In his lectures ten years ago, the distinguished obstetrician, Sir Halliday Croom, now professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh, used to criticise cycling on this score, not as regards its development of the muscles of the lower limbs, but as tending towards local rigidity unfavourable to childbirth. It may be doubted, perhaps, whether longer and wider experience of cycling by women warrants this criticism, but it is probably worth noting.

On the other hand, while exercise of certain muscles may interfere obscurely or mechanically with motherhood, we are to remember that the muscles of the abdomen are indeed the accessory muscles of motherhood, and therefore specially to be considered. According to Mosso of Turin, it is only in modern times that civilized woman shows the comparative weakness of these muscles which is indeed commonly to be found. There is verily no sign of it in the Venus of Milo, as any one can see. That statue represents very highly developed abdominal muscles in a woman less notably muscular elsewhere. The muscles lie near the skin, the disposition of fat being very small, yet the woman is distinctively maternal in type, and every kind of aesthetic praise that may be showered upon the statue may be supplemented by the encomiums of the physiologist and the worshipper of motherhood. It is highly desirable that, in physical training to-day, attention should be paid to the development of the abdominal muscles. Holding the abdomen together by means of a corset may serve its own purpose, but does less than nothing in the crisis of motherhood. The corset indeed conduces to the atrophy of the most important of all the voluntary muscles for the most important crisis of a woman's life. "Some of the slower Spanish dances" are commended for the development of the abdominal muscles, but one would rather recommend swimming, the abandonment of the corset, and, if the gymnasium is to be used, some of the various exercises which serve these muscles, however little they may serve to exploit the apparatus of the gymnasium when visitors are invited.

There is no occasion in the present volume to discuss in detail any such thing as a course of physical exercises, but it is a pleasure, and, for the English reader, a convenience to direct attention to the Syllabus of Physical Exercises for Public Elementary Schools, issued by the English Board of Education in 1909.[7] After nearly forty years of folly, the dawn is breaking in our schools. It is evident that the Board of Education has followed the best medical advice. Indeed, now that medical knowledge is actually represented upon the Board, and represented as it is, there is no need to go far. The principles which have been laid down in previous pages are abundantly recognized in this admirable syllabus. The exercises recommended for the nation's children are based upon the Swedish system of educational gymnastics. But it is fortunately recognized that that system requires modification, since "freedom of movement and a certain degree of exhilaration are essentials of all true physical education. Hence it has been thought well not only to modify some of the usual Swedish combinations in order to make the work less exacting, but to introduce games and dancing steps into many of the lessons." "The Board desire that all lessons in physical exercises in public elementary schools should be thoroughly enjoyed by the children." "Enjoyment is one of the most necessary factors in nearly everything which concerns the welfare of the body, and if exercise is distasteful and wearisome, its physical as well as its mental value is greatly diminished." An interesting paragraph on music recognizes its value in avoiding fatigue, but underestimates, perhaps, the desirability of including music for use at later years as well as for infant classes.

The syllabus contains admirably illustrated exercises in detail. They are earnestly to be commended to the reader who is responsible for girlhood, and notably to those who are interested in the formation and conducting of girls' clubs. The syllabus is excellent in the attention paid to games, in the commendation of skipping and of dancing. The following quotation well illustrates the spirit of wisdom which is at last beginning to illuminate our national education:—"The value of introducing dancing steps into any scheme of physical training as an additional exercise especially for girls, or even in some cases for boys, is becoming widely recognized. Dancing, if properly taught, is one of the most useful means of promoting a graceful carriage, with free, easy movements, and is far more suited to girls than many of the exercises and games borrowed from boys. As in other balance exercises, the nervous system acquires a more perfect control of the muscles, and in this way a further development of various brain centres is brought about.... Dancing steps add very greatly to the interest and recreative effect of the lesson, the movements are less methodical and exact, and are more natural; if suitably chosen they appeal strongly to the imagination, and act as a decided mental and physical stimulus, and exhilarate in a wholesome manner both body and mind."

Plainly, our educators have begun to be educated since 1870.

Of course, there is dancing and dancing. The real thing bears the same relation to dancing as it is understood in Mayfair, as the music of Schubert does to that of Sousa. The ideal dancing for girls is such as that illustrated by the children trained by Miss Isadora Duncan. Some of these girls were seen for a short time at the Duke of York's Theatre in London not long ago, and the American reader, rightly proud of Miss Duncan, should not require to be told what she has achieved. Just as we are learning the importance of games and play, so that a syllabus issued by the Board of Education instructs one how to stand when "giving a back" at leap-frog, so also we shall learn again from Nature that dancing of the natural and exquisite kind, never to be forgotten or confused with imitations by any one who has seen Miss Duncan's children, must be recognized as a great educative measure—educative alike of mind, body, ear, and eye, and better worth while for any girl of any rank than volumes of fictitious history concocted by fools concerning knaves.

Girls' Clubs.—Allusion has been made to girls' clubs, and one may be fortunate enough to have some readers who may feel inclined to partake in the splendid work which may be done by this means. It requires high qualities and a certain amount of expert knowledge. Much of the latter can be obtained from the little book recommended above. For the rest, it is worth while briefly to point out what the girls' club may effect, and why it is so much needed.

It has been insisted that puberty is a critical age because it means the dawn of womanhood. It is critical in both sexes, not only for the body but also for the mind. It is now that the intellect awakes; it is now that the real formation of character begins. We often talk about spoilt children at three or four, but any kind of making or marring of character at such ages can be undone in a few weeks or less—that is, in so far as it is an effect of training and not of nature that we are dealing with. The real spoiling or making is at that birth of the adult which we call puberty. During adolescence the adult is being made, and everything matters for ever. This is true of physique, of mind, and of character. The importance of this period is recognized by modern churches in their rite of Confirmation, and it was recognized by ancient religions, by Greeks and by Romans. Our national appreciation of it is expressed by our devotion of vast amounts of money and labour to the child, until the all-important epoch is reached, when we wash our hands of it. We educate away, for all we are worth, when what is mainly required is plenty of good food and open air; and we have done with the matter when the age for real education arrives. In time to come our neglect of adolescence in both sexes, more especially in girls, will be marvelled at, and many of the evils from which we suffer will cease to exist because the fatal and costly economy of the practical man is dismissed as a delusion and a sham, and it is perceived that whether for the saving of life or for the saving of money, adolescence must be cared for.

Meanwhile, it behoves private people who care about these things to do what they can. If they rightly influence but ten girls, it was well worth doing. The girls' club is a very inexpensive mode of social activity. Practically the only substantial item of expenditure is the hire of a gymnasium, say for two evenings in a week. The girls' dresses can be made at home at quite a trivial cost. The primary attraction would be the gymnasium. It must, of course, contain a piano, not necessarily one on which Pachmann would play, but a piano nevertheless. There is also required a pianist, not necessarily a Pachmann. Two girls are better than one to run such a club. They will not find it difficult to obtain material to work upon. They must acquire at a Polytechnic, or perhaps they have acquired themselves at school, some knowledge of how to conduct the work and play of the gymnasium. It will depend upon the conductors of the club how far its virtues extend. Much elementary hygiene may be taught as well as practised, and if it confine itself only to matters of ventilation, clothing, care of the teeth and feet, it is abundantly worth while. It is often possible to get medical men or women to come and talk to the girls, and in the best of these clubs there will be some more or less conscious and overt preparation in one way and another for matters no less momentous alike for the individual and the race than marriage and motherhood.

Girls' Clothing.—There is little good to be said about much of the clothing of girls and women. All clothing should of course be loose, on grounds which have been fully gone into in the previous volume on personal hygiene. A woman's headgear is perhaps too often the only article of her dress which conforms to this rule. It is good that the stimulant effect of air, and air in motion, upon the skin should be as widely extended as is compatible with sufficient warmth and decency. Thus most women wear far too many clothes, apart from the question of tightness. A woman handicaps herself seriously as compared with a man, in that, while she is much less muscular, her clothes are often so much heavier. All this applies with great force to girls. The following quotation from the syllabus referred to above is worth making:—

"A Suitable Dress for Girls.—A simple dress for girls suitable for taking physical exercises or games consists of a tunic, a jersey or blouse, and knickers. The tunic and knickers may be made of blue serge, and, if a blouse is worn, it should be made of some washing material.

The tunic, which requires two widths of serge, may be gathered or, preferably, pleated into a small yoke with straps passing over the shoulders. The dress easily slips on over the head, and the shoulder straps are then fastened. It should be worn with a loose belt or girdle. In no case should any form of stiff corset be used.

The knickers, with their detachable washing linen, should replace all petticoats. They should not be too ample, and should not be visible below the tunic. They are warmer than petticoats and allow greater freedom of movement.

Any plain blouse may be worn with the tunic, or a woollen jersey may be substituted in cold weather.

With regard to the cost of such a dress, serge may be procured for 1s. 6d. to 2s. per yard. For the tunic some 2 to 2-1/2 yards are usually required, and for the knickers about 1-1/2 to 2 yards. It may be found possible in some schools to provide patterns, or to show girls how to make such articles for themselves. Such a dress, though primarily designed for physical exercises, is entirely suitable for ordinary school use.

Though it is, of course, not practicable to introduce this dress into all Public Elementary Schools, or in the case of all girls, yet in many schools there are children whose parents are both willing and able to provide them with appropriate clothing. The adoption of a dress of this kind, which is at the same time useful and becoming, tends to encourage that love of neatness and simplicity which every teacher should endeavour to cultivate among the girls. And as it allows free scope for all movements of the body and limbs, it cannot fail to promote healthy physical development."



IX

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN

In the last chapter brief reference was made to the effects of ill-timed mental strain. Our principles have already led us to the conclusion that there are special risks for girls involved in educational strain, and that is, of course, equally true whatever the curriculum. But that being granted, it is necessary to draw very special attention to a new movement in the higher education of women which is based upon the principle that a woman is not the same as a man; that she has special interests and duties which require no less knowledge and skill than those with which men are concerned. A tentative experiment in this direction has already, we are assured, altered the whole attitude towards life of those girls who partook in it, and there is no question that we now see the beginning of a new epoch in the higher education of women upon properly differentiated lines such as have been utterly ignored in the past. I refer to the "Special Courses for the Higher Education of Women in Home Science and Household Economics," which now form part of the activities of the University of London at King's College. "The main object of these courses," we are told, "is to provide a thoroughly scientific education in the principles underlying the whole organization of 'Home Life,' the conduct of Institutions, and other spheres of civic and social work in which these principles are applicable." The lecturers are mainly highly qualified women, and the courses are extremely thorough and comprehensive. The following are the subjects which are dealt with: economics and ethics, psychology, biology, business matters, physiology, bacteriology, chemistry, domestic arts, sanitary science and hygiene, applied chemistry and physics.[8]

It will be seen that there is no underrating here of the capacities of women. The courses are not limited merely to cooking and washing, though these are most carefully gone into. It is a far cry from them to psychology and ethics or "A Sketch of the Historical Development of the Household in England." One can imagine the joy with which girls, largely nourished on the husks which constitute most of the educational curricula of boys, will turn to a series of lectures on Child Psychology, that deal with the general course of mental development in the child, with interest and attention, the processes of learning, mental fatigue and adolescence. The highest capacities of the mind in women are not ignored when we find included a course of which the special text-book is Spencer's "Data of Ethics." One can imagine also that the course on the elements of general economics, with its study of wealth and value and price, the laws of production and distribution, may bring into being a kind of housewife who, whether or not eligible for Parliament, would certainly be a much more desirable member thereof than nine-tenths of the prosperous gentlemen who daily record their opinions there upon matters they know not of. All who care at all for womanhood or for England must rejoice in the beginnings of this revised version of higher education for women which, for once in a way, finds London a pioneer. We must have such courses all over the country. Every father who can afford it must give his girls the incalculable benefit of such opportunities. The girl thus educated will glory in her womanhood, and will help to gain for it its right estimation and position in the state.

But it is to be pointed out that such courses as these, admirable though they be, are yet not everything. The influence of our great national deity, which is Mrs. Grundy, is apparent still. It is not specifically recognized that the highest destiny of a woman is motherhood, though in such courses as this motherhood will doubtless be served directly and indirectly in many ways. There is, nevertheless, required something more—something indeed no less than conscious, purposeful education for parenthood. The chief obstacle in the way of this ideal is Anglo-Saxon prudery, and, perhaps, the reader will not be persuaded that education for parenthood is our greatest educational need to-day, more especially for girls, until he or she has been persuaded of the magnitude of the preventable evils which flow from our present neglect of this matter. In the following chapter, therefore, one may point out what prudery costs us at present, and indeed, the reader may then be persuaded that education for parenthood, or, as it may be called, eugenic education, is, perhaps, the most important subject that can be discussed to-day in any book on womanhood.



X

THE PRICE OF PRUDERY

Just after we had succeeded in getting the Notification of Births Act put upon the Statute Book, the present writer occupied himself in various parts of the country in the efforts which were necessary to persuade local authorities to adopt the provisions of that Act. Addressing a meeting of the clergy of Islington, he endeavoured to trace back to the beginning the main cause of infant mortality, and endeavoured to show that that lay in the natural ignorance of the human mother, about which more must later be said. In the discussion which followed, an elderly clergyman insisted that the causes had not been traced far enough back, maternal ignorance being itself permitted in consequence of our national prudery.

Ever since that day one has come to see more and more clearly that the criticism was just. Maternal ignorance, as we shall see later, is a natural fact of human kind, and destroys infant life everywhere, though prudery be or be not a local phenomenon. But where vast organizations exist for the remedying of ignorance, prudery indeed is responsible for the neglect of ignorance on the most important of all subjects. Let it not be supposed for a moment that in this protest one desires, even for the highest ends, to impart such knowledge as would involve sullying the bloom of girlhood. It is not necessary to destroy the charm of innocence in order to remedy certain kinds of ignorance; nor are prudery and modesty identical. Whatever prudery may be when analyzed, it seems perfectly fair to charge it as the substantial cause of the ignorance in which the young generation grows up, as to matters which vitally concern its health and that of future generations. Let us now observe in brief the price of prudery thus arraigned.

There is, first, that large proportion of infant mortality which is due to maternal ignorance, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter. At present we may briefly remind ourselves that the nation has had the young mother at school for many years; much devotion and money have been spent upon her. Yet it is necessary to pass an Act insuring, if possible, that when she is confronted with the great business of her life—which is the care of a baby—within thirty-six hours the fact shall be made known to some one who, racing for life against time, may haply reach her soon enough to remedy the ignorance which would otherwise very likely bury her baby. Prudery has decreed that while at school she should learn nothing of such matters. For the matter of that she may even have attended a three-year course in science or technology, and be a miracle of information on the keeping of accounts, the testing of drains, and the principles of child psychology, but it has not been thought suitable to discuss with her the care of a baby. How could any nice-minded teacher care to put such ideas into a girl's head? Never having noticed a child with a doll, we have somehow failed to realize that Nature, her Ancient Mother and ours, is not above putting into her head, when she can scarcely toddle, the ideas at which we pretend to blush. Prudery on this topic, and with such consequences, is not much less than blasphemy against life and the most splendid purposes towards which the individual, "but a wave of the wild sea," can be consecrated.

This question of the care of babies offers us much less excuse for its neglect than do questions concerned with the circumstances antecedent to the babies' appearance. Yet we are blameworthy, and disastrously so, here also. Prudery here insists that boys and girls shall be left to learn anyhow. That is not what it says, but that is what it does. It feebly supposes not merely that ignorance and innocence are identical, but that, failing the parent, the doctor, the teacher, and the clergyman—and probably all these do fail—ignorance will remain ignorant. There are others, however, who always lie in wait, whether by word of mouth or the printed word, and since youth will in any case learn—except in the case of a few rare and pure souls—we have to ask ourselves whether we prefer that these matters shall be associated in its mind with the cad round the corner or the groom or the chauffeur who instructs the boy, the domestic servant who instructs the girl, and with all those notions of guilty secrecy and of misplaced levity which are entailed; or with the idea that it is right and wise to understand these matters in due measure because their concerns are the greatest in human life.

After puberty, and during early adolescence, when a certain amount of knowledge has been acquired, we leave youth free to learn lies from advertisements, carefully calculated to foster the tendency to hypochondria, which is often associated with such matters. Of this, however, no more need now be said, since it scarcely concerns the girl.

It is the ignorance conditioned by prudery that is responsible later on for many criminal marriages; contracted, it may be, with the blind blessing of Church and State, which, however, the laws of heredity and infection rudely ignore. Parents cannot bring themselves to inquire into matters which profoundly concern the welfare of the daughter for whom they propose to make what appears to be a good marriage. They desire, of course, that her children shall be healthy and whole-minded; they do not desire that marriage should be for her the beginning of disease, from the disastrous effects of which she may never recover. But these are delicate matters, and prudery forbids that they should be inquired into; yet every father who permits his daughter to marry without having satisfied himself on these points is guilty, at the least, of grave delinquency of duty, and may, in effect, be conniving at disasters and desolations of which he will not live to see the end.

Young people often grow fond of each other and become engaged, and then, if the engagement be prolonged—as all engagements ought to be, as a general rule—they may find that, after all, they do not wish to marry. Yet the girl's mother, an imprudent prude, may often in this and other cases do her utmost to bring the marriage about, not because she is convinced that it means her daughter's highest welfare and happiness, but because prudery dictates that her daughter must marry the man with whom she has been so frequently seen; hence very likely lifelong unhappiness, and worse.

Society, from the highest to the lowest of its strata, is afflicted with certain forms of understood and eminently preventable disease, about which not a word has been spoken in Parliament for twenty years, and any public mention of which by mouth or pen involves serious risk of various kinds. Here it is perhaps not necessary for us to consider the case of the outcast, and of the diseases with which, poor creature, she is first infected, and which she then distributes into our homes. Our present concern is simply to point out that prudery, again, is largely responsible for the continuance of these evils at a time when we have so much precise knowledge regarding their nature and the possibility of their prevention. Medical science cannot make distinctions between one disease and another, nor between one sin and another, as prudery does. Prudery says that such and such is vice, that its consequences in the form of disease are the penalties imposed by its abominable god upon the guilty and the innocent, the living and the unborn alike, and that therefore our ordinary attitude towards disease cannot here be maintained. Physiological science, however, knowing what it knows regarding food and alcohol, and air and exercise and diet, can readily demonstrate that the gout from which Mrs. Grundy suffers is also a penalty for sin; none the less because it is not so hideously disproportionate, in its measure and in its incidence, to the gravity of the offence. These moral distinctions between one disease and another have little or no meaning for medical science, and are more often than not immoral.

It would be none too easy to show that the medical profession in any country has yet used its tremendous power in this direction. Professions, of course, do not move as a whole, and we must not expect the universal laws of institutions to find an exception here. But though they do not move, they can be moved. It is when the public has been educated in the elements of these matters, and has been taught to see what the consequences of prudery are, that the necessary forces will be brought into action. Meanwhile, what we call the social evil is almost entirely left to the efforts made in Rescue Homes and the like. Despite the judgment of a popular novelist and playwright, it is much more than doubtful whether Rescue Homes—the only method which Mrs. Grundy will tolerate—are the best way of dealing with this matter, even if the people who worked in them had the right kind of outlook upon the matter, and even if their numbers were indefinitely multiplied. Every one who has devoted a moment's thought to the matter knows perfectly well that this is merely beginning at the end, and therefore all but futile. I mention the matter here to make the point that the one measure which prudery permits—so that indeed it may even be mentioned upon our highly moral stage, and passed by the censor, who would probably be hurried into eternity if M. Brieux's Les Avaries were submitted to him, and who found "Mrs. Warren's Profession" intolerable—is just the most useless, ill-devised, and literally preposterous with which this tremendous problem can be mocked.

This leads us to another point. It is that the means of our education, other than the schools, are also prejudiced by prudery. Upon the stage there is permitted almost any indecency of word, or innuendo, or gesture, or situation, provided only that the treatment be not serious. Almost anything is tolerable if it be frivolously dealt with, but so soon as these intensely serious matters are dealt with seriously, prudery protests. The consequence is that a great educative influence, like the theatre, where a few playwrights like M. Brieux, and Mr. Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Granville Barker, and Mr. John Galsworthy, might effect the greatest things, is relegated by Mrs. Grundy to the plays produced by Mr. George Edwardes and other earnest upholders of the censorship.

Publishers also, while accepting novels which would have staggered the Restoration Dramatists, can scarcely be found, even with great labour, for the publication of books dealing with the sex question from the most responsible medical or social standpoints.

It is just because public opinion is so potent, and, like all other powers, so potent either for good or for evil, that its present disastrous workings are the more deplorable. It is not unimaginable that prudery might undergo a sort of transmutation. As I have said before, we might make a eugenist of Mrs. Grundy, so that she might be as much affronted by a criminal marriage as she is now by the spectacle of a healthy and well-developed baby appearing unduly soon after its parents' marriage. The power is there, and it means well, though it does disastrously ill. Public opinion ought to be decided upon these matters; it ought to be powerful and effective. We shall never come out into the daylight until it is; we shall not be saved by laws, nor by medical knowledge, nor by the admonitions of the Churches. Our salvation lies only in a healthy public opinion, not less effective and not more well-meaning than public opinion is at present, but informed where it is now ignorant, and profoundly impressed with the importance of realities as it now is with the importance of appearances.

So much having been said, what can one suggest in the direction of remedy? First, surely it is something that we merely recognize the price of prudery. Personally, I find that it has made all the difference to my calculations to have had the thing pointed out by the clerical critic whose eye these words may possibly meet. It is something to recognize in prudery an enemy that must be attacked, and to realize the measure of its enmity. In the light of some little experience, perhaps a few suggestions may be made to those who would in any way join in the campaign for the education and transmutation of public opinion on these matters.

First, we must compose ourselves with fundamental seriousness—with that absolute gravity which imperils the publication of a book and entirely prohibits the production of a play on such matters. There is something in human nature beyond my explaining which leads towards jesting in these directions. An instinct, I know, is an instinct; of which a main character is that its exercise shall be independent of any knowledge as to its purpose. We eat because we like eating, rather than because we have reckoned that so many calories are required for a body of such and such a weight, in such and such conditions of temperature and pressure. It is not natural, so to say, just because man is in a sense rather more than natural, that we should be provident and serious, self-conscious, and philosophic, in dealing with our fundamental instincts. But it is necessary, if we are to be human: and only in so far as, "looking before and after," we transcend the usual conditions of instinct, are we human at all.

The special risk run by those who would deal with these matters seriously—or rather one of the risks—is that they will be suspected, and may indeed be guilty, of a tendency to priggishness and cant. Youth is very likely not far wrong in suspecting those who would discuss these matters, for youth has too often been told that they are of the earth earthy, that these are the low parts of our nature which we must learn to despise and trample on, and youth knows in its heart that whatever else may or may not be cant, this certainly is. So any one who proposes to speak gravely on the subject is a suspect.

Meetings confined to persons of one sex offer excellent opportunities. Much can be done, if the suspicion of cant be avoided, by men addressing the meetings of men only which gather in many churches on Sunday afternoons, and which have a healthy interest in the life of this world and of this world to come, as well as in matters less immediate. It seems to me that women doctors ought to be able to do excellent work in addressing meetings of girls and women, provided always that the speaker be genuinely a woman, rightly aware of the supremacy of motherhood.

Most of us know that it is possible to read a medical work on sex, say in French, without any offence to the aesthetic sense, though a translation into one's native tongue is scarcely tolerable. This contrasted influence of different names for the same thing is another of those problems in the psychology of prudery which I do not undertake to analyze, but which must be recognized by the practical enemy of prudery. It is unquestionably possible to address a mixed audience, large or small, of any social status, on these matters without offence and to good purpose. But certain terms must be avoided and synonyms used instead. There are at least three special cases, the recognition of which may make the practical difference between shocking an audience and producing the effect one desires.

Reproduction is a good word from every point of view, but its associations are purely physiological, and it is better to employ a word which renders the use of the other superfluous and which has a special virtue of its own. This is the term parenthood, a hybrid no doubt, but not perhaps much the worse for that. One may notice a teacher of zoology, say, accustomed to address medical students, offend an audience by the use of the word reproduction, where parenthood would have served his turn. It has a more human sound—though there is some sub-human parenthood which puts much of ours to shame—and the fact that it is less obviously physiological is a virtue, for human parenthood is only half physiological, being made of two complementary and equally essential factors for its perfection—the one physical and the other psychical. Thus it is possible to speak of physical parenthood and of psychical parenthood, and thus not only to avoid the term reproduction, but to get better value out of its substitutes. One may be able to show, perhaps, that in the case of other synonyms also a hunt for a term that shall save the face of prudery may be more than justified by the recovery of one which has a richer content. Terms are really very good servants, if they are good terms and we retain our mastery of them. Let any one without any previous practice start to write or speak on "human reproduction," and on "human parenthood, physical and psychical," and he will find that, though naming often saves a lot of thinking, as George Meredith said, wise naming may be of great service to thought.

In these matters there is to be faced the fact of pregnancy. Here, again, is a good word, as every one knows who has felt its force or that of the corresponding adjective when judiciously used in the metaphorical sense. The present writer's rule, when speaking, is to use these terms only in their metaphorical sense, and to employ another term for the literal sense. I should be personally indebted to any reader who can inform me as to the first employment of the admirable phrase, "the expectant mother." The name of its inventor should be remembered. In any audience whatever—perhaps almost including an audience of children, but certainly in any adult audience, whether mixed or not, medical or fashionable, serious or sham serious—it is possible to speak with perfect freedom on many aspects of pregnancy, as for instance the use of alcohol, exposure to lead poisoning, the due protection at such a period, by simply using the phrase "the expectant mother," with all its pregnancy of beautiful suggestion. Here, again, our success depends upon recognizing the psychical factor in that which to the vulgar eye is purely physiological—not that there is anything vulgar about physiology except to the vulgar eye.

For myself, the phrase "the expectant mother" is much more than useful, though in speaking it has made all the difference scores of times. It is beautiful because it suggests the ideal of every pregnancy—that the expectant mother shall indeed expect, look forward to the life which is to be. Her motto in the ideal world or even in the world at the foundations of which we are painfully working, will be those words of the Nicene creed which the very term must recall to the mind—Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi.

Let any one who fancies that these pre-occupations with mere language are trivial or misplaced here take the opportunity of addressing two drawing-rooms under similar conditions, on some such subject as the care of pregnancy from the national point of view. Let him in the one case speak of the pregnant woman, and so forth, and in the other of the expectant mother. He will be singularly insensitive to his audience if he does not discover that sometimes a rose by any other name is somehow the less a rose. The more fools we perhaps, but there it is, and in the most important of all contemporary propaganda, which is that of the re-establishment of parenthood in that place of supreme honour which is its due, even such "literary" debates as these are not out of place.

Sex is a great and wonderful thing. The further down we go in the scale of life, whether animal or vegetable, the more do we perceive the importance of the evolution of sex. The correctly formed adjective from this word is sexual, but the term is practically taboo with Mrs. Grundy. Only with caution and anxiety, indeed, may one venture before a lay audience to use Darwin's phrase, "sexual selection." The fact is utterly absurd, but there it is. One of the devices for avoiding its consequences is the use of sex itself as an adjective, as when we speak of sex problems; but the special importance of this case is in regard to the sexual instinct, or, if the term offends the reader, let us say the sex instinct. Here prudery is greatly concerned, and our silence here involves much of the price of prudery. Now since the word sexual has become sinister, we cannot speak to the growing boy or girl about the sexual instinct, but we may do much better.

For what is this sexual instinct? True, it manifests itself in connection with the fact of sex, but essentially that is only because sex is a condition of human reproduction or parenthood. It is this with which the sexual instinct is really concerned, and perhaps we shall never learn to look upon it rightly or deal with it rightly until we indeed perceive what the business of this instinct is, and regard as somewhat less than worthy of mankind any other attitude towards it. Of course there are men who live to eat, yet the instincts concerned with eating exist not for the titillation of the palate but for the sustenance of life; and, likewise, though there are those who live to gratify this instinct, it exists not for sensory gratification, but for the life of this world to come. Can we not find a term which shall express this truth, shall be inoffensive and so doubly suitable for the purposes of our cause?

The term reproductive instinct is often employed. It is vastly superior to sexual instinct, because it does refer to that for which the instinct exists; but it hints at reproduction, and though Mrs. Grundy can tolerate the idea of parenthood, reproduction she cannot away with. We cannot speak of it as the parental instinct, because that term is already in employment to express the best thing and the source of all other good things in us. Further, the sexual instinct and the parental instinct are quite distinct, and it would be disastrous to run the possibility of confusing them—one the source of all the good, and the other the source of much of the evil, though the necessary condition of all the good and evil, in the world.

For some years past, in writing and speaking, I have employed and counselled the employment of the term "the racial instinct." This seems to meet all the needs. It avoids the tabooed adjective, and if it fails to allude at all to the fact of sex, who needs reminding thereof? It is formed from the term race, which prudery permits, and it expresses once and for all that for which the instinct exists—not the individual at all, but the race which is to come after him. Doubtless its satisfaction may be satisfactory for him or her, but that does not testify to Nature's interest in individuals, but rather to her skill in insuring that her supreme concern shall not be ignored, even by those who least consciously concern themselves with it.

These are perhaps the three most important instances of the verbal, or perhaps more than verbal, issues that arise in the fight with prudery. One has tried to show that they are not really in the nature of concessions to Mrs. Grundy, but that the terms commended are in point of fact of more intrinsic worth than those to which she objects. Other instances will occur to the reader, especially if he or she becomes in any way a soldier in this war, whether publicly or as a parent instructing children, or on any other of the many fields where the fight rages.

It is not the purpose of the present chapter to deal with that which must be said, notwithstanding prudery, and in order that the price of prudery shall no longer be paid. But one final principle may be laid down which is indeed perhaps merely an expression of the spirit underlying the foregoing remarks upon our terminology. It is that we are to fly our flag high. We may consult Mrs. Grundy's prejudices if we find that in doing so we may directly serve our own thinking, and therefore our cause. This is very different from any kind of apologizing to her. All such I utterly deplore. We must not begin by granting Mrs. Grundy's case in any degree. Somewhere in that chaos of prejudices which she calls her mind, she nourishes the notion, common to all the false forms of religion, ancient or modern, that there is something about sex and parenthood which is inherently base and unclean. The origin of this notion is of interest, and the anthropologists have devoted much attention to it. It is to be found intermingled with a by no means contemptible hygiene in the Mosaic legislation, is to be traced in the beliefs and customs of extant primitive peoples, and has formed and forms an element in most religions. But it is not really pertinent to our present discussion to weigh the good and evil consequences of this belief. Without following the modern fashion, prevalent in some surprising quarters, of ecstatically exaggerating the practical value of false beliefs in past and present times, we may admit that the cause of morality in the humblest sense of that term may sometimes have been served by the religious condemnation of all these matters as unclean, and of parenthood as, at the best, a second best.

But for our own day and days yet unborn this notion of sex and its consequences as unclean or the worser part is to be condemned as not merely a lie and a palpably blasphemous one, grossly irreligious on the face of it, but as a pernicious lie, and to be so recognized even by those who most joyfully cherish evidence of the practical value of lies. Whatever may have been the case in the past or among present peoples in other states of culture than our own, no impartial person can question that during the Christian Era what may be called the Pauline or ascetic attitude on this matter has been disastrous; and that if the present forms of religion are not completely to outlive their usefulness, it is high time to restore mother and child worship to the honour which it held in the religion of Ancient Egypt and in many another. If the mother and child worship which is to be found in the more modern religions, such as Christianity, is to be worth anything to the coming world it must cease to have reference to one mother and one child only; it must hail every mother everywhere as a Madonna, and every child as in some measure deity incarnate. By no Church will such teaching be questioned to-day; but if it be granted the Churches must cease to uphold those conceptions of the superiority of celibacy and virginity which, besides involving grossly materialistic conceptions of those states, are palpably incompatible with that worship of parenthood to which the Churches must and shall now be made to return.

All this will involve many a shock to prudery; to take only the instance of what we call illegitimate motherhood, our eyes askance must learn that there are other legitimacies and illegitimacies than those which depend upon the little laws of men, and that if our doctrine of the worth of parenthood be a right one it is our business in every such case to say, "Here also, then, in so far as it lies in our power, we must make motherhood as good and perfect as may be."

These principles also will lead us to understand how differently, were we wise, we should look upon the outward appearances of expectant motherhood. In his masterpiece, Forel—of all living thinkers the most valuable—has a passage with which Mrs. Grundy may here be challenged. It is too simple to need translating from the author's own French:[9]—

"La fausse honte qu'out les femmes de laisser voir leur grossesse et tout ce qui a rapport a l'accouchement, les plaisanteries dont on use souvent a l'egard des femmes enceintes, sont un triste signe de la degenerescence et meme de la corruption de notre civilization raffinee. Les femmes enceintes ne devraient pas ce cacher, ni jamais avoir honte de porter un enfant dans leur ventre; elles devraient au contraire en etre fieres. Pareille fierte serait certes bien plus justifiee que celle des beaux officiers paradant sous leur uniforme. Les signes exterieurs de la formation de l'humanite font plus d'honneur a leurs porteurs que les symboles de sa destruction. Que les femmes s'impregnent de plus en plus de cette profonde verite! Elles cesseront alors de cacher leur grossesse et d'en avoir honte. Conscientes de la grandeur de leur tache sexuelle et sociale, elles tiendront haut l'etendard de notre descendance, qui est celui de la veritable vie a venir de l'homme, tout en combattant pour l'emancipation de leur sexe."

This passage recalls one of Ruskin's, which is to be found in "Unto This Last":—

"Nearly all labour may be shortly divided into positive and negative labour—positive, that which produces life; negative, that which produces death; the most directly negative labour being murder, and the most directly positive the bearing and rearing of children; so that in the precise degree in which murder is hateful on the negative side of idleness, in that exact degree child-rearing is admirable, on the positive side of idleness."

Here is the right comment upon the swaggering display of the means of death and the hiding as if shameful of the signs of life to come. What has Mrs. Grundy to say to this? Will she consider the propriety of urging in future that it is murder and the means of murder, and the organized forces of capital and politics making for murder, that must not be mentioned before children, and must be hidden as shameful from the eyes of men; and while a woman may still glory in her hair, according to that spiritual precept of St. Paul: "But if a woman have long hair it is a glory to her; for her hair is given her for a covering," perhaps she may be permitted even to glory in her motherhood, contemptible as such a notion would doubtless have seemed to the Apostle of the Gentiles.



XI

EDUCATION FOR MOTHERHOOD

It is our first principle in this discussion that the individual exists for parenthood, being a natural invention for that purpose and no other. It has been shown further that this is more pre-eminently true of woman than of man, she being the more essential—if such a phrase can be used—for the continuance of the race. If these principles are valid they must indeed determine our course in the education of girls. Some incidental reference has already been made to this subject, but the matter must be more carefully gone into here. We have seen that there are right and wrong ways of conducting the physical training of girls, according as whether we are aiming at muscularity or motherhood. We have seen also that there is a thing called the higher education of women, apparently laudable and desirable in itself, which may yet have disastrous consequences for the individual and the race.

In a book devoted to womanhood, and written at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the reader might well expect that what we call the higher education of women would be a subject treated at great length and with great respect. Such a reader, turning to the chapter that professedly deals with the subject, might well be offended by its brevity. It might be asked whether the writer was really aware of the importance of the subject—of its remarkable history, its extremely rapid growth, and its conspicuous success (in proving that women can be men if they please—but this is my comment, not the reader's). Nor can any one question that the so-called higher education of women is a very large and increasingly large fact in the history of womanhood during the last half century in the countries which lead the world—whither it were perhaps not too curious to consider. Further, this kind of education does in fact achieve what it aims at. Women are capable of profiting by the opportunities which it offers, as we say. This is itself a deeply interesting fact in natural history, refuting as it does the assertions of those who declared and still declare that women are incapable of "higher education," except in rare instances. It is important to know that women can become very good equivalents of men, if they please.

Further, this higher education of women—and we may be content to accept the adjective without qualification, since it is after all only a comparative, and leaves us free to employ the superlative—may be and often is of very real value in certain cases and because of certain local conditions, such as the great numerical inequality of the sexes in nearly all civilized countries. It is valuable for that proportion of women, whatever it be, who, through some throw of the physiological dice, seem to be without the distinctive factor for psychical womanhood, the existence of which one has tentatively ventured to assume. These individuals, like all others, are entitled to the fullest and freest development of their lives, and it is well that there shall be open to them, as to the brothers they so closely resemble, opportunities for intellectual satisfaction and self-development. Therefore, surely, by far the most satisfactory function of higher education for women is that which it discharges in reference to these women. Their destiny being determined by their nature, and irrevocable by nurture, it is well that, though we cannot regard it as the highest, we should make the utmost of it by means of the appropriate education.

Only because sometimes we must put up with second bests can we approve of higher education for women other than those of the anomalous semi-feminine type to which we have referred. At present we must accept it as an unfortunate necessity imposed upon us by economic conditions. So long as society is based economically, or rather uneconomically, upon the disastrous principles which so constantly mean the sacrifice of the future to the present, so long, I suppose, will it be impossible that every fully feminine woman shall find a livelihood without some sacrifice of her womanhood. This is a subject to which we must return in a later chapter. Meanwhile it is referred to only because its consideration shows us some sort of excuse, if not warrant, for the higher education of woman, even though in the process of thus endowing her with economic independence, we disendow her of her distinctive womanhood, or at the very least imperil it; even though, more serious still, we deprive the race of her services as physical and psychical mother.

We have seen that there is just afoot a new tendency in the higher education of women, and it is indeed a privilege to be able to do anything in the way of directing public attention to this new trend. In reference thereto, it was hinted that though this newer form of higher education for woman is a great advance upon the old, and is so just because it implies some recognition of woman's place in the world, yet for one reason or another it falls short of what this present student of womanhood, at any rate, demands. As has been hinted further, probably those responsible for the new trend are by no means unaware that, though their line is nearer to the right one, the direct line to the "happy isles" has not quite been taken. But great is Mrs. Grundy of the English, and those who devised the new scheme—one is willing to hazard the guess—had to be content with an approximation to what they knew to be the ideal. That is why we devoted the last chapter to the question of prudery, inserting that between a discussion of the "higher education" of women and the present discussion, which is concerned with the highest education of women.

Words are only symbols, but, like other symbols, they are capable of assuming much empire over the mind. Man, indeed, as Stevenson said, lives principally by catchwords, and though woman, beside a cot, is less likely to be caught blowing bubbles and clutching at them, she also is in some degree at the mercy of words. The higher education of women is a good phrase. It appeals, just because of the fine word higher, to those who wish women well, and to those who are not satisfied that woman should remain for ever a domestic drudge. The phrase has had a long run, so to say, but I propose that henceforth we should set it to compete with another—the highest education of women. Whether this phrase will ever gain the vogue of the other even a biased and admiring father may well question. But if there is anything certain, having the whole weight of Nature behind it, and only the transient aberrations of men opposed thereto, it is that what I call the highest education of women will be and will remain the most central and capital of society's functions, when what is now called the higher education of women has gone its appointed way with nine-tenths of all present-day education, and exists only in the memory of historians who seek to interpret the fantastic vagaries of the bad old days.

Perhaps it is well that we should begin by freeing the word education from the incrustations of mortal nonsense that have very nearly obscured its vitality altogether. Before we can educate for motherhood, we must know what education is, and what it is not. We must have a definition of it and its object; in general as well as in this particular case, otherwise we shall certainly go wrong. Perhaps it may here be permitted to quote a paragraph from a lecture on "The Child and the State," in which some few years ago I attempted to express the first principles of this matter:—

"Now, as a student of biology, I will venture to propose a definition of education which is new, so far as I know, and which I hope and believe to be true and important. Comprehensively, so as to include everything that must be included, and yet without undue vagueness, I would define education as the provision of an environment. We may amplify this proposition, and say that it is the provision of a fit environment for the young and foolish by the elderly and wise. It has really scarcely anything in the world to do with my trying to make you pay for the teaching to my children of dogmas which I believe, and you deny. It neither begins nor ends with the three R's; and it does not isolate, from that whole which we call a human being, the one attribute which may be defined as the intellectual faculty. It is the provision of an environment, physical, mental, and moral, for the whole child, physical, mental, and moral. That is my definition of education. Now, what are we to say of the object of education? In providing the environment—from its mother's milk to moral maxims—for our child, what do we seek? Some may say, to make him a worthy citizen, to make him able to support himself; some may say, to make him fit to bear arms for his king and country; but I will give you the object of education as defined by the author of the most profound and wisest treatise which has ever been written upon the subject—Plato, Locke, and Milton not forgotten. 'To prepare us for complete living,' says Herbert Spencer, 'is the function which education has to discharge.' The great thing needed for us to learn is how to live, how rightly to rule conduct in all directions under all circumstances; and it is to that end that we must direct ourselves in providing an environment for the child. Education is the provision of an environment, the function of which is to prepare for complete living."

Perhaps the only necessary qualification of the foregoing is that, though it refers specially to the child, yet the need of education does not end with childhood, becoming indeed pre-eminent when childhood ends. So we may apply what has been said in the case of the girl, and we shall find it a sure guide to the highest education of women.

First, education being the provision of an environment in the widest sense of that very wide word, always misused when it is used less widely, we must be sure that in our scheme we avoid the errors of past or passing schemes which concern themselves only with some aspect of the environment, and so in effect prepare for something much less than complete living. It is not sufficient to provide an environment which regards the girl as simply a muscular machine, as is the tendency, if not actually the case, in some of the "best" girls' schools to-day; it is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as merely an intellectual machine, as in the higher education of women; it is not sufficient to provide an environment which looks upon the girl as a sideboard ornament, in Ruskin's phrase, such as was provided in the earlier Victorian days. In all these cases we are providing only part of the environment, and providing it in excess. None of them, therefore, satisfies our definition of education, which conceives of environment as the sum-total of all the influences to which the whole organism is subjected—influences dietetic, dogmatic, material, maternal, and all other.[10]

Who will question that, according to this conception of education, such a thing as the higher education of women must be condemned as inadequate? No more than a man is woman a mere intellect incarnate. Her emotional nature is all-important; it is indeed the highest thing in the Universe so far as we know. The scheme of education which ignores its existence, and much more than fails to provide the best environment for it, is condemnable. But the scheme of education which derides and despises the emotional nature of woman, looking upon it as a weakness and seeking to suppress it, is damnable, and has led to the damnation—or loss, if the reader prefers the English term—of this most precious of all precious things in countless cases.

The only right education of women must be that which rightly provides the whole environment. The simpler our conception of woman, the more we underrate her complexity and the manifoldness of her needs, the more certainly shall we repeat in one form or another the errors of our predecessors.

Complete living is a great phrase; perhaps not for a lizard or a mushroom, but assuredly for men and women. Perhaps it involves more for women even than for men; indeed it must do so if we are to adhere to our conception of women as more complex than men, having all the possibilities of men in less or greater measure, and also certain supreme possibilities of their own. Whatever complete living may mean for men, it cannot mean for women anything less than all that is implied in Wordsworth's great line—

"Wisdom doth live with children round her knees."

That line was written in reference to the unwisdom of a man, Napoleon, the greatest murderer in recorded time, and I believe it to be true of men, but it is pre-eminently true of women. There needs no excuse for quoting from Herbert Spencer, since we have already accepted his definition of the subject of education, a notable passage which is perhaps at the present time the most needed of all the wisdom with which that great thinker's book on education is filled:—

"The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed improvement of our systems in respect both of matter and manner, the most pressing desideratum, to prepare the young for the duties of life, is tacitly admitted to be the end which parents and schoolmasters should have in view; and, happily, the value of the things taught, and the goodness of the methods followed in teaching them, are now ostensibly judged by their fitness to this end. The propriety of substituting for an exclusively classical training, a training in which the modern languages shall have a share, is argued on this ground. The necessity of increasing the amount of science is urged for like reasons. But though some care is taken to fit youth of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that, for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value is that it constitutes the education of a gentleman; and while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties, not an hour is spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all responsibilities—the management of a family. Is it that the discharge of it is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not; of all functions which the adult has to fulfil, this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No; not only is the need for such self-instruction unrecognized, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of all others in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed."

If we were wise enough, therefore, we should recognize all education, in the great sense of that word, to be as for parenthood. That ideal will yet be recognized and followed for both sexes, as it has for long been followed, consciously as well as unconsciously, by that astonishing race which has survived all its oppressors, and is in the van of civilization to-day as it was when it produced the Mosaic legislation. The time is not yet when one could accept with a light heart an invitation to lecture on fatherhood to the boys at Eton. Boys to-day are taught by each other, and by those who give them what they call "smut jaws," that what exists for fatherhood, and thus for the whole destiny of mankind, is "smut." When such blasphemies pass for the best pedagogic wisdom, to preach parenthood as the goal of all worthy education is to run the risk of being looked upon as ridiculous. But the time will come when the hideous Empire-wrecking Imperialisms of the present are forgotten, and when we have a new Patriotism—which suggests, first and foremost, as that word well may, the duty of fatherhood; and then, perhaps, "smut jaws" will not be the phrase at Eton for discussion of those instincts which determine the future of mankind.

But girls are our present concern, and we may indeed hope that, though the day is still far when the motto of Eton will be education as for fatherhood, yet the ideal of education as for motherhood may yet triumph wherever girls are taught within even a few years to come. On all sides to-day we see the aberrations of womanhood in a hundred forms, and the consequences thereof. Wrong education is partly, beyond a doubt, to be indicted for this state of things, and the right direction is so clearly indicated by nature and by the deepest intuitions of both sexes that we cannot much longer delay to take it.

Perhaps the reader will have patience whilst for a little we discuss the facts upon which right education for motherhood must be based. Some may suppose that by education for womanhood is meant simply one form or other of instruction; say, for instance, in the certainly important matter of infant feeding. At present, however, I am not thinking of instruction at all, but of education—the leading forth, that is to say, in right proportion and in right direction of the natural constituents of the girl. If we are to be right in our methods we must have some clear understanding of what those constituents are, and we must therefore address ourselves now to getting, if possible, clear and accurate notions of the material with which we have to deal; in other words, we must discuss the psychology of parenthood. We shall perhaps realize then that though the instruction of mothers in being is very necessary and very important, that comes in at the end of our duty, and that we shall never achieve what we might achieve unless we begin at the beginning.



XII

THE MATERNAL INSTINCT

The deeds of men and women proceed from certain radical elements of their nature, some evidently noble, others, when looked at askew, apparently ignoble. These elements are classed as instinctive. We are less intelligent than we think. Reason may occupy the throne, but the foundations upon which that throne is based are not of her making. To change the image, reason is the pilot, not the gale or the engine. She does not determine the goal, but only the course to that goal. We are what our nature makes us; our likes and our dislikes determine our acts, and we are guided to our self-determined ends by means of our intelligence. More often, indeed, we use our intelligence merely to justify to ourselves the likes and dislikes, the action and the inaction, which our instinctive tendencies have determined.

Many of our natural instincts, impulses, and emotions bear only remotely upon our present inquiry; as, for instance, the instinct of flight and the emotion of fear, the instinct of curiosity and the emotion of wonder, the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger. Certain others, however, are not merely radical and permanent parts of our nature, but determine human existence, the greater part of its failures and successes, its folly and wisdom, its history and its destiny. Two of these—the parental and racial instincts—we must carefully consider here, and also, very briefly, a supposed third, the filial instinct. I am inclined to question whether such a specific entity as the filial instinct exists at all; it is rather, I believe, a product, by transmutation, of the parental instinct which, in its various forms and potencies and through the tender emotion which is its counterpart in the affective realm of our natures, is the noblest, finest, and most promising ingredient of our constitution.

Instinct and Emotion.—We must be sure, in the first place, that we have a sound idea of what we mean by the word "instinct." It is absurd, for instance, to speak of "acquiring a political instinct"—or any other. That is the most erroneous possible use of the word. An instinct is eminently something which cannot be "acquired"; it is native if anything is native; as native as the nose or the backbone. Instincts may be developed or repressed; it is the great mark of man that in him they may even be transmuted—but acquired never.

When we come to examine the laws of activity we find that, on the application of certain kinds of stimulus, there are certain very definite responses, and these we call instinctive. If the arm or the leg of a sleeper be stroked or touched, or a cold breath of air blows thereon, it will be withdrawn, and such withdrawal is what we call a reflex action. Now, an instinctive action, as Herbert Spencer saw long ago, is a "complex reflex action." It differs from a simple reflex, a mere twitch, such as winking, but it is a complicated, and possibly prolonged, action, which is, at bottom, of the nature of a reflex. One may instance the instinct of flight, which is correlated with fear. In crossing the street we hear "toot, toot," and we run. We do not ratiocinate, we run. All the primary instincts of mankind act similarly. Take, for contrast, the instinct of curiosity. Consider a child watching a mechanical toy; the impulse of this instinct of curiosity is such that he goes to the thing and examines it. By means of the transmutation, which it is the prerogative of man to effect, this instinct may work out into a lifetime devoted to the study of Nature. There is an unbroken sequence from the interest in the unknown which we see in a kitten or a child up to that which triumphs in a Newton or a Darwin.

Thus we begin to learn that human nature is largely a collection of instincts, more or less correlated, and that at bottom we act on our instincts—in accordance with certain innate predilections, likings, and dislikings with which we were born, and which we have inherited from our ancestors. Indissolubly associated therewith is what we call emotion. For instance, in the exercise of the instinct of curiosity we feel a certain emotion, which we call wonder. There is an ignoble wonder and there is a noble wonder; but whether it be an astronomer watching the stars, or the crowd at a cinematograph show, there exists an association between the emotion of wonder and the instinct of curiosity. Dr. McDougall, of Oxford, elaborated some few years ago, and has now established, an extremely important theory of the relation between instinct and emotion. He has shown that our emotions are correlated with our instincts; that the emotion is the inward or subjective side of the working of the instinct. Thus an instinct is more than a "complex reflex action"; it is more than merely that, on hearing something, or seeing something, certain muscles are thrown into action, because along with the action there is emotion, and this is a natural and necessary correlation. We should do well to carry about with us, as part of our mental furniture, this idea of the correlation between instinct and emotion.

Now, if it be true that man is not primarily a rational animal, if he be rather, au fond, a bundle, an assemblage, an organism of instincts, it behoves us to recognize in ourselves and in others the primary instincts, because from them flows all that goes to make up human nature, whether it be good or evil. Amongst these, certainly, is the parental instinct.

Let us first consider its development in the individual, for this bears on the question when to begin education for motherhood. We find it very early indeed. It is commonly asserted that the doll instinct is the precursor, the infantile and childish form, of the parental instinct. Some psychologists, as we have already noted, assure us that this is wrong, that a small child will be just as content to play with anything else as with a doll; that the child gets fond of its possession, and that what we are really witnessing is the instinct of acquisitiveness. The rest may reason and welcome, but those who are fathers know. We have only to watch a child to learn that it very soon differentiates its doll, or rather, the shapeless mass it calls its doll, from other things. Try with your own children and see if you can get them to like anything else as well as they like a doll. They will not. There are few settled questions as yet in psychology, but we may certainly be sure that the parental instinct and its associated emotion may be unmistakably displayed as the master-passion in a child who is not yet two years old. In a case where the possibility of imitation was excluded I have seen a little girl adore a small baby, stroke its hands, whisper quasi-maternal sweet nothings to it—"mother it," in short—as plainly as I have seen the sun at noon; and there is no reason to suppose that this deeply impressive spectacle was exceptional.

The parental instinct is connected subtly with the racial instinct; and it is undisputed that, except in utterly degraded persons, the object of the feelings which are associated with the racial instinct becomes the object of the feelings which are associated with the parental instinct. The object of the emotion of sex becomes also the object of tender emotion. Thus "love," in its lower sense, becomes exalted by Love in the noble sense.

There is also in us an instinct of pugnacity, which especially appears when the working of any other instinct is thwarted. We know that the parental instinct when thwarted, as in the tigress robbed of her whelps, shows itself in pugnacity—even in the female, which commonly has no pugnacity; and in the emotion of anger. It is a reasonable supposition that the fine anger, the passion for justice, the passion against, say, slavery or cruelty to children—that these indignations which move the world are at bottom traceable to the workings of the outraged parental instinct. When we have tender emotion towards a child, or towards an animal, whatever it be, this is really the subjective side of the working of the parental instinct. Now, tender emotion is what has made and makes everything that is good in the individual, and in human society. It is the basis of all morality—all morality that is real morality—everything that permits us to hold up our heads at all, or to hope for the future of the race. That is why the study of the parental instinct, its correlate or source, is as important and serious as any that can be imagined.

Let us begin by a quotation from Dr. McDougall, author of the best and most searching account of this instinct yet written:—

"The maternal instinct, which impels the mother to protect and cherish her young, is common to almost all the higher species of animals. Among the lower animals the perpetuation of the species is generally provided for by the production of an immense number of eggs or young (in some species of fish a single adult produces more than a million eggs), which are left entirely unprotected, and are so preyed upon by other creatures that on the average but one or two attain maturity. As we pass higher up the animal scale, we find the number of eggs or young more and more reduced, and the diminution of their number compensated for by parental protection. At the lowest stage this protection may consist in the provision of some merely physical shelter, as in the case of those animals that carry their eggs attached in some way to their bodies. But, except at this lowest stage, the protection afforded to the young always involves some instinctive adaptation of the parent's behaviour. We may see this even among the fishes, some of which deposit their eggs in rude nests and watch over them, driving away creatures that might prey upon them. From this stage onwards protection of offspring becomes increasingly psychical in character, involves more profound modification of the parent's behaviour, and a more prolonged period of more effective guardianship. The highest stage is reached by those species in which each female produces at a birth but one or two young, and protects them so efficiently that most of the young born reach maturity; the maintenance of the species thus becomes in the main the work of the parental instinct. In such species the protection and cherishing of the young is the constant and all-absorbing occupation of the mother, to which she devotes all her energies, and in the course of which she will at any time undergo privation, pain, and death. The instinct becomes more powerful than any other, and can override any other, even fear itself; for it works directly in the service of the species, while the other instincts work primarily in the service of the individual life, for which Nature cares little.... When we follow up the evolution of this instinct to the highest animal level, we find among the apes the most remarkable examples of its operation. Thus in one species the mother is said to carry her young one clasped in one arm uninterruptedly for several months, never letting go of it in all her wanderings. This instinct is no less strong in many human mothers, in whom, of course, it becomes more or less intellectualized and organized as the most essential constituent of the sentiment of parental love. Like other species, the human species is dependent upon this instinct for its continual existence and welfare. It is true that reason, working in the service of the egotistic impulses and sentiments, often circumvents the ends of this instinct and sets up habits which are incompatible with it. But when that occurs on a large scale in any society, that society is doomed to rapid decay. But the instinct itself can never die out save with the disappearance of the human species itself; it is kept strong and effective just because those families and races and nations in which it weakens become rapidly supplanted by those in which it is strong.

"It is impossible to believe that the operation of this, the most powerful of the instincts, is not accompanied by a strong and definite emotion; one may see the emotion expressed unmistakably by almost any mother among the higher animals, especially the birds and the mammals—by the cat, for example, and by most of the domestic animals; and it is impossible to doubt that this emotion has in all cases the peculiar quality of the tender emotion provoked in the human parent by the spectacle of her helpless offspring. This primary emotion has been very generally ignored by the philosophers and psychologists; that is, perhaps, to be explained by the fact that this instinct and its emotion are in the main decidedly weaker in men than women, and in some men, perhaps, altogether lacking. We may even surmise that the philosophers as a class are men among whom this defect of native endowment is relatively common."

Dr. McDougall goes on to show how from this emotion and its impulse to cherish and protect spring generosity, gratitude, love, true benevolence, and altruistic conduct of every kind; in it they have their main and absolutely essential root without which they would not be. He argues that the intimate alliance between tender emotion and anger is of great importance for the social life of man, for "the anger invoked in this way is the germ of all moral indignation, and on moral indignation justice and the greater part of public law are in the main founded."[11]

The reader may be earnestly counselled to acquaint himself with Dr. McDougall's book, which, in the judgment of those best qualified, definitely advances the science of psychology in its deepest and most important aspects.

The Transmutation of Instinct.—The last thing here meant by the transmutation of instinct is that by any political alchemy it is possible—to quote Herbert Spencer's celebrated aphorism—to get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. But it is the mark of man, the intelligent being, that in him the instincts are plastic, and even capable of amazing transmutations. In the lower animals there is instinct, but that instinct is an almost completely fixed, rigid, and final thing. In ourselves there is a limitless capacity for the development, the humanization of instinct along many lines, as when the primitive infantile curiosity works out into the speculations of a thinker. In other words, we are educable, the lower animals are not, or only within very narrow limits.

Yet in one respect the lower animals have the advantage over us. Their instincts are often perfect. We cannot teach a cat anything about how to look after a kitten; but parallel instincts amongst ourselves, though not less numerous or potent, are not perfected, not sharp-cut. In the cat there is no need for education; in woman there is eminent need for it. Indeed it is the lack of education that is largely responsible for our large infant mortality; not that woman is inferior to the cat, but that, being not instinctive but intelligent, she requires education in motherhood.

Human instincts in general are capable of modification; sometimes they may take bizarre forms, and so we find that there are people without children of their own—more commonly women—who will have twenty cats in the house and look after them, or who will devote their whole lives to the cause of the rat or the rabbit, or whatever it may be, while the children of men are dying around them. These things are indications of the parental instinct centred on unworthy objects. It is a common thing to laugh at these aberrations—thoughtlessly, may we not say? While orphans are to be found, we should do better if we try to bring together the woman who needs to "mother" and the child who needs to be "mothered."

Conduct is at least three-fourths of life, and the great business of education is the direction of conduct. We have seen how modern psychology illuminates what has been so long dark, by directing us to our instincts as the sources of our needs, and by showing us that it is the possibility of the education of instinct which essentially distinguishes us from the lower animals.

We must therefore distinguish between education for motherhood and education or instruction in motherhood. It is very important that a woman should know the elements of infant feeding, but it is more important that, in the first place, her whole life before she becomes a mother—nay, even before she chooses her child's father—shall centre in the education of her instincts for motherhood. Finding good evidence, as we do, of the maternal instinct at a very early age, and recognizing its importance in conduct and in the formation of ideals long before the marriage age, we are justified in discussing the maternal instinct here instead of postponing it, as some might argue, until after we have discussed marriage. There is nothing which I wish to assert more strongly than that we are radically wrong in this postponement, which is indeed our customary practice. Partly because we are blind, partly because of our most imprudent prudery, we ignore and pervert the due sequence of development, but here I deliberately prefer to follow the indications of nature, and to discuss the maternal instinct now because, in the matter of the education of girls, this is precisely the most important subject that can be named.

Let us now note some popular misconceptions which cumber our minds and often interfere with the work of the reformer.

To begin with what is perhaps the oldest of these, though indeed scarcely entitled to the appellation of popular, let us assure ourselves once and for all that we are talking about a fact natural, innate, not acquired. The modern criticism of ancient notions of human nature, such as those expressed in the theologians' conception of "conscience," has inclined some to the view that our best feelings are indeed not at all innate. No one can for a moment analyze conscience without observing the immense disparity between the facts and the theologians' theory. And thus we are apt to fall into the opposite error of supposing that our impulses towards good action are entirely the products of education, training, public opinion, and so forth. Let the reader refer, for instance, to such a celebrated work as John Stuart Mill's "Utilitarianism," and it will be seen how wide of the mark it was possible for even a great thinker to go, when his ideas of mind were unguided by the light of evolution. Even in the greatest writer of that time not a syllable do we find as to the parental instinct. "As is my own belief," says Mill, "the moral feelings are not innate but acquired." Yet we have seen convincing evidence which teaches us that the moral feelings spring essentially from the root of the parental instinct, without which mankind could not continue for another generation, and than which there is nothing more fundamental and essential in any type of human nature that can persist.

The importance of noting this can be clearly stated. We are here dealing with something which is not for us to implant, but which is already part of the plant, so to speak, and which it is for us to tend. Like other innate features of mankind, its transmission from generation to generation is notably independent of the effects of education, the effects of use and disuse. This is a difficult thing of which to persuade people, but it is the fact. Education, environment, training, opportunity, habit, public opinion, social prejudice—all these and such other influences may and do affect the maternal instinct in the individual for good or for evil. No fact is more certain or important, and that is precisely why we must study this instinct. But the effect upon the individual does not involve any effect upon the native constitution of the individual's children. From age to age the general facts and features of the human backbone persist. We do not expect to find notable differences between the generations in such a radical feature of our constitution, no matter what particular habits of posture, play, and the like we adopt. The maternal instinct is scarcely less fundamental; it is certainly no whit less essential for the species. It is the very backbone of our psychological constitution. Thus it is nonsense to assert that, for instance, women are becoming less motherly, if by this is meant that the maternal instinct is failing. That bad education may affect it for evil no one can question, but we must distinguish between nature and nurture. We may be perfectly confident that so far as the natural material of girl-childhood and girlhood is concerned, there is no falling off; there will not, for there cannot, be any falling off either in the quality or in the quantity of the maternal instinct. On the contrary, it can, and will later be shown that through the action of heredity this instinct will be strengthened in the future, just in so far as motherhood becomes more and more a special privilege of those women in whom this instinct is strong, and who become mothers for the only good reason—that they love to have children of their own.