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37

In considering what is the best mental equipment for women in civilised countries it is as well not to contemplate only the great general facts of life, such as wifehood, motherhood, and the woman’s position in the household. It is necessary to take into account also the special characteristics and circumstances of our own times and civilisation; for, unless a woman is prepared to meet these successfully, she cannot be deemed adequately equipped, even if from other points of view her education be ideal. In the beautiful old-fashioned education of Japanese women we have an instance of such ideal excellence, which is yet proving unable to cope with the requirements of actual life in modern Japan.

The most striking, and also the most radical and pervasive, characteristic of our time is, of course, the progress made in scientific knowledge. Month by month enormous numbers of facts are, in every department, added to the knowledge already acquired. To let one’s imagination range, even in a cursory way, over the work that is being done in 38 chemistry and physics merely as they concern biology—to enumerate the subdivisions of these sciences, or to look down a list of recent publications relating to research carried on in them, is enough to make one’s brain reel.

This ceaseless widening of the borders of knowledge is, we must gladly allow, most inspiriting; and yet, seen from another side, it may well give rise to fears. For it is fairly obvious that the progress of human happiness goes by no means pari passu with this progress of knowledge; and, on looking more closely, we may even observe miseries and degradations which can be traced up directly to the practical application of some of those scientific discoveries.

To what must we ascribe this? It would seem to be the outcome of two lines of tendency just now predominant.

The first of these is that very strong bent towards mere accumulation of fresh facts which may be noted in the most able and active workers all over the world. Just as, in other times, the best minds have flung themselves with enthusiasm upon art or literature or philosophy or statesmanship or war, so now they fling themselves eagerly upon the discovery of more and more recondite truths in science—leaving the ordinary government of affairs, on the whole, to minds of the second order.

The next is the reckless way in which isolated scientific discoveries—more especially in physics and chemistry—are brought to a practical application 39 and introduced into the scheme of everyday human life. This is done without consideration of anything beyond ensuring some obvious superficial convenience, and—what is a principal determinant—the opening up of new financial enterprises. Advantages of a sort no doubt are won—but often only at a fearfully disproportionate cost. The game—if we would but look at it unconventionally, from the standpoint of true biological science—is not worth the candle; for it involves a sacrifice of life itself to what can hardly be considered even as the means of life.

Thus the chemicals used to preserve food impair its nutritive qualities; while other chemicals, as well as a number of ingenious mechanical processes, serve to facilitate adulteration. We all know how difficult it is to obtain pure milk and butter, or pure bread from pure flour, or jams made with sugar from fresh and good fruit. Bread may be made from flour which has passed through no less than seven processes,—a sad contrast this to the old home-made bread, the product of home-ground meal, whole and sweet as nature made it. What is sold in enormous quantities to the people as sugar, whether alone or as part of preserves, turns out often to be glucose. Butter, so-called, is often only skilfully-treated fats, the weight helped out by water. These three articles of diet alone, when adulterated as they thus often are, mean serious deterioration in the food—and therefore in the physique—of the nation; and to them we have 40 yet to add the effect of the chemicals used for keeping fish and meat in place of the genuine, old-fashioned pickling, salting, and smoking.

Machinery, again, growing ever more and more complicated, has destroyed an incalculable wealth of traditional activity: and therewith, generation by generation, it tends to destroy the finest capacities of individual men and women, whether producers or consumers of the finished product. The consumers suffer through the lack of opportunity to acquire and exercise manual dexterity and resourcefulness—as well as through a great lack of experimental knowledge. The producers suffer through the monotony and narrowness of their labour.

We may take as other instances of recklessness our common use of unprotected illuminants—electric light and incandescent gas-mantles—which give off ultra-violet rays injurious to the eyes; the use of portable electric lamps and switch lampholders, which is by no means free from risk; and again the extreme recklessness of the so-called “medical electrician,” who will actually venture to give electrical massage to a patient immediately after wet pack.[12]

As a last example we may take the rage for speed, and in particular the use of electrically driven motor-cars. The exact effects upon the human frame of the rapid motion, of the vibrations, of the presence of the electric current and escaping gas have never been adequately investigated—though 41 sundry ill consequences of motor-driving have been noted without any diminution of the practice.

A very cursory reflection may show us that, while the progress of science is the great characteristic fact of modern life to which we all have to adjust ourselves, we must be prepared not only to take advantage of the good it offers, but also to discern and counteract the perils it brings with it, when applied to human life in our present somewhat random way.

The random nature of our proceedings may be illustrated from yet another side. There are a number of facts and principles, long since agreed upon as truly ascertained, which have never, or only very partially, been brought to bear upon custom and daily life. We all know that plenty of fresh air is a first condition of health and vigour; and are so far convinced of this verity that open-air treatment is generally accepted as the proper mode of attacking and mastering consumption. Yet we crowd together into cities: our houses are often very imperfectly ventilated, and our public buildings—churches, theatres, halls, schools and institutions, as well as our railway-carriages and tram-cars—provide only for the very minimum of change of air. Similar neglect of definitely ascertained facts may be seen in dress, in food and drink, in furniture, in occupations. Noise is well known to be injurious to the brain, and destructive to thought: more than that, it has been discovered that it is harmful to the viscera. We insist, more or less, upon quiet 42 for the sick: but no trouble is taken about quiet for those who are well. Our thoroughfares echo with noises of all kinds, from the roar of traffic to the howling and whistling of errand-boys; and the authorities would be much surprised if they were accounted specially negligent for not making some effort to suppress them. Yet to any biologically trained person this noise must appear not disagreeable merely, but a real handicap to the health and energy of the community. Wherever faithfulness to scientific principle involves trouble without prospect of money-making, it is likely to be shirked, however great the benefits known to come from it.

This is not entirely due to laziness, nor yet to ignorance, it is due quite as much to circumstance and to the pressure of our present social institutions. It is closely bound up with the great social question of the ownership of land, and with the husbandry and use of the resources of the land, our rivers and our sea-shore. Wasting a great measure of what these have to give us, polluting them in different ways by our manufactures and by the refuse of our cities, we are constraining whole masses of our population to look to the work and the products of other countries for the first necessities of life. Whole masses of our population are removed from direct contact with the soil, which is the nursing-mother not only of the body, but also of the mind of man; the people and the land being thus alike impoverished. Inquiring how so dangerous an error can have 43 arisen, we may find at least part of its cause to lie in an ignorance of the fundamental principles of biology, the science of life.

What, it may now be asked, is to be done to counteract these disadvantages and dangers? And, again, how does all this bear on the equipment of women?

Taking the latter question first: it is indisputable that an enormous proportion of our commerce and manufactures is concerned with food and with articles required for the home. But things for the home are made to be dealt with and used by women. In so far as science comes in and modifies this material it is imperative that women should be placed in a position, not only to know what are the essentials for life, but also to criticise and estimate accurately that which is offered to them as scientific improvement. For we need, in this connection also, to remember that science can only be fought by science—that is, by knowledge belonging to the same plane.

We have now in part answered our former question. What we need is a central or basal science to which—for practical purposes and in regard to its practical application—the work done in other sciences can be brought to be accepted, or rejected, or modified. This central science can, in the very nature of things, be none other than biology: the science, that is, which gives an account of the functions and inter-relations and structure of all living things, and deduces therefrom 44 those principles which, in a rather loose way, we speak of as the laws of life.

It would, we think, be a very happy turn of affairs if, not all, but some of that genius, which is now spending itself in the research for fresh facts, could be diverted to the work of correlating with one another facts already known, and bringing all those that are appropriate to be grouped as it were in order of service around biology.

But perhaps not less important than this is what we may call the practical synthetic work of women in their households. There are, indeed, two circumstances which would give the ordinary woman of average intelligence, if she were but adequately instructed, some advantage, so far as the service of mankind goes, over even the most brilliant man of genius. The first is the vantage-ground of her position in the home—at the very point, that is, where so many sciences thrust themselves up together to the surface of actual life—where in some way or other, however roughly, they have to be correlated, compared, their different claims adjusted. The second is the natural inclination of the womanly mind towards synthesis rather than analysis, towards practice rather than theory.

We ought now to consider rather closely—exhaustively we cannot—what is included under the term Biology. It stood for some time chiefly to mean an account of the structures of animals and plants, structure being pursued into ever further minuteness, down to the cell and the constituents and parts of the cell. With this has 45 gone insistent inquiry into the process of reproduction and growth; and more lately, in bio-chemistry and bio-physics, the conformity of living substance to the order recognised in non-living matter has been, and is being, most eagerly investigated. And now a school of biologists is arising whose aim is the vindication of the claims of function as against the too exclusive study of structure. Function, of course, involves activity; and activity, in a complex, multicellular organism, involves the interplay of parts. This interplay, again, cannot be studied without reference to the environment, and to the relations between the organism in question and others—whether of its own or of other species. In this way it seems likely that biology—moving as it were in a spiral—will by-and-by return, though at a much higher level, to the standpoint of the older naturalists, whose interest in plants and animals was focussed more upon their activities, habits of life and special environment than upon their morphology—and even disdained not to consider their possible uses for man. Also, more thoroughly and extensively than before, the study of man himself is being caught up into the great web of Biology. It is seen as an integral part of Biology, and pursued in the biological spirit. Whether we look to psychology on the one hand, or to anthropology and its associated sciences on the other, the present is a most propitious moment for drawing public attention to this vast science, as being the true centre and foundation of that practical knowledge which is 46 needed as a guide, and also as a stimulus, for practical everyday life.

It will, of course, be instantly objected that the subject is indeed vast—much too vast. But not too vast, surely, if, by means of a very simple principle, we select out what is of immediate definite use, and necessary for everybody, from what may be, by the majority, safely left on one side. We shall then get, on this side, the highly specialised Biology of the laboratory with its minute researches and nicely calculated experiments, and, on that, what we may, for our present purpose, call Common-sense Biology.

Just one word of explanation is perhaps needed at the outset. Common-sense Biology does not mean anything like that slipshod dealing with miscellaneous phenomena of nature which sometimes goes by the name of Nature Study. It is a course of work systematic and strictly scientific, conducted as truly as any other in the scientific spirit. It presents, however, two points of contrast with special or analytical Biology, in that, whereas, in analytical Biology, a beginning may be made practically anywhere, with any series of facts one may prefer to take first, in Common-sense Biology there is only one right mode of starting, and that of the utmost importance; while, secondly, Common-sense Biology combines some of the characteristics of an art with the ordinary characteristics of a science.