XXIX.

8.—“...pain both prompts and points escape.”

“All evil is associated more or less closely with pain ... and pain of every kind is so repugnant to the human organism, that it is no sooner felt than an effort is made to escape from it.... Alongside of the evolution of evil there has ever been a tendency towards theeliminationof evil.... The highest intellectual powers of the greatest men have for their ultimate objectthe mitigation of evil, and the final elimination of it from the earth.”—Richard Bithell (“The Creed of a Modern Agnostic,” p. 103).

1.—“...woman shall her own redemption gain.”

In the greatest depth of their meaning remain true the words of Olive Schreiner: “He who stands by the side of woman cannot help her; she must help herself.”

Id.... “Nothing is clearer than that woman must lead her own revolution; not alone because it is hers, and that no other being can therefore have her interest in its achievement, but because it is for a life whose highest needs and rights—those to be redressed in its success—lie above the level of man’s experiences or comprehension. Only woman is sufficient to state woman’s claims and vindicate them.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman,” Vol. I., p. 308).

(See also Notes to XLVI. 7 and LVIII. 1.)

2.—“Instructed by the sting of bootless pain.”

“Toutes les fonctions du corps humain, sauf l’enfantement, sont autant de plaisirs. Dès que la douleur surgit, la nature est violée. La douleur est d’origine humaine. Un corps malade ou a violé les lois de la nature, ou bien souffre de la violation de la loi d’un de ses semblables. La douleur par elle-même est donc le meilleur diagnostic pour le médecin.... Entre la loi de la nature et la violation de cette loi, il n’y a que désordres, douleurs et ruines.... La maladie ne vient pas de la nature, elle n’y estmême pas. Elle n’est que la violation d’une des lois de la nature. Dès qu’une de ces lois est violée, la douleur arrive et vous dit qu’une loi vient d’être enfreinte. S’il est temps encore, le mal peut être amoindri, expulsé, chassé.... La maladie n’est donc que le résultat de la violation d’une loi naturelle.... La science et la mécanique du corps humain, c’est l’art de vivre d’après les lois de la nature, c’est la certitude que pas un médecin ne possède contre la violation d’une de ces lois un remède autre que d’y rentrer le plus tôt possible.... Chaque fois que l’homme s’efforcera de suivre la loi de la nature, il chassera devant soi une centaine de maladies.”—Dr. Alexandre Weill (“Lois et Mystères de l’Amour,” pp. 41, 91, 24, 85, 83).

3, 4.—“With Nature ever helpful to retrieveThe injury we heedlessly achieve.”

3, 4.—“With Nature ever helpful to retrieve

The injury we heedlessly achieve.”

“Thus, if we could, by preaching our pet ideal, or in any other way induce one generation of women to turn to a new pursuit, we should have accomplished a step towards bending all future womanhood in the same direction.”—Frances Power Cobbe (Essay: “The Final Cause of Woman”).

See also Note LVII., 1, and LVIII, 1.

Id.... Progress is indeed being made, surely, yet slowly, for Mrs. Fawcett has still necessity to reiterate, four years afterwards:—

“Make her a doctor, put her through the mental discipline and the physical toil of the profession; charge her, as doctors are so often charged, with the health of mind and body of scores of patients, she remains womanly to her finger tips, and a good doctor in proportion as the truly womanly qualities in her are strongly developed. Poor women are very quick to find this out as patients. Not only fromthe immediate neighbourhood of the New Hospital for Women, where all the staff are women doctors, but also from the far East of London do they come, because ‘the ladies,’ as they call them, are ladies, and show their poor patients womanly sympathy, gentleness, and patience, womanly insight and thoughtfulness in little things, and consideration for their home troubles and necessities. It is not too much to say that a woman can never hope to be a good doctor unless she is truly and really a womanly woman. And much the same thing may be said with regard to fields of activity not yet open to women.”—Mrs. Fawcett (Fortnightly Review, Nov., 1891).

Id.—“...saviour of her sex.”

Bebel says:—“Women doctors would be the greatest blessing to their own sex. The fact that women must place themselves in the hands of men in cases of illness or of the physical disturbances connected with their sexual functions frequently prevents their seeking medical help in time. This gives rise to numerous evils, not only for women, but also for men. Every doctor complains of this reserve on the part of women, which sometimes becomes almost criminal, and of their dislike to speak freely of their ailments, even after they have made up their minds to consult a doctor. This is perfectly natural, the only irrational thing about it is the refusal of men, and especially of doctors, to recognise how legitimate the study of medicine is for women.” (“Woman,” Walther’s translation, p. 131.)

Id.... “As I am alluding to my own experience in this matter, I may perhaps be allowed to say how often inthe same place I have been struck with thecontingentadvantages attendant on the medical care by women of women; how often I have seen cases connected with stories of shame or sorrow to which a woman’s hand could far more fittingly minister, and where sisterly help and counsel could give far more appropriate succour than could be expected from the average young medical man, however good his intentions. Perhaps we shall find the solution of some of our saddest social problems, when educated and pure-minded women are brought more constantly in contact with their sinning and suffering sisters, in other relations as well as those of missionary effort.”—Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake (Essay: “Medicine as a Profession for Women”).

1.—“With purer phase...”

A noted specialist in this matter, Dr. Tilt, “basing his conclusions on his own unpublished observations, and on those already made public by M. Brierre de Boismont and Dr. Rawn,” has declared what is indeed a generally accepted proposition, that “luxurious living and habits render menstruation precarious, while this function is retarded by out-door labour and less sophisticated habits.” (“Proceedings of British Association,” 1850, p. 135; “On the Causes which Advance or Retard the Appearance of First Menstruation in Women,” by E. J. Tilt, M.D., &c., &c.)

4.—“...weakness...”

It is to be carefully kept in mind that this “weakness” (Scriptural, “sickness,” Lev. xx., 18) is strictly a pathologicalincident; while maternity is truly a physiological one; the male false physicists seem in their mental and clinical attitude to have aimed to precisely reverse this definition. (See also Note XXIII., 8, and XXVI., 6.)

5, 6.—To the fact related in these two lines there is testimony in nearly every book connected with the subject; and doubtless numerous instances never come to light, owing to the very natural reticence pointed out in Note XXIX., 8. The improved condition reported by Mrs. Fawcett (Note XXIX., 6) is hence more readily verified by women practitioners; and the writer has had detailed personal experiences of perfect health and maternity being co-existent with little or no appearance of the menses in the case of women whose names, if published, would be indubitable guarantee for their accuracy and veracity.

7.—“Not to neglectful man to greatly care...”

The Report of the British Association for 1850, in summarising the paper above referred to (Note 1), says of Dr. Tilt that, “in discussing what he calls the intrinsic causes which have been supposed to influence menstruation, his observations are rather of a suggestive character, for he considers such causes highly problematical and requiring further investigation.” Dr. Tilt rightly emphasises the question as “a matter equally interesting to the physician, the philosopher, and the statesman; and it behoves them to know that this epoch (of menstruation) varies under the influence of causes which for the most part have been insufficiently studied.” But the negligence or carelessness reprobated in the verse has again supervened.

Buckle says, concerning this same paper of Dr. Tilt’s: “We take shame to ourselves for not having sooner noticed this very interesting and in some respects very important work; the author unknown,” (?) “and yet the book has gone through two editions, though written on a subject ignorantly supposed to be going on well. That women can be satisfied with their state shows their deterioration. That they can be satisfied with knowing nothing, &c.” (sic.) (“Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works,” Vol. I., p. 381.)

The whole passage seems somewhat incoherent, and is unfinished as above, as if left by Mr. Buckle for further consideration. The last two remarks as to women are certainly not written with his usual justice; when we remember how assiduously men have striven to prevent woman’s pursuit of physiological knowledge, especially as applied to her own person, it is manifest that the blame for woman’s ignorance, or her presumed “satisfaction” therewith, is more fittingly to be reproached to man than to her.

1.—“Her intellect alert...”

“Intellectus prelucit voluntati.”—“Intellect carries the light before the will.”—Cardinal Manning (Review of Reviews, Vol. V., p. 135).

5, 6.—“...body still is supple unto mind,By dint of soul is fleshly form inclined.”

5, 6.—“...body still is supple unto mind,

By dint of soul is fleshly form inclined.”

Reflecting Plato’s teaching, our second worthy Elizabethan poet has said:—

“Every spirit as it is most pure,And hath in it the more of heavenly light,So it the fairer body doth procureTo habit in.For of the Soul the Body form doth take:For Soul is form, and doth the Body make.”

“Every spirit as it is most pure,

And hath in it the more of heavenly light,

So it the fairer body doth procure

To habit in.

For of the Soul the Body form doth take:

For Soul is form, and doth the Body make.”

And in our own day, Charles Kingsley says, in serious sportiveness: “The one true doctrine of this wonderful fairy tale is, that your soul makes your body, just as a snail makes its shell.” And again: “You must know and believe that people’s souls make their bodies just as a snail makes its shell.... I am not joking, my little man; I am in serious, solemn earnest.”—(“The Water Babies,” Chaps. III. and IV.)

And Elizabeth Barrett Browning (“Aurora Leigh,” Book III.)—

“... the soulWhich grows within a child makes the child grow.”

“... the soul

Which grows within a child makes the child grow.”

The physiologists and psychologists, as is not unusual, tardily follow in the wake of the poets. At the International Congress of Experimental Psychology, London, 1892, “Professor Delbœuf said that at all times the mind of man had been capable of influencing the body, but it was only in recent times that this action had been scientifically put in evidence.”—(Times, August 3rd, 1892.)

And Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin, had written the year previously, that—“When the practical importance of mental influences becomes more generally recognised, physicians will be obliged to acknowledge that psychology is as important as physiology. Psychology and psychicaltherapeutics will be the basis of a rational treatment of neuroses. The other methods must group themselves around this; it will be the centre, and no longer a sort of Cinderella of science, which now admits only the influence of the body on the mind, and not that of the mind on the body.”—(“Hypnotism,” p. 328.) See also Note XXVIII., 5.

2.—“...woo the absent curse.”

Even Raciborski condemns this common error of treatment:—“... quand les jeunes filles de cette catégorie paraissent souffrantes, quel que soit le caractère des souffrances, on est disposé à les attribuer au défaut du flux menstruel, on le regrette, on l’invoque, et l’on tente tout pour le provoquer. Ces idées sont aujourd’hui encore très profondément enracinées dans le public, et sont souvent la cause des entraves au traitement rationnel proposé par les médecins.”—(Traité, &c., ed. 1868, p. 377.)

And Mrs. E. B. Duffey very sensibly says:—

“Nature ... is very easily perverted: and the girl who begins by imagining she is ill or ought to be at such times will end by being really so.” (“No Sex in Education,” Philadelphia, 1874, p. 79.)

3.—“...counter-effort...”

“Forel and many others mention that there are certain popular methods of slightly retarding menstruation. In one town many of the young women tie something round their little finger if they wish to delay menstruation for a fewdays in order to go to a ball, &c. The method is generally effectual, but when faith ceases, the effect also ceases.”—Dr. Albert Moll (“Hypnotism,” p. 226).

Before quitting this special subject it may be well to remark that little more than the fringe is here indicated of an enormous mass of evidence which affords more than presumptive confirmation and support for the position here taken in the whole question of this “abnormal habit.”

4.—“...custom...”—See Note XXIV., 6.

2.—“...newer vigour to the brain.”

“It is well-known that every organ of the body and, therefore, also the brain, requires for its full development and, consequently, for the development of its complete capability of performance, exercise and persistent effort. That this is and has been the case for thousands of years in a far less degree in woman than in man, in consequence of her defective training and education, will be denied by no one.” So says the learned biologist Büchner.—(“Man,” Dallas’s translation, p. 206.)

And Bebel also declares:—“The brain must be regularly used and correspondingly nourished, like any other organ, if its faculties are to be fully developed.”—(“Woman,” Walther’s translation, p. 124.)

Dr. Emanuel Bonavia, in the course of an able reply to a somewhat shallow recent disquisition by Sir James Crichton Browne, says:—

“From various sources we have learnt that the braintissue, like every other tissue, willgrowby exercise, and diminish, or degenerate and atrophy by disuse. Keep your right arm tied up in a sling for a month, and you will then be convinced how much it has lost by disuse. Then anatomists might perhaps be able to say—Lo! and behold! the muscles of your right arm have a less specific gravity than those of your left arm; that the nerves and blood-vessels going to those muscles are smaller, and that,therefore, the right arm cannot be the equal of the left, and must have a different function!

“Any medical student knows that if you tie the main trunk of an artery, a branch of it will in due course acquire thecalibreof the main trunk. If, for some reason, it cannot do so, the tissues, which the main trunk originally supplied,mustsuffer, and be weakened, from want of a sufficient supply of blood.... Man, and especially British man, has evolved into what he is by endless trouble and struggle through past ages. He has had to develop his present brain from very small beginnings. It would, therefore, now be the height of folly to allow the thinking lobes of the mothers of the race to revert, intellectually, by disuse step by step again to that of the lower animals, from which we all come. That of course many may not believe, but it may be asked, how can he or she believe these things with such weakened lobes, as he or she may have inherited from his or her mother? How indeed! If there is anything in nature that is true, it is this—That if you don’t use your limbs they will atrophy; if you don’t use your eyes they will atrophy; if you don’t use your brain it will atrophy. They all follow the same inexorable law. Useincreases and sharpens; disuse decreases and dulls. Diminished size of the frontal lobes and of the arteries that feed them mean nothing if they do not mean that woman’s main thinking organ, that of the intellect, is, as Sir James would hint, degenerating bydisuseand neglect.”—(“Woman’s Frontal Lobes,”Provincial Medical Journal, July, 1892.)

These facts suggest strongly that the waste at present induced in the female body by the menstrual habit might well be absorbed in increase of brain power; and indeed, that this evolved habit has hitherto persistently sequestrated and carried off from woman’s organism the blood force that should have gone to form brain power. This explanation would dispose of the awkwardly imagined “plethora” theory, as well as one or two others, of sundry gynæcologists.

And the converse—that the increased appropriation of the blood in forming brain power induces a state of bodily well-being, free from the present waste and weariness,—would certainly seem to be borne out by such evidence as that of the Hon. John W. Mitchell, the president of the Southern California College of Law, who said in a recent lecture:—

“Not only in this, but in other countries, there are successful women practitioners (of Law), 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.” (See Note LVII., 1.)

A few words may here be said as to the dubitablequestion of the relative size of the brain in man and woman, though the matter may not be of great import, from more than one reason. For, as Bebel observes: “Altogether the investigations on the subject are too recent and too few in number to allow of any definite conclusions” (p. 123). A. Dumas fils says(“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” p. 196)—“Les philosophes vous démontreront que, si la force musculaire de l’homme est plus grande que celle de la femme, la force nerveuse de la femme est plus grande que celle de l’homme; que, si l’intelligence tient, comme on l’affirme aujourd’hui, au développement et au poids de la matière cérébrale, l’intelligence de la femme pourrait être déclarée supérieure à celle de l’homme, le plus grand cerveau et le plus lourd comme poids, étant un cerveau de femme lequel pesait 2,200 grammes, c’est a dire 400 grammes de plus que celui de Cuvier. On ne dit pas, il est vrai, que cette femme ait écrit l’équivalent du livre de Cuvier sur les fossiles.”

To which last remark may be replied, again in the words of Bebel,—“Darwin is perfectly right in saying that a list of the most distinguished women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, science, and philosophy, will bear no comparison with a similar list of the most distinguished men. But surely this need not surprise us. It would be surprising if it were not so. Dr. Dodel-Port (in “Die neuere Schöpfungsgeschichte”) answers to the point, when he maintains that the relative achievements would be very different after men and women had received the same education and the same training in art and science during a certain number of generations.”—(“Woman,” p. 125.)

“It is of small value to say—yes, but look howmanymen excel and how few women do so. True, but see how much repression men have exercised topreventwomen from even equalling them, and how much shallowness of mind they have encouraged. All manner of obstructions, coupled with ridicule, have been put in their way, and until women succeed in emancipating themselves, most men will probably continue to do so, simply because they have the power to do it. When women become emancipated, that is, are placed on social equality with men, this senseless, mischievous opposition will die a natural death.”—E. Bonavia, M.D. (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).

To revert to the question of brain weight, one of the first of English specialists says:—

“Data might, therefore, be considered to show, in the strongest manner, how comparatively unimportant is mere bulk or weight of brain in reference to the degree of intelligence of its owner, when considered as it often is, apart from the much more important question of the relative amount of its grey matter, as well as of the amount and perfection of the minute internal development of the organ either actual or possible.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 375.)

The American physiologist Helen H. Gardener states:—“The differences (in brain) between individuals of the same sex—in adults at least, are known to be much more marked than any that are known to exist between the sexes. Take the brains of the two poets Byron and Dante. Byron’s weighed 1,807 grammes, while Dante’s weighed only 1,320 grammes, a difference of 487 grammes. Or take twostatesmen, Cromwell and Gambetta. Cromwell’s brain weighed 2,210 grammes, which, by the way, is the greatest healthy brain on record; although Cuvier’s is usually quoted as the largest, a part of the weight of his was due to disease, and if a diseased or abnormal brain is to be taken as the standard, then the greatest on record is that of a negro criminal idiot; while Gambetta’s was only 1,241 grammes, a difference of 969 grammes. Surely it will not be held because of this that Gambetta and Dante should have been denied the educational and other advantages which were the natural right of Byron and Cromwell. Yet it is upon this very ground, by this very system of reasoning, that it is proposed to deny women equal advantages and opportunities, although the difference in brain weight between man and woman is said to be only 100 grammes, and even this does not allow for difference in body weight, and is based upon a system of averages, which is neither complete nor accurate.”—(Report of the International Council of Women, Washington, 1888, p. 378.)

Concerning an assertion that “the specific gravity of both the white and grey matter of the brain is greater in man than in woman,” Helen H. Gardener says:—“Of this point this is what the leading brain anatomist in America (Dr. E. C. Spitzka) wrote: ‘The only article recognised by the profession as important and of recent date, which takes this theory as a working basis, is by Morselli, and he is compelled to make the sinister admission, while asserting that the specific gravity is less in the female, that with old age and with insanity the specific gravity increases.’ If this is the case I do not know that women need sigh over theirshortcoming in the item of specific gravity. There appear to be two very simple methods open to them by which they may emulate their brothers in the matter of specific gravity, if they so desire. One of these is certain, if they live long enough; and the other—well, there is no protective tariff on insanity.”—(Loc. cit., p. 379.)

Helen Gardener further appositely observes:—“The brain of no remarkable woman has ever been examined. Woman is ticketed to fit the hospital subjects and tramps, the unfortunates whose brains fall into the hands of the profession as it were by mere accident, while man is represented by the brains of the Cromwells, Cuviers, Byrons, and Spurzheims. By this method the average of men’s brains is carried to its highest level in the matter of weight and texture; while that of women is kept at its lowest, and even then there is only claimed 100 grammes’ difference!”—(Loc. cit., p. 380.)

And she concludes her exhaustive paper with the closing paragraph of a letter to herself from Dr. E. C. Spitzka, the celebrated New York brain specialist:—“You may hold me responsible for the following declaration: That any statement to the effect that an observer can tell by looking at a brain, or examining it microscopically, whether it belonged to a female or a male subject, is not founded on carefully-observed facts.... No such difference has ever been demonstrated, nor do I think it will be by more elaborate methods than we now possess. Numerous female brains exceed numerous male brains in absolute weight, in complexity of convolutions, and in what brain anatomists would call the nobler proportions. So that he who takesthese as his criteria of the male brain may be grievously mistaken in attempting to assert the sex of a brain dogmatically. If I had one hundred female brains and one hundred male brains together, I should select the one hundred containing the largest and best-developed brains as probably containing fewer female brains than the remaining one hundred. More than this no cautious experienced brain anatomist would venture to declare.”—(Loc. cit., p. 381.)

Charles Darwin has clearly summarised this question of comparison of brain:—“No one, I presume, doubts that the large size of the brain in man, relatively to his body, in comparison with that of the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers.... On the other hand, no one supposes that the intellect of any two animals or of any two men can be accurately gauged by the cubic contents of their skulls. It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter; thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants are generally known, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin’s head. Under this latter point of view the brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more marvellous than the brain of man.”—(“The Descent of Man,” Chap. IV.)

3.—“Wide shall she roam...”

John Ruskin says, of training a girl:—“Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a field. It knowsthe bad weeds twenty times better than you, and the good ones too; and will eat some bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest thought were good.”—(“Sesame and Lilies,” p. 167.)

6.—“...murmurings...”

“Man thinks that his wife belongs to him like his domesticated animals, and he keeps her therefore in slavery. There are few, however, who wear their shackles without feeling their weight, and not a few who resent it. Madame Roland says: ‘Quand vous parlez en maître, vous faites penser aussitôt qu’on peut vous résister, et faire plus peut être, tel fort que vous soyez. L’invulnerable Achille ne l’était pas partout.’”—Alexander Walker, M.D. (“Woman as to Mind, &c.,” p. 353).

“Why do women not discover, when ‘in the noon of beauty’s power,’ that they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect, till they are led to resign, or not assume, their natural prerogatives? Confined then in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch. It is true they are provided with food and raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin, but health liberty, and virtue are given in exchange.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (“Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” Chap. IV.). See also Note XL., 5.

“What have they (men) hitherto offered us in marriage, with a great show of generosity and a flourish of trumpets, but the dregs of a life, and the leavings of a dozen other women? Experience has at last taught us what to expectand how to meet them.”—Lady Violet Greville (National Review, May, 1892).