Thus, that which should be greeted with universal joy becomes an object of hostility, that in former years occasioned the storming of many a factory and the demolition of many a new machine. A similar hostile feeling exists to-day between man and woman as workers. This feeling also is unnatural. The point, consequently, is to seek to establish a social condition in which the _full equality of all without distinction of s.e.x shall be the norm of conduct_.
_The feat is feasible--the moment all the means of production become the property of society; when collective labor, by the application of all technical and scientific advantages and aids in the process of production, reaches the highest degree of fertility; and when the obligation lies upon all, capable of work, to furnish a certain measure of labor to society, necessary for the satisfaction of social wants, in exchange whereof society guarantees to each and all the means requisite for the development of his faculties and for the enjoyment of life._
Woman shall be like man, a productive and useful member of society, equal-righted with him. Precisely like man, she shall be placed in position to fully develop all her physical and mental faculties, to fulfil her duties, and to exercise her rights. A free being and the peer of man, she is safe against degradation.
We shall point out how modern developments in society run out into such a state of things, and that it is these very cra.s.s and monstrous ills in modern development that compel the establishment of the New Order.
Although the development of the position of woman, as above characterized, is palpable, is tangible to the sight of all who have eyes to see, the twaddle about the "natural calling" of woman is heard daily, a.s.signing her to domestic duties and the family. The phrase is heard loudest there where woman endeavors to penetrate into the sphere of the so-called higher professions, as for instance, the higher departments of instruction and of the civil service, the medical or legal careers, and the pursuit of the natural sciences. The most laughable and absurd objections are fetched up, and are defended with the air of "learning." Gentlemen, who pa.s.s for learned, appeal, in this as in so many other things, to science in order to defend the most absurd and untenable propositions. Their chief trump card is that woman is inferior to man in mental powers and that it is folly to believe she could achieve aught of importance in the intellectual field.
These objections, raised by the "learned," fit so well with the general prejudices entertained by men on the calling and faculties of woman that, whoever makes use of them can count upon the applause of the majority.
New ideas will ever meet with stubborn opposition so long as general culture and knowledge continue at so low an ebb as at present, especially if it lies in the interest of the ruling cla.s.ses to confine culture and knowledge as much as possible to their own ranks. Hence new ideas will at the start win over but a small minority, and this will be scoffed at, maligned and persecuted. But if these new ideas are good and sound, if they are born as the necessary consequence of existing conditions, then will they spread, and the one-time minority finally becomes a majority. So has it been with all new ideas in the course of history: the idea of establishing the complete emanc.i.p.ation of woman presents the same experience.
Were not one time the believers in Christianity a small minority? Did not the Protestant Reformers and modern bourgeoisdom once face overpowering adversaries? And yet they triumphed. Was the Social Democracy crippled because gagged and pinioned by exclusion laws, so that it could not budge? Never was its triumph more a.s.sured than when it was thought to have been killed. The Social Democracy overcame the exclusion laws; it will overcome quite other obstacles besides.
The claim regarding the "natural calling of woman," according whereto she should be housekeeper and nurse, is as unfounded as the claim that there will ever be kings because, since the start of history, there have been such somewhere. We know not where the first king sprang up, as little as we know where the first capitalist stepped upon the scene.
This, however, we do know: Kingship has undergone material changes in the course of the centuries, and the tendency of development is to strip it ever more of its powers, until a time comes, no longer far away, when it will be found wholly superfluous. As with the kingship, so with all other social and political inst.i.tutions; they are all subject to continuous changes and transformations, and to final and complete decay.
We have seen, in the course of the preceding historic sketch, that the form of marriage, in force to-day, like the position of woman, was by no means such "eternally"; that, on the contrary, both were the product of a long process of development, which has by no means reached its acme, and can reach it only in the future. If 2,400 or 2,300 years ago Demosthenes could designate the "bringing forth of legitimate children and officiating as a faithful warder of the house" as the only occupation of woman, to-day we have traveled past that point. Who, to-day, would dare uphold such a position of woman as "natural" without exposing himself to the charge of belittling her? True enough, there are even to-day such sots, who share in silence the views of the old Athenian; but none dare proclaim publicly that which 2,300 years ago one of the most eminent orators dared proclaim frankly and openly as _natural_. Therein lies the great advance made.
If, on the one hand, modern development, especially in industrial life, has wrecked millions of marriages, it, on the other hand, promoted favorably the development itself of marriage. Only a few decades ago, and it was a matter of course in every citizen"s or peasant"s house not only that woman sewed, knitted and washed--although even this has now extensively gone out of fashion--but she also baked the bread, spun, wove, bleached, brewed beer, boiled soap, made candles. To have a piece of wearing apparel made out of the house was looked upon as unutterable waste. Water-pipes, gaslight, gas and oil cooking ranges--to say nothing of the respective electric improvements--together with numberless others, were wholly unknown to the women of former times. Antiquated conditions exist even to-day, but they are the exception. The majority of women have discontinued many an occupation, formerly considered of course, the same being attended to in factory and shop better, more expeditiously and cheaper than the housewife could, whence, at least in the cities, all domestic requirements for them are wanting. Thus, in the period of a few decades, a great revolution for them has been accomplished within our family life, and we pay so little attention to the fact because we consider it a matter of course. Phenomena, that develop, so to speak, under the very eyes of man, are not noticed by him, unless they appear suddenly and disturb the even tenor of events.
He bristles up, however, against new ideas that threaten to lead him out of the accustomed ruts.
The revolution thus accomplished in our domestic life, and that progresses ever further, has altered the position of woman in the family, in other directions besides. Woman has become freer, more independent. Our grandmothers, if they were honest masters" wives, would not have dared, and, indeed the thought never crossed their minds, to keep their working people and apprentices from the table, and visiting, instead, the theatres, concerts and pleasure resorts, by day at that.
Which of those good old women dared think of occupying her mind with public affairs, as is now done by many women? To-day they start societies for all manner of objects, establish papers, call conventions.
As working-women they a.s.semble in trades unions, they attend the meetings and join the organizations of men, and here and there--we are speaking of Germany--they have had the right of electing boards of labor arbitration, a right that the backward majority of the Reichstag took away again from them in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and ninety.
What sot would seek to annul the changes just described, although the fact is not to be gainsaid that, there are also dark sides to the bright sides of the picture, consequent upon our seething and decaying conditions? The bright sides, however, predominate. Women themselves, however conservative they are as a body, have no inclination to return to the old, narrow, patriarchal conditions of former times.
In the United States society still stands, true enough, on bourgeois foundations; but it is forced to wrestle neither with old European prejudices nor with inst.i.tutions that have survived their day. As a consequence American society is far readier to adopt new ideas and inst.i.tutions that promise advantage. For some time the position of woman has been looked upon from a viewpoint different than ours. There, for instance, the idea has long taken hold that it is not merely troublesome and improper, but not even profitable to the purse, for the wife to bake bread and brew beer, but that it is unnecessary for her to cook in her own kitchen. The private kitchen is supplanted by co-operative cooking, with a large central kitchen and machinery. The women attend to the work by turns, and the meals generally come out cheaper, taste better, offer a greater variety, and give much less trouble. Our army officers, who are not decried as Socialists and Communists, act on a similar plan. They establish in their casinos a co-operative kitchen; appoint a steward, who attends to the supply of victuals on a large scale; the bill of fare is arranged in common; and the food is prepared in the steam kitchen of the barracks. They live much cheaper than in a hotel, and fare at least as well. Furthermore, thousands of the rich families live the whole year, or part of the year, in boarding-houses or hotels, without in any way missing the private kitchen. On the contrary, they consider it a great convenience to be rid of it. The aversion of especially well-to-do women towards all matters connected with the kitchen does not seem to indicate that this function either belongs to the category of the "natural calling" of woman. On the contrary, the circ.u.mstance that princely and other prominent families do like the hotels, and all of them engage male cooks for the preparation of their food, would rather indicate that cooking is a male occupation.--All of which is stated for the benefit of those people who are unable to picture to themselves a woman not brandishing a kitchen ladle.
It is but a step to set up, beside the central kitchen, also the central laundry and corresponding steaming arrangements for public use--as already established in all large cities by rich private persons or speculators, and found highly profitable. With the central kitchen may also be connected central heating, warm water along with cold water pipes, whereby a number of bothersome and time-consuming labors are done away with. Large hotels, many private houses, hospitals, schools, barracks, etc., have now these and many other such arrangements, such as electric light and baths. The only fault to find is that only public establishments and the well-to-do cla.s.ses enjoy these advantages. Placed within the reach of all, an enormous amount of time, trouble, labor and material could be saved, and the standard of life and the well-being of all raised considerably. In the summer of 1890, the papers published a description of the progress made in the United States in the matter of centralized heating and ventilation. It was there stated:
"The recent attempts, made especially in North America, to effect the heating of whole blocks of houses or city wards from one place have to record no slight success. From the constructive point of view, they have been carried out so carefully and effectively that, in view of the favorable results and the financial advantages which they offer, their further extension may be confidently expected. More recently the attempt is being made to furnish from central locations not heat alone, but also fresh air, either warm or cool, to certain extensive but not too wide areas of the city. These plans are found in execution in the so-called Timby System, which, according to the central organ of the Department of Buildings, gathered from a report of the technical attache in Washington, Government Architect Petri, has recently been thoroughly explained in Washington by the "National Heating and Ventilating Company." The said company originally planned to supply 50,000 people from one place. The difficulties presented by the requisite speed of transit and the size of the pneumatic machines, have, however, caused a limitation to 0.8 kilometers, and in instances of specially closely built business quarters, the building of a special central power place."
What was then only projected, has since been in great part executed.
Philistine narrowness in Germany lives to shrug its shoulders at these and such like schemes, although in Germany also we find ourselves just now in the midst of one of those technical revolutions, that render the private kitchen, together with a number of other occupations, hitherto appertaining to the household, as superfluous as handicraft has been rendered by machinery and modern technique. In the early days of the nineteenth century, Napoleon p.r.o.nounced insane the idea of constructing a ship that could be set in motion by steam. The idea of building a railroad was declared silly by many folks who pa.s.sed for sensible: n.o.body, it was argued, could remain alive on such a conveyance: the rapidity of motion would deprive the pa.s.sengers of breath. Identical treatment is to-day accorded to a number of new ideas. He who sixty years ago would have made to our women the proposition of replacing the carrying of water with water-pipes, would have been exposed to the charge of trying to lead women and servants into idleness.
Nevertheless the great revolution in technique is in full march on all fields; nothing can any longer hold it back; and bourgeois society, having conjured the same into life, has the historic mission of also carrying the revolution to perfection, and to promote on all fields the budding of the germs for radical transformations, _which a social order, built on new foundations, would only have to generalize on a large scale, and make common property_.
The trend, accordingly, of our social life is not to banish woman back to the house and the hearth, as our "domestic life" fanatics prescribe, and after which they l.u.s.t, like the Jews in the Desert after the fleshpots of Egypt. _On the contrary, the whole trend of society is to lead woman out of the narrow sphere of strictly domestic life to a full partic.i.p.ation in the public life of the people_--a designation that will not then cover the male s.e.x only--and in the task of _human civilization_. Laveleye fully recognized this when he wrote:[130] "In the measure that what we are in the habit of designating as civilization advances, the sentiments of piety and the family bonds weaken, and they exercise a decreasing influence upon the actions of men. This fact is so general that a law of social development may be recognized therein." Not only has the position of woman changed, but also the relation of son and daughter to the family, who have gradually attained a degree of independence unknown in former days,--a fact noticeable especially in the United States, where the self-dependent and independent education of the individual is carried on much further than with us. The dark sides that to-day accompany also this form of development, are not necessarily connected with it; they lie in the social conditions of our times.
Capitalist society evokes no beneficent phenomenon unaccompanied with a dark side: as Fourier long ago pointed out with great perspicacity, capitalist society is in all its progressive steps double-faced and ambiguous.
With Laveleye, Schaeffle also detects in the changed character of the family of our days the effect of social development. He says:[131] "It is true that the tendency described in Chapter II, to reduce and limit the family to its specific functions is traceable throughout history.
The family relinquishes one provisional and temporary function after the other. In so far as it officiated only in a surrogate and gap-filling capacity it makes way to independent inst.i.tutions for law, order, authority, divine service, education, technique, etc., as soon as these inst.i.tutions take shape."
Women are pressing even further, though as yet only in a minority, and only a fraction of these with clear aims. They aspire to measure their power with men, not on the industrial field alone; they aspire not only after a freer and more independent position in the family; they also aspire at turning their mental faculties to the higher walks of life.
The favorite objection raised against them is that they are not fit for such pursuits, not being intended therefor by Nature. The question of engaging in the higher professional occupations concerns at present only a small number of women in modern society; it is, however, important in point of principle. The large majority of men believe in all seriousness that, mentally as well, woman must ever remain subordinate to them, and, hence, has no right to equality. They are, accordingly, the most determined opponents of woman"s aspirations.
The self-same men, who raise no objection whatever to the employment of woman in occupations, many of which are very exhausting, often dangerous, threaten the impairment of her feminine physique and violently compel her to sin against her duties as a mother,--these self-same men would exclude her from pursuits in which these obstacles and dangers are much slighter, and which are much better suited to her delicate frame.
Among the learned men, who in Germany want to hear nothing of the admission of women to the higher studies, or who will yield only a qualified a.s.sent, and express themselves publicly on the subject are Prof. L. Bischoff, Dr. Ludwig Hirt, Prof. H. Sybel, L. von Buerenbach, Dr. E. Reich, and many others. Notedly has the livelier agitation, recently set on foot, for the admission of women to the Universities, incited a strong opposition against the plan in Germany. The opposition is mainly directed against woman"s qualifications for the study of medicine. Among the opponents are found Pochhammer, Fehling, S. Binder, Waldeyer, Hegar, etc. Von Buerenbach is of the opinion that both the admission to and the fitness of woman for science can be disposed of with the argument that, until now, no genius has arisen among woman, and hence woman is manifestly unfit for philosophic studies. It seems the world has had quite enough of its male philosophers: it can, without injury to itself, well afford to dispense with female. Neither does the objection that the female s.e.x has never yet produced a genius seem to us either to hold water, or to have the weight of a demonstration. Geniuses do not drop down from the skies; they must have opportunity to form and mature. This opportunity woman has lacked until now, as amply shown by our short historic sketch. For thousands of years she has been oppressed, and she has been deprived or stunted in the opportunity and possibility to unfold her mental faculties. It is as false to reason that the female s.e.x is bereft of genius, by denying all spark of genius to the tolerably large number of great women, as it would be to maintain that there were no geniuses among the male s.e.x other than the few who are considered such. Every village schoolmaster knows what a ma.s.s of apt.i.tudes among his pupils never reach full growth, because the possibilities for their development are absent. Aye, there is not one, who, in his walk through life, has not become acquainted, some with more, others with fewer persons of whom it had to be said that, had they been able to mature under more favorable circ.u.mstances, they would have been ornaments to society, and men of genius. Unquestionably the number of men of talent and of genius is by far larger among the male s.e.x than those that, until now, have been able to reveal themselves: social conditions did not allow the others to develop. Precisely so with the faculties of the female s.e.x, a s.e.x that for centuries has been held under, hampered and crippled, far worse than any other subject beings.
We have absolutely no measure to-day by which to gauge the fullness of mental powers and faculties that will develop among men and women so soon as they shall be able to unfold amid natural conditions.
It is with mankind as in the vegetable kingdom. Millions of valuable seeds never reach development because the ground on which they fall is unfavorable, or is taken up by weeds that rob the young and better plant of air, light and nourishment. The same laws of Nature hold good in human life. If a gardener or planter sought to maintain with regard to a given plant that it could not grow, although he made no trial, perhaps even hindered its growth by wrong treatment, such a man would be p.r.o.nounced a fool by all his intelligent neighbors. Nor would he fare any better if he declined to cross one of his female domestic animals with, a male of higher breed, to the end of producing a better animal.
There is no peasant in Germany to-day so ignorant as not to understand the advantage of such treatment of his trees or animals--provided always his means allow him to introduce the better method. Only with regard to human beings do even men of learning deny the force of that which with regard to all other matters, they consider an established law. And yet every one, even without being a naturalist, can make instructive observations in life. Whence comes it that the children of peasants differ from city children? It comes from the difference in their conditions of life and education.
The one-sidedness, inherent in the education for one calling, stamps man with a peculiar character. A clergyman or a schoolmaster is generally and easily recognized by his carriage and mien; likewise an officer, even when in civilian dress. A shoe maker is easily told from a tailor, a joiner from a locksmith. Twin brothers, who closely resembled each other in youth, show in later years marked differences if their occupations are different, if one had hard manual work, for instance, as a smith, the other the study of philosophy for his duty. Heredity, on one side, adaptation on the other, play in the development of man, as well as of animals, a decisive _role_. Indeed, man is the most bending and pliable of all creatures. A few years of changed life and occupation often suffice to make quite a different being out of the same man.
Nowhere does rapid external change show itself more strikingly than when a person is transferred from poor and reduced, to materially improved circ.u.mstances. It is in his mental make-up that such a person will be least able to deny his antecedents, but that is due to the circ.u.mstance that, with most of such people, after they have reached a certain age, the desire for intellectual improvement is rarely felt; neither do they need it. Such an upstart rarely suffers under this defect. In our days, that look to money and material means, people are far readier to bow _before the man with a large purse, than before a man of knowledge and great intellectual gifts, especially if he has the misfortune of being poor and rankless_. Instances of this sort are furnished every day. The worship of the golden calf stood in no age higher than in this,--whence it comes that we are living "in the best possible world."
The strongest evidence of the effect exercised upon man by radically different conditions of life is furnished in our several industrial centers. In these centers employer and employe present externally such a contrast as if they belonged to different races. Although accustomed to the contrast, it struck us almost with the shock of a surprise on the occasion of a campaign ma.s.s meeting, that we addressed in the winter of 1877 in an industrial town of the Erzgebirge region. The meeting, at which a debate was to be held between a liberal professor and ourselves, was so arranged that both sides were equally represented. The front part of the hall was taken by our opponents,--almost without exception, healthy, strong, often large figures; in the rear of the hall and in the galleries stood workingmen and small tradesmen, nine-tenths of the former weavers,--mostly short, thin, shallow-chested, pale-faced figures, with whom worry and want looked out at every pore. One set represented the full-stomached virtue and solvent morality of bourgeois society; the other set, the working bees and beasts of burden, on the product of whose labor the gentlemen made so fine an appearance. _Let both be placed for one generation under equally favorable conditions, and the contrast will vanish with most; it certainly is blotted out in their descendants._
It is also evident that, in general, it is harder to determine the social standing of women than of men. Women adapt themselves more readily to new conditions; they acquire higher manners more quickly.
Their power of accommodation is greater than that of more clumsy man.
What to a plant are good soil, light and air, are to man healthy social conditions, that allow him to unfold his powers. The well known saying: "Man is what he eats," expresses the same thought, although somewhat one-sidedly: The question is not merely what man eats; it embraces his whole social posture, the social atmosphere in which he moves, that promotes or stunts his physical and mental development, that affects, favorably or unfavorably, his sense of feeling, of thought, and of action. Every day we see people, situated in favorable material conditions, going physically and morally to wreck, simply because, beyond the narrower sphere of their own domestic or personal surroundings, unfavorable circ.u.mstances of a social nature operate upon them, and gain such overpowering ascendency that they switch them on wrong tracks. The general conditions under which a man lives are even of far greater importance than those of the home and the family. If the conditions for social development are equal to both s.e.xes, if to neither there stand any obstacles in the way, and if the social state of society is a healthy one, _then woman also will rise to a point of perfection in her being, such as we can have no full conception of, such conditions having hitherto been absent in the history of the development of the race_. That which some women are in the meantime achieving, leaves no doubt upon this head: these rise as high above the ma.s.s of their own s.e.x as the male geniuses do above the ma.s.s of theirs. Measured with the scale usually applied to Princes, women have, on an average, displayed greater talent than men in the ruling of States. As ill.u.s.trations, let Isabella and Blanche of Castile be quoted; Elizabeth of Hungary; Catharine Sforza, the d.u.c.h.ess of Milan and Imola; Elizabeth of England; Catharine of Russia; Maria Theresa, etc. Resting upon the fact that, in all races and all parts of the world, women have ruled with marked ability, even over the wildest and most turbulent hordes, Burbach makes the statement that, _in all probability, women are fitter for politics than men_.[132] For the rest, many a great man in history would shrink considerably, were it only known What he owes to himself, and what to others. Count Mirabeau, for instance, is described by German historians, von Sybel among them, as one of the greatest lights of the French Revolution: and now research has revealed the fact that this light was indebted for the concept of almost all of his speeches to the ready help of certain scholars, who worked for him in secret, and whom he understood to utilize. On the other hand, apparitions like those of a Sappho, a Diotima of the days of Socrates, a Hypatia of Alexander, a Madame Roland, Madame de Stael, George Sand, etc., deserve the greatest respect, and eclipse many a male star. The effect of women as mothers of great men is also known. Woman has achieved all that was possible to her under the, to her, as a whole, most unfavorable circ.u.mstances; all of which justifies the best hopes for the future. As a matter of fact, only the second half of the nineteenth century began to smooth the way for the admission of women in large numbers to the race with men on various fields; and quite satisfactory are the results attained.
But suppose that, on an average, women are not as capable of higher development as men, that they cannot grow into geniuses and great philosophers, was this a criterion for men when, at least according to the letter of the law, they were placed on a footing of equality with "geniuses" and "philosophers?" The identical men of learning, who deny higher apt.i.tudes to woman, are quite inclined to do the same to artisans and workingmen. When the n.o.bility appeals to its "blue" blood and to its genealogical tree, these men of learning laugh in derision and shrug their shoulders; but as against the man of lower rank, they consider themselves an aristocracy, that owes what it is, not to more favorable conditions of life, but to its own talent alone. The same men who, on one field, are among the freest from prejudice, and who hold him lightly who does not think as liberally as themselves, are, on another field,--the moment the interests of their rank and cla.s.s, or their vanity and self-esteem are concerned--found narrow to the point of stupidity, and hostile to the point of fanaticism. The men of the upper cla.s.ses look down upon the lower; and so does almost the whole s.e.x upon woman. The majority of men see in woman only an article of profit and pleasure; to acknowledge her an equal runs against the grain of their prejudices:--woman must be humble and modest; she must confine herself exclusively to the house and leave all else to the men, the "lords of creation," as their domain: woman must, to the utmost, bridle her own thoughts and inclinations, and quietly accept what her Providence on earth--father or husband--decrees. The nearer she approaches this standard, all the more is she praised as "sensible, modest and virtuous," even though, as the result of such constraint, she break down under the burden of physical and moral suffering. What absurdity is it not to speak of the "equality of all" and yet seek to keep one-half of the human race outside of the pale!
Woman has the same right as man to unfold her faculties and to the free exercise of the same: she is human as well as he: like him, she should be free to dispose of herself as her own master. The accident of being born a woman, makes no difference. To exclude woman from equality on the ground that she was born female and not male--an accident for which man is as little responsible as she--is as inequitable, as would be to make rights and privileges dependent upon the accident of religion or political bias; and as senseless as that two human beings must look upon each other as enemies on the ground that the accident of birth makes them of different stock and nationality. Such views are unworthy of a truly free being. The progress of humanity lies in removing everything that holds one being, one cla.s.s, one s.e.x, in dependence and in subjection to another. _No inequality is justified other than that which Nature itself establishes in the differences between one individual and another, and for the fulfillment of the purpose of Nature. The natural boundaries no s.e.x can overstep: it would thereby destroy its own natural purpose._
The adversaries of full equality for woman play as their trump card the claim that woman has a smaller brain than man, and that in other qualities, besides, she is behind man, hence her permanent inferiority (subordination) is demonstrated. It is certain that man and woman are beings of different s.e.xes; that they are furnished with different organs, corresponding to the s.e.x purpose of each; and that, owing to the functions that each s.e.x must fill to accomplish the purpose of Nature, there are a series of other differences in their physiologic and psychic conditions. These are facts that none can deny and none will deny; nevertheless, they justify no distinction in the social and political rights of man and woman. The human race, society, consists of both s.e.xes; both are indispensable to its existence and progress. Even the greatest male genius was born of a mother, to whom frequently he is indebted for the best part of himself. By what right can woman be refused equality with man?
Based upon information furnished us by a medical friend, we shall here sketch with a few strokes the essential differences, that, according to leading authorities, manifest themselves in the physical and mental qualities of man and woman. The bodily size of man and woman stands, on an average, in the relation of 100 to 93.2. The bones of woman are shorter and thinner, the chest smaller, wider, deeper and flatter. Other differences depend directly upon the s.e.x purpose. The muscles of woman are not as ma.s.sive. The weight of the heart is 310 grains in man, 255 in woman.
The composition of the blood in man and woman is as follows: Water, man, 77.19; woman, 79.11. Solid matter, man, 22.10; woman, 20.89. Blood corpuscles, man, 14.10; woman, 12.79. Number of blood corpuscles in a cubic millimeter of blood, man, 4 to 5 millions; woman, 4 to 4 millions. According to Meynert, the weight of the brain of man is from 1,018 to 1,925 grams; of woman, from 820 to 1,565; or in the relation of 100 to 90.93. LeBon and Bischoff agree that, while weight of brain corresponds with size of body, nevertheless short people have relatively larger brains. With woman, the smaller size of the heart, the narrower system of blood vessels and probably also the larger quant.i.ty of blood, has a lower degree of nourishment for its effect.[133] That, however, the larger skulls of larger persons, coupled with the quant.i.tative changes occasioned by the size of the skull promote the vigor of the several sections of the brain is a matter that _cannot be a.s.serted_.[134]
Of 107 mentally healthy men and 148 women of the ages of 20 to 59, the weight of the brain per thousand was:
Average Medulla Length in s.e.x. Oblongata. Cerebellum. Pons. Centimeters.
Men 790 107.5 102 166.5 Women 787 110.0 103 156.0
The absolute and relative excess in the weight of the cerebellum of woman has an enormous significance. With animals that run immediately upon birth, the cerebellum is much more powerfully developed than with animals that are born blind, are helpless, and that learn to walk with difficulty. Accordingly, and in consequence of its connection with the cerebrum, subcortical center and the spinal cord, the cerebellum is a station of the muscular and of the chief nervous system, by means of both of which qualities we keep our equilibrium. The more ma.s.sive cerebellum with woman, together with the comparative shortness and tenderness of her bones, explains her comparative quickness and easiness of motion, her quicker and higher co-ordination of the muscles for their functions, and her knack of quickly sizing up a situation, and finding her way in the midst of a confusion of a.s.sociations. Woman is furthermore aided in the latter faculty through the greater excitability of her cerebral cortex. Meynert says:--
1. All structural anomalies a.s.sociated with anaemia of the blood--including also a small heart and narrow arteries--should be considered as subject structural defects. Upon this depends not only the ready exhaustibility of the cortex, but also the phenomena of irritability, named by Meynert, localized irritable weakness.
2. The branches of blood vessels, supplying the subcortical centers from the base, are short, thick, straight, palisade-like, while those on the surface of the brain, supplying the cortex, run in long tortuous lines.
And it is because of that, since with the increased length of the blood vessels the resistance to the propulsive force of the heart is increased, that the subcortical centers, the moment fatigue supervenes, are better supplied with blood than the cortex, they are less readily fatigued than the more readily exhaustible cerebrum.
3. Because of this and because of the more watery character of woman"s blood and great extent of subcortical centers in woman in comparison with cerebrum, the physical equilibrium of woman is more unstable than of man.
4. All nerves (except the optic and olfactory, which spread out directly in the cortex, save some of their filaments terminating in the subcortical centers) terminate in the subcortical center; the cortex of the cerebrum acts as a checking organ for the subcortical center; as the cerebral cortex in woman, as already stated, is at a disadvantage not only from the anatomical standpoint, but also in the quality of its blood supply, woman is not only more easily fatigued, but also more readily excitable (irritable, nervous).
These facts explain, on the one hand, what is called the superior endowment of woman, and, on the other, her inclination to sudden changes of opinion, as well as to hallucinations and illusions. This state of unstable equilibrium between the _dura mater_ and the _pons_ becomes particularly normal during menstruation, pregnancy, lying-in, and at her climacteric. As a result of her physical organization, woman is more inclined to melancholy than man, and likewise is the inclination to mental derangement stronger with her; on the other hand, the male s.e.x excels her in the number of cases of megalomania.
Such, in substance, is the information furnished us by the authority whom we have been quoting.