XXXIII.
2.—“... newer vigour to the brain.”
“It is well-known that every organ of the body and, therefore, also the brain, requires for its full development and, consequently, for the development of its complete capability of performance, exercise and persistent effort. That this is and has been the case for thousands of years in a far less degree in woman than in man, in consequence of her defective training and education, will be denied by no one.” So says the learned biologist Büchner.—(“Man,” Dallas’s translation, p. 206.)
And Bebel also declares:—“The brain must be regularly used and correspondingly nourished, like any other organ, if its faculties are to be fully developed.”—(“Woman,” Walther’s translation, p. 124.)
Dr. Emanuel Bonavia, in the course of an able reply to a somewhat shallow recent disquisition by Sir James Crichton Browne, says:—
“From various sources we have learnt that the brain tissue, like every other tissue, will grow by exercise, and diminish, or degenerate and atrophy by disuse. Keep your right arm tied up in a sling for a month, and you will then be convinced how much it has lost by disuse. Then anatomists might perhaps be able to say—Lo! and behold! the muscles of your right arm have a less specific gravity than those of your left arm; that the nerves and blood-vessels going to those muscles are smaller, and that, therefore, the right arm cannot be the equal of the left, and must have a different function!
“Any medical student knows that if you tie the main trunk of an artery, a branch of it will in due course acquire the calibre of the main trunk. If, for some reason, it cannot do so, the tissues, which the main trunk originally supplied, must suffer, and be weakened, from want of a sufficient supply of blood.... Man, and especially British man, has evolved into what he is by endless trouble and struggle through past ages. He has had to develop his present brain from very small beginnings. It would, therefore, now be the height of folly to allow the thinking lobes of the mothers of the race to revert, intellectually, by disuse step by step again to that of the lower animals, from which we all come. That of course many may not believe, but it may be asked, how can he or she believe these things with such weakened lobes, as he or she may have inherited from his or her mother? How indeed! If there is anything in nature that is true, it is this—That if you don’t use your limbs they will atrophy; if you don’t use your eyes they will atrophy; if you don’t use your brain it will atrophy. They all follow the same inexorable law. Use increases and sharpens; disuse decreases and dulls. Diminished size of the frontal lobes and of the arteries that feed them mean nothing if they do not mean that woman’s main thinking organ, that of the intellect, is, as Sir James would hint, degenerating by disuse and neglect.”—(“Woman’s Frontal Lobes,” Provincial Medical Journal, July, 1892.)
These facts suggest strongly that the waste at present induced in the female body by the menstrual habit might well be absorbed in increase of brain power; and indeed, that this evolved habit has hitherto persistently sequestrated and carried off from woman’s organism the blood force that should have gone to form brain power. This explanation would dispose of the awkwardly imagined “plethora” theory, as well as one or two others, of sundry gynæcologists.
And the converse—that the increased appropriation of the blood in forming brain power induces a state of bodily well-being, free from the present waste and weariness,—would certainly seem to be borne out by such evidence as that of the Hon. John W. Mitchell, the president of the Southern California College of Law, who said in a recent lecture:—
“Not only in this, but in other countries, there are successful women practitioners (of Law), and in France, where the preparatory course is most arduous, and the term of study longest, a woman recently took the highest rank over 500 men in her graduating examinations, and during the whole six years of class study she only lost one day from her work.” (See Note LVII., 1.)
A few words may here be said as to the dubitable question of the relative size of the brain in man and woman, though the matter may not be of great import, from more than one reason. For, as Bebel observes: “Altogether the investigations on the subject are too recent and too few in number to allow of any definite conclusions” (p. 123). A. Dumas fils says (“Les Femmes qui Tuent,” p. 196)—“Les philosophes vous démontreront que, si la force musculaire de l’homme est plus grande que celle de la femme, la force nerveuse de la femme est plus grande que celle de l’homme; que, si l’intelligence tient, comme on l’affirme aujourd’hui, au développement et au poids de la matière cérébrale, l’intelligence de la femme pourrait être déclarée supérieure à celle de l’homme, le plus grand cerveau et le plus lourd comme poids, étant un cerveau de femme lequel pesait 2,200 grammes, c’est a dire 400 grammes de plus que celui de Cuvier. On ne dit pas, il est vrai, que cette femme ait écrit l’équivalent du livre de Cuvier sur les fossiles.”
To which last remark may be replied, again in the words of Bebel,—“Darwin is perfectly right in saying that a list of the most distinguished women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, science, and philosophy, will bear no comparison with a similar list of the most distinguished men. But surely this need not surprise us. It would be surprising if it were not so. Dr. Dodel-Port (in “Die neuere Schöpfungsgeschichte”) answers to the point, when he maintains that the relative achievements would be very different after men and women had received the same education and the same training in art and science during a certain number of generations.”—(“Woman,” p. 125.)
“It is of small value to say—yes, but look how many men excel and how few women do so. True, but see how much repression men have exercised to prevent women from even equalling them, and how much shallowness of mind they have encouraged. All manner of obstructions, coupled with ridicule, have been put in their way, and until women succeed in emancipating themselves, most men will probably continue to do so, simply because they have the power to do it. When women become emancipated, that is, are placed on social equality with men, this senseless, mischievous opposition will die a natural death.”—E. Bonavia, M.D. (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).
To revert to the question of brain weight, one of the first of English specialists says:—
“Data might, therefore, be considered to show, in the strongest manner, how comparatively unimportant is mere bulk or weight of brain in reference to the degree of intelligence of its owner, when considered as it often is, apart from the much more important question of the relative amount of its grey matter, as well as of the amount and perfection of the minute internal development of the organ either actual or possible.”—Dr. H. C. Bastian (“The Brain as an Organ of Mind,” p. 375.)
The American physiologist Helen H. Gardener states:—“The differences (in brain) between individuals of the same sex—in adults at least, are known to be much more marked than any that are known to exist between the sexes. Take the brains of the two poets Byron and Dante. Byron’s weighed 1,807 grammes, while Dante’s weighed only 1,320 grammes, a difference of 487 grammes. Or take two statesmen, Cromwell and Gambetta. Cromwell’s brain weighed 2,210 grammes, which, by the way, is the greatest healthy brain on record; although Cuvier’s is usually quoted as the largest, a part of the weight of his was due to disease, and if a diseased or abnormal brain is to be taken as the standard, then the greatest on record is that of a negro criminal idiot; while Gambetta’s was only 1,241 grammes, a difference of 969 grammes. Surely it will not be held because of this that Gambetta and Dante should have been denied the educational and other advantages which were the natural right of Byron and Cromwell. Yet it is upon this very ground, by this very system of reasoning, that it is proposed to deny women equal advantages and opportunities, although the difference in brain weight between man and woman is said to be only 100 grammes, and even this does not allow for difference in body weight, and is based upon a system of averages, which is neither complete nor accurate.”—(Report of the International Council of Women, Washington, 1888, p. 378.)
Concerning an assertion that “the specific gravity of both the white and grey matter of the brain is greater in man than in woman,” Helen H. Gardener says:—“Of this point this is what the leading brain anatomist in America (Dr. E. C. Spitzka) wrote: ‘The only article recognised by the profession as important and of recent date, which takes this theory as a working basis, is by Morselli, and he is compelled to make the sinister admission, while asserting that the specific gravity is less in the female, that with old age and with insanity the specific gravity increases.’ If this is the case I do not know that women need sigh over their shortcoming in the item of specific gravity. There appear to be two very simple methods open to them by which they may emulate their brothers in the matter of specific gravity, if they so desire. One of these is certain, if they live long enough; and the other—well, there is no protective tariff on insanity.”—(Loc. cit., p. 379.)
Helen Gardener further appositely observes:—“The brain of no remarkable woman has ever been examined. Woman is ticketed to fit the hospital subjects and tramps, the unfortunates whose brains fall into the hands of the profession as it were by mere accident, while man is represented by the brains of the Cromwells, Cuviers, Byrons, and Spurzheims. By this method the average of men’s brains is carried to its highest level in the matter of weight and texture; while that of women is kept at its lowest, and even then there is only claimed 100 grammes’ difference!”—(Loc. cit., p. 380.)
And she concludes her exhaustive paper with the closing paragraph of a letter to herself from Dr. E. C. Spitzka, the celebrated New York brain specialist:—“You may hold me responsible for the following declaration: That any statement to the effect that an observer can tell by looking at a brain, or examining it microscopically, whether it belonged to a female or a male subject, is not founded on carefully-observed facts.... No such difference has ever been demonstrated, nor do I think it will be by more elaborate methods than we now possess. Numerous female brains exceed numerous male brains in absolute weight, in complexity of convolutions, and in what brain anatomists would call the nobler proportions. So that he who takes these as his criteria of the male brain may be grievously mistaken in attempting to assert the sex of a brain dogmatically. If I had one hundred female brains and one hundred male brains together, I should select the one hundred containing the largest and best-developed brains as probably containing fewer female brains than the remaining one hundred. More than this no cautious experienced brain anatomist would venture to declare.”—(Loc. cit., p. 381.)
Charles Darwin has clearly summarised this question of comparison of brain:—“No one, I presume, doubts that the large size of the brain in man, relatively to his body, in comparison with that of the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers.... On the other hand, no one supposes that the intellect of any two animals or of any two men can be accurately gauged by the cubic contents of their skulls. It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter; thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants are generally known, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin’s head. Under this latter point of view the brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more marvellous than the brain of man.”—(“The Descent of Man,” Chap. IV.)
3.—“Wide shall she roam ...”
John Ruskin says, of training a girl:—“Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better than you, and the good ones too; and will eat some bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest thought were good.”—(“Sesame and Lilies,” p. 167.)
6.—“... murmurings ...”
“Man thinks that his wife belongs to him like his domesticated animals, and he keeps her therefore in slavery. There are few, however, who wear their shackles without feeling their weight, and not a few who resent it. Madame Roland says: ‘Quand vous parlez en maître, vous faites penser aussitôt qu’on peut vous résister, et faire plus peut être, tel fort que vous soyez. L’invulnerable Achille ne l’était pas partout.’”—Alexander Walker, M.D. (“Woman as to Mind, &c.,” p. 353).
“Why do women not discover, when ‘in the noon of beauty’s power,’ that they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect, till they are led to resign, or not assume, their natural prerogatives? Confined then in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch. It is true they are provided with food and raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin, but health liberty, and virtue are given in exchange.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (“Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” Chap. IV.). See also Note XL., 5.
“What have they (men) hitherto offered us in marriage, with a great show of generosity and a flourish of trumpets, but the dregs of a life, and the leavings of a dozen other women? Experience has at last taught us what to expect and how to meet them.”—Lady Violet Greville (National Review, May, 1892).
See also Note XX., 2.
8.—“Lest that her soul should rise ...”
“Laboulaye distinctly advises his readers to keep women in a state of moderate ignorance, for ‘notre empire est détruit, si l’homme est reconnu’ (Our empire is at an end when man is found out).”—(Note to Bebel, Walther’s translation, p. 73.)
Id.—“... break his timeworn yoke.”
As already shown, the subjugation of woman has not been an incident of Western “civilisation” alone. Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham relates that “When a Chinese Mandarin in California was told that the women of America were nearly all taught to read and write, and that a majority of them were able to keep books for their husbands, if they chose to do so, he shook his head thoughtfully, and, with a foreboding sigh, replied, ‘If he readee, writee, by’n-by he lickee all the men.’ Was that a barbarian sentiment, or rather, perhaps, a presentiment of the higher sovereignty coming?”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 41.)