feminine education and influence such as I have sketched, is that
there are undoubtedly times during which very little is heard of
feminine influence and almost nothing at all of feminine education.
There are periods on the other hand when these subjects are the very
centre of human interest. This interest waxes to a certain climax and
then apparently wanes. What is the reason for these waxings and
wanings? Is there anything that we know about them that will help us
to account for them? If women have once achieved a certain position
and have once secured certain privileges in the matter of education,
it might reasonably be expected that, barring some great cataclysm or
political upheaval, that completely disrupted society, they would not
abandon these hard-won rights and precious privileges, and so we
should not have to be going through the storm and stress of another
period of discussion, controversy, opposition with regard to woman's
rights. How is it that rights once attained--and never unless after a
struggle, for no matter how civilized a period or how cultured a
people, they do not grant rights to any class unless forced to do so--
that these rights have afterwards been lost, or at least greatly
diminished and partly forgotten?
{255}
In this we come upon one of the mysteries of history and of the life
of man. How is it that men secure certain knowledge and then forget
it--literally forget all about it--how is it that men make
discoveries and then lose sight of them so that they have to be made
over again; how is it that men even make useful inventions of all
kinds and these are lost sight of and the invention has to be made
over again in succeeding generations? How is it that the Suez Canal
was opened at least once before our time and then allowed to fill up
with sand, and we had to do the work all over again two generations
ago? How is it that America was discovered at least twice, probably
oftener, before Columbus' time, and yet his was a real discovery? We
actually have Papal documents addressed to bishops in Greenland from
Popes in the thirteenth century, mentioning missions on the mainland
of America. There are traditions that seem to point beyond all doubt
to the fact that the Irish monks were here in America in the eighth
and ninth centuries. Those traditions come from three or four
different sources. There was a reverence for the cross among the
Indians in certain parts of the country. A tradition of white-robed
priests who came from over the sea. The Norse name for America was
Irland it Mikla, Ireland the Great, {256} that is, the island of the
Irish, much larger than Ireland itself and lying beyond it in the
seas.
How is it, indeed, that there are many discoveries and rediscoveries
of the same principle in science? Heron's engine at Alexandria was an
anticipation of the turbine principle in the application of steam.
When we dug up surgical instruments at Pompeii we were surprised to
find that they had the form of many instruments that we thought we had
invented in our time. In glass-making, in iron-working, in all the
arts and crafts precious secrets are discovered, then lost, then
rediscovered, and this may even happen several times. We find no sign
of a continuous progress, but recurring phases that represent ups and
downs in man's interest in certain things and his achievements
corresponding to the intensity of his interest. Such a thing as a
regular progressive advance one finds nowhere in history. Nations do
not maintain their power after they have achieved it. Just as soon as
the struggle to maintain themselves is over, internal troubles of
various kinds set disintegrating factors at work and it is not long
before decadence can be noted and then the disappearance of the people
or at least of its national prominence becomes inevitable. We shall
not be surprised to find ups and downs in the history of feminine
influence and education, for this is the rule of history. We have only
been laboring under the false notion that definite progress was the
rule because of {257} over-absorption in the evolution theory--but it
is not.
There seems to be in this matter a certain check upon the occupation
of woman with interests external to her household that would tempt her
to occupy herself much with duties extraneous to the family life.
After all, one thing is perfectly clear. Only women can be mothers. We
have not succeeded even in getting the slightest possible hint of any
method of continuing the race except by the ordinary process of
maternity. Whatever of direct evolution the advocates of the theory of
evolution have suggested as coming in humanity so that it may be the
subject of observation, has been due in their minds to the lengthening
of the period during which the young of the race are cared for. As we
go up in the scale of life from the lowest to the highest, infancy--
meaning by that the period during which the offspring is cared for by
the parents--lengthens. In the very small beings there is none. As we
ascend in the scale we find traces of parental care. Then comes
occupation of the parents with their offspring from a few hours up to
a day or two, and then finally months and years, until in the human
race infancy has been gradually prolonged to twenty years. This is
Herbert Spencer's observation and it is interesting and suggestive. A
mother then especially, though also a father, must care for children,
not alone for months before and after birth, but for a score of years.
{258}
Occupation with other things, though necessary, detracts from this
care of children, and if exaggerated leads to the celibate condition
or that approaching it, the limitation of families within narrow
bounds. The mother of but two or three children may occupy herself
with other things and, indeed, has to find other occupation of mind.
At certain periods in the world's history a certain number of these
women accumulate and the tendency to celibacy or to very limited
maternity makes itself felt, and then this class of people usually
fails to propagate enough of the species like themselves to take their
places in the world. It is a matter of common comment at the present
moment that if the women's colleges were to depend on the progeny of
their graduates to fill the classes in succeeding years, the numbers
at the schools not only would not increase but would constantly tend
to decrease. Of course this same thing is true of the descendants of
the male graduates of many of our Eastern universities, and I believe
that attention has been particularly called to it with regard to our
three oldest universities. Such are the risks of life and the
fatalities incident to disease, even with our present improved
hygienic conditions, that anything less than five or six children in a
family will not prove sufficient eventually to replace the parents in
their activities. When to small families is added the number of
celibates consequent upon absorption in self-improvement, then the
failure of the {259} cultured classes even to replace themselves
becomes very manifest, and hence our dwindling native populations, if
we take that word to mean the families that have been in the country
for more than two generations.
Nature does not confide conditions in humanity entirely to man,
however. This would be to leave mankind subject to certain whims and
fashions and the caprices of times and people. There are many
biological checks which maintain mankind in a certain equilibrium. A
typical example of it is the regulation of the number of each sex
born. In general the proportion of the sexes to one another maintains
a ratio very near that of equality under ordinary natural conditions.
This obtains in spite of the fact that man is so much more subject to
accidents than woman, so much more likely to catch and succumb to
disease and so much more likely to wear himself out prematurely as the
result of his labors. The death-rate among women at all ages is lower
than that of men, yet a constant, definite equilibrium of the sexes is
maintained with accurate nicety. There is evidently some check
existing in nature itself that prevents any disturbance of this fixed
ratio.
Not only is nature able to maintain this, but in cases where, because
of some serious disturbance of natural conditions, a decided
inequality of the ratio occurs by accident, nature is able to restore
conditions to the previous normal, without our being quite able to
understand just how this is {260} accomplished. We do not know how sex
is determined. There have been many explanations offered, but all of
them have proved inadequate and most of them quite nugatory. In spite
of our lack of knowledge there have been times in history when a
striking manifestation of nature's power has occurred. For instance,
after the Thirty Years' War in Germany the ratio between the sexes had
been so much disturbed that, according to some historians, there were
probably nearly twice as many women as men in existence in the
Germanic countries. The men had been cut off by the war itself, by
famines consequent upon it, by extreme and unusual efforts to support
their families and by epidemic diseases in camps and campaigns. The
disproportion was so great that a relaxation of the marriage laws was
permitted for a time in certain of the countries and men were allowed
to have two wives.
Under these conditions nature at once began to reassert herself, the
number of male births was greatly increased and the disproportion
between the sexes immediately began to lessen. At the end of scarcely
more than three generations the normal equilibrium of the sexes was
restored and there was about an equal number of men and women again.
Here we have the effect of one of these curiously interesting
biological checks upon man's foolish quarrelsomeness which might
result in a too great disproportion of the sexes.
We shall not be surprised, then, if we find other {261} such
biological checks and compensations exerting themselves. In recent
years Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Darwin, who is recognized as
the best living authority in statistical biology, and Professor Karl
Pearson, who has done more than any one else to bring out many curious
and interesting but very important biological laws by the study of
statistics, have insisted in their studies of the effect of the law of
primogeniture, that when there are small families, the children are
more likely to be nervous, oftener have an inclination to mental
disease and have less resistive vitality against disease in general
than the average child of the larger families. There is a small but
significant advantage in vitality that accrues to later children of a
family. This is so contrary to the frequently expressed opinion that
only the children of small families can be brought up properly to
resist disease and have such advantages in their education and
nutrition as to be of better health, that I should hesitate to quote
it, only that it has behind it the authority of such distinguished
scientists as Galton and Pearson. They are both conservative
Englishmen, they have no theory of their own that they are supporting,
they have no axe to grind in things social and political for the
launching of the new theory, they are only making observations on the
facts presented and the data that have been collected.
Here is another striking example of a check on certain tendencies in
humanity that apparently {262} nature does not approve of, or to avoid
personifying a process, we had better say are not according to
nature's laws. The small family does not perpetuate itself. It has
certain natural disadvantages that work against it. It gradually
disappears and the races of larger families maintain themselves. We
need not have had recourse to Galton's and Pearson's principle in this
matter, for we see the results of the small family in present-day
history. France is decreasing in population. Our own Puritan families
are dying out. American families generally of more than three
generations are not perpetuating themselves. The teeming fertility of
the poor immigrants who come to us is, with immigration itself,
supplying our increase in population. Our nation is, as a result,
gradually becoming something very different from what our forefathers
anticipated.
What has apparently happened, then, in the history of feminine
education and influence is that, whenever women became occupied with
such modes of education, or the cultivation of phases of feminine
influence that took them out of their houses, away from family life
and far from the hearthstone, the particular classes of women who thus
became interested did not propagate themselves, or propagated
themselves to such a limited degree that, after a time, their kind
disappeared to a great extent. The domestic woman with tendencies to
care much more for her maternal duties than for any extra-domiciliary
successes {263} propagated herself, raised her children with her
ideals, cultivated domesticity and consciously or unconsciously
fostered the mother idea as the main feature of woman's life and her
principal source not only of occupation, but of joy in the living, of
consolation and of genuine accomplishment. The tendency, as can
readily be seen in our own time, of the other class of woman is
largely to foster, often unconsciously, but of course often
consciously also, the opposite notions. She talks of the slavery of
child-raising, the limitations of the home woman, the drudgery of
domestic life, forgetting that life is work and that the only
happiness in life is to have work that you want to do, whatever it may
be, but all this talk has its inevitable effect upon all but the born
mother woman, and the result is the fad for public occupation instead
of domestic life.
It is easy to see what the result of the opposite opinion is. Every
tendency of the intellectual woman so-called is to repress such
natural instincts as lead to the propagation of the race and the
continuance of her kind. Of course it will be said that intellectual
women are quite willing to have one or two children. First, this is
not true for a great many of them. Secondly, for those who have one or
two children losses by death and failure to marry in the second
generation, because of conscious or unconscious discouragements and
the exaggeration of ideas with regard to the danger of maternity, lead
often to a complete {264} suppression of the family in the second or
third generation.
Apparently the rule of history is that there are four or five
generations of women interested in intellectual things particularly,
who follow one another in these periods of special feminine education
and exertion of influence outside of the home. Then there comes a
distinct decadence of the feminist movement, because of the gradual
diminution in number of women who are interested in such things, and
then, while there are always certain women who develop great
intellectual abilities which require a larger stage than the home for
their display, and while there are always some who find an
intellectual career or rather make it, very little is heard of
feminism and women's claims. They are satisfied to rule their
husbands, to raise their children, to be saints to their sons and
elder sisters to their daughters, and the feminine world has its
simple joys and not much fuss about rights.
It may seem far-fetched thus to appeal to a biological check or a
great underlying natural law in a matter of this kind, but in recent
years biology has so often been appealed to to justify unsocial
conditions that its true application needs to be pointed out. We have
heard, for instance, much of the struggle for life and the competition
that is supposed to be inevitable in nature, while all the time it has
apparently been forgotten that there is no struggle for life within
the species {265} except when there is some disturbance of the
ordinary order of nature, as in times of famine, or when a mother is
foraging for her children. On the contrary, mutual aid is the rule
within the species and there is no animal small or large, from the ant
to the elephant, that does not help its kind and has not certain
wonderful instincts for helpfulness, the origin of which we do not
know, but which are founded in nature itself. Man justifies inhumanity
to man by the supposed struggle for life, while all the time nature
teaches us the opposite law.
Nature's way is that of elimination. Her interest is the race. She
cares very little for the individual and guards only her great purpose
of securing the propagation of the race. Apparently such intense
preoccupation with the intellectual life as provides opportunity for
serious education, for literary work and for the exertion of diffuse
influence in a community, does not make for the propagation of the
race or its proper preservation. We can see this easily in the world
around us, in the limited progeny of those who live the intellectual
or selfish life to the exclusion of racial interests. This is opposed
to nature's purpose and she proceeds to eliminate those who stand in
her way. This is not done by any cataclysmic process but by a law of
nature. Those involved in the influence disturbing to her purpose
eliminate themselves. This is as true for indulgence in toxic
substances that produce certain personal {266} momentary good
feelings, as for the more deliberate avoidance of certain of nature's
burdens which brings about a certain negative pleasure at least by
lessening the amount of pain that has to be borne and trouble to be
endured. To these pains and troubles nature has attached some of the
best of the compensations of life. The domestic joys are properly
man's highest source of unalloyed pleasure without remorse.
Our review of the phases of feminine education and influence would
seem to show that there has occurred a series of cycles about three
centuries apart in the history of the race, during which women become
very much occupied with things external to their household. Such
cycles are represented by our own period, that of the Renaissance in
the sixteenth century, that of the university period in the thirteenth
century, and then that at Charlemagne's court earlier, though the
barbaric conditions following the migration of nations probably did
not allow a natural expression of the tendencies at this time. Earlier
in history, in the first century before Christ and just after and in
the fourth century before Christ in Greece, there had been, as we have
pointed out, such cycles. During the intervening centuries there is a
negative phase in the movement, so that feminism, under which is
understood woman's expression of herself outside of her home and the
exertion of her influence apart from her family and immediate friends,
is very little in {267} evidence. During these times the domestic
woman reasserts herself. During the positive phases of the movement
she continues to have her children, the feminists do not, or at least
not to the same extent. They and their kind are gradually eliminated,
at least to a great degree, and so the negative phase comes on.
This is not an argument and is not meant as such. It is meant to be a
scientific reading of the meaning of certain phases of the history of
the race as they can be studied. I would be the last in the world to
think that I could influence present-day activities by any such
indications of a great law in the history of the race that takes three
centuries from phase to phase. After all, who cares for a law that
does not affect our generation, but at most the third and fourth
succeeding generations, and the manifestation of whose phenomena can
only be recognized in three-century periods?
What I have tried to do is to point out just what are the cycles of
feminine influence and education in the world's history, and then to
work out the reasons why, quite contrary to what might be expected,
these phases have not continued, but are interrupted by periods of
utter decadence of feminine influence or interest in public life and
education. Perhaps in our time we are going to change all that. That
is the feeling that we are prone to have. Others may have made
progress and forgotten about it, or {268} may have made mistakes and
been eliminated for them, but we are so consciously active in our
affairs that we cannot think of ourselves as likely to suffer the fate
of our predecessors. There is much of that feeling abroad in the
present day, there has always been much of that feeling abroad in
every other day, for each succeeding generation in its turn is
perfectly sure that what it is doing means more than ever before,
though it can see very clearly the mistakes made by its predecessors.
It is somewhat like our feeling towards other persons and their
accomplishments in life as compared to our own. Most of us are quite
sure that whatever we are doing is quite significant, though we can
see plainly that what most of our friends are doing, or are trying to
do, is altogether trivial and insignificant.
In recent years we have come to realize more and more how much history
needs to be studied in the light of biology. The decadence of Greece
was probably due, to a great extent, to the bringing back by
Alexander's conquering soldiers of malaria from the Orient, and thus
the vanquished proved the ruin of their conquerors. The great plagues
of the olden time which sometimes carried away nearly one-half the
human race in a single visitation, were due to insect pests of various
kinds, which all unknown to men conveyed the disease and diffused it
widely. It will not be easy always to read the lessons of biology in
history aright. Whether I have done so for you {269} or not, in this
matter of the history of feminism, I cannot tell. The story, however,
has been interesting to work out, and I do not think that its
conclusions have ever been presented to the public in quite this form
before. They are now presented not with the idea that they should be
accepted as absolute, but for the criticism and consideration of those
who are most vitally interested and who want to know all that can be
known about the conditions surrounding woman's influence in the world
and her place for good in the history of the race.
{270}
{271}
THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION
{272}
"It is your duty to see that your daughter loves study and work,
securing this by the promise of rewards or some other means of
emulation. Above all you must take care not to give her disgust for
study for fear that this may continue as she grows older. Let her
not learn in her childhood what she should unlearn later in life."
--_Letter of St. Jerome to Leta, the wife of Toxolus, the son of St.
Paula_.
"The sum of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of
the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence
in which, when he grows up to manhood, he will have to be
perfected."
--Plato, _Laws_ (Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 174. Scribner, 1902.
"The minds of children are most of all influenced by the training
they receive at home."
--Pope Leo XIII.
{273}
THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION [Footnote 18]
[Footnote 18: The material for this address was gathered originally
for the normal courses on the History of Education for many of the
teaching sisterhoods in this country. In its present form it was the
address to the graduates of St. Elizabeth's College, Convent
Station, N. J., on the occasion of the celebration of the jubilee of
the foundation of its teaching work.]
Lady Bachelors: I have had frequent occasions to address all sorts of
bachelors on their graduation, of science and arts and letters and
pedagogy, but this is my first opportunity to address ladies crowned,
at least symbolically, with the laurel berries of the bachelorhood in
art. We are apt to think of young ladies rather as masters of arts
innumerable, and as needing no degree to attest their abilities. While
I am glad, indeed, to address you as lady bachelors I do so with the
fondest hope that you will all proceed to further degrees either
academic or domestic and not remain in that nondescript class of
bachelor-maids.
I should like to be able to tell you how much pleasure it gives me to
have the privilege of addressing you on this Fiftieth Anniversary of
the Foundation of St. Elizabeth's. There is an apt illustration of the
Communion of Saints in your title as a college. Founded in honor of
that noble, saintly American woman, Elizabeth Seton, {274} and yet
called particularly after that Saint Elizabeth whom the Mother of the
Lord set out to visit as the first act of her Motherhood of the
Church, there always rises in my mind besides, the thought of that
other Saint Elizabeth whom the Germans delight to call the dear Saint
Elizabeth, who, though she died when she was scarcely twenty-four, has
left a name undying in the annals of helpfulness for others.