Book: Woman and Womanhood

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We must therefore now briefly but adequately consider the argument of
the remarkable book published by the Scottish biologists in 1889, and
presented in a new edition in 1900. The latter date is of interest,
because it coincides with the re-discovery of the work of Mendel,
published in 1865, to which we must afterwards more than once refer; and
the work of the Mendelians during the subsequent decade very
substantially modifies much of the authors' teaching upon the
determination of sex, and the intimate nature of the physiological
differences between the sexes. We have learnt more about the nature of
sex in the decade or so since the publication of the new edition of the
"Evolution of Sex" than in all preceding time. Such, at least, is the
well-grounded opinion of all who have acquainted themselves with the
work of the Mendelians, as we shall see: and therefore that book is by
no means commended to the reader's attention as the last word upon the
subject. The rather would one particularly direct him to the following
prophetic and admirable passage in the preface of 1900:--

"Our hope is that the growing strength of the still young school of
experimental evolutionists may before many years yield results
which will involve not merely a revision, but a recasting of our
book."

--a passage which may well content the authors to-day, when its
fulfilment is so signal.

Yet assuredly the main thesis of the volume stands, and profoundly
concerns every student of womanhood in any of its aspects. It will
continue to stand when the brilliant foolishness of such writers as poor
Weininger, the author of that evidently insane product "Sex and
Character," is rightly estimated as interesting to the student of mental
pathology alone. There has lately been a kind of epidemic citation from
Weininger, whose book is obviously rich in characters that make it
attractive to the ignorant and the many; and it is high time that we
should concern ourselves less with the product of a suicidal and
much-to-be-pitied boy, and more with the sober and scientific work for
which daily verification is always at hand.

We cannot do better than have before us at the outset the authors'
statement of their main proposition, in the preface to the new edition
of their work:--

"In all living creatures there are two great lines of variation,
primarily determined by the very nature of protoplasmic change
(metabolism); for the ratio of the constructive (anabolic) changes
to the disruptive (katabolic) ones, that is of income to outlay,
of gains to losses, is a variable one. In one sex, the female, the
balance of debtor and creditor is the more favourable one; the
anabolic processes tend to preponderate, and this profit may be at
first devoted to growth, but later towards offspring, of which she
hence can afford to bear the larger share. To put it more
precisely, the life-ratio of anabolic to katabolic changes, A/K, in
the female is normally greater than the corresponding life-ratio,
a/k, in the male. This for us, is the fundamental, the
physiological, the constitutional difference between the sexes; and
it becomes expressed from the very outset in the contrast between
their essential reproductive elements, and may be traced on into
the more superficial sexual characters."

A little further on (p. 17), the authors say:--

"Without multiplying instances, a review of the animal kingdom, or
a perusal of Darwin's pages, will amply confirm the conclusion that
on an average the females incline to passivity, the males to
activity. In higher animals, it is true that the contrast shows
itself rather in many little ways than in any one striking
difference of habit, but even in the human species the difference
is recognized. Every one will admit that strenuous spasmodic bursts
of activity characterize men, especially in youth, and among the
less civilized races; while patient continuance, with less violent
expenditure of energy, is as generally associated with the work of
women."

We must shortly proceed to study the origin and determination of sex,
and more especially of femaleness, in the individual, and here we shall
be entirely concerned with the new knowledge commonly called Mendelism,
to which there is no allusion in our authors' pages. Meanwhile it must
be insisted that the reader who will either read their pages for a
survey of the evidence in detail, or who will for a moment consider the
evident necessities imposed by the facts of parenthood, cannot possibly
fail to satisfy himself that the main contention, as stated in the
foregoing quotations, is correct. A further point of the greatest
importance to us requires to be made.

It is that, owing to profound but intelligible causes, the contrast
which necessarily obtains between the sexes in respect of their vital
expenditure is most marked in the case of our own species. It is one of
the conditions of progress that the young of the higher species make
more demands upon their mothers than do the young of humbler forms. In
other words, progress in the world of life has always leant upon and
been conditioned by motherhood. Thus, as one has so frequently asserted
in reference to the modern campaign against infant mortality, the young
of the human species are nurtured within the sacred person--the
_therefore_ sacred person--of the mother for a longer period in
proportion to the body weight than in the case of any other species; and
the natural period of maternal feeding is also the longest known. On the
other hand, the physical demands made by parenthood upon the male sex
are no greater in our case than in that of lower forms; though upon the
psychical plane the great fact of increasing paternal care in the right
line of progress may never be forgotten. But thus it follows that the
law of conservation, asserting that what is spent for self cannot be
kept for the race, and that if the demands of the future are to be met
the present must be subordinated, not merely applies to woman, but
applies to her in unique degree. There are grounds, also, for believing
that what is demonstrably and obviously true on the physical plane has
its counterpart in the psychical plane; and that, if woman is to remain
distinctively woman in mind, character, and temperament, and if, just
because she remains or becomes what she was meant to be, she is to find
her greatest happiness, she must orient her life towards Life Orient,
towards the future and the life of this world to come. Some such
doctrines may help us at a later stage to decide whether it be better
that a woman should become a mother or a soldier, a nurse or an
executioner.




CHAPTER V

THE DETERMINATION OF SEX


We must regard life as essentially female, since there is no choice but
to look upon living forms which have no sex as female, and since we know
that in many of the lower forms of life there is possible what is called
parthenogenesis or virgin-birth. It has, indeed, been ingeniously argued
by a distinguished American writer, Professor Lester Ward,[4] that the
male sex is to be looked upon as an afterthought, an ancillary
contrivance, devised primarily for the advantages of having a second
sex--whatever those advantages may exactly be; and secondarily, one
would add, becoming useful in adding fatherhood to motherhood upon the
psychical plane of post-natal care and education as well.

But whatever was the historical or evolutionary origin of sex, we may
here be excused for attaching more importance--for it is of great
practical consequence--to the origin or determination of sex in the
individual. At what stage and under what influences did the child that
is born a girl become female? To what extent can we control the
determination of sex? Why are the numbers of the sexes approximately so
equal? What determines the curious disproportions observed in many
families, which may be composed only of girls or only of boys; and, as
is asserted, also observed after wars and epidemics or during sieges,
when an abnormally high proportion of boys is said to be born? These are
some of the deeply interesting questions which men have always attempted
to answer--with the beginnings of substantial success during the present
century at last.

In general it is true that, the more we learn of the characters and
histories of living beings, the more importance we attach to nature or
birth and the less to nurture or environment, vastly important though
the latter be. Thus to the student of heredity nothing could well seem
more improbable, at any rate amongst the higher animals, than that
characters so profound as those of sex should be determined by nurture.
He simply cannot but believe that the sex of the individual is as inborn
as his backbone, and as incapable of being created by varying conditions
of nurture. The causation of sex is therefore really a problem in
heredity; and we may most confidently assert, in the first place, that
the sex of every human being is already determined at the moment of
conception when, indeed, the new individual is created: determined then
by the nature and constitution of the living cells--or of one of
them--which combine to form the new being. Subsequent attempts to affect
the sex, as by means of the mother's diet and the like, are palpably
hopeless from the outset and always will be. This is by no means to say
that conditions affecting the mother--as, for instance, the
semi-starvation of a prolonged siege--may not affect the construction of
the germ-cells which she houses, and which are constantly being formed
within her from the mother germ-cells, as they are called. But any given
final germ-cell, such as will combine with another from an individual of
the opposite sex to form a new being, is already determined, once for
all, to be of one sex or the other. We naturally ask, then, how the two
parents are concerned in this matter; and the first remarkable answer
returned by the Mendelian workers during the last three or four years is
that it is the mother who determines the sex of her children in the case
of all the higher animals. Her contribution to the new being is called
the ovum, and it is believed that ova are of two kinds, or, we are quite
right in saying, of two sexes.

Those who are now working at these problems experimentally, actually
seeing what happens in given cases, and whom we may for convenience call
Mendelians after the master who gave them their method and their key,
have latterly obtained results the main tenour of which must be stated
here, as they indicate the lines of a portion of the succeeding
argument. The task was to attack experimentally the determination of
sex--a fascinating problem for which so many solutions that failed to
hold water have been found, but hitherto no others. In finding the
answer to it, as they appear certainly to have done so far as the higher
animals are concerned, the Mendelians are also beginning to ascertain,
as we shall see, certain basal facts as to the composition or
constitution of the individual; and to us, who wish to know exactly
what a woman is, and what she is as distinguished from a man, this
discovery is of the most vital importance. The experimental facts are
not yet numerous, and if they were not consonant with facts of other
orders, it would be rash to proceed; but it will be evident, in the
sequel, that common experience is well in accord with the experimental
evidence.

It appears that, amongst at any rate the higher animals, the sex of
offspring is determined by the nature of the mother's contribution. The
cell derived from the father is always male--as goes without saying, we
might add, if we knew little of the subject. But the ovum, the cell
derived from the mother, may carry either femaleness or maleness. When
an ovum bearing maleness meets the invariably maleness-bearing sperm,
the resultant individual is a male, of course, and he is male all
through. But when an ovum bearing femaleness meets a sperm, the
resulting individual is female, femaleness being a Mendelian "dominant"
to maleness; if both be present, femaleness appears. The female,
however, is not female all through as the male is male all through. So
far as sex is concerned, he is made of maleness _plus_ maleness; but she
is made of femaleness _plus_ maleness. In Mendelian language the male is
homozygous, so-called "pure" as regards this character. But the female
is heterozygous, "impure" in the sense that her femaleness depends upon
the dominance of the factor for femaleness over the factor for maleness,
which also is present in her. In the Mendelian terminology, she is an
instance of impure dominance. The observed practical equality in the
numbers of the two sexes is in exact accord with this interpretation of
the facts, this proportion being the expected and observed one in many
other cases which doubtless depend upon parallel conditions of the
reproductive cells.

Surely there is great enlightenment here: for the discovery of the
factors determining sex is a very small affair compared with the
suggestive inference as to the constitution of womanhood. Let us compare
man and woman on the basis of this assumption.

In the man there is nothing but maleness. This is not to deny that he
may possess the protective instinct and the tender emotion which is its
correlate, even though these were undoubtedly feminine in origin. But it
is to deny that any injury to, or arrested development of, the male can
reveal in him characters distinctively female. He may fail to become a
man and may remain a boy; or, having been a man, he may perhaps return,
under certain conditions, to a more youthful state; but he will never,
can never, display anything distinctive of the woman.

Not such, however, must be the woman's case. If anything should
interfere with the development and dominance of the femaleness factor in
her, there is not another "dose" of femaleness, so to speak, to fall
back upon; but a dose of maleness. We may be right in thus seeking to
explain certain familiar phenomena, observed in women under various
conditions--as, for instance, the growth of hair upon the face in
elderly women, the assumption of a masculine voice and aspect, and so
forth. Such facts are frequently to be observed after the climacteric or
"change of life," which probably denotes the termination of the
dominance of the femaleness factor. They are also to be observed as a
consequence of operations much more commonly and irresponsibly performed
a few years ago than now, which abruptly deprived the organism of the
internal secretion through which, as we may surmise, the femaleness
factor in the germ makes its presence effective.

If these propositions are valid, they are certainly important. Our
attitude towards them will depend upon our estimates of the worth of
distinctive womanhood. We may regard it as a loss to society that what
might have been a woman should become only a sort of man of rather less
than average efficiency. Or we may hail with delight the possibility
that, after all, we may be able, by judicious education, to make men of
our daughters. But, whatever our estimates, certainly it is of great
interest to inquire how far and in what directions education may affect
the development of what was given in the germ. We cannot yet answer this
question. In a thousand matters it is all-important to know in what
degree education can control nature, but until we know what the nature
of the individual is we cannot decide. Professor Bateson has clearly
shown that we shall be able duly to estimate environment only when
Mendelian analysis has gone much further, and has instructed us in
detail as to the nature of the material upon which environment is to
act.

For instance, there is the well-established fact that women who have
undergone "higher education" show a low marriage-rate, and produce very
few children. However considered, the fact is of great importance. But
the right interpretation of it is not certain. There are women of a type
approaching the masculine, who are evidently so by nature. Is it these
women, already predestined for something other than distinctive
womanhood, that offer themselves for "higher education"? In other words,
is there a selective process at work, the results of which in choosing a
certain type of woman we attribute to the education undergone? If we
answer this question wrongly, and act upon our erroneous interpretation,
we shall certainly do grave injury to individuals and society.

Thus, we might roundly condemn the higher education of women _in toto_,
and hold up the "domestic woman" as the sole type to which every woman
can and must be made to conform. Or, on the other hand, we may argue
that it is well to provide suitable opportunities of self-development
for those women whose nature practically unfits them for the ordinary
career of a woman.

I do not think that any one who has had opportunities of first-hand
observation will question the presence in university and college
class-rooms of girls of the anomalous type. Each generation produces a
certain number of such. Probably no education will alter their nature in
any radical or effective way. On every ground, personal and social, we
must be right in providing for them, as for their brothers, all the
opportunities they may desire. But I am convinced that their relative
number is not large.

The great majority of those girls who are nowadays subjected to what we
call "higher education" are of the normal type; and this is none the
less true because the proportion of the anomalous is doubtless higher
here than in the feminine community at large. The ordinary observation
of those teachers who year by year see young girls at the beginning of
their higher education will certainly confirm the statement that by far
the greater number of them are of the ordinary feminine type. If this be
so, the necessary inference is that education _has_ a potent influence,
and that it must be held accountable for the observed facts of later
years, whether those facts please or displease us.

The human being is the most adaptable--that is to say, educable--of all
living creatures. This is true of women as well as men. The response of
girls to ideas, ideals, suggestion, the spirit of the group, is an
unquestioned thing. Further, there are basal facts of physiology,
ultimately dependent on the law of the conservation of energy, and the
circumstance that you cannot eat your cake and have it, which work
hand-in-hand, on their own effective plane, with the psychological
influences already referred to. All physiology and psychology lead us to
expect those results of "higher education" upon its subjects or victims
which, in fact, we find, and which, in the main, are indeed its results
and not dependent upon the exceptional natures of those subjected to it.
The more general higher education becomes, and the less selection is
exercised upon the candidates for it, the more evident, I believe, will
it appear that woman responds in high degree to the total circumstances
of her life; and that if we do not like the fruits of our labour it is
we indeed that are to blame.




CHAPTER VI

MENDELISM AND WOMANHOOD


We are accustomed to think of Mendelism as simply a theory of heredity,
by which term we should properly understand the relation between living
generations. Now Mendelism is certainly this, but I believe that it is
vastly more. Already the claim has been made, though not, perhaps, in
adequate measure, by the Mendelians, and I am convinced that their title
to it will be upheld. Mendelism has already effected a really
epoch-making advance in our knowledge of heredity--the relations between
parents and offspring; but we shall learn ere long that it has yet more
to teach us regarding the very constitution of living beings. As modern
chemistry can analyse a highly complex molecule into its constituent
elementary atoms, so the Mendelians promise ere long to enable us to
effect an _organic analysis_ of living creatures. For many decades past
theory has perceived that, in the germ-cells whence we and the higher
animals and plants are developed, there must exist--somewhere
intermediate between the chemical molecule and the vital unit, the cell
itself--units which Herbert Spencer, the first and greatest of their
students, called physiological or constitutional units. Since his day
they have been re-discovered--or rather re-named--by a host of students,
including Haeckel, Weismann, and many of scarcely less distinction. The
Mendelian "factors," as I maintain must be clear to any student of the
idea, are Spencer's physiological units. Of course neither Spencer nor
any one else, until the re-discovery of Mendel's work, had any notion at
all of the remarkable fashion in which these units are treated in the
process whereby germ-cells are prepared for their great destiny. The
rule, as we now know, is that one germ-cell contains any given unit,
while another does not. The process of cell-division, whereby the
germ-cells or gametes[5] are made, is called gameto-genesis. Somewhere
in its course there occurs the capital fact discovered by Mendel and
called by him segregation. A cell divides into two--which are the final
gametes. One of these will definitely contain the Mendelian factor, and
the other will be as definitely without it. Definite consequences follow
in the constitution of the offspring; and such is the Mendelian
contribution to heredity. But we must see that these inquiries cannot be
far pursued without telling us vastly more than we ever knew before of
not only the relation between individuals of successive generations, but
the very structure of the individuals themselves. It is by the study of
heredity that we shall learn to understand the individual. For instance,
experimental breeding of the fowl reveals the existence of the brooding
instinct as a definite unit, which enters, or does not enter, into the
composition of the individual, and which is quite distinct from the
capacity to produce eggs. Here is a definite distinction suggested, for
the case of the fowl, between two really distinct things which, for
several years past, I have called respectively physical and psychical
motherhood. The analysis will doubtless go far further, but already the
facts of experiment help us to realize the composition of the individual
mother--for instance, the number of possible variants, and the
non-necessity of a connection between the capacity to produce children
and the parental instinct upon which the care of them depends, and
without which entire and perfect motherhood cannot be.

The Mendelians are teaching us, too, that their "factors," the units of
which we are made, are often intertangled or mutually repellent. If
such-and-such goes into the germ-cell, so must something else; or if the
one, then never the other. There may thus be naturally determined
conditions of entire womanhood; just as one may be externally a woman,
yet lack certain of the fractional constituents which are necessary for
the perfect being. Complete womanhood, like genius--rarer though not
more valuable--depends upon the co-existence of _many_ factors, some of
which may be coupled and segregated together in gameto-genesis, while
others may be quite independent, only chance determining the throw of
them. And the question of incompatibility or mutual repulsion of factors
is of the gravest concern; as, for instance, if it were the case--and
the illustration is perhaps none too far-fetched--that the factor for
the brooding instinct and the factor for intellect can scarcely be
allotted together to a single cell.

This question of compatibilities is illustrated very strikingly by the
case of the worker-bee. There is as yet no purely Mendelian
interpretation of this case, Mendel's own laborious work upon heredity
in bees having been entirely lost, and practically nothing having been
done since. Yet, as will be evident, the main argument of Geddes and
Thomson leads us to a similar interpretation of this case in terms of
compatibility.

The worker-bee is an individual of a most remarkable and admirable kind,
from whom mankind have yet a thousand truths to learn. She is
distinguished primarily by the rare and high development of her nervous
apparatus. In terms of brain and mind, using these words in a general
sense, the worker-bee is almost the paragon of animals. The ancients
supposed that the queen-bee was indeed the queen and ruler of the hive.
Here, they thought, was the organizing genius, the forethought, the
exquisite skill in little things and great, upon which the welfare of
the hive and the future of the race depend. But, in point of fact, the
queen-bee is a fool. Her brain and mind are of the humblest order. She
never organizes anything, and does not rule even herself, but does what
she is told. She is entirely specialized for motherhood; but the
thinking, and the determination of the conditions of her motherhood, are
in the hands of other females, also highly specialized, and certainly
the least selfish of living things--_yet themselves sterile, incapable
of motherhood_.

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