Mill says:—“There is nothing which men so easily learn as this self-worship; all privileged persons, and all privileged classes have had it.” And he also speaks of a time—“when satires on women were in vogue, and men thought it a clever thing to insult women for being what men made them.”—(“Subjection of Women,” pp. 76, 77).
We have seen (Note XLV., 5) how Professor Huxley postulates scientific training equally for girls and boys; he has also said:—“Emancipate girls. Recognise the fact that they share the senses, perceptions, feelings, reasoning powers, emotions of boys, and that the mind of the average girl is less different from that of the average boy, than the mind of one boy is from that of another; so that whatever argument justifies a given education for all boys, justifies its application to girls as well.”—(“Emancipation, Black and White.”)
Balzac asserted: “A woman who has received a masculine education possesses the most brilliant and fertile qualities, with which to secure the happiness of her husband and herself.”—(“Physiologie du Mariage,” Méditation XI.).
But the instances are innumerable where the intellect of higher men expressly or unconsciously rebukes the jealous sexual conceit of their less intelligent brethren. Dr. Bonavia says, very tersely:—“The fact is, many men don’t like the idea of being surpassed or even equalled by women. They stupidly feel their dignity wounded. This jealousy, however, is not only extremely contemptible and unjust, but disastrous to the true interests of the race, for men have mothers as well as women, and imbecility—the result of atrophied frontal lobes—is just as likely to be transmitted to the one sex as to the other, as far as we yet know. Just see the injustice of men’s jealousy in matters of intellect. Only recently the talent of Miss Ormerod—an entomologist who can hold her own anywhere on earth—was kept under by the Royal Agricultural Society. She did the entomological work, and made the discoveries, while they took the credit. In their reports they did not even mention her name in connection with her own work!—A more contemptible proceeding, it would appear, has never been brought to light, in the struggle of the sexes, if that case has been correctly reported.”—(“Woman’s Frontal Lobes.”)
Bebel treats this jealousy with a fine irony in his exposition of “the motives which induce most medical professors, and indeed the professors of every faculty, to oppose women students:”—“They regard the admission of women as synonymous with the degradation of science (!) which could not but lose its prestige in the eyes of the enlightened (!) multitude if it appeared that the female brain was capable of grasping problems which had hitherto only been revealed to the elect of the opposite sex.”—(Op. cit., p. 132.)
Had Bebel recorded masculine mercenary considerations, rather than sham misgivings as to the interests of science, his sarcasm would have been very grim truth. Indeed, what is sometimes called the “loaves and fishes” argument is at the root of most of this masculine jealousy which cloaks itself under a pretension of tender consideration for woman’s delicacy. To cite Bebel again: “Another objection is that it is unseemly to admit women to medical lectures, to operations, and deliveries, side by side with male students. If men see nothing indecent in studying and examining female patients in the presence of nurses and other female patients, it is difficult to understand why it should become so through the presence of female students.”—(Op. cit., p. 132.) And as to the actual fitness of women for exercising the profession of medicine or surgery:—
“‘Women always improve when the men begin to show signs of failing,’ were the words of a distinguished physician and surgeon, who had seen years of service on a remote wintry station of the army. ‘I have had fellows brought to me to have the leg amputated—perhaps both—close to the body, and never anywhere in Paris, London, or New York, saw I better surgeon’s assistants than some of our women made, especially the Sisters of Charity, of whom we had a few at the post, for three or four years. Heads as clear as a silver bell; hands steady and unshrinking as a granite rock, yet with a touch as light as a spring leaf; foot quick and indefatigable, whether the time was noonday or midnight; memory perfect; tenderness for the sufferer unfailing. Talk about love, courage, fortitude, and endurance in your sex! I tell you,’ he added, with a needless affirmation at this point, ‘they seem to be nothing else, when these are most wanted, and the man who doubts them is an ass.’”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 157). See also Note XXIX., 8.
Id. ... Here may fittingly follow the report of a trained masculine judgment as to woman’s ability in yet a further profession—that of the law:—
At the recent opening of the Southern California College of Law, at Los Angeles, John W. Mitchell, the president, in his lecture upon “The Study of the Law,” spoke of the utility of women studying law, in the following language:—
“This part of this discourse it is believed would be radically incomplete without calling attention to one other and particular class of persons who need an insight into the rudiments of law—which class, it seems, has also been neglected by those occupying a like position to my own—I mean the women. He is, indeed, blind to the signs of the times who does not recognise the expanding field of women’s work, and their increased influence in the professions as well as in the fine arts. That women are entering the lists with men, in behalf of themselves and womankind, is well; for they must make up their minds to take up the task of urging the reforms they need, and must solve the woman problem in all its bearings. Women are doing this. They are becoming competitors with men in the pursuits of life, it is true; but it is as much from necessity as choice. But it is not only the women who have to labour and earn their own living who need legal knowledge to aid them. It is more needful to the woman of property, be her possessions but an humble home or a colossal fortune; whether she be married or single. Women want this experience to make them cautious of jeopardising their rights, and less confiding in business matters. The courts are full of cases showing how women have been wrongly stripped of their belongings. And, perhaps, if one woman had known the legal effect of some of her acts, one of the largest fortunes ever amassed in this State of Crœsus-like wealth would not have been carried to distant States, and there scandalously distributed amongst scheming adventurers and lawyers, making a little Massachusetts county-seat the theatre of one of the most remarkable contests for a fortune in the whole annals of probate court law.