In considering what is the best mental equipment for women in civilised
countries it is as well not to contemplate only the great general facts
of life, such as wifehood, motherhood, and the woman's position in the
household. It is necessary to take into account also the special
characteristics and circumstances of our own times and civilisation;
for, unless a woman is prepared to meet these successfully, she cannot
be deemed adequately equipped, even if from other points of view her
education be ideal. In the beautiful old-fashioned education of Japanese
women we have an instance of such ideal excellence, which is yet proving
unable to cope with the requirements of actual life in modern Japan.
The most striking, and also the most radical and pervasive,
characteristic of our time is, of course, the progress made in
scientific knowledge. Month by month enormous numbers of facts are, in
every department, added to the knowledge already acquired. To let one's
imagination range, even in a cursory way, over the work that is being
done in chemistry and physics merely as they concern biology--to
enumerate the subdivisions of these sciences, or to look down a list of
recent publications relating to research carried on in them, is enough
to make one's brain reel.
This ceaseless widening of the borders of knowledge is, we must gladly
allow, most inspiriting; and yet, seen from another side, it may well
give rise to fears. For it is fairly obvious that the progress of human
happiness goes by no means _pari passu_ with this progress of knowledge;
and, on looking more closely, we may even observe miseries and
degradations which can be traced up directly to the practical
application of some of those scientific discoveries.
To what must we ascribe this? It would seem to be the outcome of two
lines of tendency just now predominant.
The first of these is that very strong bent towards mere accumulation of
fresh facts which may be noted in the most able and active workers all
over the world. Just as, in other times, the best minds have flung
themselves with enthusiasm upon art or literature or philosophy or
statesmanship or war, so now they fling themselves eagerly upon the
discovery of more and more recondite truths in science--leaving the
ordinary government of affairs, on the whole, to minds of the second
order.
The next is the reckless way in which isolated scientific
discoveries--more especially in physics and chemistry--are brought to a
practical application and introduced into the scheme of everyday human
life. This is done without consideration of anything beyond ensuring
some obvious superficial convenience, and--what is a principal
determinant--the opening up of new financial enterprises. Advantages of
a sort no doubt are won--but often only at a fearfully disproportionate
cost. The game--if we would but look at it unconventionally, from the
standpoint of true biological science--is not worth the candle; for it
involves a sacrifice of life itself to what can hardly be considered
even as the means of life.
Thus the chemicals used to preserve food impair its nutritive qualities;
while other chemicals, as well as a number of ingenious mechanical
processes, serve to facilitate adulteration. We all know how difficult
it is to obtain pure milk and butter, or pure bread from pure flour, or
jams made with sugar from fresh and good fruit. Bread may be made from
flour which has passed through no less than seven processes,--a sad
contrast this to the old home-made bread, the product of home-ground
meal, whole and sweet as nature made it. What is sold in enormous
quantities to the people as sugar, whether alone or as part of
preserves, turns out often to be glucose. Butter, so-called, is often
only skilfully-treated fats, the weight helped out by water. These three
articles of diet alone, when adulterated as they thus often are, mean
serious deterioration in the food--and therefore in the physique--of the
nation; and to them we have yet to add the effect of the chemicals used
for keeping fish and meat in place of the genuine, old-fashioned
pickling, salting, and smoking.
Machinery, again, growing ever more and more complicated, has destroyed
an incalculable wealth of traditional activity: and therewith,
generation by generation, it tends to destroy the finest capacities of
individual men and women, whether producers or consumers of the finished
product. The consumers suffer through the lack of opportunity to acquire
and exercise manual dexterity and resourcefulness--as well as through a
great lack of experimental knowledge. The producers suffer through the
monotony and narrowness of their labour.
We may take as other instances of recklessness our common use of
unprotected illuminants--electric light and incandescent
gas-mantles--which give off ultra-violet rays injurious to the eyes; the
use of portable electric lamps and switch lampholders, which is by no
means free from risk; and again the extreme recklessness of the
so-called "medical electrician," who will actually venture to give
electrical massage to a patient immediately after wet pack.[12]
As a last example we may take the rage for speed, and in particular
the use of electrically driven motor-cars. The exact effects upon the
human frame of the rapid motion, of the vibrations, of the presence
of the electric current and escaping gas have never been adequately
investigated--though sundry ill consequences of motor-driving have
been noted without any diminution of the practice.
A very cursory reflection may show us that, while the progress of
science is the great characteristic fact of modern life to which we all
have to adjust ourselves, we must be prepared not only to take advantage
of the good it offers, but also to discern and counteract the perils it
brings with it, when applied to human life in our present somewhat
random way.
The random nature of our proceedings may be illustrated from yet another
side. There are a number of facts and principles, long since agreed upon
as truly ascertained, which have never, or only very partially, been
brought to bear upon custom and daily life. We all know that plenty of
fresh air is a first condition of health and vigour; and are so far
convinced of this verity that open-air treatment is generally accepted
as the proper mode of attacking and mastering consumption. Yet we crowd
together into cities: our houses are often very imperfectly ventilated,
and our public buildings--churches, theatres, halls, schools and
institutions, as well as our railway-carriages and tram-cars--provide
only for the very minimum of change of air. Similar neglect of
definitely ascertained facts may be seen in dress, in food and drink, in
furniture, in occupations. Noise is well known to be injurious to the
brain, and destructive to thought: more than that, it has been
discovered that it is harmful to the viscera. We insist, more or less,
upon quiet for the sick: but no trouble is taken about quiet for those
who are well. Our thoroughfares echo with noises of all kinds, from the
roar of traffic to the howling and whistling of errand-boys; and the
authorities would be much surprised if they were accounted specially
negligent for not making some effort to suppress them. Yet to any
biologically trained person this noise must appear not disagreeable
merely, but a real handicap to the health and energy of the community.
Wherever faithfulness to scientific principle involves trouble without
prospect of money-making, it is likely to be shirked, however great the
benefits known to come from it.
This is not entirely due to laziness, nor yet to ignorance, it is due
quite as much to circumstance and to the pressure of our present social
institutions. It is closely bound up with the great social question of
the ownership of land, and with the husbandry and use of the resources
of the land, our rivers and our sea-shore. Wasting a great measure of
what these have to give us, polluting them in different ways by our
manufactures and by the refuse of our cities, we are constraining whole
masses of our population to look to the work and the products of other
countries for the first necessities of life. Whole masses of our
population are removed from direct contact with the soil, which is the
nursing-mother not only of the body, but also of the mind of man; the
people and the land being thus alike impoverished. Inquiring how so
dangerous an error can have arisen, we may find at least part of its
cause to lie in an ignorance of the fundamental principles of biology,
the science of life.
What, it may now be asked, is to be done to counteract these
disadvantages and dangers? And, again, how does all this bear on the
equipment of women?
Taking the latter question first: it is indisputable that an enormous
proportion of our commerce and manufactures is concerned with food and
with articles required for the home. But things for the home are made to
be dealt with and used by women. In so far as science comes in and
modifies this material it is imperative that women should be placed in a
position, not only to know what are the essentials for life, but also to
criticise and estimate accurately that which is offered to them as
scientific improvement. For we need, in this connection also, to
remember that science can only be fought by science--that is, by
knowledge belonging to the same plane.
We have now in part answered our former question. What we need is a
central or basal science to which--for practical purposes and in regard
to its practical application--the work done in other sciences can be
brought to be accepted, or rejected, or modified. This central science
can, in the very nature of things, be none other than biology: the
science, that is, which gives an account of the functions and
inter-relations and structure of all living things, and deduces
therefrom those principles which, in a rather loose way, we speak of as
the laws of life.
It would, we think, be a very happy turn of affairs if, not all, but
some of that genius, which is now spending itself in the research for
fresh facts, could be diverted to the work of correlating with one
another facts already known, and bringing all those that are appropriate
to be grouped as it were in order of service around biology.
But perhaps not less important than this is what we may call the
practical synthetic work of women in their households. There are,
indeed, two circumstances which would give the ordinary woman of average
intelligence, if she were but adequately instructed, some advantage, so
far as the service of mankind goes, over even the most brilliant man of
genius. The first is the vantage-ground of her position in the home--at
the very point, that is, where so many sciences thrust themselves up
together to the surface of actual life--where in some way or other,
however roughly, they have to be correlated, compared, their different
claims adjusted. The second is the natural inclination of the womanly
mind towards synthesis rather than analysis, towards practice rather
than theory.
We ought now to consider rather closely--exhaustively we cannot--what
is included under the term Biology. It stood for some time chiefly to
mean an account of the structures of animals and plants, structure
being pursued into ever further minuteness, down to the cell and the
constituents and parts of the cell. With this has gone insistent
inquiry into the process of reproduction and growth; and more lately,
in bio-chemistry and bio-physics, the conformity of living substance
to the order recognised in non-living matter has been, and is being,
most eagerly investigated. And now a school of biologists is arising
whose aim is the vindication of the claims of function as against
the too exclusive study of structure. Function, of course, involves
activity; and activity, in a complex, multicellular organism, involves
the interplay of parts. This interplay, again, cannot be studied
without reference to the environment, and to the relations between the
organism in question and others--whether of its own or of other species.
In this way it seems likely that biology--moving as it were in a
spiral--will by-and-by return, though at a much higher level, to the
standpoint of the older naturalists, whose interest in plants and
animals was focussed more upon their activities, habits of life and
special environment than upon their morphology--and even disdained
not to consider their possible uses for man. Also, more thoroughly and
extensively than before, the study of man himself is being caught up
into the great web of Biology. It is seen as an integral part of
Biology, and pursued in the biological spirit. Whether we look to
psychology on the one hand, or to anthropology and its associated
sciences on the other, the present is a most propitious moment for
drawing public attention to this vast science, as being the true
centre and foundation of that practical knowledge which is needed as
a guide, and also as a stimulus, for practical everyday life.
It will, of course, be instantly objected that the subject is indeed
vast--much too vast. But not too vast, surely, if, by means of a very
simple principle, we select out what is of immediate definite use, and
necessary for everybody, from what may be, by the majority, safely left
on one side. We shall then get, on this side, the highly specialised
Biology of the laboratory with its minute researches and nicely
calculated experiments, and, on that, what we may, for our present
purpose, call Common-sense Biology.
Just one word of explanation is perhaps needed at the outset.
Common-sense Biology does not mean anything like that slipshod dealing
with miscellaneous phenomena of nature which sometimes goes by the name
of Nature Study. It is a course of work systematic and strictly
scientific, conducted as truly as any other in the scientific spirit. It
presents, however, two points of contrast with special or analytical
Biology, in that, whereas, in analytical Biology, a beginning may be
made practically anywhere, with any series of facts one may prefer to
take first, in Common-sense Biology there is only one right mode of
starting, and that of the utmost importance; while, secondly,
Common-sense Biology combines some of the characteristics of an art with
the ordinary characteristics of a science.