these hampering conditions is of course a point in their favour, so far as
it goes. A desire for knowledge is never to be despised, even when it is
not entertained for its own sake. And a secondary desire may often be
changed into a primary one, if the task is approached in the right way.
The possibility of such a transformation is a hopeful feature of the
present situation.
The reading that is done by women in connection with club work is of
several different types. In the simplest organisations, which are reading
clubs pure and simple, a group of books, roughly equal in number to the
membership, is taken and passed around until each person has read them
all. There is no connection between them, and each volume is selected
simply on some one's statement that it is a "good book." A step higher is
the club where the books are on one general subject, selected by some one
who has been asked to prescribe a "course of reading." By easy gradations
we arrive at the final stage, where the reading is of the nature of
investigation and its outcome is an essay. A subject is decided on at the
beginning of the season. The programme committee selects several phases of
it and assigns each to a member, who prepares her essay and reads it to
the club at one of the stated meetings. In this case the reading to be
done in preparation for writing the essay may or may not be guided by the
committee. In many cases, where the local public library cooperates
actively with the clubs, a list may be made out by the librarian and
perhaps printed, with due acknowledgment, in the club's year book. No one
can doubt, in looking over typical programmes and lists among the
thousands that represent the annual reading of the women's clubs
throughout the United States, that a serious and sustained effort is being
made to introduce the intellect, as an active factor, into the lives of
thousands of women--lives where hitherto it has played little part,
whether they are millionaires or near paupers, workers or idlers. With
this aim there must be frill measure of sympathy, but I fear we can
commend it only in the back-handed fashion in which a great authority on
sociology recently commended the Socialists. "If sympathy with what they
are trying to do, as opposed to the way in which they are trying to do it,
makes one a Socialist," said the Professor, "then I am a Socialist." Here
also we may sympathise with the aim, but the results are largely dependent
on the method; and that method is the offspring of ignorance and
inefficiency. The results may be summed up in one word--superficiality. I
have elsewhere warned readers not to think that this word means simply a
slight knowledge of a subject. A slight knowledge is all that most of us
possess, or need to possess, about most subjects. I know a little about
Montenegro for instance--something of its origin and relationships, its
topography, the names and characteristics of a city or two, the racial and
other peculiarities of its inhabitants. Yet I should cut a poor figure
indeed in an examination on Montenegrin history, geography or government.
Is my knowledge "superficial"? It could not properly be so stigmatised
unless I should pose as an authority on Montenegro, or unless my
opportunities to know about the country had been so great that failure to
take advantage of them should argue mental incapacity. The trouble with
the reading-lists and programmes of our women's clubs, inherited in some
degree from our general educational methods, is that they emphasise their
own content and ignore what they do not contain, to such an extent that
those who use them remain largely in ignorance of the fact that the former
bears a very small proportion indeed to the latter.
It was once my duty to act as private tutor in algebra and geometry to a
young man preparing for college. He was bright and industrious, but I
found that he was under the impression that when he had gone to the end of
his text-books in those two subjects he would have mastered, not only all
the algebra and geometry, but all the mathematics, that the world held in
store. And when this story has been told in despair to some very
intelligent persons they have commented: "Well, there isn't much more, is
there?"
The effort of the text-book writer, as well as that of the maker of
programmes, lists, and courses, appears to have been to produce what he
calls a "well-rounded" effect; in other words, to make the student think
that the whole subject--in condensed form perhaps, but still the
whole--lies within what he has turned out. Did you ever see a chemistry
that gave, or tried to give, an idea of the world of chemical knowledge
that environs its board cover? One has to become a Newton before he feels,
with that sage, like a child, playing on the sands, with the great,
unexplored ocean of knowledge stretching out before him. Most students are
rather like ducks in a barn-yard puddle, quite sure that they are familiar
with the whole world and serene in that knowledge.
Most writers of text-books would indignantly deny that this criticism
implies a fault. It is none of their business, they would say, to call
attention to what is beyond their scope. So be it. Unfortunately, every
one feels in the same way and so the horizon of our women's clubs is that
of the puddle instead of the ocean.
It is a most interesting fact in this connection that there exist certain
organisations which make a business of furnishing clubwomen with
information for their papers. I have heard this service described as a
"godsend," to clubs in small places where there are no libraries, or where
the libraries are poorly equipped with books and _personnel_. But, if I am
correctly informed, the service does not stop with the supply of raw
material; it goes on to the finished product, and the perplexed lady who
is required to read a paper on "Melchisedek" or on "Popular Errors
Regarding the Theory of Groups," may for an adequate fee, or possibly even
for an inadequate one, obtain a neatly typewritten manuscript on the
subject, ready to read.
This sort of thing is not at all to be wondered at. It has gone on since
the dawn of time with college theses, clergymen's sermons, the orations
and official papers of statesmen. Whenever a man is confronted with an
intellectual task that he dare not shirk, and yet has not the intellect or
the interest to perform, the first thing he thinks of is to hire some one
to do it for him, and this demand has always been great enough and
widespread enough to make it profitable for some one to organise the
supply on a commercial basis. What interests us in the present case is the
fact that its existence in the woman's club affords an instant clue to the
state of mind of many of its members. They have this in common with the
plagiarising pupil, clergyman, or statesman--they are called upon to do
something in which they have only a secondary interest. The minister who
reads a sermon on the text "Thou Shalt Not Steal," and considers that the
fact that he has paid five dollars for it will absolve him from the charge
of inconsistency, does not--cannot--feel any desire to impress his
congregation with a desire for right living--he wants only to hold his
job. The university student who, after ascertaining that there is no
copyable literature in the Library on "Why I Came to College," pays a
classmate a dollar to give this information to the Faculty, cares nothing
about the question; but he does care to avoid discipline. So the clubwoman
who reads a purchased essay on "Ireland in the Fourteenth Century," has
not the slightest interest in the subject; but she does want to remain a
member of her club, in good and regular standing. It is the same
substitution of adventitious for natural motives and stimuli that works
intellectual havoc from the mother's knee up to the Halls of Congress.
When I assert boldly that at the present time the majority of vague and
illogical readers are women, and that women's clubs are responsible for
much of that kind of reading, I shall doubtless incur the displeasure of
the school of feminists who seem bent on minimising the differences
between the two sexes. Obvious physical differences they have not been
able to explain away, and to deny that corresponding mental differences
exist is to shut one's eyes to all the teachings of modern physiology. The
mental life is a function, not of the brain alone, but of the whole
nervous system of which the brain is but the principal ganglion. Cut off a
man's legs, and you have removed something from his mental, as well as
from his physical equipment. That men and women should have minds of the
same type is a physiological impossibility. A familiar way of stating the
difference is to say that in the man's mind reason predominates, in the
woman's, intuition. There is doubtless something to be said for this
statement of the distinction, but it is objectionable because it is
generally interpreted to mean--quite unnecessarily--that a woman's mind is
inferior to a man's--a distinction about as foolish as it would be to say
the negative electricity is inferior to positive, or cold to heat. The
types are in most ways supplementary, and a combination of the two has
always been a potent intellectual force--one of the strongest arguments
for marriage as an institution. When we try to do the work of the world
with either type alone we have generally made a mess of it. And the
outcome seems to make it probable that the female type is especially prone
to become the prey of fallacies like that which has brought about the
present flood of useless, or worse than useless, reading.
I shall doubtless be asked whether I assert that one type of mind belongs
always to the man and one to the woman. By no means. I do not even lay
emphasis on the necessity of naming the two types "male" and "female." All
I say is that the types exist--with those intermediate cases that always
bother the classifier--and that the great majority of men possess one type
and the great majority of women the other. It is possible that differences
of training may have originated or at least emphasised the types; it is
possible that future training may obliterate the lines that separate them,
but I do not believe it. I am even afraid of trying the experiment, for
there is reason to believe that its success in the mental field might
react unfavourably on those physical differences on which the future of
the race depends. We may have gone too far in this direction already; else
why the feverish anxiety of the girls' colleges to prove that their
graduates are marrying and bearing children?
The fact is that the problem of the education of the sexes is not yet
solved. Educating one sex alone didn't work; neither, I believe, does the
present plan of educating both alike, whether in the same institution, or
separately.
II--_A Diagnosis_
Reading, like conversation, is, or ought to be, a contact between two
minds. The difference is that while one may talk only with his
contemporaries and neighbours one may read the words of a writer far
distant both in time and space. It is no wonder, perhaps, that the printed
word has become a fetish, but fetishes of any kind are not in accordance
with the spirit of the age, and their veneration should be discouraged.
Reading in which the contact of minds is of secondary importance, or even
cuts no figure at all, is meaningless and valueless.
In a previous paper, reasons have been given for believing that reading of
this kind is peculiarly prevalent among the members of women's clubs. The
value of these organisations is so great, and the services that they have
rendered to women, and through them to the general cause of social
betterment, are so evident, that it seems well worth while to examine the
matter a little more closely, and to complete a diagnosis based on the
study of the symptoms that have already presented themselves. As most of
the reading done in connection with clubs is in preparation for the
writing and reading of papers, we may profitably, perhaps, direct our
attention to this phase of the subject.
Most persons will agree, probably, that the average club paper is not
notably worth while. It is written by a person not primarily and vitally
interested in the subject, and it is read to an assemblage most of whom
are similarly devoid of interest--the whole proceeding being more or less
perfunctory. Could it be expected that reading done in connection with
such a performance should be valuable?
This is worth pondering, because it is a fact that almost all the vital
informative literature that is produced at first hand sees the light in
connection with clubs and associations--bodies that publish journals,
"transactions" or "proceedings" for the especial purpose of printing the
productions of their members.
This literature, for the most part, does not come to the notice of the
general reader. The ordinary books on the technical subjects of which it
treats are not raw material, but a manufactured product--compilations from
the original sources. And the pity of it is that very many of them, often
the best of them from a purely literary point of view, are so
unsatisfactory, viewed from the point of view of accomplishment. They do
not do what they set out to do; they are full of misunderstandings,
misinterpretations, interpolations and omissions. It is the old story;
those who know won't tell and the task is assumed by those who are
eminently able to tell, but don't know. The scientific expert despises the
public, which is forced to get its information through glib but ignorant
expounders. This is a digression, but it may serve to illuminate the
situation, which is that the authoritative literature of special subjects
sees the light almost wholly in the form of papers, read before clubs and
associations. Evidently there is nothing in the mere fact that a paper is
to be read before a club, to make it trivial or valueless. Yet how much
that is of value to the world first saw the light in a paper read before a
woman's club? How much original thought, how much discovery, how much
invention, how much inspiration, is put into their writing and emanates
from their reading?
There must be a fundamental difference of some kind between the
constitution and the methods of these two kinds of clubs. A study of this
difference will throw light on the kind of reading that must be done in
connection with each and may explain, in great part, why the reading done
for women's club-papers is what it is.
A scientific or technical society exists largely for the purpose of
informing its members of the original work that is being done by each of
them. When anyone has accomplished such work or has made such progress
that he thinks an account of what he has done would be interesting, he
sends a description of it to the proper committee, which decides whether
it shall be read and discussed at a meeting, or published in the
Proceedings, or both, or neither. The result depends on the size of the
membership, on its activity, and on the value of its work. It may be that
the programme committee has an embarrassment of riches from which to
select, or that there is poverty instead. But in no case does it arrange a
programme. The Physical Society, if that is its name and subject, does not
decide that it will devote the meetings of the current season to a
consideration of Radio-activity and assign to specified members the
reading of papers on Radio-active springs, the character of Radium
Emanation, and so on. If it did, it would doubtless get precisely the same
results that we are complaining of in the case of the Woman's Club. A man
whose specialty is thermodynamics might be told off to prepare a paper on
Radio-active Elements in Rocks--a subject in which he is not interested.
He could have nothing new nor original to say on the subject and his paper
would be a mere compilation. It would not even be a good compilation, for
his interest and his skill would lie wholly in another direction. The good
results that the society does get are wholly dependent on the fact that
each writer is full of new information that he desires, above all things,
to communicate to his fellow-members.
In the preparation of such a paper, one needs, of course, to read, and
often to read widely. Much of the reading will be done in connection with
the work described, or even before it is begun. No one wishes to undertake
an investigation that has already been made by someone else, and so the
first thing that a competent investigator does is to survey his field and
ascertain what others have accomplished in it. This task is by no means
easy, for such information is often hidden in journals and transactions
that are difficult to reach, and the published indexes of such material,
though wonderfully advanced on the road toward perfection in the past
twenty years, have yet far to travel before they reach it. Not only the
writer's description of what he has done or ascertained, but the character
of the work itself; the direction it takes--the inferences that he draws
from it, will be controlled and coloured by what he reads of others' work.
And even if he finds it easy to ascertain what has been done and to get at
the published accounts and discussions of it, the mass may be so great
that he has laid out for him a course of reading that may last many
months.
But mark the spirit with which he attacks it! He is at work on something
that seems to him supremely worth while. He is labouring to find out
truth, to dissipate error, to help his fellow-men to know something or to
do something. The impulse to read, and to read much and thoroughly, is so
powerful that it may even need judicious repression. The difference
between this kind of reading and that done in the preparation of a paper
to fill a place in a set programme hardly needs emphasis.
The preparation of papers for professional and technical societies has
been dwelt upon at such length, because I see no reason why the impulse to
reading that it furnishes cannot also be placed at the disposal of the
woman's club; and I shall have some suggestions toward this end in a
future article.
Meanwhile, I shall doubtless be told that it is unfair to compare the
woman's club, with its didactic aim, and the scientific association of
trained and interested investigators. It is true that we have plenty of
clubs--some of men alone, some of both sexes--whose object is to listen to
interesting and instructive papers on a set subject, often forming part of
a pre-arranged programme. These, however, need our attention here only so
far as the papers are prepared by members of the club, and in this case
they are in precisely the same class as the woman's club. In many cases,
however, the paper is merely the excuse for a social gathering, perhaps at
a dinner or a luncheon. Of course if the paper or lecture is by an expert
invited to give it, the case falls altogether outside of the region that
we are exploring.
I am condemning here all clubs, formed for an avowed educational or
cultural purpose, that adopt set programmes and assign the subjects to
their own members. I am deploring the kind of reading to which this leads,
the kind of papers that are prepared in this way, and the kind of thought
and action that are the inevitable outcome.
It would seem that the women's clubs now form an immense majority of all
organisations of this kind and that there are reasons for warning women
that they are specially prone to this kind of mistake.
The diversity of interests of the average man, the wideness of his
contacts--the whole tradition of his sex--tends to minimise the injury
that may be done to him, intellectually and spiritually, by anything of
this kind. The very fact that he is the woman's inferior spiritually, and
in many cases, in intellect, also--although probably not at the
maximum--relieves him, in great part, of the odium attaching to the error
that has been described. Women are becoming keenly alive to the
deficiencies of their sex-tradition; they are trying to broaden their
intellectual contacts--that is the great modern feminist movement. Some of
those who are active in it are making two mistakes--they are ignoring the
differences between the sexes and they are trying to substitute revolution
for evolution. In this latter error they are in very good company--hardly
one of the great and the good has not made it, at some time and in some
way. Revolution is always the outcome of a mistake. The mistake may be
antecedent and irrevocable, and the revolution therefore necessary, but
this is rarely the case. The revolutionist runs a risk common to all who
are in a hurry--he may break the object of his attention instead of moving
it. When he wants to hand you a dish he hits it with a ball-bat. Taking a
reasonable amount of time is better in the long run.
That there is no royal road to knowledge has long been recognised. The
trouble with most of us is that we have interpreted this to mean that the
acquisition of knowledge must always be a distasteful process. On the
contrary, the vivid interest that is the surest guide to knowledge is also
the surest smoother of the path. Given the interest that lures the student
on, and he will spend years in surmounting rocks and breaking through
thorny jungles, realising their difficulties perhaps, but rejoicing the
more when those difficulties prove no obstacles.
The fact that the first step toward accomplishment is to create an
interest has long been recognised, but attempts have been made too often
to do it by devious ways, unrelated to the matter in hand. Students have
been made to study history or algebra by offering prizes to the diligent
and by threatening the slothful with punishment. More indirect rewards and
punishments abound in all our incitements to effort and need not be
mentioned here. They may often be effective, but the further removed they
are from direct personal interest in the subject, the weaker and the less
permanent is the result. You may offer a boy a dollar to learn certain
facts in English history, but those facts will not be fixed so well or so
lastingly in his mind as those connected with his last year's trip to
California, which he remembers easily without offer of reward or threat of
punishment.
The interest in the facts gathered by reading in connection with the
average club paper is merely the result of a desire to remain in good
standing by fulfilling the duties of membership; and these duties may be
fulfilled with slight effort and no direct interest, as we have already
seen.
If interest were present even at the inception of the programme, something
would be gained; but in too many cases it is not. The programme committee
must make some kind of a programme, but what it is to be they know little
and care less.
Two women recently entered a branch library and asked the librarian, who
was busy charging books at the desk, what two American dramatists she
considered "foremost." This was followed by the request, "Please tell me
the two best plays of each of them." A few minutes later the querists
returned and asked the same question about English dramatists, and still
later about German, Russian, Italian and Spanish writers of the drama.
Each time they eagerly wrote down the information and then retired to the
reading-room for a few minutes' consultation.
Finally they propounded a question that was beyond the librarian's
knowledge, and then she asked why they wanted to know.
"We are making out the programme for our next year's study course in the
Blank Club," was the answer.
"But you mustn't take my opinion as final," protested the scandalised
librarian. "You ought to read up everything you can find about dramatists.
I may have left out the most important ones."
"This will do nicely," said the club-woman, as she folded her sheets of
paper. And it did--whether nicely or not deponent saith not? but it
certainly constituted the club programme.
On another occasion a clubwoman entered the library and said with an air
of importance, "I want your material on Susanna H. Brown."
The librarian had never heard of Susanna, but experience had taught her
modesty and also a certain degree of guile, so she merely said, "What do
you want to know about her, particularly?"
"Our club wishes to discuss her contributions to American literature."