As Miss Jex Blake may possibly think that my decision was influenced by prejudice against her cause, allow me to add that such prejudice as I labour under lies in the opposite direction. Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigour and capacity.
We have heard a great deal lately about the physical disabilities of women. Some of these alleged impediments, no doubt, are really inherent in their organisation, but nine-tenths of them are artificial—the products of their modes of life. I believe that nothing would tend so effectually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness, and that "over-stimulation of the emotions" which, in plainer-spoken days, used to be called wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work, directed towards a definite object, combined with an equally fair share of healthy play, during the years of adolescence; and those who are best acquainted with the acquirements of an average medical practitioner will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily intelligent and well-educated young woman.
[The Marine Biological Station at Naples was still struggling for existence, and to my father's interest in it is do you the following letter, one of several to Dr. Dohrn, whose marriage took place this summer:—]
4 Marlborough Place, June 24, 1874.
My dear Dohrn,
Are you married yet or are you not? It is very awkward to congratulate a man upon what may not have happened to him, but I shall assume that you are a benedict, and send my own and my wife's and all the happy family's good wishes accordingly. May you have as good a wife and as much a "happy family" as I have, though I would advise you—the hardness of the times being considered—to be satisfied with fewer than seven members thereof.
I hear excellent accounts of the progress of the Station from Lankester, and I hope that it is now set on its legs permanently. As for the English contribution, you must look upon it simply as the expression of the hearty goodwill of your many friends in the land of fogs, and of our strong feeling that where you had sacrificed so much for the cause of science, we were, as a matter of duty,—quite apart from goodwill to you personally—bound to do what we could, each according to his ability.
Darwin is, in all things, noble and generous—one of those people who think it a privilege to let him help. I know he was very pleased with what you said to him. He is working away at a new edition of the "Descent of Man," for which I have given him some notes on the brain question.
And apropos of that, how is your own particular brain? I back la belle M— against all the physicians in the world—even against mine own particular Aesculapius, Dr. Clark—to find the sovereignest remedy against the blue devils.
Let me hear from you—most abominable of correspondents as I am. And why don't you send Madame's photograph that you have promised?