Let Us Hear What Science Says

Weighty opinions set forth by a great woman of letters, for whom the time has come to put an end to this quarrel over which too much time has passed.

When we say that this work or that is peculiar to woman, appointed to her by nature, we mean that it accords with femininity — not that proof has endorsed it or conviction consecrated it.

The ancients opposed the education of woman, that she might devote her care to household management, on the claim that this was her place and that no other befitted her. That was because they did not know that the home has many sides, and that a woman, if she is to shoulder its burdens well, must cultivate her learning; and that from an intelligent, educated mother there comes to her offspring a benefit surpassing the profit derived from the service of an ignorant, dull one.

Those who say that women of high culture ought to turn away from marriage and motherhood are like those who preach monasticism: they would deprive the home of the class of good and noble mothers — notwithstanding what has been famed of the nuns' works of mercy and humanity generation after generation, and notwithstanding that among the nuns are found the finest types of women in health, beauty, and mind, women whose taking of the veil has brought upon their nation a loss equal in measure to the loss arising from educated spinsters.

In the present age, economic conditions have compelled women to compete with men in the fields of their labors, where they expend a heavy effort, and some of them work from the age of adolescence onward.

Alongside this effort they show the influence of climate, environment, upbringing, instruction, exercise, habits, and so forth.

Space here does not allow the transcription of all these researches concerning the characteristics that have been modified or changed by changing environment, kinds of nourishment, methods of upbringing, styles of instruction, and the branches of learning.

It used to be said that women were weaker than men in the manual crafts — until a certain young lady carried off the honors at typewriting.

The power of the mind is, to a great extent, the product of society's influence upon the two sexes. It has been said that mind and personality are formed by virtue of external influences. The most widespread view today goes back to the opinion that the mental difference between the sexes is owing to the opportunities that allowed one of them greater growth. Mental differences, then, are partly natural and partly acquired over the course of the ages.

Man had to fight whenever matters called for war, and woman to raise the children. Man had to hunt and to discover lands and regions, and woman to keep to her house to watch over the little ones. Man had to plow the billows of the seas, and woman to sell and buy, to plant, to spin, and to make whatever she was obliged to make. The marks of these differences still stand, bearing witness to the character of the labors each of the two sexes has pursued.

This time I take up the mental differences at which the biologists have arrived, together with the observations other men of science have made upon them and their criticisms of them, leaving the inquiry into "Woman and Invention" to another occasion.

These scholars say that women, on the whole, have proved their strong appetite for memorization, and that they are more capable of it than male students; that the time in which they gather up the thoughts and opinions presented to them is shorter than what boys require; and that the boys have surpassed them in speed and precision of observation.

In all these theories there is an indication that mental capacity is not limited, and that we cannot distinguish between the sexes in it; and that it is not wise to build an opinion or pronounce a judgment upon such experiments and theories, however much caution has surrounded them or however much care and attention they have demanded.

Science has found no difference between the skulls of man and woman, owing to the difficulty of relying on size; and reliance upon it is explained away by the difference in the process of digestion and the kinds of nutrition — besides what there is of

steady application to work that affects their health most injuriously. Every work a woman takes up in which no regard or consideration is given to her sex, and in which, at the time of childbirth and pregnancy, she is given no opportunity for calm and quiet, is harmful to the woman, harmful to the nation, and leads to the decline and enfeeblement of the generations to come.

For this reason we see, in some countries, societies founded to aid mothers, whose aim is to concern themselves with pregnant working women as they concern themselves with the poor and unmarried, so as to keep them from hard labor.

Woman does not storm men's occupations out of any desire for them; she does so under the impulse of material need, and the soundness of her health while at work is an equivalent of the national wealth.

The highly educated woman was, in the eyes of some, a byword for mockery, and their argument for forbidding learning to her was that it sterilizes mothers and reduces the number of births.

Yet science contains nothing to support this claim, for fruitfulness in bearing offspring does not prevent the strengthening of personality, nor does it forbid us its development. All that is known in the animal kingdom is that the birds of large brains breed less than others, and show more concern and care for their chicks than their fellows — and it is they that preserve their broods to the following year.

The growth of personality, then, has not been a cause of scarcity of offspring; its cause may rather be the quantity and kind of nourishment and other such causes, like a marriage bond tied without love, or selfish celibacy, or a turning away from procreation. And in the abundance of births among the Brahmins and the Rajputs — the people of the high class in India — we have what supports our statement with proof, a testimony to its truth.

As for the claim that hard study may bring about conditions that turn women away from marriage and childbearing, it is refuted by the fact that this condition has no relation to education. These are artificial stumbling blocks laid in the path of women who seek learning. Have not the advanced countries, from grandmothers of keen minds, brought forth those who bore sons in whom their peoples take pride?

And there is yet another witness, in the brain of the queen bee: those devoted to the study of this species have observed that her brain does not rise to the degree of intelligence of the worker bees.

So we must not leave women to motherhood alone, turning them into the meekness of cattle; for there is nothing to fear in the going forth of capable women to the field of work, and no dread that the nation will be deprived of their offspring.

The advanced nations have finished with the inquiry into the superiority of man or of woman; the concern of today's men of science has become to inquire into what work woman ought to take up, and what she ought to be taught; into mixed and separate education, and when each should begin; and into how to preserve the attractions of sex, so as to ward off the masculinization of woman and the feminization of man — in order that woman may earn her living by herself and take part in public affairs without being denied marriage and motherhood. So they have counseled her to choose a work belonging to her own particular gifts, not to the traits of her sex — a work toward which she inclines by nature, so that she may be to man, in its management, a thinking, inventive helper, not a machine he runs as he pleases.

It is among the accepted truths that when we choose a work, we look for what accords with our condition in it — capability for it and inclination toward it; and that it is a loss to do a work which another can do better than we. This is what woman must take into account, because of the bodily differences rooted deep within her since ancient times.