Part 11

It is of good omen that the precedent thus set in America is finding a following in our own isle also. All honour to the University of St. Andrews, concerning which sundry newspapers of 15th March, 1892, relate that: “The Senatus Academicus of the University of St. Andrews has agreed to open its classes in arts, science, and theology to women, who will be taught along with men. The University will receive next year a sum of over £30,000 to be spent on bursaries, one half of the sum to be devoted to women exclusively. Steps are being taken to secure a hall of residence in which the women students may live while attending the University classes.”

_Id._—“... _in purity and truth, Through plastic childhood and retentive youth_.”

“Je voudrais que ce petit volume apportât au lecteur un peu de la jouissance que j’ai goûtée en le composant. Il complète mes _Souvenirs_, et mes souvenirs sont une partie essentielle de mon œuvre. Qu’ils augmentent ou qu’ils diminuent mon autorité philosophique, ils expliquent, ils montrent l’origine de mes jugements, vrais ou faux. Ma mère, avec laquelle j’ai été si pauvre, à côté de laquelle j’ai travaillé des heures, n’interrompant mon travail que pour lui dire: ‘Maman, êtes-vous contente de moi?’ mes petites amies d’enfance qui m’enchantaient par leur gentillesse discrète, ma sœur Henriette, si haute, si pure, qui, à vingt ans, m’entraîna dans la voie de la raison et me tendit la main pour franchir un passage difficile, ont embaumé le commencement de ma vie d’un arôme qui durera jusqu’à la mort.”—Ernest Renan (“Souvenirs d’Enfance.”).

5.—“_Their mutual sports of sinew and of brain._”

“No boy nor girl should leave school without possessing a grasp of the general character of science, and without having been disciplined more or less in the methods of all sciences; so that when turned into the world to make their own way, they shall be prepared to face scientific problems, not by knowing at once the conditions of every problem, or by being able at once to solve it, but by being familiar with the general current of scientific thought, and by being able to apply the methods of science in the proper way, when they have acquainted themselves with the conditions of the special problem.”—T. H. Huxley (“Essay on Scientific Education”).

And the same learned professor tells us, on another occasion:—“A liberal education is an artificial education which has not only prepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties. That man, I think,” (shall we not include “woman” also, on his own showing as above?) “has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine, with all its parts in equal strength and in smooth working order, ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to every kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature, and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.

“Such an one, and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education, for he is as completely as a man can be in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever beneficent mother, he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister, and interpreter.”—_Id._ (“Essay on a Liberal Education.”)

6.—“_In strength alike the sturdy comrades train_; ...”

How largely strength is simply a matter of training may be instanced by a case or two:—

“The results of practice and training from childhood on the bodily development can be seen in female acrobats and circus riders, who could compete with any man in courage, daring, dexterity, and strength, and whose performances are frequently astonishing.”—Bebel (“Woman,” p. 126).

“I am a medical man. I have spent several years in Africa, and have seen human nature among tribes whose habits are utterly unlike those of Europe. I had been accustomed to believe that the _muscular_ system of women is necessarily feebler than that of men, and perhaps I might have dogmatised to that effect; but, to my astonishment, I found the African women to be as strong as our men.... Not only did I see the proof of it in their work and in the weights which they lifted, but on examining their arms I found them large and hard beyond all my previous experience. On the contrary, I saw the men of these tribes to be weak, their muscles small and flabby. Both facts are accounted for by the habits of the people. The men are lazy in the extreme; all the hard work is done by the women.”—(_Westminster Review_, Oct., 1865, p. 355.)

“Les femmes Sphakiotes ne le cèdent en rien aux hommes pour la vigueur et l’énergie. J’ai vu un jour une femme ayant un enfant dans les bras et un sac de farine sur la tête, gravir, malgré ce double fardeau, la pente escarpée qui conduit à Selia.”—Jules Ballot (“Histoire de l’Insurrection Crétoise,” Paris, 1868, p. 251).

_Id._... In this context it is pleasant to find in the newspapers such a note as the following:—

“The frost continued throughout West Cheshire yesterday, and skating on rather rough ice was largely enjoyed. At Eaton, where the Duke of Westminster is entertaining a party, the guests had a hockey match on the frozen fish-pond in front of the hall. The players, who kept the game up with spirit for over an hour, included the Duchess of Westminster, the Marquis and Marchioness of Ormonde, Lady Beatrice and Lady Constance Buller, Lord Arthur Grosvenor, Lord Gerald Grosvenor, Lady Margaret and Lady Mary Grosvenor, Captain and Mrs. Cawley, Hon. Mrs. Norman Grosvenor, Hon. Mrs. Thomas Grosvenor, General Julian Hall, and party.”—(_Manchester Courier_, 12th Jan., 1892.)

Later on in the year we read in the journal _Woman_:—

“At the Marlow Regatta an extremely pretty girl in navy serge, built Eton fashion, was a Miss ——, who wore as an under-bodice a full vest of shaded yellow Indian silk. Her prowess with the oar is the cause of daily admiration to the Marlowites.”

Again, on August 15th, 1892, the _Manchester Evening Mail_ has the following:—

“An ailing ‘navvy,’ who has been engaged in some works near Versailles, was a few days ago admitted to a hospital in that town. Before the sick person had long been in the institution it was discovered that the apparent ‘navvy’ was a woman. The superintendent of the hospital was not in the least surprised on hearing of the transformation scene, for it appears that he is accustomed to deal with many woman patients who enter the hospital in male attire. It is common in the district (says a Paris correspondent) for robust women to don men’s garb in order to obtain remunerative employment as navvies, porters, farm labourers, road menders, or assistants to bricklayers, masons, and builders. It has long been established that the average Frenchwoman of town or country has as great a capacity for work either in counting-houses, shops, fields, or farms as her lord and master has for laziness and lolling in the cafés, playing dominoes, and smoking cigarettes.”

On the preceding day, August 14th, 1892, the St. Petersburg journals reported that:—

“Ces jours-ci sera érigé à Sébastopol le monument élevé en l’honneur des Femmes de cette ville qui, en 1854, ont construit seules une batterie contre les troupes alliées. C’est une pyramide taillée en granit d’une hauteur de cinquante pieds. Sur un côté est écrit en lettres d’or: ‘C’est ici que se trouvait la batterie des Femmes’; sur l’autre face les mots suivants sont gravés: ‘A cet endroit, en 1854, les Femmes de Sébastopol ont construit une batterie.’ Le jour de l’inauguration de ce monument n’est pas encore fixé. L’impératrice se fera représenter à l’inauguration par un grand-duc.”

And, in October, 1892, the “sporting” newspapers recorded that:—

“Women are gradually coming to the fore as bicycle riders. Miss Dudley, a well-known rider, has just accomplished a feat which would have seemed wonderful for any rider not long ago. She has ridden from a spot near Hitchin to Lincoln, a distance of 100 miles, in little more than seven hours, or at the average speed of about fourteen miles an hour. Mr. and Mrs. Smith are well-known as tandem riders, and they have won many races together; but this is, perhaps, the first recorded instance of a woman cyclist holding her own so well, unaided, in a long road ride.”

See also “The Lancashire pit-brow women,” Note XVIII., 8.

7.—“_Of differing sex no thought inept intrudes_,”

“I have conversed, as man with man, with medical men on anatomical subjects, and compared the proportions of the human body with artists—yet such modesty did I meet with that I was never reminded by word or look of my sex, and the absurd rules which make modesty a pharisaical cloak of weakness.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (“The Rights of Woman,” p. 278).

“As a careful observer remarks, true modesty lies in the entire absence of thought upon the subject. Among medical students and artists the nude causes no extraordinary emotion; indeed, Flaxman asserted that the students in entering the Academy seemed to hang up their passions along with their hats.”—Westermarck (“History of Human Marriage,” p. 194).

_Id._... “This is strikingly exemplified in the curious conversation recorded in Lylie’s ‘Euphues’ and his ‘England,’ edit. 1605, 4to, signature X—Z 2, where young unmarried people of both sexes meet together and discuss without reserve the ticklish metaphysics of love. But though treading on such slippery ground, it is remarkable that they never, even by allusion, fall into grossness. Their delicate propriety is not improbably the effect of their liberty.”—Buckle (“Common-place Book,” No. 856).

8.—“_Their purpose calmly sure all errant aim excludes_.”

“We point to a present remedy for undergraduate excesses, which, resting on the soundest theory, has also the demonstration of unquestioned fact. It is co-education. Cease to separate human beings because of sex. They are conjoined in the family, in the primary and grammar schools, in society, and, after the degree rewards four years of monastic student existence, in the whole career of life.

“Throw open the doors of Harvard to women on equal terms, absorb the annexe into the college proper, and as the night follows the day, scholarship will rise, and dissipation fall by the law of gravitation. The moral atmosphere will find immediate purification, and the daily association of brothers and sisters in intellectual pursuits impart a breadth of view which is an education in itself. The professors may then be left safely to their themes, John Harvard’s statue may cease to dread defilement, the regent will find his censorial duties fully as perfunctory as he seems to have made them in the past, and character will crowd out profligacy.”—William Lloyd Garrison (in _Woman’s Journal_, Boston, U.S., 6th February, 1892).

“Whatsoever is ultimately decided by the wisdom of ages to be the best possible form of culture for one human nature, must be so for another, for one common humanity lies deeper in all and is more essential in each than any difference.”—Sophia Jex-Blake, M.D.

XLVI.

3.—“... _impartial range_ ...”

Preparation in this direction is going steadily forward, not only in the Western hemisphere, but in the Eastern. It is announced (in August, 1892) that

“Lady students at the five Universities in Switzerland number 224. Berne is the most popular, with 78 female undergraduates; Zurich has 70; Geneva 70; the new University of Lausanne has five; and Basle one. The medical faculty is in most favour with the female students, and counts 157 of the whole number; the philosophical faculty follows with 62; five prefer the faculty of jurisprudence; the theological faculty has not yet been invaded by the sex. More than half of the female students, 116, are Russians, 21 Germans, 21 Swiss, 11 Americans, nine Austrians, seven Bulgarians, four English, three Roumanians, and three from the Turkish Empire, all of whom are young Armenian ladies.”

4.—“... _wider wisdom_ ...”

Such wider wisdom—without the preliminary suffering—as the poet had attained to, when he wrote:—

“I have climbed to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past, Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire; But I hear no yelps of the beast, and the man is quiet at last, As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that is higher.” —Tennyson (“By an Evolutionist”).

_Id._—“... _juster ethics, teach_; ...”

“For we see that it is possible to interpret the ideals of ethical progress, through love and sociality, co-operation and sacrifice, not as mere utopias contradicted by experience, but as the highest expressions of the central evolutionary process of the natural world.... The older biologists have been primarily anatomists, analysing and comparing the form of the organism, separate and dead; however incompletely, we have sought rather to be physiologists, studying and interpreting the highest and intensest activity of things living.... It is much for our pure natural history to recognise that ‘creation’s final law’ is not struggle, but love.”—Geddes and Thomson (“The Evolution of Sex,” pp. 312, 313).

5; 6.—“_Conformed to claims of intellect and need, The tempered numbers of their high-born breed_;”

“There is a problem creeping gradually forward upon us, a problem that will have to be solved in time, and that is the steady increase of population.... I believe that with the emancipation of women we shall solve this problem now. Fewer children will be born, and those that are born will be of a higher and better physique than the present order of men. The ghastly abortions, which in many parts pass muster nowadays, owing to the unnatural physical conditions of society, as men, women, and children, will make room for a nobler and higher order of beings, who will come to look upon the production of mankind in a diseased or degraded state as a wickedness and unpardonable crime, against which all men and women should fight and strive.”—Lady Florence Dixie (“Gloriana,” p. 137).

_Id._... And Mrs. Mona Caird says:—“If the new movement had no other effect than to rouse women to rebellion against the madness of large families, it would confer a priceless benefit on humanity.”—(_Nineteenth Century_, May, 1892.)

_Id._... “To bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society.... The fact itself of causing the existence of a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To undertake this responsibility—to bestow a life which may be either a curse or a blessing—unless the being on whom it is bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being. And in a country either over-peopled, or threatened with being so, to produce children, beyond a very small number, with the effect of reducing the reward of labour by their competition, is a serious offence against all who live by the remuneration of their labour.”—J. S. Mill (“Liberty,” Chap. V.).

_Id._... A. Dumas fils draws a true and piteous picture in which this element of the unintelligent overproduction of human beings has the largest share:—

“Il y a, et c’est la masse, les femmes du peuple et de la campagne suant du matin au soir pour gagner le pain quotidien, faisant ainsi ce que faisaient leurs mères, et mettant au monde, sans savoir pourquoi ni comment, des filles qui, à leur tour, feront comme elles, à moins que, plus jolies, et par conséquent plus insoumises, elles ne sortent du groupe par le chemin tentant et facile de la prostitution, mais où le labeur est encore plus rude. Le dos courbé sous le travail du jour, regardant la terre quand elles marchent, domptées par la misère, vaincues par l’habitude, asservies aux besoins des autres, ces créatures à forme de femme ne supposent que leur condition puisse être modifiée jamais. Elles n’ont pas le temps, elles n’ont jamais eu la faculté de penser et de réfléchir; à peine un souhait vague et bientôt refoulé de quelque chose de mieux! Quand la charge est trop lourde elles tombent, elles geignent comme des animaux terrassés, elles versent de grosses larmes à l’idée de laisser leurs petits sans ressources, ou elles remercient instinctivement la mort, c’est-à-dire le repos dont elles ont tant besoin.” (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” etc., p. 101.)

_Id._... And again, the advanced biological writers say:—

“The statistician will doubtless long continue his fashion of confidently estimating the importance and predicting the survival of populations from their quantity and rate of reproduction alone; but at all this, as naturalists, we can only scoff. Even the most conventional exponent of the struggle for existence among us knows, with the barbarian conquerors of old, that ‘the thicker the grass, the easier it is mown,’ that ‘the wolf cares not how many the sheep may be.’ It is the most individuated type that prevails in spite, nay, in another sense, positively because of its slower increase; in a word, the survival of a species or family depends not primarily upon quantity, but upon quality. The future is not to the most numerous population, but to the most individuated....

“Apart from the pressure of population, it is time to be learning (1) That the annual child-bearing still so common, is cruelly exhaustive to the maternal life, and this often in actual duration as well as quality; (2) That it is similarly injurious to the standard of offspring; and hence, (3) That an interval of two clear years between births (some gynæcologists even go as far as three) is due alike to mother and offspring.” (It is to be noted that this period of three years is postulated as a necessity for the well-being of the offspring; it is by no means a recommendation to even a triennial maternity on the part of the mother, who is indeed to be, in all fulness, “free mistress of her person’s sacred plan,” with a duty to herself, as well as to her child). “It is time, therefore, as we heard a brave parson tell his flock lately, ‘to have done with that blasphemous whining which constantly tries to look at a motherless’ (ay, or sometimes even fatherless) ‘crowd of puny infants as a dispensation of mysterious providence.’ Let us frankly face the biological facts, and admit that such cases usually illustrate only the extreme organic nemesis of intemperance and improvidence, and these of a kind far more reprehensible than those actions to which common custom applies the names, since they are species-regarding vices, and not merely self-regarding ones, as the others at least primarily are....

“It seems to us, however, essential to recognise that the ideal to be sought after is not merely a controlled rate of increase, but regulated married lives.... We would urge, in fact, the necessity of an ethical rather than of a mechanical ‘prudence after marriage,’ of a temperance recognised to be as binding on husband and wife as chastity on the unmarried.... Just as we would protest against the dictum of false physicians who preach indulgence rather than restraint, so we must protest against regarding artificial means of preventing fertilisation as adequate solutions of sexual responsibility. After all, the solution is primarily one of temperance. It is no new nor unattainable ideal to retain, throughout married life, a large measure of that self-control which must always form the organic basis of the enthusiasm and idealism of lovers.”—Geddes and Thomson (“The Evolution of Sex,” Chap. XX.).

As a fitting exemplification of the words of the “parson” above narrated, compare the following verbatim extract from a conversation in this year of grace 1892. The —— referred to is a man about 35, middle-class, and of “good ‘education’” (!) The same description would also apply to the speaker, who said, “Poor —— is a brave fellow, and keeps up his head in the worst of luck. He has a lot of home troubles; he has lost three children, and his wife always has a bad time at the birth of each baby.”

No word of sympathy for the wife and mother, or even of recognition that it was really _she_ who bore the pain at each “bad time.” As the children left alive still numbered two at the time of the speech, the whole incident can but imply—on the part of both actor and speaker—the hideous, even if unconscious, inhumanity so widely prevalent. Never will “high-born breed” be attained till such action of low-bred intellect is reprobated and amended; in accordance with the enunciated truth, that:—

“Especially in higher organisms, a distinction must obviously be drawn between the period at which it is possible for males and females to unite in fertile sexual union, and the period at which such union will naturally occur or will result in the fittest offspring.”—Geddes and Thomson (_op. cit._, p. 243).

7, 8.—“_Not overworn with childward pain and care, The mother—and the race—robuster health shall share_.”

“It is not the true purpose of any intellectual organism to live solely to give birth to succeeding organisms; its duty is also to live for its own happiness and well-being. Indeed, in so doing, it will be acting in one of the most certain ways to ensure that faculty and possession of happiness that it aims to secure for its progeny.”—Ben Elmy (“Studies in Materialism,” Chap. III.).

_Id._... Even the placid and precisian American poet bears strong, if involuntary, testimony to the evil and wrong of the non-cultured and untempered begetting of children:—

“She wedded a man unlearned and poor, And many children played round her door; But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain Left their traces on heart and brain.” —Whittier (“Maud Müller”).

_Id._... Mr. Andrew Lang also promises us “a world that is glad and clean, and not overthronged and not overdriven.”—(Introduction to “Elizabethan Songs.”)

_Id._... “_Justice never loses sight of self._... The language of Justice is ‘to Me and to You; or to You and to Me.’ ... We have to learn, for the action and spirit worthy of the coming time, that woman is never to sacrifice herself to a man, but, when needful, to the _Manhood_ she hopes or desires to develop in him. In this she will also attain her own development. But after the hour when her faith in the hope of worthy results fails her (reason instructing her nobler affections by holding candidly in view all the premises, past, present, and future), she is bound by all her higher obligations to bring that career, whether it be of the daughter, sister, mother, wife, or friend, to a close. For the inferior cannot possibly be worth the sacrifice of the superior. True self-sacrifice, which necessarily involves the temporary descent of the nobler to the less noble—the higher to the lower—is made only when the lower is elevated, improved, carried forward in its career, thereby.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 149).