LIV.

4.—“...living butchery with learned knife.”

“We are told what Professor Brücke says with reference to section of the trigeminus:—‘The first sign that the trigeminus is divided is a loud piercing cry from the animal. Rabbits we know,’ he adds, ‘are not very sensitive; all sorts of things may be done to them without making them utter a cry; but in this operation, if it succeeds, they invariablysend forth a prolonged shriek.’”—“Lectures on Physiology,” Vol. II., p. 76.

5.—“...cruel anodyne that chained the will...”

It is dubious whether curare be even an anodyne,i.e.a deadener of pain. M. Claude Bernard, himself a vivisector, says:—“Curare acting on the nervous system only suppresses the action of the motor nerves, leaving sensation intact. Curare is not an anæsthetic.” (Revue Scientifique, 1871–2, p. 892.)

6.—“...the shuddering victim conscious still.”

“Everyone has heard of the dog, suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.”—Darwin (“The Descent of Man,” Part I., Chap. II.).

8.—“Nor yields her holiest truths on such a murderer’s rack.”

“It is fit to say here, once for all, that laws which govern the animal kingdom below the human, can no more be accepted as final and determining to man, in physiological, than in intellectual and moral, action.... For neither the knife of the anatomist, nor the lens of the microscopist, are infallible interpreters of function. We do not possess ourselves of all of Nature’s secrets by cutting up her tissues and fabrics, neither by the keenest inspection of their ultimate atoms, whether fluid or solid. There are some truths withheld from the investigator, however brave, patient,and nice his methods and means, which are given up, in due time, to the truth-seer, without any method or means, save the intuitive faculty and its unambitious, guileless surrender to the service offered it. Such, it is at least possible, we may find has been Nature’s dealing in this occult department.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. I., pp. 47, 50).

1.—“True science finds its own by kindlier quest.”

“Science is of the utmost importance to mankind, but the last degree of importance cannot be said to attach to all its minute discoveries, and where, as in physiology, the investigation becomes inhuman, there it ought to stop. It ought to stop for our own sakes if from no other motive, for the torturing of animals on the chance that it may suggest the means of alleviating some of our own pains helps to blunt those sensibilities which afford us some of our purest pleasures. Animals are not our equals in all things, but they seem to be at any rate our equals in the sense of pain. The want of imagination may deprive it in their case of some of its poignancy, but on the other hand they have none of the supports which we derive from reason and sympathy, from the tenderness of friendship and the consolations of religion. With them it is pure, unmitigated, unsolaced suffering. Our duties to them form a neglected chapter in the code of ethics, but we ought not to torture them, and there are many who will maintain that the obligation is absolute. Life is no doubt valuable, but it is not everything. It is more than meat, as the bodyis more than raiment, but it is not more than humanity. There are occasions on which it has to be risked, and there are terms on which men of honour and patriotism would hold it worthless. The doctrine that we may subject the lower animals to incredible suffering on the possibility that it may save ourselves from an additional pang is of a selfish and degrading tendency. It helps to lower the ‘moral ideal’ and to weaken the springs of heroism in human character. We owe it to ourselves to keep clear of this peril. Nature surrounds us with limitations. Here is one which all that is best and noblest in us sets up, and it is more sacred than those over which we have no control. We refuse to torture other sentient creatures in order that we may live.”—Dr. Henry Dunckley (Manchester Guardian, August 9th, 1892).

The above noble pronouncement, with its conclusion, is instinct with the spirit oftruescience (which repudiates with disdain and horror the hypocritical pseudo-science of a ghastly and demoralising study and pursuit of cruelty),—thetruescience which is one with love, because it refuses the acceptance of life itself on terms of outrage to love.

See Note LXI., 3.

4.—“...a keener lens of man’s own brain.”

“Observation is perhaps more powerful an organon than either experiment or empiricism.”—Richard Jefferies (“Story of My Heart,” p. 162).

Id.... It is well that some English physicists of the fullest scientific impulse and effort are revolted at the inhuman and bootless cruelty of the foreign medical schoolswhich masquerades as scientific research. Is it not possibly something more than a coincidence that vivisectionists in general exhibit an aversion to the equality of woman, and that vivisection flourishes more unrestrainedly where her position and influence are less recognised;i.e., in plain words,—in a lower civilisation?

Mr. Lawson Tait says, with the indignation of a truly scientific mind at these methods of “science falsely so called”:—

“For one, as intimately and widely concerned in the application of human knowledge for the saving of human life and the relief of human suffering as anyone can be, or as anyone has ever been, I say I am grateful for the restrictive legislation. Let me give one brief illustration of my most recent experience in this matter as one of hundreds which confirm me in my determination persistently to oppose the introduction into England of what passes for science in Germany. Some few years ago I began to deal with one of the most dreadful calamities to which humanity is subject by means of an operation which had been scientifically proposed nearly two hundred years ago. I mean ectopic gestation. Therationaleof the proposed operation was fully explained about fifty years ago, but the whole physiology of the normal process and the pathology of the perverted one were obscured and misrepresented by a French physiologist’s experiments on rabbits and dogs. Nothing was done, and at least ninety-five per cent. of the victims of this catastrophe were allowed to die.

“I went outside the experimentalists’ conclusions, went back to the true science of the old pathologist and of the surgeon of 1701, and performed the operation in scores of cases with almost uniform success. My example was immediately followed throughout the world, and during the last five or six years hundreds if not thousands of women’s lives have been saved, whilst for nearly forty years the simple road to this gigantic success was closed by the folly of a vivisector....

“Views such as mine are those of a minority of my professional brethren, and are generally sneered at as those of acrank. But my reply to this is that they form the new belief, that of the coming generation, and that not one in fifty of the bulk of my present brethren have ever seriously gone into the question, and probably have never seen a single experiment on a living animal.

“My address as the Surgical Orator of 1890, when the British Medical Association met in this town, was mainly directed to the mischievous system of so-called scientific training, of purely German origin and thoroughly repugnant to our English tastes and our English common-sense.

“It is therefore a satisfactory matter to know that the Council of Mason’s College would have none of it, and that the governing body of the new University College of Nottingham has recently decided similarly. The Medical School of Queen’s College is now united entirely with the Science School of Mason’s College; but we, of Mason’s College, have had the direction of the science teaching of the Medical School for several years, we have had no German scientific methods, and our success has not diminished thereby one atom—on the contrary.”—Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S.,President of Mason’s Science College, Birmingham(“The Discussion on Vivisection at the Church Congress, October, 1892”).

At the Congress, as above, Professor Horsley made aspersions on Miss Frances Power Cobbe, as to statements concerning Vivisection in her work, “The Nine Circles.” The professor declared some of the reported cruel experiments to have been painless, owing to the victims being under the influence of anæsthetics. In reply to the attack, the following preliminary letter from Miss Cobbe was then published:—

“TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘TIMES.’

“Sir,—Professor Horsley’s criticism on the above work—planned and compiled by my direction—demands from me a careful reply, which I shall endeavour to give as soon as may be possible at this distance from the books whence the impugned passages are derived. I shall be much surprised if the hocus pocus of the sham anæstheticcurarewith ineffective applicationsof genuine chloroform do not once more illustrate ‘the curse of vivisectible animals,’ and if the results of the experiments in question, whatever were their worth, would not, in most cases, have been vitiated had real and absolute anæsthesia been produced in the victims. Should a small number of the experiments cited in the ‘Nine Circles’ prove, however, to have been performed on animals in an entirely painless state, I shall, while withdrawing them with apologies from a forthcoming new edition of the book, take care at the same time to call attention to the multitude of other experiments, home and foreign, therein recorded—e.g., baking to death, poisoning, starving, creating all manner of diseases, inoculating in the eyes, dissecting out and irritating the exposed nerves, causing the brain of cats ‘to run like cream,’ etc., about which no room for doubt as to the unassuaged agony of the animal can possibly exist.”

Miss Cobbe concludes by a sharp, but just, criticism on her critic, and with an acute diagnosis of the learned vivisectionist’s own condition:—

“The tone of Dr. Horsley’s remarks against me personally will probably inspire those who know me and the history of my connexion with the anti-vivisection cause with an amused sense of the difficulty wherein the Professor must have found himself when, instead of argument in defence of vivisection, he thus turned to ‘abuse the plaintiffs’ attorney.’ For myself I gladly accept such abuse (or mere bluster) as evidence that the consciences even of eminent vivisectors are, like their victims’ nerves, imperfectly under the influence of the scientific anæsthesia, and remain still sensitive to the heart-pricking charge which I bring against them, of cowardly cruelty to defenceless creatures.

“I am, Sir, yours,Frances Power Cobbe.Hengwrt, Dolgelly, Oct. 8th, 1892.”

“I am, Sir, yours,

Frances Power Cobbe.

Hengwrt, Dolgelly, Oct. 8th, 1892.”

⁂ A further newspaper correspondence concerning “The Nine Circles,” a work from which some of the foregoing notes on vivisection are copied, has gone on while“Woman Free” is passing through the press; the vivisectors saying that certain of the incidents transcribed in “The Nine Circles” are without the announcement that in some cases an anæsthetic had been administered prior to the act of living anatomy, otherwise admittedly true in every detail. The vivisectors lay what stress they can on the omissions; indeed, their principal advocate has made use of a grossness of imputation and a coarseness of invective that augurs ill for any gentleness of treatment or purpose being existent in the organism of such an operator.

Yet, in truth, it is not a matter of surpassing import whether the assertion of the operation (alone) being conducted under an anæsthetic be indubitable, since the after-consequences of pain or incommodity had to be endured by the victim without anæsthetics. What initial chloroforming could ward off the constant after-suffering attendant on the incubation of the disease for the creation of which the “operation” had been performed, a period acknowledgedly often lasting for weeks, and terminated only by death’s mercy? Or what medicament could anæsthetise the impotent yearning—to feed her starving puppy—of a poor mother dog whose mammary glands had been excised, even if the “operation” had been carried out “under chloroform”? Mr. Edward Berdoe, M.R.C.S., reproduces and reprobates the incident with horror in theTimesof Oct. 27, 1892:—

“Professor Goltz amputated the breast of the mother of a puppy nursing her young ... who ‘unceasingly licked the living puppy with the same tenderness as an uninjured dog might do.’”

Most gladly may we turn to the words and ways of worthier seekers after truth. Professor Lawson Tait is reported by theStandard, 28th Oct., 1892, as saying at a meeting the previous day:—

“Vivisection was a survival from mediæval times. It could not be justified by any results that it had produced. In days when they could tell the composition of the atmosphere of Orion by means of the spectroscope, it was a disgrace that men should resort to vivisection, instead of perfecting other and more humane means of research.”

There speaks true science. And, on a later occasion, Mr. Lawson Tait quotes the celebrated anatomist, Sir Charles Bell (who had been falsely claimed as an advocate of vivisection), as saying, “on page 217 of the second volume of his great work on the Nervous System, published in 1839”:—

“... a survey of what has been attempted of late years in physiology will prove that the opening of living animals has done more to perpetuate error than to confirm the just views taken from the study of anatomy and natural motions.... For my own part I cannot believe that Providence should intend that the secrets of nature are to be discovered by means of cruelty, and I am sure that those who are guilty of protracted cruelties do not possess minds capable of appreciating the laws of nature.”—(TheTimes, Nov. 8th, 1892, p. 3.)

The views of Charles Bell and Lawson Tait are in striking and encouraging coincidence with verses LIII., LIV., and LV.

To women peculiarly it belongs to oppose the doctrines and methods of vivisectionists, for to the practitioners of that school were due the arguments or assumptions whichsufficed to introduce for a while into our country the vile system of according a licence to male dissoluteness and female subjection—under a pretext of public morality and “scientific” sanction—known on the continent as the “police des mœurs,” and in sundry Naval and Military stations of England and Ireland as the “Contagious Diseases Acts.”

8.—“...from Love’s might alone all thoughts of Wisdom grow.”

“Hast thou considered how the beginning of all thought worthy the name is love; and the wise head never yet was, without first the generous heart?”—Carlyle (“French Revolution,” Vol. III., p. 375).

5.—“With woman honoured, rises man to height.”

“If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically governed; if order is preserved without oppression, if cultivation is extended, and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that principality is under a woman’s rule. This fact, to me an entirely unexpected one, I have collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo Governments.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 100 note).

6.—“With her degraded, sinks again in night.”

“And you who have departed from the common tradition, how have you fared in the race of life? Are your men asbrave and fearlessly truthful, are your women as courageous and honest as in the old days of ‘the maiden’s choice’? Are the little worn-out child-wives of to-day likely to have descendants like those of the damsels of your ancient epics? Where are the deeds of high emprise, of daring valour, and of patient persistence of the youths who were fired by the pure love of a woman? Ah! gentlemen, with love life departs; there is no vitality in married life without affection, and when love, the great incentive to action, disappears from the family, leaving dry the streams of affection which should flow between the children and parents, what must come of the race?”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (“Address to the Hindoos”).

Id.... “From all we know of the laws of life and its development it would appear one of the foolishest things on earth for men to fancy that they can debase the intellect lobes of women, and at the same time exalt their own. No breeder of cattle or horses would think of debasing the qualities, in the females, which he would desire to possess in the males.

“No race in the future can either rule the world or even continue in existence without improving the intellect of that race, and this certainly cannot be done by depauperising the intellects of more than half of theprogenitorsof that race.”—Dr. E. Bonavia (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).

8.—“....Earth’s advancing queen.”

“Will man den ganzen Menschen studiren, so darf man nur auf das weibliche Geschlecht seine Augen richten: denn wo die Kraft schwacher ist, da ist das Werkzeug umso künstlicher. Daher hat die Natur in das weibliche Geschlecht eine natürliche Anlage zur Kunst gelegt.Der Mann ist geschaffen, ueber die Natur zu gebieten, das Weib aber, den Mann zu regieren.Zum Ersten gehört viel Kraft, zum Andern viel Geschicklichkeit.”—Immanuel Kant.

1.—“...in jealousy...”

The male conceit and jealousy of sex, existent among the majority of meaner men, has been perceived and censured or satirised by higher masculine minds both in ancient and modern literature. To take a few scattered instances from the latter, Shakespeare says:—

“... however we do praise ourselves,Our fancies are more giddy and infirm,More longing, wavering, sooner lost and wonThan women’s are.”—(“Twelfth Night,” Act II., Sc. 4.)

“... however we do praise ourselves,

Our fancies are more giddy and infirm,

More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won

Than women’s are.”

—(“Twelfth Night,” Act II., Sc. 4.)

Goethe says pungently (in “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship”): “People ridicule learned women and dislike even women who are well informed, probably because it is considered impolite to put so many ignorant men to shame.”

As our own plain-spoken Sydney Smith has said, in his essay on Female Education:—“It is natural that men who are ignorant themselves, should view, with some degree of jealousy and alarm, any proposal for improving the education of women.”

A ludicrously pitiful modern-day instance of the jealous ignorance or ignorant jealousy to which Goethe and SydneySmith make reference, is afforded by a seriously-written leading article in No. 545 of theChristian Commonwealth, a London weekly newspaper, under date of 24th March, 1892:—

“The Woman question will not down. She is asserting herself in every direction, and generally with considerable force. In America she is positively alarming the lords of creation by her rapid progress in educational matters. She is actually outrunning the men in the race for intellectual attainments. And this fact is becoming so evident, and so prominent, that a new problem is being evolved from it. This is, how are the finely educated young women of America to find congenial husbands? It is assumed by some writers that already there is a great disparity between the culture of the young men and young women, and that every year the chasm between them is becoming deeper and wider. This is a truly lamentable state of things, but the woman movement in this country is likely to take a more practical course. The agitation of the question of Woman Suffrage may bring about a reaction against her excessive culture. If woman is permitted to enter the cesspool of politics, it is probable she will not be very long distressed with an overplus of those qualities which are just now endangering her conjugal felicity in the United States....”

It is refreshing and consolatory to revert from such verbiage to what Sir Humphrey Davy said (“Lectures, 1810 and 1811”): “It has been too much the custom to endeavour to attach ridicule to the literary and scientific acquisitions of women. Letthemmake it disgraceful for men to be ignorant, and ignorance will perish.”

To Shakespeare and Goethe may be added the corroboration of French intellect:—

“N’est-il pas évident que Molière, dans sesFemmes Savantesn’a pas attaqué l’instruction, l’étude, mais le pédantisme, comme, dans sonTartuffe, il avait attaquénon la vraie dévotion, mais l’hypocrisie? N’est-ce pas Molière lui-même qui a écrit ce beau vers: “Et je veux qu’une femme ait des clartésde tout?”—Monseigneur Dupanloup, Evêque d’Orléans (“Femmes Savantes et Femmes Studieuses,” 1868, p. 8).

“C’est à Condorcet et non pas à Jean Jacques, comme on le croit généralement, qu’appartient l’initiative des réformes proposées dans l’éducation et la condition des femmes.”—Daniel Stern (“Hist. de la Révolution de 1848,” Vol. II, p. 185).

“Quand la loi française”—(shall we not say also every other?)—“déclare la femme inférieure à l’homme ce n’est jamais pour libérer la femme d’un devoir vis-à-vis de l’homme ou de la société, c’est pour armer l’homme ou la société d’un droit de plus contre elle. Il n’est jamais venu à l’idée de la loi de tenir compte de la faiblesse de la femme dans les différents délits qu’elle peut commettre; au contraire, la loi en abuse.”—A. Dumas fils (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” etc., p. 204).

Mill says:—“There is nothing which men so easily learn as this self-worship; all privileged persons, and all privileged classes have had it.” And he also speaks of a time—“when satires on women were in vogue, and men thought it a clever thing to insult women for being what men made them.”—(“Subjection of Women,” pp. 76, 77).

We have seen (Note XLV., 5) how Professor Huxley postulates scientific training equally for girls and boys; he has also said:—“Emancipate girls. Recognise the fact that they share the senses, perceptions, feelings, reasoning powers, emotions of boys, and that the mind of the averagegirl is less different from that of the average boy, than the mind of one boy is from that of another; so that whatever argument justifies a given education for all boys, justifies its application to girls as well.”—(“Emancipation,Black and White.”)

Balzac asserted: “A woman who has received a masculine education possesses the most brilliant and fertile qualities, with which to secure the happiness of her husband and herself.”—(“Physiologie du Mariage,” Méditation XI.).

But the instances are innumerable where the intellect of higher men expressly or unconsciously rebukes the jealous sexual conceit of their less intelligent brethren. Dr. Bonavia says, very tersely:—“The fact is, many men don’t like the idea of being surpassed or even equalled by women. They stupidly feel their dignity wounded. This jealousy, however, is not only extremely contemptible and unjust, but disastrous to the true interests of the race, for men have mothersas well as women, and imbecility—the result of atrophied frontal lobes—is just as likely to be transmitted to the one sex as to the other, as far as we yet know. Just see the injustice of men’s jealousy in matters of intellect. Only recently the talent of Miss Ormerod—an entomologist who can hold her ownanywhereon earth—was kept under by the Royal Agricultural Society.Shedid the entomological work, and made the discoveries, whiletheytook the credit. In their reports they did not even mentionhername in connection with her own work!—A more contemptible proceeding, it would appear, has never been brought to light, in the struggle of the sexes, if thatcase has been correctly reported.”—(“Woman’s Frontal Lobes.”)

Bebel treats this jealousy with a fine irony in his exposition of “the motives which induce most medical professors, and indeed the professors of every faculty, to oppose women students:”—“They regard the admission of women as synonymous with the degradation of science (!) which could not but lose its prestige in the eyes of the enlightened (!) multitude if it appeared that the female brain was capable of grasping problems which had hitherto only been revealed to the elect of the opposite sex.”—(Op. cit., p. 132.)

Had Bebel recorded masculine mercenary considerations, rather than sham misgivings as to the interests of science, his sarcasm would have been very grim truth. Indeed, what is sometimes called the “loaves and fishes” argument is at the root of most of this masculine jealousy which cloaks itself under a pretension of tender consideration for woman’s delicacy. To cite Bebel again: “Another objection is that it is unseemly to admit women to medical lectures, to operations, and deliveries, side by side with male students. If men see nothing indecent in studying and examining female patients in the presence of nurses and other female patients, it is difficult to understand why it should become so through the presence of female students.”—(Op. cit., p. 132.) And as to the actual fitness of women for exercising the profession of medicine or surgery:—

“‘Women always improve when the men begin to show signs of failing,’ were the words of a distinguished physicianand surgeon, who had seen years of service on a remote wintry station of the army. ‘I have had fellows brought to me to have the leg amputated—perhaps both—close to the body, and never anywhere in Paris, London, or New York, saw I better surgeon’s assistants than some of our women made, especially the Sisters of Charity, of whom we had a few at the post, for three or four years. Heads as clear as a silver bell; hands steady and unshrinking as a granite rock, yet with a touch as light as a spring leaf; foot quick and indefatigable, whether the time was noonday or midnight; memory perfect; tenderness for the sufferer unfailing. Talk about love, courage, fortitude, and endurance in your sex! I tell you,’ he added, with a needless affirmation at this point, ‘they seem to be nothing else, when these are most wanted, and the man who doubts them is an ass.’”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 157). See also Note XXIX., 8.

Id.... Here may fittingly follow the report of a trained masculine judgment as to woman’s ability in yet a further profession—that of the law:—

At the recent opening of the Southern California College of Law, at Los Angeles, John W. Mitchell, the president, in his lecture upon “The Study of the Law,” spoke of the utility of women studying law, in the following language:—

“This part of this discourse it is believed would be radically incomplete without calling attention to one other and particular class of persons who need an insight into the rudiments of law—which class, it seems, has also been neglected by those occupying a like position to my own—I mean the women. He is, indeed, blind to the signs of the times who does not recognise the expanding field of women’s work, and their increased influence in the professions as well as in the fine arts.That women are entering the lists with men, in behalf of themselves and womankind, is well; for they must make up their minds to take up the task of urging the reforms they need, and must solve the woman problem in all its bearings. Women are doing this. They are becoming competitors with men in the pursuits of life, it is true; but it is as much from necessity as choice. But it is not only the women who have to labour and earn their own living who need legal knowledge to aid them. It is more needful to the woman of property, be her possessions but an humble home or a colossal fortune; whether she be married or single. Women want this experience to make them cautious of jeopardising their rights, and less confiding in business matters. The courts are full of cases showing how women have been wrongly stripped of their belongings. And, perhaps, if one woman had known the legal effect of some of her acts, one of the largest fortunes ever amassed in this State of Crœsus-like wealth would not have been carried to distant States, and there scandalously distributed amongst scheming adventurers and lawyers, making a little Massachusetts county-seat the theatre of one of the most remarkable contests for a fortune in the whole annals of probate court law.

“As to the professions: women were for a long time barred from them, but now the barriers to all of them have been removed, and there is not a profession in which women are not distinguished. They have graduated in the sciences from most universities with the highest honours, and have stood the same tests as the men. The law was about the last to admit them within its precincts, and there they are meeting with an unexpected measure of success. Not only in this, but in other countries, there are successful women practitioners. And in France, where the preparatory course is most arduous, and the term of study longest, a woman recently took the highest rank over 500 men in her graduating examinations, and during the whole six years of class study she only lost one day from her work—an example that is commended to you students. Undoubtedly, the weight of the argument is in favour of women studying law.”—(Women’s Journal, Boston, U.S., 6th February, 1892.)

Id.... Even the vaunted politeness and gallantry of the Frenchman is not proof against the far more deeply-beddedmasculine jealousy. M. de Blowitz, the erudite correspondent at Paris of theTimes, reports that—

“The law students yesterday hooted down Mdlle. Jeanne Chauvin, 28 years of age, who was to have argued a thesis for a legal degree. She had chosen as her theme, ‘The Professions accessible to Women and the Historical Evolution of the Economic Position of Woman in Society.’ The uproar was such that the examiner postponed the ceremonysine die. Mdlle. Chauvin is the first Frenchwoman who has sought a legal degree, but two years ago a Roumanian lady went through the ordeal without obstruction.”—(TheTimes, July 4, 1892.)

To revert to the “loaves and fishes” argument, an incident now to be given will show that medicine and the law are not the only professions in which the objections to the equal status of the sexes are largely prompted by a “jalousie de métier” of a selfish and mercenary character:—

“The following letters have been received at Auckland from the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in relation to the memorial lately sent from New Zealand in favour of the opening of degrees to women:—

“‘Dear Professor Aldis,

“‘Your very interesting memorial reached me yesterday. I still await the explanatory letter and analysis. After receiving I will write again.

“‘Yours etc.,John Peile,Vice-Chancellor.

“‘Yours etc.,

John Peile,

Vice-Chancellor.

Christ’s College Lodge,‘Cambridge, Nov. 2nd, 1891.’

Christ’s College Lodge,

‘Cambridge, Nov. 2nd, 1891.’

“‘My Dear Professor Aldis,

“‘The petition of the memorial received by me from Miss Lilian Edger and yourself, respecting degrees for women at the University of Cambridge, and the analysis of the signaturesto that memorial, have been printed by me in theUniversity Reporter, the official organ of communication of any kind of business to the members of the Senate. The memorial itself will be preserved in the Registry of the University. Immediate action on this question by the Council of the Senate—the body, with which, as you are aware, all legislation in the University must begin—is not probable. The question was raised about three years ago; and it became at once plain that, if persevered in, it would produce a very serious division in the ranks of those members of the University who had all shown themselves, in the past, friends to the highest education of women. Many of those who had earnestly supported the admission of women to Tripos examinations,would not support their admission to the B.A. degree. Into their—mostly practical—reasons I cannot fully enter: One was the belief that admission to B.A. must lead, in the end (in spite of any provisions which might be introduced), to admission to M.A., and consequently toa share in the management of the University; it was also apprehended that difficulties would arise in the several collegeswith respect to fellowships,etc.I do not mention these difficulties as insuperable. But they are felt by so many that there is, I am persuaded, no prospect of successful action in this matter at the present time. I shall, therefore, not myself propose anything in the Council, nor so far has any other of the friends of women’s education, of whom there are many on the Council, given notice of any motion. At any future time, when such a motion is made, your most influential memorial will certainly have its due weight with the members of the Council, and if they decide to take action, I hope also, with members of the Senate.

“‘I am, etc.,John Peile,Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.Christ’s College Lodge,Cambridge, Nov. 20th, 1891.’”—(New Zealand Herald, 5th Jan., 1892.)

“‘I am, etc.,

John Peile,

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

Christ’s College Lodge,

Cambridge, Nov. 20th, 1891.’”

—(New Zealand Herald, 5th Jan., 1892.)

6.—“...potency...”

“The Brain is different from all other organs of the body. It is often a mass of structural potentialities rather than offully-developed nerve tissues. Some of its elements, viz., those concerned with best-established instinctive operations, naturally go on to their full development without the aid of extrinsic stimuli; others, however, and large tracts of these, seem to progress to such developments only under the influence of suitable stimuli. Hence natural aptitudes and potencies of the most subtle order may never be manifested by multitudes of persons, for want of the proper stimuli and practice capable of perfecting the development and functional activity of those regions of the brain whose action is inseparably related to the mental phenomena in question.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 374).

1.—“Woman’s own soul must seek and find...”

On women of medical education especially is the duty incumbent to investigate the world of biological experience in woman. They may not sit quietly down and assume that in learning all that man has to teach, they rest his equals, and that the last word has been said on the matter. They have a field of exploration, with opportunities, with implements, and with capacities, which man cannot have. His research on such a question as the recognisedly most vital one of human embryology with all its issues, can get but rare and uncertain light from accidental occasions, and is, moreover, simply as it were a dead anatomising; nor can he by any means reach the psychic or introspective phase of enquiry; but woman has the live subject, body and soul, inher own organism, to study at her leisure. Does she not yet see how to grasp such further living knowledge? But that is the very quest here indicated. The askidian also had no strength of vision, yet we can now tell and test the light and the components of distant spheres.

There are, undoubtedly, what may be termed intelligent operations carried on in the body unconsciously to oneself, or at any rate beyond the present ken of one’s actively perceptive and volitional faculties. Observation and recognition of these is to be striven for, and even guidance or command of them may be ours in a worthy future. TheTimesof 27th January, 1892, reported a lecture at the Royal Institution on the previous day by Professor Victor Horsley, in the course of which the lecturer—

“... pointed out the pineal gland, which Descartes thought to be the seat of the soul, but which was now known to be an invertebrate eye. He also explained the functions of certain small masses of grey matter, which are two, viz.—sight and equilibration. The optic nerve was situated close to the crura, and equilibration was subserved by the cerebellum. After referring to the basal ganglia, Professor Horsley admitted that as science advanced we seem to know less and less about the specific functions of the various masses of grey matter, and less definite views than formerly prevailed were now held with respect to the local source of what are termed voluntary impulses, and that of sensations.... We were still in ignorance as to the functions of the optic thalamus, and of the corpus striatum. Those of the cortex had to some extent been ascertained. They might be divided into three classes, viz.—movement, sensation, and what was termed mental phenomena. But we were still in the dark as to those portions of the brain which subserved intellectual operations, memory, and emotional impulses. A like ignorance prevailed with respect to the basal ganglia.”

What as yet unrecognised inward eyes watch over the embryo life?

3.—“...counsel helpful...”

Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham says:—“In this day the most needed science to humankind is that which will commend women to confidence in themselves and their sex as the leading force of the coming Era—the Era of spiritual rule and movement; in which, through them, the race is destined to rise to a more exalted position than ever before it has held, and for the first time to form its dominant ties of relationship to that world of purer action and diviner motion, which lies above the material one of intellectual struggle and selfish purpose wherein man has held and exercised his long sovereignty.”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. I., p. 311).

5.—“...philosophic lore...”

“The farther our knowledge advances, the greater will be the need of rising to transcendental views of the physical world.... If the imagination had been more cultivated, if there had been a closer union between the spirit of poetry and the spirit of science, natural philosophy would have made greater progress because natural philosophers would have taken a higher and more successful aim, and would have enlisted on their side a wider range of human sympathies.”—Buckle (“Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”).

Id.“...chirurgic lore...”

“The Lady Dufferin fund had already been the means ofopening a school of medicine for Indian women, who would consequently devote themselves to the study of anatomy. Anatomy and Asiatic women. That was the most extraordinary association of ideas one could ever have imagined.”—Professor Vambéry (Lecture to the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, Edinburgh, 20th May, 1891). Reported in theTimesof following day.

8.—“Regent of Nature’s will, ...”

“Woman will grow into fitness for the sublime work which nature has given her to do, and man through her help and persuasion will spontaneously assume the relation of a co-operator in it. Finding that nature intends his highest good and that of his species, through the emancipation and development of woman into the fulness of her powers, he will gratefully seek his own profit and happiness in harmonising himself with this method; he will honour it as nature’s method, and woman as its chief executor; and will joyfully find that not only individuals, families, and communities, but nations, have been wisely dependent on her, in their more advanced conditions, for the good which can come only from the most perfect, artistic, and spiritual being who inhabits our earth.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 423).

1.—“Each sequent life shall feel her finer care.”

“The one thing constant, the one peak that rises above all clouds, the one window in which the light for everburns, the one star that darkness cannot quench, iswoman’s love. This one fact justifies the existence and the perpetuation of the human race. Again I say that women are better than men; their hearts are more unreservedly given; in the web of their lives sorrow is inextricably woven with the greatest joys; self-sacrifice is a part of their nature, and at the behest of love and maternity they walk willingly and joyously down to the very gates of death. Is there nothing in this to excite the admiration, the adoration, of a modern reformer? Are the monk and nun superior to the father and mother?”—Robert Ingersoll (North American Review, Sept., 1890).

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