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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
4
(S. -“3 aXA-x^vx,
essa;y i.
Jod. Thou breathest to
Thou who art life itself.’
us the breath of life,
hi. IV. II
The student who has patiently followed these essays thus
far through the labyrinth of cumbrous dissertations is now
to lift his head from the darkness which abides under the
skirt of Wisdom, and from groping after Her secret trea
sures of This Place nro mpn m, to behold for a season
the light of Her countenance without: to the end that from
that which is above he may understand that which is below,
and from that which is below may seek that which is above:
and so learning to live for Her by whom and for whom all
worlds exist may strive and fight for Her, not as one that
beateth the air.
We are now to breathe a new atmosphere, the daylight
of the outer and upper sky where it gleams abroad on the
busy world, on the vast mart of individual and social
interests. The shadowy cloister of philosophy must soon
throw open its doors, and our disputants Ish and Adam
walk forth together into the high road and join the motley
throng of human beings as they are, in order to see and
hear what now is, and to judge what shall be hereafter.
They must carry with them no prejudices, not even such as
seemingly tend to the social elevation of woman ; for flat
tery is hardly less detrimental to that cause than deprecia
tion. Preceding arguments have more than once been
directed to point out the all-important philosophic distinc
tion between woman and women; and we must not mix up
the eternal Divinity of the former with the manifold and
multiform failings and imperfections of the latter. Our
task is to teach what women are born to be, and to show
that the education and consequent habits of the world
hitherto have directly tended to bring girls up to woman
hood in complete and exact reversal of that course of
development which belongs to their innate qualities and
�2
THE EDUCATION OE GIBUS.
powers; the consequence of which perversion—that is, thcfirst consequence ; for a ghastly and almost endless train
attaches to it—is the undeniable, though perhaps not
obvious, fact, that no one has ever yet seen a real grown-up
woman, and no one knows what such a woman woidd be
capable of.
This may seem a paradox, but it is really an axiom. No'
existing woman nor man would have become what she or
he is at this moment but for her or his social surroundings,
past and present. We are each and all what our social
circumstances and the use we have put them to have made
us ; and the vast differences, especially mental differences,
which we observe among members of the same sex are,
generally speaking, quite as much, if not more, induced
from without than arising from within; no idiosyncracy
being strong enough to stand quite alone in all matters
whatever against the current of the time.
Well, then, who can point to a time and a place in the
world’s history where the current of social life, the influenceof the social atmosphere, flowed in the direction of treating
woman as the spiritual superior, or even equal, of man ?
Where and when has this been done, I ask—done soearnestly and effectually that adverse influences from with
out could never penetrate and vitiate that hallowed sphere ;
When and where did any woman, during her growth to
womanhood, ever breathe a social atmosphere the main,
weight of which was not dead against female supremacy in
either world ? But if such a state of things can nowhere
be pointed at, we come back perforce to this conclusion: a
real grown-up woman has not yet appeared in this icorld.
And even this is not all; the question follows, whether man
can be fully human while woman is not. In the subsequent
pages it will be considered whether he can. Meanwhile
here is on exposition of her views on the great social
question, written by a lady to the Examiner periodical of'
May 20th, 1871, showing how some few of our women, even
*
as they are, can rise equal to occasion.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
Sir,—At the various meetings and conferences that have
been held, and in the lectures that have been delivered, during
the last few weeks on the Woman Suffrage question, an enor
mous amount of reason and argument in favour of the removal of
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
o
political disabilities from women has been brought to bear on it.
It has, indeed, been asserted by several of the speakers, that all
the reason is on their side of the question, and the assertion has
not been disproved. “The objections of our opponents,” said
Dr. Lyon Playfair at the meeting at St. James’s Hall, “are
entirely of a sentimental character.”
Now, while perfectly concurring in the judgment that in
deciding all questions affecting great human interests, reason
should have the first place and sentiment the second; and that
in this particular question there is a weight of reason on one
side, and on the other nothing but sentiment, and sentiment
mostly of a very weak and washy character, it ought not to be
put so completely out of the question as the advocates of the
measure generally do. For even were the stout offensive weapons
of reason sheathed altogether, it could hold its ground, and ulti
mately win its way by the preponderating force of the highest
and purest sentiment it has in its favour.
There is now, say the opponents of Woman Suffrage, an
amiable forbearance to the ignorances and follies of women, and
an affection—occasionally a little contemptuous, no doubt—for
their weakness and defects, on the part of men, which is very
pleasant to see; while, on the other hand, women look up to
men with a sweet fearful humility, confide their whole social
and moral well-being to them with a beautiful unquestioning
trustfulness that is equally delightful and refreshing to behold.
All of which would be utterly destroyed by the social equality
of the sexes that the gift of political power to women would
necessary entail; and also by the intellectual equality that,
women’s minds being thus raised to take interest in a higher
range of subjects than they have yet done, must inevitably
follow. One honourable member of the House of Commons, in
the recent debate, reminded his brethren that a woman’s husband
should rule over her, and that “fear and blushing” were her
proper mental and physical conditions: while another dutifully
called to their remembrance the “ illogical and unreasonable
words which they had heard at their mothers’ knees,” and
warned them that if this bill passed their sons and grandsons to
come would have no such agreeable recollections to solace and
comfort them in manhood and old age. He also called upon
them to observe the dangerous element of priestly power that
would thus be introduced into our legislature, priests and such
like persons having always a pernicious influence over the illo
gical minds of women; a line of talk—I won’t dignify it by the
name of argument—carried still further by another honourable
member, who, with the eye of a seer, perceived in Woman
Suffrage the beginning of a Jesuitical rule that would ultimately
submerge all the Protestant liberties of England.
r!
But none of these honourable gentleman saw in this Bill the
foundation of a hope that finds a place in the breast of every
�4
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
one who takes a large and comprehensive view of society as it
has been, as it is, as it may be in the time to come ; for a new
and higher, and—for both—a happier moral and intellectual
relation of the sexes than the contemptuous forbearance and
terrified confidence—the latter too often misplaced—that, on the
showing of those who are doing their utmost to maintain it,
form the type of the existing state of things. Looking each no
further than himself and his own illogical woman—or women,
as the member for Kilmarnock naively suggested—whom he
finds it agreeable to him to have and to hold in a state of admir
ing subjection to his superior wisdom, their minds were closed
to that far nobler conception of the human life, in its twofold
aspect, that the promoters of this Bill aspire to see realised
among us; not, as now, exceptionally, but universally, as
humanity advances still further towards perfection. The conception of man and woman united, not as the master and the
slave, the possessor and the possessed, which places an almost
insurmountable barrier between their moral natures, but as co
inheritors of all freedom and knowledge and truth; working
together for the same great end, the moral, intellectual, and
physical advancement of the human race. The diversities of
the two natures, not of necessity dividing them in every aim
and object and pursuit in life, but recognised rather as intended
that, the two working for the same purpose, each shall supply
the lack of the other. The inequalities of two natures fitted
together until they become one nature ; the greater breadth of
thought filling the space left by the narrower ; the firmer grasp
of mind holding the weaker in its place ; the quicker perceptions
stimulating the slower; the readier sympathies bringing out the
more backward; and the more acute reasoning faculties, and
the more profound, giving each to each what the other wants,
all joined together harmoniously to form a perfect whole.
This is the relation between the sexes that those who are
demanding the political equality of women hope to see arise,
upon the destruction of the other which the opponents of the
measure say—and with the very correct prescience—will be its
inevitable result.
But that such a relation could be established until women
have equal political rights and equal educational advantages
with men is impossible. It is met with now, no doubt, but only
in rare individual cases where men, contemning the power the
law gives them, practically make it a dead letter, and where
women, having educated themselves, notwithstanding that they
are deprived of political rights, work by any indirect means that
they can to advance great political ends, the furtherence of social
reforms and the general welfare of the community. But the
number of men who, having power, will not use it, are few.
And the number of women who will have convictions and
interests without the right to give them effect, and who will have
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
$
tie Courage and resolution to work on themselves to undo all
that governess, and the schoolmistress, and the world in general
have done for them—and when they have destroyed the super
structure of folly and frivolity and falsehood that these have
raised up upon their minds to build another of true knowledge
and common sense there instead—are fewer still. For it is a
(much harder thing to do ; truly any one of the labours of Hercules was light in comparison ! And yet this is what every
woman must do who wants to raise herself out of the slough of
Ignorance and apathy and error about everything that is good
and great, in which the majority of her sex are sunk, unless she
kappen to have had the good fortune not to be educated at all,
When her labour is diminished one half.
®ie folly that supposes political rights and educational advan
tages would make every woman aspire to rule the State and
toeglcet her personal duties, is scarcely worth noticing. It is
sufficient for its refutation to say that as the power to vote does
not make the bank-clerk or the shopkeeper neglect his desk or
OffittBter, to indulge in dreams of being Chancellor of the Ex
chequer or Prime Minister, there can be no possible grounds for
Supposing that it would make his mother or sister do so : or, if
dreaded universal suffrage came to pass, his wife or daughter
either; even though they were all educated to be bank clerks
and shopkeepers’ wives and mothers, instead of poor imitations
of fine ladies as they are at present. Placing women on an
equality with men would never raise them .above them. The
*
terror that some of these lower orders of men now indulge in, of
the world under the new regime coming to such a pass that they
Would have none but female Gladstones and John Stuart Mills
®nd Professor Huxleys in petticoats to marry, is without a shadow
of .foundation. Education will always be controlled by capacity,
if not by circumstance ; while, given its fair chance, genius is
sure to rise to its own level.
But, as all political economists know, everyone who works
Conscientiously and intelligently in his own place—be that place
ever so small and obscure a one—is giving his quota of help to
#ie prosperity of the State. And it is hard for women, whatever
be their place, to work either conscientiously or intelligently,
with the moral and mental obliquities, consequent on their mis
directed education, and the degraded social status that they suffer
from at present.
Another of the fanciful terrors that haunt the minds of men
opposed to women having political power, and the natural con
sequence of political power, political convictions, is, that
politics would then form one of the general topics of conversa
tion between men and women in society, and would introduce
an dement of bitterness and dissension instead of the sweet
That remains to be seen.
[Present Author.}
�6
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
melliferousness that now characterises such intercourse. This
spectre, it is true, has some more reality about him than those
already disposed of; he has rattling bones at least, and is Lnot
one of the mere “airy nothings” they were. I admit that
women having a knowledge of, and an interest in, questions that
men only are now informed about and interested in, would be
likely to alter, to a very considerable degree, what is at present
the almost prevailing tone of the mixed society of both sexes.
But I cannot think that this would be an evil; on the con
trary, I believe that it would be a good; and a good so great
that to bring it about would be alone worth making the change.
As society at present exists, conversation between young men
and women, who are in person or manner excessively un
attractive to each other, is utterly insane and uninteresting to
both, and done merely as a duty to society. But, on the con
trary, if there be anything outwardly attractive in either to the
other, often when only very slightly attractive, sometimes
when merely negative, this intercourse assumes a tone called
by different names in the parlance of society, but which is, in
reality, a mutual excitation, or attempt at excitation, in a greater
or less degree, of sexual feelings, equally pernicious in its
effects on both. This will doubtless be called exaggeration,
but I need only point to the lists of broken troth-plights and
miserable marriages that the newspapers and each person’s
private circle of acquaintance furnish to verify the truth of the
assertion. What do these innumerable cases of men and
women, without the slightest real affinity in their natures, rush
ing into engagements and unions that end either in shameful
faithlessness or miserable bondage arise from but the fact that,
in the ordinary intercourse between men and women, there is
no opening for either to know anything of the other’s real mind
or disposition, while every effort is made on both sides to excite
a spurious admiration and love ? *
With no fear that educated Englishmen and Englishwomen
will ever be roused by political feeling to throw wine-glasses or
tea-cups at each other’s heads, or, in any other way, to forget
the respect due to each other, and each other’s honest convic
tions, serious thinking people might well rejoice to see elements
introduced into their association that would develop their real
sympathies and antipathies, bringing together only those whom
nature intended to be brought together, and sundering those
who ought to be sundered. “Fancy,” cry the ghoul-hunted
“a Conservative man married to a Radical woman, or vice versa!
There would be an end to all domestic peace ! ” We need
fancy no such thing. The skeleton of the rattling bones puts
* As spurious it is no doubt pernicious ; but were Divine Order fol
lowed, and sexual relations placed on a different footing, it would not be
so. [Present Author.]
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
7
this phantom completely to rout. On the showing of those
whose imaginations are frighted by these hobgoblins, such a
thing would be an impossibility. But without going so far as
to suppose that Conservative young men and Radical young
women, or the reverse, would ever be led, by the difference of
their opinions, to pull each other’s hair or punch each other’s
heads when they met in society, we must believe that the great
differences of mind that lead to these two mental conditions
would then be so apparent that there would be no possibility of
making a mistake on the subject; though the mistake may
easily occur under the present state of things, when, if a woman
happen to have any unlawful political opinions, she is frightened
into concealing them by the threat of her else incurring the
dreaded odium of all her male acquaintances.
But, with a new era of equal rights and equal knowledge for
women, we may hope to see this reign of terror for both sexes
come to an end. Then the day will come when a man will
not shrink, through a miserable vanity and self-conceit, from
owning that his wife is gifted with reason, as he is, and has the
same right to use it; above all, when he will be ashamed to
proclaim before his countrymen that he believes her to be such
a slave to the bigotry and superstition of priests, that even his
great controlling wisdom cannot direct her how to use her liberty
aright, and that he, therefore, dreads to give her the common free
dom and rights of a citizen—rather when he will rejoice in
having beside him a companion and fellow-worker to aid him in
carrying out his greatest aims, and in realising his highest
aspirations.—I am, &c.,
Alice Perrier.
Still more powerful is the following extract from a pam
phlet on the same subject by a well-known writer and
lecturer, Mrs. Annie Besant:—
Lastly, I would urge on those who believe in women’s natural
inferiority, why, in the name of common sense, are you so
terribly afraid of putting your theory to the proof? Open to
women the learned professions; unlock the gates which bar her
out from your mental strifes; give her no favour, no special
advantage; let her race you on even terms. She must fail, if
nature be against her—she must be beaten, if nature has in
capacitated her for the struggle. Why do you fear to let her
challenge you, if she is weighted not only with the transmitted
effects of long centuries of inferiority, but is also bound with
nature’s iron chain? Try. If you are so sure about nature’s
verdict, do not fear her arbitration; but if you shrink from our
rivalry, wemustbelievethatyoufeel ourequality, and, to cover your
own doubts of your superiority, you prattle about our feebleness.
“Women are indifferent about the possession of the fran
chise.” If this is altogether true, it is very odd that there
�8
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
should be so much agitation going on about the subject. But I
am quite willing to grant that the mass of women are indif
ferent about the matter. Alas! it has always been so. Those
who stand up to champion an oppressed class do not look for
gratitude from those for whom they labour. It is the bitterest
curse of oppression that it crushes out in the breast of the
oppressed the very wish to be free. A man once spent long
years in the Bastille ; shut up in his youth, old age found him
still in his dungeon. The people assailed the prison, and
amongst others, this prisoner was set free; but the sunshine
was agony to the eyes long accustomed to the darkness, and the
fresh stir of life was as thunder to the ears accustomed to the
silence of the dungeon; the prisoner pleaded to be kept a prisoner
still. Was his action a proof that freedom is not fair? The slaves,
after generations of bondage, were willing to remain slaves
where their masters were kind and good. Is this a proof that
liberty is not the birthright of a man ? And this rule holds
good in all, and not only in the extreme cases I have cited.
Habit, custom, make hard things easy. If a woman is educated
to regard man as her natural lord, she will do so. If the man
to whom her lot falls is kind to her, she will be contented; if
he is unkind, she will be unhappy; but, unless she be an excep
tional character, she will not think of resistance. But women
are now beginning to think of resistance ; a deep, low, mur
muring is going on, suppressed as yet, but daily growing in
intensity; and such a murmur has always been the herald of
revolt. Further, do men think of what they are doing when
they taunt the present agitators with the indifference shown
by women? They are, in effect, telling us, that if we are in
earnest in this matter, we must force it on their attention; we
must agitate till every home in England rings with the subject;
we must agitate till mass meetings in every town compel them
to hear us ; we must agitate till every woman has our arguments
at her fingers’ end. Ah! you are not wise to throw in our
*
teeth the indifference of women. You are stinging us into a
determination that this indifference shall not last; you are nerving
us to a struggle, which will be fiercer than you dream ; you are
forcing us into an agitation which will convulse the State. You
dare to make indifference a plea for injustice. Very well; then
the indifference shall soon be a thing of the past. You have as
yet the frivolous, the childish, the thoughtless on your side; but
the cream of womanhood is against you. We will educate women
to reason and to think, and then the mass will only want a leader.
However, it is not to be pretended that philosophic, any
* Argumentative agitation ought of course, to be tried in the first
place; but, should arguments fail, women have a reserve force in
waiting. [Present Author. ]
�THE JEOTJCATION OR GIRLS.
more than diplomatic, controversy can be carried on withont a definite basis of negotiation ; and if we are to predi
cate right and wrong of a given state or states of society at
large, we must adopt some standard of what ought to be,
whereby to judge the character of what is. It hardly needs
to be said that the standard adopted in this work is the
hypothesis of the work—namely, the essential spiritual
Supremacy of woman over every other being in the universe,
and so of course over the universe of Nature itself, in the
same manner in which an individual woman is over and
above her own speech or her own clothes. Hence it is
necessary to take the religious aspect of the question as the
fundamental groundwork of every other aspect; for indeed
religion is truly but the final summing-up of all kinds of
practical utility.
The great lesson to be learnt, the fundamental axiom to
be engrained upon the mind of every one who aspires to
break the fetters wrought by a false and evil social edu
cation, is that this question of woman’s spiritual birthright
is one about which there can be no sort of parley or com
promise. The writer of the letter to the Examiner speaks in
a tone which seems to encourage the idea of sexual equality.
Now this is right enough in a certain restricted sense, but
in that only. It is only in view of the temporal co-operatfon of the sexes toward reunion in the Divine Female
Unity that the question of equality can be entertained. It
is certainly requisite that women should compete with men
on fair and equitable terms in all mundane matters, great and
small, in the government of Europe and America, as at the
chess-board, or in any other game. But to infer, from the
fact of the two sexes getting on best by mutual help and
competition in the earth-world, that man can be the equal
of woman spiritually, is neither more nor less than to make
Good and Evil equal, or two Infinites—a manifest ab
surdity. It is the destiny of the masculine or evil principle
in the universe to be finally reabsorbed into the feminine or
good principle, and so annihilated; hence doctrine or prac
tice which may be inconsistent with this knowledge must
always end in futility and failure, as it always has done.
This being clearly understood, and the spiritual dominion
*
* Demonstration of the doctrines thus sketched cannot be given
■within the compass of this pamphlet, which has a more immediate and
practical purpose.
�10
THE EDUCATION OE GIRLS.
being put aside as inherently and essentially belonging to
woman only, we can afford to be quite impartial between
the sexes in all other concerns. And the best service
which those who have the opportunity can render to women
is not to flatter or favour them, but to provide fair oppor
tunities for both sexes to compete, and then pay or reward
by results only, and not according to the sex of the worker,
or on any other extraneous consideration. There will, pro
bably, always be some physical matters in which a man can
do better than a woman, just as there are others in which a
horse or ox can do better than a man; these will soon show
themselves under any regime. For the rest open competition
will prove woman’s best title-deed.
The one-sided system under which we live cramps
the efforts even of wealthy benevolence. We see many
a wealthy philanthropist, no doubt, men who would do
good far and wide if they could, and who would not be
narrow and selfish if they could help it. But they cannot
help it so long as the social atmosphere they breathe is one
of general suspicion and distrust, of caution against being
over-reached, even by one’s friends, for their own benefit or
aggrandisement; so long as misunderstanding and envy
take the place of co-operation and sympathy. And I say
that so long as one of the sexes—and that the higher sex—
is kept from its rights, and artificially stunted in its capaci
ties, this state of things cannot be altered. History will
repeat itself with its woes and horrors, for there is
nothing to prevent similar circumstances kindling similar
passions, however hard they may have been scrubbed
in the meanwhile by the polishing-brush of an unsound
civilisation.
The Dialogists may now appear.
Adam. You know well, Ish, how to state your views
forcibly; but a good statement does not always involve a
strong case. Granted the folly and unmanliness of sitting
down helpless under admitted evils, it does not follow that
we are safe in receiving with open arms the first worldbetterer who comes forward with an offer of ready made
universal regeneration. Many plausible panaceas have been
tried, and you will agree with me that they have all failed
in their main object. Wh^ should we expect for yours a
better fortune than for all those that have gone before ?
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
11
Ish. The upshot of all which is—that there is never to he a
sensible improvement here in the circumstances of mankind!
If so, I think Wordsworth’s supposition about fire coming
down from far to scorch earth’s pleasant habitations and
dry up old ocean, in his bed left singed and bare, was no
idle one. The sooner this planet is burnt the better. After
all, the idea is not peculiar to Wordsworth or to his times.
Paul, I think, said something about the elements melting
some day with fervent heat; and thus much, at any rate, is
well known, that certain of the heavenly bodies have
already disappeared suddenly and unaccountably. May we
not reasonably fancy that their inhabitants had been offered
the last chance and would not take it ? But putting poets
and theologians aside, it is quite safe to say that in the
absence of much greater knowledge than our men of science
yet possess concerning the possible contingent causes of
sudden generation of excessive heat in the sun or in some
still more powerful star—the tenure of this little tem
poral home of ours, with its beauties and its drawbacks,
may be much more precarious than we are accustomed
to believe.
A. Save us, Ish! that is a tremendous threat. I hope
this earth will take care to improve before so violent a
remedy as that becomes necessary.
I. Not on its present style of going on. But my hope and
belief is that things will change for the better and obviate
all occasion for the human race to be rubbed out, and have
to begin again at the beginning.
A. I hope so too. I do not go so far as to deny the
likelihood of the world being bettered, I assure you.
I. Well, then, how far do you go ? Let us have something
definite.
A. I mean no more than what I have already said, that a
heavy burden of proof lies on the side of such innovation as
yours.
I. As heavy as you please. Only the proof, mind you,
lies not in talking, but in doing. I do not ask you or society
to take my words for anything ; I ask you to do your duty
by woman, and set her free from her present thralls, and it
will then be for her, not me, to prove the truth of what I
say. The burden of proof may |ie upon me, but the burden
of unperformed duty lies upon your side ; and that is a far
more serious matter.
�12
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
A. Ah, then you do not rest your claim for woman’s
emancipation upon the fact of her essential divinity ?
I. Certainly not. I make, it is true, both claims; but
they are quite independent of each other. I arraign you in
the first instance for systematically ill-treating a portion,
the greater portion, I believe, of mankind. That is the first
step ; my assertion of her exclusive divinity is a step beyond.
A. I see. Well, then, to deal with the first step; how
does it happen that the female race exists in a generally
inferior position to the male race all over the world? You
denounce the fact as an abuse; but I should like to hear
you account for it.
I. It happens simply by the law of brute force; which
law, as humanity develops more, that is, rises in the scale of
its own being, gradually gives way to the higher law, that
of spiritual force, which is woman’s strength.
A. You mean, then, that man has no other superiority
over woman than that which great brutes have over him.
I. Just so.
A. But is it so? Putting causes aside, and looking to
their effects, do you not find yourself obliged for candour’s
sake to allow that, as men and women have hitherto been
and still are, the male sex has excelled the female in per
formances which savour not at all of the brutal, but quite
the contrary ? To take notorious instances near home,
what woman has written like Shakspere, has composed like
Beethoven—in short, not to enlarge, where have women
hitherto accomplished works in any department open to both
sexes equal to the best that men have accomplished ? It
does seem to me strange at the outset, that the superior sex
should be beaten by the inferior in nearly all—I am by no
means sure I might not say quite all—real practical doings.
I will add that, let alone higher things, it has yet to be
shown that men could not, by practice, also tend children,
and make beds, and mend clothes, and do all other domestic
duties commonly supposed to be women’s special province,
as well, aye and better, than women themselves. I am free
to avow that my notion of superiority is one of superior
performance even more than of beautiful appearance; and
if women generally cannot do what men generally can, what
is their superiority worth, even if it exist? You see, it is
one thing to aspire to the glories of heaven, and another to
condescend to recognise the utilities of earth.
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
13
I. Is that meant to imply that the glories of heaven are
not worth taking trouble about, while the utilities of earth
are? At any rate, then, let the glories of heaven be left
to woman, and let man confine himself to the utilities of earth.
A. No, but I don’t see how to reach the higher without
employing the lower.
I. Well, man has certainly not reached the glories of
heaven by his able use of earthly means. There can hardly
therefore, be that connection between the two which you suppose J
A. Come then, I waive heaven; woman shall be welcome
to it, so long as you leave earth to man.
I. I might retort that a compulsory cession is not meri
torious ; but let that pass. I cannot, however, leave man
to his misrule and usurpation of earth.
A. I suppose he must go to hell, then ?
I. Nay, nay; justice between the sexes in this world
makes the best earth for the male sex and the best heaven
for the female. But that justice has yet to be done.
When it is done, done in fulness without stint or reserve,
then the nations who sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death will have seen the beginning of a new heaven and a
new earth wherein shall dwell righteousness.
I grant, however, that your case would look strong enough
so far as regards the test by works, if only you could show
that women have had equal opportunities with men, and
therefore that their backwardness in productive arts must
proceed from some inherent defect of their nature. But
my argument—which I shall proceed to make good in detail
—is that the reason why women have not turned out Shaksperes and Beethovens, &c., is because they have not
been trained from early youth in such a manner as to give
their latent faculties a fair chance. I do not say but what
there might always remain a perceptible sexual difference
of mind as well as of body; but you have no ground for
assuming that such difference would place the female at
disadvantage; on the contrary, it is evident that analogy__
the only test we have to go by—points to a superiority on
the female side in the department of mind corresponding
to that she already undisputedly possesses in that of matter
—her physical beauty. Meanwhile, I am satisfied for the
present if you sincerely concede the first step and give up
the religious department of life to woman unreservedly.
�14
THE EDUCATION OF GIFTS.
ESSAY
‘ But now
‘
II.
been, how worse than
[blind !
Day by day we resist thy saving grace.’
blind have we
in. iv. iv.
The Dialogists may resume.
A. Come to the point, Ish; what do you formally pro
pose to substitute for a woman’s present surroundings and
bringing up ?
I. I propose, in a few words, that woman, from her
earliest infancy shall be systematically developed instead of
being systematically repressed and snubbed, as she is.
A. How is she so ? I must say that I cannot see it.
I. Let us begin, then, at the beginning proper, the
earliest influences common to childhood; and you will
discover, before we have done, that these influences are the
same as, or strictly analogous with, those which determine
our character at the close of this life—character, that one
thing which though we brought it not with us into the world,
yet it is certain we must carry out. The child is father to
the man, as Wordsworth says, in this sense, that the career
of the adult is foreshadowed by the peculiarities of the
infant; but then these peculiarities themselves assume a
healthy or an unhealthy form, accordingly as they are judi
ciously or injudiciously treated by those who have the rear
ing of the young mind.
Now, although between the treatment respectively of a
girl and of a boy just born there can hardly be much external
difference, there will, nevertheless, be a difference, too
subtle for ordinary people to observe, perhaps, but by no
means too subtle to affect the infants. I mean the differ
ence of what is termed atmosphere, in reference to the
spiritual world. Even while the new-born babe is wrapped
in a flannel covering and taken in the nurse’s arms, the
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
15
persons around the latter will begin to make their observa
tions ; and their words, which the babe cannot understand,
will be accompanied with looks expressive of affection or of
indifference, which there is good reason to believe it can.
The tones of the voice also have ei idently a strong effect
both on children and on lower animals. Now, without
assuming that we should everywhere meet with much differ
ence in the welcome given to a male or a female child;
without any ignoring of the fact that girls are often wel
comed where boys would not be—still I maintain that the
impulses generally evoked by the birth of a girl into a family,
the discussion of her promise of attractiveness, her possible
prospects in matrimony, &c., in short, her tacitly recognised
place as a tributary and appendage to the male—these things
floating and being ventilated around her, almost from the
very hour of her birth, coagulate the first stratum of that
poisoned spiritual atmosphere wherein she is destined to
grow up. The fondness for a baby girl felt in particular
instances by her parents and nurses may happen to exceed
that for a boy; but the fondness is of a different kind.
Ordinary persons have been accustomed to look upon boys
as those intended hereafter to be equals among themselves
in proportion to rank and wealth, and to be the masters of
women in their respective degrees. Consequently, it is not
to be expected that the future superior and the future
inferior in all matters of life should be regarded at the
outset of their lives with the same kind of affection, even
where the degree of it is in favour of the girl.
Thus, even before parents or guardians have begun to
dogmatise about the religious or moral training up of the
new-born girl, the atmosphere of that small society into
which she comes at her birth is dead against her. Of warm
love she may receive plenty; but it is rarely love of the
most precious kind; at the best, it is love that will provide
all attainable comforts and advantages for her lower nature,
and leave—nay, lead—her higher nature to perish. Be they
to whose care the infant is committed Jews, Christians,
Mahomedans, non-religionists, what you will, they all agree
in a common warfare against the divine order of the universe.
So the new-born girl inhales an atmosphere dead against her
spiritual life, so soon as her young eyes can discern faces
and her ears distinguish tones.
Let it not be thought that kindness of any sort, however
�16
THE EDUCATION OE GTKL.S.
mistaken its mode of working, is to be depreciated. The
young blind, led by the adult blind, will both, indeed, fall
into the ditch; but no one is further than I am from
disbelieving that the blind guides, as a rule, do their best
for their infant charge; and, moreover, I am sure that
there are some amongst them so honest and single-minded in
their simplicity, as to be capable of turning aside from the
evil way and walking in the right one, if only they could be
shown it. But, unfortunately, these are not the persons
who in this world form the mind and set the fashions of
society. It would almost seem as if mental culture were
laboured for only to be abused, so that in place of the head
being ruled by a good heart, the heart is misruled by a
perverted head until it has ceased to be honest. At any
rate, the knowledge of the sanctity hitherto attained by the
classes who make it their profession, has not exceeded that
amount which is proverbially dangerous ; the history of
priestcraft being a history of knowledge sufficient to become
an engine for misleading the masses, but not sufficient to
demonstrate beforehand what the event proves, that such
policy must bring about the falsification and corruption of
all social relations, and sooner or later bring down on its
authors and promoters the just execration of the lamely pro
gressing nations of the earth—still just, even although the
nations themselves were doubly in fault; first for having
made to themselves those crooked rules, and then for not
cutting them down like rotten trees so soon as ever their
character appeared. That character, it is true, depends
upon society, which thus moves in a vicious circle. A
superstitious laity sets up priests without natural qualifica
tion for their office; and these naturally take advantage of
their position to keep the laity conveniently superstitious.
And so the wheel goes round, without remedy, that I can
see, but in calling to our aid the dormant capacity of the
female race, and substituting the religion of nature and true
humanity for an ignoble idolatry which usurps its place.
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
17
ESSAY III.
[The same continued.']
I. I said that the fact of its social surroundings tending
to affect the character of an infant, is one which not all
minds may be able to comprehend. I think, however, that
few will be able to follow me into the next field of inquiry,
a spacious and sunny ground, where the objects to which I
shall direct attention are large, and simple, and common;
so that no hearer of my words shall be able to plead the
miserable excuse of his own intellectual weakness.
However hazy may be the notions many people have
concerning such things as spiritual atmosphere, they ought
to be able to follow me when 1 pass on to the period where
children begin to speak their little syllables and to take in
the drift of short sentences spoken to them, to distinguish
faces constantly seen, and to exercise acts of recent memory.
And here, in this manifest opening of education, comme-ces
the working of that evil spell which is to bruise and bll lit
the opening powers of the female child, and through her to
ruin the character of the male children with whom she con
verses, and through both to people the world with beings
who grow up, the one sex to be but half men, the other, it
is hardly exaggeration to say, not women at all.
Where, then, is the commencement of this evil spell’s
operation ? A little girl who has brothers ought to be inti
lectually the better for it; the sexual character of mines,
under the present terrestrial dispensation, being as much
intended for reciprocation as that of bodies. But what
benefits do we actually find ? The girl a year or two old,
just able to prattle and comprehend a few sentences, is at
once put by her mother or nurse, or both, into subjection
under her male companions on every occasion of a little
nursery quarrel about playthings, or some other storm in a
tea-cup. At best the little brothers are told that they should
give way to the little sisters on principles of chivalry, &c.,
�18
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
so far as children can be taught such things ; that is to say,
because they are supposed to be the stronger, being: boys,
and the strong should always be generous to the weak. The
boy is to be kind to the girl on the principle that the merci
ful man is to be kind to his beast. I don’t mean that people
tell boys this in express words : but if they insinuate it that is
just as bad. They are doing their best, however unwit
tingly, to train up a child in the way of sacrilege and wrong;
and when he is old—nay, when he has attained the prime
of life—he will not depart from it.
A. Spoken like yourself, Ish. And, indeed, I am alive to
the reality of how much may be done by early impressions
for good or ill; but are you not making too much of it ?
For my part, I should be inclined to leave mothers and
nurses alone until the children are old enough to come
under wider influences, and then take care that these new
influences, which can easily be made to obliterate the old
ones, are of the right sort.
I. But why, my good friend, why go putting off to a
convenient season the duty which it behoves us to do to
day ? Why adopt or sanction a system of beginning wickedly
and foolishly, in the ungrounded confidence that you will
afterwards proceed righteously and wisely? If you may
spiritually debase your daughters at, say, four years old,
why not at seven ; if at seven, why not at seventeen, and so
on? Do you imagine it is so easy to say to the powers of
darkness, Thus far shall je go, and no further? No, no;
the only safety is in teaching children the principles of
divine order so soon as they are able to learn anything.
And I do not pretend that it will be a light task to neutra
lise the evil influence of so many past generations. But it
has to be done ; therefore, the sooner all classes buckle to
the business the better for all.
A. Well, but, Ish, how, for instance, in teaching young
children, would you account to them for the greater brute
force of the male ?
I. In the first place, I have great doubts whether this
quiet assumption about the male’s greater physical force is
not an utter delusion—I mean, of course, when we com
pare males and females of the same calibre. Of course, I
do not deny that men in general grow to a larger stature
than women in general, and have proportionally so much
more of that force which is identical with material weight.
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
It
Although, mind you, there is no reason why this order of
nature should continue. A very few generations might reverse
it. For instance, I believe the largest and tallest huma^
being now alive is a woman who lately exhibited herse1^London; and I lately read somewhere that Cuvier remarked ’
that the largest and heaviest brain he ever exfLmine(j wag...
that of a woman. These little straws show that tpe wjnq
seed not always set in the direction of Loan’s superiority
*
even in mere brute weight and its force, Moreover let me
remind you that enormous importance should attach to the
notorious fact that the existing modes of life of men and
boys generally is very much more calculated to develop
and haiden muscle than that of women and girls. So much
the worse for society and its customs; nevertheless, such
is the fact. And the difference between the muscles of the
same person properly exercised and not properly exercised,
is second only to that between the muscles of different
persons. Meanwhile, if great brute weight or force is ■
to be called superiority well and good. Only in that case, while you point out to children how 11 superior ” man isto woman, you must also point out to them how “ supe
rior” the elephant is to man, how “ superior” a great steamengine is to an elephant, how “superior” a falling cliff or
an irruption of the sea is to the steam-engine. Let it once
be cleaily settled that superiority means simply a greater
mass of inert matter, and then the assertion that man is
generally woman’s “ superior ” remains harmless so lon°- as
it holds good.
°
A. But are you sure that in a state of society where men
am women had equal opportunities and no favour physically
Old mentally, there would not be some performances in which
men would always excel women, as there would be others
m which women would excel men ?
7. I know of no evidence to show that men need always
surpass women in anything except those kinds of hard
labour, e.g., carrying heavy loads, which a woman in preg.
nancy, or during her menstrual periods, ought certainly to
avoid if possible.
J
. .4’
now> Ish, how would you take measures for
initiating very young children into your doctrine of Divine
‘
Order, so as to prevent the young religious or aspiring
faculty from going wrong ?
X I do not see that there is any necessity fcr trying thei?
�20
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS
heads with deep matters at all. Not the ineffable Tetragrammaton, the universal one, but Elohim, the Godhead or
Divine Plurality—in other words, not Woman, but her re
presentative aspects, or individual women—constitute the
temporal object of worship which alone can belong to our
temporal conditions. We can worship and behold the One
olny through and in the Many.
A. Bless us, Ish ! do not you call that a deep matter? I
should like to find the child who could be posted up in it.
I. But, my dear Sir, alb you have to teach children is
that they are never to worship any other object than a
female—their own mother in the first instance, if you like.
As they get older, the idea can be gradually extended from
the single individual. Surely that is both simple and
natural.
A. Not quite such plain sailing as it might seem It is
all very well to talk of worship; but you yourself, Ish, had
you been taught on your present principles when you were
a child, would have knelt before a particular woman or girl,
and prayed to her with a homage as purely external and
objective as the attention paid to an article of food set
before you, and perhaps also as vague as, let us say, one’s
ordinary notion of “ London ” or “ the sea.”
1. Well, I cannot help that. Of course children’s worship
will be childish. All we can do is to see that rudimentary
and inchoate religion shall not develop wrongly. If a child
can only “ love ” a woman in the way that “ Charley Cram
loved raspberry jam,” that, at any rate, is better than its
living in awe of the detestable nightmare of a false god,
as all children who are taught religion at all are still com
pelled to do.
A. Return your sword, Ish; we must examine these
minutiae dispassionately.
1. Willingly. I have said nothing, however, but what I
am prepared deliberately to repeat.
A. Well then, now suppose that a child has reached that
stage of religious development where it can begin to extend
the sphere of its worship of women, or rather of woman ;
and suppose that two or more of those lovely objects of
worship happen to fall out and tear each other’s character
to rags, in their young devotee’s presence. It strikes me
that the growing Church of the Future would soon learn
that in mutual scolding, if in nothing else, the Divine
�THE EDUCATION OP GIRLS.
Plurality undoubtedly excels her humble subject, the
male.
I. Well, that would be the first lesson—rather a rude one,
it is true, and therefore to be avoided if possible—upon the
difference hetween the Unity and the Plurality, between
perfection and imperfection. Indeed they are pretty sure
to find out imperfections and inconsistencies in the objects
of their worship under even the most favourable circum
stances ; therefore it is to be kept in view that they should
learn to look higher than the individual, so soon as they are
able to understand the simple formula that there is a Woman
greater and better than all other women, who rules the
(world, and some day or other will set right everything that
goes wrong here. This, of course, is but a child’s way of
looking at the matter, and perhaps better modes of convey
ing the truth might be stated; all I strenuously insist on is
that though it may be impossible to convey the whole truth
to the young child, it is at all events possible, and a solemn
duty, moreover, to convey to it nothing but the truth.
Where there’s a will there’s a way : and if mothers, nurses,
&c., only set themselves right, it is not likely that the infants
and children under their care will wander far from the path
of Divine Order.
41. I should be glad, nevertheless, to hear something more
like explicit directions.
I. You must not rate any directions of this sort which I
can give as anything more positive than suggestion. Here
is a suggestion, however, if you please. If it be desired that
children begin religious practice very early, say by repeating
a short sentence at bed-time, why not tell them that the God
to whom this little prayer is made is simply a Woman, like,
btft more lovely than, all other women together, and that
though She cannot be seen and talked with in this life, yet
if we pray to Her and trust in Her now, we shall live in
enjoyment with Her in a happier life hereafter? To a very
intelligent child it might be added that in that happier life
there will be only women and girls, all good men having
been changed into them; but this could only be said use
fully to very thoughtful children. There then, Adam, I
have done my best to throw you out a hint or sketch; you
or others might, no doubt, easily improve upon it. Anyhow
it is right so far as it goes, though that be only a little way.
You would have shown the children—or put them in the
�22
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS
right road to find out—that the God to whom they pray is
an ever ready help and comfort in trouble, an ever ready
eompanion and sympathiser in pleasures, be they ever so
childish, a real God at hand to heal and bless, not a false
and mean and revengeful and selfish God afar off to disap
point and mock.
A. Yes ; I see no objection to that.
I. Contrast such a faith of living warm sweetness and
reality, which daily experience and spontaneous observation
would mainly tend to confirm without the aid of unnatural
distortive struggles of imagination—contrast it with the cold
blast of Infinity, or with the bloody horrors of the historic
tragedy on Calvary. Is there not between the two kinds of
religious education almost the difference between giving a
a child its mother’s milk, and dashing its head against the
stones ?
Those who have young children to bring up will do well
to consider that they live in an age of rapid transition,
when the old faiths are crumbling away and fated soon to
lie mingled with the dust. Hence, to bring up children in
reliance upon those collapsing walls is decidedly worse
than to give them no religious education at all. It is but
to expend time, labour, and means upon work which will
have to be picked to pieces, upon lessons which will have
to be unlearnt, and unlearnt by no means cheaply. If in
deed a new and higher dispensation appear too startling to
be acquiesced in at once, it is surely better to suspend
judgment than to persist in a futile and discreditable course.
Let parents consider that their children, when they are
grown up men and women, living under a stronger and
purer light, will assuredly not hold them blameless, will
assuredly not esteem blundering affection any sufficient
excuse for having forced their young charge to cling by
their side to that which was visibly and palpably rotten.
A. You speak very harshly of beliefs which, although I
do not share them, are dear to many harmless and benevo
lent people.
I. I mean no injury to any one’s creed, regarded as a
purely religious ideal. But when that creed is made the
pretext for a social and political code of injustice and
oppression, it must incur the condemnation due to the
wrongs which it is abused to sanction.
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
23
ESSAY IV.
[Ish’s Discourse continued.]
*
1 Sic fatur lacrymans classique immittit habenas the
Saturday Review of January 4th, 1868 :—
'There are, it must be owned, few things on earth of less interest
at first sight than a girl in her teens. She is a mere bundle of
pale, colourless virtues, a little shy, slightly studious, passively
obedient, tamely religious. Her tastes are “simple;” she has
to particular preference, that is, for anything; her aims incline
mildly towards a future of balls to come ; her rule of life is an
hourly reference to “ mamma.” She is without even the charm
of variety; she has been hot-pressed in the most approved
finishing establishments, and is turned out the exact double of
her sister, or her cousin, or her friend, with the same stereotyped
manner, the same smattering of accomplishments, the same con
tribution to society of her little sum of superficial information.
We wonder how it is that any one can take an interest in a creature
of this sort, just as we wonder how any one can take an interest
in the Court Circular. And yet there are few sentiments more
pardonable, as there are none more national than our interest in
that marvellous document___ It is precisely the same interest
which attaches us to the loosely-tied bundle of virtue and accom
plishments which we call a girl. We recognise in her our future
ruler. The shy, modest creature who has no thought but a
dance, and no will but mamma’s, will in a few years be our
master, changing our habits, moulding our tastes, bending
our character to her own. In the midst of our own drawing
room, in our pet easy chair, we shall see that retiring figure
quietly establish, with downcast eyes and hands busy with their
crochet needles, what Knox called, in days before a higher
knowledge had dawned, “ The Monstrous Regimen of Woman.”
,..... Feminine rule is certainly not favourable to anything like
largeness of mind or breadth of view...... Woman lives from her
childhood in a world of petty details, of minute household and
other cares...... The habit of mind which is formed by these and
similar influences becomes the spirit of the house—a spirit
admirable, no doubt, in many ways, but excessively small. The
quarrels of a woman’s life, her social warfare, her battles about
precedence, her upward progress from set to set, have all on
�24
>
THE EDUCATION OE GIKLS.
them the stamp of Lilliput. But it is to these small details,
these little pleasures, and littie anxieties, and little disappoint
ments, and little ambitions, that a wife generally manages to
bend the temper of her spouse. He gets gradually to share her
indifference to large interests, to broad public questions. He
imbibes little by little the most fatal of all kinds of selfishness—
the selfishness of the home...... Whether from innate narrowness
of mind, or from defective training, or from the excessive
development of the affections, family interests far outweigh in
the feminine estimation any larger national or human consideration...... Justice is a quality unknown to woman, and against
which she wages a fierce battle in the house and in the world.
The first question here is whether the accusations quoted,
or any of them, be true. If not, there is no occasion to
give them a thought; they may be set affde with the easy
supposition that such writers are bachelors, or others,
“ crossed iD love,” and seeking to revenge indiscriminately
upon the sex at large the wrongs, or fancied wrongs, they
have suffered at the hands of individuals. But if, on the
other hand, even growling bachelors and disappointed
voluptuaries have nevertheless a real, solid foundation in
fact for their ungallant observations, the evils they complain
of will not be cured by being shrugged at and hushed up;
on the contrary, the more you whitewash the outside, the
more the inside will fester.
It is not quite accurate to say that a girl can be “ turned
out the exact double ” of another girl; the differences
between characters are as irrepressible as between faces.
Yet, just as the soldiers in a regiment, with all their various
characters, can be drilled into something like uniformity in
working, so can the girls in a house or in a school, and
thence in a larger or smaller circle of society, be drilled
after the pattern of a fixed conventionality, until their life
becomes a tissue of hypocrisy so thorough and so subtle
that it may almost be called conscientious hypocrisy. The
great Oriental maxim of human wisdom is reversed; and
Know not Thyself becomes the rule of polite society, the
basis of good manners, and last, not least, the chevcd de
lataille of that art of arts, that sport of sports, man
catching.
Let women of culture and of independent courage say what
they will for themselves ; I revere—surely I have well
shown how deeply—the bright side of their disposition;
but I am now obliged to treat of the dark one. And I
�THE EDUCATION OE GIRLS.
25
contend that the sway of the False God throughout known
history has so darkened the world with its evil shadow
that the most powerful among female minds now on this
earth can hardly hope to shake it off completely—at least,
I have not met with such an one. Turn to any religion or
to any doctrinal system you please, and the Male is still
practically in the ascendant; can we wonder, then, that lay
society, which voluntarily entrusts its spiritual interests to
the hands of a professional class, should model both its
morals and its fashions after the accepted teaching ?
When it has come to this, that a cultivated writer in a
periodical can state, without provoking the resentment of
all readers, that “ a girl in her teens ” is one of the most
uninteresting objects in the world, we may sit down. The
world, in that case, must be quite topsy-turvy, and the
whole must be less than its part. So it is futile to go any
further with science or philosophy; those useless occupa
tions had better be cast aside ; for the further they go, the
more they will go wrong. If she who is—or was intended
to be—the crown and consummation of nature be among
the most uninteresting objects of nature, it is hard to see
reason for taking an interest in anything. According to this,
it were better to be a mummy than a living and useful
human being. Yet, for all that, is the apparent blasphemy
entirely devoid of foundation ? I fear not.
For example, some time ago I read a series of private
letters addressed to a female relative from an unfortunate
young lady, who had given birth to an illegitimate child,
and had evidently suffered much in mind, if not in body,
before she departed this life a short time after. The letter#
evinced no want of good feeling of a certain sort; they ex
pressed no anger against any one but herself; but here was
just the hitch. I confess that, with all good will to sympa
thise with the girl’s sufferings, I could not help laughing at
these letters, and feeling my sympathies cheated. It was
all such unexceptionable sin, sorrow, and repentance; the
regular old story unaltered. The sin and sorrow were all
done into such correct, angular, book-like phrases; they
were so much in the style of the Perfect Letter-writer, so
unmistakeably the sin and sorrow of a well-drilled Miss,
instead of the unobtrusive grief of a natural, fresh girl; the
Oh !’s and Ah !’s came into their right places with such” a
weary, dreary precision of unbroken common-place; the
�26
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
whole business was so exactly what one has met with over
and over again in penny romances—that the most pathetic
passages in the communications of this accurately-sinning
and accurately-repenting Miss were certainly more provoca
tive of a guffaw than of a sigh. It was the most complete
travestie and burlesque of woe that I ever came across
A. Poor Miss ! You are a very hard-hearted philosopher,
Ish.
I. I hope not; but I freely admit that I hate humbug,
especially second-hand humbug. And especially, to do our
English girls justice, does it sit ill upon them, who have
the sterling heart-of-oak nature hidden beneath all this con
founded rubbish, which would enable them to rise high
above it all, if they chose.
A.' Well, well; continue.
I. The amount of mischief, both to the individual and to
the society whereof the future woman or man is to form a
part, which is done by this systematic early perversion is
not to be estimated—unless, indeed, by forcing ourselves to
contemplate all the misery and wickedness that contact
with the world can reveal. From the horrors of a gigantic
war, with its mangled and agonised bodies, its desolated
and desecrated homes, down to the pettiest domestic trou
bles and quarrels, we may only too safely affirm that early
false impressions respecting good and evil lie at the bottom
of it a.
A. That is an awful impeachment. And I must say, it
seems to me far too much to assume.
I. Treat it as an assumption if you will, but I think you
will find examination bear it out. Let us continue the
examination. The first antagonism between children that
rests on inculcated principle is that of the sexes. This,
therefore, leaves its traces on brothers and sisters perma
nently, while all other differences and quarrels are effaced.
The young girl has been distorted and coerced into a false
appreciation of the other sex from her earliest years of in
telligence ; is she likely to forget the lesson during those
most susceptible years of her life, the years approaching
puberty ? Nay, nay; fidelity to her education, be it good
or bad, is, if any other, a characteristic of the female ; after
you have once spoilt her in early youth, it is very hard—
although I do not say impossible—to un-spoil her after
wards. Very well, then ; the character of the future mis
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
27
tress of the home, as the Saturday Reviewei’ says, is dormant
in the mis-educated, and therefore uninteresting, girl “ in
her teens ” that he sees before him. But to vitiate the
home is to vitiate the world; for the characters, male or
female, which can withstand home influence are few and
far between. And the home influence is polluted thus in
all departments. While the children are very young the
boy is encouraged to be rough and “ manly” in his exploits
under the nursery-table, or among the garden flower-beds,
or in the orchard, while the girl is to be meek and mincing
and “maidenly;” never to wrestle and kick about and
harden her muscles, nor to raise her voice and strengthen
her lungs. And now, when the children are passing out of
childhood, and leaving off extremely childish things, the
same principle is carried on, only that, in addition to pre
vious repression, the girl’s mind, as well as her body, is
attacked by her blind guides, and she is taught to repress
her natural curiosity about sexual relations, which could be
legitimately satisfied with judicious, but thoroughly scien
tific, instruction, analysing the passions, and bringing them
jfcrto subjection to the cultivated intellect; and so she is
forced to think about these things only in that cramped,
unwholesome, morbid, cowardly, and generally idiotic way
in which a polite society or a polite church dares to think
of them. Is it any wonder if a girl in her teens is made
uninteresting? Yet, for all that there is a part of her
which not even this persistent regime of devilry can sup
press : and whoso hath eyes to see it, let him see it.
A. The compliments of the season seem to be flying
about to-day. Would it not be well, perhaps, to ventilate
the matter in a rather more forensic tone ?
I. No ; I doubt if it would. Silver speech is not likely
to be listened to by those with whom I have to deal. Well,
then, again ; to take another point of a girl’s education.
A favourite feminine virtue is supposed to be humility.
But humility towards whom or what? If humility of the
individual human being towards the universal Human
Being were meant, well and good. But then this would
apply even more to man than to woman, since he is only
the indirect form of the Universal One, while she is the
direct form. Or if it were meant to convey that mankind,
children especially, should never be too proud to learn, but
always take to heart a useful hint on any subject, no matter
�28
THE EDUCATION OE GIRLS.
from how obseure a quarter; or if it were meant that we
should be just, even in our quarrels, and never ashamed to
recede from a clearly false position, and to make amends
to the extent of our error—this humility also would be most
commendable- and valuable.
I doubt whether any one
could become a philosopher without it, or indeed attain
real greatness in any walk. So here are two kinds of
humility which I admit to be very desirable in man or
woman. But it is easy to see that the “humility ” incul
cated by priestcraft and its morals is something altogether
different. By this sacerdotal humility, which enslaves the
conscience, beauty is to be humbled to material size and
weight, sweetness to coarseness, intelligence and refinement
to stupidity and brutality, the law of love to that of physical
tyranny among barbarous peoples, and of moral tyranny
among others ; the higher organism is to be humbled to the
lower; and thence by logical necessity—although this is
not admitted—Spirit to Matter, the Creator of the world to
its subordinate forms, Good to Evil.
A. You have a fine talent for making mountains out of
molehills.
I. I thought you said just now that the miseries of this
world were not a molehill, but an awful contemplation.
They are the molehill which the perversion of young girls
has created.
M. Nay, that is just the question.
I. Be it so ; you will tread any other road in vain to
settle the question. But that, of course, can only be finally
decided by your own experience. Meanwhile, pray go and
“ humble ” yourself as the Chair of St. Peter would tell you,
and see whither your “humility” will lead.
M. Well, keep your course again.
I. Not even the excuse of negligenee—a fault to which
we are all more or less prone in our various ways—can be
alleged in defence of the ideas of their mutual duties in
which those responsible cause the young of each sex to
grow up. It will not avail for parents to say, “ Ah, well;
we can’t be at the trouble to bring up our children differ
ently from other people’s children; they must take their
chance.” This kind of shelving the dispute will not hold,
because to take trouble is just what they do, as it happens.
They take enormous pains and trouble, only it is in a wrong
direction. The work, of encouraging the frolics and freaks
�THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.
29
and gambols and outspokenness of boys, and of snubbing
and strait waistcoating those of girls, is an aggregate of
trouble in itself. Even if the work be shifted altogether to
schoolmasters and mistresses, a sacrifice of money is gene
rally entailed on the parents ; and a few would send their
children off without any inquiries about the place of their
paid-for instruction ; so that in any case a conscious effort
has been made, and its results deliberately calculated upon.
Hence, supposing that utter indifference what becomes of
children were an excuse for allowing them to be perverted,
that indifference is, generally speaking, not a fact, and the
excuse falls to the ground. But, indeed, it is hardly worth
considering; for there are comparatively few children so
isolated from their home as to be out of the way of home
influence on social relations.
Example is a powerful agent in the education of the
young. Any attempt to give them a sound ideal of conduct
is sure to fail, so long as girls and boys hear grown-up
women talking about the inability of ladies to do this or
that, to take long walks, to bear heat or cold, to be out in
the evening damp, to take their part thoroughly in any
game or amusement, in anything that calls for exertion of
body or mind ; and while they hear grown-up men ratifying
and encouraging all this absurd nonsense and delicateladyism, contrasting feminine fragility and good-for-nothingness with their own god-like strength and wisdom. Is it to
be expected that the buds of ideality, coming out in that
imitation of men and women at which all children delight
to play, should take any other form than that of setting up
their men as heroes or villains of unlimited power, and
their women as a set of washy fairies, bound to wait on
their hirsute lords, and do their pleasure ? These things
are not trifles ; for the future character of children is made
even more at play than at work. The same vein runs
through their amusements, whether they be children or
adults. From “ This is the man all tattered and torn, that
kissed the maiden all forlorn, that milked the cow with
the crumpled horn,” &c., up—if, indeed, it be not rather
down than up—to the most fashionable of sensational love
novels, the same light and airy aspect of woman as the
“ forlorn ” dependent of man, awaiting his favour, is pre
sented by a myriad of channels to the imagination of youth.
In the nursery, in the playground at school, at table with
�30
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS
their elders, at public worship interpreted from the pulpit,
in the entire routine of daily and weekly life, it is the same
old story, the same sophistry and hypocrisy and arrogance
on the one side; the same external cringing acquiescence,
but practical hostility, on the other. On the one side are
developed selfishness and contempt; on the other, servility,
guile, and spite. This is not said at wedding-breakfasts;
but it is, nevertheless, the ugly reality inaugurated there and
everywhere else. And children cannot fail to see it, no,
not more than they can fail to acquire the rudiments of
their mother tongue. It may be wrapped in a silver paper
of plausibilities, but it is a poison whose work is sure.
I hardly need insist longer on the importance of early
impressions ; these have always been recognised, and acted
upon, alas! with only too fatal success by the self-seeking
enemies of light and knowledge. The question before us
is this: has any people in any age ever tried the experiment
of an unprejudiced and unrestrictive education of girls, an
education which, starting with no foregone conclusions
about feminine capacity or duty, seeks rather to find out
what girls can do than to restrain them from doing ? If
not, it is surely time that we should turn and try while
liberty of choice is left. The old religions of the world
have proved themselves to be mostly delusions; the morals
of the world have been something worse; failure has been
stamped upon every undertaking, however grand, to improve
the condition of mankind at large in any degree proportioned
to the sacrifices demanded. But expediency is only one
view of the question, and some might think it the lower
view. There are the requisitions of eternal truth and justice
to be satisfied; and if we who have the task entrusted to us
to perform freely and generously, neglect our duty from
short-sighted motives of whatsoever kind—those laws of
disintegration which are inexorable in reforming the lower
kingdoms of nature, will certainly not be long delayed in
their action upon a community which has shown repeatedly
that it is not fit to work out its destiny for itself.
London: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bbadlaugh,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
���
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The education of girls
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Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 30 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Four essays, mainly in the form of dialogues between "Adam" and "Ish". Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. Date of publication from British Library. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Dalton, Henry Robert Samuel
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[1879]
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N184
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Women's rights
Education
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English
Education of Girls
Suffrage
Women's Emancipation
Women's Rights
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THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN.
*
BY AUGUSTE
COMTE.
< BOUT the close of the year 1841 a correspondence Began be/
tween Mr. John Stuart Mill and M. Auguste Comte. It be/ \ came at once very cordial and friendly and continued so for
some years. Mr. Mill accepted the method formulated by M.
Comte in the “ Cours de Philosophie positive.” This acceptance was
complete and remains so up to the present. Agreement on this point
is the first and most essential; without it nothing can be accom
plished ; with it, everything. But while such was his relation to the
method, it was wholly different as to the doctrine. Mr. Mill reserved
this for future contemplation. Very much of it reflection and more
extended observation have shown him to be well-founded, and to that
part of it he has given his most unqualified adhesion. We may cite,
among other things, M. Comte’s view of human evolution; of the
philosophical limits of the sciences; and of their concatenation into a
series, which are perhaps the most important of “ positive ” doctrines.
There were other points, however, on which the English philosopher
dissented—a dissent prolonged up to the present time. Such are the
study of economic conditions as a separate science—the present politi
cal economy; the study of the intellectual functions apart from their
cerebral organs—the present psychology ; and the social condition of
women.
Mr. Mill has very recently devoted an entire work, or rather pam
phlet, to the advocacy of his views on the relations of the sexes, with
reference both to the family and to the social organism. Very few (we
think) can read the letters, here for the first time presented to the
English speaking public, without perceiving that “ The Subjection-of
Women”! embodies, in great part, a substantial, if not an exact re
production of the opinions and arguments communicated so many
years ago to M. Comte. As far as the constitution of th'e positive
philosophy is concerned, this question is of wholly minor importance;
it can be decided either way without affecting its integrity. It is, how
ever, the fundamental question in social statics without which that
half of the science of sociology cannot be constituted; while the lively
* Discussion with Mr. J. S. Mill on the social condition of women,
f London, 1869 ; and New York, 1870.
22
�172
THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
sension about the condition and social destination of women, the more
suitable does it appear to me to characterize profoundly the deplorable
mental anarchy of our time, by showing the difficulty of a sufficient
present convergence even among the minds of the elite, between whom
there already exists, beside native sympathy, a logical harmony so pro
found as ours, and which, nevertheless, diverges, at least for the moment,
on one of the most fundamental questions which sociology can agitate;
upon the principal elementary base, to speak correctly, of all true so
cial hierarchy. Such a spectacle might even be enough to inspire a
kind of philosophical despair upon the final impossibility, as the relig
ious spirits pretend, of constituting a true intellectual concord upon
purely rational bases, if on the other hand a profound habitual estima
tion of our mental state, and even a sufficient personal experience, did
not tend to clearly convince me that the present position of your mind
constitutes in this respect only a necessarily temporary phase, the last
indirect reflection of the great negative transition. All thinkers who
seriously love women otherwise than as charming toys, have, in our
day, passed, I believe, through an analogous situation; on my own part,
I recollect very well the time when the strange work of Miss Mary
*
Wollstonecraft (before she espoused Godwin) produced a very strong
impression upon me. It was even chiefly by laboring to elucidate for
others the true elementary notions of domestic order, that I put my
mind, about twenty years, irrevocably beyond the pale of all similar
surprises of sentiment. I have no doubt that my special estimation of
this fundamental principle in the work which I am about commencing,
will suffice to dissipate, in this relation, all your uncertainties, if, before
this moment, your own meditations 'do not. essentially antedate this
important demonstration, on which we can prematurely talk a little in
our fraternal interview. In resuming summarily the indications of
your last letter, I hope that our spontaneous concert is less distant than
I at first feared. Although acknowledging the anatomical diversities
which more than anything else separate the feminine organism from
the great human type,f I think you have not allowed them a strong
enough physiological participation, while you have perhaps exaggerated
the possible influence of exercise, which, before everything, necessarily
supposes a suitable constitution. If, according to your hypothesis, our
cerebral apparatus never reached its adult state, all the exercise imag
inable would not render it susceptible of the high elaborations that it
ends by admitting of; and it is to this that I attribute the avortement,
too frequent in our day, of many unhappy youths who are exercised at
tasks repulsive to their age. Women are in the same category. In a
methodical discussion, I will have little to add to your judicious esti*“A Vindication of the Rights of Women, with strictures on political and moral
subjects.” London, 1792.
t As Littre remarks, this expression is not well chosen; “ human nature has no
human type which is independent of woman. The human ty pe can never, physically
or morally, be conceived but as double; it comprises two inseparable parts.”
�THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
173
naation of the normal limits of their faculties; but I find that you do
not attach sufficient importance to the real consequences of such native
inferiority. Their characteristic inaptitude for abstraction and construc
tion, the almost complete impossibility of rejecting emotional inspiration
in rational operations, though their passions are in general more gen
erous, must continue to indefinitely interdict them from all immediate
supreme direction of human affairs, not only in science or philosophy
as you allow, but also in esthetic life and even in practical life, as well
industrial as military, in which the spirit of consequence (de suite)
constitutes assuredly the principal condition of prolonged success. I
believe that women are as improper to direct any great commercial or
manufacturing enterprise as any important military operation; with
stronger reason are they radically incapable of all government, even
domestic, but only of secondary administration. In any case, neither
direction nor execution being suitable to them, they are essentially re
served for consultation and modification, in which their passive position
permits them to utilize very happily their sagacity and their character
istic * actuality.’ I have been able to observe very closely the feminine
organism, even in many eminent exceptions. I can further, on this
subject, mention my own wife, who, without having happily written
anything, at least up to the present, really possesses more mental force
than the greater number of the most justly praised persons of her sex.
I have everywhere found the essential characters of this type, a very
insufficient aptitude for the generalization of relations, and for persist
ence in deductions as well as in the preponderance of reason over pas
sion. All the cases of this kind are, in my eyes, too frequent and too
pronounced, to permit the imputation of difference of results chiefly
to diversity of education; for I have met with the same essential attri
butes where the whole surrounding influences had certainly tended to de
velop as far as possible an entirely different disposition. After all, is it
not otherwise in many respects a final advantage rather than a real incon
venience for women, to have been saved from this disastrous education
of words and entities which, during the great modem transition, has
replaced ancient military education ? As to the Fine Arts especially,
is it not evident that for two or three centuries, many women have
been very happily situated and trained for the cultivation, without ever
having been able, nevertheless, to produce anything truly great—no
more in music or painting than in poetry ? By a more profound es
timation of the whole field, one is, I think, led to recognize that this
social order so much execrated is radically arranged, on the contrary,
Sb as to essentially favor the proper scope of feminine qualities. Des
tined, beyond the maternal functions, to spontaneously constitute the
domestic auxilaries of all spiritual power, in supporting by sentiment
the practical influence of intelligence to modify morally the natural
reign of material force, women, are more and more placed in the condi
tions most proper for this important mission, by their isolation itself
�174
-THE
SUBJECTION
OF
WOMEN.
from active specialties which facilitates a judicious exercise of their
kind and moderating influence, at the same time that their own inter
ests are thus connected necessarily with the triumph of universal mo
rality. If it were possible that their position could change in this
respect and that they could become the equals of men instead of their
companions, I believe that the qualities which you justly attribute to
them would be much less developed. Their small instantaneous sagac
ity would become, for example, almost sterile, as soon as, ceasing to be
passive without being indifferent, they would have to conceive and di
rect, in place of regarding and counselling without serious responsi
bility. Besides, for truly positive philosophers, who know how, in all
cases, our systematic influence must be limited to wisely modify the ex
ercise of natural laws, without ever thinking of radically changing
their character and direction proper, the immense experience al
ready accomplished, in this respect, by the whole of humanity must
be, it seems to me, fully decisive; for we know the philosophical
worth of the theatrical declamations on the pretended abuse of force
on the part of the males. Although anatomical estimation has not
yet sufficiently established the explicit demonstration of the organic
superiority of our own species over the rest of animality, which has,
indeed, only very recently become possible, physiological research has
left no doubt upon the point, according to the single fact of the
progressive ascendancy obtained by man.
It is nearly the same in the question of sexes, though to a much less
degree; for how can the constant social subordination of the female sex
be otherwise explained ? The singular emaute organized in our day for
the benefit of women, but not by them, will certainly in the end only
add confirmation to this universal experience, although this grave in
cident of our anarchy may otherwise for the moment produce deplora
ble consequences, either private or public. The mass of our species
was for ages everywhere plunged in a social condition much inferior in
every way to that over which some now lament in women; but it has
been, since the beginning of the Middle Ages, gradually abandoned
among the most advanced peoples, because this collective subjection, a
temporary condition of ancient sociability, did not really belong to any
organic difference between the dominant and the dominated
*
But, .
on the contrary, the social subordination of women will be necessarily
indefinite, although progressively conformed to the normal universal
type, because it directly reposes upon a natural inferiority which
nothing can destroy, and which is even more pronounced among men
than among the other superior animals. By rendering women con
tinuously more suitable to their true general destination, I am con
vinced that the modern regeneration will more completely recall them
to their eminently domestic life, from which the disorder inseparable
See, on this illustration relative to the question of serfdom and slavery further
on in the third letter, p.
�THE
SUB JE C T T 0 N
OF
WOMEN.
175
from the great modern transition has, I think, momentarily turned
their attention in divers secondary respects. The natural movement
of our industry certainly tends to gradually turn over to men profes. sions for a long time carried on by women, and this spontaneous dispo
sition is, in my eyes, only one example of the growing tendency of our
sociability, to interdict women from all occupations which are not suf
ficiently reconcilable with their domestic destination, the importance
of which will become more and more preponderant. This is very far,
as you are aware, from interdicting them from a great and useful
indirect participation in the entire social movement, which could have
| never been conducted by them alone, even as to the essential scope of
opinions and manners which specially interest them. Every other
mode of conceiving their status and consequently their duties and
ours, will really be as contrary at the least to their own good as to uni
versal harmony. If from the attitude of woman’s protector, men enter
a situation of rivalry toward her, she will become, I believe, very un
happy through the necessary impossibility in which she will soon find
herself of sustaining such a competition, directly contrary to the con
ditions of her existence. I believe, therefore that those who sincerely
*
love her, who ardently desire the most complete evolution possible of
the faculties and functions properly belonging to her, must desire that
these anarchical utopias may never be tried?’
The third letter in this ensemble, and the last we shall give, is dated
Paris, November 14th, 1843. It is as follows: “Having now resumed
my daily occupations, I hasten to reply to your important letter of
October 30th before commencing my small work upon the ‘Ecole poly
technique,’ which, as it would take me a fortnight, would delay too
K long a response which I regard as the present termination of our great
biologico-sociological discussion. The general impression left upon
my mind by this letter, leads me, indeed, to think that this discussion
has now reached as far as it could with any utility be pushed; in
short, that there would at present be more inconvenience than advan
tage in further prolonging it, and it seems to me from your closing
words, that, at base, you are not far removed from the same opinion.
Without your divers arguments on this subject having in any way
shaken or even modified any of my previous convictions, they have
proved to me that the time has not yet come for seeing you arrive at
the fundamental truths upon this capital point which I have for a long
time received, but leave me, nevertheless, in all its fullness, the hope
that your further meditations may end by leading you also to the
same conclusion. In our present position we agree neither upon the
principles nor even the facts which must indispensably contribute
to the decision; and, consequently, it becomes proper not to finally
close the discussion, but to indefinitely suspend it, until such time as
on one side or the other the conditions of a useful resumption are found
effectively fulfilled. Still, I think I ought, for the last time, to take up
�176
THE
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summarily the principal articles of your letter, in order the better to
characterize as I have not hitherto been able to do so, the essential
points of opposition, at once logical and scientific, thus established
between us in this respect.
“ In the beginning, I share essentially your logical opinion as to the
superior difficulty now offered by questions of social statics as compared
with dynamical questions. However, although the positive elaboration
of the latter is now much more mature, at the same time that it is
happily more urgent, I believe it possible to demonstrate immediately
the principal bases of static Sociology, and I expect to give an example
of it in the methodical treatise which I will commence at the end of
the present winter. I even think that without this preliminary condi
tion the dynamical theory would not have sufficient rationality. I can
now feel bold, as, for my own mind, this preamble has been accom
plished for many years, although I have not hitherto been able to
sufficiently develop this order of convictions so as to have them prop
erly shared by other thinkers. Owing to the fact that the fundamental
laws of existence can never be really suspended, it is very difficult to
clearly distinguish their continuous influence in the study of the
phenomena of activity; but this is not, however, impossible, as we can
do so by properly .estimating what is common to all the essential cases
offered by them. Besides, I believe that the preliminary light shed by
pure Biology, and which then has, especially in the present question, a
superior importance, is. now much more advanced than you seem ready
to admit, despite the little satisfactory state of our biological studies.
Doubtless, as you say, in reacting against the philosophical aberrations
of the last century, contemporary thinkers have been at times led to
exaggerate in the opposite direction. Thus Gall, in worthily upholding
the preponderant influence of the primordial organism, has too much
neglected that of education so abusively extolled by Helvetius. But,
though the truth is assuredly between the two, it is far, in my opinion,
from consisting in the exact balance {juste milien), and is found much
nearer the present opinion than the preceding. It was very natural to
at first estimate the external influences as plainer, and thi§ is what
the eighteenth century has everywhere done on all biological subjects
in which the notions of the medium are always shown before that of
the organism. But this is surely not the normal state of biological ’
philosophy, in which the organic conditions must certainly prevail;
since it is the organism and not the medium that makes us men rather
than monkeys or dogs, and which even determines our special mode
of humanity to a degree much more circumscribed than is commonly
believed. Under the logical aspect, by applying the natural march
that your valuable treatise has so judiciously characterized as the
Method of Residues, we cannot, it seems to me, especially in such
*
* See “ Mill’s Logic,” Vol. Ill, chap. viii. 3d London Ed. (1851) Vol. I, pp. 404, 405.
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complex subjects, regard as indifferent the order of partial subtractions
which ought always to be followed out as far as possible according to
the decreasing importance that a primary general estimation sponta
neously awards to the diverse determinable influences; in short, that in
biological researches we ought most frequently to reverse the order which
you believe always preferable, viz., from the external to the internal.
u I regret exceedingly that the grave defects of co-ordination inherent
in Gall’s work should have so shocked a mind as methodical as yours, thus
hindering you hitherto from appreciating the fundamental reality of
his essential demonstrations, abstraction made of all irrational or prema
ture localization. You may, perhaps, in this respect be less dissatisfied
with his great early work, (Analogicpt physiologie du systeme nerveux
en general et du cerveau en particulier, in 4to,) although it is probably
too anatomical for your purpose. But the same fundamental ideas
are presented in better logical form in the more systematic works of
Spurzheim, that is to say, Observations sur la phrenologie, Essai philosophique sur les facultes morales et intellectuelles, the work upon
Education, and even that relating to insanity, which constitute in all
only four thin octavo volumes, easily read in one or two weeks.
Without the subordination of . sexes being directly examined there,
we can, however, regard this doctrine as having already sufficiently
established, as far, at least, as Biology can do so, the fundamental
principle of the domestic hierarchy. Before philosophical Biology
had properly arisen under Vicq. d’Azyr and Bichat, and altogether
independently of cerebral physiology, an estimable work, though not
very eminent, still deserving to be read, had already attempted to
found this principle upon the single preponderant consideration of
physical destination; it is a small treatise of a Montpellier physician,
(Roussel), entitled Systemephysique et morale de la femme, published in
1775, under the scientific impulsion of the labors of Borden, the great
precursor of Bichat. Comparative Biology seems to me, further, to
leave no real doubt on this subject. In following, for instance, M. de
Blainville’s lectures, though he had in yiew no thesis whatsoever on
this question, one cannot fail, to perceive arise from the ensemble of
the studies on animals, the general law of the superiority of the mas
culine sex in all the higher part of the living hierarchy; we will have
to descend among the invertebrates in order to find, and still very
rarely, notable exceptions to this great organic rule, which presents
besides the diversity of the sexes as increasing with the degree of
organization. I am, therefore, far from agreeing to abandon biological
considerations, although I regard the sociological appreciation as being
able without other aid to directly establish this important hotion; but
biological inspirations must then serve to properly direct sociological
speculations, which, in this respect, as in all other elementary ones,
seem to me ought to offer only a sort of philosophical prolongation of
-the great biological theorems.
23
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THE
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“ As to the sociological appreciation separately regarded, I cannot
agree with you that the English medium is more favorable to the
mental and moral development of women than the French. Ab
straction made of all national vanity, of which you know me certainly
to be very independent, I believe, on the contrary, that the ladies of
France should be more developed from this very cause, that they live
in, more oomplete society with men. This diversity between us is
otherwise only a consequence of another more general, consisting in
the fact that the social constitution appears to you to have been
hitherto unfavorable to feminine development, while it seems to me
very proper for cultivating the qualities proper for women. As to the
rest, I am nowise competent to contest your observation upon English
households. But I believe that in it you confound too much simple
domestic administration with the true general government of the
family. In all Occidental Europe, I believe that, as in England,
households are administered by the women; but everywhere also,
save individual anomalies, it is the men who govern the common
affairs of the family. .
“1 cannot at all accept your comparison of the condition of women
to that of any sort of slaves. I have indicated this analogy only to
prevent a natural enough objection, tending to indirectly invalidate my
conclusion upon the passage from fact to principle. But, on a direct
comparison of the two cases, it seems to me that, since the establish
ment of monogamy, and especially in modern sociability, the term ‘ser
vitude’ is extremely vicious when meant to characterize the social
state of our gentle partners, and consequently I can nowise accept the
historical parallelism upon the simultaneous variations of two situations
so radically heterogeneous. Sale and non-possession are the principal
characters of all slavery—they have certainly never been applicable to
the occidentals of the last five centuries.
*
“ As to the progress which, for a century, is gradually working for
feminine emancipation, I do not at all believe in it, either as a fact or
as a principle. Our female authors seem to me no way superior, in
reality, to Mme. de Sevigne, Mme. de la Fayette, ,Mme. de Motteville,
and other remarkable ladies of the seventeenth century. I cannot
decide, whether it is otherwise in England. The woman who, under
a man’s name, (George Sand,) has now become so celebrated among us,
appears to me, at base, very inferior, not only in propriety, but even in
feminine originality, to the greater number of these estimable types.
* See remarks above, p. 174, and also “The Subjection of Women,” 2d London
Ed., pp. 8, 9,18, ff., and 28. Mr. Mill here traces pathetically, nay, almost tragically,
the parallelistn mentioned by M. Comte. One thought suggested itself while
reading it: Why slave-masters who were apparently as much interested as hus
bands in having their slaves docile, etc., did not try the same means to accomplish
this end as Mr. Mill asserts husbands to have done? Should his genesis of the
present condition of women prove true, of which certain damaging omissions
make us afraid, we would recommend it to Mr. Darwin as the most long-continued
and successful piece of artificial “ selection ” to be anywhere found.—Tr.
�THE
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I do not see, in reality, any other notable increase than that of the
number and material fecundity of these authoresses, as Moli&re prob
ably foresaw; but I am doubtful whether any true progress is shown in
it. This movement consists chiefly in a growing intemperance, which
appears to me a sad but very natural consequence (or rather face) of
our universal mental anarchy since the inevitable decay of the frail
bases that theology had provisionally supplied to the entirety of great
moral and social notions. Beside this part of the negative disturbance
having been found especially favored by energetic passions, it has had
only to contend against perhaps the weakest part of theological socia
bility; for what can. be more illusory than to found the, domestic
hierarchy upon Adam’s supernumerary rib ? Is it astonishing, that
principles so lightly constituted, have not been able to resist the shock
of impassioned anarchy? But their momentary discredit really proves
no more than the necessity for better establishing them. Under this
relation the deplorable discussions thus raised, although yet essentially
deprived of logical reasonableness, besides being unhappily inevitable,
are at least useful, in obliging us to more profoundly fathom the in
timate motives of this indispensable domestic co-ordination. The
present emeuts of women, or rather of some womejn, will in the end
have no other result than that of presenting experimentally the insur
mountable reality of the fundamental principle of such subordination,
which must then. react profoundly upon all the other parts of social
economy; but this useful conclusion will be found purchased at the
price of much public and private misery, which a more philosophical
advance would have shunned were such rationality now possible. If
this disastrous social equality of the two sexes were ever really at
tempted, it would immediately radically disturb the conditions of
existence of the sex that some desire thus to favor, and with regard to
which the present protection, that must alone be completed by regu
lating it, would then be converted into a competition impossible to
habitually sustain. Such an assimilation will otherwise tend morally
to destroy the principal charm which now draws us towards women,
and which resulting from a sufficient harmony between social diversity
and organic diversity, supposes women to be in an essentially passive
and speculative situation that can in no way hinder their just partici
pation in all great social sympathies. If such a principle of repulsion
could be pushed to its extreme natural limit, I venture to affirm that it
will appear directly opposed to the reproduction of our species, which
restores, in this respect, the biological point of view, more intimately
connected there than elsewhere with the sociological.
“ All this may perhaps appear to you very extended for a discussion
which I regarded as provisionally terminated ; but for this very reason
I undertook to better characterize our principal dissidences. For the
rest, although without present result, I am far from regretting that you
have begun it, for it will assist me considerably in properly feeling the
�180
THE
’
SUBJECTION
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WOMEN.
A
essential points to be especially insisted upon in my forthcoming
treatise, in my attempt at a static demonstration of a principle which,
despite its eminently elementary nature, is yet so profoundly misunder
stood by so superior and so well-prepared a mind. Permit me, how
ever, to hope, according to my own previous experience, that this
situation of your judgment constitutes really only a last transient
phase of the great negative transition belonging to our age.”*
° Mr. Mill has forcibly called attention (work cited, p. 99) to a fact which
deserves Careful study. After acknowledging that no woman had been a Homer,
an Aristotle, or a Michael Angelo, he remarks: “ It is a curious consideration, that
the only things which the existing law excludes women from doing, are the things
^fliich they have proved they are able to do. * * * Their vocation for govern
ment has made its way and become conspicuous through the very few opportunities
which have been given, while in the lines of distinction, which apparently were
freely open to them, they have by no means so eminently distinguished them
selves.” From the way Mr. Mill puts it, the distinction seems well founded, and
on further reflection, seems one of the most “ curious ” things in the world. That
exercise and freedom should in woman’s case act the very reverse of what they do
among men, seems to go far to substantiate M. Comte’s doctrine of fundamental
difference between the sexes. While it seems in the nature of a standing “ miracle”
to know how a state could have originated or how it could be kept up that inter
dicts beings from their real natural vocation. If I understand the English philoso
pher correctly, it might be wholesome for women to have an edict on our statute
books against writing poetry or painting; if it could act as political proscription
seemingly does, all should hope for the early arrival of the day.—Tr.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Title
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The subjection of women
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Comte, Auguste
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Place of publication: New York
Collation: [169]-180 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Modern Thinker, no. 1, 1870. "Discussion with Mr J.S. Mill on the social condition of women". Based on correspondence between Comte and Mill that began at the end of 1841. Includes bibliographical references. Printed on blue paper.
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[American News Company]
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[1870]
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G5422
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<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The subjection of women), identified by <span style="color:#0000ff;"><span lang="zxx"><u>Humanist Library and Archives</u></span></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
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Text
Subject
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Women's rights
Conway Tracts
John Stuart Mill
Marriage
Women
Women-Social Conditions
Women's Emancipation