1.—“_Thoughts like to these are breathings of the truth_.”
“I submit that there is a spiritual, a poetic, and, for aught we know, a
spontaneous and uncaused element in the human mind, which ever and anon
suddenly, and without warning, gives us a glimpse and a forecast of the
future, and urges us to seize truth, as it were, by anticipation. In
attacking the fortress we may sometimes storm the citadel without
stopping to sap the outworks. That great discoveries have been made in
this way the history of our knowledge decisively proves.”—H. T. Buckle
(“Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”).
_Id._... “Then there is the inner consciousness—the psyche—that has
never yet been brought to bear upon life and its questions. Besides
which, there is a supersensuous reason. Observation is perhaps more
powerful an organon than either experiment or empiricism. If the eye is
always watching, and the mind on the alert, ultimately chance supplies
the solution.”—Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” Chap. X.).
_Id._... “Women only want hints, finger-boards, and finding these, will
follow them to Nature. The quick-glancing intellect will gather up, as
it moves over the ground, the almost invisible ends and threads of
thought, so that a single volume may convey to the mind of woman truths
which man would require to have elaborated in four or six.”—Eliza W.
Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 420).
3.—“... _futile mannish pleas_ ...”
Roussel details fully some nine of these main theories or explanations
of the habitude. (“Système,” Note A.)
6.—“_In blindness born_ ...”
“Tous ces faits nous induisent fortement à conjecturer qu’il a dû
exister un temps ou les femmes n’étaient point assujettiés à ce tribut
incommode; que le flux menstruel bien loin d’être une institution
naturelle, est au contraire un besoin factice contracté dans l’état
sociale.”—Roussel (_Op. cit._, Chap. II.).
Note that menstruation (scriptural “sickness”) remains a pathological
incident, not, as child-birth, an indubitably natural and normal
physical function.
See also Note XXX., 4.
_Id._—“... _in error fostered_ ...”
Not only the habit itself, but its causes. And this by medical, _i.e._,
assumedly curative, practitioners. As to which “fostering,” medical and
clinical manuals afford abundant spontaneous and ingenuous testimony,
and also of other professional practices of instigation, or condonation,
or complicity, at which a future age will look aghast. _Conf._ the
following from Whitehead, “On the Causes and Treatment of Abortion and
Sterility” (Churchill, 1847):—
“In a case under my care of pregnancy in a woman, with _extreme
deformity of the pelvis_, wherein it was considered advisable to
_procure abortion_ in the fifth month of the process, the ergot alone
was employed, and, at first, with the desired effect.” [The italics
are not in the doctor’s book; he remarks nothing wrong or immoral,
and—in an unprofessional person—illegal, and open to severest penalty;
he is simply detailing the effects of a specified medicament.] “It was
given in _three successive_ pregnancies, and in each instance labour
pains came on after eight or ten doses had been administered, and
expulsion was effected by the end of the third day. It was
perseveringly tried in a fourth pregnancy in the same individual, and
failed completely” (p. 254).
There is an ominous silence as to whether the patient’s health or life
also “failed completely.”