Woman between Science and Culture

Culture in a nation is measured by the degree of national consciousness and social sense in its citizens. Have we, then, any right to claim culture? And may we consider everyone who holds a degree in the higher sciences to be cultured?

Let us take, for example, a woman from among the holders of higher degrees; let us set aside talk of the sciences in which she specialized, and let us discuss with her our public concerns, whether national or social. Then let us judge whether she is cultured, or merely educated — for instruction contents itself with amassing scattered bits of knowledge, discordant or harmonious, weighing down the mind without polishing the spirit; whereas culture aims at the higher values of life, and makes of a woman a lady who knows her true self and seeks her right by way of duty.

Our ignorance of the needs of our society and the causes of our nation deprives us of the very purpose of our knowledge. And I am certain that learning which brings no benefit is like ignorance which does no harm.

What is woman's share of culture in our country?

The well-informed observer has the right to judge that the majority of our educated women are without culture, or are half-cultured.

You see a university girl proud of the degrees she has won in the sciences, and you believe you stand before a woman of the kind you hope for for your country. But if you talk with her, the painful truth is quickly laid bare: she is ignorant of everything that concerns the affairs of her country, material or moral.

She knows by heart, for instance, the history of Europe; hardly an event of its ancient or modern history escapes her; and she knows more of the social and national developments in the life of England and France across ten centuries than she knows of the national or social developments that have taken place in her own country within a single year. She is educated with an alien learning, of no use to herself, her people, or her country.

Woman, of course, is not alone in this deformed culture; man shares her ignorance in it. Yet it may be said that the number of cultured men in our country exceeds the number of cultured women, because social consciousness has penetrated men's circles over a wider range — and that is because woman among us was reared in a spirit of dependence in all that concerns her private and public affairs. The responsibility for this falls upon corrupt, artificial social conditions, left behind by the ages of decadence that passed over us: they corrupted the life of our society, carried its dissolution and fragmentation to extremes, and worked upon the souls of its sons, so that they grew up dependent and mutually repellent in their social life, unconcerned with their national destiny.

But time has turned its cycle, and it has become our duty to learn from the nations that grasped their national causes and turned in a sound direction toward social, literary, and historical studies.

In our country there is a social awakening, and woman in our homeland enjoys no small measure of relative freedom, if it be measured against the condition of woman in our Arab world. The doors of learning stand open to her. She has outdone the Western woman in many of the trivial, outward aspects of life; the husks of the West dazzled her, and she rushed after them, believing them among the complements of 'culture' and civilization. Why, then, has she ignored her place in the building of nations and the struggle of life?

We may find her an excuse for what is past, since her capacities were paralyzed and her faculties frozen by the odious traditional repression; but now she has no excuse.

I fear it may be understood from my words that I except the woman of elementary schooling, or the unlettered woman, since I have directed my attention to the educated woman. Indeed, I find some women whom circumstances did not help toward higher learning who understand their responsibilities in life better, and are more deeply conscious of their nation's causes, than educated women heedless of all that goes on around them.

If I address my words to university women, it is because the country awaits from them what it does not await from the girl who was deprived of continuing her

education — for each has her own field of production and giving. The latter grasps, by her sound instinct and her simple soul, what life demands of her, and gives without being asked: in the field or the workshop she gives and produces, crops and handiwork; her hand is in her man's hand in all that is made and planted, and her heart is with his heart in all that pains and wearies him.

As for the 'half-cultured' girl, there have piled up in her soul assorted colors of the many modes of living, and imperfect knowledge has woven about her mind a delusion that led her to think she holds a monopoly of all science, art, and knowledge. She has been touched by the moral chaos imported from the West, which they deluded her into thinking was liberty. So she rushed along its dangerous current, leaping over the restraining moral barriers; and 'idealism' spread through the atmosphere of the milieu she chose for herself, until life came to mean, in her eyes, nothing but playground and cabaret and gaming table and fashions, into which she pours her modern, scientific 'arts.' The demands of a counterfeit civilization made her forget her place in life; and so the country was deprived of her active vitality and her buried gifts.

Have we the right, this being the case, to claim culture and to boast of knowledge?

And what sort of cultured woman is she who is versed in the odds and ends of the West? Why does she not follow the trace of the Western woman in her social maturity and her national consciousness? What does she lack for proving her existence by means other than the familiar one of imitating foreigners — a reckless imitation!

Our country is rich in ideas, principles, and teachings. Why does woman not turn to them, searching and delving for the better, the more perfect, the more exemplary? If she does, let her glory in the harvest of her own hands; if not, the penalty of indifference falls upon her.