Woman in Science — Woman's Capacity for Scientific Pursuits, Part 1

CHAPTER II WOMAN'S CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS

In a curious old black-letter volume entitled _The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes_, published in England in 1521 by Henry Pepwell, occurs the following passage: "I mervayle gretely of the opynyon of some men that say they wolde in no wyse that theyr daughters or wyves or kynnes-women sholde lerne scyences, and that it sholde apayre theyr condycyons.

This thing is not to say ne to sustayne.

That the woman apayreth by conynge it is not well to beleve.

As the proverb saythe, 'that nature gyveth may not be taken away.'

" The book from which this remarkable quotation is taken is a translation of Christine de Pisan's _La Cite des Dames_, which was written early in the fifteenth century.

It is a capital defence against the slanderers of the gentler sex and an armory of arguments for all time against those men who declare that "women are fit for nothing but to bear children and spin."

It shows conclusively that conynge--knowledge--far from tending to injure women's character--apayre theyr condycyons--as was asserted by Christine's antagonists, contributes, on the contrary, to elevate and ennoble them and to render them better mothers and more useful members of society.

Notwithstanding that it was written five hundred years ago, and notwithstanding its "antiquated allegorical dress and its quaint pre-Renaissance notions of history," it is in many of its aspects a surprisingly modern production.

The line of argument adopted by the writer is virtually the same as that which is adopted to-day in the discussion of the same questions which are so ably treated in this long-forgotten book[89] and show that Christine de Pisan was in every way a worthy champion of her sex.

No woman of her time was more competent to discuss the capacity of her sex for science as well as for other intellectual pursuits than was this learned daughter of Italy.

She was not only a woman of profound and varied knowledge, but was also, as stated in the preceding chapter, the first woman to earn her living by her pen.

Besides writing _The City of Ladies_ and more verses--mostly ballads and virelays--than are contained in the _Divina Commedia_, she was also the author of many other works on the most diverse subjects.

She is best known to historians as the author of _Livre des Fais et Bonnes Meurs du sage Roy Charles V_, which is a graphic account of the court and policy of this monarch, and of the _Livre des Faits d'Armes et de Chevalerie_.

The latter work is not, as might be imagined from its title, a collection of tales of chivalry, but, incredible as it may seem, a profound and systematic treatise on military tactics and international law.

It deals with "many topics of the highest policy, from the manners of a good general and the minutiae of siege operations to the wager of battle, safe-conducts and letters of marque," and was deemed so important by Henry VII that at his expressed desire it was translated into English and published by Caxton under the title of _The Boke of Fayettes of Armes and Chyvalrye_.

Even so late as the time of Henry VIII it was regarded as an authoritative manual on the topics treated.

So great, indeed, was the extent and variety of Christine's attainments, so thoroughly had she studied the Latin and Greek authors, sacred and profane, and so profound was her knowledge of all the subjects which she dealt with in her numerous books that "one cannot but feel a certain astonishment when one finds in a woman in the fourteenth century an erudition such as is hardly possessed by the most laborious of men."

When we read the eloquent plea which this learned woman of five centuries ago makes in behalf of her sex, when we note the examples she quotes of women "illumined of great sciences," and consider the arguments by which she demonstrated the capacity of women for all scientific pursuits, we can easily fancy that we are reading the brief of some modern exponent of the woman's rights movement and are almost disposed to believe that La Bruyiere was right when he declared, _Les anciens ont tout dit_.

For so cogent is Christine's reasoning and so thoroughly does she traverse her subject from every point of view that she has left later writers little to add to the controversy except matters of detail which were not available in her time.

In spite, however, of Christine's _Cyte of Ladyes_, "in which," according to our mediaeval paragon, "women, hitherto scattered and defenceless, were forever to find refuge against all their slanderers," in spite of the fact that the foundations of this city were laid by Reason, that its walls and cloisters were built on Righteousness, and its battlements and high towers on Justice, in spite of the fact that the material entering into its construction was "stronger and more durable than any marble," and that it was, as our author declares, "a city right fair, without fear and of perpetual during to the world--a city that should never be brought to nought," Christine's work was soon lost sight of, and the right of women to the same intellectual advantages as men was as strongly denied as it had been before she had so valiantly championed their cause, and denied, too, on the assumed ground of their innate incapacity.

It mattered not that during the succeeding centuries other women took up the cause for which the author of _La Cite des Dames_ had so nobly battled; it mattered not that countless women in every civilized country of the globe distinguished themselves by their achievements in every department of science and gave evidence of talent and genius of the highest order; it mattered not that chivalrous representatives of the sterner sex, like John Stuart Mill, came forward to plead the case of that half of humanity which had so long been held in cruel subjection.

The attitude of the world toward the intellectually disfranchised sex remained unchanged almost until our own time.

But, although women now enjoy advantages in the pursuit of science which were undreamed of only a generation ago, the age-old prejudices respecting woman's mental powers and her capacity for the more abstract branches of science still prevail.

It is useless to cite instances of women who have attained eminence in astronomy, mathematics, archaeology, or in any other science whatever.

Such instances, we are assured, are only exceptions and prove nothing.

Men like Lombroso are willing to admit the existence of an occasional woman of talent, but they deny the existence of genius in one who is truly a womanly woman.

[90] For, with Goncourt, they flippantly assert, _Il n'y a pas de femmes de genie: lorsqu'elles sont des genies, elles sont des hommes_--there are no women of genius; when they have genius they are men.

The reasons that now influence men for affirming the intellectual disparity of the sexes are, it must be observed, quite different from what they were in the time of Christine de Pisan--quite different from what they were half a century ago.

Our forebears, in their endless disputations regarding woman's mental inferiority, based their arguments on _a priori_ deductions, or on metaphysical considerations which proved nothing and which were often irrelevant, if not absurd.

Thus the Aristotelians, accepting as true the doctrine of the four elements as well as the superimposed doctrine of the four elemental qualities, sought to explain the properties of all compound bodies by these primal qualities.

In this way they explained the various virtues of drugs and medicines.

And by the same process of reasoning they explained the assumed difference between male and female brains.

They assumed, to begin with, that there was a difference between the intellectual capacities of men and women.

They then assumed that this difference in capacity was due to the difference in character and texture of the female as compared with those of the male brain.

They next further assumed that the doctrines of the four elements and of the four elemental qualities were established beyond question, and then assumed again that the reason of woman's inferior capacity was due to the fact that her brain was moister and softer, and, therefore, more impressionable than that of man.

No wonder that the old Spanish Benedictine, Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, in his chivalrous _Defensa de la Mujer_, lost all patience with such fantastic theorizers and wrote: "Did I write ...

to display my wit, I could easily, by deducting a chain of consequences from received principles, shew that man's understanding, weighed in the balance with female capacity, would be found so light as to kick the beam."

[91] Abandoning the Aristotelian method of envisaging the question under discussion, our modern philosophers have recourse to the recent sciences of biology and psycho-physiology to prove what they, too, assume to be true--viz.

, woman's incurable mental weakness.

Like their predecessors, they are dominated by passion, prejudice, the errors of countless centuries, and, like them, they approach the subject on which they are to pronounce judgment, with minds warped by long ages of imperious instincts, ignorant preconceptions and social bias.

They will quote the opinions of Proudhon and Schopenhauer--as if they had the value of mathematical demonstrations--on the mental inferiority of women, and will declare with unblushing assurance that no woman has ever produced a single work of any kind of enduring worth.

With the German pessimist, they will blatantly declare, taken as a whole, "women are and remain thoroughgoing Philistines and quite incurable."

[92] With the French socialist they will assert, as if it were an axiomatic truth, that "thought in every living being is proportional to force"--that "physical force is not less necessary for thought than for muscular labor."

They have apparently no more doubt respecting the truth of these assumptions than had their predecessors, the Aristotelians, respecting their assumptions of the four elements and their first qualities.

Their process of reasoning is somewhat as follows: "Woman is smaller and weaker than man.

This is a matter of simple observation, confirmed by the teachings of physiology.

Therefore, woman is physically and intellectually inferior to man.

Therefore she is incapable of any of those great conceptions and achievements in science or philosophy which have so distinguished the male sex in every age of the world's history.

That she is thus weaker and inferior physically and intellectually and forever incapacitated from successfully competing with man in the intellectual arena is a fatality for which, we are gravely told, there is no remedy, and to which women, consequently, must resign themselves as to one of the inexorable laws of nature."

It would be difficult to cite a more preposterous example of ratiocination.

If it were true that there is a necessary relation between vigor of body and vigor of mind; that mental power is proportional to physical power; that thought is but a special form of energy and capable of transformation, like heat, light and electricity;

that it, like the various physical forces, has its chemical and mechanical equivalents; that psychic work corresponds to a certain amount of chemical or thermic action; that intellectual capacity in man is proportional to muscular strength; it would follow that the great leaders of thought and action through the ages have been Goliaths in stature and Herculeses in strength.

But so far is this conclusion from being warranted that it is almost the reverse of the truth.

For many, if not the majority, of the great geniuses of the world in every age have been either men of small frame or men of delicate and precarious health.

Among the men of genius who were noted for their diminutive stature were Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Archimedes, Epicurus, Horace, Albertus Magnus, Montaigne, Lipsius, Spinoza, Erasmus, Lalande, Charles Lamb, Keats, Balzac and Thiers.

Many others were remarkable for their spare form.

Among these in the prime of life were Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, St. Paul, Kepler, Pascal, Boileau, Fenelon, D'Alembert, Napoleon, Lincoln and Leo XIII.

Others, like Aesop, Brunelleschi, Leopardi, Magliabecchi, Parini, Scarron, Talleyrand, Pope, Goldsmith, Byron, Sir Walter Scott, to mention only a few of the most eminent, were either hunchbacked, lame, rachitic or clubfooted.

Others, still, were the victims of chronic ill health, or of nervous disorders of the most serious character.

Virgil was of a delicate and frail constitution.

He essayed the bar, but shrank from it and turned to the "contemplation of diviner things."

Nor was Horace, though less completely a recluse and more of a _bon vivant_, a strong man.

Both of them, as scholars will remember, sought the couch, while Maecenas went off to the tennis court.

Pope's life, says Johnson, was a long disease.

Johnson himself, though large and muscular, had queer health and a tormenting constitution.

Schiller wrote most of his best work while struggling against a painful malady, and Heine's "mattress grave" is proverbial.

France furnishes an excellent example in Pascal.

[93] Some of the most noted leaders of thought in our own era were likewise chronic invalids.

Among these were the scholarly theologian, E. B.

Pusey, and J. A.

Symonds, the historian of the Renaissance.

There was also Herbert Spencer, who was frequently forced by nervous breakdowns to take long periods of absolute rest.

More remarkable still was the case of the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin.

"It is," writes his son, "a principal feature of his life that for nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one long struggle against the weariness and the strain of sickness."

[94] But, notwithstanding his continued ill health and the spinal anemia from which he suffered, he was able to conduct those epoch-making researches which put him in the forefront of men of science, and to write those famous books which have completely revolutionized our views of nature and nature's laws.

But a still more remarkable illustration of the fact that there is no necessary relation between muscular and mental power, between physical well-being and intellectual energy, is afforded by the illustrious discoverer of the world of the infinitely little, Louis Pasteur.

Stricken by hemiplegia shortly after he had begun those brilliant investigations which have rendered him immortal, he remained affected by partial paralysis until the end of his life.

His friends had reason to fear that this attack, even if he should survive it, would weaken or extinguish his spirit of initiative, if it did not make further work entirely impossible.

But this was far from the case.

For a quarter of a century he continued with unabated activity those marvelous labors which are forever associated with his name.

And it was after, not before, his misfortune that he made his most famous discoveries in the domain of microbian life, and placed in the hands of physicians and surgeons those infallible means of combatting disease which have made him one of the greatest benefactors of suffering humanity.

The complete separation of the intellectual from the motor faculties was never more clearly exhibited than in this case, nor was it ever more completely demonstrated by an experiment, whose validity no one could question, that power of mind does not necessarily depend on strength or health of body.

It proved, also, in the most telling manner that it is not muscular but psychic force which avails most, whether to the individual or to society.

And it showed, at the same time, the utter absurdity of those theories which would fatally connect intellectual with physical debility in woman, and would forever adjudge the physically weaker sex to be of hopeless inferiority in all things of the mind.

What has been said of men achieving renown, notwithstanding ill health, may likewise be affirmed of women.

The case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is scarcely less remarkable than that of Darwin.

In spite of being a chronic invalid the greater part of her life, she attained a position in letters reached by but few of her contemporaries.

The same almost may be said of the three Bronte sisters.

The deadly seeds of consumption were sown in their systems in early youth, but, although fully aware that life had "passed them by with averted head," they were, through their indomitable wills, able to send forth from their bleak home in the wild Yorkshire moors works of genius that still instruct and delight the world.

From the foregoing it is clear that valetudinarianism, if it prove anything, proves not that it renders intellectual effort impossible, but that it serves as a discipline for the soul.

It forces the mind to husband its strength, and thus enables it to accomplish by economy and concentration of effort that which the same mind in a healthy body, with the distractions of society and the allurements of life, would be unable to accomplish.

It exemplifies in the most striking manner the truth of what Socrates says in Plato's _Republic_ about the beneficent action of the "bridle of Theages," preventing an infirm friend of his from embracing politics and keeping him true to his first love--philosophy.

Failing to show any necessary connection between superior physique and intellectual capacity, between health of body and mental activity, between the amount of food consumed and the degree of intelligence, the class of thinkers whose theories are now under consideration found themselves forced to abandon the argument based on robust health and physical strength and seek elsewhere for support of their views.

This, they soon announced, was found in the greater cranial capacity and greater brain weight of the male as compared with that of the female.

Following up this fancied clew, anthropologists the world over began measuring skulls and weighing brains in order to determine the supposed ratio of sex-difference.

The results of these investigations were far from corroborating the preconceived notions of those who had fancied a necessary correlation between mental capacity and size of cranium, between the weight of encephalon and degree of intelligence.

For it was soon discovered that cranial capacity depended on many causes--many of them unknown--and that people having the largest skulls were often far from being the ones dowered with the greatest intellectual power.

It was found, for instance, that climate was a determining factor--that the inhabitants of northern regions have larger heads than those who live farther south.

Thus the Lapps, in proportion to their stature, have the largest heads in Europe.

After these come in order the Scandinavians, the Germans, the French, the Italians, the Arabs.

It was found also that the least cranial capacity of the ancient Egyptians coincides with the most brilliant period of their civilization--that of the eighteenth dynasty.

Measurements of skulls unearthed at Pompeii showed that the heads of the Romans who lived two thousand years ago were larger than the heads of the Romans of to-day.

Similarly, the skulls of the lake-dwellers of Switzerland were larger than those of the Swiss people of the present time, while the average circumference of the skulls measured in the catacombs of Paris is more than an inch greater than that of the Parisians who have died during the last half century.

The circumference of the skulls of a large number of mound-builders, excavated some years ago near Carrollton, Illinois, exceeded that of the average head of white men in New York of our day by nearly three inches.

This shows that the culture of the white race during long centuries has not developed its cranial capacity to equal that of the uncultured Indians who flourished in the Mississippi valley untold generations ago.

The skulls of Quaternary men were likewise very voluminous, although they belonged to a race whose mental manifestations were infantile in the extreme.

Even the celebrated Engis skull, one of the most ancient in existence, has been described by the late Professor Huxley as well formed and considerably larger than the average of the European skulls of to-day, not only in the width and height of the forehead, but also in the cubic capacity of the whole.

Furthermore, the eminent craniologist, Broca, has proved that the illiterate peasants of Auvergne have a much greater cranial capacity than that of the learned and cultured denizens of Paris.

And, as if to show conclusively that there is no necessary connection between intellectual capacity and size of cranium, authentic measurements disclose the fact that some of the most gifted men the world has known had small heads.

Among these were Dante and Voltaire.

The skull of the latter is one of the smallest which has thus far been observed.

What has been said regarding the relation of cranial volume to intellectual capacity, as revealed by the measurements of the skulls of ancient and modern, savage and civilized peoples may likewise be predicated of the differences in the sizes of the crania of men and women.

No argument as to the greater or less intelligence of either sex can be based on mere craniometric determinations.

"At the best, cranial capacity is but a rough indication of brain size; and to measure brain size by the external size of the skull furnishes still rougher and more fallacious approximations, since the male skull is more massive than the female."

Even the slight morphological differences between male and female skulls--some anthropologists deny that there are any at all--afford no more ground for conclusions in favor of the superiority of one or the other sex than the relative differences in size.

Such trifling differences as do exist exhibit, as Virchow has pointed out, an approximation of men to the savage, simian and senile type, and an approach of women to the infantile type.

Havelock Ellis, commenting on this difference, pertinently remarks, "It is open to a man in a Pharisaic mood to thank God that his cranial type is far removed from the infantile.

It is equally open to woman in such a mood to be thankful that her cranial type does not approach the senile."

[95] But much stress as has been laid on physical power, health and cranial capacity, as determining factors of intellectual capacity and sexual differences, far greater stress has been laid on conclusions deducible from the relative brain weights of different classes of people as well as of different sexes.

It was assumed that by a critical study of the brain, by careful weighings of many brains of both sexes and of many races, it would be easy to secure conclusive evidence that the size and weight of the brain increase with the amount of intelligence of the individual.

It was also assumed that function not only makes the organ, but also develops it.

Brain became synonymous with mind.

A large brain implied vigor of thought; a small brain was evidence of mental inferiority.

Physiology had demonstrated unquestionably that the muscles of the body are enlarged by exercise.

It was assumed by those who are wont to measure mind in terms of matter that the brain, being the organ of thought, was also developed by exercise.

It was also assumed that the development of the brain was in a direct ratio to its activity.

The greater its activity the greater its mass, and the greater the mass the greater the degree of intelligence.

In other words, it was assumed that there was an exact and invariable proportion between weight of brain and amount of brain power.

None of the theories which have already been adverted to have been so full of assumptions and prejudices or vitiated by so many fallacies and over-hasty generalizations as this.

No subject has possessed a greater fascination for anthropologists, and no subject has been prolific in more diverse and conflicting conclusions.

Many men of science who, in other matters, were noted for their care in weighing evidence, before formulating theories, completely lost the scientific spirit when they began to weigh brains and to draw conclusions respecting the relations of brain weight and mental power, and to establish ratios between the character of the convolutions of the organ of thought and the degree of intelligence of its possessor.

Contrary to what is generally believed, a large brain is not always an indication of superior capacity or intelligence.

There have been, it is true, a number of men of genius who were the possessors of large brains, but there have also been others whose brains were of but medium weight.

The largest known brains of intellectual workers were those of Cuvier, the noted zoologist, and Turgenieff, the distinguished novelist.

The brain of the Frenchman weighed 1830 grams, while that of the Russian totaled 2012 grams.

Among other large brains--even larger than Cuvier's--were those of a bricklayer, which weighed 1900 grams, and of an ordinary laborer, which reached 1924 grams.

The largest brains on record were that of an ignorant laborer named Rustan, which weighed 2222 grams; that of a weak-minded London newsboy, which weighed 2268 grams, and that of a twenty-one-year-old epileptic idiot, which had the unheard of weight of 2850 grams.

[96] The seven largest recorded female brains were three weighing 1580 grams each, one of which belonged to a medical student of marked ability, while the other two belonged to quite undistinguished women.

There were two others weighing 1587 each, one of which belonged to an insane woman.

Still heavier than these by far were the brains of an insane woman who died of consumption, and of a dwarfed Indian squaw.

The brain of the first weighed 1742 grams; while that of the second was no less than 2084 grams.

From the foregoing examples it is evident that a large brain is far from being a certain index of mental capacity or of superior intelligence.

It is frequently the very reverse.

If, for instance, it fail to receive the necessary supply of blood, it will be inert or disordered and will prove to be a dangerous possession rather than a precious endowment.

Epileptics usually have brains that are large relatively to the size of the body.

And, while it is probably true that the great thinkers and men of action of the world have, in most instances, had comparatively large brains, it is also true that the brain weights of but few of them exceeded 1500 grams, while those of many fall below 1200 grams.

Thus the brain of Gambetta, "the foremost Frenchman of his time," weighed only 1159 grams, while the weight of the brain of Napoleon I was 1502 grams--barely equal to that of a negro described by the anthropologist Broca, and but little superior to that of a Hottentot mentioned by Dr. Jeffries Wyman.

[97] The late Dr. Joseph Simms found the average brain weight of sixty persons who were either imbeciles, idiots, criminals or men of ordinary mind to be 1792 grams, while that of sixty famous men was 1454 grams, a difference in favor of men not noted for intellectual greatness of 338 grams.

These figures are far from showing that large brains are a necessary concomitant of mental capacity.

In view of these and many similar facts, we are not surprised that the eminent German anatomist and anthropologist, Rudolph Wagner, should declare that "very intelligent men do not differ strikingly in brain weight from less gifted men," and that the noted French physician, Esquirol, should assert that "no size or form of head or brain is incident to idiocy or superior talent."