When any woman, old or young, asks the question, Which among all modern
books ought I to read first? the answer is plain. She should read Buckle's
lecture before the Royal Institution upon "The Influence of Woman on the
Progress of Knowledge." It is one of two papers contained in a thin volume
called "Essays by Henry Thomas Buckle." As a means whereby a woman may
become convinced that her sex has a place in the intellectual universe,
this little essay is almost indispensable. Nothing else quite takes its
place.
Darwin and Huxley seem to make woman simply a lesser man, weaker in body
and mind,--an affectionate and docile animal, of inferior grade. That
there is any aim in the distinction of the sexes, beyond the perpetuation
of the race, is nowhere recognized by them, so far as I know. That there is
anything in the intellectual sphere to correspond to the physical
difference; that here also the sexes are equal yet diverse, and each the
natural completion and complement of the other,--this neither Huxley nor
Darwin explicitly recognizes. And with the utmost admiration for their
great teachings in other ways, I must think that here they are open to the
suspicion of narrowness.
Huxley wrote in "The Reader," in 1864, a short paper called "Emancipation--
Black and White," in which, while taking generous ground in behalf of the
legal and political position of woman, he yet does it pityingly, _de haut
en bas_, as for a creature hopelessly inferior, and so heavily weighted
already by her sex that she should be spared all further trials. Speaking
through an imaginary critic, who seems to represent himself, he denies
"even the natural equality of the sexes," and declares "that in every
excellent character, whether mental or physical, the average woman is
inferior to the average man, in the sense of having that character less in
quantity and lower in quality." Finally he goes so far as "to defend the
startling paradox that even in physical beauty man is the superior." He
admits that for a brief period of early youth the case may be doubtful, but
claims that after thirty the superior beauty of man is unquestionable. Thus
reasons Huxley; the whole essay being included in his volume of "Lay
Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews." [1]
Darwin's best statements on the subject may be found in his "Descent of
Man."[2] He is, as usual, more moderate and guarded than Huxley. He says,
for instance: "It is generally admitted that with women the powers of
intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly
marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are
characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state
of civilization." Then he passes to the usual assertion that man has thus
far attained to a higher eminence than woman. "If two lists were made of
the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music,--
comprising composition and performance,--history, science, and philosophy,
with half a dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear
comparison." But the obvious answer, that nearly every name on his list,
upon the masculine side, would probably be taken from periods when woman
was excluded from any fair competition,--this he does not seem to recognize
at all. Darwin, of all men, must admit that superior merit generally
arrives later, not earlier, on the scene; and the question for him to
answer is, not whether woman equalled man in the first stages of the
intellectual "struggle for life," but whether she is not gaining on him
now.
If, in spite of man's enormous advantage in the start, woman is already
overtaking his very best performances in several of the highest
intellectual departments,--as, for instance, prose fiction and dramatic
representation,--then it is mere dogmatism in Mr. Darwin to deny that she
may yet do the same in other departments. We in this generation have
actually seen this success achieved by Rachel and Ristori in the one art,
by "George Sand" and "George Eliot" in the other. Woman is, then, visibly
gaining on man in the sphere of intellect; and, if so, Mr. Darwin, at
least, must accept the inevitable inference.
But this is arguing the question on the superficial facts merely. Buckle
goes deeper, and looks to principles. That superior quickness of women,
which Darwin dismisses so lightly as something belonging to savage epochs,
is to Buckle the sign of a quality which he holds essential, not only to
literature and art, but to science itself. Go among ignorant women, he
says, and you will find them more quick and intelligent than equally
ignorant men. A woman will usually tell you the way in the street more
readily than a man can; a woman can always understand a foreigner more
easily; and Dr. Currie says in his letters, that when a laborer and his
wife came to consult him, the man always got all the information from the
wife. Buckle illustrates this at some length, and points out that a woman's
mind is by its nature deductive and quick; a man's mind, inductive and
slow; that each has its value, and that science profoundly needs both.
"I will endeavor," he says, "to establish two propositions. First, that
women naturally prefer the deductive method to the inductive. Secondly,
that women, by encouraging in men deductive habits of thought, have
rendered an immense though unconscious service to the progress of science,
by preventing scientific investigators from being as exclusively inductive
as they would otherwise be."
Then he shows that the most important scientific discoveries of modern
times--as of the law of gravitation by Newton, the law of the forms of
crystals by Haüy, and the metamorphosis of plants by Goethe--were all
essentially the results of that _a priori_ or deductive method "which,
during the last two centuries, Englishmen have unwisely despised." They
were all the work, in a manner, of the imagination,--of the intuitive or
womanly quality of mind. And nothing can be finer or truer than the words
in which Buckle predicts the benefits that are to come from the
intellectual union of the sexes for the work of the future. "In that field
which we and our posterity have yet to traverse, I firmly believe that the
imagination will effect quite as much as the understanding. Our poetry will
have to reinforce our logic, and we must feel quite as much as we must
argue. Let us, then, hope that the imaginative and emotional minds of one
sex will continue to accelerate the great progress by acting upon and
improving the colder and harder minds of the other sex. By this coalition,
by this union of different faculties, different tastes, and different
methods, we shall go on our way with the greater ease."
[Footnote 1: Pp. 22, 23, Am. ed.]
[Footnote 2: Vol. ii. p. 311, Am. ed]