MENDELISM AND WOMANHOOD
We are accustomed to think of Mendelism as simply a theory of heredity,
by which term we should properly understand the relation between living
generations. Now Mendelism is certainly this, but I believe that it is
vastly more. Already the claim has been made, though not, perhaps, in
adequate measure, by the Mendelians, and I am convinced that their title
to it will be upheld. Mendelism has already effected a really
epoch-making advance in our knowledge of heredity--the relations between
parents and offspring; but we shall learn ere long that it has yet more
to teach us regarding the very constitution of living beings. As modern
chemistry can analyse a highly complex molecule into its constituent
elementary atoms, so the Mendelians promise ere long to enable us to
effect an _organic analysis_ of living creatures. For many decades past
theory has perceived that, in the germ-cells whence we and the higher
animals and plants are developed, there must exist--somewhere
intermediate between the chemical molecule and the vital unit, the cell
itself--units which Herbert Spencer, the first and greatest of their
students, called physiological or constitutional units. Since his day
they have been re-discovered--or rather re-named--by a host of students,
including Haeckel, Weismann, and many of scarcely less distinction. The
Mendelian "factors," as I maintain must be clear to any student of the
idea, are Spencer's physiological units. Of course neither Spencer nor
any one else, until the re-discovery of Mendel's work, had any notion at
all of the remarkable fashion in which these units are treated in the
process whereby germ-cells are prepared for their great destiny. The
rule, as we now know, is that one germ-cell contains any given unit,
while another does not. The process of cell-division, whereby the
germ-cells or gametes[5] are made, is called gameto-genesis. Somewhere
in its course there occurs the capital fact discovered by Mendel and
called by him segregation. A cell divides into two--which are the final
gametes. One of these will definitely contain the Mendelian factor, and
the other will be as definitely without it. Definite consequences follow
in the constitution of the offspring; and such is the Mendelian
contribution to heredity. But we must see that these inquiries cannot be
far pursued without telling us vastly more than we ever knew before of
not only the relation between individuals of successive generations, but
the very structure of the individuals themselves. It is by the study of
heredity that we shall learn to understand the individual. For instance,
experimental breeding of the fowl reveals the existence of the brooding
instinct as a definite unit, which enters, or does not enter, into the
composition of the individual, and which is quite distinct from the
capacity to produce eggs. Here is a definite distinction suggested, for
the case of the fowl, between two really distinct things which, for
several years past, I have called respectively physical and psychical
motherhood. The analysis will doubtless go far further, but already the
facts of experiment help us to realize the composition of the individual
mother--for instance, the number of possible variants, and the
non-necessity of a connection between the capacity to produce children
and the parental instinct upon which the care of them depends, and
without which entire and perfect motherhood cannot be.
The Mendelians are teaching us, too, that their "factors," the units of
which we are made, are often intertangled or mutually repellent. If
such-and-such goes into the germ-cell, so must something else; or if the
one, then never the other. There may thus be naturally determined
conditions of entire womanhood; just as one may be externally a woman,
yet lack certain of the fractional constituents which are necessary for
the perfect being. Complete womanhood, like genius--rarer though not
more valuable--depends upon the co-existence of _many_ factors, some of
which may be coupled and segregated together in gameto-genesis, while
others may be quite independent, only chance determining the throw of
them. And the question of incompatibility or mutual repulsion of factors
is of the gravest concern; as, for instance, if it were the case--and
the illustration is perhaps none too far-fetched--that the factor for
the brooding instinct and the factor for intellect can scarcely be
allotted together to a single cell.
This question of compatibilities is illustrated very strikingly by the
case of the worker-bee. There is as yet no purely Mendelian
interpretation of this case, Mendel's own laborious work upon heredity
in bees having been entirely lost, and practically nothing having been
done since. Yet, as will be evident, the main argument of Geddes and
Thomson leads us to a similar interpretation of this case in terms of
compatibility.
The worker-bee is an individual of a most remarkable and admirable kind,
from whom mankind have yet a thousand truths to learn. She is
distinguished primarily by the rare and high development of her nervous
apparatus. In terms of brain and mind, using these words in a general
sense, the worker-bee is almost the paragon of animals. The ancients
supposed that the queen-bee was indeed the queen and ruler of the hive.
Here, they thought, was the organizing genius, the forethought, the
exquisite skill in little things and great, upon which the welfare of
the hive and the future of the race depend. But, in point of fact, the
queen-bee is a fool. Her brain and mind are of the humblest order. She
never organizes anything, and does not rule even herself, but does what
she is told. She is entirely specialized for motherhood; but the
thinking, and the determination of the conditions of her motherhood, are
in the hands of other females, also highly specialized, and certainly
the least selfish of living things--_yet themselves sterile, incapable
of motherhood_.
Observe, further, that these wonderful workers, so highly endowed in
terms of brain, are amongst the children of the queen, herself a fool;
and that it was the conditions of nourishment, the conditions of
environment or education, which determined whether the young creatures
should develop into queens or workers, fertile fools or sterile wits. We
have here an absolute demonstration that environment or nurture can
determine the production of these two antithetic and radically opposed
types of femaleness.
Now, amongst the bees, this high degree of specialization works very
well. How old bee-societies are we cannot say. We do know, at any rate,
that bees are invertebrate animals, and therefore of immeasurable
antiquity compared with man. No one can for a moment question the
eminent success of the bee-hive; and that success depends upon the
extreme specialization of the female, so as in effect to create a third
sex. Further, we know that nurture alone accounts for this remarkable
splitting of one sex into two contrasted varieties.
I have little doubt that a process which is, at the very least,
analogous, is possible amongst ourselves; nay more, that such a process
is already afoot. In Japan they have actually been talking of a
deliberate differentiation between workers and breeders; such
differentiation, though indeliberate, is to be seen to-day in all highly
civilized communities. Is it likely to be as good for us as for the
bee-hive? And, granted its value as a social structure, is it, even
then, to be worth while?
No one can answer these questions, though I venture to believe that it
is something to ask them. So far as the last is concerned, we must not
admit the smallest infringement of the supreme principles that every
human being is an end in himself or herself, and that the worth of a
society is to be found in the worth and happiness of the individuals who
compose it.
Can we, as human beings, regard a human society as admirable because it
is successful, stable, numerous?
The question is a fundamental one, for it matters at what we aim. As it
becomes increasingly possible for man to realize his ideals, it becomes
increasingly important that they shall be right ones; and there is a
risk to-day that the growth of knowledge shall be too rapid for wisdom
to keep pace with. We are reaching towards, and will soon attain in very
large and effective measure, nothing less than a _control of life_,
present and to come. It may well be that a remodelling of human society
upon the lines of the bee-hive is feasible. It was his study of bees
that made a Socialist of Professor Forel, certainly one of the greatest
of living thinkers; and his assumption is that in the bee-hive we have
an example largely worthy of imitation. But he would be the first to
admit that, as the ordinary Socialist has yet to learn, the nature of
the society is ultimately determined by the nature of the individuals
composing it. It follows that the bee-society can be completely, or, at
all events substantially, imitated only by remodelling human nature on
the lines of the individual bee. This is very far from impossible; there
is a plethora of human drones already, and we see the emergence of the
sterile female worker. But is such a change--or any change at all of
that kind--to be desired?
_The Terms of Specialization._--It surely cannot be denied that there
may be a grave antagonism between the interests of the society and those
of the individual. It is a question of the terms of specialization or
differentiation. In the study of the individual organism and its history
we discern specialization of the cell as a capital fact. Organic
evolution has largely depended upon what Milne-Edwards called the
"physiological division of labour." In so far as organic evolution has
been progressive, it has entirely coincided with this process of
cell-differentiation. That is the clear lesson which the student of
progress learns from the study of living Nature. Let him hold hard by
this truth, and by it let him judge that other specialization which
human society presents.
For this primary and physiological division of labour has its analogue
in a much later thing, the division of labour in human society, upon
which, indeed, the possibility of what we call human society depends.
And it is plain that the time has come when we must determine the price
that may rightly be paid for this specialization. Assuredly it is not to
be had for nothing. Dr. Minot considers that death, as a biological
fact, is the price paid for cell-differentiation. Now surely the death
of individuality is the price paid for such specialization as that of
the workman who spends his life supervising the machine which effects a
single process in the making of a pin, and has never even seen any
other but that stage in the process of making that one among all the
"number of things" of which the world is full. Here, as in a thousand
other cases, it has cost a man to make an expert.
How far we are entitled to go we shall determine only when we know what
it is that we want to attain.
If we desire an efficient, durable, numerous society, there are probably
no limits whatever that we need observe in the process of
specialization. Pins are cheaper for the sacrifice of the individual in
their making. In general, the professional must do better than the
amateur; the lover of chamber music knows that a Joachim or Brussels
Quartet is not to be found everywhere. Specialization we must have for
progress, or even for the maintenance of what the past has achieved for
us; but we shall pay the right price only by remembering the principle
that all progress in the world of life has depended on
cell-differentiation. If we prejudice that we are prejudicing progress.
Now nothing can be more evident than that, in some of our
specializations of the individual for the sake of society, we are
_opposing_ that specialization within the individual which, it has been
laid down, we must never sacrifice. And so we reach the basal principle
to which the preceding argument has been guiding us. It is that the
specialization of the individual for the sake of society may rightly
proceed to any point short of reversing or aborting the process of
differentiation within himself. Every individual is an end in himself;
there are no other ends for society; and that society is the best which
best provides for the most complete development and self-expression of
the individuals composing it.
But how, then, is the division of labour necessary for society to be
effected, the reader may ask? The answer is that the human species, like
all others, displays what biologists call variation--men and women
naturally differ within limits so wide that, when we consider the case
of genius, we must call them incalculable, illimitable. The difference
of our faces or our voices is a mere symbol of differences no less
universal but vastly more important. It is these differences, in
reality, that are the cause of the development of human society and of
that division of labour upon which it depends. In providing for the best
development of all these various individuals we at the same time provide
for the division of labour that we need; nor can we in any other fashion
provide so well. Thus we shall attain a society which, if less certainly
stable than that of the bees, is what that is not--progressive, and not
merely static; and a society which is worth while, justified by the
lives and minds of the individuals composing it.
We are not, then, to make a factitious differentiation of set purpose in
the interests of society and to the detriment of individuals. We are not
to take a being in whom Nature has differentiated a thousand parts, and,
in effect, reduce him, in the interests of others, to one or two
constituents and powers, thus nullifying the evolutionary course. But we
shall frame a society such as the past never witnessed, and we shall
achieve a rate of progress equally without parallel, by consistently
regarding society as existing for the individual, and not the individual
for society, and by thus realizing to the full his characteristic powers
_for himself and for society_.
In so far as all this is true it is true of woman. It has long been
asserted that woman is less variable than man; but the certainty of that
statement has lately lost its edge. It is probably untrue. There is no
real reason to suppose that woman is less complex or less variable than
man. She has the same title as he has to those conditions in which her
particular characters, whatever they be, shall find their most complete
and fruitful development. There is no more a single ideal type of woman
than there is a single ideal type of man. It takes all sorts even to
make a sex. It has been in the past, and always must be, a piece of
gross presumption on man's part to say to woman, "Thus shalt thou be,
and no other." Whom Nature has made different, man has no business to
make or even to desire similar. The world wants all the powers of all
the individuals of either sex. On the other hand, no good can come of
the attempt to distort the development of those powers or to seek
conformity to any type. Much of the evil of the past has arisen from the
limitation of woman to practically one profession. Even should it be
incomparably the best, in general, it is by no means necessarily the
best, or even good at all, for every individual. Men are to be heard
saying, "A woman ought to be a wife and mother." It is, perhaps, the
main argument of this book that, for most women, this is the sphere in
which their characteristic potencies will find best and most useful
expression both for self and others; but that is very different from
saying that every woman ought to be a mother, or that no woman ought to
be a surgeon. We may prefer the maternal to the surgical type, and there
may be good reason for our preference; but the surgeon may be very
useful, and, useful or not, the question is not one of ought. Thoughtful
people should know better than to make this constant confusion between
what ought to be and what is. Let us hold to our ideals, let us by all
means have our scale of values; but the first question in such a case as
this is as to what _is_. In point of fact all women are not of the same
type; and our expression of what ought to be is none other than the
passing of a censure upon Nature for her deeds. We may know better than
she, or, as has happened, we may know worse.
VII
BEFORE WOMANHOOD
We have seen that the sex of the individual is already determined as
early as any other of his or her characters, though the realization of
the potentialities of that sex may be much modified by nurture, as in
the contrasted cases of the queen bee and the worker bee. Children,
then, are already of one sex or other, and though our business in the
present volume is not childhood of either sex, a few points are worth
noting before we take up the consideration of the individual at the
period when the distinctive characteristics of sex make their effective
appearance.
Despite the abundance of the material and the opportunities for
observation, we are at present without decisive evidence as to the
distinctiveness of sex in any effective way during childhood. Here, as
elsewhere, we have to guard ourselves against the influences of nurture
in the widest sense of the word; as when, to take an extreme case, we
distinguish between the boy and the girl because the hair of the one is
cut and of the other is not. The natural, as distinguished from the
nurtural, distinctions at this period are probably much fewer than is
supposed. It is asserted--to take physical characters first--that the
girl of ten gives out in breathing considerably less carbonic acid than
her brother of the same age, thus foreshadowing the difference between
the sexes which is recognized in later years. If this fact be critically
established it is of very great interest, showing that the sex
distinction effectively makes its presence felt in the most essential
processes of the body. But we should require to be satisfied that the
observations were sufficiently numerous, and were made under absolutely
equal conditions, and with due allowance for difference in body-weight.
They would be the more credible if it were also shown that the number of
the red blood corpuscles were smaller in girls than in boys in parallel
with the difference between the sexes in later years.
Children of both sexes have fewer red blood corpuscles in a given
quantity of blood and a smaller proportion of the red colouring matter,
or hæmoglobin, than adults. Women have very definitely fewer red blood
corpuscles than men, and a smaller proportion of hæmoglobin, and their
blood is more watery. According to one authority this difference in the
hæmoglobin can be observed from the ages of eleven to fifty, but not
before. The specific gravity of the blood is found to be the same in
both sexes before the fifteenth year. Thereafter, that of the boy's
blood rises, and between seventeen and forty-five is definitely higher
than in women of the corresponding age. It thus seems quite clear that,
as we should expect, these differences in the blood, which are
certainly, as Dr. Havelock Ellis says, fundamental, make their
appearance definitely at puberty--a fact which supports the view that
fundamental differences of practical importance between the two sexes
before that age are not to be found. Careful comparative study of the
pulse of children is hitherto somewhat inconclusive, though it is well
known that the pulse is more rapid in women than in men.
On the other hand, it seems clear as regards respiration that as early
as the age of twelve there are definite differences between the sexes.
Several thousands of American school children were examined, and between
the ages of six and nineteen the boys were throughout superior in lung
capacity. The girls had almost reached their maximum capacity at the age
of twelve, and thereafter the difference, till then slight, rapidly
increased.[6] It appears that from eight to fifteen years of age a boy
burns more carbon than a girl, the difference, however, being not great.
But at puberty the boy proceeds to consume very nearly twice as much
carbon per hour as his sister.
Perhaps the matter need not be pursued further. It is sufficient for us
to recognize that puberty is really the critical time, and that in the
consideration of womanhood we may, on the whole, be justified in looking
upon the problem of the girl before that age as almost identical with
her brother's. Yet we must be reasonably cautious, since our knowledge
is small, and there is some by no means negligible evidence of
fundamental physiological differences between the sexes before puberty,
relatively slight though these may be. Therefore, though on the whole
we need make few distinctions between the girl and her brother, and
though we are doubtless wrong in the magnitude of the practical
distinctions which we have often made hitherto, yet we must remember
that these are going to be different beings, and that the main
principles which determine our nurture of womanhood may be recalled when
we are doubtful as to practice in the care of the girl child.
Physiological distinctions, we have seen, probably exist during these
early years, but are of less importance than we sometimes have attached
to them, and of no importance at all compared with what is to come.
Psychological distinctions, we may believe, are still more dubious. For
instance, it is generally believed that the parental instinct shows
itself much more markedly in girls than in boys, and the commonly
observed history of the liking for dolls is quoted in this connection.
As this instinct bears so profoundly upon the later life of the
individual, and as we may reasonably suppose the child to be the mother
of the woman as well as the father of the man, the matter is worth
looking at a little further.
But, in the first place, it has been asserted that the doll instinct has
really nothing whatever to do with the parental instinct in either sex.
Psychologists, whom one suspects of being bachelors, tell us that what
we really observe here is the instinct of acquisition: it really does
not matter what we give the child, though it so happens that we very
commonly present it with dolls; it is the lust of possession that we
satisfy, and in point of fact one thing will satisfy it as well as
another.
The evidence against this view is quite overwhelming. We might quote the
universal distribution of dolls in place and in time as revealed by
anthropology. Wherever there is mankind there are dolls, whether in
Mayfair or in Whitechapel, Japan, the South Sea Islands, Ancient Egypt
or Mexico. Further, there is the observed behaviour of the child,
opportunities for which have presumably been denied to the psychologists
whose opinion has been quoted. The only objection to the theory that the
child will be content with the possession of anything else as well as of
a doll is the circumstance that the child is not so content, but asks
for a doll for choice, and will lavish upon any doll, however
diagrammatic, an amount of love and care which no other toy will ever
obtain. Further, if the child has opportunities for playing with a real
baby, it will be perfectly evident, even to the bachelor psychologist,
that the doll was the vicarious substitute for the real thing.
But now, what as to the comparative strength of this instinct in the two
sexes? Here we must not be deceived by the effects of nurture,
environment, or education. Though finding, as we do, that the little boy
enjoys playing with his dolls as his sister does, we refrain from buying
dolls for him, and may indeed, underestimating the importance of human
fatherhood, declare that dolls are beneath the dignity of a boy though
good enough for his sister. He, destined rather for the business of
destroying life, so much more glorious than saving it, must learn to
play with soldiers. In this fashion we at least deprive ourselves of
any opportunity of critically comparing the strength and the history of
the instinct in the two sexes.
There is good reason to suppose that the distinction between the
psychology of the boy and that of the girl in these early years is very
small. If boys are not discouraged they will play with dolls for choice,
just as their sisters do, and may be just as charming with younger
brothers or sisters. Nor is it by any means certain that this misleading
of ourselves is the worst consequence of the common practice. It is
possible that we lose opportunities for the inculcation of ideals which
are of the highest value to the individual and the race. I am reminded
of the true story of a small boy, well brought up, who, being jeered at
in the street by bigger boys because he was carrying a doll, turned upon
his critics with the admirable retort--slightly wanting in charity, let
us hope, but none the less pertinent--"None of you will ever be a good
father."
Thus, on the whole, one is inclined to suppose that the general
resemblance in facial appearance, bodily contour, and interests which we
observe in children of the two sexes, indicates that deeper distinctions
are latent rather than active. This is much more than an academic
question, for if our subject in the present volume were the care of
childhood, it is plain that we should have to base upon our answer to
this question our treatment of boy and girl respectively. Probably we
are on the whole correct in instituting no deep distinction of any kind
in the nurture, either physical or mental, of children during their
early years. Nor can there be any doubt, at least so far, as to the
rightness of educating them together, and allowing them to compete, in
so far as we allow competition at all, freely both in work and in games.
However this may be, there comes at an age which varies somewhat in
different races and individuals, a period critical to both sexes, in
which the factors of sex differentiation, hitherto more or less latent,
begin conspicuously to assert themselves. Here, plainly, is the dawn of
womanhood, and here, in our consideration of woman the individual, we
must make a start. If we recall the tentative Mendelian analysis already
referred to, we may suppose that the "factor" for womanhood begins to
assert itself, at any rate in effective degree, at this period of
puberty, when a girl becomes a woman; and that its most effective reign
is over at the much later crisis which we call the change of life or
climacteric. In other words, though sex is determined from the first,
and though certain of its distinctive characters remain to the end, we
may say that our study of womanhood is practically concerned with the
years between twelve or thirteen, and forty-five or fifty. Before this
period, as we have suggested, the distinction between the sexes is of no
practical importance so far as _regimen_ and education are concerned.
After this period also it is probable that the difference between the
two sexes is diminished, and would be still more evidently diminished
were it not for the effects which different experience has permanently
wrought in the memory. We begin our practical study, then, of woman the
individual, with the young girl at the age of puberty; and we must
concern ourselves first with the care of her body.
VIII
THE PHYSICAL TRAINING OF GIRLS
We shall certainly not reach right conclusions about the physical
training of girls unless we rightly understand what physical training
does and does not effect, and what we desire it should effect. This
applies to all education--that our aim be defined, that we shall know
"what it is we are after," and it applies pre-eminently to the
education, both physical and mental, of girls.
Now it will be granted, in the first place, that by physical
training--whether in the form of gymnastics or games or what not--we
desire to produce a healthier and more perfectly developed body. Some
will add a stronger body, but as this term has two meanings constantly
confused, it really contains the crux of the question. Stronger may mean
stronger in the sense of resistance to disease or fatigue or strain of
any kind, or it may mean stronger in the sense of the capacity to
perform feats of strength. It being commonly assumed that vitality and
muscularity are identical, this distinction is, on that assumption,
merely academic and trivial. But as muscularity and vitality are not
identical, and have indeed very little to do with each other, and as
muscularity may even in certain conditions prejudice vitality, the
distinction is not academic but all-important. I freely assert that it
is substantially ignored by those who concern themselves with physical
training, whether of boys or girls or recruits, all the world over.
Though a woman is naturally less muscular than a man, her vitality is
higher. This seems to be a general truth of all female organisms. The
evidence is of many orders. Thus, to begin with, women live longer, on
the average, than men do. In the light of our modern knowledge of
alcohol, however, we cannot regard this fact by itself as conclusive,
since the average age attained by men is undoubtedly considerably
lowered by alcohol, and of course to a much greater extent than obtains
in the case of women. But women recover better from poisoning, such as
occurs in infectious disease, and they are far more tolerant of loss of
blood, as indeed they have to be. The same applies to loss of sleep or
food, and to injurious influences generally. These indisputable proofs
of superior vitality co-exist with much inferior muscularity, and are
conclusive on the point. If men would make observations among themselves
and think for a moment, they would soon perceive how foolish they are in
crediting the assumptions of the strong men who so successfully persuade
the public that the great thing is for a man to have big muscles. Men,
muscular by nature, and still more so by nurture, are often in point of
fact really weak compared with much less muscular men who, though they
cannot put forth so much mechanical energy at a given moment, can yet
endure fifty times the fatigue or stress or poisoning of any order.
From the point of view of any sound physiology there is no comparison at
all between the absurd strong man and the slight Marathon runner of
small muscles but splendid vitality. If we are to test vitality in
muscular terms at all--that in itself being a quite indefensible
assumption--we must do so in terms of endurance, and not in terms of
horse power or ass power, at any given moment.
If, then, vitality be our aim in physical training, and not muscularity
as such, nor in any degree except in so far as it serves vitality, it is
plain that we shall to some extent reconsider our methods.
Pre-eminently will this apply to the girl. Just because she is now
becoming a woman, her vital energies are in no small degree pledged for
special purposes of the highest importance, from which we cannot
possibly divert them if we desire that she shall indeed become a woman.
Thus, though muscular exercise of any kind is certainly not to be
condemned, we must be cautious; for, in the first place, muscular
exercise is no end in itself; in the second, the production of big
muscles by exercise is no end in itself; and in the third place, all
muscular exercise is expenditure of energy in those outward directions
which are not characteristic of womanhood, and which must always be
subordinated to those interests that are.
At this period of which we are speaking there are constructions of the
most important kind going on in the girl's body, compared with which the
construction of additional muscular tissue is of much less than no
importance. These building-up processes are, we know, characteristic of
the woman. Their right inception is a matter of the greatest importance.
They involve the actual accumulation of food material and the building
up of it into gland cells and other highly organized tissues upon which
complete womanhood depends. These all-important concerns are prejudiced
by excessive external expenditure, and thus the care necessary for the
boy at puberty is a thousandfold more necessary for the girl, though the
obvious changes in her appearance and her voice may be much less marked.
Greater and more costly constructions are afoot in her case than her
brother's, grossly though these facts are at present ignored in what we
are pleased to call education, both physical and mental.
If we are to decide what kinds of physical exercise will be most
desirable, we must come to some conclusion as to what is the object of
our labours, it being granted that muscular activity and the making of
big muscles are not ends in themselves. The answer to this question is
to be found in what I have elsewhere called the new asceticism.
In tracing the history of animal progress, we find that it coincides
with and has consisted in the emergence of the psychical and its
predominance over the physical. The history of progress is the history
of the evolving nervous system. Muscles are the servants of the nervous
system. In man progress has reached its highest phase in that the
nervous system, which at first was merely a servant of the body, has
become the essential thing, so that the brain is the man. The old
asceticism was at least right in regarding the soul as all-important,
though it was utterly wrong in considering the interests of soul and
body to be entirely antagonistic, and in teaching that for the elevation
of the soul we must outrage, mutilate, and deny the body. The new
asceticism accepts the first principle of the old, but bases its
practice on a truer conception of the relations between mind and body.
The greater part of the body is composed of muscles, and it is with
muscles that physical training is concerned. On our principles, then,
any system of physical training worth a straw must have primary
reference to the brain, since the body, including the muscles, is only
the servant of the ego or self which resides in the brain. For this
reason, if for no other, the development of muscle as an end in itself
is beneath human dignity; the value of a muscle lies not in its size or
strength, but in its capacity to be a useful and skilful agent of the
brain.
The exceptions to this rule are furnished by precisely those muscles
which the usual forms of physical training and gymnastics ignore and
subordinate to the development of the muscles of the limbs. It does
matter very much that man or woman shall have the heart, which is the
most important muscle in the body, and the muscles of respiration in
good order. These muscles are directly necessary for life, and are
therefore servants of the brain, even though they are not in any
appreciable degree the direct agents of its purposes. Any kind of
physical exercise then which, while developing the muscles of the arm,
for instance, throws undue strain upon the heart or involves the
fixation of the chest for a considerable period--as occurs in various
feats of strength, whether with weights or upon bars or the like--is
_ipso facto_ to be condemned. It is now recognized that in the training
of soldiers much harm is often done in this way to the essential
muscles, while others, more conspicuous but of relatively no importance,
are being developed.
But before we consider in detail what kinds of exercise and with what
accompaniment may be permitted for the muscles of the limbs, it is well
that we should agree upon some method of deciding as to the quantity of
such exercise. We cannot go by such measures as hours per week, for
individuals vary. We must find some criterion which will guide us for
each individual. The pendulum has swung in this regard from one extreme
to another. Both extremes were adopted and permitted because in our
guidance of girlhood we ignored facts of physiology, and, notably,
because educators had not a clear conception of what it was that they
desired to attain. By the consent of all who have given any attention to
the subject, the great educational reformer of the nineteenth century
was Herbert Spencer, and not the least of his services was his
liberation of girls from the extraordinary _regimen_ of fifty years ago.
There needs no excuse for a long quotation from the volume in which,
just short of half a century ago, Herbert Spencer discussed this matter.
Thereafter we may observe how the pendulum has swung to the other
extreme:--
"To the importance of bodily exercise most people are in some
degree awake. Perhaps less needs saying on this requisite of
physical education than on most others; at any rate, in so far as
boys are concerned. Public schools and private schools alike
furnish tolerably adequate play-grounds; and there is usually a
fair share of time for out-door games, and a recognition of them as
needful. In this, if in no other direction, it seems admitted that
the promptings of boyish instinct may advantageously be followed;
and, indeed, in the modern practice of breaking the prolonged
morning's and afternoon's lessons by a few minutes' open-air
recreation, we see an increasing tendency to conform
school-regulations to the bodily sensations of the pupils. Here,
then, little need be said in the way of expostulation or
suggestion.
"But we have been obliged to qualify this admission by inserting
the clause in so far as boys are concerned. Unfortunately, the fact
is quite otherwise with girls. It chances, somewhat strangely, that
we have daily opportunity of drawing a comparison. We have both a
boys' school and a girls' school within view; and the contrast
between them is remarkable. In the one case nearly the whole of a
large garden is turned into an open, gravelled space, affording
ample scope for games, and supplied with poles and horizontal bars
for gymnastic exercises. Every day before breakfast, again towards
eleven o'clock, again at mid-day, again in the afternoon, and once
more after school is over, the neighbourhood is awakened by a
chorus of shouts and laughter as the boys rush out to play; and for
as long as they remain, both eyes and ears give proof that they are
absorbed in that enjoyable activity which makes the pulse bound and
ensures the healthful activity of every organ. How unlike is the
picture offered by the Establishment for Young Ladies! Until the
fact was pointed out, we actually did not know that we had a girls'
school as close to us as the school for boys. The garden, equally
large with the other, affords no sign whatever of any provision for
juvenile recreation; but is entirely laid out with prim
grass-plots, gravel-walks, shrubs, and flowers, after the usual
suburban style. During five months we have not once had our
attention drawn to the premises by a shout or a laugh. Occasionally
girls may be observed sauntering along the paths with their
lesson-books in their hands, or else walking arm-in-arm. Once,
indeed, we saw one chase another round the garden; but, with this
exception, nothing like vigorous exertion has been visible.
"Why this astonishing difference? Is it that the constitution of a
girl differs so entirely from that of a boy as not to need these
active exercises? Is it that a girl has none of the promptings to
vociferous play by which boys are impelled? Or is it that, while in
boys these promptings are to be regarded as stimuli to a bodily
activity without which there cannot be adequate development, to
their sisters Nature has given them for no purpose whatever--unless
it be for the vexation of schoolmistresses? Perhaps, however, we
mistake the aim of those who train the gentler sex. We have a vague
suspicion that to produce a robust physique is thought undesirable;
that rude health and abundant vigour are considered somewhat
plebeian; that a certain delicacy, a strength not competent to more
than a mile or two's walk, an appetite fastidious and easily
satisfied, joined with that timidity which commonly accompanies
feebleness, are held more lady-like. We do not expect that any
would distinctly avow this; but we fancy the governess-mind is
haunted by an ideal young lady bearing not a little resemblance to
this type. If so, it must be admitted that the established system
is admirably calculated to realize this ideal. But to suppose that
such is the ideal of the opposite sex is a profound mistake. That
men are not commonly drawn towards masculine women is doubtless
true. That such relative weakness as asks the protection of
superior strength is an element of attraction we quite admit. But
the difference thus responded to by the feelings of men is the
natural, pre-established difference, which will assert itself
without artificial appliances. And when, by artificial appliances,
the degree of this difference is increased, it becomes an element
of repulsion rather than of attraction.
"'Then girls should be allowed to run wild--to become as rude as
boys, and grow up into romps and hoydens!' exclaims some defender
of the proprieties. This, we presume, is the ever-present dread of
schoolmistresses. It appears, on inquiry, that at Establishments
for Young Ladies noisy play like that daily indulged in by boys is
a punishable offence; and we infer that it is forbidden, lest
unladylike habits should be formed. The fear is quite groundless,
however. For if the sportive activity allowed to boys does not
prevent them from growing up into gentlemen, why should a like
sportive activity prevent girls from growing up into ladies? Rough
as may have been their play-ground frolics, youths who have left
school do not indulge in leap-frog in the street, or marbles in the
drawing-room. Abandoning their jackets, they abandon at the same
time boyish games, and display an anxiety--often a ludicrous
anxiety--to avoid whatever is not manly. If now, on arriving at the
due age, this feeling of masculine dignity puts so efficient a
restraint on the sports of boyhood, will not the feeling of
feminine modesty, gradually strengthening as maturity is
approached, put an efficient restraint on the like sports of
girlhood? Have not women even a greater regard for appearances than
men? and will there not consequently arise in them even a stronger
check to whatever is rough or boisterous? How absurd is the
supposition that the womanly instincts would not assert themselves
but for the rigorous discipline of schoolmistresses!
"In this, as in other cases, to remedy the evils of one
artificiality, another artificiality has been introduced. The
natural, spontaneous exercise having been forbidden, and the bad
consequences of no exercise having become conspicuous, there has
been adopted a system of factitious exercise--gymnastics. That this
is better than nothing we admit, but that it is an adequate
substitute for play we deny."
The pendulum has indeed swung across from those days to these of the
hockey-girl, not to mention the girl who throws a cricket-ball and bowls
very creditably overhand. There can be no doubt that this state of
things is vastly better than that was, yet, as one has endeavoured to
insist, this also has its risks. Apart from the question as to the
particular game or form of exercise, we must be guided in each case by
the first signs of anything approaching undue strain. We must look out
for lack of energy, for a lessening of joy in the exercise and of
spontaneous desire therefor. Fatigue that interferes with appetite,
digestion, or sleep is utterly to be condemned.
_The Specific Criterion._--Such criteria apply, of course, equally to
either sex, though it is more important to be on the look-out for them
in the case of the developing girl. But in her case there is another
criterion, which is of special importance, because it concerns not only
her development as an individual, but her development as a woman. That
criterion is furnished us by the menstrual function. It may safely be
said that that exercise is excessive and must be immediately curtailed
which leads to the diminution of this function, much more to its
disappearance. I would, indeed, urge this as a test of the highest
importance, always applicable to whatever circumstances. Defect in this
respect should never be looked upon lightly; it may, indeed, be a
conservative process, as in cases of anæmia, but the cause which
produces such an effect is always to be combated.
_The Kinds of Exercise._--Given, then, this most important test as to
the quantity of exercise of whatever kind--a test which indeed applies
no less to mental exercise--we may pass on to consider the kinds of
exercise best suited for the girl, it being premised that any one of
them, however good in itself and in moderation, is capable of being
pursued to excess, and that the danger of this is specially noticeable
in the case of the girl, because, as we have seen, the effects of excess
are more serious in her case, and also because girls are very apt to
take things up with immense keenness, and sometimes, in even greater
degree than their brothers, to devote themselves too much to the
competitive aspect of things. The girl should certainly be content to
play a game for the joy of it, and be scarcely less happy to lose than
to win if her side has played the game and made a good fight of it. The
competitive element is excessive in almost all sports to-day, and it is
especially to be deplored in the games of girls, who are so liable to
overstrain and so apt to take trifles to heart.
In what has been already said and in the end of our quotation from
Herbert Spencer, it will be evident that purposeful games rather than
exercises are to be commended. There is indeed no comparison for a
moment possible between Nature's method of exercise, which is obtained
through play, and the ridiculous and empty parodies of it which men
invent. The truth is that Nature is aiming at one thing, and man at
another. Man's aim, for reasons already exploded, is the acquirement of
strength; Nature's is the acquirement of skill. It is really nervous
development that Nature is interested in when she appears to be
persuading the young thing to exercise its muscles. Man notices only the
muscular contractions involved, thinks he can improve upon Nature, and
invents absurdities like dumb-bells.
It is the nervous system by which we human beings live. Our voluntary
muscles are agents of the will, agents of purpose; and while strength is
a trifle, skill is always everything. We know now that it is impossible
to carry out any human purpose by the contraction of one muscle or even
one group of muscles. Even when we merely bend the arm we are doing
things with the muscles which extend it, and when we raise it sideways
we are modifying the whole trunk in order to preserve the balance. We
have only to watch the clumsiness of an infant or a small child to
realize how much skill the nervous system has to acquire. This skill may
be mainly expressed as co-ordination, the balanced use of many muscles
for a purpose and, as a rule, their co-ordinated use with one of the
senses, more especially vision, but also touch and hearing.
This is the first of the physiological reasons why games and play of all
sorts are so incomparably superior to the use of dumb-bells and
developers, where movement and increase of muscular strength are made
ends in themselves; whereas in play we are making relations with the
outside world, responding to stimuli, educating our nerve muscular
apparatus as an instrument of human purpose.
It is in part true to suppose that the play of children expresses an
overflow of superfluous energy, but a still deeper and much more
important conception of play is that which recognizes in it Nature's
method of nervous development, the attainment of control and
co-ordination, the capacity of quick and accurate response to
circumstances and obedience to the will. Compare, for instance, the girl
who has played games, avoiding danger as she crosses the road, with
another whose youth has been made dreary by dumb-bells. It may freely be
laid down, then, that systems of physical training are good in
proportion as they approximate to play, and bad in proportion as they
depart from it; and, further, that the very best of them ever devised is
worthless in comparison with a good game. This evidently does not refer
to, say, special exercises for a curved back.
However, systems of physical training we shall still have with us for a
long time to come, and perhaps the mere difficulty of finding room for
games makes them necessary, though it may be noted in passing that the
last touch of absurdity is accorded to our frequent preference for
exercises over games when we conduct the exercises in foul air and
prefer them to games in the open air. If exercises we are to have, then
they must at least be modelled so as to come as near as possible to play
in the two essentials. The first of these has already been
mentioned--the preference of skill to strength as an object.
The second, though less obvious, is no less important. What is the most
palpable fact of the child's play? It is enjoyment. We have done for
ever with the elegant morality which grown-up people, very particular
about their own meals, used to impose upon children, and which was based
upon the idea that everything which a child enjoys is therefore bad for
it. We are learning the elements of the physiology of joy. We find that
pleasure and boredom have distinct effects upon the body and the mind,
notably in the matter of fatigue. Careful study of fatigue in school
children has shown that the hour devoted to physical exercise of the
dreary kind under a strict disciplinarian may, instead of being a
recreation, actually induce more fatigue than an hour of mathematics.
If, then, we cannot allow the girl to play, but must give her some kind
of formal exercise, we must at least make it as enjoyable as possible.
There are Continental systems of gymnastics which do not believe in the
use of music because, forsooth, they find that the music diminishes the
disciplinary effect! Such an argument dismisses those who adduce it from
the category of those entitled to have anything to do with young people.
They should devote themselves to training the rhinoceros, these
martinets; the human spirit is not for their mauling. In point of fact
one of the redeeming features of physical training is the use of music,
which goes far to supply the pleasure that accrues from the natural
exercise of games, and greatly reduces the fatigue of which the risk is
otherwise by no means inconsiderable. We leave this subject, then, for
the nonce, having arrived at the conclusion that the objects of
physical training are skill and pleasure rather than strength and
discipline; that the system is best which is nearest to play; and that
the use of music is specially to be commended.
But, as we have said, artificial physical training at its best is not to
be compared with the real thing; more especially if, as is usually the
case, the real thing has the advantage of being practised in pure air.
We must ask ourselves, then, what sort of games are suitable for girls,
and to what extent, if at all, mixed games are desirable. We must first
remind ourselves of the proviso that any game may be played to excess,
whether physical excess or mental excess, the risk of both of these
being involved when the competitive element is made too conspicuous. If
this risk be avoided there is no objection, perhaps, to even such a
vigorous game as hockey in moderation for girls. The present writer has
observed mixed hockey for many years, and finds it impossible to believe
that the game should be condemned for girls, but he has always seen it
under conditions where the game was simply played for the fun of the
thing, and that makes a great difference.
It is certainly open to argument whether, in such a game as hockey, it
is not better, on the whole, that girls shall play by themselves, but,
as has been urged elsewhere, there is a good deal to be said for the
meeting of the sexes elsewhere than in the artificial conditions of the
ball-room, since these mixed games widen the field of choice for
marriage and provide far more natural and desirable conditions under
which the choice may be made. There can be no question that an epoch has
been created by the freedom of the modern girl to play games, and to
enjoy the movements of a ball, as her brother does. The very fact of her
pleasure in games indicates, to those who do not believe that the body
is constructed on essentially vicious principles, that they must be good
for her. The mere exercise is the least of the good they do. The open
air counts for more, as does the development of skill, and the girl's
opportunity of sharing in that moral education which all good games
involve and which there is no need to insist upon here. Amongst the many
things alleged against woman as natural defects by those who have never
for a moment troubled to distinguish between nature and nurture, are an
incapacity to combine with her sisters, petty dishonour in small things,
a blindness to the meaning of "playing the game." It is similarly
alleged by such persons against the lower classes that they also do not
know how to "play the game," and do not understand the spirit of true
sportsmanship, preferring to win anyhow rather than not at all. But
those who conduct the Children's Vacation Schools in London--that
remarkable arrangement by which children are damaged in school time and
educated in holidays--are aware that in a short time children of any
class can be taught to "play the game," if only they can be made to see
it from that point of view. So also women can learn to combine, to be
unselfish, to avoid petty deceits even in games, to obey a captain and
to accept the umpire's decision, when they are taught, as we all have
to be taught, that that is playing the game.
These immense virtues of the new departure must by no means be forgotten
in the course of the reaction which is bound to occur, and is indeed
necessary, against the contemporary practice of trying to demonstrate
that boys and girls are substantially identical. He who pleads for the
golden mean is always abused by extremists of both parties, but is
always justified in the long run, and this is a case where the golden
mean is eminently desirable, being indeed vital, which is much more than
golden. Safety is to be found in our recognition of elementary
physiological principles, assuming from the first that though it is not
difficult to turn a girl into something like a boy, it is not desirable;
and especially in attending carefully, in the case of each individual,
to the indications furnished by that characteristic physiological
function, interference with which necessarily imperils womanhood.
The organism is a whole; it reacts not only to physical strain but to
mental strain. There are parts of the world, including a country no less
distinguished as a pioneer of education than Scotland, where serious
mental strain is now being imposed upon girls at this very period of the
dawn of womanhood, when strain of any kind is especially to be deplored.
Utterly ignoring the facts of physiology, the laws and approximate dates
of human development, official regulations demand that at just such ages
as thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen large numbers of girls--and picked
girls--shall devote themselves to the strain of preparing for various
examinations, upon which much depends. Worry combines to work its
effects with those of excessive mental application, excessive use of the
eyes at short distances, and defective open-air amusement. The whole
examination system is of course to be condemned, but most especially
when its details are so devised as to press thus hardly upon girlhood at
this critical and most to be protected period. Many years ago Herbert
Spencer protested that we must acquaint ourselves with the laws of life,
since these underlie all the activities of living beings. The time is
now at hand when we shall discover that education is a problem in
applied biology, and that the so-called educator, whether he works
destruction from some Board of Education or elsewhere, who knows and
cares nothing about the laws of the life of the being with whom he
deals, is simply an ignorant and dangerous quack.
What has been said about the reaction against excess in the physical
education of girls applies very forcibly to excess in their mental
education. We are undoubtedly coming upon a period when more and more
will be heard of the injurious consequences of such ill-timed
preparation for stupid examinations as has been referred to; and there
will be not a few to sigh for the return to the bad old days which a
certain type of mind always calls good. Here, again, we must find the
golden mean, recognizing that the danger lies in excess, and especially
in ill-timed excess. We shall further discover that if we desire a girl
to become a woman, and not an indescribable, we must provide for her a
kind of higher education which shall take into account the object at
which we aim. It will be found that there are womanly concerns, of
profound importance to a girl and therefore to an empire, which demand
no less of the highest mental and moral qualities than any of the
subjects in a man's curriculum, and the pursuit of which in reason does
not compromise womanhood, but only ratifies and empowers it.
_Muscles worth Developing._--When men and women are carefully compared,
it is found that women, muscularly weaker as a whole, are most notably
so as regards the arms, the muscles of respiration, and the muscles of
the back. The muscles of the legs, and especially of the thighs, are
relatively stronger. In these facts we can find some practical guidance.
The muscles of all the limbs may be left comparatively out of account;
whether naturally weak or naturally strong they are of subordinate
importance. On the other hand, it is always worth while to cultivate the
muscles of respiration, as it is always worth while to keep the heart in
good order. Again, the weakness of the muscles of the back, and more
especially in the case of the growing girl, is not a thing to be
accepted as readily as the weakness of the biceps and the forearm
muscles. Various observers find a proportion of between 85 per cent. and
90 per cent. of those suffering from lateral curvature of the spine to
be girls, the great majority of these cases occurring between the ages
of ten and fifteen. Everywhere it is our duty to prevent such cases, and
everywhere physical training will find only too abundant opportunities
for endeavouring to correct them. It may be doubted perhaps whether we
may rightly follow Havelock Ellis in attributing woman's liability to
backache to the relative weakness of the muscles of the back, for we
know how often this symptom depends upon not muscular but internal
causes peculiar to woman. On the other hand, we may certainly follow
Havelock Ellis when he says, regarding this lateral curvature of the
spine, from which so many girls and women suffer: "There can be no doubt
that defective muscular development of the back, occurring at the age of
maximum development, and due to the conventional restraints on exercises
involving the body, and also to the use of stays, which hamper the
freedom of such movements, is here a factor of very great importance."
We shall not here concern ourselves with the details of practice, but
the principle is to be laid down that perhaps second only in importance
to the right development of the heart and the muscles of respiration is
that of the muscles of the back.
Always, however, we are apt to judge by the obvious and to value it
unduly. Nature makes the biceps and the muscles of the forearm naturally
the weakest in woman compared with man, but it is just the bending of
the elbow that makes a good show on a horizontal bar or rope; and so we
devote too much time to the training of these muscles in our girls, with
the results which make such creditable exhibitions at the end of the
session, while we forget the muscles of the back, the right development
of which is far more valuable, but does not lend itself to display.
In this connection it is to be added last, but not least, that special
importance attaches in woman to those muscles which one may perhaps call
the muscles of motherhood. It is common experience amongst physicians to
find the appropriate muscularity defective at childbirth in women the
muscles of whose limbs may have been very highly developed. Thus Dr.
Havelock Ellis, amongst other evidence, quotes that of a physician, who
says: "In regard to this interesting and suggestive question, it does
seem a fact that women who exercise all their muscles persistently meet
with increased difficulties in parturition. It would certainly seem that
excessive development of the muscular system is unfavourable to
maternity. I hear from instructors in physical training, both in the
United States and in England, of excessively tedious and painful
confinements among their fellows--two or three cases in each instance
only, but this within the knowledge of a single individual among his
friends. I have also several such reports from the circus--perhaps
exceptions. I look upon this as a not impossible result of muscular
exertion in women, the development of muscle, muscular attachments, and
bony frame leading to approximation to the male."
In his lectures ten years ago, the distinguished obstetrician, Sir
Halliday Croom, now professor of Midwifery in the University of
Edinburgh, used to criticise cycling on this score, not as regards its
development of the muscles of the lower limbs, but as tending towards
local rigidity unfavourable to childbirth. It may be doubted, perhaps,
whether longer and wider experience of cycling by women warrants this
criticism, but it is probably worth noting.
On the other hand, while exercise of certain muscles may interfere
obscurely or mechanically with motherhood, we are to remember that the
muscles of the abdomen are indeed the accessory muscles of motherhood,
and therefore specially to be considered. According to Mosso of Turin,
it is only in modern times that civilized woman shows the comparative
weakness of these muscles which is indeed commonly to be found. There is
verily no sign of it in the Venus of Milo, as any one can see. That
statue represents very highly developed abdominal muscles in a woman
less notably muscular elsewhere. The muscles lie near the skin, the
disposition of fat being very small, yet the woman is distinctively
maternal in type, and every kind of æsthetic praise that may be showered
upon the statue may be supplemented by the encomiums of the physiologist
and the worshipper of motherhood. It is highly desirable that, in
physical training to-day, attention should be paid to the development of
the abdominal muscles. Holding the abdomen together by means of a corset
may serve its own purpose, but does less than nothing in the crisis of
motherhood. The corset indeed conduces to the atrophy of the most
important of all the voluntary muscles for the most important crisis of
a woman's life. "Some of the slower Spanish dances" are commended for
the development of the abdominal muscles, but one would rather recommend
swimming, the abandonment of the corset, and, if the gymnasium is to be
used, some of the various exercises which serve these muscles, however
little they may serve to exploit the apparatus of the gymnasium when
visitors are invited.
There is no occasion in the present volume to discuss in detail any such
thing as a course of physical exercises, but it is a pleasure, and, for
the English reader, a convenience to direct attention to the Syllabus of
Physical Exercises for Public Elementary Schools, issued by the English
Board of Education in 1909.[7] After nearly forty years of folly, the
dawn is breaking in our schools. It is evident that the Board of
Education has followed the best medical advice. Indeed, now that medical
knowledge is actually represented upon the Board, and represented as it
is, there is no need to go far. The principles which have been laid down
in previous pages are abundantly recognized in this admirable syllabus.
The exercises recommended for the nation's children are based upon the
Swedish system of educational gymnastics. But it is fortunately
recognized that that system requires modification, since "freedom of
movement and a certain degree of exhilaration are essentials of all true
physical education. Hence it has been thought well not only to modify
some of the usual Swedish combinations in order to make the work less
exacting, but to introduce games and dancing steps into many of the
lessons." "The Board desire that all lessons in physical exercises in
public elementary schools should be thoroughly enjoyed by the children."
"Enjoyment is one of the most necessary factors in nearly everything
which concerns the welfare of the body, and if exercise is distasteful
and wearisome, its physical as well as its mental value is greatly
diminished." An interesting paragraph on music recognizes its value in
avoiding fatigue, but underestimates, perhaps, the desirability of
including music for use at later years as well as for infant classes.
The syllabus contains admirably illustrated exercises in detail. They
are earnestly to be commended to the reader who is responsible for
girlhood, and notably to those who are interested in the formation and
conducting of girls' clubs. The syllabus is excellent in the attention
paid to games, in the commendation of skipping and of dancing. The
following quotation well illustrates the spirit of wisdom which is at
last beginning to illuminate our national education:--"The value of
introducing dancing steps into any scheme of physical training as an
additional exercise especially for girls, or even in some cases for
boys, is becoming widely recognized. Dancing, if properly taught, is one
of the most useful means of promoting a graceful carriage, with free,
easy movements, and is far more suited to girls than many of the
exercises and games borrowed from boys. As in other balance exercises,
the nervous system acquires a more perfect control of the muscles, and
in this way a further development of various brain centres is brought
about.... Dancing steps add very greatly to the interest and recreative
effect of the lesson, the movements are less methodical and exact, and
are more natural; if suitably chosen they appeal strongly to the
imagination, and act as a decided mental and physical stimulus, and
exhilarate in a wholesome manner both body and mind."
Plainly, our educators have begun to be educated since 1870.
Of course, there is dancing and dancing. The real thing bears the same
relation to dancing as it is understood in Mayfair, as the music of
Schubert does to that of Sousa. The ideal dancing for girls is such as
that illustrated by the children trained by Miss Isadora Duncan. Some of
these girls were seen for a short time at the Duke of York's Theatre in
London not long ago, and the American reader, rightly proud of Miss
Duncan, should not require to be told what she has achieved. Just as we
are learning the importance of games and play, so that a syllabus issued
by the Board of Education instructs one how to stand when "giving a
back" at leap-frog, so also we shall learn again from Nature that
dancing of the natural and exquisite kind, never to be forgotten or
confused with imitations by any one who has seen Miss Duncan's children,
must be recognized as a great educative measure--educative alike of
mind, body, ear, and eye, and better worth while for any girl of any
rank than volumes of fictitious history concocted by fools concerning
knaves.
_Girls' Clubs._--Allusion has been made to girls' clubs, and one may be
fortunate enough to have some readers who may feel inclined to partake
in the splendid work which may be done by this means. It requires high
qualities and a certain amount of expert knowledge. Much of the latter
can be obtained from the little book recommended above. For the rest, it
is worth while briefly to point out what the girls' club may effect, and
why it is so much needed.
It has been insisted that puberty is a critical age because it means the
dawn of womanhood. It is critical in both sexes, not only for the body
but also for the mind. It is now that the intellect awakes; it is now
that the real formation of character begins. We often talk about spoilt
children at three or four, but any kind of making or marring of
character at such ages can be undone in a few weeks or less--that is, in
so far as it is an effect of training and not of nature that we are
dealing with. The real spoiling or making is at that birth of the adult
which we call puberty. During adolescence the adult is being made, and
everything matters for ever. This is true of physique, of mind, and of
character. The importance of this period is recognized by modern
churches in their rite of Confirmation, and it was recognized by ancient
religions, by Greeks and by Romans. Our national appreciation of it is
expressed by our devotion of vast amounts of money and labour to the
child, until the all-important epoch is reached, when we wash our hands
of it. We educate away, for all we are worth, when what is mainly
required is plenty of good food and open air; and we have done with the
matter when the age for real education arrives. In time to come our
neglect of adolescence in both sexes, more especially in girls, will be
marvelled at, and many of the evils from which we suffer will cease to
exist because the fatal and costly economy of the practical man is
dismissed as a delusion and a sham, and it is perceived that whether for
the saving of life or for the saving of money, adolescence must be cared
for.
Meanwhile, it behoves private people who care about these things to do
what they can. If they rightly influence but ten girls, it was well
worth doing. The girls' club is a very inexpensive mode of social
activity. Practically the only substantial item of expenditure is the
hire of a gymnasium, say for two evenings in a week. The girls' dresses
can be made at home at quite a trivial cost. The primary attraction
would be the gymnasium. It must, of course, contain a piano, not
necessarily one on which Pachmann would play, but a piano nevertheless.
There is also required a pianist, not necessarily a Pachmann. Two girls
are better than one to run such a club. They will not find it difficult
to obtain material to work upon. They must acquire at a Polytechnic, or
perhaps they have acquired themselves at school, some knowledge of how
to conduct the work and play of the gymnasium. It will depend upon the
conductors of the club how far its virtues extend. Much elementary
hygiene may be taught as well as practised, and if it confine itself
only to matters of ventilation, clothing, care of the teeth and feet, it
is abundantly worth while. It is often possible to get medical men or
women to come and talk to the girls, and in the best of these clubs
there will be some more or less conscious and overt preparation in one
way and another for matters no less momentous alike for the individual
and the race than marriage and motherhood.
_Girls' Clothing._--There is little good to be said about much of the
clothing of girls and women. All clothing should of course be loose, on
grounds which have been fully gone into in the previous volume on
personal hygiene. A woman's headgear is perhaps too often the only
article of her dress which conforms to this rule. It is good that the
stimulant effect of air, and air in motion, upon the skin should be as
widely extended as is compatible with sufficient warmth and decency.
Thus most women wear far too many clothes, apart from the question of
tightness. A woman handicaps herself seriously as compared with a man,
in that, while she is much less muscular, her clothes are often so much
heavier. All this applies with great force to girls. The following
quotation from the syllabus referred to above is worth making:--
"_A Suitable Dress for Girls._--A simple dress for girls suitable
for taking physical exercises or games consists of a tunic, a
jersey or blouse, and knickers. The tunic and knickers may be made
of blue serge, and, if a blouse is worn, it should be made of some
washing material.
The tunic, which requires two widths of serge, may be gathered or,
preferably, pleated into a small yoke with straps passing over the
shoulders. The dress easily slips on over the head, and the
shoulder straps are then fastened. It should be worn with a loose
belt or girdle. In no case should any form of stiff corset be used.
The knickers, with their detachable washing linen, should replace
all petticoats. They should not be too ample, and should not be
visible below the tunic. They are warmer than petticoats and allow
greater freedom of movement.
Any plain blouse may be worn with the tunic, or a woollen jersey
may be substituted in cold weather.
With regard to the cost of such a dress, serge may be procured for
1s. 6d. to 2s. per yard. For the tunic some 2 to 2-1/2 yards are
usually required, and for the knickers about 1-1/2 to 2 yards. It
may be found possible in some schools to provide patterns, or to
show girls how to make such articles for themselves. Such a dress,
though primarily designed for physical exercises, is entirely
suitable for ordinary school use.
Though it is, of course, not practicable to introduce this dress
into all Public Elementary Schools, or in the case of all girls,
yet in many schools there are children whose parents are both
willing and able to provide them with appropriate clothing. The
adoption of a dress of this kind, which is at the same time useful
and becoming, tends to encourage that love of neatness and
simplicity which every teacher should endeavour to cultivate among
the girls. And as it allows free scope for all movements of the
body and limbs, it cannot fail to promote healthy physical
development."
IX
THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN
In the last chapter brief reference was made to the effects of ill-timed
mental strain. Our principles have already led us to the conclusion that
there are special risks for girls involved in educational strain, and
that is, of course, equally true whatever the curriculum. But that being
granted, it is necessary to draw very special attention to a new
movement in the higher education of women which is based upon the
principle that a woman is not the same as a man; that she has special
interests and duties which require no less knowledge and skill than
those with which men are concerned. A tentative experiment in this
direction has already, we are assured, altered the whole attitude
towards life of those girls who partook in it, and there is no question
that we now see the beginning of a new epoch in the higher education of
women upon properly differentiated lines such as have been utterly
ignored in the past. I refer to the "Special Courses for the Higher
Education of Women in Home Science and Household Economics," which now
form part of the activities of the University of London at King's
College. "The main object of these courses," we are told, "is to
provide a thoroughly scientific education in the principles underlying
the whole organization of 'Home Life,' the conduct of Institutions, and
other spheres of civic and social work in which these principles are
applicable." The lecturers are mainly highly qualified women, and the
courses are extremely thorough and comprehensive. The following are the
subjects which are dealt with: economics and ethics, psychology,
biology, business matters, physiology, bacteriology, chemistry, domestic
arts, sanitary science and hygiene, applied chemistry and physics.[8]
It will be seen that there is no underrating here of the capacities of
women. The courses are not limited merely to cooking and washing, though
these are most carefully gone into. It is a far cry from them to
psychology and ethics or "A Sketch of the Historical Development of the
Household in England." One can imagine the joy with which girls, largely
nourished on the husks which constitute most of the educational
curricula of boys, will turn to a series of lectures on Child
Psychology, that deal with the general course of mental development in
the child, with interest and attention, the processes of learning,
mental fatigue and adolescence. The highest capacities of the mind in
women are not ignored when we find included a course of which the
special text-book is Spencer's "Data of Ethics." One can imagine also
that the course on the elements of general economics, with its study of
wealth and value and price, the laws of production and distribution,
may bring into being a kind of housewife who, whether or not eligible
for Parliament, would certainly be a much more desirable member thereof
than nine-tenths of the prosperous gentlemen who daily record their
opinions there upon matters they know not of. All who care at all for
womanhood or for England must rejoice in the beginnings of this revised
version of higher education for women which, for once in a way, finds
London a pioneer. We must have such courses all over the country. Every
father who can afford it must give his girls the incalculable benefit of
such opportunities. The girl thus educated will glory in her womanhood,
and will help to gain for it its right estimation and position in the
state.
But it is to be pointed out that such courses as these, admirable though
they be, are yet not everything. The influence of our great national
deity, which is Mrs. Grundy, is apparent still. It is not specifically
recognized that the highest destiny of a woman is motherhood, though in
such courses as this motherhood will doubtless be served directly and
indirectly in many ways. There is, nevertheless, required something
more--something indeed no less than conscious, purposeful education for
parenthood. The chief obstacle in the way of this ideal is Anglo-Saxon
prudery, and, perhaps, the reader will not be persuaded that education
for parenthood is our greatest educational need to-day, more especially
for girls, until he or she has been persuaded of the magnitude of the
preventable evils which flow from our present neglect of this matter. In
the following chapter, therefore, one may point out what prudery costs
us at present, and indeed, the reader may then be persuaded that
education for parenthood, or, as it may be called, eugenic education,
is, perhaps, the most important subject that can be discussed to-day in
any book on womanhood.
X
THE PRICE OF PRUDERY
Just after we had succeeded in getting the Notification of Births Act
put upon the Statute Book, the present writer occupied himself in
various parts of the country in the efforts which were necessary to
persuade local authorities to adopt the provisions of that Act.
Addressing a meeting of the clergy of Islington, he endeavoured to trace
back to the beginning the main cause of infant mortality, and
endeavoured to show that that lay in the natural ignorance of the human
mother, about which more must later be said. In the discussion which
followed, an elderly clergyman insisted that the causes had not been
traced far enough back, maternal ignorance being itself permitted in
consequence of our national prudery.
Ever since that day one has come to see more and more clearly that the
criticism was just. Maternal ignorance, as we shall see later, is a
natural fact of human kind, and destroys infant life everywhere, though
prudery be or be not a local phenomenon. But where vast organizations
exist for the remedying of ignorance, prudery indeed is responsible for
the neglect of ignorance on the most important of all subjects. Let it
not be supposed for a moment that in this protest one desires, even for
the highest ends, to impart such knowledge as would involve sullying the
bloom of girlhood. It is not necessary to destroy the charm of innocence
in order to remedy certain kinds of ignorance; nor are prudery and
modesty identical. Whatever prudery may be when analyzed, it seems
perfectly fair to charge it as the substantial cause of the ignorance in
which the young generation grows up, as to matters which vitally concern
its health and that of future generations. Let us now observe in brief
the price of prudery thus arraigned.
There is, first, that large proportion of infant mortality which is due
to maternal ignorance, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter. At
present we may briefly remind ourselves that the nation has had the
young mother at school for many years; much devotion and money have been
spent upon her. Yet it is necessary to pass an Act insuring, if
possible, that when she is confronted with the great business of her
life--which is the care of a baby--within thirty-six hours the fact
shall be made known to some one who, racing for life against time, may
haply reach her soon enough to remedy the ignorance which would
otherwise very likely bury her baby. Prudery has decreed that while at
school she should learn nothing of such matters. For the matter of that
she may even have attended a three-year course in science or technology,
and be a miracle of information on the keeping of accounts, the testing
of drains, and the principles of child psychology, but it has not been
thought suitable to discuss with her the care of a baby. How could any
nice-minded teacher care to put such ideas into a girl's head? Never
having noticed a child with a doll, we have somehow failed to realize
that Nature, her Ancient Mother and ours, is not above putting into her
head, when she can scarcely toddle, the ideas at which we pretend to
blush. Prudery on this topic, and with such consequences, is not much
less than blasphemy against life and the most splendid purposes towards
which the individual, "but a wave of the wild sea," can be consecrated.
This question of the care of babies offers us much less excuse for its
neglect than do questions concerned with the circumstances antecedent to
the babies' appearance. Yet we are blameworthy, and disastrously so,
here also. Prudery here insists that boys and girls shall be left to
learn anyhow. That is not what it says, but that is what it does. It
feebly supposes not merely that ignorance and innocence are identical,
but that, failing the parent, the doctor, the teacher, and the
clergyman--and probably all these do fail--ignorance will remain
ignorant. There are others, however, who always lie in wait, whether by
word of mouth or the printed word, and since youth will in any case
learn--except in the case of a few rare and pure souls--we have to ask
ourselves whether we prefer that these matters shall be associated in
its mind with the cad round the corner or the groom or the chauffeur who
instructs the boy, the domestic servant who instructs the girl, and with
all those notions of guilty secrecy and of misplaced levity which are
entailed; or with the idea that it is right and wise to understand
these matters in due measure because their concerns are the greatest in
human life.
After puberty, and during early adolescence, when a certain amount of
knowledge has been acquired, we leave youth free to learn lies from
advertisements, carefully calculated to foster the tendency to
hypochondria, which is often associated with such matters. Of this,
however, no more need now be said, since it scarcely concerns the girl.
It is the ignorance conditioned by prudery that is responsible later on
for many criminal marriages; contracted, it may be, with the blind
blessing of Church and State, which, however, the laws of heredity and
infection rudely ignore. Parents cannot bring themselves to inquire into
matters which profoundly concern the welfare of the daughter for whom
they propose to make what appears to be a good marriage. They desire, of
course, that her children shall be healthy and whole-minded; they do not
desire that marriage should be for her the beginning of disease, from
the disastrous effects of which she may never recover. But these are
delicate matters, and prudery forbids that they should be inquired into;
yet every father who permits his daughter to marry without having
satisfied himself on these points is guilty, at the least, of grave
delinquency of duty, and may, in effect, be conniving at disasters and
desolations of which he will not live to see the end.
Young people often grow fond of each other and become engaged, and then,
if the engagement be prolonged--as all engagements ought to be, as a
general rule--they may find that, after all, they do not wish to marry.
Yet the girl's mother, an imprudent prude, may often in this and other
cases do her utmost to bring the marriage about, not because she is
convinced that it means her daughter's highest welfare and happiness,
but because prudery dictates that her daughter must marry the man with
whom she has been so frequently seen; hence very likely lifelong
unhappiness, and worse.
Society, from the highest to the lowest of its strata, is afflicted with
certain forms of understood and eminently preventable disease, about
which not a word has been spoken in Parliament for twenty years, and any
public mention of which by mouth or pen involves serious risk of various
kinds. Here it is perhaps not necessary for us to consider the case of
the outcast, and of the diseases with which, poor creature, she is first
infected, and which she then distributes into our homes. Our present
concern is simply to point out that prudery, again, is largely
responsible for the continuance of these evils at a time when we have so
much precise knowledge regarding their nature and the possibility of
their prevention. Medical science cannot make distinctions between one
disease and another, nor between one sin and another, as prudery does.
Prudery says that such and such is vice, that its consequences in the
form of disease are the penalties imposed by its abominable god upon the
guilty and the innocent, the living and the unborn alike, and that
therefore our ordinary attitude towards disease cannot here be
maintained. Physiological science, however, knowing what it knows
regarding food and alcohol, and air and exercise and diet, can readily
demonstrate that the gout from which Mrs. Grundy suffers is also a
penalty for sin; none the less because it is not so hideously
disproportionate, in its measure and in its incidence, to the gravity of
the offence. These moral distinctions between one disease and another
have little or no meaning for medical science, and are more often than
not immoral.
It would be none too easy to show that the medical profession in any
country has yet used its tremendous power in this direction.
Professions, of course, do not move as a whole, and we must not expect
the universal laws of institutions to find an exception here. But though
they do not move, they can be moved. It is when the public has been
educated in the elements of these matters, and has been taught to see
what the consequences of prudery are, that the necessary forces will be
brought into action. Meanwhile, what we call the social evil is almost
entirely left to the efforts made in Rescue Homes and the like. Despite
the judgment of a popular novelist and playwright, it is much more than
doubtful whether Rescue Homes--the only method which Mrs. Grundy will
tolerate--are the best way of dealing with this matter, even if the
people who worked in them had the right kind of outlook upon the matter,
and even if their numbers were indefinitely multiplied. Every one who
has devoted a moment's thought to the matter knows perfectly well that
this is merely beginning at the end, and therefore all but futile. I
mention the matter here to make the point that the one measure which
prudery permits--so that indeed it may even be mentioned upon our highly
moral stage, and passed by the censor, who would probably be hurried
into eternity if M. Brieux's _Les Avariés_ were submitted to him, and
who found "Mrs. Warren's Profession" intolerable--is just the most
useless, ill-devised, and literally preposterous with which this
tremendous problem can be mocked.
This leads us to another point. It is that the means of our education,
other than the schools, are also prejudiced by prudery. Upon the stage
there is permitted almost any indecency of word, or innuendo, or
gesture, or situation, provided only that the treatment be not serious.
Almost anything is tolerable if it be frivolously dealt with, but so
soon as these intensely serious matters are dealt with seriously,
prudery protests. The consequence is that a great educative influence,
like the theatre, where a few playwrights like M. Brieux, and Mr.
Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Granville Barker, and Mr. John Galsworthy, might
effect the greatest things, is relegated by Mrs. Grundy to the plays
produced by Mr. George Edwardes and other earnest upholders of the
censorship.
Publishers also, while accepting novels which would have staggered the
Restoration Dramatists, can scarcely be found, even with great labour,
for the publication of books dealing with the sex question from the most
responsible medical or social standpoints.
It is just because public opinion is so potent, and, like all other
powers, so potent either for good or for evil, that its present
disastrous workings are the more deplorable. It is not unimaginable
that prudery might undergo a sort of transmutation. As I have said
before, we might make a eugenist of Mrs. Grundy, so that she might be as
much affronted by a criminal marriage as she is now by the spectacle of
a healthy and well-developed baby appearing unduly soon after its
parents' marriage. The power is there, and it means well, though it does
disastrously ill. Public opinion ought to be decided upon these matters;
it ought to be powerful and effective. We shall never come out into the
daylight until it is; we shall not be saved by laws, nor by medical
knowledge, nor by the admonitions of the Churches. Our salvation lies
only in a healthy public opinion, not less effective and not more
well-meaning than public opinion is at present, but informed where it is
now ignorant, and profoundly impressed with the importance of realities
as it now is with the importance of appearances.
So much having been said, what can one suggest in the direction of
remedy? First, surely it is something that we merely recognize the price
of prudery. Personally, I find that it has made all the difference to my
calculations to have had the thing pointed out by the clerical critic
whose eye these words may possibly meet. It is something to recognize in
prudery an enemy that must be attacked, and to realize the measure of
its enmity. In the light of some little experience, perhaps a few
suggestions may be made to those who would in any way join in the
campaign for the education and transmutation of public opinion on these
matters.
First, we must compose ourselves with fundamental seriousness--with
that absolute gravity which imperils the publication of a book and
entirely prohibits the production of a play on such matters. There is
something in human nature beyond my explaining which leads towards
jesting in these directions. An instinct, I know, is an instinct; of
which a main character is that its exercise shall be independent of any
knowledge as to its purpose. We eat because we like eating, rather than
because we have reckoned that so many calories are required for a body
of such and such a weight, in such and such conditions of temperature
and pressure. It is not natural, so to say, just because man is in a
sense rather more than natural, that we should be provident and serious,
self-conscious, and philosophic, in dealing with our fundamental
instincts. But it is necessary, if we are to be human: and only in so
far as, "looking before and after," we transcend the usual conditions of
instinct, are we human at all.
The special risk run by those who would deal with these matters
seriously--or rather one of the risks--is that they will be suspected,
and may indeed be guilty, of a tendency to priggishness and cant. Youth
is very likely not far wrong in suspecting those who would discuss these
matters, for youth has too often been told that they are of the earth
earthy, that these are the low parts of our nature which we must learn
to despise and trample on, and youth knows in its heart that whatever
else may or may not be cant, this certainly is. So any one who proposes
to speak gravely on the subject is a suspect.
Meetings confined to persons of one sex offer excellent opportunities.
Much can be done, if the suspicion of cant be avoided, by men addressing
the meetings of men only which gather in many churches on Sunday
afternoons, and which have a healthy interest in the life of this world
and of this world to come, as well as in matters less immediate. It
seems to me that women doctors ought to be able to do excellent work in
addressing meetings of girls and women, provided always that the speaker
be genuinely a woman, rightly aware of the supremacy of motherhood.
Most of us know that it is possible to read a medical work on sex, say
in French, without any offence to the æsthetic sense, though a
translation into one's native tongue is scarcely tolerable. This
contrasted influence of different names for the same thing is another of
those problems in the psychology of prudery which I do not undertake to
analyze, but which must be recognized by the practical enemy of prudery.
It is unquestionably possible to address a mixed audience, large or
small, of any social status, on these matters without offence and to
good purpose. But certain terms must be avoided and synonyms used
instead. There are at least three special cases, the recognition of
which may make the practical difference between shocking an audience and
producing the effect one desires.
Reproduction is a good word from every point of view, but its
associations are purely physiological, and it is better to employ a word
which renders the use of the other superfluous and which has a special
virtue of its own. This is the term parenthood, a hybrid no doubt, but
not perhaps much the worse for that. One may notice a teacher of
zoology, say, accustomed to address medical students, offend an audience
by the use of the word reproduction, where parenthood would have served
his turn. It has a more human sound--though there is some sub-human
parenthood which puts much of ours to shame--and the fact that it is
less obviously physiological is a virtue, for human parenthood is only
half physiological, being made of two complementary and equally
essential factors for its perfection--the one physical and the other
psychical. Thus it is possible to speak of physical parenthood and of
psychical parenthood, and thus not only to avoid the term reproduction,
but to get better value out of its substitutes. One may be able to show,
perhaps, that in the case of other synonyms also a hunt for a term that
shall save the face of prudery may be more than justified by the
recovery of one which has a richer content. Terms are really very good
servants, if they are good terms and we retain our mastery of them. Let
any one without any previous practice start to write or speak on "human
reproduction," and on "human parenthood, physical and psychical," and he
will find that, though naming often saves a lot of thinking, as George
Meredith said, wise naming may be of great service to thought.
In these matters there is to be faced the fact of pregnancy. Here,
again, is a good word, as every one knows who has felt its force or that
of the corresponding adjective when judiciously used in the
metaphorical sense. The present writer's rule, when speaking, is to use
these terms only in their metaphorical sense, and to employ another term
for the literal sense. I should be personally indebted to any reader who
can inform me as to the first employment of the admirable phrase, "the
expectant mother." The name of its inventor should be remembered. In any
audience whatever--perhaps almost including an audience of children, but
certainly in any adult audience, whether mixed or not, medical or
fashionable, serious or sham serious--it is possible to speak with
perfect freedom on many aspects of pregnancy, as for instance the use of
alcohol, exposure to lead poisoning, the due protection at such a
period, by simply using the phrase "the expectant mother," with all its
pregnancy of beautiful suggestion. Here, again, our success depends upon
recognizing the psychical factor in that which to the vulgar eye is
purely physiological--not that there is anything vulgar about physiology
except to the vulgar eye.
For myself, the phrase "the expectant mother" is much more than useful,
though in speaking it has made all the difference scores of times. It is
beautiful because it suggests the ideal of every pregnancy--that the
expectant mother shall indeed _expect_, look forward to the life which
is to be. Her motto in the ideal world or even in the world at the
foundations of which we are painfully working, will be those words of
the Nicene creed which the very term must recall to the mind--_Expecto
resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi sæculi_.
Let any one who fancies that these pre-occupations with mere language
are trivial or misplaced here take the opportunity of addressing two
drawing-rooms under similar conditions, on some such subject as the care
of pregnancy from the national point of view. Let him in the one case
speak of the pregnant woman, and so forth, and in the other of the
expectant mother. He will be singularly insensitive to his audience if
he does not discover that sometimes a rose by any other name is somehow
the less a rose. The more fools we perhaps, but there it is, and in the
most important of all contemporary propaganda, which is that of the
re-establishment of parenthood in that place of supreme honour which is
its due, even such "literary" debates as these are not out of place.
Sex is a great and wonderful thing. The further down we go in the scale
of life, whether animal or vegetable, the more do we perceive the
importance of the evolution of sex. The correctly formed adjective from
this word is sexual, but the term is practically taboo with Mrs. Grundy.
Only with caution and anxiety, indeed, may one venture before a lay
audience to use Darwin's phrase, "sexual selection." The fact is utterly
absurd, but there it is. One of the devices for avoiding its
consequences is the use of sex itself as an adjective, as when we speak
of sex problems; but the special importance of this case is in regard to
the sexual instinct, or, if the term offends the reader, let us say the
sex instinct. Here prudery is greatly concerned, and our silence here
involves much of the price of prudery. Now since the word sexual has
become sinister, we cannot speak to the growing boy or girl about the
sexual instinct, but we may do much better.
For what is this sexual instinct? True, it manifests itself in
connection with the fact of sex, but essentially that is only because
sex is a condition of human reproduction or parenthood. It is this with
which the sexual instinct is really concerned, and perhaps we shall
never learn to look upon it rightly or deal with it rightly until we
indeed perceive what the business of this instinct is, and regard as
somewhat less than worthy of mankind any other attitude towards it. Of
course there are men who live to eat, yet the instincts concerned with
eating exist not for the titillation of the palate but for the
sustenance of life; and, likewise, though there are those who live to
gratify this instinct, it exists not for sensory gratification, but for
the life of this world to come. Can we not find a term which shall
express this truth, shall be inoffensive and so doubly suitable for the
purposes of our cause?
The term reproductive instinct is often employed. It is vastly superior
to sexual instinct, because it does refer to that for which the instinct
exists; but it hints at reproduction, and though Mrs. Grundy can
tolerate the idea of parenthood, reproduction she cannot away with. We
cannot speak of it as the parental instinct, because that term is
already in employment to express the best thing and the source of all
other good things in us. Further, the sexual instinct and the parental
instinct are quite distinct, and it would be disastrous to run the
possibility of confusing them--one the source of all the good, and the
other the source of much of the evil, though the necessary condition of
all the good and evil, in the world.
For some years past, in writing and speaking, I have employed and
counselled the employment of the term "the racial instinct." This seems
to meet all the needs. It avoids the tabooed adjective, and if it fails
to allude at all to the fact of sex, who needs reminding thereof? It is
formed from the term race, which prudery permits, and it expresses once
and for all that for which the instinct exists--not the individual at
all, but the race which is to come after him. Doubtless its satisfaction
may be satisfactory for him or her, but that does not testify to
Nature's interest in individuals, but rather to her skill in insuring
that her supreme concern shall not be ignored, even by those who least
consciously concern themselves with it.
These are perhaps the three most important instances of the verbal, or
perhaps more than verbal, issues that arise in the fight with prudery.
One has tried to show that they are not really in the nature of
concessions to Mrs. Grundy, but that the terms commended are in point of
fact of more intrinsic worth than those to which she objects. Other
instances will occur to the reader, especially if he or she becomes in
any way a soldier in this war, whether publicly or as a parent
instructing children, or on any other of the many fields where the fight
rages.
It is not the purpose of the present chapter to deal with that which
must be said, notwithstanding prudery, and in order that the price of
prudery shall no longer be paid. But one final principle may be laid
down which is indeed perhaps merely an expression of the spirit
underlying the foregoing remarks upon our terminology. It is that we are
to fly our flag high. We may consult Mrs. Grundy's prejudices if we find
that in doing so we may directly serve our own thinking, and therefore
our cause. This is very different from any kind of apologizing to her.
All such I utterly deplore. We must not begin by granting Mrs. Grundy's
case in any degree. Somewhere in that chaos of prejudices which she
calls her mind, she nourishes the notion, common to all the false forms
of religion, ancient or modern, that there is something about sex and
parenthood which is inherently base and unclean. The origin of this
notion is of interest, and the anthropologists have devoted much
attention to it. It is to be found intermingled with a by no means
contemptible hygiene in the Mosaic legislation, is to be traced in the
beliefs and customs of extant primitive peoples, and has formed and
forms an element in most religions. But it is not really pertinent to
our present discussion to weigh the good and evil consequences of this
belief. Without following the modern fashion, prevalent in some
surprising quarters, of ecstatically exaggerating the practical value of
false beliefs in past and present times, we may admit that the cause of
morality in the humblest sense of that term may sometimes have been
served by the religious condemnation of all these matters as unclean,
and of parenthood as, at the best, a second best.
But for our own day and days yet unborn this notion of sex and its
consequences as unclean or the worser part is to be condemned as not
merely a lie and a palpably blasphemous one, grossly irreligious on the
face of it, but as a pernicious lie, and to be so recognized even by
those who most joyfully cherish evidence of the practical value of lies.
Whatever may have been the case in the past or among present peoples in
other states of culture than our own, no impartial person can question
that during the Christian Era what may be called the Pauline or ascetic
attitude on this matter has been disastrous; and that if the present
forms of religion are not completely to outlive their usefulness, it is
high time to restore mother and child worship to the honour which it
held in the religion of Ancient Egypt and in many another. If the mother
and child worship which is to be found in the more modern religions,
such as Christianity, is to be worth anything to the coming world it
must cease to have reference to one mother and one child only; it must
hail every mother everywhere as a Madonna, and every child as in some
measure deity incarnate. By no Church will such teaching be questioned
to-day; but if it be granted the Churches must cease to uphold those
conceptions of the superiority of celibacy and virginity which, besides
involving grossly materialistic conceptions of those states, are
palpably incompatible with that worship of parenthood to which the
Churches must and shall now be made to return.
All this will involve many a shock to prudery; to take only the instance
of what we call illegitimate motherhood, our eyes askance must learn
that there are other legitimacies and illegitimacies than those which
depend upon the little laws of men, and that if our doctrine of the
worth of parenthood be a right one it is our business in every such case
to say, "Here also, then, in so far as it lies in our power, we must
make motherhood as good and perfect as may be."
These principles also will lead us to understand how differently, were
we wise, we should look upon the outward appearances of expectant
motherhood. In his masterpiece, Forel--of all living thinkers the most
valuable--has a passage with which Mrs. Grundy may here be challenged.
It is too simple to need translating from the author's own French:[9]--