Facts and Fictions of Life

by Helen H. Gardener

When religious influence and dogma began to lose their terrors, legal enactments were slowly modified in woman's favor and hell went out of fashion. Then Conservatism, Ignorance, and Egotism, in dismay and terror, took counsel together and called in medical science, still in its infancy, to aid in staying the march of progress which is inevitable to civilization and so necessary to anything like a real Republic. Equality of opportunity began to be denied to woman, for the first time, upon natural and so-called scientific grounds. She was pronounced physically and mentally incapable, because of certain anatomical conditions, and she must be prevented—for her own good and that of the race here—from competition with her mental and physical superiors.

It was no longer her soul, but her body, that needed saving from herself. Her thirst for knowledge the clergy declared had already damned the souls of a very large majority of mankind—in a hereafter known only to them. The same vicious tendency, the doctors echoed, will be the ruin of the physical bodies of the race in this world, as we are prepared to prove. The case began to look hopeless again. Opportunity must be denied, these doctors say, because capacity does not exist. Where capacity seems to exist, it is, it must be, at the expense of individual health and future maternal capabilities.

As a person, she has no status with these consistent believers in "equal rights to all mankind." As a potential mother only, can she hope for consideration either by religious or medical theorist. This has been a difficult combination to meet. Few who cared to contest their verdict, possessed the bravery to fearlessly face the religious dictators, and fewer still had the anatomical and anthropological information to risk a fight on a field which assumed to be held by those who based all of their arguments upon scientific facts, collected by microscope and scales and reduced to unanswerable statistics.

The priest, reinforced by the doctor, promised a long and bitter struggle, on new grounds, to those who fought for simple justice to the individual, aside from her sex relations; who wished for neither malediction nor mercy; those who claim only the right of a unit to enjoy the common heritage untrammeled by superstition and artificial difficulties. They do not ask to be helped—only not to be hindered. They had hailed science as their friend and ally; and behold, pseudo-science adopted theories, invented statistics, and published personal prejudices as demonstrated fact. All this has done a vast deal of harm to the cause of woman.

Educators, theorists, and politicians readily accept the data and statistics of prominent physicians, and, in good faith, make them a basis of action, while the victims of their misinformation have been helpless. It is, therefore, very important to learn, if possible, just how far medical science and anthropology have really discovered demonstrable natural sex differences in the brains of men and women, and how far the usual theories advanced are gratuitous assumptions, founded upon legend and fed by mental habit and personal egotism.

I began an investigation into this matter a little while ago by questioning the arguments and logic of the medical pseudo-scientists from their own basis of facts. I ended by questioning the facts themselves, upon the evidence furnished me by leading members of the profession, some of whom are known in this country and abroad as leaders in original investigation as brain students and anatomists. None of these gentlemen knew the aim or motive of my inquiries, and they gave me all the information to be had on this subject without bias and quite freely. The specialists and brain students to whom my questions were submitted, were of widely different religious beliefs, which beliefs, of course, colored their theories as well as their motives, either consciously or unconsciously.

But the profession has reason to be proud of the ability of the most of these men, no less than of their sincerity and willingness to confess to ignorance of facts where proof was lacking. The abler the man the more willing was he to do this. One or two tried to explain, and, as it seemed to me, to force an agreement between scientific facts which they did possess, and their inherited belief in "revelation." Others, who did not themselves recognize it, performed the same mental gymnastics from mere force of habit, and gave a black eye to their facts in preserving a blind eye to their faith. But in the following results are to be found the opinions of eminent medical men, some of whom are Roman Catholic, some Protestant, and some of the negative systems of religion. So far as I know, not one is a believer in "Woman Suffrage," nor even in the more radical but less comprehensive measures for her development. Not one, who touched directly upon the subject, believed in sex equality in its entirety or had not personal prejudice and long-cherished sentiments opposed to it, if his reason approved. By some of them this was frankly stated, even while giving facts in her favor. Not more than one, so far as I know, is "agnostic" in religion or a believer in evolution in its entirety.

I have mentioned these latter points, because I found in this line of investigation, as in all others, that a man's religious leanings inevitably color and modify all of his opinions, and govern his entire mental outlook. They even add bitterness to his "jalop" and fizz in his "seltzer". If he absolutely believe in the "Garden of Eden" story he deals with "Adam" as a creature after "God's own heart and in his image," and therefore capable and deserving of all opportunity and development for and because of himself, and to promote his own happiness. "Eve," of course, receives due attention as a physical, anatomical specimen, "with intuitions"—a mere bone or rib of contention, as it were, between man and man. The more orthodox the man the bonier the rib. The more literal and consistent his faith the less likely is he to deal with woman as an intellectual being, capable of and entitled to the same or as liberal, mental, social, and financial opportunities or rights as are universally conceded in this country to be the birthright of man, and quite beyond farther controversy in his case. Evidence in her favor which cannot be evaded, must be overwhelming, indeed, then, if an investigator starts out handicapped with the theory of "revelation" as a part of his mental equipment, and with the "sphere of woman" formulated for him by the ancient Hebrews.

I went to the men whom the doctors themselves told me were the best authority to be found on the subject of brain anatomy and microscopy. One of these men, Dr. E. C. Spitzka, of New York, was referred to by physicians of all schools of practice as undoubtedly the best informed man in America, and second to none in the world, in this branch of the profession. They, one and all, told me that what he could not tell me himself on this subject, or could not tell me where to find, could not be of the slightest importance.

I have been asked to tell you just what I started out to learn, and how far I succeeded. But before I do this it may not be out of place to tell you an anecdote of my experience in this undertaking: I went personally with my questions to about twenty of the leading physicians of New York. [I had them submitted in other ways to many more in this and other cities. I got written communications from the Old World as well as the New.] Nearly every one of these twenty, after very kindly telling me what he himself knew and what he believed on the subject, referred me to the same man as the final appeal; but not one of them was willing to introduce me to him. They would introduce me to anybody and everybody else, but they did not like to risk sending me to him. He was, they said, utterly impatient of ignorance, and might treat me with scant courtesy. He would very likely tell me flatly that he could not waste time on so trivial a matter—that I and everybody else ought to know all about "sex in brain."