LVIII.
1.—“Woman’s own soul must seek and find ...”
On women of medical education especially is the duty incumbent to investigate the world of biological experience in woman. They may not sit quietly down and assume that in learning all that man has to teach, they rest his equals, and that the last word has been said on the matter. They have a field of exploration, with opportunities, with implements, and with capacities, which man cannot have. His research on such a question as the recognisedly most vital one of human embryology with all its issues, can get but rare and uncertain light from accidental occasions, and is, moreover, simply as it were a dead anatomising; nor can he by any means reach the psychic or introspective phase of enquiry; but woman has the live subject, body and soul, in her own organism, to study at her leisure. Does she not yet see how to grasp such further living knowledge? But that is the very quest here indicated. The askidian also had no strength of vision, yet we can now tell and test the light and the components of distant spheres.
There are, undoubtedly, what may be termed intelligent operations carried on in the body unconsciously to oneself, or at any rate beyond the present ken of one’s actively perceptive and volitional faculties. Observation and recognition of these is to be striven for, and even guidance or command of them may be ours in a worthy future. The Times of 27th January, 1892, reported a lecture at the Royal Institution on the previous day by Professor Victor Horsley, in the course of which the lecturer—
“... pointed out the pineal gland, which Descartes thought to be the seat of the soul, but which was now known to be an invertebrate eye. He also explained the functions of certain small masses of grey matter, which are two, viz.—sight and equilibration. The optic nerve was situated close to the crura, and equilibration was subserved by the cerebellum. After referring to the basal ganglia, Professor Horsley admitted that as science advanced we seem to know less and less about the specific functions of the various masses of grey matter, and less definite views than formerly prevailed were now held with respect to the local source of what are termed voluntary impulses, and that of sensations.... We were still in ignorance as to the functions of the optic thalamus, and of the corpus striatum. Those of the cortex had to some extent been ascertained. They might be divided into three classes, viz.—movement, sensation, and what was termed mental phenomena. But we were still in the dark as to those portions of the brain which subserved intellectual operations, memory, and emotional impulses. A like ignorance prevailed with respect to the basal ganglia.”
What as yet unrecognised inward eyes watch over the embryo life?
3.—“... counsel helpful ...”
Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham says:—“In this day the most needed science to humankind is that which will commend women to confidence in themselves and their sex as the leading force of the coming Era—the Era of spiritual rule and movement; in which, through them, the race is destined to rise to a more exalted position than ever before it has held, and for the first time to form its dominant ties of relationship to that world of purer action and diviner motion, which lies above the material one of intellectual struggle and selfish purpose wherein man has held and exercised his long sovereignty.”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. I., p. 311).
5.—“... philosophic lore ...”
“The farther our knowledge advances, the greater will be the need of rising to transcendental views of the physical world.... If the imagination had been more cultivated, if there had been a closer union between the spirit of poetry and the spirit of science, natural philosophy would have made greater progress because natural philosophers would have taken a higher and more successful aim, and would have enlisted on their side a wider range of human sympathies.”—Buckle (“Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”).
Id. “... chirurgic lore ...”
“The Lady Dufferin fund had already been the means of opening a school of medicine for Indian women, who would consequently devote themselves to the study of anatomy. Anatomy and Asiatic women. That was the most extraordinary association of ideas one could ever have imagined.”—Professor Vambéry (Lecture to the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, Edinburgh, 20th May, 1891). Reported in the Times of following day.
8.—“Regent of Nature’s will, ...”
“Woman will grow into fitness for the sublime work which nature has given her to do, and man through her help and persuasion will spontaneously assume the relation of a co-operator in it. Finding that nature intends his highest good and that of his species, through the emancipation and development of woman into the fulness of her powers, he will gratefully seek his own profit and happiness in harmonising himself with this method; he will honour it as nature’s method, and woman as its chief executor; and will joyfully find that not only individuals, families, and communities, but nations, have been wisely dependent on her, in their more advanced conditions, for the good which can come only from the most perfect, artistic, and spiritual being who inhabits our earth.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 423).