Читать книгу The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization - Iwan 1872-1922 Bloch - Страница 24

“We can indeed hardly believe that anywhere in the entire organic world is there anything, of the same minute size, endowed with like energy and enterprise as these so-called spermatozoa (‘little sperm animals’), which are indeed not animals, and which yet prepare for us more joy and more sorrow than any animal does. There everything is busy. With what turbulence they hurry along until they attain their ardently desired goal, and having attained it, thrust themselves head first into the interior of the ovum! In this we have a drama for the gods. To doubt the energy of these structures would be preposterous.”

Spermatozoa and ova are the original representatives of the respective spiritual natures of man and woman. Disregarding all further differentiation and individualization, the fundamental lineaments of the masculine and feminine natures harmonize with the demeanour of the reproductive cells; and we are able to recognize that for each is provided a different task, and yet that the task of each is no less important than that of the other. Quite rightly Rosa Mayreder points out, that the male sex stands biologically no higher than the female from the reproductive and procreative point of view; that in the continued reproduction of life male and female have equal share.

No less true, on the other hand, is the remark of Havelock Ellis, whose position in relation to the woman question is throughout objective:

“As long as women are distinguished from men by primary sexual characters—as long, that is to say, as they conceive and bear—so long will they remain unequal to man in the highest psychical processes” (“Man and Woman,” p. 21).

The nature of man is aggressive, progressive, variable; that of woman is receptive, more susceptible to stimuli, simpler.

Numerous exact, scientific, ethnological, and psychological investigations concerning the sexes, among the most important of which we may mention those of Darwin, Allan, Münsterberg, C. Vogt, Ploss-Bartels, Jastrow, Lombroso and Ferrero, Shaw, Havelock Ellis, and Helen Bradford Thompson, have confirmed the existence of these differences in the nature of the two sexes. Many individual points still remain obscure, but the above-mentioned sexual difference is everywhere recognizable, and can never be entirely eradicated, even by a higher psychical differentiation. Even the author of the “Critique of Femininity,” who would open an unlimited perspective to the freedom of individuality, is still compelled to admit that the majority of women differ from men, no less in character than in intellect.

Havelock Ellis, in his classical work “Man and Woman” (London, 1892), has given a summary of the psychical differences between the sexes, based upon the most recent anthropological and psychological investigations. This work forms the foundation for all later researches.

Of the individual psychical phenomena in man and woman, the sensory sensations first demand consideration. In these no absolute and general superiority of one sex over the other can be shown to exist. The assumption that women have a more delicate power of sensory receptivity cannot be sustained; indeed, the contrary appears the truer view. It is true that women can be more readily excited by sensory stimuli, but they do not possess a more delicate sensory receptivity.

As regards the general intellectual endowment of the sexes, the interesting experimental researches of Jastrow into the psychology of woman show that she possesses a greater interest in her immediate environment, in the finished product, in the decorative, the individual, and the concrete; man, on the other hand, exhibits a preference for the more remote, for that which is in process of construction or growth, for the useful, the general, and the abstract.

In agreement with these views is a report in the Berliner Städtischen Jahrbuch (1870, pp. 59-77), concerning the knowledge possessed by several thousands of boys and girls at the time of their entry into school. The report states:

“The more usual, the more approximate, and the easier an idea is, the greater is the probability that the girls will excel the boys, and vice versa. In boys more frequently than in girls do we find that they know nothing of quite common things in their immediate environment.”

Professor Minot arranged that persons of both sexes should cover ten cards with sketches of any subject they chose. It appeared from this experiment that the sketches of the men embraced a greater variety of subjects than those of the women.

In respect of quickness of comprehension and intellectual mobility woman is distinctly superior to man. Women, for example, read faster than men, and can give a better account of what they have read. From this fact, however, no conclusion can be drawn regarding their higher intellectual capacity, for many men of exceptional intelligence read very slowly.

Delaunay inquired of a number of merchants regarding the industrial capacity of the two sexes, and was informed that women are more diligent than men, but less intelligent, so that they can be trusted only in routine work.

In general, the experience of the postal service coincided with what has already been stated. Havelock Ellis regarded the result of an inquiry made at several of the large English post-offices as “typical and trustworthy.” One of the chief postmasters was of the opinion that as counter and instrumental clerks, doing concurrently money-order and savings-bank business, taking in telegrams and signalling and receiving, and in attending to rough and illiterate persons, women clerks were preferable to men. Women telegraphists work as intelligently and as exactly as their male colleagues. They do not, however, like the men, exhibit an interest in the technical working of telegraphy; and, owing to a lack of staying power, they are unable to compete with the men in times of pressure. The comparatively slighter strength of the wrist made it difficult for women telegraphists to write at the desired speed, and to produce the requisite number of copies.

All the reports agree in this—that

“Women are more docile and amenable to discipline, they do light work as well as men, and are steadier in some respects; on the other hand, they more often remain away from work on the ground of trifling indisposition, are more likely to fail to meet severe demands, and show less intelligence in respect of tasks lying outside the course of their current work, and in general show less desire and less capacity for self-culture.”

Unquestionable is the greater suggestibility of women, doubtless dependent on organic peculiarities, in consequence of which they so quickly become subject to the influence of persons and opinions, when the latter exercise a sufficiently powerful effect upon their emotional life. The independent, the poietic,[26] are more distant from women, are more foreign to their nature, than in the case of men. But that these are quite impossible to them I am compelled to doubt. And when, for example, Havelock Ellis considers it unthinkable that a woman should have discovered the Copernican system, I need merely call to mind the widely known physical discoveries of Madame Curie, whose thoroughly independent work qualified her to succeed her husband as professor at the Sorbonne. We cannot therefore exclude the possibility that in the sphere of the natural sciences notable discoveries and inventions may be made in the future in consequence of the independent work of women.

Very interesting are the observations of Paul Lafitte on the differences between the higher intellectual qualities of man and woman. After drawing attention to the greater receptivity of woman, he says:

“When children of both sexes are educated together, during the first year the girls lead; at this time they have to do chiefly with the reception and retention of impressions, and we see every day that women put men in the shade by the vividness of their impressions and the excellence of their memory. In addition to this we must take into account the inborn sense of women for symmetry, from which it is readily explicable that they generally receive geometrical instruction with very beneficial results. In correspondence with this, we find that woman students of medicine excel in the examinations in physiology and general pathology, and show a clearness of apprehension of series of facts which is really remarkable; on the other hand, they are distinctly inferior in clinical investigations, in which other intellectual qualities are involved. In general, women are more receptive for facts than for laws, more for the concrete than for general ideas. If we chance to hear an opinion expressed regarding someone with whom we are acquainted, a man’s opinion will probably be more accurate in the general outlines, but a woman’s will show a clearer perception of the nuances of character.”

Thus it is that among women concrete philosophers are greater favourites than abstract metaphysicians. According to the experience of a London bookseller, ladies of the West End of London prefer Schopenhauer, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Renan; that is to say, the most concrete, the most personal, the most poetical, and the most religious of thinkers. This last quality especially fascinates the mind of woman. At the same time, want of relationship between the strong suggestibility of woman and her slight power of independent production also strikingly manifests itself in woman’s position with regard to the religious phenomena of the spiritual life. Havelock Ellis shows that ninety-nine in every hundred of the great religious movements of the world have received their initial impulse from men. And yet it has always been women who have been the first to attach themselves to the founders of religions.

In contrast with this, women appear to possess more independent significance in the sphere of politics, as is shown by the fact that there has been such a large number of celebrated women rulers. Diplomatic adroitness, finesse, and self-command, to the extent to which these qualities favour political activity, are indeed specific feminine peculiarities.

The above-mentioned greater suggestibility of woman is connected with her greater emotivity; that is, woman reacts to physical and psychical stimuli more quickly than man. The “vasomotor theory” of the emotions, originated by Mosso and C. Lange, is true to a greater extent of woman than of man. Woman’s neuro-muscular system is more irritable, as is especially shown in the case of the pupil of the eye, and in that of the urinary bladder. By Mosso and Pellacani the bladder is termed the most sensitive psychometer in the body. Contraction of the bladder is well known to occur in many emotional states, such as fear, expectation, tension, and bashfulness. This is much commoner in women and children than in men. The fact that in women under the influence of strong excitement there arises a powerful impulse to urinate, is a fact extremely well known to medical men and others with special opportunities for observation.

The greater neuro-muscular irritability of woman may also be explained as the result of the relatively greater size of her abdominal organs.

To this greater irritability of woman there corresponds a greater susceptibility to fatigue. It appears as a result of any long-lasting task; it is, in fact, a safeguard against over-exertion, which in man so commonly leads to complete exhaustion, because he works too long. The ease with which a woman becomes exhausted is no doubt partly dependent upon the physiological anæmia to which we alluded in the last chapter—to the larger quantity of water and the smaller quantity of red blood-corpuscles (erythrocytes) in her blood.

Havelock Ellis has detected a decline in the emotivity of modern woman, under the influence of custom and education, especially as a result of the great diffusion of bodily sports among girls. But he does not believe that anything of the kind can lead to a complete abolition of the emotional differences between the sexes, since these depend upon firmly established bodily differences, such as the greater extension of the sexual sphere and of the visceral functions in woman, upon woman’s physiological anæmia, and upon the more marked periodicity of her vital processes.

“So many factors work in combination, in order to give a basis for the play of the emotions, whose greater extension can be overcome by no alteration of the milieu, or of custom. The emotivity of woman may be reduced to finer and more delicate shades, but it can never be brought down to the level of the emotivity of the male sex.”

In respect of artistic endowment the male sex is unquestionably superior to the female. The long series of male poets, musicians, painters, sculptors, of the highest genius cannot be matched by any notable number of striking female personalities in the same sphere of artistic activity. Even the art of cooking has been further developed by men. Without doubt the differences in sexuality are the principal causes of this deficiency. The impetuous, aggressive character of the male sexual impulse also favours poietic endeavours, the transformation of sexual energy into higher plastic activity, as it fulfils itself in the moments of most exalted artistic conception. The greater variability of the male also serves to explain the greater frequency of male artists of the first rank.

John Hunter, Burdach, Darwin, Havelock Ellis, and others, have shown that there exists a greater tendency on the part of man to divergence from type. In the course of evolution, man represents the more variable and progressive, woman the more monotonous and conservative, moiety of mankind. These differences find no less clear expression in the psychical sphere. Notwithstanding increasing individual differentiation—in truth, affecting only the minority, the élite among women, as Rosa Mayreder very rightly insists—this great difference in the variability of the sexes will ever continue. This biological fact is certainly of great importance in respect of civilization and of the relation between the sexes.

In a comparison between man and woman, the important fact of menstruation must never be forgotten. Menstruation is only the expression, only a phase, of a continuous undulatory movement in the entire feminine organism. The intellectual and emotional state of woman is, beyond question, a different one in different phases of the monthly cycle. Icard, and recently Francillon (“Essai sur la Puberté chez la Femme”—“Essay on Puberty in Woman,” pp. 189-198; Paris, 1906), have given us exact information on this subject.

“In all tests of strength and cleverness,” says Havelock Ellis, “the woman’s degree of strength and exactitude is related to the level of her monthly curve. Moreover, in every criminal procedure, the relation between the time of occurrence of the alleged crime and the accused’s monthly cycle should invariably be taken into consideration.”

The results obtained by Helen Bradford Thompson by experimental research in her “Comparative Psychology of the Sexes” (Würzburg, 1905) agree in general with the details we have already given as the result of earlier researches. In her experiment also

“man proved better developed in respect of motor capacity and accuracy of judgment. Woman had, indeed, sharper senses and a better memory. The opinion, however, that emotional excitement plays a greater part in the life of woman has not been confirmed. On the contrary, woman’s greater tendency towards religion and towards superstition is a proof of her conservative nature, of her function to guard established beliefs and modes of action.”

Thus we cannot expel from the world the fact that man and woman are eminently different alike physically and mentally. Whether, as Alfons Bilharz declares, they are really throughout equivalent opposites, or, as he expresses the comparison, like +1 and -1, their sum is equivalent to nil, must remain at present undetermined. But that ineradicable differences exist is certain. There is no question here of an inferiority to man. What woman lacks on one side she has more of on another. She is through and through a creature constructed on other lines, standing nearer to Nature than man, and for this reason, like Nature, problematical, the great guardian of the secrets of Nature (Bärenbach).

“Who shall explain the wonderful

Magic power of woman?”

says Platen, thus touching an aspect of ancient German sentiment, which has also found expression in the sanctum aut providum of Tacitus. Ovid, Byron, Börne, and Rousseau, have also described the wonderful and mysterious influence of woman’s nature, fundamentally different from that of man. Most beautifully has it been described by Theodor Mundt in the following magnificent passage of his book on Charlotte Stieglitz:

“The most secret elements of woman’s nature, in association with the magic mystery of her organization, indicate the existence in her of peculiar and deep-lying creative ideas, and in this wonderful riddle of love we find the sympathetic of the entire universe expressed. The sympathetic, which attracts and binds forces, the silent music in the innermost being of the world’s soul, by means of which the stars, the suns, bodies, spirits, are compelled to move in this eternal, changeable rhythm, and in this continuous opposition—is the feminine of the universe. This is the eternal feminine, of which Goethe says that it draws us heavenward. Therefore there is nothing deeper, more gentle, more unsearchable, than a woman’s heart. All-movable, it extends into that wonderful distance of existence, and hears with fine nerves the most hidden elements of existence. Touched and shaken by every sound, like a spiritual harp, the most hidden aspects of nature and of life often evoke in its strings prophetic oscillations. The feminine is something common to all life, the most gentle psyche of existence, and hence the fine connexion of the feminine nature with the general organizations, operations, and world forces; hence the mysterious force of attraction which exercises itself in such a magic manner as the true pole of sex, as though each one only in, and with, the true feminine could first find peace.... The ancients made a remarkable use of this idea of a common feminine element in human nature, inasmuch as by the name they gave to the pupil of the eye they expressed the idea that a young girl was to be found in every man’s eye. Young girls (pupillæ, κοραι)—these formed the centre of the human eye, as Winkelmann points out; and is it possible to describe the eye more aptly and distinctively, this radiant chiaroscuro of the hidden basis of the soul, than by ascribing femininity to it—femininity, which rises from that hidden basis of the soul as an Anadyomene rises from the deep?”

Nietzsche speaks also of the “veil” of beautiful possibilities with which woman is covered, and which makes the charm of her life. This undefinable spiritual emanation, this dark, irrational element in woman, led von Hippel to coin the clever phrase that woman is a comma, man a full-stop. “With man, you know where you are—you have come to an end; but with woman, there is something more to be expected.” From this inward nature of woman there proceed immense results: the feminine essence is a civilizing factor of the first rank; were woman wanting, civilization would be non-existent. Very beautifully has the great Buckle drawn attention to the indispensability of woman for the spiritual progress of mankind. He remarks that men, the slaves of experience and of fact, have only the women to thank for the fact that their slavery has not become much more complete and more narrowing. Women’s way of thinking, their spiritual care, their intercourse, their influence, diffuse themselves unnoticed through the whole of society, and take their place throughout its entire structure. By means of this influence, more than by any other cause, we men have been conducted, says Buckle, to a completely thought-out world.

This obscure, wonderful nature of woman has, however, its shadowy side. Upon it depends that primitive, deeply-rooted antipathy of the sexes, which is due to their profound heterogeneity, to the impossibility that they can ever really understand one another. Herein lie the roots of the brutal enslavement of woman by man in the course of history; of the belief in witchcraft; of contempt for women, and the continued renewal of theoretical misogyny. The victory of sexual love over this contrast is often apparent only. Leopardi, and Theophile Gautier (in “Mademoiselle de Maupin”), have shown how little woman understands the inner nature of man; how little man understands woman has been poetically described by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.

For this reason, true love is an understanding of the contrasted natures, a solution of the riddle. “Être aimé, c’est être compris,” says Delphine de Girardin.

What significance for the so-called “woman’s question” has the determination of the existence of psychical sexual differences? We answer: The nature of woman, completely developed in all her peculiarities, and enriched throughout her being by all the spiritual elements of our times adequate to her being, ensures her an equal share in civilization and in the progress of humanity.

Complete equality between man and woman is impossible. But are all sides of woman’s nature as yet adequately worked upon, fully developed? Is not the civilized woman of the future still to be created? The true nucleus of the woman’s movement is, I conceive, to be found in the emancipation of woman from the dominion of pure sensuality, and from the not less disastrous dominion of masculine spiritual arrogance. Have we men really any right to pride ourselves to such a degree upon our knowledge and intelligence? Should we without woman have advanced anything like so far?

A glance at the beginnings of human civilization should teach us a little modesty, for there we see that woman was equal, if not superior, to man in productive, poietic activity. Gradually only, in the progress of civilization, man supplanted woman, and monopolized all spheres of productive activity, whilst woman was limited more and more to domestic occupations. According to Karl Bücher, to women were originally allotted all the labours connected with the obtaining and subsequent utilization of vegetable materials, also the provision of the apparatus and vessels necessary for this purpose; to man, on the other hand, were allotted the chase, fishing, herding, and the provision of weapons and tools. Thus woman was engaged in threshing and grinding the grain, in baking bread, in the preparation of food and drink, in the making of pots, and in spinning. Since these occupations are largely conducted in a rhythmical manner, and the women worked together in the fields or in their huts, while the men hunted singly in the forests, it resulted that women were the first creators of poetry and music.

“Not,” writes Bücher, “upon the steep summits of society did poetry originate; it sprung rather from the depths of the pure strong soul of the people. Women have striven to produce it; and as civilized man owes to woman’s work much the best of his possessions, so also are her thought and her poetry interwoven in the spiritual treasure handed down from generation to generation. To follow the traces of woman’s poetry farther, in the intellectual life of the people, would be a valuable exercise. Although these traces have to a large extent disappeared, during the subsequent period of man’s poetic activity, which appears to have gained predominance in proportion as men monopolized the labours of material production, still, in a number of races the influence of woman’s poetry can be followed for a long way into the literary period.”

To a large extent men first learned from women the elements of the various handicrafts. For instance, as Mason says, primeval woman gave her “ulu”[27] to the saddler, and taught him the mode of preparing leather. Women were the first discoverers of numerous industries and handicrafts. The further development of these in later times was the work of men; men alone understood how to differentiate their work, while from the first it was inevitable that motherhood should greatly limit the working powers of woman.

In the middle ages there still existed in Europe, especially in Germany and France, certain industries which were exclusively in the hands of women—for instance, the silk-spinners, silk-weavers, tailoresses, and girdle-makers. In all these occupations there were mistresses, maids, and female apprentices. It was not until the sixteenth century that manufactures became a monopoly of the male sex. In the eighteenth century women were actually forbidden by law to take part in manufactures, until in recent times a reaction in their favour took place.

Therefore we must not from the present conditions judge the capacity of women for practical activity outside the home. I quite agree with Gerland, who assumes that during this oppression of the female sex for thousands of years, a certain deteriorating influence must have been exercised, and I agree also with Havelock Ellis, who hopes much from the development in the civilization of the future of an equal freedom for man and woman, and who demands that we should acquire experience by unlimited experiment regarding the qualifications of the female sex for all departments of activity. Golden words as to the necessity for a comprehensive emancipation of woman were uttered in 1865 by the celebrated anthropologist Thomas Huxley, in his essay on “Emancipation—Black and White,” in which he strongly condemns the present system for the education of girls:

“Let us have ‘sweet girl graduates’ by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the ‘golden hair’ will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within. Nay, if obvious practical difficulties can be overcome, let those women who feel inclined to do so descend into the gladiatorial arena of life, not merely in the guise of retiariæ, as heretofore, but as bold sicariæ, breasting the open fray. Let them, if they so please, become merchants, barristers, politicians. Let them have a fair field, but let them understand, as the necessary correlative, that they are to have no favour. Let Nature alone sit high above the lists, ‘rain influence and judge the prize.’”

And that men would maintain their old position cannot be doubted. The only change would be that women, too, would take part in the work of civilization.[28] They would introduce a new and fresh element into this work; and inasmuch as every woman would be brought up systematically with a view to her life’s work, the physically and psychically disastrous idleness of unmarried young girls, of “old maids,” and of “misunderstood women,” would come to an end, and these unattractive types would pass away for ever. The work of mother and housewife must, in correspondence with these changes, be more highly esteemed than has hitherto been the case. The technique and the theory of domestic economy can even now, with sufficient intelligence devoted to the question, be remodelled and transformed to a satisfying activity.[29]

Woman is an integral constituent of the processes of civilization, which, without her, becomes unthinkable. The present moment is a turning-point in the history of the feminine world. The woman of the past is disappearing, to give place to the woman of the future; instead of the bound, there appears the free personality.