence of puberty and fitness for marriage. But there can be no question that the goal of evolution, which is perfect adaptation, has not yet been attained by mankind, and indeed reason can be given to show that the goal recedes as we advance towards it. The practice of lower races, amongst whom the girls often marry at puberty or before it, is much less injurious to the individual and the race than we might suppose; but the harmony between the maternal body and the maternal function is much less imperfect in lower races of mankind than it is among ourselves. Just as we find that, among the lower animals, the phenomena of motherhood are simple, easy, and almost painless, so we find that, though owing to the erect attitude, as much cannot be said for human beings anywhere, yet these phenomena are far less severe among the lower races of mankind than among ourselves. The reason is to be found in the astonishing progressive increase in the size of the human head in the higher races. The large size of the head in adult life is foreshadowed in its size at birth, and this it is which constitutes the _crux_ of motherhood among the higher races. It is undoubtedly true that the maternal body, by a process of natural selection, has been evolved in the direction of better correspondence with, and capacity for, that enlarged head of which civilization is the product. But at the present stage in evolution the great function of giving birth to a human being of high race--more especially to a boy of such a race--is graver, more prolonged, and more hazardous than the maternal function has ever been before. The gravity of the process has increased proportionately with the worth of the product.

There are yet further consequences of the development which will convince us how important it is that we should come to right conclusions regarding the physical fitness of girls for marriage. Even to-day, when the work of Lord Lister has been done, and when maternity hospitals--far more dangerous than a battlefield less than two generations ago--can show records from year to year without the loss of a single mother, the fact remains that several thousands of women in Great Britain alone lose their lives every year in the discharge of their supreme duty. It is also the case that large numbers of infants lose their lives during, or shortly after, birth, owing to causes inherent in the conditions of birth, and practically beyond any but the most expert control. In many cases no skill will save the child. A considerable preponderance of the victims are of the male sex, so that there is thus early begun that process of higher male mortality, which is the chief cause of the female preponderance that is so injurious to womanhood and to society. There are thus many and weighty reasons, individual and social--reasons in the present generation and in the next--which conduce to the importance of discovering the best age for marriage from the physical point of view.

We may probably accept the long-standing figures of Dr. Matthews Duncan, one of Edinburgh's many famous obstetricians, who found that the mortality rate in childbirth, or as a consequence of it, was lowest among women from twenty to twenty-four years of age. Therefore it may safely be said that, on the average, and looking at the question, for the present, solely from this point of view, a girl of twenty-one to twenty-two is by no means too young to marry. Of course it would be monstrously absurd to take such a statement as this and regard it as conclusive, even had it been communicated from on high, for any particular case; but as an average statement it may be confidently put forward. At this age, the all-important bones of the pelvis have reached all the development of which they are capable. This may be accepted, notwithstanding the fact that, especially in men, the growth of the long bones of the limbs continues to a considerably later age. Women reach maturity sooner than men, and the pelvis reaches its full capacity at the age stated. Obstetricians know further that if motherhood be begun at a considerably later date, there is less local adaptability than when the bones and ligaments are younger. The point lies in the date of the beginning of motherhood, for this is in general a conspicuous instance of the adage that the first step is the most costly.[13]

_Psychical Fitness for Marriage._--At the beginning of this chapter it was insisted that we must carefully distinguish between physical or physiological fitness for mating and complete fitness for marriage--which, though it includes mating, is vastly more. Few will question the proposition that physical fitness for marriage is reached only some years after puberty; so complete psychical fitness for marriage may well be later still. We should thus have a second disharmony superposed upon the first. But, instead, when we look round us, we may often be inclined to ask whether, for many girls and women, the age of psychical fitness for marriage is ever reached at all; and we have to ask ourselves how far this delay or indefinite postponement of such fitness is due to natural conditions, or how far it is due to the fact that we bring up our girls to be, for instance, sideboard ornaments, as Ruskin said a generation ago.

I believe that this disparity between the age of physical fitness for marriage and the attainment of that outlook upon life and its duties, without which marriage must be so perilous, is one of the most important practical problems of our time, and that its solution is to be found in the principle of education for parenthood, which we have already considered at such length. It is a most serious matter that marriage should be delayed as it is beyond the best age for the commencement of motherhood; it is injurious to the individual and her motherhood, and whether delay occurs, as it does, disproportionately in different cases, or disproportionately within a nation, in the different classes of which it is composed, the consequences, as we have seen, are of the most stupendous possible kind.

Yet observe what a difficulty we are faced with. Perceiving the injurious consequences of delay in marriage--consequences which, as we have seen, if considered only as they show themselves in the most horrible department of pathology, would be sufficient to demand the most urgent consideration--we may almost feel inclined to agree with the utterly blind and deplorable doctrine too common amongst parents and schoolmistresses, who should know so much better, that it is good to see the young things falling in love, and that the sooner they are married the better. Every one whose eyes are open knows how often the consequences of such teaching and practice are disastrous; and if there is anything which we should discourage in our present study, it is that marriage in haste and repentance at leisure to which these blind guides so often lead their blind victims.

Very different, however, will the case be when the victims are no longer blind. The condemnation of their blind guides at the present time is not that they regard it as right and healthy that young people should mate in their early twenties, but it is that by every means in their power, positive and negative, these blind guides have striven to prevent the light from reaching their victim's eyes. The day is coming, however, when the principles of education for parenthood--for which, if for anything, this book is a plea--will be accepted and practised, and then the case will be very different.

Convinced though I certainly am of the vast importance of nature or heredity in the human constitution, I am not one of those eugenists who, to the grave injury of their cause, declare that there are no such things as nurture and education, in that they effect nothing; nor do I believe it in any way inherently necessary that perhaps ten years after puberty a girl should still be irresponsible in those matters which, incomparably beyond all others, demand responsibility; or incapable, with wise help or even without it, of guiding her course aright. It is we, as I repeat for the thousandth time, who are to blame, for our deliberate, systematic, and disastrous folly in scrupulously excluding from her education that for which the whole of education, of any other kind, should be regarded as the preparation.

No one can attach more than its due importance to woman's function of choosing the fathers of the future; rejecting the unworthy and selecting the worthy for this greatest of human duties. It would be a most serious difficulty for those who hold such a creed if it were that a girl's taste and judgment could be trusted, if at all, only some years after she had reached physical maturity for motherhood. It may be that in the present conditions of girls' education, such right direction of this choice as occurs, is just as likely to occur at the earlier age as at any later one, when indeed it may happen that considerations more worldly and prudential, less generally natural and eugenic, may come to have greater weight. One can, therefore, only leave it to the reader's consideration whether it is not high time that we should so seek to prepare the girl's mind, that when her body Is ready for marriage her mind may, if possible, be ready also to guide her towards a worthy choice which the whole of her future life may ratify, and the life of her descendants thereafter.

It must be insisted again that this question has many ramifications, and that not the least important of them are those which concern themselves with the kinds of disease already referred to. Some enemy of God and man once invented a phrase about the desirability of young men sowing their wild oats, and subsequent enemies of life and the good and progress, or perhaps mere fools, animated gramophones of a cheap pattern, have repeated and still propagate that doctrine. It is poisonous to its core; it never did any one any good, and has done incalculable harm. It has blinded the eyes of hundreds of thousands of babies; it has brought hundreds of thousands more rotten into the world. Hosts of dead men, women, and children are its victims. It is indeed good that a man should be a man, and not a worm on stilts; it is indeed good that women should prefer men to be men, and that as soon as possible they should cease to accept in marriage the feeble, the cowardly, the echoers, and the sheep. But this is a very different thing from asserting that it is good for young men, before marriage, to adopt a standard of morality which would be thought shameful beyond words in their sisters, and which has all the horrible consequences that have been alluded to, and many more. Now, vicious though the wild oats doctrine be in itself and in its consequences, we have to grant that there is little need of it, for young manhood needs the insertion of no doctrines from without to encourage it towards the satisfaction of what are in themselves natural and healthy tendencies. Our right procedure therefore should be--notwithstanding the unhealthy tendency of high civilization in this respect, and notwithstanding the terrible folly, traitorous to their sex, of those women who decry marriage, and seek to delay it--to prepare girlhood and public opinion, and even to modify, so far as may be necessary, economic conditions, in order that the girls who are worthy to marry at all shall do so at the right age, and shall join themselves for life with rightly chosen men.

One more point may be conveniently considered here, though it is not strictly a matter of the marriage age for girls. The point is as to the most generally desirable age relation between husband and wife. Here, again, we must remind ourselves that it is impossible to lay down the law for any case, and that that is not what we are now attempting to do.

As every one knows, there is an average disparity of some few years in the ages of husband and wife. This may be referred probably to economic conditions in part, and also to the fact that girlhood becomes womanhood at a somewhat earlier age than boyhood becomes manhood. The girl is more precocious. Thus though she be twenty and her husband twenty-three, she is as mature.

It is probable that the economic tendencies of the day are in the direction of increasing this disparity, since more is demanded of the man in the material sense, and he therefore must delay. Some authorities consider that seniority of six or eight years on the part of the husband constitutes the desirable average. But there are considerations commonly ignored that should qualify this opinion in my judgment.

It is not that science has any information regarding the consequence upon the sex or quality of offspring of any one age ratio in marriage rather than another. On subjects like this wild statements are incessantly being made, and we are often told that certain consequences in offspring follow when the husband is older than the wife, and others when he is younger, and so forth. As to this, nothing is known, and it is improbable that there is anything to know. But it has usually been forgotten, so far as I am aware, that the disparity of age has a very marked and real consequence, which is, in its turn, the cause of many more consequences.

We have seen that the male death-rate is higher than the female death-rate. At all ages, whether before birth or after it, the male expectation of life is less than the female. This is more conspicuously true than ever now that the work of Lord Lister, based upon that of Pasteur, has so enormously lowered the mortality in childbirth. Even now that mortality is falling, and will rapidly fall for some time to come, still further increasing the female advantage in expectation of life; the more especially this applies to married women. If now, this being the natural fact, we have most husbands older than their wives, it follows that in a great preponderance of cases the husband will die first; and so we have produced the phenomenon of widowhood. The greater the seniority of the husband, the more widowhood will there be in a society. Every economic tendency, every demand for a higher standard of life, every aggravation for the struggle for existence, every increment of the burden of the defective-minded, tending to increase the man's age at marriage, which, on the whole, involves also increasing his seniority--contributes to the amount of widowhood in a nation.

We therefore see that, as might have been expected, this question of the age ratio in marriage, though first to be considered from the average point of view of the girl, has a far wider social significance. First, for herself, the greater her husband's seniority, the greater are her chances of widowhood, which is in any case the destiny of an enormous preponderance of married women. But further, the existence of widowhood is a fact of great social importance because it so often means unaided motherhood, and because, even when it does not, the abominable economic position of woman in modern society bears hardly upon her. It is not necessary to pursue this subject further at the present time. But it is well to insist that this seniority of the husband has remoter consequences far too important to be so commonly overlooked.