WOMAN'S EMPIRE OVER MAN
Men have always been reluctant to acknowledge the truth about woman's
real position in the world. They keep up a beautiful kind of masculine
myth about the mastery of the sterner sex and their mental superiority,
and they talk of woman in a patronizing way as man's helpmate.
There is no doubt--it is a physiological fact--that man possesses more
brain-power or capacity than woman. But woman has, on the other hand, an
enormous advantage in the use to which she has put her mental machinery
from time immemorial. The truth is that women think out things for
themselves a great deal more than does the average man. As, however,
they concentrate their attention for the most part on what are called
the minor interests of life, whilst men are occupied with bigger and
more important things, it has come to be accepted that the mind of woman
is inferior to the mind of man.
In one sense this is true. Potentially, woman's mind has not the
capacity of man's. One has only to look for female Shakespeares,
Newtons, Bismarcks, Raphaels, and Beethovens, to verify the fact beyond
dispute. But we are dealing here with existing circumstances, not with
potentialities. Therefore I have no hesitation in saying that, as a
general rule, women use what brain power they have to much better
advantage than men; which amounts to a confession that woman, apart from
intellectual specialization, is, on the average, man's mental superior.
This is a sweeping statement to make, but it is made only in the
interests of truth, and it admits of a great deal of plausible
explanation.
Man's mental training, as has been fully pointed out, consists almost
entirely in pouring facts into a vacuum created by the careful
elimination of original thought. Until recently, women have not been
subjected to this agreeable process. For a very long time they were not
educated at all, and when governesses first came into fashion in better
class families, the idea was rather to endow girls with a few graceful
accomplishments than to cram them with dates and other kinds of
mechanical knowledge.
This tradition is still kept up to a certain degree in the higher social
circles; but there have also sprung up a large number of girls'
colleges, in which all the bad points of masculine education are
carefully copied. These colleges are frequented by girls of the upper
and middle classes, chiefly the latter, and no doubt they are gradually
working a revolution in feminine character. But heredity--especially
when it is, within a generation or so, the heredity of long ages--is a
very potent factor in the formation of both mind and body, and offers a
steady resistance to innovation. The full effects, therefore, of this
educational revolution in respect to womankind are not yet apparent.
The net result of this is that the majority of women are still addicted
to thought. Facts have not yet entirely taken the place of ideas in
their minds, except in extreme cases which may be called exceptional,
although it must be confessed that they are becoming every day less
rare. They think, no doubt, for the most part about the commonplace
incidents of their daily life, and possibly they are given too much to
morbid introspection. But anything that serves to make a human being
exercise the function for which his brain was originally intended should
be regarded with thankfulness. It is a thousand times better for the
development of the mind to speculate about the motives of acquaintances,
or to philosophize on the shortcomings of the maid-of-all-work, than to
babble off the dates of the Sovereigns from William the Conqueror, or to
construe Horace's Odes without taking in a syllable of their sense.
Women have thus formed a habit of reflection about trifles, which the
more gifted amongst them extend to weightier topics. And it is in this
way that they are able to gain an ascendancy over man that is the more
potent because it is unobtrusive. The average woman sees things the
subtleties of which escape man altogether, and she perceives them
because her mind has been trained, by natural development, to
observation.
The average man, on the other hand, is the most unobservant creature
under the sun. He rarely understands even what is going on under his
nose. It is all very well to say that his superior mind is wrapt up in
percentages, or absorbed in grand schemes for the regeneration of
mankind. The plain truth is that he does not possess the faculty of
applying his intelligence to everything within his range of observation.
Evolution intended him to possess it; but education systems, which
harbour very little respect for the laws of Nature, have found ready
means to curb the propensity or to destroy it altogether.
It is small matter for surprise, therefore, that woman should have
succeeded in subjecting man to an empire as autocratic as it is, to all
outward appearances, unsuspected. Some people maintain that this empire
is gained solely by physical attraction; but this contention is
disproved easily enough. All women do not possess the charm of beauty;
yet there is scarcely a woman of any nationality, or belonging to any
station in life, who does not exercise a more or less powerful influence
over her menkind.
Husbands are guided by their wives, even in matters of business or
affecting public interests, far more than they are generally ready to
acknowledge. Staying at a seaside hotel some time ago, I made the
acquaintance of a hard-headed Lancashire merchant who had amassed a
comfortable independence. In an outburst of confidence he told me one
day that he had never taken a single important step in the conduct of
his business without consulting his wife, and he also acknowledged that
he had never had to regret asking her advice.
The moral of this story is the more significant when it is recollected
that in such a case the wife has not had the same opportunities as her
husband of forming a correct judgment. The latter has the business
details at his finger-ends; he is acquainted with the person or persons
with whom the dealings are taking place; and he has his experience to
fall back upon. But somehow or other the wife seems to grasp all the
points, and to see more clearly into the motives of the person
concerned. 'Why,' she will exclaim to her husband, 'can't you see that
So-and-so is trying to bamboozle you?' And, the scales falling from the
deluded husband's eyes, he suddenly makes the discovery that his wife
thinks where his own powers of reflection are contented to remain
dormant.
The fact is, that the habit of thinking cannot be acquired through
exercise in mental gymnastics. Philosophers, mathematicians, and men of
science are notoriously up in the clouds, and incapable often to a
remarkable degree of managing the affairs of everyday life with common
sense. Yet these are the individuals who have been subjected to the
highest form of what is called mental training. If fact-cramming and
mental gymnastics are the best developers of the human mind, these men
ought to be perfect models of intelligence. But will any candid-minded
person call it the highest form of intellectual development to have a
clear conception of the precession of the equinoxes, or to manufacture
metaphysical conundrums, whilst remaining utterly incapable of applying
common sense to human affairs that demand at least an equal amount of
attention?
It is clear that this type of mental training does not teach people to
think at all, but has the contrary effect of restricting the
intelligence to an altitude very far beyond the ordinary requirements of
our social existence. Man may have a very broad horizon; but the broader
it becomes, the further he seems to be transported from the capacity to
exercise the normal functions of the brain. To designate this the proper
development of the mind would be manifestly absurd; yet many people seem
contented to regard it as such, and accept the anomaly without giving
its obvious contradictoriness a second thought.
Of course it is not argued that woman's mental training is, or has been,
all that can be desired. It is, in her case, more the neglect to apply
severe educational methods, than anything else, that has permitted the
negative development of her thinking faculties; and this tends to
demonstrate all the more conclusively that the real use of the brain is
practically destroyed by conventional modes of instruction.
Women, left to their own devices for countless generations, have
acquired a faculty that all the education systems in the world have
failed to pound into the mind of man. It is their superiority in this
respect that has given them far-reaching empire over the opposite sex.
That this should be generally appreciated is of the utmost importance,
because the modern metamorphosis of woman, if rightly understood, is the
best conceivable object-lesson in the evils brought about by the
educational methods of the present day. It is not that the
academically-trained woman threatens to push man out of his place in the
world, but that she is herself in danger of losing the very weapon that
has given her so large a share of power and influence.
A great deal of nonsense has been talked and written about the
spectacled Girton girl competing with men in knowledge, at the expense
of forfeiting their admiration and thereby losing her vantage-ground.
Spectacles do not enter into the matter at all. As has already been
pointed out, physical attraction has nothing, or very little, to do with
feminine wire-pulling.
Women derive their real powers from a gift of trained observation, and
from the subtlety conferred upon them by the capacity to apply their
intelligence to the numerous small matters which go to make up the sum
of human life. Their minds will no longer develop these powers when they
are systematically subjected to a process of education which has
invariably failed to evoke them in the opposite sex. And with the loss
of them, woman is bound also to lose the empire which she has hitherto
exercised over masculine nature.
From this point of view alone, the education of women on the modern
system is much to be deplored. There is no doubt that women in general
have always exercised their predominant influence for the good of
mankind. Striking exceptions might easily be adduced from history; but,
on the whole, it must be acknowledged that woman has seldom abused her
power. Therefore, anything that is calculated to undermine or destroy
this favourable influence on human affairs cannot be regarded as
otherwise than pernicious.
The more the idea spreads that girls must be given the same educational
equipment as boys, the more rapid will be the degeneration of woman. It
is a well-known fact in the medical profession that weakly boys are
often unable to withstand the strain of school cramming; therefore
girls, with their more delicate organization, will suffer
proportionately in a greater degree. Physical training, of course,
obviates a great deal of this evil. But the same thing is bound to
happen in the case of girls as has already been experienced where boys
are concerned; that is to say, the most promising intellects will be
sacrificed, partly through the ambition of the school authorities, whose
principal anxiety is to see their pupils distinguish themselves in
examinations, and partly owing to the fact that exceptional ability so
often implies a nervous temperament and delicate physique.
Women, it must be acknowledged, by no means use their faculties of
thinking and observation to the best advantage. The conclusions at which
they arrive are often far too definite, and have been formed in too
great haste. So rapid is this operation of thought that it often becomes
a mere intuition. Yet the remarkable accuracy of a woman's intuitions is
evidence that there underlies them some intellectual process resting on
a more solid basis than conjecture or guesswork.
It is the crude and untutored stage of development of the thinking
faculty in woman that causes it to work intuitively, instead of by the
slower and sounder processes of logic. To neglect a faculty is by no
means synonymous with developing it. Hence woman's powers of thought and
observation are embryonic rather than matured. The work they perform is
not a tithe of what would be accomplished by them under the auspices of
judicious encouragement and skilled training. The faculty has neither
been destroyed by over-cramming nor fostered by enlightened treatment.
It has simply been allowed to lie more or less dormant, according to the
natural environment of the individual.
If man, with his superior brain capacity, were encouraged to cultivate
the habits of observation at present restricted to woman, and to apply
his intelligence to everything, instead of to a few selected objects,
the ratio of the world's progress would be enormously increased. Who
first started the notion that man is being manufactured into a superior
article, and that woman cannot do better than submit herself with all
haste to the same process, I do not know. At any rate, it is a
disastrous doctrine, and the sooner the fallacy of it is perceived the
more chance there will be of saving future generations of women from the
blunder that is handicapping the masculine sex at the present moment.
It would be a grand thing if educationists could be persuaded to open
their eyes to the fact that women, having been providentially saved from
school instruction for past generations, have been enabled to preserve
mental faculties that no amount of cramming and corporal punishment has
ever succeeded in awakening in man. They would then cease from their
ignorant attempt to deprive woman of her intellectual gift, and possibly
even do something towards securing man a little mental room for the
installation of his own thinking faculty.