Facts and Fictions of Life

by Helen H. Gardener

Now, this is a secret—I would not have it get out for a good deal. It took me a long while to get my courage up to go to that man without an introduction—a thing I did not do with any of the others. I finally, with fear and trembling, made up my mind to learn what he knew on this subject or perish in the attempt. So I took my life in my hands, put on my best gown—I had previously discovered that even brain anatomists are subject to the spell of good clothes—and went. I fully expected to be reduced to mere pulp before I left; but he listened quite patiently, asked me a few questions as to why I had come to him; told me to read him my questions; asked me sharply, "Who wrote those questions?" I said meekly, "I did." He looked at me critically, wrote something on a card, and dismissed me. I was uncertain whether, he had been so kind in his manner, because he considered me a harmless lunatic or not. Once in the street I read the card. I was to call again when he could give me more time.

I went not once, but many times. I devoted some months to brain anatomy and anthropology. In his laboratory he had brains from those of a mouse to those of the largest whale on record. He showed me the peculiarities of brains as shown by microscope and scales. He looked up points in foreign journals to which I had not access. In short, he did all he could to aid me; and he said that no such investigation as I was trying to learn about had ever yet been made, although no fair record of the difference of sex in brain, of which we hear so much, could possibly be made without it. He was delightfully frank, earnest, and thoroughly honest. He knew—and, what is better, he was willing to tell—where knowledge stopped and guessing began; a point sadly confused, I found, by even prominent members of the profession. "I do not know," was a hard sentence to get from a doctor so long as he was under the impression that others of his profession would know. "I do not know; nobody knows," came freely enough from the man who was sure of the boundaries of investigation, who recognized the vast difference between theories and proof. From him, and through him, I collected material that is of intense interest and importance to woman in this stage of the movement for her elevation.

It is only right that I say here that I am of opinion that he does not himself believe in the equality of the sexes, but he is too thoroughly scientific to allow his hereditary bias to color his statements of facts on this or any subject. In the hands of a man who has arrived at that point of mental poise and dignity, our case is safe, no matter what his sentiments may be. Such men do not go to their emotions for premises when it comes to a statement of scientific facts. There are writers on this subject who do.

As you all know, any statement calmly and persistently made is reasonably sure to be accepted as true, even by its victims. Frequency of iteration passes as proof. Even thoughtful men, after spending years of time in trying to explain why a thing is true, often end with the discovery that it is not true, after all. We are all familiar with the story of the wrangle of the philosophers as to why a vessel containing water weighed no more with a fish weighing a pound in it than it did after the fish was removed. After long and acrimonious debate over the principle of philosophy involved, some one bethought him to weigh it, and, of course, discovered that no unfamiliar principle was involved, since it was a simple misstatement as to facts.

The assumptions of "divine rights" by kings and priests stood as unquestioned facts for centuries by those who were the victims of both. The "divine right" of men rests still on the same bare-faced fraud, and is simply the last of this interesting trinity to die, and it naturally dies hard, as its fellows did. If a charlatan loudly asserts that he can do a certain thing, no matter how unlikely that thing is, if he insists that he has done it often, he will find many believers who will spend much time in an attempt to explain how he does it, while only the few will think to question first if he does it.

Upon this basis of calm assumption on the one side, and credulous acceptance on the other, has grown up a very general belief that there are great and well-defined natural anatomical differences between the brains of the sexes of the human race; that these differences are well known to the medical practitioner or anatomist, and that they plainly indicate inferiority of capacity in the female brain, which is structural, while, strangely enough, no one argues that this is the case in the lower animals. It therefore occurred to me to question—admitting that the microscope and scales really do show the differences to exist in adults—whether it would not be fair to assume, at least, that they are not natural and necessary sex differences, but that they are due to difference of opportunity and environment, and, under like conditions, would be produced between members of the same sex; that since this superiority of brain in the male sex is said to appear in the human race only, where alone, in all nature, superior opportunities and environments are held as a sex right and condition by the males, that the so-called "superiority of structure" is simply better development of the equally capable but restricted brain of the other sex.

I proposed to test this by an appeal to the brains of infants. And my assumption although not new, appeared to be borne out by the accepted, though unproven theory, that the brains of the men and women are nearer alike the lower we go into the human scale. This assumption is clearly based upon the idea that where the mental opportunities of the men and women are nearer equal the physical results are also similar. Indeed, Topinard plainly states this fact in his Anthropology. He says: "The reason that the brain of woman is lighter than that of man is that she has less cerebral activity to exercise in her sphere of duty. In former times it was relatively larger in the department of Lozère, because then the woman and man mutually shared the burdens of the daily labor. The truth is that the weight of the brain increases with the use we make of it." Since women are not given diversified and stimulating mental employment, they can not be expected to show the results of such training on the brain itself.

"Of the physiology of the brain comparatively little is known," says Dr. McDonald, author of "Criminology."

I was started on my work in this matter by several articles written by the boldest of the medical men in this country, who is the leader of the medical party which claims to be opposed to the educational and political advancement of women because of the inevitable injury to her physical constitution. The writings of such a man, aided by the circulation and prestige of the leading journals of the country, which publish them as authoritative, must inevitably influence school directors, voters, and legislators, and go far to crystalize the belief that facts are well known to the medical profession, with which it would be dangerous to trifle, when the truth is that the positive knowledge on the subject is not sufficient at this moment to form even an intelligent guess upon. In spite of this fact the well-known physician of whom I speak, Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, reiterates in these articles all of the old, and adds one or two new arguments to prove that woman should not be allowed to develop what brain she has, because she possesses very little and even that little is of inferior quality.

Professor Romanes, who is said by many to stand second only to Herbert Spencer in his branch of science, has also recently published a very extensive paper on mental differences of the sexes and the proper education of woman, which is, unfortunately, but most likely honestly, based upon this same assumption, under the belief that it was a demonstrated fact. His paper has been very widely copied in spite of its extreme length, and the fact that the same journals "absolutely can not find space" for even a moderately long one on the other side. The editors say, "The public is not interested in it"—that is, in its correction. I mention these two men not because they are peculiar in, but because they are honored representatives of, the so-called scientific school of objectors to human equality, and claim to base the right of male supremacy upon important scientific facts.