The one-sidedness, inherent in the education for one calling, stamps man with a peculiar character. A clergyman or a schoolmaster is generally and easily recognized by his carriage and mien; likewise an officer, even when in civilian dress. A shoe maker is easily told from a tailor, a joiner from a locksmith. Twin brothers, who closely resembled each other in youth, show in later years marked differences if their occupations are different, if one had hard manual work, for instance, as a smith, the other the study of philosophy for his duty. Heredity, on one side, adaptation on the other, play in the development of man, as well as of animals, a decisive role. Indeed, man is the most bending and pliable of all creatures. A few years of changed life and occupation often suffice to make quite a different being out of the same man. Nowhere does rapid external change show itself more strikingly than when a person is transferred from poor and reduced, to materially improved circumstances. It is in his mental make-up that such a person will be least able to deny his antecedents, but that is due to the circumstance that, with most of such people, after they have reached a certain age, the desire for intellectual improvement is rarely felt; neither do they need it. Such an upstart rarely suffers under this defect. In our days, that look to money and material means, people are far readier to bow before the man with a large purse, than before a man of knowledge and great intellectual gifts, especially if he has the misfortune of being poor and rankless. Instances of this sort are furnished every day. The worship of the golden calf stood in no age higher than in this,—whence it comes that we are living "in the best possible world."
The strongest evidence of the effect exercised upon man by radically different conditions of life is furnished in our several industrial centers. In these centers employer and employe present externally such a contrast as if they belonged to different races. Although accustomed to the contrast, it struck us almost with the shock of a surprise on the occasion of a campaign mass meeting, that we addressed in the winter of 1877 in an industrial town of the Erzgebirge region. The meeting, at which a debate was to be held between a liberal professor and ourselves, was so arranged that both sides were equally represented. The front part of the hall was taken by our opponents,—almost without exception, healthy, strong, often large figures; in the rear of the hall and in the galleries stood workingmen and small tradesmen, nine-tenths of the former weavers,—mostly short, thin, shallow-chested, pale-faced figures, with whom worry and want looked out at every pore. One set represented the full-stomached virtue and solvent morality of bourgeois society; the other set, the working bees and beasts of burden, on the product of whose labor the gentlemen made so fine an appearance. Let both be placed for one generation under equally favorable conditions, and the contrast will vanish with most; it certainly is blotted out in their descendants.
It is also evident that, in general, it is harder to determine the social standing of women than of men. Women adapt themselves more readily to new conditions; they acquire higher manners more quickly. Their power of accommodation is greater than that of more clumsy man.
What to a plant are good soil, light and air, are to man healthy social conditions, that allow him to unfold his powers. The well known saying: "Man is what he eats," expresses the same thought, although somewhat one-sidedly: The question is not merely what man eats; it embraces his whole social posture, the social atmosphere in which he moves, that promotes or stunts his physical and mental development, that affects, favorably or unfavorably, his sense of feeling, of thought, and of action. Every day we see people, situated in favorable material conditions, going physically and morally to wreck, simply because, beyond the narrower sphere of their own domestic or personal surroundings, unfavorable circumstances of a social nature operate upon them, and gain such overpowering ascendency that they switch them on wrong tracks. The general conditions under which a man lives are even of far greater importance than those of the home and the family. If the conditions for social development are equal to both sexes, if to neither there stand any obstacles in the way, and if the social state of society is a healthy one, then woman also will rise to a point of perfection in her being, such as we can have no full conception of, such conditions having hitherto been absent in the history of the development of the race. That which some women are in the meantime achieving, leaves no doubt upon this head: these rise as high above the mass of their own sex as the male geniuses do above the mass of theirs. Measured with the scale usually applied to Princes, women have, on an average, displayed greater talent than men in the ruling of States. As illustrations, let Isabella and Blanche of Castile be quoted; Elizabeth of Hungary; Catharine Sforza, the Duchess of Milan and Imola; Elizabeth of England; Catharine of Russia; Maria Theresa, etc. Resting upon the fact that, in all races and all parts of the world, women have ruled with marked ability, even over the wildest and most turbulent hordes, Burbach makes the statement that, in all probability, women are fitter for politics than men.[132] For the rest, many a great man in history would shrink considerably, were it only known What he owes to himself, and what to others. Count Mirabeau, for instance, is described by German historians, von Sybel among them, as one of the greatest lights of the French Revolution: and now research has revealed the fact that this light was indebted for the concept of almost all of his speeches to the ready help of certain scholars, who worked for him in secret, and whom he understood to utilize. On the other hand, apparitions like those of a Sappho, a Diotima of the days of Socrates, a Hypatia of Alexander, a Madame Roland, Madame de Stael, George Sand, etc., deserve the greatest respect, and eclipse many a male star. The effect of women as mothers of great men is also known. Woman has achieved all that was possible to her under the, to her, as a whole, most unfavorable circumstances; all of which justifies the best hopes for the future. As a matter of fact, only the second half of the nineteenth century began to smooth the way for the admission of women in large numbers to the race with men on various fields; and quite satisfactory are the results attained.
But suppose that, on an average, women are not as capable of higher development as men, that they cannot grow into geniuses and great philosophers, was this a criterion for men when, at least according to the letter of the law, they were placed on a footing of equality with "geniuses" and "philosophers?" The identical men of learning, who deny higher aptitudes to woman, are quite inclined to do the same to artisans and workingmen. When the nobility appeals to its "blue" blood and to its genealogical tree, these men of learning laugh in derision and shrug their shoulders; but as against the man of lower rank, they consider themselves an aristocracy, that owes what it is, not to more favorable conditions of life, but to its own talent alone. The same men who, on one field, are among the freest from prejudice, and who hold him lightly who does not think as liberally as themselves, are, on another field,—the moment the interests of their rank and class, or their vanity and self-esteem are concerned—found narrow to the point of stupidity, and hostile to the point of fanaticism. The men of the upper classes look down upon the lower; and so does almost the whole sex upon woman. The majority of men see in woman only an article of profit and pleasure; to acknowledge her an equal runs against the grain of their prejudices:—woman must be humble and modest; she must confine herself exclusively to the house and leave all else to the men, the "lords of creation," as their domain: woman must, to the utmost, bridle her own thoughts and inclinations, and quietly accept what her Providence on earth—father or husband—decrees. The nearer she approaches this standard, all the more is she praised as "sensible, modest and virtuous," even though, as the result of such constraint, she break down under the burden of physical and moral suffering. What absurdity is it not to speak of the "equality of all" and yet seek to keep one-half of the human race outside of the pale!
Woman has the same right as man to unfold her faculties and to the free exercise of the same: she is human as well as he: like him, she should be free to dispose of herself as her own master. The accident of being born a woman, makes no difference. To exclude woman from equality on the ground that she was born female and not male—an accident for which man is as little responsible as she—is as inequitable, as would be to make rights and privileges dependent upon the accident of religion or political bias; and as senseless as that two human beings must look upon each other as enemies on the ground that the accident of birth makes them of different stock and nationality. Such views are unworthy of a truly free being. The progress of humanity lies in removing everything that holds one being, one class, one sex, in dependence and in subjection to another. No inequality is justified other than that which Nature itself establishes in the differences between one individual and another, and for the fulfillment of the purpose of Nature. The natural boundaries no sex can overstep: it would thereby destroy its own natural purpose.
The adversaries of full equality for woman play as their trump card the claim that woman has a smaller brain than man, and that in other qualities, besides, she is behind man, hence her permanent inferiority (subordination) is demonstrated. It is certain that man and woman are beings of different sexes; that they are furnished with different organs, corresponding to the sex purpose of each; and that, owing to the functions that each sex must fill to accomplish the purpose of Nature, there are a series of other differences in their physiologic and psychic conditions. These are facts that none can deny and none will deny; nevertheless, they justify no distinction in the social and political rights of man and woman. The human race, society, consists of both sexes; both are indispensable to its existence and progress. Even the greatest male genius was born of a mother, to whom frequently he is indebted for the best part of himself. By what right can woman be refused equality with man?
Based upon information furnished us by a medical friend, we shall here sketch with a few strokes the essential differences, that, according to leading authorities, manifest themselves in the physical and mental qualities of man and woman. The bodily size of man and woman stands, on an average, in the relation of 100 to 93.2. The bones of woman are shorter and thinner, the chest smaller, wider, deeper and flatter. Other differences depend directly upon the sex purpose. The muscles of woman are not as massive. The weight of the heart is 310 grains in man, 255 in woman.
The composition of the blood in man and woman is as follows: Water, man, 77.19; woman, 79.11. Solid matter, man, 22.10; woman, 20.89. Blood corpuscles, man, 14.10; woman, 12.79. Number of blood corpuscles in a cubic millimeter of blood, man, 4½ to 5 millions; woman, 4 to 4½ millions. According to Meynert, the weight of the brain of man is from 1,018 to 1,925 grams; of woman, from 820 to 1,565; or in the relation of 100 to 90.93. LeBon and Bischoff agree that, while weight of brain corresponds with size of body, nevertheless short people have relatively larger brains. With woman, the smaller size of the heart, the narrower system of blood vessels and probably also the larger quantity of blood, has a lower degree of nourishment for its effect.[133] That, however, the larger skulls of larger persons, coupled with the quantitative changes occasioned by the size of the skull promote the vigor of the several sections of the brain is a matter that cannot be asserted.[134]
Of 107 mentally healthy men and 148 women of the ages of 20 to 59, the weight of the brain per thousand was: