Woman and Womanhood A Search for Principles(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：Saleeby, C. W. (Caleb Williams)

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We are often and rightly reminded that woman is half the human race. It is truer even than it appears. Not only is woman half of the present generation, but present woman is half of all the generations of men and women to come. The argument of this book, which will be regarded as reactionary by many women called "advanced"—presumably as doctors say that a case of consumption is "advanced"—involves nothing other than adequate recognition of the importance of woman in the most important of all matters. It is true that my primary concern has been to furnish, for the individual woman and for those in charge of girlhood, a guide of life based upon the known physiology of sex. But it is a poor guide of life which considers only the transient individual, and poorest of all in this very case.

If it were true that woman is merely the vessel and custodian of the future lives of men and women, entrusted to her ante-natal care by their fathers, as many creeds have supposed, then indeed it would be a question of relatively small moment how the mothers of the future were chosen. Our ingenious devices for ensuring the supremacy of man lend colour to this idea. We name children after their fathers, and the fact that they are also to some extent of the maternal stock is obscured.

But when we ask to what extent they are also of maternal stock, we find that there is a rigorous equality between the sexes in this matter. It is a fact which has been ignored or inadequately recognized by every feminist and by every eugenist from Plato until the present time. Salient qualities, whether good or ill, are more commonly displayed by men than by women. Great strength or physical courage or endurance, great ability or genius, together with a variety of abnormalities, are much more commonly found in men than in women, and the eugenic emphasis has therefore always been laid upon the choice of fathers rather than of mothers. Not so long ago, the scion of a noble race must marry, not at all necessarily the daughter of another noble race, but rather any young healthy woman who promised to be able to bear children easily and suckle them long. But directly we observe, under the microscope, the facts of development, we discover that each parent contributes an exactly equal share to the making of the new individual, and all the ancient and modern ideas of the superior value of well-selected fatherhood fall to the ground. Woman is indeed half the race. In virtue of expectant motherhood and her ante-natal nurture of us all, she might well claim to be more, but she is half at least.

And thus it matters for the future at least as much how the mothers are chosen as how the fathers are. This remains true, notwithstanding that the differences between men, commending them for selection or rejection, seem so much more conspicuous and important than in the case of women.

For, in the first place, the differences between women are much greater than appear when, for instance, we read history as history is at present understood, or when we observe and compare the world and his wife. Uniformity or comparative uniformity of environment is a factor of obvious importance in tending to repress the natural differences between women. Reverse the occupations and surroundings of the sexes, and it might be found that men were "much of a muchness," and women various and individualized, to a surprising extent.

But, even allowing for this, it is difficult to question that men as individuals do differ, for good and for evil, more than women as individuals. Such a malady as hæmophilia, for instance, sharply distinguishes a certain number of men from the rest of their sex, whereas women, not subject to the disease, are not thus distinguished, as individuals.

But the very case here cited serves to illustrate the fallacy of studying the individual as an individual only, and teaches that there is a second reason why the selection of women for motherhood is more important than is so commonly supposed. In the matter of, for instance, hæmophilia, men appear sharply contrasted among themselves and women all similar. Yet the truth is that men and women differ equally in this very respect. Women do not suffer from hæmophilia, but they convey it. Just as definitely as one man is hæmophilic and another is not, so one woman will convey hæmophilia and another will not. The abnormality is present in her, but it is latent; or, as we shall see the Mendelians would say, "recessive" instead of "dominant."

Now I am well assured that if we could study not only the patencies but also the latencies of individuals of both sexes, we should find that they vary equally. Women, as individuals, appear more similar than men, but as individuals conveying latent or "recessive" characters which will appear in their children, especially their male children, they are just as various as men are. The instance of hæmophilia is conclusive, for two women, each equally free from it, will respectively bear normal and hæmophilic children; but this is probably only one among many far more important cases. I incline to believe that certain nervous qualities, many of great value to humanity, tend to be latent in women, just as hæmophilia does. Two women may appear very similar in mind and capacity, but one may come of a distinguished stock, and the other of an undistinguished. In the first woman, herself unremarkable, high ability may be latent, and her sons may demonstrate it. It is therefore every whit as important that the daughters of able and distinguished stock shall marry as that the sons shall. It remains true even though the sons may themselves be obviously distinguished and the daughters may not.

The conclusion of this matter is that scientific inquiry completely demonstrates the equal importance of the selection of fathers and of mothers. If our modern knowledge of heredity is to be admitted at all, it follows that the choice of women for motherhood is of the utmost moment for the future of mankind. Woman is half the race; and the leaders of the woman's movement must recognize the importance of their sex in this fundamental question of eugenics. At present they do not do so; indeed, no one does. But the fact remains. As before all things a Eugenist, and responsible, indeed, for that name, I cannot ignore it in the following pages. There is not only to-day to think of, but to-morrow. The eugenics which ignores the natural differences between women as individuals, and their still greater natural differences as potential parents, is only half eugenics; the leading women who in any way countenance such measures as deprive the blood of the future of its due contribution from the best women of the present, are leading not only one sex but the race as a whole to ruin.

If women were not so important as Nature has made them, none of this would matter. To insist upon it is only to insist upon the importance of the sex. The remarkable fact, which seems to me to make this protest and the forthcoming pages so necessary, is that the leading feminists do not recognize the all-importance of their sex in this regard. They must be accused of neglecting it and of not knowing how important they are. They consider the present only, and not the composition of the future. Like the rest of the world, I read their papers and manifestoes, their speeches and books, and have done so, and have subscribed to them, for years; but no one can refer me to a single passage in any of these where any feminist or suffragist, in Great Britain, at least, militant or non-militant, has set forth the principle, beside which all others are trivial, that the best women must be the mothers of the future.

Yet this which is thus ignored matters so much that other things matter only in so far as they affect it. As I have elsewhere maintained, the eugenic criterion is the first and last of every measure of reform or reaction that can be proposed or imagined. Will it make a better race? Will the consequence be that more of the better stocks, of both sexes, contribute to the composition of future generations? In other words, the very first thing that the feminist movement must prove is that it is eugenic. If it be so, its claims are unchallengeable; if it be what may contrariwise be called dysgenic, no arguments in its favour are of any avail. Yet the present champions of the woman's cause are apparently unaware that this question exists. They do not know how important their sex is.

Thinkers in the past have known, and many critics in the present, though unaware of the eugenic idea, do perceive, that woman can scarcely be better employed than in the home. Herbert Spencer, notably, argued that we must not include, in the estimate of a nation's assets, those activities of woman the development of which is incompatible with motherhood. To-day, the natural differences between individuals of both sexes, and the importance of their right selection for the transmission of their characters to the future, are clearly before the minds of those who think at all on these subjects. On various occasions I have raised this issue between Feminism and Eugenics, suggesting that there are varieties of feminism, making various demands for women which are utterly to be condemned because they not merely ignore eugenics, but are opposed to it, and would, if successful, be therefore ruinous to the race.

Ignored though it be by the feminist leaders, this is the first of questions; and in so far as any clear opinion on it is emerging from the welter of prejudices, that opinion is hitherto inimical to the feminist claims. Most notably is this the case in America, where the dysgenic consequences of the so-called higher education of women have been clearly demonstrated.

The mark of the following pages is that they assume the principle of what we may call Eugenic Feminism, and that they endeavour to formulate its working-out. It is my business to acquaint myself with the literature of both eugenics and feminism, and I know that hitherto the eugenists have inclined to oppose the claims of feminism, Sir Francis Galton, for instance, having lent his name to the anti-suffrage side; whilst the feminists, one and all, so far as Anglo-Saxondom is concerned—for Ellen Key must be excepted—are either unaware of the meaning of eugenics at all, or are up in arms at once when the eugenist—or at any rate this eugenist, who is a male person—mildly inquires: But what about motherhood? and to what sort of women are you relegating it by default?

I claim, therefore, that there is immediate need for the presentation of a case which is, from first to last, and at whatever cost, eugenic; but which also—or, rather, therefore—makes the highest claims on behalf of woman and womanhood, so that indeed, in striving to demonstrate the vast importance of the woman question for the composition of the coming race, I may claim to be much more feminist than the feminists.

The problem is not easily to be solved; otherwise we should not have paired off into insane parties, as on my view we have done. Nor will the solution please the feminists without reserve, whilst it will grossly offend that abnormal section of the feminists who are distinguished by being so much less than feminine, and who little realize what a poor substitute feminism is for feminity.

There is possible no Eugenic Feminism which shall satisfy those whose simple argument is that woman must have what she wants, just as man must. I do not for a moment admit that either men or women or children of a smaller growth are entitled to everything they want. "The divine right of kings," said Carlyle, "is the right to be kingly men"; and I would add that the divine right of women is the right to be queenly women. Until this present time, it was never yet alleged as a final principle of justice that whatever people wanted they were entitled to, yet that is the simple feminist demand in a very large number of cases. It is a demand to be denied, whilst at the same time we grant the right of every man and of every woman to opportunities for the best development of the self; whatever that self may be—including even the aberrant and epicene self of those imperfectly constituted women whose adherence to the woman's cause so seriously handicaps it.

But it is one thing to say people should have what is best for them, and another that whatever they want is best for them. If it is not best for them it is not right, any more than if they were children asking for more green apples. Women have great needs of which they are at present unjustly deprived; and they are fully entitled to ask for everything which is needed for the satisfaction of those needs; but nothing is more certain than that, at present, many of them do not know what they should ask for. Not to know what is good for us is a common human failing; to have it pointed out is always tiresome, and to have this pointed out to women by any man is intolerable. But the question is not whether a man points it out, presuming to tell women what is good for them, but whether in this matter he is right—in common with the overwhelming multitude of the dead of both sexes.

As has been hinted, the issue is much more momentous than any could have realized even so late as fifty years ago. It is only in our own time that we are learning the measure of the natural differences between individuals, it is only lately that we have come to see that races cannot rise by the transmission of acquired characters from parents to offspring, since such transmission does not occur, and it is only within the last few years that the relative potency of heredity over education, of nature over nurture, has been demonstrated. Not one in thousands knows how cogent this demonstration is, nor how absolutely conclusive is the case for the eugenic principle in the light of our modern knowledge. At whatever cost, we see, who have ascertained the facts, that we must be eugenic.

This argument was set forth in full in the predecessors of this book, which in its turn is devoted to the interests of women as individuals. But before we proceed, it is plainly necessary to answer the critic who might urge that the separate questions of the individual and the race cannot be discussed in this mixed fashion. The argument may be that if we are to discuss the character and development and rights of women as individuals, we must stick to our last. Any woman may question the eugenic criterion or say that it has nothing to do with her case. She claims certain rights and has certain needs; she is not so sure, perhaps, about the facts of heredity, and in any case she is sure that individuals—such as herself, for instance—are ends in themselves. She neither desires to be sacrificed to the race, nor does she admit that any individual should be so sacrificed. She is tired of hearing that women must make sacrifices for the sake of the community and its future; and the statement of this proposition in its new eugenic form, which asserts that, at all costs, the finest women must be mothers, and the mothers must be the finest women, is no more satisfactory to her than the crude creed of the Kaiser that children, cooking and church are the proper concerns of women. She claims to be an individual, as much as any man is, as much as any individual of either sex whom we hope to produce in the future by our eugenics, and she has the same personal claim to be an end in and for herself as they will have whom we seek to create. Her sex has always been sacrificed to the present or to the immediate needs of the future as represented by infancy and childhood; and there is no special attractiveness in the prospect of exchanging a military tyranny for a eugenic tyranny: "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

One cannot say whether this will be accepted as a fair statement of the woman's case at the present time, but I have endeavoured to state it fairly and would reply to it that its claims are unquestionable and that we must grant unreservedly the equal right of every woman to the same consideration and recognition and opportunity as an individual, an end in and for herself, whatever the future may ask for, as we grant to men.

But I seek to show in the following pages that, in reality, there is no antagonism between the claims of the future and the present, the race and the individual. On philosophic analysis we must see that, indeed, no living race could come into being, much less endure, in which the interests of individuals as individuals, and the interest of the race, were opposed. If we imagine any such race we must imagine its disappearance in one generation, or in a few generations if the clash of interests were less than complete. Living Nature is not so fiendishly contrived as has sometimes appeared to the casual eye. On the contrary, the natural rule which we see illustrated in all species, animal or vegetable, high or low, throughout the living world, is that the individual is so constructed that his or her personal fulfilment of his or her natural destiny as an individual, is precisely that which best serves the race. Once we learn that individuals were all evolved by Nature for the sake of the race, we shall understand why they have been so evolved in their personal characteristics that in living their own lives and fulfilling themselves they best fulfil Nature's remoter purpose.

To this universal and necessary law, without which life could not persist anywhere in any of its forms, woman is no exception; and therein is the reply to those who fear a statement in new terms of the old proposition that women must give themselves up for the sake of the community and its future. Here it is true that whosoever will give her life shall save it. Women must indeed give themselves up for the community and the future; and so must men. Since women differ from men, their sacrifice takes a somewhat different form, but in their case, as in men's, the right fulfilment of Nature's purpose is one with the right fulfilment of their own destiny. There is no antinomy. On the contrary, the following pages are written in the belief and the fear that women are threatening to injure themselves as individuals—and therefore the race, of course—just because they wrongly suppose that a monstrous antinomy exists where none could possibly exist. "No," they say, "we have endured this too long; henceforth we must be free to be ourselves and live our own lives." And then, forsooth, they proceed to try to be other than themselves and live other than the lives for which their real selves, in nine cases out of ten, were constructed. It works for a time, and even for life in the case of incomplete and aberrant women. For the others, it often spells liberty and interest and heightened consciousness of self for some years; but the time comes when outraged Nature exacts her vengeance, when middle age abbreviates the youth that was really misspent, and is itself as prematurely followed by a period of decadence grateful neither to its victim nor to anyone else. Meanwhile the women who have chosen to be and to remain women realize the promise of Wordsworth to the girl who preferred walks in the country to algebra and symbolic logic:—Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,Shalt show us how divine a thingA woman may be made.Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,Nor leave thee, when grey hairs are nigh,A melancholy slave;But an old age serene and brightAnd lovely as a Lapland night,Shall lead thee to thy grave.

Where is the woman, recognizable as such, who will question that the brother of Dorothy Wordsworth was right?

In the following pages, it is sought to show that, women being constructed by Nature, as individuals, for her racial ends, they best realize themselves, are happier and more beautiful, live longer and more useful lives, when they follow, as mothers or foster-mothers in the wide and scarcely metaphorical sense of that word, the career suggested in Wordsworth's lovely lines.

It remains to state the most valuable end which this book might possibly achieve—an end which, by one means or another, must be achieved. It is that the best women, those favoured by Nature in physique and intelligence, in character and their emotional nature, the women who are increasingly to be found enlisted in the ranks of Feminism, and fighting the great fight for the Women's Cause, shall be convinced by the unchangeable and beneficent facts of biology, seen in the bodies and minds of women, and shall direct their efforts

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