Woman in Science Part 9

I hold it sure, condemned my s.e.x is quite To trifling nothings as its sole birthright; Ridiculous 'tis thought outside its 'sphere'; The learned woman dare not such appear; Nay, she must even cloak her brilliancy So envy leave in peace stupidity; Must keep the level of the common kind, To subjects commonplace devote her mind, And treating these she must be like the rest.

Lo, in such garb refinement must be dressed: That knowledge shall not make her seem unwise, She must herself in foolishness disguise."

--Act III, Scene 7.

[79] No one, however, went so far in his opposition to the education of women as the notorious Silvain _Marechal_, the author of _Projet d'une Loi portant Defense d'Apprendre a Lire aux Femmes_, who would have a law pa.s.sed forbidding women to learn to read. He maintained that a knowledge of science and letters interfered with their being good housekeepers.

"Reason," he avers, "does not approve of women studying chemistry. Women who are unable to read make the best soup. I would rather," he declares in the words of Balzac, "have a wife with a beard than a wife who is educated." See pp. 40, 50 and 51, of the edition of this strange work, published at Brussels, 1847.

[80] In her _Problema Practic.u.m_, addressed to Dr. Rivet, Anna van Schurman states and develops in true syllogistic form a series of propositions in defense of her thesis in favor of the higher education of women. Two of these propositions are here given as ill.u.s.trative of her points of view:

I. Cui natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium, ei conveniunt scientiae et artes. Atque feminae natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium. Ergo.

II Quidquid intellectum hominis perficit et exornat, id femmae Christianae convenit. Atqui scientiae et artes intellectum hominis perficiunt et exornant. Ergo. See _n.o.biliss. Virginis Annae Schurman Opuscula_, pp. 35 and 41, Leyden, 1656, and her _De Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Literas Apt.i.tudine_, Leyden, 1641. Cf. also _Anna van Schurman_, Chap. IV, by Una Birch, London, 1909.

[81] A writer of the seventeenth century gives the following as the popular programme of female study: "To learn alle pointes of good housewifery, spinning of linen, the ordering of dairies, to see to the salting of meate, brewing, bakery, and to understand the common prices of all houshold provisions. To keepe account of all things, to know the condition of the poultry--for it misbecomes no woman to be a hen-wife.

To know how to order your clothes and with frugality to mend them and to buy but what is necessary with ready money. To love to keep at home."

How like the German four K's and the words on the sarcophagus of a Roman matron--_lanifica_, _frugi_, _domiseda_--a diligent plyer of the distaff, thrifty and a stay-at-home.

[82] _The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu_, Vol. II, p.

5, Bohn Edition, 1887.

[83] Letter XLIX, London, Sept. 5, O. S., 1748.

Walpole, writing in 1773, makes the following curious declaration: "I made a discovery--Lady Nuneham is a poetess, and writes with great ease and sense some poetry, but is as afraid of the character, as if it was a sin to make verses." And Lord Granville tells us of an eminent statesman and man of letters who, in the early part of the last century, was so troubled on discovering in his daughter a talent for poetry that he "appealed to her affection for him, and made a request to her never to write verses again. He was not afraid of her becoming a good poetess, but he was afraid of the disadvantages which were likely to be suffered by her, if she were supposed to be a lady of literary attainments."

[84] It was Swift who had such a low opinion of woman's intellect that in writing to one of his fair correspondents he told her that she could "never arrive in point of learning to the perfection of a schoolboy."

Lady Pennington, strange to say, seems to have shared his views, for in a manual of advice to young ladies, she declares: "A sensible woman will soon be convinced that all the learning the utmost application can make her master of will be in many points inferior to that of the schoolboy."

"At the time the Tatler first appeared in the female world any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured," and it was then considered "more important for a woman to dance a minuet well than to know a foreign language."

[85] The wife of President John Adams, descended from the most ill.u.s.trious colonial families, writing in 1817, regarding the educational opportunities of the girls of her time and rank, expressed herself as follows:

"Female education in the best families went no farther than writing and arithmetic, and, in some few and rare instances, music and dancing."

According to her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, "The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female s.e.x was to be found in the families of the educated cla.s.s, and in occasional intercourse with the learned of the day. Whatever of useful instruction was secured in the practical conduct of life came from maternal lips; and, what of farther mental development depended more upon the eagerness with which the casual teachings of daily conversation were treasured up than upon any labor expended purposely to promote it." _Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife, Abigail Adams, During the Revolution, With a Memoir of Mrs. Adams_, by Charles Francis Adams, pp. X and XI, New York, 1876.

[86] When the students of Girton and Newnham in 1897, after pa.s.sing the Cambridge examinations--many of them with the highest honors--applied for degrees, "the undergraduate world was stirred to a fine frenzy of wrath against all womankind," and an astonished world saw re-enacted scenes scarcely less disgraceful than those which characterized the riotous demonstrations which, seventeen years before, had greeted seven young women at the portals of the University of Edinburgh.

[87] _The Queen's Reign_, Chap. V, London, 1897.

[88] Proposition third, of her _Propositiones Philosophicae_, Milan, 1738, reads as follows:

"Optime etiam de universa Philosophia infirmiorem s.e.xum meruisse nullus infirmabitur; nam praeter septuaginta fere eruditissimas, Mulieres, quas recenset Menagius, complures alias quovis tempore floruisse novimus, quae in philosophicis disciplinis maximam ingenii laudem sunt a.s.secutae. Ad omnem igitur doctrinam, eruditionemque etiam muliebres animos Natura comparavit: quare paulo injuriosius c.u.m feminis agunt qui eis bonarum artium cultu omnino interdic.u.n.t, eo vel maxime, quod haec illarum studia privatis, publicisque rebus non modo haud noxia futura sint verum etiam perutilia."

This admirable work, with its one hundred and ninety-one propositions, is commended to those who may have any doubt regarding the learning or capacity of the Italian women who have been referred to in the preceding pages.

CHAPTER II

WOMAN'S CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS

In a curious old black-letter volume ent.i.tled _The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes_, published in England in 1521 by Henry Pepwell, occurs the following pa.s.sage: "I mervayle gretely of the opynyon of some men that say they wolde in no wyse that theyr daughters or wyves or kynnes-women sholde lerne scyences, and that it sholde apayre theyr condycyons. This thing is not to say ne to sustayne. That the woman apayreth by conynge it is not well to beleve. As the proverb saythe, 'that nature gyveth may not be taken away.'"

The book from which this remarkable quotation is taken is a translation of Christine de Pisan's _La Cite des Dames_, which was written early in the fifteenth century. It is a capital defence against the slanderers of the gentler s.e.x and an armory of arguments for all time against those men who declare that "women are fit for nothing but to bear children and spin." It shows conclusively that conynge--knowledge--far from tending to injure women's character--apayre theyr condycyons--as was a.s.serted by Christine's antagonists, contributes, on the contrary, to elevate and enn.o.ble them and to render them better mothers and more useful members of society.

Notwithstanding that it was written five hundred years ago, and notwithstanding its "antiquated allegorical dress and its quaint pre-Renaissance notions of history," it is in many of its aspects a surprisingly modern production. The line of argument adopted by the writer is virtually the same as that which is adopted to-day in the discussion of the same questions which are so ably treated in this long-forgotten book[89] and show that Christine de Pisan was in every way a worthy champion of her s.e.x.

No woman of her time was more competent to discuss the capacity of her s.e.x for science as well as for other intellectual pursuits than was this learned daughter of Italy. She was not only a woman of profound and varied knowledge, but was also, as stated in the preceding chapter, the first woman to earn her living by her pen. Besides writing _The City of Ladies_ and more verses--mostly ballads and virelays--than are contained in the _Divina Commedia_, she was also the author of many other works on the most diverse subjects. She is best known to historians as the author of _Livre des Fais et Bonnes Meurs du sage Roy Charles V_, which is a graphic account of the court and policy of this monarch, and of the _Livre des Faits d'Armes et de Chevalerie_. The latter work is not, as might be imagined from its t.i.tle, a collection of tales of chivalry, but, incredible as it may seem, a profound and systematic treatise on military tactics and international law. It deals with "many topics of the highest policy, from the manners of a good general and the minutiae of siege operations to the wager of battle, safe-conducts and letters of marque," and was deemed so important by Henry VII that at his expressed desire it was translated into English and published by Caxton under the t.i.tle of _The Boke of Fayettes of Armes and Chyvalrye_. Even so late as the time of Henry VIII it was regarded as an authoritative manual on the topics treated.

So great, indeed, was the extent and variety of Christine's attainments, so thoroughly had she studied the Latin and Greek authors, sacred and profane, and so profound was her knowledge of all the subjects which she dealt with in her numerous books that "one cannot but feel a certain astonishment when one finds in a woman in the fourteenth century an erudition such as is hardly possessed by the most laborious of men."

When we read the eloquent plea which this learned woman of five centuries ago makes in behalf of her s.e.x, when we note the examples she quotes of women "illumined of great sciences," and consider the arguments by which she demonstrated the capacity of women for all scientific pursuits, we can easily fancy that we are reading the brief of some modern exponent of the woman's rights movement and are almost disposed to believe that La Bruyiere was right when he declared, _Les anciens ont tout dit_. For so cogent is Christine's reasoning and so thoroughly does she traverse her subject from every point of view that she has left later writers little to add to the controversy except matters of detail which were not available in her time.

In spite, however, of Christine's _Cyte of Ladyes_, "in which,"

according to our mediaeval paragon, "women, hitherto scattered and defenceless, were forever to find refuge against all their slanderers,"

in spite of the fact that the foundations of this city were laid by Reason, that its walls and cloisters were built on Righteousness, and its battlements and high towers on Justice, in spite of the fact that the material entering into its construction was "stronger and more durable than any marble," and that it was, as our author declares, "a city right fair, without fear and of perpetual during to the world--a city that should never be brought to nought," Christine's work was soon lost sight of, and the right of women to the same intellectual advantages as men was as strongly denied as it had been before she had so valiantly championed their cause, and denied, too, on the a.s.sumed ground of their innate incapacity.

It mattered not that during the succeeding centuries other women took up the cause for which the author of _La Cite des Dames_ had so n.o.bly battled; it mattered not that countless women in every civilized country of the globe distinguished themselves by their achievements in every department of science and gave evidence of talent and genius of the highest order; it mattered not that chivalrous representatives of the sterner s.e.x, like John Stuart Mill, came forward to plead the case of that half of humanity which had so long been held in cruel subjection.

The att.i.tude of the world toward the intellectually disfranchised s.e.x remained unchanged almost until our own time.

But, although women now enjoy advantages in the pursuit of science which were undreamed of only a generation ago, the age-old prejudices respecting woman's mental powers and her capacity for the more abstract branches of science still prevail. It is useless to cite instances of women who have attained eminence in astronomy, mathematics, archaeology, or in any other science whatever. Such instances, we are a.s.sured, are only exceptions and prove nothing. Men like Lombroso are willing to admit the existence of an occasional woman of talent, but they deny the existence of genius in one who is truly a womanly woman.[90] For, with Goncourt, they flippantly a.s.sert, _Il n'y a pas de femmes de genie: lorsqu'elles sont des genies, elles sont des hommes_--there are no women of genius; when they have genius they are men.

The reasons that now influence men for affirming the intellectual disparity of the s.e.xes are, it must be observed, quite different from what they were in the time of Christine de Pisan--quite different from what they were half a century ago. Our forebears, in their endless disputations regarding woman's mental inferiority, based their arguments on _a priori_ deductions, or on metaphysical considerations which proved nothing and which were often irrelevant, if not absurd.

Thus the Aristotelians, accepting as true the doctrine of the four elements as well as the superimposed doctrine of the four elemental qualities, sought to explain the properties of all compound bodies by these primal qualities. In this way they explained the various virtues of drugs and medicines. And by the same process of reasoning they explained the a.s.sumed difference between male and female brains. They a.s.sumed, to begin with, that there was a difference between the intellectual capacities of men and women. They then a.s.sumed that this difference in capacity was due to the difference in character and texture of the female as compared with those of the male brain. They next further a.s.sumed that the doctrines of the four elements and of the four elemental qualities were established beyond question, and then a.s.sumed again that the reason of woman's inferior capacity was due to the fact that her brain was moister and softer, and, therefore, more impressionable than that of man. No wonder that the old Spanish Benedictine, Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, in his chivalrous _Defensa de la Mujer_, lost all patience with such fantastic theorizers and wrote: "Did I write ... to display my wit, I could easily, by deducting a chain of consequences from received principles, shew that man's understanding, weighed in the balance with female capacity, would be found so light as to kick the beam."[91]

Abandoning the Aristotelian method of envisaging the question under discussion, our modern philosophers have recourse to the recent sciences of biology and psycho-physiology to prove what they, too, a.s.sume to be true--viz., woman's incurable mental weakness. Like their predecessors, they are dominated by pa.s.sion, prejudice, the errors of countless centuries, and, like them, they approach the subject on which they are to p.r.o.nounce judgment, with minds warped by long ages of imperious instincts, ignorant preconceptions and social bias. They will quote the opinions of Proudhon and Schopenhauer--as if they had the value of mathematical demonstrations--on the mental inferiority of women, and will declare with unblushing a.s.surance that no woman has ever produced a single work of any kind of enduring worth. With the German pessimist, they will blatantly declare, taken as a whole, "women are and remain thoroughgoing Philistines and quite incurable."[92] With the French socialist they will a.s.sert, as if it were an axiomatic truth, that "thought in every living being is proportional to force"--that "physical force is not less necessary for thought than for muscular labor."

They have apparently no more doubt respecting the truth of these a.s.sumptions than had their predecessors, the Aristotelians, respecting their a.s.sumptions of the four elements and their first qualities. Their process of reasoning is somewhat as follows: "Woman is smaller and weaker than man. This is a matter of simple observation, confirmed by the teachings of physiology. Therefore, woman is physically and intellectually inferior to man. Therefore she is incapable of any of those great conceptions and achievements in science or philosophy which have so distinguished the male s.e.x in every age of the world's history.

That she is thus weaker and inferior physically and intellectually and forever incapacitated from successfully competing with man in the intellectual arena is a fatality for which, we are gravely told, there is no remedy, and to which women, consequently, must resign themselves as to one of the inexorable laws of nature."

It would be difficult to cite a more preposterous example of ratiocination. If it were true that there is a necessary relation between vigor of body and vigor of mind; that mental power is proportional to physical power; that thought is but a special form of energy and capable of transformation, like heat, light and electricity; that it, like the various physical forces, has its chemical and mechanical equivalents; that psychic work corresponds to a certain amount of chemical or thermic action; that intellectual capacity in man is proportional to muscular strength; it would follow that the great leaders of thought and action through the ages have been Goliaths in stature and Herculeses in strength. But so far is this conclusion from being warranted that it is almost the reverse of the truth. For many, if not the majority, of the great geniuses of the world in every age have been either men of small frame or men of delicate and precarious health.

Among the men of genius who were noted for their diminutive stature were Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Archimedes, Epicurus, Horace, Albertus Magnus, Montaigne, Lipsius, Spinoza, Erasmus, Lalande, Charles Lamb, Keats, Balzac and Thiers. Many others were remarkable for their spare form. Among these in the prime of life were Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, St. Paul, Kepler, Pascal, Boileau, Fenelon, D'Alembert, Napoleon, Lincoln and Leo XIII. Others, like aesop, Brunelleschi, Leopardi, Magliabecchi, Parini, Scarron, Talleyrand, Pope, Goldsmith, Byron, Sir Walter Scott, to mention only a few of the most eminent, were either hunchbacked, lame, rachitic or clubfooted.

Others, still, were the victims of chronic ill health, or of nervous disorders of the most serious character. Virgil was of a delicate and frail const.i.tution. He essayed the bar, but shrank from it and turned to the "contemplation of diviner things." Nor was Horace, though less completely a recluse and more of a _bon vivant_, a strong man. Both of them, as scholars will remember, sought the couch, while Maecenas went off to the tennis court. Pope's life, says Johnson, was a long disease.

Johnson himself, though large and muscular, had queer health and a tormenting const.i.tution. Schiller wrote most of his best work while struggling against a painful malady, and Heine's "mattress grave" is proverbial. France furnishes an excellent example in Pascal.[93]

Some of the most noted leaders of thought in our own era were likewise chronic invalids. Among these were the scholarly theologian, E. B.

Pusey, and J. A. Symonds, the historian of the Renaissance. There was also Herbert Spencer, who was frequently forced by nervous breakdowns to take long periods of absolute rest. More remarkable still was the case of the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin. "It is," writes his son, "a princ.i.p.al feature of his life that for nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one long struggle against the weariness and the strain of sickness."[94]

But, notwithstanding his continued ill health and the spinal anemia from which he suffered, he was able to conduct those epoch-making researches which put him in the forefront of men of science, and to write those famous books which have completely revolutionized our views of nature and nature's laws.

But a still more remarkable ill.u.s.tration of the fact that there is no necessary relation between muscular and mental power, between physical well-being and intellectual energy, is afforded by the ill.u.s.trious discoverer of the world of the infinitely little, Louis Pasteur.

Stricken by hemiplegia shortly after he had begun those brilliant investigations which have rendered him immortal, he remained affected by partial paralysis until the end of his life. His friends had reason to fear that this attack, even if he should survive it, would weaken or extinguish his spirit of initiative, if it did not make further work entirely impossible. But this was far from the case. For a quarter of a century he continued with unabated activity those marvelous labors which are forever a.s.sociated with his name. And it was after, not before, his misfortune that he made his most famous discoveries in the domain of microbian life, and placed in the hands of physicians and surgeons those infallible means of combatting disease which have made him one of the greatest benefactors of suffering humanity. The complete separation of the intellectual from the motor faculties was never more clearly exhibited than in this case, nor was it ever more completely demonstrated by an experiment, whose validity no one could question, that power of mind does not necessarily depend on strength or health of body. It proved, also, in the most telling manner that it is not muscular but psychic force which avails most, whether to the individual or to society. And it showed, at the same time, the utter absurdity of those theories which would fatally connect intellectual with physical debility in woman, and would forever adjudge the physically weaker s.e.x to be of hopeless inferiority in all things of the mind.

What has been said of men achieving renown, notwithstanding ill health, may likewise be affirmed of women. The case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is scarcely less remarkable than that of Darwin. In spite of being a chronic invalid the greater part of her life, she attained a position in letters reached by but few of her contemporaries. The same almost may be said of the three Bronte sisters. The deadly seeds of consumption were sown in their systems in early youth, but, although fully aware that life had "pa.s.sed them by with averted head," they were, through their indomitable wills, able to send forth from their bleak home in the wild Yorkshire moors works of genius that still instruct and delight the world.

From the foregoing it is clear that valetudinarianism, if it prove anything, proves not that it renders intellectual effort impossible, but that it serves as a discipline for the soul. It forces the mind to husband its strength, and thus enables it to accomplish by economy and concentration of effort that which the same mind in a healthy body, with the distractions of society and the allurements of life, would be unable to accomplish. It exemplifies in the most striking manner the truth of what Socrates says in Plato's _Republic_ about the beneficent action of the "bridle of Theages," preventing an infirm friend of his from embracing politics and keeping him true to his first love--philosophy.