Ladies and Gentlemen:--Poets, statesmen, novelists, and artists have for
ages untold striven to eclipse each other in the eulogies of motherhood.
On the stage nothing is so sure of rapturous applause as is some
touching bit of sacrifice which has reached its climax in a mother's
love wherein she has yielded all to shield, to protect, or to better the
condition of husband or child. From the crude topical songs which advise
the son to "Stick to your mother when her hair turns gray," through
the various phases of maternal love and devotion or sacrifice in the
"Camille" type of thought, on up to the loftiest touches in art and
literature, there is alike the effort to celebrate the power, the
potentiality and the beauty of motherhood and to stimulate the
sentiments of gratitude and love and of admiration for and emulation of
the ideal depicted. But through it all, in the building and nurturing
of the ideal, there runs--ever and always--the thread of thought that
self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, self-effacement, are the grandest
attributes of maternity. That in order to be a perfect, an ideal wife
and mother, the woman must be sunk, the individual immolated, the ego
subjugated. To a degree and in a sense, that is, of course, true.
For the willingness to go down to the gates of death; to face its
possibility for long, weary months; to know that suffering, and to fear
that death, stands as a sure and inevitable host at the end of a long
journey--to know this and to be willing to face it for the sake of
others is a heroism, a bravery, a self-abnegation so infinitely above
and beyond the small heroism of camp or battlefield that comparison is
almost sacrilege.
The condemned man, upon whom the death watch has been set, who cannot
hope for executive clemency, who is helpless in the hands of absolute
power, still knows that, although death may be sure, physical suffering
is unlikely or at the worst will be but brief; but he alone stands in
the position to know--even to a degree--the nervous strain, the mental
anguish, the unthinking but uncontrollable panics of flesh and blood and
nerve which woman faces at the behests of love and maternity and,
alas, that it can be true, at the behests of sex power and financial
dependence!
But when we study anthropology and heredity we come to realize the
indisputable facts that her love, her physical heroism and her bravery,
linked with her political and financial subject status, has cast a
physical blight, a moral shadow and a mental threat upon the world, we
cease to clap quite so vigorously at the theater and our tears or smiles
are mingled with mental reservations and a sigh for a loftier ideal of
the meaning and purpose of maternity than the merely physical one that
man has depicted as material sacrifice to the child and self-abnegation
and subjection to him. We begin to wonder if much of the vice, the
crime, the wrong, the insanity, the disease, the incompetence and
the woe of the world is not the direct lineal descendant of this very
self-debasement of the individual character of woman in maternity!
We wonder if an unwilling, a forced or supinely yielding (and not
self-controlled), a subject motherhood, in short, is not responsible to
the race for the weak, the deformed, the depraved, the double dealing,
pretense-soaked natures which curse the world with failure, with
disease, with war, with insanity and with crime. We wonder if the awful
power with which nature clothes maternity in heredity does not strike
blindly back at the race for man's artificial and cruel requirements at
the hands of the producer of the race. We wonder if mothers do not owe a
higher duty to their offspring than that of mere nurse. We wonder if she
has the moral right to give her children the inheritance that accident
and subserviency stamps upon body and mind. We wonder how she dares face
her child and know that she did not fit herself by self-development
and by direct, sincere, firm and thorough qualifications for maternity
before she dared to assume its responsibilities. We wonder that man has
been so slow in learning to read the message that nature has telegraphed
to him in letters of fire and photographed with a terrible persistency
upon the distorted, diseased bodies and minds of his children and upon
the moral imbeciles she has set before him as an answer to his message
of sex domination.*
* "Alienists bold, in general, that a large proportion of
mental diseases is the result of degeneracy; that is, they
are the offspring of drunken, insane, syphilitic and
consumptive parents, and suffer from the action of
heredity."--Dr. MacDonald; author of Criminology.
"Who has sinned, this man or his parents that he was blind?"
Bible.
Self-abnegation, subserviency to man--whether he be father, lover, or
husband--is the most dangerous that can be taught to, or forced upon
her, whose character shall mould the next generation! She has no right
to transmit a nature and a character that is subservient, subject,
inefficient, undeveloped--in short, a slavish character, which is either
blindly obedient or blindly rebellious and is therefore set, as is a
time-lock, to prey or to be preyed upon by society in the future!
If woman is not brave enough personally to demand, and to obtain,
absolute personal liberty of action, equality of status and entire
control of her great and race-endowing function of maternity, she has
no right to dare to stamp upon a child, and to curse a race with
the descendants of a servile, a dwarfed, a time-and-master-serving
character.
We have been taught that it is an awful thing to commit murder--to take
a human life. There are students of anthropology and heredity who think
that it is a far more awful thing to thrust, unasked, upon a human being
a life that is handicapped before he gets it. It is a far more solemn
responsibility to give than to take a human life! In the one case you
invade personal liberty and put a stop to an existence more or less
valuable and happy, but at least all pain is over for that invaded
individuality. In the other case--in giving life--you invade the liberty
of infinite oblivion and thrust into an inhospitable world another human
entity to struggle, to sink, to swim, to suffer or to enjoy. Whether the
one or the other no mortal knows, but surely knows it must contend not
only with its environment but with its heredity--with itself.
Not long ago a great man, who is successful beyond most human units,
who is wealthy, socially to be envied, who enjoys almost ideal family
relations, who is in all regards a man of broad intellect, of large
heart, who is beloved, successful and powerful--not long ago this man
said to me, when talking of life and its chances, its joys and its
burdens and wrongs:
"Well, the more I think of it all, the more I know, the more I delve
into philosophy and science, the more I understand life as it is and as
it must be for long years to come, if not forever, the more I wonder at
the sturdy bravery of those who are less fortunate than I. Does it pay
me to live? Would I choose to be born again? Were I to-day unborn, could
I be asked for my vote, knowing all I do of life, would I vote to come
into this world? Taking life at its best estate are we not assuming a
tremendous risk to thrust it unasked upon those who are at least safe
from its pitfalls? I ask myself these questions very often," he said,
and then hesitatingly, "I sometimes think it pays after all. Of course,
since I am here I am bound to make the best of it, but for all that I am
not sure how I would vote on my birth if I had the chance to try it--not
quite sure."
"If you are so impressed with life for yourself--you, a fortunate,
healthy, wealthy, happily married, successful man," said I, "don't you
think it is a pretty serious thing to assume the right to cast that vote
for another human pawn, who could hardly conceivably stand your chances
in the world?"
"Serious," he exclaimed. "Serious! With the world's conditions what they
are to-day, with the physical, moral and mental chances to run, with
woman, the character-forming producer of the race a half-educated
subordinate to masculine domination, it is little short of madness; it
is not far from a crime. It is a crime unless the mother is a physically
healthy, a mentally developed and comprehending, morally clear, strong,
vigorous entity who knows her personal responsibility in maternity and,
knowing, dares maintain it."
It has been the fashion to hold that the mothers of the race should not
be the thinkers of the race. Indeed, in commenting upon this Congress of
Representative Women, the most widely read newspaper on this continent
last week said editorially:
"There is to be a great series of women's congresses held at Chicago
during the Fair. The purpose is to illustrate and celebrate the progress
of women. Accordingly there will be sessions to discuss the achievements
of women in art, authorship, business, science, histrionic endeavor,
law, medicine and a variety of other activities.
"But so far as the published programmes enable us to judge not one thing
is to be done to show the progress of women as women. There will be
no showing made of any increased capacity on their part to make homes
happier, to make their husbands stronger for their work in the world,
to encourage high endeavors, to maintain the best standards of honor
and duty, to stimulate, encourage, uplift--which--from the beginning
of civilization--has been the supreme feminine function. Nothing, it
appears, is to be done at the congresses to show that a higher education
and a larger intellectual advancement has enabled women to bear
healthier children or to bring them up in a manner more surely tending
to make this a better world to live in, the noblest of all work that can
be done by women.
"We need no congress to show us that women are more thoroughly educated
than they once were, or that they can successfully do things once
forbidden to them. But have wider culture and wider opportunities made
them better wives and mothers? A congress which should show that
would make all men advocates of still larger endeavors for woman's
advancement. A congress, on the other hand, which assumes that the only
thing to be celebrated is an increased capacity to win fame or money
will teach a disastrously false and dangerous lesson to our growing
girls."
This fatal blunder as to woman's development as woman--quite aside from
her home relations, which the editor confuses with it--has retarded
the real civilization and caused to be transmitted--unnecessarily
transmitted--the characteristics which have gone far to make insanity,
disease and deformity of mind and body, the heritage of well-nigh every
family in the land.
A great medical expert said to me not long ago, "There is not more
than one family in ten who can show a clean bill of health, mental and
physical--aye, and moral--from hereditary taints that are serious in
threat and almost certain of development in one form or another.
"Now, if a man with a contagious disease enters a community he is
quarantined for the benefit of his fellows, who might never take it if
he were not restrained and isolated. But if a man with a hereditary
or transmittible disorder, which is certain, enters a community, he is
allowed to marry and transmit it to the helpless unborn--to establish a
line of posterity--who are far more directly his victims than would be
those who were exposed to a cholera contagion by a lack of quarantine.
Fathers, physicians, society, and all educational and economic
conditions have conspired to keep mothers ignorant of all the facts of
life of which mothers should know everything; and so it has come about
that the race is the victim of the narrow and dangerous doctrine of sex
domination and sex restriction, and of selfish reckless indulgence. If
not one family in ten can show a clean bill of heredity, is it not more
than time that the mothers learn why, learn where, and in what they
are responsible, and that they cease 'to close the doors of mercy on
mankind?'"
Maternity, its duties, needs and responsibilities has been exploited in
all ages and climes; in all phases and spheres, from one point of
view only--the point of view of the male owner. If you think that this
statement is extreme I beg of you to read "The Evolution of Marriage"
by Letourneau. Read it all. Read it with care. It is the production of
a man of profound learning and research, a man who sees the light of
the future dawning, although even he sometimes lapses from a universal,
language of humanity into hereditary forms of speech, hedged in by sex
bias.
But in all the past arguments maternity with its duties to itself;
maternity with its duties to the race, has never been more than merely
touched upon, and even then it has been chiefly from the side of the
present, and not with the tremendous search-light of heredity and of
future generations turned upon it. It has been ever and always in its
relations to the desires, opinions and prejudices of the present man
power which controls it.
Some time ago a famous doctor in New York took up the cudgel against
higher education for women, and under the heading of "Education
and Maternity; Woman's Proper Sphere; the Dangers Which Threaten
Intellectual and Society Women;" wrote in favor of ignorant wives and a
larger number of children. A great journal published his article without
protest, thus giving added prestige to the opinions expressed. This,
too, in spite of the fact that at that very time the same journal was
appealing for alms, for free nurses, for volunteer doctors and for a
fresh-air fund to enable the ignorant mothers of the crime-infested,
disease-pol-luted, over populated tenements of the city to get even a
breath of fresh air by the sea, which is only two miles from its doors!
In spite of the fact, too, that Lombroso, Ricardo, Mendel, Spitzka,
MacDonald and other famous anthropologists and experts have pointed out
so plainly in their criminal, insane, imbecile and mortuary statistics
the all-pervading evil of rapid, ill advised, irresponsible parentage.
Professor Edward S. Morse, in a recent paper called "Natural Selection
in Crime," which he courteously sent to me, said: "To one at all
familiar with the external aspects of insanity in its various forms it
seems incredible that its physical nature was not sooner realized. Had
the laws of heredity been earlier understood it would have been seen
that mental derangements, like physical diseases and tendencies, were
transmitted."
Of late years there has sprung into existence a school of criminal
anthropology, with societies, journals, and a rapidly increasing
literature. A most admirable summary of the work thus far accomplished
has recently been given by Dr. Robert Fletcher in his address as
retiring president of the Anthropological Society of Washington. In his
opening paragraphs Dr. Fletcher thus graphically portrays the scourge of
the criminal and his rapid increase:
"In the cities, towns and villages of the civilized world every year
thousands of unoffending men and women are slaughtered; millions of
money, the product of honest toil and careful saving, are carried away
by the conqueror, and incendiary fires light his pathway of destruction.
Who is this devastator, this modern "scourge of God," whose deeds are
not recorded in history? The criminal! Statistics unusually trustworthy
show that if the carnage yearly produced by him could be brought
together at one time and place it would excel the horrors of many a
well-contested field of battle. In nine great countries of the world,
including our own favored land, in one year, 10,380 cases of homicide
were recorded, and in the six years extending from 1884 to 1889, in the
United States alone, 14, 770 murders came under cognizance of the law.
"And what has society done to protect itself against this aggressor?
True, there are criminal codes, courts of law, and that surprising
survival of the unfittest, trial by jury. Vast edifices have been built
as prisons and reformatories, and philanthropic persons have formed
societies for the instruction of the criminal and to care for him when
his prison gates are opened. But, in spite of it all, the criminal
becomes more numerous. He breeds criminals; the taint is in the blood,
and there is no royal touch can expel it."
Commenting on this Professor Morse says: "Certain results of the modern
school of anthropology, as presented by Dr. Fletcher, may be briefly
summed up by stating broadly that in studying the criminal classes from
the standpoint of anatomy, physiology, external appearance, even to
the minuter shades of difference in the form of the skull and facial
proportions, the criminal is a marked man. His abnormities are
characteristic, and are to be diagnosticated in only one way. That these
propositions are being rapidly established there can be no doubt. As an
emphatic evidence of their truth, the criminal is able to transmit his
criminal propensities even beyond the number of generations allotted to
inheritance by Scripture."
And where do all these lunatics and criminals come from? From educated
mothers? from mothers who are in even a small and limited sense allowed
to own themselves, to think for themselves, control their own lives? Not
at all. They are the mothers whose lives belong to their men, as this
learned doctor, who objects to the higher education of women, argues
that all wives should.
Maternity is an awful power, and I repeat that it strikes back at the
race, with a blind, fierce, far-reaching force, in revenge for its
subject status. Dr. Arthur MacDonald, in his "Criminology," says: "The
intellectual physiognomy shows an inferiority in criminals, and when in
an exceptional way there is a superiority, it is rather in the nature of
cunning and shrewdness.... Poverty, misery and organic debility are not
infrequently the cause of crime."
Who is likely to transmit "organic debility?" The mother of many
children or of few? Who is likely to stamp a child with low intellectual
physiognomy? The mother who is educated or she who is the willing or
unwilling subordinate in life's benefits?
Again he says: "Every asymmetry is not necessarily a defect of cerebral
development, for, as suggested above, under the influence of education
defects of function can be corrected, covered up or eradicated." Can
this be true of criminals and not of normal women?
Again he says: "When we consider the early surroundings, unhygienic
conditions, alcoholic parents, etc., of the criminal, where he may begin
vice as soon as consciousness awakes, malformation, due to neglect and
rough treatment, are not surprising. Yet the criminal malformations may
be frequently due to osteological conditions. But here still hereditary
influence and surrounding conditions in early life exert their power."
Benedikt says: "To suppose that an atypically constructed brain can
function normally is out of the question."
So long as motherhood is kept ignorant, dependent and subject in status
just that long will heredity avenge the outrage upon her womanhood, upon
her personality, upon her individual right to a dignified, personal,
equal human status, by striking telling blows on the race.
But let me return to the arguments of the author of "Higher Education
and Woman's Sphere," since he represents all the reactionary thought
on this topic and because he ignores utterly, as do all of his fellows,
woman's duty to herself and her awful power for good or evil upon the
race, according as she makes herself a dignified, developed, educated
and independent individuality first and a function of maternity second.
It seems to me that in discussing no other question in life is there so
little logical reasoning and so much arbitrary dogmatism as in the ones
which are usually embraced under "woman's sphere." In the first place,
it is assumed that because women are mothers they are nothing else; that
because this is her sphere she can have, should have, no other.
Men are fathers. That is their sphere, therefore they should not be
mentally developed, legally and politically emancipated, socially
civilized or economically independent. This would appear to most men,
doubtless, as a somewhat absurd proposition. It appears so to me, but
it is not one whit less absurd when applied to women. Yet this is
constantly done. Because women are mothers is the very reason why
they should be developed mentally and physically and socially to their
highest possible capacity. The old theory that a teacher was good enough
for a primary class if she knew the "A B C's" and little else has long
since been exploded. A high degree of intellectual capacity and a broad
mental grasp are more important in those who have the training and
molding of small children than if the children were older. The younger
the mind the less capable it is to guide itself intelligently and
therefore the more important is it that the guide be both wise and well
informed. In a college, if the professor is only a little wiser than his
class it does not make so much difference. In a post-graduate course it
makes even less, for here all are supposed to be somewhat mature. Each
has within himself an intelligent guide, a reasoner, a questioner and
one to answer questions.
With little children the one who has them in charge most closely must be
all this and more. She must understand the proportions and relations
of things and wherein they touch--the bearing and trend of mental and
physical phenomena. She must furnish self-poise to the nervous child
and stimulus to the phlegmatic one. She must be able to read signs
and interpret indications in the mental and moral, as well as in the
physical being of those within her care. All this she must be able to do
readily and with apparent unconsciousness if she is best fitted to deal
with and develop small children. More than this, she must be not only
able to detect wants but have the wisdom to guide, to stimulate, to
restrain, to develop the plastic creature in her keeping. If she had the
wisdom of the fabled gods and the self-poise of the Milo she would not be
too well equipped for bearing and educating the race in her keeping.
But more than this the ideal mother should know and be. She must have
love too loyal and sense of obligation too profound to recklessly bring
into the world children she cannot properly endow or care for. It does
not appear to occur to the physicians and politicians who discuss this
question that it may be due to other causes than incapacity that the
educated women are the mothers of fewer children than are the "ideal
wives and mothers" of whom they speak in their arguments against her
higher education--the squaws of the Kaffirs and Black-feet Indian women,
who "devote but a few hours to the completion of this act of nature," as
our doctor felicitously expresses it. It is no doubt true that habits
of civilization do tend to make the dangers of motherhood greater. So do
they tend to render men less sturdy--less perfect animals. A Kaffir
or an Indian buck would not find it necessary to stay at home from his
office, for example, because of a broken arm, or a gun shot wound in the
leg. He would tramp sturdily through the forest, and sleep in the jungle
with an arrow imbedded in his flesh. He would sit stolidly down on a log
and cut it out of himself with a scalping-knife. Yet nobody would think
it a desirable thing for a member of the Union League club to stop on
his way up Fifth avenue and attend to his own surgery on the sidewalk.
They would expect him to faint, and to be "carried tenderly into the
nearest drug store" and a doctor would be sent for. He would be put
under the influence of an anaesthetic drug during the operation,
and carefully nursed for weeks afterward by his devoted wife, and
intelligent physician. Then if he pulled through it would be heralded
far and wide as because of his "magnificent physique, his pluck and the
excellent treatment he received." Well now, is he a less "manly man"
than is the Kaffir or the Indian buck? Is he a less desirable husband
and father? Is he "deteriorating in his sphere?" The fact is, the more
sensitive men have become to pain, whether it be mental or physical, the
more manly have they grown, the more nearly fitted to be the fathers of
a race of men and women who are not mere brutes. The race does not need
the brute type any longer. It has already too many mere human animals
to deal with--in its asylums, almshouses, prisons and impoverished
districts.
This world is in no danger of suffering from a lack of children, the cry
has always been "over population" and even in our new country the wail
has begun. Not more children, but a better kind of children is what is
needed. Who will be likely to furnish these? The ideal "squaw wife" or
the educated woman, who knows that her obligation to her child begins
before it is born, and does not end even with her death, for she must
leave it the heritage of a good name, an earnest life, a noble example,
even after she is gone.
If by "being unfitted for the sphere of wife and mother" it is meant
that this sphere is truly that of a mere animal--a healthy animal--if
in order to be an ideal wife to civilized man, woman should remain a
savage; if to be a mother to an intellectually advancing race she need
not even comprehend the advance, then truly are these arguments against
her higher education and intellectual development logical.
But even then they are not fair. Why? Simply because she has not been
consulted as to her choice in the matter. The argument is still based
on the tremendous assumption that man's happiness, man's desires, man's
wishes, man's rights, are the sum total of all desire, all right,
all freedom, all happiness and all justice. It omits two tremendous
equations--that of the woman herself and that of her offspring, who will
have a right to demand of her how she dared equip him so badly for the
life into which she has taken the liberty to bring him. To demand of her
how she dared equip herself so ill for her self-imposed task of creator
of a human soul!
Up to the present time woman's moral responsibility in heredity has been
below the point of zero, for the reason that she has had no voice in her
own control nor in that of her children. With the present knowledge
of heredity she who permits herself to become a mother without having
demanded and obtained (1) her own freedom from sex dominion and (2)
fair and free conditions of development for herself and her child, will
commit a crime against herself, against her child and against the race.
But the learned doctor deplores the fact that educated women are
bringing fewer children into the world, and argues that, this being the
case, it shows that education is not within woman's sphere. Now, if
a man does not choose to become the father of ten or twelve children
nobody on earth feels called upon to criticise him as not properly
filling his sphere--as out of his proper sphere--in case he prefers
to spend more of his time on mental development and progress than upon
irresponsible physical indulgence and paternity. If he makes up his mind
that he cannot or does not wish to become responsible for the mental and
physical endowment and well-being of more than one or two children, or
of none, nobody says that his "college training unfitted him for the
holy position of husband and father, which is his sphere." Perhaps the
college training may have a good deal to do with it in the sense that
with his developed mind and wider information, his sense of right and
of personal obligation to the unborn has tended in that direction. We do
not often notice a vast degree of self discipline of this nature in
the uneducated, whether it be man or woman, but is this a reason for
deprecating intellectual training for our boys? Why then for the girls?
It appears to me that it is one of the greatest possible arguments in
favor of higher education for women, unless, indeed, it is desirable
to be mere Kaffirs, both male and female, which has its strong points.
Kaffirs are healthier, hardier, more irresponsibly, happily brutal. They
have few nervous moments, I fancy, over the future good of wife or child
or friend. Their sense of obligation does not keep them awake nights.
They are neither afraid nor ashamed to create helpless human beings
simply to furnish targets for another tribe. They have not even a
glimmer of the thought--still embryonic, indeed, in civilized man--that
the woman whose life is risked, and the child upon whom life is thrust
unasked, are of the least consideration in the matter. These have no
rights which the Kaffir lord is bound to respect. I fancy if he were
asked a question on the subject he would look at you in stupid, silent
wonder, if he did not ask: "What have they got to do with it? I am the
race. What she and my children are for is to look after me, to make me
comfortable, to be my inferiors, for my glory." Most likely he would be
so stupidly unequal to even the shadow of a thought not purely egotistic
that he could not even formulate such preposterous questions and
self-evident statements as these. But his civilized brother does it for
him--so why complain?*
* The report of the marriage of another educated and refined
white woman to a full-blooded Sioux Indian shows the species
of lunacy that attacks those who make a hobby of Indian
education. The woman who has cast in her lot with an Indian,
whose savagery is only veneered with civilized manners, will
repent of her act, as all her sisters in misery have done
before her. As a husband the American Indian is not a model,
for even long training among white people fails to uproot
his native idea that a woman is simply provided to bear him
children and to do hard work which is beneath his dignity.--
N. Y. Press. June, 1893.
Now, suppose a woman would prefer to enjoy her mental capabilities
to the full and develop these rather than to be the mother of a large
brood; suppose she thinks she should be a developed woman first before
daring to become a mother, whose right is it to object? If men prefer
Kaffir wives there is a large assortment on hand. Squaws, both white and
red, are to be had for the asking.
Whose right is it to decide that all women shall be squaws in mental
development, in social position, in legal status and in political and
economic relations, if all women do not choose to be such? Has a woman
not the right to be a human being and count one in the economy of life
before she is a mother---quite aside from her maternal capabilities? If
not, when and where did she forfeit that right? When and where did _man_
get his? Every man has and maintains the right to be a man first--a
unit, a responsible human being; after that--aside from it--he may,
if he choose, become also a husband and a father. Is it not more than
possible that the whole human race has been dwarfed and retarded and
hampered in its upward struggle because of this unaccountable effort
to climb one side at a time, because brute force and phenomenal egotism
have always refused to place humanity on terms of equal opportunity and
leave nature alone?
We are constantly informed that those who insist on equal opportunities,
on equal status before the law for women are making an effort to subvert
nature; that nature has done this and that and the other thing with and
for women. Well if she has, then she will take care of the results in
an open field. She does not need special, restrictive laws placed on
the sex that she has already put under the ban of inferiority. If the
superior sex cannot still more than hold its own without putting a high
protective tariff on itself then how can it claim to be the superior
sex? Nature has managed very well with the lower animals, giving them
equal surroundings and opportunities. That nature is not allowed to
manage for women is the very point we object to. Men have made all sorts
of laws for and about women that are not made for and about men. Why
not make laws and make them apply to the human being, leaving the sex
of that human being out of the question? It is the special, restrictive,
unnatural sex provisions in the laws and in the conditions of life
that are objected to. No woman objects to nature's decree that she is
a potential mother any more than men object to her decree that they are
potential fathers.
It is the fact that men insist that women are this and nothing
more--which nature did not say--to which women object. Nowhere else
in nature does the male claim all of the other avenues of life as
his special sex privilege, except alone the one which he cannot
perform--that of maternity. The sexes stand on an exact equality as to
opportunity until we come to man. The brain of each is developed to
the extent of its capacity. The freedom and opportunity for food and
pleasure are enjoyed by the sexes alike. When the desire for maternity
is strong upon her is the only time that the female brute animal ever
becomes a mother. She decides when she is a mere mother, and when she
is an animal with all the rights and privileges of her genus. With
the human race alone is one-half governed upon the theory, and its
opportunities fitted to the idea, that the female is never a unit, never
a human being, never a person, but that she is simply, solely and only a
potential mother, whose one "sphere" even then is to be controlled
and regulated as to time, place and conditions--not by nature, not by
herself, as with the lower animals, but by the other half of the race,
which holds itself as first human, individual, and with rights, duties,
privileges and ambitions pertaining to him as such. His sex relation,
his potential paternity, is truly his "sphere" also, but that it is his
whole sphere he has never dreamed. There are women who look at life the
same way, for the other half of humanity, and decline to read nature's
teachings--are unable to read them--in any other way.
But aside from all this the doctor first claims that it is the
intellectual development which cripples maternal capabilities and then
he proceeds to give the reasons for the poor health of girls, which
turn out to be bad ventilation in their schools, unwholesome sanitary
conditions, injudicious or insufficient nourishment or physical and
mental habits, and a lack of intelligent mothers and teachers, who dress
and train the girls unhealthfully and in vitiated surroundings. How
would boys fare under like conditions? Would the doctor say that it was
the intellectual training which wrecked the health of the boys or would
he say that it was the absurd conditions under which they got their
training? Would he advise less mental work or less vile air; fewer
studies or better light; more healthful clothing and food and exercise,
or that the boys go homeland devote themselves to the sphere nature
marked out for them--paternity?
Again the doctor appears to confuse society women with college women. As
a rule they are totally distinct classes. The mere society woman who--so
the doctor says--"wrecks her health in rounds of pleasure and bears
sickly children or none," is, in nine cases out of ten, the exact
opposite of the intellectual woman--the college-bred girl--who has
learned before she leaves college the value of health and the obligation
to herself and others to be well. It is true that certain of the
fashionable schools which fit girls for society and for nothing else on
earth call their girls educated; but, since no one else does, it were
futile to confuse the two classes. The mere society girl, as a rule, is,
so far as real mental development and higher education and capacity to
think logically, are concerned, as truly a squaw as if she wore blanket
and feathers. Indeed, this is what she does wear mentally. She should be
a perfect wife for the men who wish wives to be physical and not mental
companions; she would be second only to the Kaffir women in that she
wears a trifle more clothing.
But even in her case, would it not be wise to infer that she has not
necessarily physically incapacitated herself for maternity by her
frivolous life, so much as that she does not care for children, and
would find them troublesome to a brain, which holds nothing more serious
and valuable than jewels and reception dates? And, if she did reproduce
her kind, would this world be benefited? Why this constant cry for more
children in a world crushed by the weight of sorrow, suffering and wrong
to those already here? Until children can be born into better conditions
let us be thankful that there is one class of women too narrowly selfish
and another class too full of the sense of obligation to add very
rapidly to this bee hive of misery and discontent and wrong.
The world needs healthier, wiser, truer children, not more of them, and
until mothers are both educated and rank before the law as human beings,
they will never be able to give that kind to the world. Just so long as
men must get their brains from the proscribed sex, just that long
will their minds remain an "infant industry" and be in need of a high
protective tariff in the shape of restrictive laws on women to shield
men from equal competition in a fair field as and with human units. The
laws of heredity are as inflexible as death. Invariable, they are
not; but so surely as there is a family likeness in faces, there are
hereditary reasons for crime, for insanity, for disease, for mental and
for moral imbecility, and women owe it to themselves, and to the world
which they populate, not to allow themselves to be made either the
unwilling, or the supine, transmitters or creators of a mentally,
morally or physically dwarfed or distorted progeny.
While reading the proof for this book, this interesting
article comes to me from Germany and shows how thoroughly
the false basis of thought is being undermined, in other
countries than our own. H. H. G.
"There has been so much discussion concerning the physical and mental
differences between men and women, and the representatives of social
science have expressed so many contradictory opinions regarding this
question, that I feel it my duty, as a physiologist, to give my opinion
on this important matter. Several fathers of the Church have entirely
denied that woman has a soul. The canonists write: 'Woman is not formed
after the image of God; and many philosophers in the same manner have
considered women of small consequence. In a discourse 'concerning the
education and culture of women,' Prof Sergi has followed the lead of
this pessimistic school. The differences between the sexes, to which
Prof. Sergi lias called attention, are doubtless significant for
anthropology and physiology but, in my opinion, do not depend on the
original condition of woman, but are caused by the barriers which have
been raised by society regarding her destiny. In order to obtain an
unprejudiced judgment, we must free woman from the yoke which man has
placed upon her. We must observe her in the natural position, where she
represents a particular language in the zoological scale. The ladies
must now pardon me if I compare them with the lower animals, for in this
way I can the better exalt them.
"As objects of comparison we will observe the most intelligent and
faithful animals. With regard to dogs and horses we notice little
difference between either the strength or the temperament of males and
females. The hunter fears the lioness more than the lion, and the
same is true of tigers and panthers. Prof. Sergi, in the above-named
discourse, has expressed the following condemnatory opinion: "Neither in
her physical nor mental capacities has woman reached man's normal scale
of development, but on an average has remained so far behind that this
sex seems to have come to a standstill in the general development of the
race." This statement has surprised me in the highest degree. It
appears to me that the marks of the human race, and the real physical
characteristics which distinguish us from the animals, are feminine
peculiarities. The principle has been adduced that the structure of the
brain shows the abyss between man and animals. This is incorrect. There
is no immeasurable difference between our brain and that of the gorilla,
and the effects of the central cavities are shown only in the advancing
development of the expressions of physical activity, not in their
formation and character. A greater morphological difference between man
and the animals is shown in the form of the pelvis. No physician,
even twenty steps away, could mistake the pelvis of man for that of an
anthropoid ape. The pelvis of woman is a new type which has appeared on
the earth. Until now we have sought in vain for that animal which shall
complete the chain between us and animals. It is striking: the narrow,
high pelvis of the man is more ape-like than that of the woman. If the
assertion is correct that the upright gait (on two feet) is the mark of
distinction, and the noblest one for man, then woman certainly possesses
the advantage of a pelvis particularly suitable for upright walking.
Darwin has also demonstrated that female animals often revert to
the masculine type, while the reverse seldom happens. More favorable
conditions are necessary for the production of a female animal than
a male, because the female embryo exhibits a greater fulness of life.
Statistics have shown that under unfavorable conditions more men than
women are born; also, male animals die more easily than female.
"Several judges of the woman question who consider that the brain of
woman cannot compare with that of man, add that women should not enter
into emulation with men in the mental domain lest they should lose the
charm of their femininity, and because they should give themselves up
completely to their vocation as wife and mother. This division of the
work is certainly very useful for man and has greatly assisted him to
his position of power, and has Pushed woman into the background. But it
is incorrect that woman loses her womanliness by cultivating her mind."
[From the Deutsche Revue.]