Education: How Old The New Part 9

"The scene changes to another street in Athens, where the citizens are bringing out all their property, to be carried into the market-place {248} and inventoried for the common stock. Citizen 'A'

dances with delight as he marshals his dilapidated chattels into a mock procession--from the meal sieve, which he kisses, it looks so pretty with its powdered hair, to the iron pot which looks as black 'as if Lysimachus' (some well-known fop of the day, possibly present among the audience) 'had been boiling his hair dye in it.' This patriot, at least, has not much to lose, and hopes he may have something to gain, under these female communists.

"But his neighbor, who is better off, is in no such hurry. The Athenians, as he remarks, are always making new laws and abrogating them; what has been pa.s.sed to-day very likely will be repealed to-morrow. Besides it is a good old national habit to take, not to give. He will wait a while before he gives in an inventory of his possessions. (One might think of an income tax law in the United States in the twentieth century.)

"But at this point comes the city-beadle (an appointment now held, of course, by a lady) with a summons to a banquet provided for all citizens out of the public funds: and amongst the items in the bill of fare is one dish whose name is composed of seventy-seven syllables--which Aristophanes gives us, but which the reader shall be spared. (It has been boiled down by the American schoolboy to just 'hash.') Citizen 'B' at once delivers it as his opinion that 'every {249} man of proper feeling should support the const.i.tution to the utmost of his ability,' and hurries to take his place at the feast. There are some difficulties caused, very naturally by the new communistic regulations as to providing for the old and ugly women, but with these we need not deal. The piece ends with an invitation, issued by direction of Praxagora through her lady-chamberlain, to the public generally, spectators included, to join the national banquet which is to inaugurate the new order of things."

In a previous comedy Aristophanes had told of another interference of women in the political life of Athens that contains so many reminders of the modern time, and shows so definitely how old the new is, that it deserves a place here. Above all, the desertions from the cause of the women when they find that their political duties interfere with their home duties, and that they have to sacrifice many of the joys of life even though they are duties that may at times seem irksome enough,--children, household work, etc.,--for these newer obligations with which they have so little sympathy, is especially interesting.

Once more I prefer to take the Rev. Mr. Collins' summary of the play in order that it may be clear that Aristophanes' meaning is not being stretched for the purpose of making points with regard to present-day conditions. After all, Mr. Collins' little book was written very nearly thirty years ago, when very little of the present feministic {250} movement, at least in the form in which we are now familiar with it, had a.s.serted itself.

"They determine, under the leading of the clever Lysistrata, wife to one of the magistrates, to take the question (of the ending of the war) into their own hands. They resolve upon a voluntary separation from their husbands--a practical divorce _a mensa et thoro_--until peace with Sparta shall be proclaimed. It is resolved that a body of the elder matrons shall seize the Acropolis and make themselves masters of the public treasury. These form one of the two choruses in the play, the other being composed of the old men of Athens. The latter proceed (with a good deal of comic difficulty, owing to the steepness of the ascent and their shortness of breath) to attack the Acropolis, armed with torches and f.a.gots and pans of charcoal, with which they hope to smoke out the occupants. But the women have provided themselves with buckets of water, which they empty on the heads of their a.s.sailants, who soon retire discomfited to call the police. But the police are, in their turn, repulsed by these resolute insurgents, whom they do not exactly know how to deal with.

At last a member of the public committee comes forward to parley, and a dialogue takes place between him and Lysistrata. 'Why,' he asks, 'have they thus taken possession of the citadel?' 'They have resolved henceforth to manage the public revenues themselves,' is the {251} reply, 'and not allow them to be applied to carrying on this ruinous war.' 'That is no business for women,' argues the magistrate. 'Why not?' says Lysistrata; 'the wives have long had the management of the private purses of the husbands, to the great advantage of both.' In short, the women have made up their minds to have their voice no longer ignored, as. .h.i.therto, in questions of peace and war. Their remonstrances have always been met with the taunt that 'war is the business of men;' and to any question they have ventured to ask their husbands on such points, the answer has always been the old cry--old as the days of Homer--'Go spin, you jade, go spin!' But they will put up with it no longer. As they have always had wit enough to clear the tangled threads in their work, so they have no doubt of settling all these difficulties and complications in international disputes, if it is left to them. But what concern, her opponent asks, can women have with war, who contribute nothing to its dangers and hards.h.i.+ps? 'Contribute, indeed!' says the lady; 'we contribute the sons who carry it on.'

And she throws down to her adversary her hood, her basket and her spindle, and bids him 'go home and card wool,'--it is all such old men are fit for; henceforth the proverb (of the men's making) shall be reversed,--'War shall be the care of the women.' The magistrate retires not having got the best of it, very naturally, in an encounter of words; and the chorus of elders raise the cry--{252} well known as a popular partisan cry at Athens, and sure to call forth a hearty laugh in such juxtaposition--that the women are designing to 'set up a tyranny!'

"But poor Lysistrata soon has her troubles. Her unworthy recruits are fast deserting her. They are going off to their husbands in the most sneaky manner--creeping out through the little hole under the citadel which led to the celebrated cave of Pan, and letting themselves down from the walls by ropes at the risk of breaking their necks. Those who are caught all have excellent excuses. One has some fleeces of fine Milesian wool at home which must be seen to,--she is sure the moths are eating them. Another has urgent occasion for the doctor; a third cannot sleep alone for fear of the owls--of which, as every one knows, there were really a great many at Athens. The husbands, too, are getting uncomfortable without their housekeepers; there is no one to cook their victuals; and one poor soul comes and humbly entreats his wife at least to come home and wash and dress the baby.

"It is becoming plain that either the war or the wives' resolution will soon give way, when there arrives an emba.s.sy from Sparta. They cannot stand this general strike of the wives. They are agreed already with their enemies, the Athenians, on one point--as to the women--that the old Greek comedian's proverb, which we have borrowed and translated freely, is true,--

"There is no living with 'em--or without 'em."

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"They are come to offer terms of peace. When two parties are already of one mind, as Lysistrata observes, they are not long in coming to an understanding. A treaty is made on the spot, with remarkably few preliminaries."

Whenever we have sufficient remains to ill.u.s.trate the life of any period of history with reasonable completeness, we find women occupying a much more important place than is usually conceded to them. The trouble is that we a.s.sume that we know something about the past, because we have somewhere obtained a vague notion of it and then we fill in details in accordance with that preconceived notion. The general rule, unfortunately, is to make as little of the past as possible and to consider that, of course, they must have been very different from us, and surely far behind us in everything. The more one really knows of history, however, the less does one think this. We must not let our complacent self-satisfaction with our own generation disturb our proper appreciation of past generations, however. An English writer said not very long ago, and now that we have reviewed various periods in the history of feminine influence and of education, I think that you will recognize the justice of what he said, "It is too much the easy custom of the present self-admiring day--not a bit more self-satisfied, after all, than each day has been in its {254} turn--to hold the women of the past as something little better than dolls for their attainments, a little dearer than slaves for their position and despicably content therein." Nothing could well be less true than this.

What is apt to strike us, however, after a review of the phases of feminine education and influence such as I have sketched, is that there are undoubtedly times during which very little is heard of feminine influence and almost nothing at all of feminine education.

There are periods on the other hand when these subjects are the very centre of human interest. This interest waxes to a certain climax and then apparently wanes. What is the reason for these waxings and wanings? Is there anything that we know about them that will help us to account for them? If women have once achieved a certain position and have once secured certain privileges in the matter of education, it might reasonably be expected that, barring some great cataclysm or political upheaval, that completely disrupted society, they would not abandon these hard-won rights and precious privileges, and so we should not have to be going through the storm and stress of another period of discussion, controversy, opposition with regard to woman's rights. How is it that rights once attained--and never unless after a struggle, for no matter how civilized a period or how cultured a people, they do not grant rights to any cla.s.s unless forced to do so-- that these rights have afterwards been lost, or at least greatly diminished and partly forgotten?

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In this we come upon one of the mysteries of history and of the life of man. How is it that men secure certain knowledge and then forget it--literally forget all about it--how is it that men make discoveries and then lose sight of them so that they have to be made over again; how is it that men even make useful inventions of all kinds and these are lost sight of and the invention has to be made over again in succeeding generations? How is it that the Suez Ca.n.a.l was opened at least once before our time and then allowed to fill up with sand, and we had to do the work all over again two generations ago? How is it that America was discovered at least twice, probably oftener, before Columbus' time, and yet his was a real discovery? We actually have Papal doc.u.ments addressed to bishops in Greenland from Popes in the thirteenth century, mentioning missions on the mainland of America. There are traditions that seem to point beyond all doubt to the fact that the Irish monks were here in America in the eighth and ninth centuries. Those traditions come from three or four different sources. There was a reverence for the cross among the Indians in certain parts of the country. A tradition of white-robed priests who came from over the sea. The Norse name for America was Irland it Mikla, Ireland the Great, {256} that is, the island of the Irish, much larger than Ireland itself and lying beyond it in the seas.

How is it, indeed, that there are many discoveries and rediscoveries of the same principle in science? Heron's engine at Alexandria was an antic.i.p.ation of the turbine principle in the application of steam.

When we dug up surgical instruments at Pompeii we were surprised to find that they had the form of many instruments that we thought we had invented in our time. In gla.s.s-making, in iron-working, in all the arts and crafts precious secrets are discovered, then lost, then rediscovered, and this may even happen several times. We find no sign of a continuous progress, but recurring phases that represent ups and downs in man's interest in certain things and his achievements corresponding to the intensity of his interest. Such a thing as a regular progressive advance one finds nowhere in history. Nations do not maintain their power after they have achieved it. Just as soon as the struggle to maintain themselves is over, internal troubles of various kinds set disintegrating factors at work and it is not long before decadence can be noted and then the disappearance of the people or at least of its national prominence becomes inevitable. We shall not be surprised to find ups and downs in the history of feminine influence and education, for this is the rule of history. We have only been laboring under the false notion that definite progress was the rule because of {257} over-absorption in the evolution theory--but it is not.

There seems to be in this matter a certain check upon the occupation of woman with interests external to her household that would tempt her to occupy herself much with duties extraneous to the family life.

After all, one thing is perfectly clear. Only women can be mothers. We have not succeeded even in getting the slightest possible hint of any method of continuing the race except by the ordinary process of maternity. Whatever of direct evolution the advocates of the theory of evolution have suggested as coming in humanity so that it may be the subject of observation, has been due in their minds to the lengthening of the period during which the young of the race are cared for. As we go up in the scale of life from the lowest to the highest, infancy-- meaning by that the period during which the offspring is cared for by the parents--lengthens. In the very small beings there is none. As we ascend in the scale we find traces of parental care. Then comes occupation of the parents with their offspring from a few hours up to a day or two, and then finally months and years, until in the human race infancy has been gradually prolonged to twenty years. This is Herbert Spencer's observation and it is interesting and suggestive. A mother then especially, though also a father, must care for children, not alone for months before and after birth, but for a score of years.

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Occupation with other things, though necessary, detracts from this care of children, and if exaggerated leads to the celibate condition or that approaching it, the limitation of families within narrow bounds. The mother of but two or three children may occupy herself with other things and, indeed, has to find other occupation of mind.

At certain periods in the world's history a certain number of these women acc.u.mulate and the tendency to celibacy or to very limited maternity makes itself felt, and then this cla.s.s of people usually fails to propagate enough of the species like themselves to take their places in the world. It is a matter of common comment at the present moment that if the women's colleges were to depend on the progeny of their graduates to fill the cla.s.ses in succeeding years, the numbers at the schools not only would not increase but would constantly tend to decrease. Of course this same thing is true of the descendants of the male graduates of many of our Eastern universities, and I believe that attention has been particularly called to it with regard to our three oldest universities. Such are the risks of life and the fatalities incident to disease, even with our present improved hygienic conditions, that anything less than five or six children in a family will not prove sufficient eventually to replace the parents in their activities. When to small families is added the number of celibates consequent upon absorption in self-improvement, then the failure of the {259} cultured cla.s.ses even to replace themselves becomes very manifest, and hence our dwindling native populations, if we take that word to mean the families that have been in the country for more than two generations.

Nature does not confide conditions in humanity entirely to man, however. This would be to leave mankind subject to certain whims and fas.h.i.+ons and the caprices of times and people. There are many biological checks which maintain mankind in a certain equilibrium. A typical example of it is the regulation of the number of each s.e.x born. In general the proportion of the s.e.xes to one another maintains a ratio very near that of equality under ordinary natural conditions.

This obtains in spite of the fact that man is so much more subject to accidents than woman, so much more likely to catch and succ.u.mb to disease and so much more likely to wear himself out prematurely as the result of his labors. The death-rate among women at all ages is lower than that of men, yet a constant, definite equilibrium of the s.e.xes is maintained with accurate nicety. There is evidently some check existing in nature itself that prevents any disturbance of this fixed ratio.

Not only is nature able to maintain this, but in cases where, because of some serious disturbance of natural conditions, a decided inequality of the ratio occurs by accident, nature is able to restore conditions to the previous normal, without our being quite able to understand just how this is {260} accomplished. We do not know how s.e.x is determined. There have been many explanations offered, but all of them have proved inadequate and most of them quite nugatory. In spite of our lack of knowledge there have been times in history when a striking manifestation of nature's power has occurred. For instance, after the Thirty Years' War in Germany the ratio between the s.e.xes had been so much disturbed that, according to some historians, there were probably nearly twice as many women as men in existence in the Germanic countries. The men had been cut off by the war itself, by famines consequent upon it, by extreme and unusual efforts to support their families and by epidemic diseases in camps and campaigns. The disproportion was so great that a relaxation of the marriage laws was permitted for a time in certain of the countries and men were allowed to have two wives.

Under these conditions nature at once began to rea.s.sert herself, the number of male births was greatly increased and the disproportion between the s.e.xes immediately began to lessen. At the end of scarcely more than three generations the normal equilibrium of the s.e.xes was restored and there was about an equal number of men and women again.

Here we have the effect of one of these curiously interesting biological checks upon man's foolish quarrelsomeness which might result in a too great disproportion of the s.e.xes.

We shall not be surprised, then, if we find other {261} such biological checks and compensations exerting themselves. In recent years Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Darwin, who is recognized as the best living authority in statistical biology, and Professor Karl Pearson, who has done more than any one else to bring out many curious and interesting but very important biological laws by the study of statistics, have insisted in their studies of the effect of the law of primogeniture, that when there are small families, the children are more likely to be nervous, oftener have an inclination to mental disease and have less resistive vitality against disease in general than the average child of the larger families. There is a small but significant advantage in vitality that accrues to later children of a family. This is so contrary to the frequently expressed opinion that only the children of small families can be brought up properly to resist disease and have such advantages in their education and nutrition as to be of better health, that I should hesitate to quote it, only that it has behind it the authority of such distinguished scientists as Galton and Pearson. They are both conservative Englishmen, they have no theory of their own that they are supporting, they have no axe to grind in things social and political for the launching of the new theory, they are only making observations on the facts presented and the data that have been collected.

Here is another striking example of a check on certain tendencies in humanity that apparently {262} nature does not approve of, or to avoid personifying a process, we had better say are not according to nature's laws. The small family does not perpetuate itself. It has certain natural disadvantages that work against it. It gradually disappears and the races of larger families maintain themselves. We need not have had recourse to Galton's and Pearson's principle in this matter, for we see the results of the small family in present-day history. France is decreasing in population. Our own Puritan families are dying out. American families generally of more than three generations are not perpetuating themselves. The teeming fertility of the poor immigrants who come to us is, with immigration itself, supplying our increase in population. Our nation is, as a result, gradually becoming something very different from what our forefathers antic.i.p.ated.

What has apparently happened, then, in the history of feminine education and influence is that, whenever women became occupied with such modes of education, or the cultivation of phases of feminine influence that took them out of their houses, away from family life and far from the hearthstone, the particular cla.s.ses of women who thus became interested did not propagate themselves, or propagated themselves to such a limited degree that, after a time, their kind disappeared to a great extent. The domestic woman with tendencies to care much more for her maternal duties than for any extra-domiciliary successes {263} propagated herself, raised her children with her ideals, cultivated domesticity and consciously or unconsciously fostered the mother idea as the main feature of woman's life and her princ.i.p.al source not only of occupation, but of joy in the living, of consolation and of genuine accomplishment. The tendency, as can readily be seen in our own time, of the other cla.s.s of woman is largely to foster, often unconsciously, but of course often consciously also, the opposite notions. She talks of the slavery of child-raising, the limitations of the home woman, the drudgery of domestic life, forgetting that life is work and that the only happiness in life is to have work that you want to do, whatever it may be, but all this talk has its inevitable effect upon all but the born mother woman, and the result is the fad for public occupation instead of domestic life.

It is easy to see what the result of the opposite opinion is. Every tendency of the intellectual woman so-called is to repress such natural instincts as lead to the propagation of the race and the continuance of her kind. Of course it will be said that intellectual women are quite willing to have one or two children. First, this is not true for a great many of them. Secondly, for those who have one or two children losses by death and failure to marry in the second generation, because of conscious or unconscious discouragements and the exaggeration of ideas with regard to the danger of maternity, lead often to a complete {264} suppression of the family in the second or third generation.

Apparently the rule of history is that there are four or five generations of women interested in intellectual things particularly, who follow one another in these periods of special feminine education and exertion of influence outside of the home. Then there comes a distinct decadence of the feminist movement, because of the gradual diminution in number of women who are interested in such things, and then, while there are always certain women who develop great intellectual abilities which require a larger stage than the home for their display, and while there are always some who find an intellectual career or rather make it, very little is heard of feminism and women's claims. They are satisfied to rule their husbands, to raise their children, to be saints to their sons and elder sisters to their daughters, and the feminine world has its simple joys and not much fuss about rights.

It may seem far-fetched thus to appeal to a biological check or a great underlying natural law in a matter of this kind, but in recent years biology has so often been appealed to to justify unsocial conditions that its true application needs to be pointed out. We have heard, for instance, much of the struggle for life and the compet.i.tion that is supposed to be inevitable in nature, while all the time it has apparently been forgotten that there is no struggle for life within the species {265} except when there is some disturbance of the ordinary order of nature, as in times of famine, or when a mother is foraging for her children. On the contrary, mutual aid is the rule within the species and there is no animal small or large, from the ant to the elephant, that does not help its kind and has not certain wonderful instincts for helpfulness, the origin of which we do not know, but which are founded in nature itself. Man justifies inhumanity to man by the supposed struggle for life, while all the time nature teaches us the opposite law.

Nature's way is that of elimination. Her interest is the race. She cares very little for the individual and guards only her great purpose of securing the propagation of the race. Apparently such intense preoccupation with the intellectual life as provides opportunity for serious education, for literary work and for the exertion of diffuse influence in a community, does not make for the propagation of the race or its proper preservation. We can see this easily in the world around us, in the limited progeny of those who live the intellectual or selfish life to the exclusion of racial interests. This is opposed to nature's purpose and she proceeds to eliminate those who stand in her way. This is not done by any cataclysmic process but by a law of nature. Those involved in the influence disturbing to her purpose eliminate themselves. This is as true for indulgence in toxic substances that produce certain personal {266} momentary good feelings, as for the more deliberate avoidance of certain of nature's burdens which brings about a certain negative pleasure at least by lessening the amount of pain that has to be borne and trouble to be endured. To these pains and troubles nature has attached some of the best of the compensations of life. The domestic joys are properly man's highest source of unalloyed pleasure without remorse.

Our review of the phases of feminine education and influence would seem to show that there has occurred a series of cycles about three centuries apart in the history of the race, during which women become very much occupied with things external to their household. Such cycles are represented by our own period, that of the Renaissance in the sixteenth century, that of the university period in the thirteenth century, and then that at Charlemagne's court earlier, though the barbaric conditions following the migration of nations probably did not allow a natural expression of the tendencies at this time. Earlier in history, in the first century before Christ and just after and in the fourth century before Christ in Greece, there had been, as we have pointed out, such cycles. During the intervening centuries there is a negative phase in the movement, so that feminism, under which is understood woman's expression of herself outside of her home and the exertion of her influence apart from her family and immediate friends, is very little in {267} evidence. During these times the domestic woman rea.s.serts herself. During the positive phases of the movement she continues to have her children, the feminists do not, or at least not to the same extent. They and their kind are gradually eliminated, at least to a great degree, and so the negative phase comes on.

This is not an argument and is not meant as such. It is meant to be a scientific reading of the meaning of certain phases of the history of the race as they can be studied. I would be the last in the world to think that I could influence present-day activities by any such indications of a great law in the history of the race that takes three centuries from phase to phase. After all, who cares for a law that does not affect our generation, but at most the third and fourth succeeding generations, and the manifestation of whose phenomena can only be recognized in three-century periods?

What I have tried to do is to point out just what are the cycles of feminine influence and education in the world's history, and then to work out the reasons why, quite contrary to what might be expected, these phases have not continued, but are interrupted by periods of utter decadence of feminine influence or interest in public life and education. Perhaps in our time we are going to change all that. That is the feeling that we are p.r.o.ne to have. Others may have made progress and forgotten about it, or {268} may have made mistakes and been eliminated for them, but we are so consciously active in our affairs that we cannot think of ourselves as likely to suffer the fate of our predecessors. There is much of that feeling abroad in the present day, there has always been much of that feeling abroad in every other day, for each succeeding generation in its turn is perfectly sure that what it is doing means more than ever before, though it can see very clearly the mistakes made by its predecessors.

It is somewhat like our feeling towards other persons and their accomplishments in life as compared to our own. Most of us are quite sure that whatever we are doing is quite significant, though we can see plainly that what most of our friends are doing, or are trying to do, is altogether trivial and insignificant.

In recent years we have come to realize more and more how much history needs to be studied in the light of biology. The decadence of Greece was probably due, to a great extent, to the bringing back by Alexander's conquering soldiers of malaria from the Orient, and thus the vanquished proved the ruin of their conquerors. The great plagues of the olden time which sometimes carried away nearly one-half the human race in a single visitation, were due to insect pests of various kinds, which all unknown to men conveyed the disease and diffused it widely. It will not be easy always to read the lessons of biology in history aright. Whether I have done so for you {269} or not, in this matter of the history of feminism, I cannot tell. The story, however, has been interesting to work out, and I do not think that its conclusions have ever been presented to the public in quite this form before. They are now presented not with the idea that they should be accepted as absolute, but for the criticism and consideration of those who are most vitally interested and who want to know all that can be known about the conditions surrounding woman's influence in the world and her place for good in the history of the race.

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THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION

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"It is your duty to see that your daughter loves study and work, securing this by the promise of rewards or some other means of emulation. Above all you must take care not to give her disgust for study for fear that this may continue as she grows older. Let her not learn in her childhood what she should unlearn later in life."

--_Letter of St. Jerome to Leta, the wife of Toxolus, the son of St.

Paula_.

"The sum of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence in which, when he grows up to manhood, he will have to be perfected."

--Plato, _Laws_ (Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 174. Scribner, 1902.

"The minds of children are most of all influenced by the training they receive at home."

--Pope Leo XIII.

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