WOMAN'S CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS
In a curious old black-letter volume entitled _The Boke of the Cyte of
Ladyes_, published in England in 1521 by Henry Pepwell, occurs the
following passage: "I mervayle gretely of the opynyon of some men that
say they wolde in no wyse that theyr daughters or wyves or kynnes-women
sholde lerne scyences, and that it sholde apayre theyr condycyons. This
thing is not to say ne to sustayne. That the woman apayreth by conynge
it is not well to beleve. As the proverb saythe, 'that nature gyveth may
not be taken away.'"
The book from which this remarkable quotation is taken is a translation
of Christine de Pisan's _La Cite des Dames_, which was written early in
the fifteenth century. It is a capital defence against the slanderers of
the gentler sex and an armory of arguments for all time against those
men who declare that "women are fit for nothing but to bear children and
spin." It shows conclusively that conynge--knowledge--far from tending
to injure women's character--apayre theyr condycyons--as was asserted by
Christine's antagonists, contributes, on the contrary, to elevate and
ennoble them and to render them better mothers and more useful members
of society.
Notwithstanding that it was written five hundred years ago, and
notwithstanding its "antiquated allegorical dress and its quaint
pre-Renaissance notions of history," it is in many of its aspects a
surprisingly modern production. The line of argument adopted by the
writer is virtually the same as that which is adopted to-day in the
discussion of the same questions which are so ably treated in this
long-forgotten book[89] and show that Christine de Pisan was in every
way a worthy champion of her sex.
No woman of her time was more competent to discuss the capacity of her
sex for science as well as for other intellectual pursuits than was this
learned daughter of Italy. She was not only a woman of profound and
varied knowledge, but was also, as stated in the preceding chapter, the
first woman to earn her living by her pen. Besides writing _The City of
Ladies_ and more verses--mostly ballads and virelays--than are contained
in the _Divina Commedia_, she was also the author of many other works on
the most diverse subjects. She is best known to historians as the author
of _Livre des Fais et Bonnes Meurs du sage Roy Charles V_, which is a
graphic account of the court and policy of this monarch, and of the
_Livre des Faits d'Armes et de Chevalerie_. The latter work is not, as
might be imagined from its title, a collection of tales of chivalry,
but, incredible as it may seem, a profound and systematic treatise on
military tactics and international law. It deals with "many topics of
the highest policy, from the manners of a good general and the minutiae
of siege operations to the wager of battle, safe-conducts and letters of
marque," and was deemed so important by Henry VII that at his expressed
desire it was translated into English and published by Caxton under the
title of _The Boke of Fayettes of Armes and Chyvalrye_. Even so late as
the time of Henry VIII it was regarded as an authoritative manual on the
topics treated.
So great, indeed, was the extent and variety of Christine's attainments,
so thoroughly had she studied the Latin and Greek authors, sacred and
profane, and so profound was her knowledge of all the subjects which she
dealt with in her numerous books that "one cannot but feel a certain
astonishment when one finds in a woman in the fourteenth century an
erudition such as is hardly possessed by the most laborious of men."
When we read the eloquent plea which this learned woman of five
centuries ago makes in behalf of her sex, when we note the examples she
quotes of women "illumined of great sciences," and consider the
arguments by which she demonstrated the capacity of women for all
scientific pursuits, we can easily fancy that we are reading the brief
of some modern exponent of the woman's rights movement and are almost
disposed to believe that La Bruyiere was right when he declared, _Les
anciens ont tout dit_. For so cogent is Christine's reasoning and so
thoroughly does she traverse her subject from every point of view that
she has left later writers little to add to the controversy except
matters of detail which were not available in her time.
In spite, however, of Christine's _Cyte of Ladyes_, "in which,"
according to our mediaeval paragon, "women, hitherto scattered and
defenceless, were forever to find refuge against all their slanderers,"
in spite of the fact that the foundations of this city were laid by
Reason, that its walls and cloisters were built on Righteousness, and
its battlements and high towers on Justice, in spite of the fact that
the material entering into its construction was "stronger and more
durable than any marble," and that it was, as our author declares, "a
city right fair, without fear and of perpetual during to the world--a
city that should never be brought to nought," Christine's work was soon
lost sight of, and the right of women to the same intellectual
advantages as men was as strongly denied as it had been before she had
so valiantly championed their cause, and denied, too, on the assumed
ground of their innate incapacity.
It mattered not that during the succeeding centuries other women took up
the cause for which the author of _La Cite des Dames_ had so nobly
battled; it mattered not that countless women in every civilized country
of the globe distinguished themselves by their achievements in every
department of science and gave evidence of talent and genius of the
highest order; it mattered not that chivalrous representatives of the
sterner sex, like John Stuart Mill, came forward to plead the case of
that half of humanity which had so long been held in cruel subjection.
The attitude of the world toward the intellectually disfranchised sex
remained unchanged almost until our own time.
But, although women now enjoy advantages in the pursuit of science which
were undreamed of only a generation ago, the age-old prejudices
respecting woman's mental powers and her capacity for the more abstract
branches of science still prevail. It is useless to cite instances of
women who have attained eminence in astronomy, mathematics, archaeology,
or in any other science whatever. Such instances, we are assured, are
only exceptions and prove nothing. Men like Lombroso are willing to
admit the existence of an occasional woman of talent, but they deny the
existence of genius in one who is truly a womanly woman.[90] For, with
Goncourt, they flippantly assert, _Il n'y a pas de femmes de genie:
lorsqu'elles sont des genies, elles sont des hommes_--there are no women
of genius; when they have genius they are men.
The reasons that now influence men for affirming the intellectual
disparity of the sexes are, it must be observed, quite different from
what they were in the time of Christine de Pisan--quite different from
what they were half a century ago. Our forebears, in their endless
disputations regarding woman's mental inferiority, based their arguments
on _a priori_ deductions, or on metaphysical considerations which proved
nothing and which were often irrelevant, if not absurd.
Thus the Aristotelians, accepting as true the doctrine of the four
elements as well as the superimposed doctrine of the four elemental
qualities, sought to explain the properties of all compound bodies by
these primal qualities. In this way they explained the various virtues
of drugs and medicines. And by the same process of reasoning they
explained the assumed difference between male and female brains. They
assumed, to begin with, that there was a difference between the
intellectual capacities of men and women. They then assumed that this
difference in capacity was due to the difference in character and
texture of the female as compared with those of the male brain. They
next further assumed that the doctrines of the four elements and of the
four elemental qualities were established beyond question, and then
assumed again that the reason of woman's inferior capacity was due to
the fact that her brain was moister and softer, and, therefore, more
impressionable than that of man. No wonder that the old Spanish
Benedictine, Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, in his chivalrous _Defensa de la
Mujer_, lost all patience with such fantastic theorizers and wrote: "Did
I write ... to display my wit, I could easily, by deducting a chain of
consequences from received principles, shew that man's understanding,
weighed in the balance with female capacity, would be found so light as
to kick the beam."[91]
Abandoning the Aristotelian method of envisaging the question under
discussion, our modern philosophers have recourse to the recent
sciences of biology and psycho-physiology to prove what they, too,
assume to be true--viz., woman's incurable mental weakness. Like their
predecessors, they are dominated by passion, prejudice, the errors of
countless centuries, and, like them, they approach the subject on which
they are to pronounce judgment, with minds warped by long ages of
imperious instincts, ignorant preconceptions and social bias. They will
quote the opinions of Proudhon and Schopenhauer--as if they had the
value of mathematical demonstrations--on the mental inferiority of
women, and will declare with unblushing assurance that no woman has ever
produced a single work of any kind of enduring worth. With the German
pessimist, they will blatantly declare, taken as a whole, "women are and
remain thoroughgoing Philistines and quite incurable."[92] With the
French socialist they will assert, as if it were an axiomatic truth,
that "thought in every living being is proportional to force"--that
"physical force is not less necessary for thought than for muscular
labor."
They have apparently no more doubt respecting the truth of these
assumptions than had their predecessors, the Aristotelians, respecting
their assumptions of the four elements and their first qualities. Their
process of reasoning is somewhat as follows: "Woman is smaller and
weaker than man. This is a matter of simple observation, confirmed by
the teachings of physiology. Therefore, woman is physically and
intellectually inferior to man. Therefore she is incapable of any of
those great conceptions and achievements in science or philosophy which
have so distinguished the male sex in every age of the world's history.
That she is thus weaker and inferior physically and intellectually and
forever incapacitated from successfully competing with man in the
intellectual arena is a fatality for which, we are gravely told, there
is no remedy, and to which women, consequently, must resign themselves
as to one of the inexorable laws of nature."
It would be difficult to cite a more preposterous example of
ratiocination. If it were true that there is a necessary relation
between vigor of body and vigor of mind; that mental power is
proportional to physical power; that thought is but a special form of
energy and capable of transformation, like heat, light and electricity;
that it, like the various physical forces, has its chemical and
mechanical equivalents; that psychic work corresponds to a certain
amount of chemical or thermic action; that intellectual capacity in man
is proportional to muscular strength; it would follow that the great
leaders of thought and action through the ages have been Goliaths in
stature and Herculeses in strength. But so far is this conclusion from
being warranted that it is almost the reverse of the truth. For many, if
not the majority, of the great geniuses of the world in every age have
been either men of small frame or men of delicate and precarious health.
Among the men of genius who were noted for their diminutive stature were
Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Archimedes, Epicurus, Horace,
Albertus Magnus, Montaigne, Lipsius, Spinoza, Erasmus, Lalande, Charles
Lamb, Keats, Balzac and Thiers. Many others were remarkable for their
spare form. Among these in the prime of life were Aristotle,
Demosthenes, Cicero, St. Paul, Kepler, Pascal, Boileau, Fenelon,
D'Alembert, Napoleon, Lincoln and Leo XIII. Others, like Aesop,
Brunelleschi, Leopardi, Magliabecchi, Parini, Scarron, Talleyrand, Pope,
Goldsmith, Byron, Sir Walter Scott, to mention only a few of the most
eminent, were either hunchbacked, lame, rachitic or clubfooted.
Others, still, were the victims of chronic ill health, or of nervous
disorders of the most serious character. Virgil was of a delicate and
frail constitution. He essayed the bar, but shrank from it and turned to
the "contemplation of diviner things." Nor was Horace, though less
completely a recluse and more of a _bon vivant_, a strong man. Both of
them, as scholars will remember, sought the couch, while Maecenas went
off to the tennis court. Pope's life, says Johnson, was a long disease.
Johnson himself, though large and muscular, had queer health and a
tormenting constitution. Schiller wrote most of his best work while
struggling against a painful malady, and Heine's "mattress grave" is
proverbial. France furnishes an excellent example in Pascal.[93]
Some of the most noted leaders of thought in our own era were likewise
chronic invalids. Among these were the scholarly theologian, E. B.
Pusey, and J. A. Symonds, the historian of the Renaissance. There was
also Herbert Spencer, who was frequently forced by nervous breakdowns to
take long periods of absolute rest. More remarkable still was the case
of the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin. "It is," writes his son, "a
principal feature of his life that for nearly forty years he never knew
one day of the health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one
long struggle against the weariness and the strain of sickness."[94]
But, notwithstanding his continued ill health and the spinal anemia from
which he suffered, he was able to conduct those epoch-making researches
which put him in the forefront of men of science, and to write those
famous books which have completely revolutionized our views of nature
and nature's laws.
But a still more remarkable illustration of the fact that there is no
necessary relation between muscular and mental power, between physical
well-being and intellectual energy, is afforded by the illustrious
discoverer of the world of the infinitely little, Louis Pasteur.
Stricken by hemiplegia shortly after he had begun those brilliant
investigations which have rendered him immortal, he remained affected by
partial paralysis until the end of his life. His friends had reason to
fear that this attack, even if he should survive it, would weaken or
extinguish his spirit of initiative, if it did not make further work
entirely impossible. But this was far from the case. For a quarter of a
century he continued with unabated activity those marvelous labors which
are forever associated with his name. And it was after, not before, his
misfortune that he made his most famous discoveries in the domain of
microbian life, and placed in the hands of physicians and surgeons those
infallible means of combatting disease which have made him one of the
greatest benefactors of suffering humanity. The complete separation of
the intellectual from the motor faculties was never more clearly
exhibited than in this case, nor was it ever more completely
demonstrated by an experiment, whose validity no one could question,
that power of mind does not necessarily depend on strength or health of
body. It proved, also, in the most telling manner that it is not
muscular but psychic force which avails most, whether to the individual
or to society. And it showed, at the same time, the utter absurdity of
those theories which would fatally connect intellectual with physical
debility in woman, and would forever adjudge the physically weaker sex
to be of hopeless inferiority in all things of the mind.
What has been said of men achieving renown, notwithstanding ill health,
may likewise be affirmed of women. The case of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning is scarcely less remarkable than that of Darwin. In spite of
being a chronic invalid the greater part of her life, she attained a
position in letters reached by but few of her contemporaries. The same
almost may be said of the three Bronte sisters. The deadly seeds of
consumption were sown in their systems in early youth, but, although
fully aware that life had "passed them by with averted head," they
were, through their indomitable wills, able to send forth from their
bleak home in the wild Yorkshire moors works of genius that still
instruct and delight the world.
From the foregoing it is clear that valetudinarianism, if it prove
anything, proves not that it renders intellectual effort impossible, but
that it serves as a discipline for the soul. It forces the mind to
husband its strength, and thus enables it to accomplish by economy and
concentration of effort that which the same mind in a healthy body, with
the distractions of society and the allurements of life, would be unable
to accomplish. It exemplifies in the most striking manner the truth of
what Socrates says in Plato's _Republic_ about the beneficent action of
the "bridle of Theages," preventing an infirm friend of his from
embracing politics and keeping him true to his first love--philosophy.
Failing to show any necessary connection between superior physique and
intellectual capacity, between health of body and mental activity,
between the amount of food consumed and the degree of intelligence, the
class of thinkers whose theories are now under consideration found
themselves forced to abandon the argument based on robust health and
physical strength and seek elsewhere for support of their views. This,
they soon announced, was found in the greater cranial capacity and
greater brain weight of the male as compared with that of the female.
Following up this fancied clew, anthropologists the world over began
measuring skulls and weighing brains in order to determine the supposed
ratio of sex-difference.
The results of these investigations were far from corroborating the
preconceived notions of those who had fancied a necessary correlation
between mental capacity and size of cranium, between the weight of
encephalon and degree of intelligence. For it was soon discovered that
cranial capacity depended on many causes--many of them unknown--and that
people having the largest skulls were often far from being the ones
dowered with the greatest intellectual power. It was found, for
instance, that climate was a determining factor--that the inhabitants of
northern regions have larger heads than those who live farther south.
Thus the Lapps, in proportion to their stature, have the largest heads
in Europe. After these come in order the Scandinavians, the Germans, the
French, the Italians, the Arabs.
It was found also that the least cranial capacity of the ancient
Egyptians coincides with the most brilliant period of their
civilization--that of the eighteenth dynasty. Measurements of skulls
unearthed at Pompeii showed that the heads of the Romans who lived two
thousand years ago were larger than the heads of the Romans of to-day.
Similarly, the skulls of the lake-dwellers of Switzerland were larger
than those of the Swiss people of the present time, while the average
circumference of the skulls measured in the catacombs of Paris is more
than an inch greater than that of the Parisians who have died during the
last half century. The circumference of the skulls of a large number of
mound-builders, excavated some years ago near Carrollton, Illinois,
exceeded that of the average head of white men in New York of our day by
nearly three inches. This shows that the culture of the white race
during long centuries has not developed its cranial capacity to equal
that of the uncultured Indians who flourished in the Mississippi valley
untold generations ago.
The skulls of Quaternary men were likewise very voluminous, although
they belonged to a race whose mental manifestations were infantile in
the extreme. Even the celebrated Engis skull, one of the most ancient in
existence, has been described by the late Professor Huxley as well
formed and considerably larger than the average of the European skulls
of to-day, not only in the width and height of the forehead, but also in
the cubic capacity of the whole. Furthermore, the eminent craniologist,
Broca, has proved that the illiterate peasants of Auvergne have a much
greater cranial capacity than that of the learned and cultured denizens
of Paris. And, as if to show conclusively that there is no necessary
connection between intellectual capacity and size of cranium, authentic
measurements disclose the fact that some of the most gifted men the
world has known had small heads. Among these were Dante and Voltaire.
The skull of the latter is one of the smallest which has thus far been
observed.
What has been said regarding the relation of cranial volume to
intellectual capacity, as revealed by the measurements of the skulls of
ancient and modern, savage and civilized peoples may likewise be
predicated of the differences in the sizes of the crania of men and
women. No argument as to the greater or less intelligence of either sex
can be based on mere craniometric determinations. "At the best, cranial
capacity is but a rough indication of brain size; and to measure brain
size by the external size of the skull furnishes still rougher and more
fallacious approximations, since the male skull is more massive than the
female."
Even the slight morphological differences between male and female
skulls--some anthropologists deny that there are any at all--afford no
more ground for conclusions in favor of the superiority of one or the
other sex than the relative differences in size. Such trifling
differences as do exist exhibit, as Virchow has pointed out, an
approximation of men to the savage, simian and senile type, and an
approach of women to the infantile type. Havelock Ellis, commenting on
this difference, pertinently remarks, "It is open to a man in a
Pharisaic mood to thank God that his cranial type is far removed from
the infantile. It is equally open to woman in such a mood to be thankful
that her cranial type does not approach the senile."[95]
But much stress as has been laid on physical power, health and cranial
capacity, as determining factors of intellectual capacity and sexual
differences, far greater stress has been laid on conclusions deducible
from the relative brain weights of different classes of people as well
as of different sexes. It was assumed that by a critical study of the
brain, by careful weighings of many brains of both sexes and of many
races, it would be easy to secure conclusive evidence that the size and
weight of the brain increase with the amount of intelligence of the
individual. It was also assumed that function not only makes the organ,
but also develops it. Brain became synonymous with mind. A large brain
implied vigor of thought; a small brain was evidence of mental
inferiority.
Physiology had demonstrated unquestionably that the muscles of the body
are enlarged by exercise. It was assumed by those who are wont to
measure mind in terms of matter that the brain, being the organ of
thought, was also developed by exercise. It was also assumed that the
development of the brain was in a direct ratio to its activity. The
greater its activity the greater its mass, and the greater the mass the
greater the degree of intelligence. In other words, it was assumed that
there was an exact and invariable proportion between weight of brain and
amount of brain power.
None of the theories which have already been adverted to have been so
full of assumptions and prejudices or vitiated by so many fallacies and
over-hasty generalizations as this. No subject has possessed a greater
fascination for anthropologists, and no subject has been prolific in
more diverse and conflicting conclusions. Many men of science who, in
other matters, were noted for their care in weighing evidence, before
formulating theories, completely lost the scientific spirit when they
began to weigh brains and to draw conclusions respecting the relations
of brain weight and mental power, and to establish ratios between the
character of the convolutions of the organ of thought and the degree of
intelligence of its possessor.
Contrary to what is generally believed, a large brain is not always an
indication of superior capacity or intelligence. There have been, it is
true, a number of men of genius who were the possessors of large brains,
but there have also been others whose brains were of but medium weight.
The largest known brains of intellectual workers were those of Cuvier,
the noted zoologist, and Turgenieff, the distinguished novelist. The
brain of the Frenchman weighed 1830 grams, while that of the Russian
totaled 2012 grams. Among other large brains--even larger than
Cuvier's--were those of a bricklayer, which weighed 1900 grams, and of
an ordinary laborer, which reached 1924 grams. The largest brains on
record were that of an ignorant laborer named Rustan, which weighed 2222
grams; that of a weak-minded London newsboy, which weighed 2268 grams,
and that of a twenty-one-year-old epileptic idiot, which had the unheard
of weight of 2850 grams.[96]
The seven largest recorded female brains were three weighing 1580 grams
each, one of which belonged to a medical student of marked ability,
while the other two belonged to quite undistinguished women. There were
two others weighing 1587 each, one of which belonged to an insane woman.
Still heavier than these by far were the brains of an insane woman who
died of consumption, and of a dwarfed Indian squaw. The brain of the
first weighed 1742 grams; while that of the second was no less than 2084
grams.
From the foregoing examples it is evident that a large brain is far from
being a certain index of mental capacity or of superior intelligence. It
is frequently the very reverse. If, for instance, it fail to receive
the necessary supply of blood, it will be inert or disordered and will
prove to be a dangerous possession rather than a precious endowment.
Epileptics usually have brains that are large relatively to the size of
the body. And, while it is probably true that the great thinkers and men
of action of the world have, in most instances, had comparatively large
brains, it is also true that the brain weights of but few of them
exceeded 1500 grams, while those of many fall below 1200 grams.
Thus the brain of Gambetta, "the foremost Frenchman of his time,"
weighed only 1159 grams, while the weight of the brain of Napoleon I was
1502 grams--barely equal to that of a negro described by the
anthropologist Broca, and but little superior to that of a Hottentot
mentioned by Dr. Jeffries Wyman.[97]
The late Dr. Joseph Simms found the average brain weight of sixty
persons who were either imbeciles, idiots, criminals or men of ordinary
mind to be 1792 grams, while that of sixty famous men was 1454 grams, a
difference in favor of men not noted for intellectual greatness of 338
grams. These figures are far from showing that large brains are a
necessary concomitant of mental capacity.
In view of these and many similar facts, we are not surprised that the
eminent German anatomist and anthropologist, Rudolph Wagner, should
declare that "very intelligent men do not differ strikingly in brain
weight from less gifted men," and that the noted French physician,
Esquirol, should assert that "no size or form of head or brain is
incident to idiocy or superior talent."
So far as civilized races are concerned, there can be no doubt that the
absolute weight of the male is greater than that of the female brain.
According to the investigations of seven of the most notable
anthropologists, who have given special attention to the subject under
consideration, and who, collectively, have carefully weighed many
thousands of brains, the average brain weight of men in Europe is 1381
grams, while that of women is 1237 grams. This shows a difference
between the average weight of the brain in man and woman of 144 grams.
But, if it must be conceded that the absolute weight of man's brain is
greater than woman's, is it likewise true that the relative weight is
greater? This is a question which demands an answer, as it is impossible
to come to any just conclusion respecting the intellectual capacity of
woman expressed in terms of brain weight, unless we can affirm with
certainty that men's brains are relatively, as well as absolutely,
larger than those of women.
Speaking of the relative weight of brain in man implies a term of
comparison. Several methods of estimating the sexual proportions of
brain mass have been suggested, but only two of them have met with any
favor. These are determining the ratio of brain weight to body weight or
body height.
According to the investigations of anthropologists of acknowledged
authority, the average brain weight of woman is to that of man in
England and France as 90 is to 100. The average stature of men and women
in the same countries is as 93 to 100. This gives man an excess of brain
weight over that of woman of something more than an ounce. But this
slight difference in weight has been considered sufficient to constitute
it "a fundamental sexual distinction." When, however, it is considered
that men are not only taller but also larger than women, this apparent
advantage of an ounce in favor of the male entirely disappears, and the
result is that the relative amount of brain mass in the two sexes is
practically equal.
Because of the manifest inaccuracy of the stature criterion, many
eminent anthropologists have prepared to estimate sexual differences in
brain weight by adopting the method based on the ratio of brain mass to
body weight. According to this method, women are found to possess
brains which are equal to or even somewhat larger than those of men. If
the comparative excess of non-vital tissue in the form of fat in woman
be eliminated and estimates be based only on the active organic mass of
her body, as compared with the same mass in man, the excess of brain
weight in woman over that in man will be still more marked.
A careful study, then, of the brain as a whole, far from proving woman's
inferiority to man, rather proves her superiority. The same may be said
regarding sexual distinctions based on certain parts of the brain.
Some years ago it was positively asserted that the development of the
frontal lobe exhibited a pronounced difference in the two sexes. It was
said to be much greater in man than in woman and was regarded as a
distinguishing characteristic of the male sex. This was in keeping with
the generally accepted assumption that this portion of the brain is the
seat of the higher intellectual processes. Further investigation,
however, showed that there was practically no sexual difference in the
frontal lobe of the brain, or, if there was a difference, it was
probably in favor of woman.
It has also become recognized that there is no valid reason for
considering the anterior portion of the brain as the seat of the higher
mental functions. It is possible, but in the present state of science it
can neither be affirmed nor denied. So far as our present knowledge
goes, it seems more likely that the whole of the brain, especially the
sensori-motor regions of its middle part, have a part in mental
operations. At all events, it can certainly be affirmed that Huschke's
distinction of man and woman into _homo frontalis et homo parietalis_ is
utterly devoid of foundation in fact.
Many anthropologists have fancied that a certain index of the degree of
intelligence is to be found in the convolutions of the brain. The
tortuous foldings of the female brain, it is asserted, are less ample,
less pronounced and less beautiful. "Behold," they exclaim, "a most
positive evidence of inferiority." These men overlook the fact that
certain animals, notably the elephant and divers species of cetaceans,
have cerebral convolutions that are more complex than those of man. If,
then, brain convolutions were, as claimed, a certain index of the degree
of intelligence, the whale or the elephant, and not man--_pace_
Shakespeare--would be "the paragon of animals."
But men of science are by no means at one on this alleged sexual
difference in brain convolutions. On the contrary, there are many
eminent physiologists and anatomists who contend that the superficies of
brain convolutions in women is relatively greater than in men. For those
who believe--and they are probably the majority at present--that the
seat of mental activity is in the gray matter of the brain, this greater
brain surface, due to its convolutions, would be a decided compensation
for woman's relatively smaller brain volume.[98]
In whatever way, then, we consider the brains of men and women, whether
we compare the ratio of brain weight to height of body or to weight of
body, or compare the relative amounts of gray matter in the two sexes,
the advantage, in spite of her smaller body, is distinctly in favor of
woman.
From the preceding considerations it seems clear that there is no ground
from the point of view of brain anatomy for considering one sex as
superior to the other. They evince, too, that quality as well as
quantity of brain tissue must be considered in all our discussions on
the relations between the volume of brain and the intelligence of its
possessor. Whales and elephants have much larger brains than men, but
they nevertheless stand far below him in intelligence.
It must be remembered, also, that the brain is not only an organ of
mental function. It is likewise the center of the entire nervous system,
and its volume, therefore, must correspond with the size and number of
nerve trunks under its control. In man, as in animals, the brain
elements are to a great extent but sensori-motor delegates whose
function is the regulation and government of every part of the body. The
superior size of the whale's brain, as compared with that of man, can
readily be understood when we reflect on the much greater amount of
territory which these sensori-motor delegates represent. When this fact
is borne in mind it will be found that the whale's brain, relatively to
that of man, is extremely small. For while the ratio of man's brain
weight to that of his body is as 1 to 36, the ratio of the whale's brain
weight to its immense body is but 1 to 3,000.
As an evidence that quality often counts for more than quantity, brain
anatomists would do well to reflect on the marvelous intelligence
displayed by ants and termites, those mites of animated nature which so
excited the admiration of the naturalist Pliny and caused Darwin to
declare, "The brain of an ant is one of the most marvelous atoms of
matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man."[99]
Moreover, when discussing the relative brain weights of the two sexes,
we must not lose sight of the fact that we have, with the solitary
exception of the eminent Russian mathematician, Sonya Kovalevsky,[100]
no record of the brain weights of any eminently intellectual woman. The
brains of scores of men of genius and exceptional mentality have been
weighed, but we are utterly ignorant of the weight of brain of such
women as Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Madame de Stael, Maria Theresa, Sophie
Germain, George Sand, Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, Eleanor Ormerod,
Mary Somerville, and others of the same caliber. The only data so far
available, regarding the average brain weight of women, are such as have
been obtained from the inmates of hospitals, prisons and pauper
institutions. And yet we are asked to accept the average based on such
data as a fair term of comparison with the average male brain weight as
increased by the superior weight of brain of such men as Cuvier and
Turgenieff. And this is called science![101]
The attempt, then, to prove by weighing and measuring and studying
brains that man is the intellectual superior of woman has been an
ignominious failure. The old belief that woman is by nature and cerebral
organization less intelligent than man is not borne out by the
investigations of those best qualified to pronounce an opinion on the
subject. To assert, as so many do, that woman was created man's
intellectual inferior is begging the question. Science can adduce no
proof of such a gratuitous statement. Broca, the most eminent of French
anthropologists, regarded as an absurdity the attempt to establish a
necessary relation between the development of intelligence and the
volume and weight of the encephalon. With the ripe knowledge of his
mature years he was inclined to believe that the apparent difference in
intelligence in the two sexes was owing, not to a difference of brain
organization, but rather to a difference of education, physical as well
as mental, and that, with equal opportunities for intellectual and
physical development, the present sexual differences that we have been
considering--differences which are due not to nature but to the long
ages of restraint and subjection under which women have lived--would
gradually be lessened, and that men and women would eventually approach
that equality which characterizes them in the state of nature.[102]
Realizing the impossibility of arriving, by the study of brain sizes and
structure, at any satisfactory conclusion respecting the relative
intellectual capacities of men and women, seekers after truth cast about
for other methods that were free from the errors and fallacies of those
which had proved so unreliable. The attempt to base the alleged mental
inferiority of woman upon the facial angle of Camper, the metafacial
angle of Serres, the craniofacial angle of Huxley, the sphenoidal angle
of Welcker, or the nasobasal angle of Virchow had issued in utter
failure, and had proved for the thousandth time that it is easier to
formulate theories than to establish their validity. It was evident,
notwithstanding the assertions of certain materialistic theorists, that
the brain did not secrete thought as the liver secretes bile; it was
evident, too, that intelligence could not be estimated in terms of any
kind of mechanical units. Psycho-physiologists had no sort of
dynamometer for measuring brain power as they would measure muscular
energy. By means of the plethysmograph they might determine the amount
of blood sent to the brain in a given time, but they had no psychometer
of any description which would enable them to estimate the quantity,
much less the quality, of psychic force such a blood supply was
competent to produce.
Many, of course, still remained adherents of the old view that woman
must ever remain the mental inferior of man because she is by nature
physically weaker. These persons, however, seemed to lose sight of the
fact that women who lead a rational life--who are not the slaves of
fashion or the victims of luxury--have little to complain of on the
score of physical weakness. This is evidenced by the life and habits of
the women of the people, as well as by the tasks performed by women
among savage tribes, who in health and strength are little, if at all,
inferior to their male companions.
The late Professor Huxley, in referring to this subject, exhibited his
usual acumen and sanity in such matters when he indited the following
paragraph:
"We have heard a great deal lately about the physical disabilities of
women. Some of these alleged impediments, no doubt, are really inherent
in their organization, but nine-tenths of them are artificial--the
products of their mode of life. I believe that nothing would tend so
effectually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness and
that 'over-stimulation of the emotions' which in plainer spoken days
used to be called wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work,
directed toward a definite object, combined with an equally fair share
of healthy play, during the years of adolescence; and those who are best
acquainted with the acquirements of an average medical practitioner will
find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that standard is
like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily intelligent and well-educated
woman."[103]
Substantially the same views are held by Mrs. Henry Fawcett and Dr. Mary
Putnam Jacobi, whose rare experience and knowledge give their opinions
on the subject under consideration special weight and value.
After men of science had tried the various theories above enumerated and
found them wanting, they finally bethought themselves of investigating
the relative intellectual standing of male and female students in
coeducational institutions, and inquiring into their comparative
capacity for different branches of knowledge, as made known by their
professors and by the results of oral and written examinations.
Considering the simplicity of this method and the fact that it is the
more rational way to reach reliable conclusions, the wonder is that it
was not thought of sooner. It excludes the bias of prepossessions and
preconceived theories and lends itself to the discussion of results
based on incontestable facts.
The first coeducational institution in which the intellectual capacity
of women, in competition with men, was fairly tested was, strange to
say, in the Royal College of Science for Ireland. This was somewhat more
than half a century ago. When the time of examinations came, both the
men and women students were handed the same examination papers. At the
public distribution of prizes, at the close of the session, "the
ladies," in the words of a Dublin paper, "vindicated the genius of their
sex by carrying off the highest prizes." In zoology, botany, physics,
chemistry and mathematics they proved themselves the peers, and
frequently the superiors, of their male competitors.
"The success of the female students disturbed, of course, very much the
preconceived notions of some people, who had always taken for granted
that the female intellect was inferior to the male; and, not being able
to combat the stubborn facts that appeared from time to time in the
newspapers, when the results of the examinations were published, they
tried to account for them."[104]
These cavillers, however, soon discovered that there was no way of
accounting for the disconcerting fact which confronted them, except by
confessing that their theory regarding the mental inferiority of women
was not substantiated by fact. This unexpected demand for the
unconditional surrender of their long-cherished theory of male
superiority was a crushing and humiliating blow to their pride of
intellect, but there was no remedy for it, nor was it accompanied by any
balm of consolation that they, at the time, felt disposed to regard as
adequate compensation for their lost prestige--a prestige which their
overweening sex had claimed from time immemorial.
Similar experiments under even more trying conditions were subsequently
made in the United States and in other parts of the world, and
everywhere with the same results. In the universities of Switzerland,
France, England, Germany and Russia women, when given a fair
opportunity, were able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of all
unprejudiced judges that the long-vaunted superiority of the male
intellect was a myth; that intelligence, like genius, has no sex.
One of the most interesting and comprehensive investigations ever
undertaken regarding this long-debated question was made some years ago
by Arthur Kirchhoff, an enterprising German journalist.[105] It
consisted in collecting and collaborating the opinions of more than a
hundred of the most distinguished professors of the Fatherland, besides
the opinions of a number of eminent writers and teachers in girls' high
schools. These constitute a volume of nearly four hundred pages, and
embody the views on the capacity of woman for science of professors of
theology, jurisprudence, anatomy, physiology, surgery, psychology,
history, gynecology, psychiatry, philology, philosophy, art,
mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, zoology, botany, geology,
paleontology and technology. The investigation, indeed, covered every
branch of knowledge and evoked the deliberate views of those who were
looked upon as the leading representatives of German thought and
culture.
This book possesses a special value from the fact that, of all peoples
in Europe, the Germans have been the most refractory to the claims of
women to be received at the universities on the same footing as men. The
German professors, naturally, share the conservatism of their
countrymen, and, like them, are wedded to routine when there is question
of introducing innovations into their social, political or educational
systems. One would anticipate, then, that, when called upon to give
their honest opinions respecting the intellectual capacity of women, as
compared with that of men, their answer would be decidedly in favor of
the sterner sex. "For," they will ask, "have not all the achievements in
science which have given the Fatherland such prestige in the eyes of the
world been due entirely to men? Have the women of Germany ever
undertaken the solution of any great scientific problem, or have they
ever made any notable contribution to scientific advancement? They have
not."
Yet, notwithstanding all these facts, notwithstanding all traditions and
prejudices and social bias, the unexpected has happened, even in
conservative, old-fashioned Germany. The German professor may be
tenacious of preconceived views; he may be a stickler for ancient
customs and usages; nevertheless, when he is called upon to give a
question a categorical answer which can be arrived at by observation or
experiment, he may generally, in spite of his likes or dislikes, be
counted on to give a decision in accord with the principles of
legitimate induction. He may have his prejudices--and who has not?--but,
when one appeals to him in the name of science and justice, he will
rarely be found wanting. Regardless of all personal consideration, he
will feel that loyalty to science, of which he is the avowed devotee,
requires him to consider a question proposed to him as he would a
scientific problem--something to be decided solely by such evidence as
may be available.
To the exceeding gratification of the believers in the intellectual
equality of the sexes, this proved to be the case in Herr Kirchhoff's
investigation. The answers of the German professors, contrary to what
most people would have anticipated, were, by a surprising majority, in
favor of women. But their answers were in keeping with the changed
educational conditions in Germany, as well as in other parts of the
civilized world. Had Herr Kirchhoff undertaken his investigation a few
decades earlier, the result would undoubtedly have been different, for
women were then excluded from the universities and the professors had
not had an opportunity of accurately testing their intellectual
capacities. But having, during the latter part of the nineteenth
century, had them as students in their lecture halls and laboratories,
where they were able to study their mental powers and determine the
value of their work by strict scientific methods, they were in a better
position to express an opinion on the question at issue than would, a
few years previously, have been possible.
Accordingly, even the declared enemies of the woman's movement among the
German professorate were forced to admit the intellectual equality of
the two sexes. For they, too, as well as men of science in other parts
of Europe, had been measuring skulls and weighing brains; they, too, had
been studying woman's mental caliber in the light of the new psychology;
they, too, had been watching her work in the various departments of the
university; and, notwithstanding all their observations and experiments,
they were unable to detect any difference between men and women in brain
organization or in intellectual capacity. And, as might have been
foreseen, results harmonized perfectly with those arrived at by
investigators in other parts of the world--namely, that in things of the
mind there is perfect sexual equality.
Among the hundred and more professors whose opinions are given in Herr
Kirchhoff's book there were, of course, a few who were not prepared to
subscribe to the findings of the great majority of their colleagues. But
the reasons they assign for dissent were, at least in some instances,
little better founded than that of a certain professor of chemistry in
the University of Geneva, who, a few years ago, gravely declared that
women have no aptitude for science because, forsooth, in chemical
manipulations they break more test-tubes than men. Verily, "a Daniel
come to judgment."
What probably more deeply impressed the German professors than anything
else was the marked talent and taste of many of the women students for
the abstract sciences, especially for the higher mathematics. For it had
always been asserted that these branches of knowledge were beyond
woman's capacity and that she had an instinctive antipathy for abstruse
reasoning and for abstractions of all kinds. When, however, they
discovered women whose delight was to discuss the theory of elliptic
functions or curves defined by differential equations; when they found a
mathematical genius like Sonya Kovalevsky speculating on the fourth
dimension, and carrying away from the mathematicians of the world the
most coveted prize of the French Academy of Sciences, they were forced
to confess that another of their illusions was dissipated, and to
acknowledge that they had no longer anything on which to base their long
and fondly cherished opinion of the mental inequality of the sexes.
As an evidence of the extraordinary change that had been effected among
the conservative Germans in the course of a few years respecting their
attitude toward the admission of the "Academic Woman" to the
universities, and, consequently, toward her intellectual capacity, it
will suffice to reproduce a sentence from the elaborately expressed
opinion of Dr. Julius Bernstein, professor of physiology in the
University of Halle. "After reflection on the subject," he declares, "I
am convinced that neither God nor religion, neither custom nor law, and
still less science, warrants one in maintaining any essential difference
in this respect between the male and the female sex."[106]
The controversy of centuries regarding woman's intellectual capacity was
now virtually settled beyond all peradventure. Woman had conquered, and
her final victory had been won in the heart of the enemy's country, yea,
even in what was thought to be the impregnable fortress of her
relentless foes. It was achieved where the proud Teuton male had
imagined that he was unapproachable and beyond compare--in the
laboratories and lecture rooms of his great universities--more
irresistible, in his estimation, than the Kaiser's trained legions in
battle array.
It finally dawned upon the leaders of thought in the Fatherland, as it
had but shortly before dawned upon philosophers and men of science in
other lands, that the reputed sexual difference in intelligence was not
due to difference in brain size or brain structure, or innate power of
intellect, but rather to some other factors which had been neglected, or
overlooked, as being unessential or of minor importance. These factors,
on further investigation, proved to be education and opportunity.
As far back as 1869 that keen observer and philosopher, John Stuart
Mill, had expressed himself on the subject in the following words: "Like
the French compared with the English, the Irish with the Swiss, the
Greeks or Italians compared with the German races, so women compared
with men may be found, on the average, to do the same things with some
variety in the particular kind of excellence. But that they would do
them fully as well, on the whole, if their education and cultivation
were adapted to correcting instead of aggravating the infirmities
incident to their temperament, I see not the smallest reason to
doubt."[107]
It would be difficult to find a better illustration of the sluggishness
of the male as compared with the female mind than the tardiness of men
of science in arriving at a sane conclusion respecting the subject of
this chapter. For five hundred years ago Christine de Pisan arrived at
the same conclusion which the learned professors of Germany reached only
in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Discussing in _La Cite des
Dames_ the question at issue she writes as follows: "I say to thee
again, and doubt never the contrary, that if it were the custom to put
the little maidens to the school, and they were made to learn the
sciences as they do to the men-children, that they should learn as
perfectly, and they should be as well entered into the subtleties of all
the arts and sciences as men be. And peradventure, there should be more
of them, for I have teached heretofore that by how much women have the
body more soft than the men have, and less able to do divers things, by
so much they have the understanding more sharp there as they apply it."
Christine de Pisan's statement is virtually a challenge demanding the
same educational opportunities for women as were accorded to men. But it
was a challenge that men did not see fit to accept until full five
centuries had elapsed, and until it was no longer possible to deny
giving satisfaction to the long-aggrieved half of humanity. It was also
an appeal to experiment and an appeal, likewise, to the teachings of
history in lands where women have enjoyed the same educational
advantages as men.
Having reviewed the many disabilities which so long retarded woman's
intellectual advancement, and considered some of the objections which
were urged against her capacity for scientific pursuits, we are now
prepared to consider the appeal of Christine de Pisan and deal with it
on its merits. This we shall do by a brief survey of woman's
achievements in the various branches of science in which she has been
accorded the same intellectual opportunities that were so long the
exclusive privilege of her male compeer.
FOOTNOTES:
[89] An edition of this work, based on an old manuscript in La
Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, in French, is announced to appear in
France at an early date. An interesting account of this precious volume
has recently been published by Mlle. Mathilde Laigle, Ph. D., under the
title of _Le Livre de Trois Vertus de Christine de Pisan et son Milieu
Historique et Litteraire_. It is to be hoped that some enterprising
English publisher will soon favor us with a reprint of the quaint old,
but none the less valuable, volume, _The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes_.
[90] Quando la genialita compare nella donna e sempre associata a grandi
anomalie: e la piu grande e la somiglianza coi maschi--la virilita.
_L'Uomo di Genio_, sesta edizione, p. 261, Torino, 1894.
[91] _An Essay on the Learning, Genius and Abilities of the Fair Sex,
Proving Them Not Inferior to Man_, p. 142, London, 1774.
[92] Schopenhauer, _Studies in Pessimism_, p. 115, London, 1891.
[93] _The Literary Advantages of Weak Health_, in the _Spectator_ for
October, 1894.
[94] _The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, edited by his son,
Francis Darwin, Vol. I, p. 136, New York, 1888.
[95] _Man and Woman_, p. 94, London, 1898.
[96] Cf. _Das Hirngewicht des Menschen_, pp. 21 and 137, by Theodor L.
W. von Bischoff, Bonn, 1880, and Dr. G. van Walsem in _Neurologisches
Centralblatt_, pp. 578-580, Leipsic, July 1, 1899.
[97] _L'Anthropologie_, pp. 336-337, by Paul Topinard, Paris, 1876.
[98] The importance of gray matter in mental processes has evidently
been greatly overestimated, for it has been found to be thicker in the
brains of negroes, murderers and ignorant persons than it was in the
encephalon of Daniel Webster. It is also much thicker in the brains of
dolphins, porpoises and other cetaceans than it is in the most
intellectual of men.
[99] _The Descent of Man_, Vol. I, p. 145, London, 1871.
[100] The brain of Sonya Kovalevsky was not weighed until it had been
four years in alcohol. Prof. Gustaf Retzius then wrote an elaborate
account of it and estimated that its weight, at the time of Sonya's
death, was 1385 grams. The brain-weight of her illustrious contemporary,
Hermann von Helmholtz, was 1440 grams. But when the body-weights of
these two eminent mathematicians are borne in mind--Sonya was short and
slender--it will be seen that the relative amount of brain tissue was
greater in the woman than in the man. Cf. _Das Gehirn des Mathematikers
Sonja Kovalewski in Biologische Untersuchungen_, von Prof. Dr. Gustaf
Retzius, pp. 1-17, Stockholm, 1900.
[101] The reader who desires more detailed information respecting the
brain-weights of men and women of various races and the relation of
brain-weight to intelligence may consult with profit the following works
and articles: _Memoires d'Anthropologie de Paul Broca_, 5 Vols., Paris,
1871-1888; _Alte und Neue Gehirn Probleme nebst einer 1078 Falle
umfassenden Gehirngewichstatistik aus den Kgl. pathologisch-anatomischen
Institut zu Muenchen_, von W. W. Wendt, Muenchen, 1909; Gehirngewicht und
Intelligenz, by Dr. F. K. Walter, Rostok, 1911; _Gehirngewicht und
Intelligenz_, by Dr. J. Draeseke, Hamburg, in _Archiv fuer Rassen und
Gesellschafts Biologe_, pp. 499-522, 1906; _Brain Weights and
Intellectual Capacity_, by Joseph Simms, M. D., in the _Popular Science
Monthly_, December, 1898, and _The Growth of the Brain_, by H. H.
Donaldson, London, 1895.
[102] "Quand on songe a la difference qui separe de notre temps
l'education intellectuelle de l'homme de celle de la femme, on se
demande si ce n'est pas cette influence qui retrecit le cervaux et le
crane feminins, et si, les deux sexes etant livres a leur spontaneite,
leur cervaux ne tendraient pas a se ressembler, aussi qu'il arrive chez
les sauvages." _Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie_, p. 503, Paris,
July 3, 1879.
[103] _Times_, London, July 8, 1874. Cf. Chap. XVII, on "Adolescent
Girls and Their Education," in _Adolescence_, Vol. II, by G. Stanley
Hall, New York, 1904.
[104] _The Study of Science by Women in the Contemporary Review_ for
March, 1869.
[105] _Die Akademische Frau. Gutachten hervorragender
Universitaeten-professoren, Frauenlehrer und Schriftsteller ueber die
Befaehigung der Frau zum wissenschaftlichen Studium and Berufe
herausgegeben von Arthur Kirchhoff_, Berlin, 1897.
[106] "Ich komme beim Nachdenken hieruber zu der Ueberzeigung, dass kein
Gott und keine Religion, kein Herkommen und kein Gesetz, aber
ebensowenig die Wissenschaft uns das Recht erteilen, in dieser Beziehung
zwischen dem mannerlichen und weiblichen Geschlect einen principiellen
Unterschied zu statuiren." _Die Akademische Frau_, p. 41.
[107] _The Subjection of Women_, p. 91, London, 1909.