2.—“_To him who fixed the gages of the fight_.”
“If we could imagine a Bossuet or a Fénélon figuring among the followers
of Ninon de Lenclos, and publicly giving her counsel on the subject of
her professional duties, and the means of securing adorers, this would
be hardly less strange than the relation which really existed between
Socrates and the courtesan Theodota.”—Lecky (“History of European
Morals,” Vol. II., p. 280).
8.—“_The waste of woman worth_ ...”
Since these words were written, a letter from Mrs. Mona Caird has been
published by the “Women’s Emancipation Union,” in which is said:—“So far
from giving safety and balance to the ‘natural forces,’ these
time-honoured restrictions, springing from a narrow theory which took
its rise in a pre-scientific age, are fraught with the gravest dangers,
creating a perpetual struggle and unrest, filling society with the
perturbations and morbid developments of powers that ought to be
spending themselves freely and healthfully on their natural objects.
Anyone who has looked a little below the surface of women’s lives can
testify to the general unrest and nervous exhaustion or _malaise_ among
them, although each would probably refer her suffering to some cause
peculiar to herself and her circumstances, never dreaming that she was
the victim of an evil that gnaws at the very heart of society, making of
almost every woman the heroine of a silent tragedy. I think few keen
observers will deny that it is almost always the women of placid
temperament, with very little sensibility, who are happy and contented;
those of more highly wrought nervous systems and imaginative faculty,
who are nevertheless capable of far greater joy than their calmer
sisters, in nine cases out of ten are secretly intensely miserable. And
the cause of this is not eternal and unalterable. The nervously
organised being is _not_ created to be miserable; but when intense vital
energy is thwarted and misdirected—so long as the energy lasts—there
must be intense suffering.... It is only when resignation sets in, when
the ruling order convinces at last and tires out the rebel nerves and
the keen intelligence, that we know that the living forces are defeated,
and that death has come to quiet the suffering. All this is waste of
human force, and far worse than waste.”
_Id._... Alexandre Dumas fils says:—“Celles-là voient, de jour en jour,
en sondant l’horizon toujours le même, s’effeuiller dans l’isolement,
dans l’inaction, dans l’impuissance, les facultés divines qui leur
avaient d’abord fait faire de si beaux rêves et dont il leur semble que
l’expansion eût pu être matériellement et moralement si profitable aux
autres et à elles-memes.”—(“Les Femmes qui Tuent et les Femmes qui
Votent,” p. 107).
_Id._... And Lady Florence Dixie has written:—“Nature gives strength and
beauty to man, and Nature gives strength and beauty to woman. In this
latter instance man flies in the face of Nature, and declares that she
must be artificially restrained. Woman must not be allowed to grow up
strong like man, because if she did the fact would establish her
equality with him, and this cannot be tolerated. So the boy and man are
allowed freedom of body, and are trained up to become muscular and
strong, while the woman, by artificial, not natural, laws, is bidden to
remain inactive and passive, and, in consequence, weak and undeveloped.
Mentally it is the same. Nature has unmistakably given to woman a
greater amount of brain power. This is at once perceivable in childhood.
For instance, on the stage, girls are always employed in preference to
boys, for they are considered brighter and sharper in intellect and
brain power. Yet man deliberately sets himself to stunt that early
evidence of mental capacity by laying down the law that woman’s
education shall be on a lower level than that of man’s; that natural
truths, which all women should early learn, should be hidden from her;
and that while men may be taught everything, women must only acquire a
narrow and imperfect knowledge both of life and of Nature’s laws. I
maintain that this procedure is arbitrary and cruel, and false to
Nature. I characterise it by the strong word of infamous. It has been
the means of sending to their graves, unknown, unknelled, and unnamed,
thousands of women whose high intellects have been wasted, and whose
powers for good have been paralysed and undeveloped.”—(“Gloriana: or,
the Revolution of 1900,” p. 130.)
_Id._... Buckle gives numerous instances which support the foregoing
assertions, saying himself on the point:—“That women are more deductive
than men, because they think quicker than men, is a proposition which
some persons will not relish, and yet it may be proved in a variety of
ways. Indeed, nothing could prevent its being universally admitted
except the fact that the remarkable rapidity with which women think is
obscured by that miserable, that contemptible, that preposterous system
called their education, in which valuable things are carefully kept from
them, and trifling things carefully taught to them, until their fine and
nimble minds are irreparably injured.”—(“Miscellaneous Works,” Vol. I.,
p. 8, “On the influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge.”)
_Id._... As a man of straightforward common-sense, Sydney Smith has left
a name unsurpassed in our literary history. Here is something of what he
says on this question of woman’s intellect and its waste:—“As the matter
stands at present, half the talent in the universe runs to waste, and is
totally unprofitable. It would have been almost as well for the world,
hitherto, that women, instead of possessing the capacities they do at
present, should have been born wholly destitute of wit, genius, and
every other attribute of mind of which men make so eminent a use; and
the ideas of use and possession are so united together that, because it
has been the custom in almost all countries to give to women a different
and worse education than to men, the notion has obtained that they do
not possess faculties which they do not cultivate.”—(“Essay on Female
Education.”)
_Id._... Hear also John Ruskin on the relative intellect or capacity of
women:—“Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some clear and
harmonious idea (and it must be harmonious if it is true) of what
womanly mind and virtue are in power and office, with respect to man’s;
and how their relations, rightly accepted, aid and increase the vigour,
and honour, and authority of both.... Let us see whether the greatest,
the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in anywise on this
point.... And first let us take Shakespeare; ... there is hardly a play
that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope and
errorless purpose.... Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare’s testimony
to the position and character of women in human life. He represents them
as infallibly faithful and wise counsellors, incorruptibly just and pure
examples, strong always to sanctify, even when they cannot save.... I
ask you next to receive the witness of Walter Scott.... So that, in all
cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches over,
teaches, and guides the youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who
watches over or educates his mistress.
“Now I could multiply witness upon witness of this kind upon you, if I
had time. Nay, I could go back into the mythical teaching of the most
ancient times, and show you how the great people, how that great
Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom
the form of a woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver’s
shuttle; and how the name and form of that spirit adopted, believed, and
obeyed by the Greeks, became that Athena of the olive-helm and cloudy
shield, to whose faith you owe, down to this date, whatever you hold
most precious in art, in literature, or in types of national virtue.
“But I will not wander into this distant and mythical element; I will
only ask you to give the legitimate value to the testimony of these
great poets and men of the world, consistent as you see it is on this
head. I will ask you whether it can be supposed that these men, in the
main work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious and
idle view of the relations between man and woman; nay, worse than
fictitious or idle, for a thing may be imaginary yet desirable, if it
were possible; but this, their ideal of women, is, according to our
common idea of the marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we
say, is not to guide nor even to think for herself. The man is always to
be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior in
knowledge and discretion, as in power. Is it not somewhat important to
make up our minds on this matter? Are Shakespeare and Æschylus, Dante
and Homer merely dressing dolls for us; or, worse than dolls, unnatural
visions, the realisation of which, were it possible, would bring anarchy
into all households, and ruin into all affections? Are all these great
men mistaken, or, are we?”—(“Sesame and Lilies,” p. 125, _et seq._)
Truly, in the face of these things, Tennyson had reason concerning his
fellow men, when he wrote:—
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers....”
(“Locksley Hall.”)