Book: Woman and Womanhood

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This passage recalls one of Ruskin's, which is to be found in "Unto This
Last":--

"Nearly all labour may be shortly divided into positive and
negative labour--positive, that which produces life; negative, that
which produces death; the most directly negative labour being
murder, and the most directly positive the bearing and rearing of
children; so that in the precise degree in which murder is hateful
on the negative side of idleness, in that exact degree
child-rearing is admirable, on the positive side of idleness."

Here is the right comment upon the swaggering display of the means of
death and the hiding as if shameful of the signs of life to come. What
has Mrs. Grundy to say to this? Will she consider the propriety of
urging in future that it is murder and the means of murder, and the
organized forces of capital and politics making for murder, that must
not be mentioned before children, and must be hidden as shameful from
the eyes of men; and while a woman may still glory in her hair,
according to that spiritual precept of St. Paul: "But if a woman have
long hair it is a glory to her; for her hair is given her for a
covering," perhaps she may be permitted even to glory in her motherhood,
contemptible as such a notion would doubtless have seemed to the Apostle
of the Gentiles.




XI

EDUCATION FOR MOTHERHOOD


It is our first principle in this discussion that the individual exists
for parenthood, being a natural invention for that purpose and no other.
It has been shown further that this is more pre-eminently true of woman
than of man, she being the more essential--if such a phrase can be
used--for the continuance of the race. If these principles are valid
they must indeed determine our course in the education of girls. Some
incidental reference has already been made to this subject, but the
matter must be more carefully gone into here. We have seen that there
are right and wrong ways of conducting the physical training of girls,
according as whether we are aiming at muscularity or motherhood. We have
seen also that there is a thing called the higher education of women,
apparently laudable and desirable in itself, which may yet have
disastrous consequences for the individual and the race.

In a book devoted to womanhood, and written at the end of the first
decade of the twentieth century, the reader might well expect that what
we call the higher education of women would be a subject treated at
great length and with great respect. Such a reader, turning to the
chapter that professedly deals with the subject, might well be offended
by its brevity. It might be asked whether the writer was really aware of
the importance of the subject--of its remarkable history, its extremely
rapid growth, and its conspicuous success (in proving that women can be
men if they please--but this is my comment, not the reader's). Nor can
any one question that the so-called higher education of women is a very
large and increasingly large fact in the history of womanhood during the
last half century in the countries which lead the world--whither it were
perhaps not too curious to consider. Further, this kind of education
does in fact achieve what it aims at. Women are capable of profiting by
the opportunities which it offers, as we say. This is itself a deeply
interesting fact in natural history, refuting as it does the assertions
of those who declared and still declare that women are incapable of
"higher education," except in rare instances. It is important to know
that women can become very good equivalents of men, if they please.

Further, this higher education of women--and we may be content to accept
the adjective without qualification, since it is after all only a
comparative, and leaves us free to employ the superlative--may be and
often is of very real value in certain cases and because of certain
local conditions, such as the great numerical inequality of the sexes in
nearly all civilized countries. It is valuable for that proportion of
women, whatever it be, who, through some throw of the physiological
dice, seem to be without the distinctive factor for psychical
womanhood, the existence of which one has tentatively ventured to
assume. These individuals, like all others, are entitled to the fullest
and freest development of their lives, and it is well that there shall
be open to them, as to the brothers they so closely resemble,
opportunities for intellectual satisfaction and self-development.
Therefore, surely, by far the most satisfactory function of higher
education for women is that which it discharges in reference to these
women. Their destiny being determined by their nature, and irrevocable
by nurture, it is well that, though we cannot regard it as the highest,
we should make the utmost of it by means of the appropriate education.

Only because sometimes we must put up with second bests can we approve
of higher education for women other than those of the anomalous
semi-feminine type to which we have referred. At present we must accept
it as an unfortunate necessity imposed upon us by economic conditions.
So long as society is based economically, or rather uneconomically, upon
the disastrous principles which so constantly mean the sacrifice of the
future to the present, so long, I suppose, will it be impossible that
every fully feminine woman shall find a livelihood without some
sacrifice of her womanhood. This is a subject to which we must return in
a later chapter. Meanwhile it is referred to only because its
consideration shows us some sort of excuse, if not warrant, for the
higher education of woman, even though in the process of thus endowing
her with economic independence, we disendow her of her distinctive
womanhood, or at the very least imperil it; even though, more serious
still, we deprive the race of her services as physical and psychical
mother.

We have seen that there is just afoot a new tendency in the higher
education of women, and it is indeed a privilege to be able to do
anything in the way of directing public attention to this new trend. In
reference thereto, it was hinted that though this newer form of higher
education for woman is a great advance upon the old, and is so just
because it implies some recognition of woman's place in the world, yet
for one reason or another it falls short of what this present student of
womanhood, at any rate, demands. As has been hinted further, probably
those responsible for the new trend are by no means unaware that, though
their line is nearer to the right one, the direct line to the "happy
isles" has not quite been taken. But great is Mrs. Grundy of the
English, and those who devised the new scheme--one is willing to hazard
the guess--had to be content with an approximation to what they knew to
be the ideal. That is why we devoted the last chapter to the question of
prudery, inserting that between a discussion of the "higher education"
of women and the present discussion, which is concerned with the
_highest education_ of women.

Words are only symbols, but, like other symbols, they are capable of
assuming much empire over the mind. Man, indeed, as Stevenson said,
lives principally by catchwords, and though woman, beside a cot, is less
likely to be caught blowing bubbles and clutching at them, she also is
in some degree at the mercy of words. The higher education of women is
a good phrase. It appeals, just because of the fine word higher, to
those who wish women well, and to those who are not satisfied that woman
should remain for ever a domestic drudge. The phrase has had a long run,
so to say, but I propose that henceforth we should set it to compete
with another--the highest education of women. Whether this phrase will
ever gain the vogue of the other even a biased and admiring father may
well question. But if there is anything certain, having the whole weight
of Nature behind it, and only the transient aberrations of men opposed
thereto, it is that what I call the highest education of women will be
and will remain the most central and capital of society's functions,
when what is now called the higher education of women has gone its
appointed way with nine-tenths of all present-day education, and exists
only in the memory of historians who seek to interpret the fantastic
vagaries of the bad old days.

Perhaps it is well that we should begin by freeing the word education
from the incrustations of mortal nonsense that have very nearly obscured
its vitality altogether. Before we can educate for motherhood, we must
know what education is, and what it is not. We must have a definition of
it and its object; in general as well as in this particular case,
otherwise we shall certainly go wrong. Perhaps it may here be permitted
to quote a paragraph from a lecture on "The Child and the State," in
which some few years ago I attempted to express the first principles of
this matter:--

"Now, as a student of biology, I will venture to propose a definition
of education which is new, so far as I know, and which I hope and
believe to be true and important. Comprehensively, so as to include
everything that must be included, and yet without undue vagueness, I
would define education as _the provision of an environment_. We may
amplify this proposition, and say that it is the provision of a fit
environment for the young and foolish by the elderly and wise. It has
really scarcely anything in the world to do with my trying to make you
pay for the teaching to my children of dogmas which I believe, and you
deny. It neither begins nor ends with the three R's; and it does not
isolate, from that whole which we call a human being, the one attribute
which may be defined as the intellectual faculty. It is the provision of
an environment, physical, mental, and moral, for the whole child,
physical, mental, and moral. That is my _definition_ of education. Now,
what are we to say of the _object_ of education? In providing the
environment--from its mother's milk to moral maxims--for our child, what
do we seek? Some may say, to make him a worthy citizen, to make him able
to support himself; some may say, to make him fit to bear arms for his
king and country; but I will give you the object of education as defined
by the author of the most profound and wisest treatise which has ever
been written upon the subject--Plato, Locke, and Milton not forgotten.
'To prepare us for complete living,' says Herbert Spencer, 'is the
function which education has to discharge.' The great thing needed for
us to learn is how to live, how rightly to rule conduct in all
directions under all circumstances; and it is to that end that we must
direct ourselves in providing an environment for the child. _Education
is the provision of an environment, the function of which is to prepare
for complete living._"

Perhaps the only necessary qualification of the foregoing is that,
though it refers specially to the child, yet the need of education does
not end with childhood, becoming indeed pre-eminent when childhood ends.
So we may apply what has been said in the case of the girl, and we shall
find it a sure guide to the highest education of women.

First, education being the provision of an environment in the widest
sense of that very wide word, always misused when it is used less
widely, we must be sure that in our scheme we avoid the errors of past
or passing schemes which concern themselves only with some aspect of the
environment, and so in effect prepare for something much less than
complete living. It is not sufficient to provide an environment which
regards the girl as simply a muscular machine, as is the tendency, if
not actually the case, in some of the "best" girls' schools to-day; it
is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as
merely an intellectual machine, as in the higher education of women; it
is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as
a sideboard ornament, in Ruskin's phrase, such as was provided in the
earlier Victorian days. In all these cases we are providing only part of
the environment, and providing it in excess. None of them, therefore,
satisfies our definition of education, which conceives of environment
as the sum-total of all the influences to which the whole organism is
subjected--influences dietetic, dogmatic, material, maternal, and all
other.[10]

Who will question that, according to this conception of education, such
a thing as the higher education of women must be condemned as
inadequate? No more than a man is woman a mere intellect incarnate. Her
emotional nature is all-important; it is indeed the highest thing in the
Universe so far as we know. The scheme of education which ignores its
existence, and much more than fails to provide the best environment for
it, is condemnable. But the scheme of education which derides and
despises the emotional nature of woman, looking upon it as a weakness
and seeking to suppress it, is damnable, and has led to the
damnation--or loss, if the reader prefers the English term--of this most
precious of all precious things in countless cases.

The only right education of women must be that which rightly provides
the whole environment. The simpler our conception of woman, the more we
underrate her complexity and the manifoldness of her needs, the more
certainly shall we repeat in one form or another the errors of our
predecessors.

Complete living is a great phrase; perhaps not for a lizard or a
mushroom, but assuredly for men and women. Perhaps it involves more for
women even than for men; indeed it must do so if we are to adhere to our
conception of women as more complex than men, having all the
possibilities of men in less or greater measure, and also certain
supreme possibilities of their own. Whatever complete living may mean
for men, it cannot mean for women anything less than all that is implied
in Wordsworth's great line--

"Wisdom doth live with children round her knees."

That line was written in reference to the unwisdom of a man, Napoleon,
the greatest murderer in recorded time, and I believe it to be true of
men, but it is pre-eminently true of women. There needs no excuse for
quoting from Herbert Spencer, since we have already accepted his
definition of the subject of education, a notable passage which is
perhaps at the present time the most needed of all the wisdom with which
that great thinker's book on education is filled:--

"The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely
overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed improvement of
our systems in respect both of matter and manner, the most pressing
desideratum, to prepare the young for the duties of life, is
tacitly admitted to be the end which parents and schoolmasters
should have in view; and, happily, the value of the things taught,
and the goodness of the methods followed in teaching them, are now
ostensibly judged by their fitness to this end. The propriety of
substituting for an exclusively classical training, a training in
which the modern languages shall have a share, is argued on this
ground. The necessity of increasing the amount of science is urged
for like reasons. But though some care is taken to fit youth of
both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken
to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that, for
the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is
needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of
children no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are
spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value is
that it constitutes the education of a gentleman; and while many
years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which
fit her for evening parties, not an hour is spent by either in
preparation for that gravest of all responsibilities--the
management of a family. Is it that the discharge of it is but a
remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine
out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not;
of all functions which the adult has to fulfil, this is the most
difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction to
fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No; not only is
the need for such self-instruction unrecognized, but the complexity
of the subject renders it the one of all others in which
self-instruction is least likely to succeed."

If we were wise enough, therefore, we should recognize all education, in
the great sense of that word, to be _as for parenthood_. That ideal will
yet be recognized and followed for both sexes, as it has for long been
followed, consciously as well as unconsciously, by that astonishing race
which has survived all its oppressors, and is in the van of civilization
to-day as it was when it produced the Mosaic legislation. The time is
not yet when one could accept with a light heart an invitation to
lecture on fatherhood to the boys at Eton. Boys to-day are taught by
each other, and by those who give them what they call "smut jaws," that
what exists for fatherhood, and thus for the whole destiny of mankind,
is "smut." When such blasphemies pass for the best pedagogic wisdom, to
preach parenthood as the goal of all worthy education is to run the risk
of being looked upon as ridiculous. But the time will come when the
hideous Empire-wrecking Imperialisms of the present are forgotten, and
when we have a new Patriotism--which suggests, first and foremost, as
that word well may, the duty of fatherhood; and then, perhaps, "smut
jaws" will not be the phrase at Eton for discussion of those instincts
which determine the future of mankind.

But girls are our present concern, and we may indeed hope that, though
the day is still far when the motto of Eton will be education as for
fatherhood, yet the ideal of education as for motherhood may yet triumph
wherever girls are taught within even a few years to come. On all sides
to-day we see the aberrations of womanhood in a hundred forms, and the
consequences thereof. Wrong education is partly, beyond a doubt, to be
indicted for this state of things, and the right direction is so clearly
indicated by nature and by the deepest intuitions of both sexes that we
cannot much longer delay to take it.

Perhaps the reader will have patience whilst for a little we discuss the
facts upon which right education for motherhood must be based. Some may
suppose that by education for womanhood is meant simply one form or
other of instruction; say, for instance, in the certainly important
matter of infant feeding. At present, however, I am not thinking of
instruction at all, but of education--the leading forth, that is to say,
in right proportion and in right direction of the natural constituents
of the girl. If we are to be right in our methods we must have some
clear understanding of what those constituents are, and we must
therefore address ourselves now to getting, if possible, clear and
accurate notions of the material with which we have to deal; in other
words, we must discuss the psychology of parenthood. We shall perhaps
realize then that though the instruction of mothers in being is very
necessary and very important, that comes in at the end of our duty, and
that we shall never achieve what we might achieve unless we begin at the
beginning.




XII

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT


The deeds of men and women proceed from certain radical elements of
their nature, some evidently noble, others, when looked at askew,
apparently ignoble. These elements are classed as instinctive. We are
less intelligent than we think. Reason may occupy the throne, but the
foundations upon which that throne is based are not of her making. To
change the image, reason is the pilot, not the gale or the engine. She
does not determine the goal, but only the course to that goal. We are
what our nature makes us; our likes and our dislikes determine our acts,
and we are guided to our self-determined ends by means of our
intelligence. More often, indeed, we use our intelligence merely to
justify to ourselves the likes and dislikes, the action and the
inaction, which our instinctive tendencies have determined.

Many of our natural instincts, impulses, and emotions bear only remotely
upon our present inquiry; as, for instance, the instinct of flight and
the emotion of fear, the instinct of curiosity and the emotion of
wonder, the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger. Certain
others, however, are not merely radical and permanent parts of our
nature, but determine human existence, the greater part of its failures
and successes, its folly and wisdom, its history and its destiny. Two of
these--the parental and racial instincts--we must carefully consider
here, and also, very briefly, a supposed third, the filial instinct. I
am inclined to question whether such a specific entity as the filial
instinct exists at all; it is rather, I believe, a product, by
transmutation, of the parental instinct which, in its various forms and
potencies and through the tender emotion which is its counterpart in the
affective realm of our natures, is the noblest, finest, and most
promising ingredient of our constitution.

_Instinct and Emotion._--We must be sure, in the first place, that we
have a sound idea of what we mean by the word "instinct." It is absurd,
for instance, to speak of "acquiring a political instinct"--or any
other. That is the most erroneous possible use of the word. An instinct
is eminently something which cannot be "acquired"; it is native if
anything is native; as native as the nose or the backbone. Instincts may
be developed or repressed; it is the great mark of man that in him they
may even be transmuted--but _acquired_ never.

When we come to examine the laws of activity we find that, on the
application of certain kinds of stimulus, there are certain very
definite responses, and these we call instinctive. If the arm or the leg
of a sleeper be stroked or touched, or a cold breath of air blows
thereon, it will be withdrawn, and such withdrawal is what we call a
reflex action. Now, an instinctive action, as Herbert Spencer saw long
ago, is a "complex reflex action." It differs from a simple reflex, a
mere twitch, such as winking, but it is a complicated, and possibly
prolonged, action, which is, at bottom, of the nature of a reflex. One
may instance the instinct of flight, which is correlated with fear. In
crossing the street we hear "toot, toot," and we run. We do not
ratiocinate, we run. All the primary instincts of mankind act similarly.
Take, for contrast, the instinct of curiosity. Consider a child watching
a mechanical toy; the impulse of this instinct of curiosity is such that
he goes to the thing and examines it. By means of the transmutation,
which it is the prerogative of man to effect, this instinct may work out
into a lifetime devoted to the study of Nature. There is an unbroken
sequence from the interest in the unknown which we see in a kitten or a
child up to that which triumphs in a Newton or a Darwin.

Thus we begin to learn that human nature is largely a collection of
instincts, more or less correlated, and that at bottom we act on our
instincts--in accordance with certain innate predilections, likings, and
dislikings with which we were born, and which we have inherited from our
ancestors. Indissolubly associated therewith is what we call emotion.
For instance, in the exercise of the instinct of curiosity we feel a
certain emotion, which we call wonder. There is an ignoble wonder and
there is a noble wonder; but whether it be an astronomer watching the
stars, or the crowd at a cinematograph show, there exists an association
between the emotion of wonder and the instinct of curiosity. Dr.
McDougall, of Oxford, elaborated some few years ago, and has now
established, an extremely important theory of the relation between
instinct and emotion. He has shown that our emotions are correlated with
our instincts; that the emotion is the inward or subjective side of the
working of the instinct. Thus an instinct is more than a "complex reflex
action"; it is more than merely that, on hearing something, or seeing
something, certain muscles are thrown into action, because along with
the action there is emotion, and this is a natural and necessary
correlation. We should do well to carry about with us, as part of our
mental furniture, this idea of the correlation between instinct and
emotion.

Now, if it be true that man is not primarily a rational animal, if he be
rather, _au fond_, a bundle, an assemblage, _an organism of instincts_,
it behoves us to recognize in ourselves and in others the primary
instincts, because from them flows all that goes to make up human
nature, whether it be good or evil. Amongst these, certainly, is the
parental instinct.

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