Lord Melbourne, speaking of the fine ladies in London who were fond of
talking about their ailments, used to complain that they gave him too much
of their natural history. There are a good many writers--usually men--who,
with the best intentions, discuss woman as if she had merely a physical
organization, and as if she existed only for one object, the production and
rearing of children. Against this some protest may well be made.
Doubtless there are few things more important to a community than the
health of its women. The Sandwich Island proverb says:--
"If strong is the frame of the mother,
The son will give laws to the people."
And, in nations where all men give laws, all men need mothers of strong
frames.
Moreover, there is no harm in admitting that all the rules of our structure
are imperative; that soul and body, whether of man or woman, are made in
harmony, so that each part of our nature must accept the limitations of the
other. A man's soul may yearn to the stars; but so long as the body cannot
jump so high, he must accept the body's veto. It is the same with any veto
interposed in advance by the physical structure of woman. Nobody objects to
this general principle. It is only when clerical gentlemen or physiological
gentlemen undertake to go a step farther, and put in that veto on their own
responsibility, that it is necessary to say, "Hands off, gentlemen!
Precisely because women are women, they, not you, are to settle
that question."
One or two points are clear. Every specialist is liable to overrate his own
specialty; and the man who thinks of woman only as a wife and mother is apt
to forget, that, before she was either of these, she was a human being.
"Women, as such," says an able writer, "are constituted for purposes of
maternity and the continuation of mankind." Undoubtedly, and so were men,
as such, constituted for paternity. But very much depends on what relative
importance we assign to the phrase, "as such." Even an essay so careful, so
moderate, and so free from coarseness, as that here quoted, suggests, after
all, a slight one-sidedness,--perhaps a natural reaction from the
one-sidedness of those injudicious reformers who allow themselves to speak
slightingly of "the merely animal function of child-bearing." Higher than
either--wiser than both put together--is that noble statement with which
Jean Paul begins his fine essay on the education of girls in "Levana."
"Before being a wife or mother, one is a human being; and neither motherly
nor wifely destination can overbalance or replace the human, but must
become its means, not end. As above the poet, the painter, or the hero, so
above the mother, does the human being rise preëminent."
Here is sure anchorage. We can hold to this. And, fortunately, all the
analogies of nature sustain this position. Throughout nature the laws of
sex rule everywhere; but they rule a kingdom of their own, always
subordinate to the greater kingdom of the vital functions. Every
creature, male or female, finds in its sexual relations only a
subordinate part of its existence. The need of food, the need of
exercise, the joy of living, these come first, and absorb the bulk of
its life, whether the individual be male or female. This _Antiope_
butterfly, that flits at this moment past my window,--the first of the
season,--spends almost all its existence in a form where the distinction
of sex lies dormant: a few days, I might almost say a few hours,
comprise its whole sexual consciousness, and the majority of its race
die before reaching that epoch. The law of sex is written absolutely
through the whole insect world. Yet everywhere it is written as a
secondary and subordinate law. The life which is common to the sexes is
the principal life; the life which each sex leads, "as such," is a minor
and subordinate thing.
The same rule pervades nature. Two riders pass down the street before my
window. One rides a horse, the other a mare. The animals were perhaps
foaled in the same stable, of the same progenitors. They have been reared
alike, fed alike, trained alike, ridden alike; they need the same exercise,
the same grooming; nine tenths of their existence are the same, and only
the other tenth is different. Their whole organization is marked by the
distinction of sex; but, though the marking is ineffaceable, the
distinction is not the first or most important fact.
If this be true of the lower animals, it is far more true of the higher.
The mental and moral laws of the universe touch us first and chiefly as
human beings. We eat our breakfasts as human beings, not as men or women;
and it is the same with nine tenths of our interests and duties in life.
In legislating or philosophizing for woman, we must neither forget that
she has an organization distinct from that of man, nor must we
exaggerate the fact. Not "first the womanly and then the human," but
first the human and then the womanly, is to be the order of her training.