Woman in Science — Woman's Capacity for Scientific Pursuits, Part 2

So far as civilized races are concerned, there can be no doubt that the absolute weight of the male is greater than that of the female brain.

According to the investigations of seven of the most notable anthropologists, who have given special attention to the subject under consideration, and who, collectively, have carefully weighed many thousands of brains, the average brain weight of men in Europe is 1381 grams, while that of women is 1237 grams.

This shows a difference between the average weight of the brain in man and woman of 144 grams.

But, if it must be conceded that the absolute weight of man's brain is greater than woman's, is it likewise true that the relative weight is greater?

This is a question which demands an answer, as it is impossible to come to any just conclusion respecting the intellectual capacity of woman expressed in terms of brain weight, unless we can affirm with certainty that men's brains are relatively, as well as absolutely, larger than those of women.

Speaking of the relative weight of brain in man implies a term of comparison.

Several methods of estimating the sexual proportions of brain mass have been suggested, but only two of them have met with any favor.

These are determining the ratio of brain weight to body weight or body height.

According to the investigations of anthropologists of acknowledged authority, the average brain weight of woman is to that of man in England and France as 90 is to 100. The average stature of men and women in the same countries is as 93 to 100. This gives man an excess of brain weight over that of woman of something more than an ounce.

But this slight difference in weight has been considered sufficient to constitute it "a fundamental sexual distinction."

When, however, it is considered that men are not only taller but also larger than women, this apparent advantage of an ounce in favor of the male entirely disappears, and the result is that the relative amount of brain mass in the two sexes is practically equal.

Because of the manifest inaccuracy of the stature criterion, many eminent anthropologists have prepared to estimate sexual differences in brain weight by adopting the method based on the ratio of brain mass to body weight.

According to this method, women are found to possess brains which are equal to or even somewhat larger than those of men.

If the comparative excess of non-vital tissue in the form of fat in woman be eliminated and estimates be based only on the active organic mass of her body, as compared with the same mass in man, the excess of brain weight in woman over that in man will be still more marked.

A careful study, then, of the brain as a whole, far from proving woman's inferiority to man, rather proves her superiority.

The same may be said regarding sexual distinctions based on certain parts of the brain.

Some years ago it was positively asserted that the development of the frontal lobe exhibited a pronounced difference in the two sexes.

It was said to be much greater in man than in woman and was regarded as a distinguishing characteristic of the male sex.

This was in keeping with the generally accepted assumption that this portion of the brain is the seat of the higher intellectual processes.

Further investigation, however, showed that there was practically no sexual difference in the frontal lobe of the brain, or, if there was a difference, it was probably in favor of woman.

It has also become recognized that there is no valid reason for considering the anterior portion of the brain as the seat of the higher mental functions.

It is possible, but in the present state of science it can neither be affirmed nor denied.

So far as our present knowledge goes, it seems more likely that the whole of the brain, especially the sensori-motor regions of its middle part, have a part in mental operations.

At all events, it can certainly be affirmed that Huschke's distinction of man and woman into _homo frontalis et homo parietalis_ is utterly devoid of foundation in fact.

Many anthropologists have fancied that a certain index of the degree of intelligence is to be found in the convolutions of the brain.

The tortuous foldings of the female brain, it is asserted, are less ample, less pronounced and less beautiful.

"Behold," they exclaim, "a most positive evidence of inferiority."

These men overlook the fact that certain animals, notably the elephant and divers species of cetaceans, have cerebral convolutions that are more complex than those of man.

If, then, brain convolutions were, as claimed, a certain index of the degree of intelligence, the whale or the elephant, and not man--_pace_ Shakespeare--would be "the paragon of animals."

But men of science are by no means at one on this alleged sexual difference in brain convolutions.

On the contrary, there are many eminent physiologists and anatomists who contend that the superficies of brain convolutions in women is relatively greater than in men.

For those who believe--and they are probably the majority at present--that the seat of mental activity is in the gray matter of the brain, this greater brain surface, due to its convolutions, would be a decided compensation for woman's relatively smaller brain volume.

[98] In whatever way, then, we consider the brains of men and women, whether we compare the ratio of brain weight to height of body or to weight of body, or compare the relative amounts of gray matter in the two sexes, the advantage, in spite of her smaller body, is distinctly in favor of woman.

From the preceding considerations it seems clear that there is no ground from the point of view of brain anatomy for considering one sex as superior to the other.

They evince, too, that quality as well as quantity of brain tissue must be considered in all our discussions on the relations between the volume of brain and the intelligence of its possessor.

Whales and elephants have much larger brains than men, but they nevertheless stand far below him in intelligence.

It must be remembered, also, that the brain is not only an organ of mental function.

It is likewise the center of the entire nervous system, and its volume, therefore, must correspond with the size and number of nerve trunks under its control.

In man, as in animals, the brain elements are to a great extent but sensori-motor delegates whose function is the regulation and government of every part of the body.

The superior size of the whale's brain, as compared with that of man, can readily be understood when we reflect on the much greater amount of territory which these sensori-motor delegates represent.

When this fact is borne in mind it will be found that the whale's brain, relatively to that of man, is extremely small.

For while the ratio of man's brain weight to that of his body is as 1 to 36, the ratio of the whale's brain weight to its immense body is but 1 to 3,000. As an evidence that quality often counts for more than quantity, brain anatomists would do well to reflect on the marvelous intelligence displayed by ants and termites, those mites of animated nature which so excited the admiration of the naturalist Pliny and caused Darwin to declare, "The brain of an ant is one of the most marvelous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man."

[99] Moreover, when discussing the relative brain weights of the two sexes, we must not lose sight of the fact that we have, with the solitary exception of the eminent Russian mathematician, Sonya Kovalevsky,[100] no record of the brain weights of any eminently intellectual woman.

The brains of scores of men of genius and exceptional mentality have been weighed, but we are utterly ignorant of the weight of brain of such women as Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Madame de Stael, Maria Theresa, Sophie Germain, George Sand, Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, Eleanor Ormerod, Mary Somerville, and others of the same caliber.

The only data so far available, regarding the average brain weight of women, are such as have been obtained from the inmates of hospitals, prisons and pauper institutions.

And yet we are asked to accept the average based on such data as a fair term of comparison with the average male brain weight as increased by the superior weight of brain of such men as Cuvier and Turgenieff.

And this is called science!

[101] The attempt, then, to prove by weighing and measuring and studying brains that man is the intellectual superior of woman has been an ignominious failure.

The old belief that woman is by nature and cerebral organization less intelligent than man is not borne out by the investigations of those best qualified to pronounce an opinion on the subject.

To assert, as so many do, that woman was created man's intellectual inferior is begging the question.

Science can adduce no proof of such a gratuitous statement.

Broca, the most eminent of French anthropologists, regarded as an absurdity the attempt to establish a necessary relation between the development of intelligence and the volume and weight of the encephalon.

With the ripe knowledge of his mature years he was inclined to believe that the apparent difference in intelligence in the two sexes was owing, not to a difference of brain organization, but rather to a difference of education, physical as well as mental, and that, with equal opportunities for intellectual and physical development, the present sexual differences that we have been considering--differences which are due not to nature but to the long ages of restraint and subjection under which women have lived--would gradually be lessened, and that men and women would eventually approach that equality which characterizes them in the state of nature.

[102] Realizing the impossibility of arriving, by the study of brain sizes and structure, at any satisfactory conclusion respecting the relative intellectual capacities of men and women, seekers after truth cast about for other methods that were free from the errors and fallacies of those which had proved so unreliable.

The attempt to base the alleged mental inferiority of woman upon the facial angle of Camper, the metafacial angle of Serres, the craniofacial angle of Huxley, the sphenoidal angle of Welcker, or the nasobasal angle of Virchow had issued in utter failure, and had proved for the thousandth time that it is easier to formulate theories than to establish their validity.

It was evident, notwithstanding the assertions of certain materialistic theorists, that the brain did not secrete thought as the liver secretes bile; it was evident, too, that intelligence could not be estimated in terms of any kind of mechanical units.

Psycho-physiologists had no sort of dynamometer for measuring brain power as they would measure muscular energy.

By means of the plethysmograph they might determine the amount of blood sent to the brain in a given time, but they had no psychometer of any description which would enable them to estimate the quantity, much less the quality, of psychic force such a blood supply was competent to produce.

Many, of course, still remained adherents of the old view that woman must ever remain the mental inferior of man because she is by nature physically weaker.

These persons, however, seemed to lose sight of the fact that women who lead a rational life--who are not the slaves of fashion or the victims of luxury--have little to complain of on the score of physical weakness.

This is evidenced by the life and habits of the women of the people, as well as by the tasks performed by women among savage tribes, who in health and strength are little, if at all, inferior to their male companions.

The late Professor Huxley, in referring to this subject, exhibited his usual acumen and sanity in such matters when he indited the following paragraph: "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 organization, but nine-tenths of them are artificial--the products of their mode 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 toward 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 woman."

[103] Substantially the same views are held by Mrs. Henry Fawcett and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, whose rare experience and knowledge give their opinions on the subject under consideration special weight and value.

After men of science had tried the various theories above enumerated and found them wanting, they finally bethought themselves of investigating the relative intellectual standing of male and female students in coeducational institutions, and inquiring into their comparative capacity for different branches of knowledge, as made known by their professors and by the results of oral and written examinations.

Considering the simplicity of this method and the fact that it is the more rational way to reach reliable conclusions, the wonder is that it was not thought of sooner.

It excludes the bias of prepossessions and preconceived theories and lends itself to the discussion of results based on incontestable facts.

The first coeducational institution in which the intellectual capacity of women, in competition with men, was fairly tested was, strange to say, in the Royal College of Science for Ireland.

This was somewhat more than half a century ago.

When the time of examinations came, both the men and women students were handed the same examination papers.

At the public distribution of prizes, at the close of the session, "the ladies," in the words of a Dublin paper, "vindicated the genius of their sex by carrying off the highest prizes."

In zoology, botany, physics, chemistry and mathematics they proved themselves the peers, and frequently the superiors, of their male competitors.

"The success of the female students disturbed, of course, very much the preconceived notions of some people, who had always taken for granted that the female intellect was inferior to the male; and, not being able to combat the stubborn facts that appeared from time to time in the newspapers, when the results of the examinations were published, they tried to account for them."

[104] These cavillers, however, soon discovered that there was no way of accounting for the disconcerting fact which confronted them, except by confessing that their theory regarding the mental inferiority of women was not substantiated by fact.

This unexpected demand for the unconditional surrender of their long-cherished theory of male superiority was a crushing and humiliating blow to their pride of intellect, but there was no remedy for it, nor was it accompanied by any balm of consolation that they, at the time, felt disposed to regard as adequate compensation for their lost prestige--a prestige which their overweening sex had claimed from time immemorial.

Similar experiments under even more trying conditions were subsequently made in the United States and in other parts of the world, and everywhere with the same results.

In the universities of Switzerland, France, England, Germany and Russia women, when given a fair opportunity, were able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of all unprejudiced judges that the long-vaunted superiority of the male intellect was a myth; that intelligence, like genius, has no sex.

One of the most interesting and comprehensive investigations ever undertaken regarding this long-debated question was made some years ago by Arthur Kirchhoff, an enterprising German journalist.

[105] It consisted in collecting and collaborating the opinions of more than a hundred of the most distinguished professors of the Fatherland, besides the opinions of a number of eminent writers and teachers in girls' high schools.

These constitute a volume of nearly four hundred pages, and embody the views on the capacity of woman for science of professors of theology, jurisprudence, anatomy, physiology, surgery, psychology, history, gynecology, psychiatry, philology, philosophy, art, mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, zoology, botany, geology, paleontology and technology.

The investigation, indeed, covered every branch of knowledge and evoked the deliberate views of those who were looked upon as the leading representatives of German thought and culture.

This book possesses a special value from the fact that, of all peoples in Europe, the Germans have been the most refractory to the claims of women to be received at the universities on the same footing as men.

The German professors, naturally, share the conservatism of their countrymen, and, like them, are wedded to routine when there is question of introducing innovations into their social, political or educational systems.

One would anticipate, then, that, when called upon to give their honest opinions respecting the intellectual capacity of women, as compared with that of men, their answer would be decidedly in favor of the sterner sex.

"For," they will ask, "have not all the achievements in science which have given the Fatherland such prestige in the eyes of the world been due entirely to men?

Have the women of Germany ever undertaken the solution of any great scientific problem, or have they ever made any notable contribution to scientific advancement?

They have not."

Yet, notwithstanding all these facts, notwithstanding all traditions and prejudices and social bias, the unexpected has happened, even in conservative, old-fashioned Germany.

The German professor may be tenacious of preconceived views; he may be a stickler for ancient customs and usages; nevertheless, when he is called upon to give a question a categorical answer which can be arrived at by observation or experiment, he may generally, in spite of his likes or dislikes, be counted on to give a decision in accord with the principles of legitimate induction.

He may have his prejudices--and who has not?

--but, when one appeals to him in the name of science and justice, he will rarely be found wanting.

Regardless of all personal consideration, he will feel that loyalty to science, of which he is the avowed devotee, requires him to consider a question proposed to him as he would a scientific problem--something to be decided solely by such evidence as may be available.

To the exceeding gratification of the believers in the intellectual equality of the sexes, this proved to be the case in Herr Kirchhoff's investigation.

The answers of the German professors, contrary to what most people would have anticipated, were, by a surprising majority, in favor of women.

But their answers were in keeping with the changed educational conditions in Germany, as well as in other parts of the civilized world.

Had Herr Kirchhoff undertaken his investigation a few decades earlier, the result would undoubtedly have been different, for women were then excluded from the universities and the professors had not had an opportunity of accurately testing their intellectual capacities.

But having, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, had them as students in their lecture halls and laboratories, where they were able to study their mental powers and determine the value of their work by strict scientific methods, they were in a better position to express an opinion on the question at issue than would, a few years previously, have been possible.

Accordingly, even the declared enemies of the woman's movement among the German professorate were forced to admit the intellectual equality of the two sexes.

For they, too, as well as men of science in other parts of Europe, had been measuring skulls and weighing brains; they, too, had been studying woman's mental caliber in the light of the new psychology;

they, too, had been watching her work in the various departments of the university; and, notwithstanding all their observations and experiments, they were unable to detect any difference between men and women in brain organization or in intellectual capacity.

And, as might have been foreseen, results harmonized perfectly with those arrived at by investigators in other parts of the world--namely, that in things of the mind there is perfect sexual equality.

Among the hundred and more professors whose opinions are given in Herr Kirchhoff's book there were, of course, a few who were not prepared to subscribe to the findings of the great majority of their colleagues.

But the reasons they assign for dissent were, at least in some instances, little better founded than that of a certain professor of chemistry in the University of Geneva, who, a few years ago, gravely declared that women have no aptitude for science because, forsooth, in chemical manipulations they break more test-tubes than men.

Verily, "a Daniel come to judgment."

What probably more deeply impressed the German professors than anything else was the marked talent and taste of many of the women students for the abstract sciences, especially for the higher mathematics.

For it had always been asserted that these branches of knowledge were beyond woman's capacity and that she had an instinctive antipathy for abstruse reasoning and for abstractions of all kinds.

When, however, they discovered women whose delight was to discuss the theory of elliptic functions or curves defined by differential equations; when they found a mathematical genius like Sonya Kovalevsky speculating on the fourth dimension, and carrying away from the mathematicians of the world the most coveted prize of the French Academy of Sciences, they were forced to confess that another of their illusions was dissipated, and to acknowledge that they had no longer anything on which to base their long and fondly cherished opinion of the mental inequality of the sexes.

As an evidence of the extraordinary change that had been effected among the conservative Germans in the course of a few years respecting their attitude toward the admission of the "Academic Woman" to the universities, and, consequently, toward her intellectual capacity, it will suffice to reproduce a sentence from the elaborately expressed opinion of Dr. Julius Bernstein, professor of physiology in the University of Halle.

"After reflection on the subject," he declares, "I am convinced that neither God nor religion, neither custom nor law, and still less science, warrants one in maintaining any essential difference in this respect between the male and the female sex."

[106] The controversy of centuries regarding woman's intellectual capacity was now virtually settled beyond all peradventure.

Woman had conquered, and her final victory had been won in the heart of the enemy's country, yea, even in what was thought to be the impregnable fortress of her relentless foes.

It was achieved where the proud Teuton male had imagined that he was unapproachable and beyond compare--in the laboratories and lecture rooms of his great universities--more irresistible, in his estimation, than the Kaiser's trained legions in battle array.

It finally dawned upon the leaders of thought in the Fatherland, as it had but shortly before dawned upon philosophers and men of science in other lands, that the reputed sexual difference in intelligence was not due to difference in brain size or brain structure, or innate power of intellect, but rather to some other factors which had been neglected, or overlooked, as being unessential or of minor importance.

These factors, on further investigation, proved to be education and opportunity.

As far back as 1869 that keen observer and philosopher, John Stuart Mill, had expressed himself on the subject in the following words: "Like the French compared with the English, the Irish with the Swiss, the Greeks or Italians compared with the German races, so women compared with men may be found, on the average, to do the same things with some variety in the particular kind of excellence.

But that they would do them fully as well, on the whole, if their education and cultivation were adapted to correcting instead of aggravating the infirmities incident to their temperament, I see not the smallest reason to doubt."

[107] It would be difficult to find a better illustration of the sluggishness of the male as compared with the female mind than the tardiness of men of science in arriving at a sane conclusion respecting the subject of this chapter.

For five hundred years ago Christine de Pisan arrived at the same conclusion which the learned professors of Germany reached only in the last decade of the nineteenth century.

Discussing in _La Cite des Dames_ the question at issue she writes as follows: "I say to thee again, and doubt never the contrary, that if it were the custom to put the little maidens to the school, and they were made to learn the sciences as they do to the men-children, that they should learn as perfectly, and they should be as well entered into the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as men be.

And peradventure, there should be more of them, for I have teached heretofore that by how much women have the body more soft than the men have, and less able to do divers things, by so much they have the understanding more sharp there as they apply it."

Christine de Pisan's statement is virtually a challenge demanding the same educational opportunities for women as were accorded to men.

But it was a challenge that men did not see fit to accept until full five centuries had elapsed, and until it was no longer possible to deny giving satisfaction to the long-aggrieved half of humanity.

It was also an appeal to experiment and an appeal, likewise, to the teachings of history in lands where women have enjoyed the same educational advantages as men.

Having reviewed the many disabilities which so long retarded woman's intellectual advancement, and considered some of the objections which were urged against her capacity for scientific pursuits, we are now prepared to consider the appeal of Christine de Pisan and deal with it on its merits.

This we shall do by a brief survey of woman's achievements in the various branches of science in which she has been accorded the same intellectual opportunities that were so long the exclusive privilege of her male compeer.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] An edition of this work, based on an old manuscript in La Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, in French, is announced to appear in France at an early date.

An interesting account of this precious volume has recently been published by Mlle.

Mathilde Laigle, Ph.

D.

, under the title of _Le Livre de Trois Vertus de Christine de Pisan et son Milieu Historique et Litteraire_.

It is to be hoped that some enterprising English publisher will soon favor us with a reprint of the quaint old, but none the less valuable, volume, _The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes_.

[90] Quando la genialita compare nella donna e sempre associata a grandi anomalie: e la piu grande e la somiglianza coi maschi--la virilita.

_L'Uomo di Genio_, sesta edizione, p. 261, Torino, 1894. [91] _An Essay on the Learning, Genius and Abilities of the Fair Sex, Proving Them Not Inferior to Man_, p. 142, London, 1774. [92] Schopenhauer, _Studies in Pessimism_, p. 115, London, 1891. [93] _The Literary Advantages of Weak Health_, in the _Spectator_ for October, 1894. [94] _The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, edited by his son, Francis Darwin, Vol. I, p. 136, New York, 1888. [95] _Man and Woman_, p. 94, London, 1898. [96] Cf.

_Das Hirngewicht des Menschen_, pp. 21 and 137, by Theodor L. W.

von Bischoff, Bonn, 1880, and Dr. G.

van Walsem in _Neurologisches Centralblatt_, pp. 578-580, Leipsic, July 1, 1899. [97] _L'Anthropologie_, pp. 336-337, by Paul Topinard, Paris, 1876. [98] The importance of gray matter in mental processes has evidently been greatly overestimated, for it has been found to be thicker in the brains of negroes, murderers and ignorant persons than it was in the encephalon of Daniel Webster.

It is also much thicker in the brains of dolphins, porpoises and other cetaceans than it is in the most intellectual of men.

[99] _The Descent of Man_, Vol. I, p. 145, London, 1871. [100] The brain of Sonya Kovalevsky was not weighed until it had been four years in alcohol.

Prof. Gustaf Retzius then wrote an elaborate account of it and estimated that its weight, at the time of Sonya's death, was 1385 grams.

The brain-weight of her illustrious contemporary, Hermann von Helmholtz, was 1440 grams.

But when the body-weights of these two eminent mathematicians are borne in mind--Sonya was short and slender--it will be seen that the relative amount of brain tissue was greater in the woman than in the man.

Cf.

_Das Gehirn des Mathematikers Sonja Kovalewski in Biologische Untersuchungen_, von Prof. Dr. Gustaf Retzius, pp. 1-17, Stockholm, 1900. [101] The reader who desires more detailed information respecting the brain-weights of men and women of various races and the relation of brain-weight to intelligence may consult with profit the following works and articles: _Memoires d'Anthropologie de Paul Broca_, 5 Vols.

, Paris, 1871-1888; _Alte und Neue Gehirn Probleme nebst einer 1078 Falle umfassenden Gehirngewichstatistik aus den Kgl.

pathologisch-anatomischen Institut zu Muenchen_, von W. W.

Wendt, Muenchen, 1909; Gehirngewicht und Intelligenz, by Dr. F.

K.

Walter, Rostok, 1911; _Gehirngewicht und Intelligenz_, by Dr. J.

Draeseke, Hamburg, in _Archiv fuer Rassen und Gesellschafts Biologe_, pp. 499-522, 1906; _Brain Weights and Intellectual Capacity_, by Joseph Simms, M. D.

, in the _Popular Science Monthly_, December, 1898, and _The Growth of the Brain_, by H. H.

Donaldson, London, 1895. [102] "Quand on songe a la difference qui separe de notre temps l'education intellectuelle de l'homme de celle de la femme, on se demande si ce n'est pas cette influence qui retrecit le cervaux et le crane feminins, et si, les deux sexes etant livres a leur spontaneite, leur cervaux ne tendraient pas a se ressembler, aussi qu'il arrive chez les sauvages."

_Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie_, p. 503, Paris, July 3, 1879. [103] _Times_, London, July 8, 1874. Cf.

Chap.

XVII, on "Adolescent Girls and Their Education," in _Adolescence_, Vol. II, by G. Stanley Hall, New York, 1904. [104] _The Study of Science by Women in the Contemporary Review_ for March, 1869. [105] _Die Akademische Frau.

Gutachten hervorragender Universitaeten-professoren, Frauenlehrer und Schriftsteller ueber die Befaehigung der Frau zum wissenschaftlichen Studium and Berufe herausgegeben von Arthur Kirchhoff_, Berlin, 1897. [106] "Ich komme beim Nachdenken hieruber zu der Ueberzeigung, dass kein Gott und keine Religion, kein Herkommen und kein Gesetz, aber ebensowenig die Wissenschaft uns das Recht erteilen, in dieser Beziehung zwischen dem mannerlichen und weiblichen Geschlect einen principiellen Unterschied zu statuiren."

_Die Akademische Frau_, p. 41. [107] _The Subjection of Women_, p. 91, London, 1909.