In a curious old black-letter volume entitled The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes, published in England in 1521 by Henry Pepwell, occurs the following passage: "I mervayle gretely of the opynyon of some men that say they wolde in no wyse that theyr daughters or wyves or kynnes-women sholde lerne scyences, and that it sholde apayre theyr condycyons. This thing is not to say ne to sustayne. That the woman apayreth by conynge it is not well to beleve. As the proverb saythe, 'that nature gyveth may not be taken away.'"

The book from which this remarkable quotation is taken is a translation of Christine de Pisan's La CitÉ des Dames, which was written early in the fifteenth century. It is a capital defence against the slanderers of the gentler sex and an armory of arguments for all time against those men who declare that "women are fit for nothing but to bear children and spin." It shows conclusively that conynge—knowledge—far from tending to injure women's character—apayre theyr condycyons—as was asserted by Christine's antagonists, contributes, on the contrary, to elevate and ennoble them and to render them better mothers and more useful members of society.

Notwithstanding that it was written five hundred years ago, and notwithstanding its "antiquated allegorical dress and its quaint pre-Renaissance notions of history," it is in many of its aspects a surprisingly modern production. The line of argument adopted by the writer is virtually the same as that which is adopted to-day in the discussion of the same questions which are so ably treated in this long-forgotten book[89] and show that Christine de Pisan was in every way a worthy champion of her sex.

No woman of her time was more competent to discuss the capacity of her sex for science as well as for other intellectual pursuits than was this learned daughter of Italy. She was not only a woman of profound and varied knowledge, but was also, as stated in the preceding chapter, the first woman to earn her living by her pen. Besides writing The City of Ladies and more verses—mostly ballads and virelays—than are contained in the Divina Commedia, she was also the author of many other works on the most diverse subjects. She is best known to historians as the author of Livre des Fais et Bonnes Meurs du sage Roy Charles V, which is a graphic account of the court and policy of this monarch, and of the Livre des Faits d'Armes et de Chevalerie. The latter work is not, as might be imagined from its title, a collection of tales of chivalry, but, incredible as it may seem, a profound and systematic treatise on military tactics and international law. It deals with "many topics of the highest policy, from the manners of a good general and the minutiÆ of siege operations to the wager of battle, safe-conducts and letters of marque," and was deemed so important by Henry VII that at his expressed desire it was translated into English and published by Caxton under the title of The Boke of Fayettes of Armes and Chyvalrye. Even so late as the time of Henry VIII it was regarded as an authoritative manual on the topics treated.

So great, indeed, was the extent and variety of Christine's attainments, so thoroughly had she studied the Latin and Greek authors, sacred and profane, and so profound was her knowledge of all the subjects which she dealt with in her numerous books that "one cannot but feel a certain astonishment when one finds in a woman in the fourteenth century an erudition such as is hardly possessed by the most laborious of men."

When we read the eloquent plea which this learned woman of five centuries ago makes in behalf of her sex, when we note the examples she quotes of women "illumined of great sciences," and consider the arguments by which she demonstrated the capacity of women for all scientific pursuits, we can easily fancy that we are reading the brief of some modern exponent of the woman's rights movement and are almost disposed to believe that La BruyiÈre was right when he declared, Les anciens ont tout dit. For so cogent is Christine's reasoning and so thoroughly does she traverse her subject from every point of view that she has left later writers little to add to the controversy except matters of detail which were not available in her time.

In spite, however, of Christine's Cyte of Ladyes, "in which," according to our mediÆval paragon, "women, hitherto scattered and defenceless, were forever to find refuge against all their slanderers," in spite of the fact that the foundations of this city were laid by Reason, that its walls and cloisters were built on Righteousness, and its battlements and high towers on Justice, in spite of the fact that the material entering into its construction was "stronger and more durable than any marble," and that it was, as our author declares, "a city right fair, without fear and of perpetual during to the world—a city that should never be brought to nought," Christine's work was soon lost sight of, and the right of women to the same intellectual advantages as men was as strongly denied as it had been before she had so valiantly championed their cause, and denied, too, on the assumed ground of their innate incapacity.

It mattered not that during the succeeding centuries other women took up the cause for which the author of La CitÉ des Dames had so nobly battled; it mattered not that countless women in every civilized country of the globe distinguished themselves by their achievements in every department of science and gave evidence of talent and genius of the highest order; it mattered not that chivalrous representatives of the sterner sex, like John Stuart Mill, came forward to plead the case of that half of humanity which had so long been held in cruel subjection. The attitude of the world toward the intellectually disfranchised sex remained unchanged almost until our own time.

But, although women now enjoy advantages in the pursuit of science which were undreamed of only a generation ago, the age-old prejudices respecting woman's mental powers and her capacity for the more abstract branches of science still prevail. It is useless to cite instances of women who have attained eminence in astronomy, mathematics, archÆology, or in any other science whatever. Such instances, we are assured, are only exceptions and prove nothing. Men like Lombroso are willing to admit the existence of an occasional woman of talent, but they deny the existence of genius in one who is truly a womanly woman.[90] For, with Goncourt, they flippantly assert, Il n'y a pas de femmes de gÉnie: lorsqu'elles sont des gÉnies, elles sont des hommes—there are no women of genius; when they have genius they are men.

The reasons that now influence men for affirming the intellectual disparity of the sexes are, it must be observed, quite different from what they were in the time of Christine de Pisan—quite different from what they were half a century ago. Our forebears, in their endless disputations regarding woman's mental inferiority, based their arguments on a priori deductions, or on metaphysical considerations which proved nothing and which were often irrelevant, if not absurd.

Thus the Aristotelians, accepting as true the doctrine of the four elements as well as the superimposed doctrine of the four elemental qualities, sought to explain the properties of all compound bodies by these primal qualities. In this way they explained the various virtues of drugs and medicines. And by the same process of reasoning they explained the assumed difference between male and female brains. They assumed, to begin with, that there was a difference between the intellectual capacities of men and women. They then assumed that this difference in capacity was due to the difference in character and texture of the female as compared with those of the male brain. They next further assumed that the doctrines of the four elements and of the four elemental qualities were established beyond question, and then assumed again that the reason of woman's inferior capacity was due to the fact that her brain was moister and softer, and, therefore, more impressionable than that of man. No wonder that the old Spanish Benedictine, Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, in his chivalrous Defensa de la Mujer, lost all patience with such fantastic theorizers and wrote: "Did I write ... to display my wit, I could easily, by deducting a chain of consequences from received principles, shew that man's understanding, weighed in the balance with female capacity, would be found so light as to kick the beam."[91]

Abandoning the Aristotelian method of envisaging the question under discussion, our modern philosophers have recourse to the recent sciences of biology and psycho-physiology to prove what they, too, assume to be true—viz., woman's incurable mental weakness. Like their predecessors, they are dominated by passion, prejudice, the errors of countless centuries, and, like them, they approach the subject on which they are to pronounce judgment, with minds warped by long ages of imperious instincts, ignorant preconceptions and social bias. They will quote the opinions of Proudhon and Schopenhauer—as if they had the value of mathematical demonstrations—on the mental inferiority of women, and will declare with unblushing assurance that no woman has ever produced a single work of any kind of enduring worth. With the German pessimist, they will blatantly declare, taken as a whole, "women are and remain thoroughgoing Philistines and quite incurable."[92] With the French socialist they will assert, as if it were an axiomatic truth, that "thought in every living being is proportional to force"—that "physical force is not less necessary for thought than for muscular labor."

They have apparently no more doubt respecting the truth of these assumptions than had their predecessors, the Aristotelians, respecting their assumptions of the four elements and their first qualities. Their process of reasoning is somewhat as follows: "Woman is smaller and weaker than man. This is a matter of simple observation, confirmed by the teachings of physiology. Therefore, woman is physically and intellectually inferior to man. Therefore she is incapable of any of those great conceptions and achievements in science or philosophy which have so distinguished the male sex in every age of the world's history. That she is thus weaker and inferior physically and intellectually and forever incapacitated from successfully competing with man in the intellectual arena is a fatality for which, we are gravely told, there is no remedy, and to which women, consequently, must resign themselves as to one of the inexorable laws of nature."

It would be difficult to cite a more preposterous example of ratiocination. If it were true that there is a necessary relation between vigor of body and vigor of mind; that mental power is proportional to physical power; that thought is but a special form of energy and capable of transformation, like heat, light and electricity; that it, like the various physical forces, has its chemical and mechanical equivalents; that psychic work corresponds to a certain amount of chemical or thermic action; that intellectual capacity in man is proportional to muscular strength; it would follow that the great leaders of thought and action through the ages have been Goliaths in stature and Herculeses in strength. But so far is this conclusion from being warranted that it is almost the reverse of the truth. For many, if not the majority, of the great geniuses of the world in every age have been either men of small frame or men of delicate and precarious health.

Among the men of genius who were noted for their diminutive stature were Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Archimedes, Epicurus, Horace, Albertus Magnus, Montaigne, Lipsius, Spinoza, Erasmus, Lalande, Charles Lamb, Keats, Balzac and Thiers. Many others were remarkable for their spare form. Among these in the prime of life were Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, St. Paul, Kepler, Pascal, Boileau, FÉnelon, D'Alembert, Napoleon, Lincoln and Leo XIII. Others, like Æsop, Brunelleschi, Leopardi, Magliabecchi, Parini, Scarron, Talleyrand, Pope, Goldsmith, Byron, Sir Walter Scott, to mention only a few of the most eminent, were either hunchbacked, lame, rachitic or clubfooted.

Others, still, were the victims of chronic ill health, or of nervous disorders of the most serious character. Virgil was of a delicate and frail constitution. He essayed the bar, but shrank from it and turned to the "contemplation of diviner things." Nor was Horace, though less completely a recluse and more of a bon vivant, a strong man. Both of them, as scholars will remember, sought the couch, while MÆcenas went off to the tennis court. Pope's life, says Johnson, was a long disease. Johnson himself, though large and muscular, had queer health and a tormenting constitution. Schiller wrote most of his best work while struggling against a painful malady, and Heine's "mattress grave" is proverbial. France furnishes an excellent example in Pascal.[93]

Some of the most noted leaders of thought in our own era were likewise chronic invalids. Among these were the scholarly theologian, E. B. Pusey, and J. A. Symonds, the historian of the Renaissance. There was also Herbert Spencer, who was frequently forced by nervous breakdowns to take long periods of absolute rest. More remarkable still was the case of the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin. "It is," writes his son, "a principal feature of his life that for nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one long struggle against the weariness and the strain of sickness."[94] But, notwithstanding his continued ill health and the spinal anemia from which he suffered, he was able to conduct those epoch-making researches which put him in the forefront of men of science, and to write those famous books which have completely revolutionized our views of nature and nature's laws.

But a still more remarkable illustration of the fact that there is no necessary relation between muscular and mental power, between physical well-being and intellectual energy, is afforded by the illustrious discoverer of the world of the infinitely little, Louis Pasteur. Stricken by hemiplegia shortly after he had begun those brilliant investigations which have rendered him immortal, he remained affected by partial paralysis until the end of his life. His friends had reason to fear that this attack, even if he should survive it, would weaken or extinguish his spirit of initiative, if it did not make further work entirely impossible. But this was far from the case. For a quarter of a century he continued with unabated activity those marvelous labors which are forever associated with his name. And it was after, not before, his misfortune that he made his most famous discoveries in the domain of microbian life, and placed in the hands of physicians and surgeons those infallible means of combatting disease which have made him one of the greatest benefactors of suffering humanity. The complete separation of the intellectual from the motor faculties was never more clearly exhibited than in this case, nor was it ever more completely demonstrated by an experiment, whose validity no one could question, that power of mind does not necessarily depend on strength or health of body. It proved, also, in the most telling manner that it is not muscular but psychic force which avails most, whether to the individual or to society. And it showed, at the same time, the utter absurdity of those theories which would fatally connect intellectual with physical debility in woman, and would forever adjudge the physically weaker sex to be of hopeless inferiority in all things of the mind.

What has been said of men achieving renown, notwithstanding ill health, may likewise be affirmed of women. The case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is scarcely less remarkable than that of Darwin. In spite of being a chronic invalid the greater part of her life, she attained a position in letters reached by but few of her contemporaries. The same almost may be said of the three BrontË sisters. The deadly seeds of consumption were sown in their systems in early youth, but, although fully aware that life had "passed them by with averted head," they were, through their indomitable wills, able to send forth from their bleak home in the wild Yorkshire moors works of genius that still instruct and delight the world.

From the foregoing it is clear that valetudinarianism, if it prove anything, proves not that it renders intellectual effort impossible, but that it serves as a discipline for the soul. It forces the mind to husband its strength, and thus enables it to accomplish by economy and concentration of effort that which the same mind in a healthy body, with the distractions of society and the allurements of life, would be unable to accomplish. It exemplifies in the most striking manner the truth of what Socrates says in Plato's Republic about the beneficent action of the "bridle of Theages," preventing an infirm friend of his from embracing politics and keeping him true to his first love—philosophy.

Failing to show any necessary connection between superior physique and intellectual capacity, between health of body and mental activity, between the amount of food consumed and the degree of intelligence, the class of thinkers whose theories are now under consideration found themselves forced to abandon the argument based on robust health and physical strength and seek elsewhere for support of their views. This, they soon announced, was found in the greater cranial capacity and greater brain weight of the male as compared with that of the female. Following up this fancied clew, anthropologists the world over began measuring skulls and weighing brains in order to determine the supposed ratio of sex-difference.

The results of these investigations were far from corroborating the preconceived notions of those who had fancied a necessary correlation between mental capacity and size of cranium, between the weight of encephalon and degree of intelligence. For it was soon discovered that cranial capacity depended on many causes—many of them unknown—and that people having the largest skulls were often far from being the ones dowered with the greatest intellectual power. It was found, for instance, that climate was a determining factor—that the inhabitants of northern regions have larger heads than those who live farther south. Thus the Lapps, in proportion to their stature, have the largest heads in Europe. After these come in order the Scandinavians, the Germans, the French, the Italians, the Arabs.

It was found also that the least cranial capacity of the ancient Egyptians coincides with the most brilliant period of their civilization—that of the eighteenth dynasty. Measurements of skulls unearthed at Pompeii showed that the heads of the Romans who lived two thousand years ago were larger than the heads of the Romans of to-day. Similarly, the skulls of the lake-dwellers of Switzerland were larger than those of the Swiss people of the present time, while the average circumference of the skulls measured in the catacombs of Paris is more than an inch greater than that of the Parisians who have died during the last half century. The circumference of the skulls of a large number of mound-builders, excavated some years ago near Carrollton, Illinois, exceeded that of the average head of white men in New York of our day by nearly three inches. This shows that the culture of the white race during long centuries has not developed its cranial capacity to equal that of the uncultured Indians who flourished in the Mississippi valley untold generations ago.

The skulls of Quaternary men were likewise very voluminous, although they belonged to a race whose mental manifestations were infantile in the extreme. Even the celebrated Engis skull, one of the most ancient in existence, has been described by the late Professor Huxley as well formed and considerably larger than the average of the European skulls of to-day, not only in the width and height of the forehead, but also in the cubic capacity of the whole. Furthermore, the eminent craniologist, Broca, has proved that the illiterate peasants of Auvergne have a much greater cranial capacity than that of the learned and cultured denizens of Paris. And, as if to show conclusively that there is no necessary connection between intellectual capacity and size of cranium, authentic measurements disclose the fact that some of the most gifted men the world has known had small heads. Among these were Dante and Voltaire. The skull of the latter is one of the smallest which has thus far been observed.

What has been said regarding the relation of cranial volume to intellectual capacity, as revealed by the measurements of the skulls of ancient and modern, savage and civilized peoples may likewise be predicated of the differences in the sizes of the crania of men and women. No argument as to the greater or less intelligence of either sex can be based on mere craniometric determinations. "At the best, cranial capacity is but a rough indication of brain size; and to measure brain size by the external size of the skull furnishes still rougher and more fallacious approximations, since the male skull is more massive than the female."

Even the slight morphological differences between male and female skulls—some anthropologists deny that there are any at all—afford no more ground for conclusions in favor of the superiority of one or the other sex than the relative differences in size. Such trifling differences as do exist exhibit, as Virchow has pointed out, an approximation of men to the savage, simian and senile type, and an approach of women to the infantile type. Havelock Ellis, commenting on this difference, pertinently remarks, "It is open to a man in a Pharisaic mood to thank God that his cranial type is far removed from the infantile. It is equally open to woman in such a mood to be thankful that her cranial type does not approach the senile."[95]

But much stress as has been laid on physical power, health and cranial capacity, as determining factors of intellectual capacity and sexual differences, far greater stress has been laid on conclusions deducible from the relative brain weights of different classes of people as well as of different sexes. It was assumed that by a critical study of the brain, by careful weighings of many brains of both sexes and of many races, it would be easy to secure conclusive evidence that the size and weight of the brain increase with the amount of intelligence of the individual. It was also assumed that function not only makes the organ, but also develops it. Brain became synonymous with mind. A large brain implied vigor of thought; a small brain was evidence of mental inferiority.

Physiology had demonstrated unquestionably that the muscles of the body are enlarged by exercise. It was assumed by those who are wont to measure mind in terms of matter that the brain, being the organ of thought, was also developed by exercise. It was also assumed that the development of the brain was in a direct ratio to its activity. The greater its activity the greater its mass, and the greater the mass the greater the degree of intelligence. In other words, it was assumed that there was an exact and invariable proportion between weight of brain and amount of brain power.

None of the theories which have already been adverted to have been so full of assumptions and prejudices or vitiated by so many fallacies and over-hasty generalizations as this. No subject has possessed a greater fascination for anthropologists, and no subject has been prolific in more diverse and conflicting conclusions. Many men of science who, in other matters, were noted for their care in weighing evidence, before formulating theories, completely lost the scientific spirit when they began to weigh brains and to draw conclusions respecting the relations of brain weight and mental power, and to establish ratios between the character of the convolutions of the organ of thought and the degree of intelligence of its possessor.

Contrary to what is generally believed, a large brain is not always an indication of superior capacity or intelligence. There have been, it is true, a number of men of genius who were the possessors of large brains, but there have also been others whose brains were of but medium weight.

The largest known brains of intellectual workers were those of Cuvier, the noted zoÖlogist, and Turgenieff, the distinguished novelist. The brain of the Frenchman weighed 1830 grams, while that of the Russian totaled 2012 grams. Among other large brains—even larger than Cuvier's—were those of a bricklayer, which weighed 1900 grams, and of an ordinary laborer, which reached 1924 grams. The largest brains on record were that of an ignorant laborer named Rustan, which weighed 2222 grams; that of a weak-minded London newsboy, which weighed 2268 grams, and that of a twenty-one-year-old epileptic idiot, which had the unheard of weight of 2850 grams.[96]

The seven largest recorded female brains were three weighing 1580 grams each, one of which belonged to a medical student of marked ability, while the other two belonged to quite undistinguished women. There were two others weighing 1587 each, one of which belonged to an insane woman. Still heavier than these by far were the brains of an insane woman who died of consumption, and of a dwarfed Indian squaw. The brain of the first weighed 1742 grams; while that of the second was no less than 2084 grams.

From the foregoing examples it is evident that a large brain is far from being a certain index of mental capacity or of superior intelligence. It is frequently the very reverse. If, for instance, it fail to receive the necessary supply of blood, it will be inert or disordered and will prove to be a dangerous possession rather than a precious endowment. Epileptics usually have brains that are large relatively to the size of the body. And, while it is probably true that the great thinkers and men of action of the world have, in most instances, had comparatively large brains, it is also true that the brain weights of but few of them exceeded 1500 grams, while those of many fall below 1200 grams.

Thus the brain of Gambetta, "the foremost Frenchman of his time," weighed only 1159 grams, while the weight of the brain of Napoleon I was 1502 grams—barely equal to that of a negro described by the anthropologist Broca, and but little superior to that of a Hottentot mentioned by Dr. Jeffries Wyman.[97]

The late Dr. Joseph Simms found the average brain weight of sixty persons who were either imbeciles, idiots, criminals or men of ordinary mind to be 1792 grams, while that of sixty famous men was 1454 grams, a difference in favor of men not noted for intellectual greatness of 338 grams. These figures are far from showing that large brains are a necessary concomitant of mental capacity.

In view of these and many similar facts, we are not surprised that the eminent German anatomist and anthropologist, Rudolph Wagner, should declare that "very intelligent men do not differ strikingly in brain weight from less gifted men," and that the noted French physician, Esquirol, should assert that "no size or form of head or brain is incident to idiocy or superior talent."

So far as civilized races are concerned, there can be no doubt that the absolute weight of the male is greater than that of the female brain. According to the investigations of seven of the most notable anthropologists, who have given special attention to the subject under consideration, and who, collectively, have carefully weighed many thousands of brains, the average brain weight of men in Europe is 1381 grams, while that of women is 1237 grams. This shows a difference between the average weight of the brain in man and woman of 144 grams.

But, if it must be conceded that the absolute weight of man's brain is greater than woman's, is it likewise true that the relative weight is greater? This is a question which demands an answer, as it is impossible to come to any just conclusion respecting the intellectual capacity of woman expressed in terms of brain weight, unless we can affirm with certainty that men's brains are relatively, as well as absolutely, larger than those of women.

Speaking of the relative weight of brain in man implies a term of comparison. Several methods of estimating the sexual proportions of brain mass have been suggested, but only two of them have met with any favor. These are determining the ratio of brain weight to body weight or body height.

According to the investigations of anthropologists of acknowledged authority, the average brain weight of woman is to that of man in England and France as 90 is to 100. The average stature of men and women in the same countries is as 93 to 100. This gives man an excess of brain weight over that of woman of something more than an ounce. But this slight difference in weight has been considered sufficient to constitute it "a fundamental sexual distinction." When, however, it is considered that men are not only taller but also larger than women, this apparent advantage of an ounce in favor of the male entirely disappears, and the result is that the relative amount of brain mass in the two sexes is practically equal.

Because of the manifest inaccuracy of the stature criterion, many eminent anthropologists have prepared to estimate sexual differences in brain weight by adopting the method based on the ratio of brain mass to body weight. According to this method, women are found to possess brains which are equal to or even somewhat larger than those of men. If the comparative excess of non-vital tissue in the form of fat in woman be eliminated and estimates be based only on the active organic mass of her body, as compared with the same mass in man, the excess of brain weight in woman over that in man will be still more marked.

A careful study, then, of the brain as a whole, far from proving woman's inferiority to man, rather proves her superiority. The same may be said regarding sexual distinctions based on certain parts of the brain.

Some years ago it was positively asserted that the development of the frontal lobe exhibited a pronounced difference in the two sexes. It was said to be much greater in man than in woman and was regarded as a distinguishing characteristic of the male sex. This was in keeping with the generally accepted assumption that this portion of the brain is the seat of the higher intellectual processes. Further investigation, however, showed that there was practically no sexual difference in the frontal lobe of the brain, or, if there was a difference, it was probably in favor of woman.

It has also become recognized that there is no valid reason for considering the anterior portion of the brain as the seat of the higher mental functions. It is possible, but in the present state of science it can neither be affirmed nor denied. So far as our present knowledge goes, it seems more likely that the whole of the brain, especially the sensori-motor regions of its middle part, have a part in mental operations. At all events, it can certainly be affirmed that Huschke's distinction of man and woman into homo frontalis et homo parietalis is utterly devoid of foundation in fact.

Many anthropologists have fancied that a certain index of the degree of intelligence is to be found in the convolutions of the brain. The tortuous foldings of the female brain, it is asserted, are less ample, less pronounced and less beautiful. "Behold," they exclaim, "a most positive evidence of inferiority." These men overlook the fact that certain animals, notably the elephant and divers species of cetaceans, have cerebral convolutions that are more complex than those of man. If, then, brain convolutions were, as claimed, a certain index of the degree of intelligence, the whale or the elephant, and not man—pace Shakespeare—would be "the paragon of animals."

But men of science are by no means at one on this alleged sexual difference in brain convolutions. On the contrary, there are many eminent physiologists and anatomists who contend that the superficies of brain convolutions in women is relatively greater than in men. For those who believe—and they are probably the majority at present—that the seat of mental activity is in the gray matter of the brain, this greater brain surface, due to its convolutions, would be a decided compensation for woman's relatively smaller brain volume.[98]

In whatever way, then, we consider the brains of men and women, whether we compare the ratio of brain weight to height of body or to weight of body, or compare the relative amounts of gray matter in the two sexes, the advantage, in spite of her smaller body, is distinctly in favor of woman.

From the preceding considerations it seems clear that there is no ground from the point of view of brain anatomy for considering one sex as superior to the other. They evince, too, that quality as well as quantity of brain tissue must be considered in all our discussions on the relations between the volume of brain and the intelligence of its possessor. Whales and elephants have much larger brains than men, but they nevertheless stand far below him in intelligence.

It must be remembered, also, that the brain is not only an organ of mental function. It is likewise the center of the entire nervous system, and its volume, therefore, must correspond with the size and number of nerve trunks under its control. In man, as in animals, the brain elements are to a great extent but sensori-motor delegates whose function is the regulation and government of every part of the body. The superior size of the whale's brain, as compared with that of man, can readily be understood when we reflect on the much greater amount of territory which these sensori-motor delegates represent. When this fact is borne in mind it will be found that the whale's brain, relatively to that of man, is extremely small. For while the ratio of man's brain weight to that of his body is as 1 to 36, the ratio of the whale's brain weight to its immense body is but 1 to 3,000.

As an evidence that quality often counts for more than quantity, brain anatomists would do well to reflect on the marvelous intelligence displayed by ants and termites, those mites of animated nature which so excited the admiration of the naturalist Pliny and caused Darwin to declare, "The brain of an ant is one of the most marvelous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man."[99]

Moreover, when discussing the relative brain weights of the two sexes, we must not lose sight of the fact that we have, with the solitary exception of the eminent Russian mathematician, SÓnya KovalÉvsky,[100] no record of the brain weights of any eminently intellectual woman. The brains of scores of men of genius and exceptional mentality have been weighed, but we are utterly ignorant of the weight of brain of such women as Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Madame de StaËl, Maria Theresa, Sophie Germain, George Sand, Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, Eleanor Ormerod, Mary Somerville, and others of the same caliber. The only data so far available, regarding the average brain weight of women, are such as have been obtained from the inmates of hospitals, prisons and pauper institutions. And yet we are asked to accept the average based on such data as a fair term of comparison with the average male brain weight as increased by the superior weight of brain of such men as Cuvier and Turgenieff. And this is called science![101]

The attempt, then, to prove by weighing and measuring and studying brains that man is the intellectual superior of woman has been an ignominious failure. The old belief that woman is by nature and cerebral organization less intelligent than man is not borne out by the investigations of those best qualified to pronounce an opinion on the subject. To assert, as so many do, that woman was created man's intellectual inferior is begging the question. Science can adduce no proof of such a gratuitous statement. Broca, the most eminent of French anthropologists, regarded as an absurdity the attempt to establish a necessary relation between the development of intelligence and the volume and weight of the encephalon. With the ripe knowledge of his mature years he was inclined to believe that the apparent difference in intelligence in the two sexes was owing, not to a difference of brain organization, but rather to a difference of education, physical as well as mental, and that, with equal opportunities for intellectual and physical development, the present sexual differences that we have been considering—differences which are due not to nature but to the long ages of restraint and subjection under which women have lived—would gradually be lessened, and that men and women would eventually approach that equality which characterizes them in the state of nature.[102]

Realizing the impossibility of arriving, by the study of brain sizes and structure, at any satisfactory conclusion respecting the relative intellectual capacities of men and women, seekers after truth cast about for other methods that were free from the errors and fallacies of those which had proved so unreliable. The attempt to base the alleged mental inferiority of woman upon the facial angle of Camper, the metafacial angle of Serres, the craniofacial angle of Huxley, the sphenoidal angle of Welcker, or the nasobasal angle of Virchow had issued in utter failure, and had proved for the thousandth time that it is easier to formulate theories than to establish their validity. It was evident, notwithstanding the assertions of certain materialistic theorists, that the brain did not secrete thought as the liver secretes bile; it was evident, too, that intelligence could not be estimated in terms of any kind of mechanical units. Psycho-physiologists had no sort of dynamometer for measuring brain power as they would measure muscular energy. By means of the plethysmograph they might determine the amount of blood sent to the brain in a given time, but they had no psychometer of any description which would enable them to estimate the quantity, much less the quality, of psychic force such a blood supply was competent to produce.

Many, of course, still remained adherents of the old view that woman must ever remain the mental inferior of man because she is by nature physically weaker. These persons, however, seemed to lose sight of the fact that women who lead a rational life—who are not the slaves of fashion or the victims of luxury—have little to complain of on the score of physical weakness. This is evidenced by the life and habits of the women of the people, as well as by the tasks performed by women among savage tribes, who in health and strength are little, if at all, inferior to their male companions.

The late Professor Huxley, in referring to this subject, exhibited his usual acumen and sanity in such matters when he indited the following paragraph:

"We have heard a great deal lately about the physical disabilities of women. Some of these alleged impediments, no doubt, are really inherent in their organization, but nine-tenths of them are artificial—the products of their mode of life. I believe that nothing would tend so effectually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness and that 'over-stimulation of the emotions' which in plainer spoken days used to be called wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work, directed toward a definite object, combined with an equally fair share of healthy play, during the years of adolescence; and those who are best acquainted with the acquirements of an average medical practitioner will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily intelligent and well-educated woman."[103]

Substantially the same views are held by Mrs. Henry Fawcett and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, whose rare experience and knowledge give their opinions on the subject under consideration special weight and value.

After men of science had tried the various theories above enumerated and found them wanting, they finally bethought themselves of investigating the relative intellectual standing of male and female students in coeducational institutions, and inquiring into their comparative capacity for different branches of knowledge, as made known by their professors and by the results of oral and written examinations. Considering the simplicity of this method and the fact that it is the more rational way to reach reliable conclusions, the wonder is that it was not thought of sooner. It excludes the bias of prepossessions and preconceived theories and lends itself to the discussion of results based on incontestable facts.

The first coeducational institution in which the intellectual capacity of women, in competition with men, was fairly tested was, strange to say, in the Royal College of Science for Ireland. This was somewhat more than half a century ago. When the time of examinations came, both the men and women students were handed the same examination papers. At the public distribution of prizes, at the close of the session, "the ladies," in the words of a Dublin paper, "vindicated the genius of their sex by carrying off the highest prizes." In zoÖlogy, botany, physics, chemistry and mathematics they proved themselves the peers, and frequently the superiors, of their male competitors.

"The success of the female students disturbed, of course, very much the preconceived notions of some people, who had always taken for granted that the female intellect was inferior to the male; and, not being able to combat the stubborn facts that appeared from time to time in the newspapers, when the results of the examinations were published, they tried to account for them."[104]

These cavillers, however, soon discovered that there was no way of accounting for the disconcerting fact which confronted them, except by confessing that their theory regarding the mental inferiority of women was not substantiated by fact. This unexpected demand for the unconditional surrender of their long-cherished theory of male superiority was a crushing and humiliating blow to their pride of intellect, but there was no remedy for it, nor was it accompanied by any balm of consolation that they, at the time, felt disposed to regard as adequate compensation for their lost prestige—a prestige which their overweening sex had claimed from time immemorial.

Similar experiments under even more trying conditions were subsequently made in the United States and in other parts of the world, and everywhere with the same results. In the universities of Switzerland, France, England, Germany and Russia women, when given a fair opportunity, were able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of all unprejudiced judges that the long-vaunted superiority of the male intellect was a myth; that intelligence, like genius, has no sex.

One of the most interesting and comprehensive investigations ever undertaken regarding this long-debated question was made some years ago by Arthur Kirchhoff, an enterprising German journalist.[105] It consisted in collecting and collaborating the opinions of more than a hundred of the most distinguished professors of the Fatherland, besides the opinions of a number of eminent writers and teachers in girls' high schools. These constitute a volume of nearly four hundred pages, and embody the views on the capacity of woman for science of professors of theology, jurisprudence, anatomy, physiology, surgery, psychology, history, gynecology, psychiatry, philology, philosophy, art, mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, zoÖlogy, botany, geology, paleontology and technology. The investigation, indeed, covered every branch of knowledge and evoked the deliberate views of those who were looked upon as the leading representatives of German thought and culture.

This book possesses a special value from the fact that, of all peoples in Europe, the Germans have been the most refractory to the claims of women to be received at the universities on the same footing as men. The German professors, naturally, share the conservatism of their countrymen, and, like them, are wedded to routine when there is question of introducing innovations into their social, political or educational systems. One would anticipate, then, that, when called upon to give their honest opinions respecting the intellectual capacity of women, as compared with that of men, their answer would be decidedly in favor of the sterner sex. "For," they will ask, "have not all the achievements in science which have given the Fatherland such prestige in the eyes of the world been due entirely to men? Have the women of Germany ever undertaken the solution of any great scientific problem, or have they ever made any notable contribution to scientific advancement? They have not."

Yet, notwithstanding all these facts, notwithstanding all traditions and prejudices and social bias, the unexpected has happened, even in conservative, old-fashioned Germany. The German professor may be tenacious of preconceived views; he may be a stickler for ancient customs and usages; nevertheless, when he is called upon to give a question a categorical answer which can be arrived at by observation or experiment, he may generally, in spite of his likes or dislikes, be counted on to give a decision in accord with the principles of legitimate induction. He may have his prejudices—and who has not?—but, when one appeals to him in the name of science and justice, he will rarely be found wanting. Regardless of all personal consideration, he will feel that loyalty to science, of which he is the avowed devotee, requires him to consider a question proposed to him as he would a scientific problem—something to be decided solely by such evidence as may be available.

To the exceeding gratification of the believers in the intellectual equality of the sexes, this proved to be the case in Herr Kirchhoff's investigation. The answers of the German professors, contrary to what most people would have anticipated, were, by a surprising majority, in favor of women. But their answers were in keeping with the changed educational conditions in Germany, as well as in other parts of the civilized world. Had Herr Kirchhoff undertaken his investigation a few decades earlier, the result would undoubtedly have been different, for women were then excluded from the universities and the professors had not had an opportunity of accurately testing their intellectual capacities. But having, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, had them as students in their lecture halls and laboratories, where they were able to study their mental powers and determine the value of their work by strict scientific methods, they were in a better position to express an opinion on the question at issue than would, a few years previously, have been possible.

Accordingly, even the declared enemies of the woman's movement among the German professorate were forced to admit the intellectual equality of the two sexes. For they, too, as well as men of science in other parts of Europe, had been measuring skulls and weighing brains; they, too, had been studying woman's mental caliber in the light of the new psychology; they, too, had been watching her work in the various departments of the university; and, notwithstanding all their observations and experiments, they were unable to detect any difference between men and women in brain organization or in intellectual capacity. And, as might have been foreseen, results harmonized perfectly with those arrived at by investigators in other parts of the world—namely, that in things of the mind there is perfect sexual equality.

Among the hundred and more professors whose opinions are given in Herr Kirchhoff's book there were, of course, a few who were not prepared to subscribe to the findings of the great majority of their colleagues. But the reasons they assign for dissent were, at least in some instances, little better founded than that of a certain professor of chemistry in the University of Geneva, who, a few years ago, gravely declared that women have no aptitude for science because, forsooth, in chemical manipulations they break more test-tubes than men. Verily, "a Daniel come to judgment."

What probably more deeply impressed the German professors than anything else was the marked talent and taste of many of the women students for the abstract sciences, especially for the higher mathematics. For it had always been asserted that these branches of knowledge were beyond woman's capacity and that she had an instinctive antipathy for abstruse reasoning and for abstractions of all kinds. When, however, they discovered women whose delight was to discuss the theory of elliptic functions or curves defined by differential equations; when they found a mathematical genius like SÓnya KovalÉvsky speculating on the fourth dimension, and carrying away from the mathematicians of the world the most coveted prize of the French Academy of Sciences, they were forced to confess that another of their illusions was dissipated, and to acknowledge that they had no longer anything on which to base their long and fondly cherished opinion of the mental inequality of the sexes.

As an evidence of the extraordinary change that had been effected among the conservative Germans in the course of a few years respecting their attitude toward the admission of the "Academic Woman" to the universities, and, consequently, toward her intellectual capacity, it will suffice to reproduce a sentence from the elaborately expressed opinion of Dr. Julius Bernstein, professor of physiology in the University of Halle. "After reflection on the subject," he declares, "I am convinced that neither God nor religion, neither custom nor law, and still less science, warrants one in maintaining any essential difference in this respect between the male and the female sex."[106]

The controversy of centuries regarding woman's intellectual capacity was now virtually settled beyond all peradventure. Woman had conquered, and her final victory had been won in the heart of the enemy's country, yea, even in what was thought to be the impregnable fortress of her relentless foes. It was achieved where the proud Teuton male had imagined that he was unapproachable and beyond compare—in the laboratories and lecture rooms of his great universities—more irresistible, in his estimation, than the Kaiser's trained legions in battle array.

It finally dawned upon the leaders of thought in the Fatherland, as it had but shortly before dawned upon philosophers and men of science in other lands, that the reputed sexual difference in intelligence was not due to difference in brain size or brain structure, or innate power of intellect, but rather to some other factors which had been neglected, or overlooked, as being unessential or of minor importance. These factors, on further investigation, proved to be education and opportunity.

As far back as 1869 that keen observer and philosopher, John Stuart Mill, had expressed himself on the subject in the following words: "Like the French compared with the English, the Irish with the Swiss, the Greeks or Italians compared with the German races, so women compared with men may be found, on the average, to do the same things with some variety in the particular kind of excellence. But that they would do them fully as well, on the whole, if their education and cultivation were adapted to correcting instead of aggravating the infirmities incident to their temperament, I see not the smallest reason to doubt."[107]

It would be difficult to find a better illustration of the sluggishness of the male as compared with the female mind than the tardiness of men of science in arriving at a sane conclusion respecting the subject of this chapter. For five hundred years ago Christine de Pisan arrived at the same conclusion which the learned professors of Germany reached only in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Discussing in La CitÉ des Dames the question at issue she writes as follows: "I say to thee again, and doubt never the contrary, that if it were the custom to put the little maidens to the school, and they were made to learn the sciences as they do to the men-children, that they should learn as perfectly, and they should be as well entered into the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as men be. And peradventure, there should be more of them, for I have teached heretofore that by how much women have the body more soft than the men have, and less able to do divers things, by so much they have the understanding more sharp there as they apply it."

Christine de Pisan's statement is virtually a challenge demanding the same educational opportunities for women as were accorded to men. But it was a challenge that men did not see fit to accept until full five centuries had elapsed, and until it was no longer possible to deny giving satisfaction to the long-aggrieved half of humanity. It was also an appeal to experiment and an appeal, likewise, to the teachings of history in lands where women have enjoyed the same educational advantages as men.

Having reviewed the many disabilities which so long retarded woman's intellectual advancement, and considered some of the objections which were urged against her capacity for scientific pursuits, we are now prepared to consider the appeal of Christine de Pisan and deal with it on its merits. This we shall do by a brief survey of woman's achievements in the various branches of science in which she has been accorded the same intellectual opportunities that were so long the exclusive privilege of her male compeer.

[89] An edition of this work, based on an old manuscript in La Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, in French, is announced to appear in France at an early date. An interesting account of this precious volume has recently been published by Mlle. Mathilde Laigle, Ph. D., under the title of Le Livre de Trois Vertus de Christine de Pisan et son Milieu Historique et LittÉraire. It is to be hoped that some enterprising English publisher will soon favor us with a reprint of the quaint old, but none the less valuable, volume, The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes.