Household Administration Part 2

The random nature of our proceedings may be ill.u.s.trated 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 circ.u.mstance and to the pressure of our present social inst.i.tutions. 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-sh.o.r.e. 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 ma.s.ses of our population to look to the work and the products of other countries for the first necessities of life. Whole ma.s.ses 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 const.i.tuents 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.n.a.lytical Biology, in that, whereas, in a.n.a.lytical 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.

COMMON-SENSE BIOLOGY

It is this latter form of the science--this science, which is also an art--that we would advocate as essential for the equipment of women.

With this view let us examine it further.

And first, what is its proper starting-point? Its proper starting-point is accurate instruction concerning the living things with which the student is, or can easily be, brought into immediate practical contact.

And, again, in the study of these living things--plants and animals alike--attention is directed first towards the organism in its totality and in its activities--towards function rather than towards structure; and also towards mode of life, relations with environment, and, where possible, towards its use or danger to mankind. Structure will, no doubt, early have to be introduced, but only in its larger details as explanatory of function, for the sake of a better knowledge of the animal or plant as a whole.

What are to be the types and examples of organisms studied?

This is an important question, and the writer would most strongly urge that the principle of selection should be that of locality; that the student should start with those plants and animals--both wild and domestic--which are to be found within a given radius of the place where she is living and working. The first things to know about are habit, activity, inter-relation and use to human beings. In respect to these, the presence of one organism will react upon others, and therefore no plant or animal within the area should be lightly overlooked.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BACTERIOLOGY

We must not, however, confine attention to the higher multicellular animals and plants. One of the most important factors in the environment is the existence of bacteria; and it is of great importance that an outline of bacteriology should be included in our course of Common-sense Biology. This outline should be kept close to the common necessities of everyday life. For the sake of making clear and real to the mind the manner in which bacteria multiply and the extreme rapidity of the process, a certain amount of microscopical work ought to be done, the examples being few, but carefully chosen. This kind of work, nevertheless, should be kept subordinate. The effects wrought by bacteria in water, earth and air, in stored foodstuffs, and in the tissues of the living body are the important subjects for study; and naturally, connected with these, the conditions which permit the access of bacteria or which, in the case of noxious bacteria, will best ensure protection.

The rationale of toxins and anti-toxins, with the relations of these to the blood-serum should also, in a general way, be known; and moreover the student should be prepared to learn that many diseases, which are at present very imperfectly understood--we may take, for instance, forms of insanity--have their _vera causa_ in the action of toxins, and require to be treated accordingly.

Perhaps, for those who cannot take more than the shorter courses of our Common-sense Biology, it will be sufficient to consider only those forms of inimical bacteria which we have to combat in our own islands. But the writer would strongly urge that, at least among women of the leisured cla.s.ses, this instruction should be extended to cover the bacterial and other minute parasitic forms of disease most prevalent in our colonies and in our foreign possessions. The wives of officers, civil servants and missionaries ought to know, in a clear, scientific way, the causes, modes of attack, and methods of prevention of the princ.i.p.al tropical diseases, so far as these have at present been made out.

METHOD OF STUDY

What should be the method of this study?

The sketching out of a course would be far beyond the scope of this paper. Here it may only be said that the work must, of necessity, fall into two main parts. There must be, on the one hand, field-naturalist's work, for the greater proportion of the animals and plants studied ought--so far as is in any way practicable--to be observed in their natural surroundings; and there must be, on the other hand, work allied to that of the gardener and farmer, the rearing of selected plants and animals for purposes of experiment and of closer examination. Nothing worth mentioning can be done on either of these lines without some study of the food and climatic conditions required by each creature; and this will involve a study of soils, temperature, atmosphere, and so on--and also a study of the nutrient properties of those organisms which furnish forth the food of other organisms. From this knowledge, gained thus through direct observation and experiment, would be deduced the general principles which--so to express it--govern life; and upon it as foundation would be reared the more specialised knowledge of all that pertains strictly to the life of mankind. Throughout the aim should be to use books mainly for reference.

It is not necessary--as it might have been a few years ago--to show that a training on these lines is better, as a preparation for life, than that offered by the ordinary school and university curriculum; but it may be worth while to show how far and why it is superior to a well-planned course in the a.n.a.lytical biology of the laboratory. The superiority is surely twofold: in that the kind of knowledge acquired is of greater practical utility; and, again, in that the development which it ensures, to the powers, bodily and mental of the student, is more varied, thorough, and effective.

COMMON-SENSE BIOLOGY AS AN ART

As has been said, this Common-sense Biology partakes of the nature of an art. Now it is characteristic of any art that, for its satisfactory exercise, it demands not only knowledge, but also intuition;--not only conscious volition, reflection, and endeavour, but also subconscious nervous and muscular activity, and, together with that, a certain emotional state--a trend, tendency, disposition of the whole being, which likewise is chiefly subconscious.

Without such a disposition to begin with you cannot have an artist.

Neither will you get an artist, if, on the other hand, this disposition is never given an opportunity for displaying itself and developing its capacities. You cannot play an instrument properly if you have no music in you, and the music in you will never come forth if you have no instrument to play upon. When disposition and opportunity are happily met, and the true artist arises, it is in the subconscious that the chief riches, gained by her work and experience, are stored, and from the subconscious that she draws her skill; while in the subconscious, again, lie the mysterious sources of original inspiration. We all know well how over-consciousness spoils art, as it spoils most kinds of action. The happiest effects, the loveliest deeds spring, as it were, spontaneously.

What is true of such arts as music and poetry is at least equally true of the art of living. The rich and well-harmonised subconsciousness is the proximate source whence all that is strongest and most beautiful in human activity is derived. The domestic arts, conversation, power of rapid judgment at a crisis, the care of the sick, the care of children, tactful daily dealing with one's fellows, all these, and so much else, we recognise to be dependent for perfection upon practice; and that is only another way of saying that they depend on the efficiency and the character of the subconscious. But the character and efficiency of each person's subconscious being depend in their turn--not solely, yet princ.i.p.ally--first, upon the knowledge she has acquired, and secondly, upon the actions she has habitually performed. Action and being, as we all know full well, are for ever acting and reacting upon one another.

Action is a more potent influence upon the subconscious even than knowledge; and when to mere activity there is added emotion--such emotion, for instance, as pleasure or love, or solicitude, or desire for truth--we may feel a.s.sured we have brought into play the most powerful of all the forces which, in an ordinary way, go to vivify and to form human character.

The subconscious is even more important for women than for men, because women have more calls upon their emotions, and more need for intuition, and also more need for general resourcefulness and skill. It is because the Common-sense Biology whose claims we are urging involves so much activity, such care, quickness of observation, patience and ready wit, that it makes a better preparation for life than the more highly specialized work in the Biology of the laboratory alone could be.

THE GAINS AND LOSSES OF CIVILISATION

Is there, it may now be asked, anywhere any definite evidence to bear out this contention. There is: and in abundance. For it, however, we must look away from civilised communities, especially from the educated portion of their populations. Civilisation, no doubt, gives much; but it also takes much away. It has taken away much of the traditional lore of women, and more and more of their traditional activities. This does not merely mean that the practical ability and knowledge of civilised women is greatly restricted; it means also that the peculiar intuitive wisdom of women--the fruit of a richly-stored subconsciousness--is much diminished. In capacity for pure thought the educated woman of civilised communities no doubt excels all the rest: in most other respects the barbarian or savage woman will--with some few exceptions--probably be found her superior, whether judged merely by her mastery of the conditions amid which she has to work, or, more broadly, by the amount of her real knowledge and the range of her effective capacities.

Take, as an example, the Eskimo woman, who is considered to represent the woman of palaeolithic times. As there is no Eskimo Board of Education--no paraphernalia of Primary, Secondary, Technical, and other Schools, with their red tape and officialism--she is free to carry on the tradition of her ancestresses, and to rear, in the good old ways, children who grow up to be st.u.r.dy men and women. The preparation she had for her task was chiefly that of watching and imitating her own mother.

Thus, as a child, she followed all the processes of turning the dead reindeer to account--learning thereby an economy and an unwillingness to waste which were essentially scientific--learning, too, subconsciously.

She saw the flesh of the reindeer made into pemmican--cut into thin slices, and dried in the sun or in the smoke of a slow fire, then pounded between stones (the use of stones is worth noticing) and stored under a cover of melted fat, poured over it in due proportion. She saw the bones--after the marrow had been extracted from them--pounded down and boiled to get out the residual fat; the horns set aside to make fish-hooks, chisels, needles, and fishing-spears, work for the long winter evenings; the skin carefully dressed with a split bone and cut into shape to make clothing, and snow-shoes, thongs, bow-strings, fishing-nets, and so on. The very tendons make threads for sewing: and the garments thus fashioned are not only strong and serviceable, but beautiful with that particular beauty, which may perhaps be called barbaric, but which almost invariably denotes vigour and fulness of subconscious life. The Eskimo women also make their own boats and their own tools; they are good fishers and hunters. Their year's work comprises an exercise of dexterity and quick wit of which the ordinary Englishwoman can have no idea.

We might take as another example the North American Indian woman, with her varied forest-lore; but, since s.p.a.ce is limited, let us pa.s.s for one further ill.u.s.tration to the despised Australian aboriginal. She too knows and does things worthy of our admiration and imitation. For instance the English housewife's preparation of the household food is nothing like so conscientious as the Australian's, whose proceedings have the keen disinterested concentration proper to a bit of scientific research. Thus, to take but one example of the processes connected with the preparation of one form of food--a seed of a species of eucalyptus: "With a hooked stick she pulls down the terminal branches of the tree and spreads them out to dry on a piece of ground cleared for the purpose. After allowing them to lie there for a period determined by temperature, she collects the distal ends of the branches, damps them and brushes the seeds off into water. For a period of two or more hours these seeds are kept soaking, but the water is repeatedly changed, so as to remove all traces of the 'gum.' After this they are dried and ground on a stone. Again, she builds their rough, but wisely devised home most carefully according to ancient tradition. She takes her little girl, armed with a miniature digging-stick, out to track the honey-ant with her, and to learn by the way what are the birds and beasts and plants, friendly or inimical, which surround their home-camp."

Alongside of this direct learning about nature goes the learning of the legends and traditions of the tribe, together with the customary dances, rituals, and religious practices. The activity of savage life is everywhere such that no anomalies like our physical exercises are needed,--for the physique of the young men and women is as graceful, strong, and enduring as need be.

If we turn to savage or barbarian peoples higher in the scale we shall find their knowledge, abilities, and accomplishments higher and also more varied. But, on the whole, until we come to the average modern woman of a civilised community, we shall find that the women--through their happily developed subconsciousness--are equal to the best the community requires of them. They do not call their training Common-sense Biology, but that is what it practically is. They know all about their surroundings, and what to do therein. And grace and beauty wait upon what they do.

This ideal is not, however, quite without parallel among the more highly civilised peoples. The Greeks conceived of Athene, the great G.o.ddess of wisdom and of war, as also Athene Ergane, the Workwoman, the G.o.ddess of handicrafts in the home. In our own country--to take examples near to us and familiar--the names of Caroline Herschel, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Mary Somerville, and George Eliot not only attest the fact that exquisite skill in domestic arts is not, in a woman, incompatible with learning and genius, but may also lead us to suspect that the exercise of this skill actually aided and furthered their better-known achievements.

In our civilised communities--from the point of view of the subconscious--women are in two ways at a disadvantage. First, excessive division of labour, with our dependence upon machinery, has made the life of the State far more complicated than in former days; and secondly, the activity of the individual, from the same causes, is far more monotonous, far less well-calculated to bring out all her powers and train her being as a whole, than it used to be. Hence, as we said, women have lost a good deal subconsciously--even though, in consciousness, they may have gained.

There is nothing in which the character of the subconscious is more clearly seen than in a person's att.i.tude towards the great mysteries of life: towards birth and marriage and death on the one hand--towards religion on the other. It is, of course, matter of common knowledge that in regard to marriage the customs of some savage tribes are what we should describe as licentious. A truer understanding of the savage mind has, however, mitigated many of the judgments pa.s.sed even upon the worst of these practices--at least in so far as they were taken to indicate gross inward depravity on the part of the women. And among many peoples there are found laws and customs of real beauty and n.o.ble significance, witnessing to reverence, fine intuition, and real care for the highest good of the tribe. And in general of all savage races it may be said that whatever their laws and customs are--though perhaps born of ignorance and selfishness--they feel seriously about them as about sacred things, and observe them scrupulously.

The better side is exemplified chiefly by the women. When anthropological work is more largely undertaken by women, and when, through their sympathy, the jealously guarded secrets of the women's tradition, now almost entirely unknown, are yielded up to us, it is probable that our conceptions of savage life and thought will have to be radically modified. However that may be, it is even now sufficiently well known that the women do not leave the question of reproduction and marriage to chance in the education of their girls. The girls are definitely, carefully, and it would seem often tenderly, taught; and if, among some peoples, they are made to undergo great sufferings, a closer study usually reveals in these the effects of the long subjection of the women to the cruelty and uncontrolled pa.s.sions of the men. All this should not blind us to the fact that the maternal instinct is here actively grappling with the great realities of life: and we may contrast this with the ways of the modern woman who, less developed in subconsciousness, is not so forcibly impelled to make any such attempt, and, for the most part, practically lets the whole thing slide. Here, as in other directions, the fuller development of the subconscious would compel and also enable us to correct a grave omission: while the knowledge necessarily acquired concerning reproduction and birth in the course of biological work would fill up that which has. .h.i.therto often been wanting even in the best-inspired women who have dealt with this question.

It must by now have been made clear that our object in advocating this Common-sense Biology is to recover what was excellent in the equipment of the women of the past, and to unite it with what is most excellent, and most germane to woman's life, in the methods and knowledge of the present. Since modern household life is deficient in the requisite opportunities we are obliged to have recourse to definite educational schemes. But education of this sort will a.s.suredly continue to be necessary even after many improvements in the home have been brought to pa.s.s; because it will always be necessary to keep the knowledge and activities of women in correspondence with the advance of science. At the same time it is worth while to remember that the earlier the child begins to observe living things, to live with them, learn about them, and take care of them, the better the final result will be; while the ideally trained mother in the ideal home, herself practical and active, will be able to do more for her children in this regard than most people, perhaps, would now dream of.

THE INFLUENCE OF COMMON-SENSE BIOLOGICAL TRAINING ON SOCIAL WORK

Biological training of the order we have been considering is, we believe, desirable for all women in the interests, first, of the home and of the rearing of children. But it is equally desirable for the women who are not destined to be wives and mothers, and particularly so as a foundation for any kind of university work, even for the different literary or philosophical schools.

Here it is, perhaps, worth while to urge upon women the claims of the other great division of Biology, that of the laboratory. A considerable number of women who go up to the universities have, indeed, intellectual abilities deserving special cultivation, yet abilities which show no very distinct inclination in any one direction. These have been very commonly drafted into the study of history. It may be questioned whether some branch of Biology would not be better for them, and more useful to the community. Women working at Biology in the universities ought to serve, and to aim at serving, as the channels by which each fresh addition of scientific knowledge finds its way to, and its appropriate place in, the schemes of Common-sense Biology generally obtaining.