PSYCHOLOGICAL LADIES.
There is no doubt that the "Woman's Rights" question is going ahead with
gigantic strides, not only in social and political, but also in
intellectual matters. Boys and girls--or rather we ought to say young
ladies and young gentlemen--are grouped together on the class list of
the Oxford Local Examination, irrespective of sex. A glance at the daily
papers will show us that women are being lectured to on all subjects
down from physical sciences, through English literature and art, to the
construction of the clavecin. We had fancied, however, that what are
technically termed "the Humanities," or, in University diction,
"Science"--meaning thereby ethics and logic--were still our own. Now, we
are undeceived. We are reminded that woman can say, without a solecism,
"Homo sum," and may therefore claim to embrace even the humanities among
her subjects of study. Henceforth the realm of woman is not merely what
may be called "pianofortecultural," as was once the case. It has soared
even above art, literature, and science itself into what might at first
sight appear the uncongenial spheres of dialectics and metaphysics.
Professor G. Croom Robertson recently commenced a course of thirty
lectures to ladies on Psychology and Logic, at the Hall, 15, Lower
Seymour Street, Portman Square. Urged, it may be, rather by a desire to
see whether ladies would be attracted by such a subject, and, if so,
what psychological ladies were like, than by any direct interest in the
matters themselves, I applied to the hon. secretary, inquiring whether
the inferior sex were admissible; and was answered by a ticket admitting
one's single male self and a party of ladies à discrétion. The very
entrance to the hall--nay, the populous street itself--removed my doubts
as to whether ladies would be attracted by the subjects; and on entering
I discovered that the audience consisted of several hundred ladies, and
two unfortunate--or shall it not rather be said privileged?--members of
the male sex. The ladies were of all ages, evidently matrons as well as
spinsters, with really nothing at all approaching a "blue stocking"
element; but all evidently bent on business. All were taking vigorous
notes, and seemed to follow the Professor's somewhat difficult Scotch
diction at least as well as our two selves, who appeared to represent
not only the male sex in general, but the London press in particular.
Professor Robertson commenced by a brief and well-timed reference to the
accomplished Hypatia, familiar to ladies from Kingsley's novel--in the
days when ladies used to read novels--and also the Royal ladies whom
Descartes and Leibnitz found apter disciples than the savants. It was,
however, he remarked, an impertinence to suppose that any apology was
needed for introducing such subjects before ladies. He plunged therefore
at once in medias res, and made his first lecture not a mere isolated or
introductory one, but the actual commencement of his series. Unreasoned
facts, he said, formed but a mere fraction of our knowledge--even the
simplest processes resolving themselves into a chain of inference. Truth
is the result of logical reasoning; and not only truth, but truth _for
all_. The sciences deal with special aspects of truth. These sciences
may be arranged in the order--1. Mathematics; 2. Physics; 3. Chemistry;
4. Biology--each gradually narrowing its sphere; the one enclosed, so to
say, in the other, and each presupposing those above it. Logic was
presupposed in all. Each might be expressed by a word ending in "logy,"
therefore logic might be termed the "science of sciences." The sciences
were special applications of logic. Scientific men speak lightly of
logic, and say truth can be discovered without it. This is true, but
trivial. We may as well object to physiology because we can digest
without a knowledge of it; or to arithmetic, because it is possible to
reckon without it. Scientific progress has been great; but its course
might have been strewn with fewer wrecks had its professors been more
generally logicians. But then logic presupposes something else. We have
to investigate the origin and growth of knowledge--the laws under which
knowledge comes to be. Under one aspect this science--psychology--should
be placed highest up in the scale; but under another it would rank later
in point of development than even biology itself, because it is not
every being that thinks. This twofold aspect is accounted for by the
peculiarity of its subject-matter--viz., mind.
The sciences are comparatively modern. Mathematics but some 3000 or 4000
years old; physics, three centuries; chemistry, a thing of the last,
biology only of the present century. But men philosophized before the
sciences. The ancient Greeks had but one science--mathematics. Now men
know a little of many sciences; but what we want is men to connect--to
knit together--the sciences; to have their knowledge all of a piece. The
knowledge of the ancient Greek directed his actions, and entered far
more into his daily life than ours does. This, he observed, was
philosophy. This is what we want now; and this is what is to be got from
psychology. There is not a single thing between heaven and earth that
does not admit of a mental expression; or, in other words, possess a
subjective aspect, and therefore come under psychology.
This, in briefest outline, is a sketch of the "strong meat" offered to
the psychological ladies. A single branch of psychology--that, namely,
of the intellect, excluding that of feeling and action--is to occupy ten
lectures, the above being number one. The other twenty will be devoted
to logic.
The next lecture was devoted to an examination of the brain and nervous
system, and their office in mental processes. Alas, however, how
different was now the audience! Only some thirty ladies--scarcely more
than one-tenth of those who were present at the opening lecture--have
permanently entered for the course. It is no disrespect to the ladies to
hazard the conjecture whether the subject be not a little out of range
for the present. We are moving ahead rapidly, and many foolish ideas as
to the intellectual differences of the sexes are becoming obsolete. We
have literary and artistic ladies by thousands. Scientific ladies, in
the ordinary acceptation of the term, are coming well to the front.
Possibly we may have to "wait a little longer" before we get, on
anything like a large scale, psychological or even logical ladies.