The Subjection of Women
deal with, what is really there, but what they have been taught to
expect. This is seldom the case with women of any ability. Their
capacity of "intuition" preserves them from it. With equality of
experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more
than a man of what is immediately before her. Now this sensibility to
the present, is the main quality on which the capacity for practice,
as distinguished from theory, depends. To discover general
principles, belongs to the speculative faculty: to discern and
discriminate the particular cases in which they are and are not
applicable, constitutes practical talent: and for this, women as they
now are have a peculiar aptitude. I admit that there can be no good
practice without principles, and that the predominant place which
quickness of observation holds among a woman's faculties, makes her
particularly apt to build over-hasty generalizations upon her own
observation; though at the same time no less ready in rectifying
those generalizations, as her observation takes a wider range. But
the corrective to this defect, is access to the experience of the
human race; general knowledge--exactly the thing which education can
best supply. A woman's mistakes are specifically those of a clever
self-educated man, who often sees what men trained in routine do not
see, but falls into errors for want of knowing things which have long
been known. Of course he has acquired much of the pre-existing
knowledge, or he could not have got on at all; but what he knows of
it he has picked up in fragments and at random, as women do.
But this gravitation of women's minds to the present, to the real, to
actual fact, while in its exclusiveness it is a source of errors, is
also a most useful counteractive of the contrary error. The principal
and most characteristic aberration of speculative minds as such,
consists precisely in the deficiency of this lively perception and
ever-present sense of objective fact. For want of this, they often
not only overlook the contradiction which outward facts oppose to
their theories, but lose sight of the legitimate purpose of
speculation altogether, and let their speculative faculties go astray
into regions not peopled with real beings, animate or inanimate, even
idealized, but with personified shadows created by the illusions of
metaphysics or by the mere entanglement of words, and think these
shadows the proper objects of the highest, the most transcendant,
philosophy. Hardly anything can be of greater value to a man of
theory and speculation who employs himself not in collecting
materials of knowledge by observation, but in working them up by
processes of thought into comprehensive truths of science and laws of
conduct, than to carry on his speculations in the companionship, and
under the criticism, of a really superior woman. There is nothing
comparable to it for keeping his thoughts within the limits of real
things, and the actual facts of nature. A woman seldom runs wild
after an abstraction. The habitual direction of her mind to dealing
with things as individuals rather than in groups, and (what is
closely connected with it) her more lively interest in the present
feelings of persons, which makes her consider first of all, in
anything which claims to be applied to practice, in what manner
persons will be affected by it--these two things make her extremely
unlikely to put faith in any speculation which loses sight of
individuals, and deals with things as if they existed for the benefit
of some imaginary entity, some mere creation of the mind, not
resolvable into the feelings of living beings. Women's thoughts are
thus as useful in giving reality to those of thinking men, as men's
thoughts in giving width and largeness to those of women. In depth,
as distinguished from breadth, I greatly doubt if even now, women,
compared with men, are at any disadvantage.
If the existing mental characteristics of women are thus valuable
even in aid of speculation, they are still more important, when
speculation has done its work, for carrying out the results of
speculation into practice. For the reasons already given, women are
comparatively unlikely to fall into the common error of men, that of
sticking to their rules in a case whose specialities either take it
out of the class to which the rules are applicable, or require a
special adaptation of them. Let us now consider another of the
admitted superiorities of clever women, greater quickness of
apprehension. Is not this pre-eminently a quality which fits a person
for practice? In action, everything continually depends upon deciding
promptly. In speculation, nothing does. A mere thinker can wait, can
take time to consider, can collect additional evidence; he is not
obliged to complete his philosophy at once, lest the opportunity
should go by. The power of drawing the best conclusion possible from
insufficient data is not indeed useless in philosophy; the
construction of a provisional hypothesis consistent with all known
facts is often the needful basis for further inquiry. But this
faculty is rather serviceable in philosophy, than the main
qualification for it: and, for the auxiliary as well as for the main
operation, the philosopher can allow himself any time he pleases. He
is in no need of the capacity of doing rapidly what he does; what he
rather needs is patience, to work on slowly until imperfect lights
have become perfect, and a conjecture has ripened into a theorem. For
those, on the contrary, whose business is with the fugitive and
perishable--with individual facts, not kinds of facts--rapidity of
thought is a qualification next only in importance to the power of
thought itself. He who has not his faculties under immediate command,
in the contingencies of action, might as well not have them at all.
He may be fit to criticize, but he is not fit to act. Now it is in
this that women, and the men who are most like women, confessedly
excel. The other sort of man, however pre-eminent may be his
faculties, arrives slowly at complete command of them: rapidity of
judgment and promptitude of judicious action, even in the things he
knows best, are the gradual and late result of strenuous effort grown
into habit.
It will be said, perhaps, that the greater nervous susceptibility of
women is a disqualification for practice, in anything but domestic
life, by rendering them mobile, changeable, too vehemently under the
influence of the moment, incapable of dogged perseverance, unequal
and uncertain in the power of using their faculties. I think that
these phrases sum up the greater part of the objections commonly made
to the fitness of women for the higher class of serious business.
Much of all this is the mere overflow of nervous energy run to waste,
and would cease when the energy was directed to a definite end. Much
is also the result of conscious or unconscious cultivation; as we see
by the almost total disappearance of "hysterics" and fainting fits,
since they have gone out of fashion. Moreover, when people are
brought up, like many women of the higher classes (though less so in
our own country than in any other) a kind of hot-house plants,
shielded from the wholesome vicissitudes of air and temperature, and
untrained in any of the occupations and exercises which give stimulus
and development to the circulatory and muscular system, while their
nervous system, especially in its emotional department, is kept in
unnaturally active play; it is no wonder if those of them who do not
die of consumption, grow up with constitutions liable to derangement
from slight causes, both internal and external, and without stamina
to support any task, physical or mental, requiring continuity of
effort. But women brought up to work for their livelihood show none
of these morbid characteristics, unless indeed they are chained to an
excess of sedentary work in confined and unhealthy rooms. Women who
in their early years have shared in the healthful physical education
and bodily freedom of their brothers, and who obtain a sufficiency of
pure air and exercise in after-life, very rarely have any excessive
susceptibility of nerves which can disqualify them for active
pursuits. There is indeed a certain proportion of persons, in both
sexes, in whom an unusual degree of nervous sensibility is
constitutional, and of so marked a character as to be the feature of
their organization which exercises the greatest influence over the
whole character of the vital phenomena. This constitution, like other
physical conformations, is hereditary, and is transmitted to sons as
well as daughters; but it is possible, and probable, that the nervous
temperament (as it is called) is inherited by a greater number of
women than of men. We will assume this as a fact: and let me then
ask, are men of nervous temperament found to be unfit for the duties
and pursuits usually followed by men? If not, why should women of the
same temperament be unfit for them? The peculiarities of the
temperament are, no doubt, within certain limits, an obstacle to
success in some employments, though an aid to it in others. But when
the occupation is suitable to the temperament, and sometimes even
when it is unsuitable, the most brilliant examples of success are
continually given by the men of high nervous sensibility. They are
distinguished in their practical manifestations chiefly by this, that
being susceptible of a higher degree of excitement than those of
another physical constitution, their powers when excited differ more
than in the case of other people, from those shown in their ordinary
state: they are raised, as it were, above themselves, and do things
with ease which they are wholly incapable of at other times. But this
lofty excitement is not, except in weak bodily constitutions, a mere
flash, which passes away immediately, leaving no permanent traces,
and incompatible with persistent and steady pursuit of an object. It
is the character of the nervous temperament to be capable of
_sustained_ excitement, holding out through long continued efforts.
It is what is meant by _spirit_. It is what makes the high-bred
racehorse run without slackening speed till he drops down dead. It is
what has enabled so many delicate women to maintain the most sublime
constancy not only at the stake, but through a long preliminary
succession of mental and bodily tortures. It is evident that people
of this temperament are particularly apt for what may be called the
executive department of the leadership of mankind. They are the
material of great orators, great preachers, impressive diffusers of
moral influences. Their constitution might be deemed less favourable
to the qualities required from a statesman in the cabinet, or from a
judge. It would be so, if the consequence necessarily followed that
because people are excitable they must always be in a state of
excitement. But this is wholly a question of training. Strong feeling
is the instrument and element of strong self-control: but it requires
to be cultivated in that direction. When it is, it forms not the
heroes of impulse only, but those also of self-conquest. History and
experience prove that the most passionate characters are the most
fanatically rigid in their feelings of duty, when their passion has
been trained to act in that direction. The judge who gives a just
decision in a case where his feelings are intensely interested on the
other side, derives from that same strength of feeling the determined
sense of the obligation of justice, which enables him to achieve this
victory over himself. The capability of that lofty enthusiasm which
takes the human being out of his every-day character, reacts upon the
daily character itself. His aspirations and powers when he is in this