2.—“... _newer vigour to the brain_.”
“It is well-known that every organ of the body and, therefore, also the
brain, requires for its full development and, consequently, for the
development of its complete capability of performance, exercise and
persistent effort. That this is and has been the case for thousands of
years in a far less degree in woman than in man, in consequence of her
defective training and education, will be denied by no one.” So says the
learned biologist Büchner.—(“Man,” Dallas’s translation, p. 206.)
And Bebel also declares:—“The brain must be regularly used and
correspondingly nourished, like any other organ, if its faculties are to
be fully developed.”—(“Woman,” Walther’s translation, p. 124.)
Dr. Emanuel Bonavia, in the course of an able reply to a somewhat
shallow recent disquisition by Sir James Crichton Browne, says:—
“From various sources we have learnt that the brain tissue, like every
other tissue, will _grow_ by exercise, and diminish, or degenerate and
atrophy by disuse. Keep your right arm tied up in a sling for a month,
and you will then be convinced how much it has lost by disuse. Then
anatomists might perhaps be able to say—Lo! and behold! the muscles of
your right arm have a less specific gravity than those of your left arm;
that the nerves and blood-vessels going to those muscles are smaller,
and that, _therefore_, the right arm cannot be the equal of the left,
and must have a different function!
“Any medical student knows that if you tie the main trunk of an artery,
a branch of it will in due course acquire the _calibre_ of the main
trunk. If, for some reason, it cannot do so, the tissues, which the main
trunk originally supplied, _must_ suffer, and be weakened, from want of
a sufficient supply of blood.... Man, and especially British man, has
evolved into what he is by endless trouble and struggle through past
ages. He has had to develop his present brain from very small
beginnings. It would, therefore, now be the height of folly to allow the
thinking lobes of the mothers of the race to revert, intellectually, by
disuse step by step again to that of the lower animals, from which we
all come. That of course many may not believe, but it may be asked, how
can he or she believe these things with such weakened lobes, as he or
she may have inherited from his or her mother? How indeed! If there is
anything in nature that is true, it is this—That if you don’t use your
limbs they will atrophy; if you don’t use your eyes they will atrophy;
if you don’t use your brain it will atrophy. They all follow the same
inexorable law. Use increases and sharpens; disuse decreases and dulls.
Diminished size of the frontal lobes and of the arteries that feed them
mean nothing if they do not mean that woman’s main thinking organ, that
of the intellect, is, as Sir James would hint, degenerating by _disuse_
and neglect.”—(“Woman’s Frontal Lobes,” _Provincial Medical Journal_,
July, 1892.)
These facts suggest strongly that the waste at present induced in the
female body by the menstrual habit might well be absorbed in increase of
brain power; and indeed, that this evolved habit has hitherto
persistently sequestrated and carried off from woman’s organism the
blood force that should have gone to form brain power. This explanation
would dispose of the awkwardly imagined “plethora” theory, as well as
one or two others, of sundry gynæcologists.
And the converse—that the increased appropriation of the blood in
forming brain power induces a state of bodily well-being, free from the
present waste and weariness,—would certainly seem to be borne out by
such evidence as that of the Hon. John W. Mitchell, the president of the
Southern California College of Law, who said in a recent lecture:—
“Not only in this, but in other countries, there are successful women
practitioners (of Law), and in France, where the preparatory course is
most arduous, and the term of study longest, a woman recently took the
highest rank over 500 men in her graduating examinations, and during the
whole six years of class study she only lost one day from her work.”
(See Note LVII., 1.)
A few words may here be said as to the dubitable question of the
relative size of the brain in man and woman, though the matter may not
be of great import, from more than one reason. For, as Bebel observes:
“Altogether the investigations on the subject are too recent and too few
in number to allow of any definite conclusions” (p. 123). A. Dumas fils
says (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” p. 196)—“Les philosophes vous démontreront
que, si la force musculaire de l’homme est plus grande que celle de la
femme, la force nerveuse de la femme est plus grande que celle de
l’homme; que, si l’intelligence tient, comme on l’affirme aujourd’hui,
au développement et au poids de la matière cérébrale, l’intelligence de
la femme pourrait être déclarée supérieure à celle de l’homme, le plus
grand cerveau et le plus lourd comme poids, étant un cerveau de femme
lequel pesait 2,200 grammes, c’est a dire 400 grammes de plus que celui
de Cuvier. On ne dit pas, il est vrai, que cette femme ait écrit
l’équivalent du livre de Cuvier sur les fossiles.”
To which last remark may be replied, again in the words of
Bebel,—“Darwin is perfectly right in saying that a list of the most
distinguished women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, science, and
philosophy, will bear no comparison with a similar list of the most
distinguished men. But surely this need not surprise us. It would be
surprising if it were not so. Dr. Dodel-Port (in “Die neuere
Schöpfungsgeschichte”) answers to the point, when he maintains that the
relative achievements would be very different after men and women had
received the same education and the same training in art and science
during a certain number of generations.”—(“Woman,” p. 125.)
“It is of small value to say—yes, but look how _many_ men excel and how
few women do so. True, but see how much repression men have exercised to
_prevent_ women from even equalling them, and how much shallowness of
mind they have encouraged. All manner of obstructions, coupled with
ridicule, have been put in their way, and until women succeed in
emancipating themselves, most men will probably continue to do so,
simply because they have the power to do it. When women become
emancipated, that is, are placed on social equality with men, this
senseless, mischievous opposition will die a natural death.”—E. Bonavia,
M.D. (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).
To revert to the question of brain weight, one of the first of English
specialists says:—
“Data might, therefore, be considered to show, in the strongest manner,
how comparatively unimportant is mere bulk or weight of brain in
reference to the degree of intelligence of its owner, when considered as
it often is, apart from the much more important question of the relative
amount of its grey matter, as well as of the amount and perfection of
the minute internal development of the organ either actual or
possible.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 375.)
The American physiologist Helen H. Gardener states:—“The differences (in
brain) between individuals of the same sex—in adults at least, are known
to be much more marked than any that are known to exist between the
sexes. Take the brains of the two poets Byron and Dante. Byron’s weighed
1,807 grammes, while Dante’s weighed only 1,320 grammes, a difference of
487 grammes. Or take two statesmen, Cromwell and Gambetta. Cromwell’s
brain weighed 2,210 grammes, which, by the way, is the greatest healthy
brain on record; although Cuvier’s is usually quoted as the largest, a
part of the weight of his was due to disease, and if a diseased or
abnormal brain is to be taken as the standard, then the greatest on
record is that of a negro criminal idiot; while Gambetta’s was only
1,241 grammes, a difference of 969 grammes. Surely it will not be held
because of this that Gambetta and Dante should have been denied the
educational and other advantages which were the natural right of Byron
and Cromwell. Yet it is upon this very ground, by this very system of
reasoning, that it is proposed to deny women equal advantages and
opportunities, although the difference in brain weight between man and
woman is said to be only 100 grammes, and even this does not allow for
difference in body weight, and is based upon a system of averages, which
is neither complete nor accurate.”—(Report of the International Council
of Women, Washington, 1888, p. 378.)
Concerning an assertion that “the specific gravity of both the white and
grey matter of the brain is greater in man than in woman,” Helen H.
Gardener says:—“Of this point this is what the leading brain anatomist
in America (Dr. E. C. Spitzka) wrote: ‘The only article recognised by
the profession as important and of recent date, which takes this theory
as a working basis, is by Morselli, and he is compelled to make the
sinister admission, while asserting that the specific gravity is less in
the female, that with old age and with insanity the specific gravity
increases.’ If this is the case I do not know that women need sigh over
their shortcoming in the item of specific gravity. There appear to be
two very simple methods open to them by which they may emulate their
brothers in the matter of specific gravity, if they so desire. One of
these is certain, if they live long enough; and the other—well, there is
no protective tariff on insanity.”—(_Loc. cit._, p. 379.)
Helen Gardener further appositely observes:—“The brain of no remarkable
woman has ever been examined. Woman is ticketed to fit the hospital
subjects and tramps, the unfortunates whose brains fall into the hands
of the profession as it were by mere accident, while man is represented
by the brains of the Cromwells, Cuviers, Byrons, and Spurzheims. By this
method the average of men’s brains is carried to its highest level in
the matter of weight and texture; while that of women is kept at its
lowest, and even then there is only claimed 100 grammes’
difference!”—(_Loc. cit._, p. 380.)
And she concludes her exhaustive paper with the closing paragraph of a
letter to herself from Dr. E. C. Spitzka, the celebrated New York brain
specialist:—“You may hold me responsible for the following declaration:
That any statement to the effect that an observer can tell by looking at
a brain, or examining it microscopically, whether it belonged to a
female or a male subject, is not founded on carefully-observed facts....
No such difference has ever been demonstrated, nor do I think it will be
by more elaborate methods than we now possess. Numerous female brains
exceed numerous male brains in absolute weight, in complexity of
convolutions, and in what brain anatomists would call the nobler
proportions. So that he who takes these as his criteria of the male
brain may be grievously mistaken in attempting to assert the sex of a
brain dogmatically. If I had one hundred female brains and one hundred
male brains together, I should select the one hundred containing the
largest and best-developed brains as probably containing fewer female
brains than the remaining one hundred. More than this no cautious
experienced brain anatomist would venture to declare.”—(_Loc. cit._, p.
381.)
Charles Darwin has clearly summarised this question of comparison of
brain:—“No one, I presume, doubts that the large size of the brain in
man, relatively to his body, in comparison with that of the gorilla or
orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers.... On the
other hand, no one supposes that the intellect of any two animals or of
any two men can be accurately gauged by the cubic contents of their
skulls. It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity
with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter; thus the
wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants
are generally known, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the
quarter of a small pin’s head. Under this latter point of view the brain
of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world,
perhaps more marvellous than the brain of man.”—(“The Descent of Man,”
Chap. IV.)
3.—“_Wide shall she roam_ ...”
John Ruskin says, of training a girl:—“Let her loose in the library, I
say, as you do a fawn in a field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times
better than you, and the good ones too; and will eat some bitter and
prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest thought were
good.”—(“Sesame and Lilies,” p. 167.)
6.—“... _murmurings_ ...”
“Man thinks that his wife belongs to him like his domesticated animals,
and he keeps her therefore in slavery. There are few, however, who wear
their shackles without feeling their weight, and not a few who resent
it. Madame Roland says: ‘Quand vous parlez en maître, vous faites penser
aussitôt qu’on peut vous résister, et faire plus peut être, tel fort que
vous soyez. L’invulnerable Achille ne l’était pas partout.’”—Alexander
Walker, M.D. (“Woman as to Mind, &c.,” p. 353).
“Why do women not discover, when ‘in the noon of beauty’s power,’ that
they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect, till
they are led to resign, or not assume, their natural prerogatives?
Confined then in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do
but to plume themselves and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch.
It is true they are provided with food and raiment, for which they
neither toil nor spin, but health liberty, and virtue are given in
exchange.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (“Vindication of the Rights of Woman,”
Chap. IV.). See also Note XL., 5.
“What have they (men) hitherto offered us in marriage, with a great show
of generosity and a flourish of trumpets, but the dregs of a life, and
the leavings of a dozen other women? Experience has at last taught us
what to expect and how to meet them.”—Lady Violet Greville (_National
Review_, May, 1892).
See also Note XX., 2.
8.—“_Lest that her soul should rise_ ...”
“Laboulaye distinctly advises his readers to keep women in a state of
moderate ignorance, for ‘notre empire est détruit, si l’homme est
reconnu’ (Our empire is at an end when man is found out).”—(Note to
Bebel, Walther’s translation, p. 73.)
_Id._—“... _break his timeworn yoke_.”
As already shown, the subjugation of woman has not been an incident of
Western “civilisation” alone. Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham relates that “When a
Chinese Mandarin in California was told that the women of America were
nearly all taught to read and write, and that a majority of them were
able to keep books for their husbands, if they chose to do so, he shook
his head thoughtfully, and, with a foreboding sigh, replied, ‘If he
readee, writee, by’n-by he lickee all the men.’ Was that a barbarian
sentiment, or rather, perhaps, a presentiment of the higher sovereignty
coming?”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 41.)