It is this latter form of the science—this science, which is also an art—that we would advocate as essential for the equipment of women. With this view let us examine it further.
And first, what is its proper starting-point? Its proper starting-point is accurate instruction concerning the living things with which the student is, or can easily be, brought into immediate practical contact. And, again, in the study of these living things—plants and animals alike—attention is directed first towards the organism in its totality and in its activities—towards function rather than towards structure; and also towards mode of life, relations with environment, and, where possible, towards its use or danger to mankind. Structure will, no doubt, early have to be introduced, but only in its larger details as explanatory of function, for the sake of a better knowledge of the animal or plant as a whole.
What are to be the types and examples of organisms studied?
This is an important question, and the writer would most strongly urge that the principle of selection should be that of locality; that the student should start with those plants and animals—both wild and domestic—which are to be found within a given radius of the place where she is living and working. The first things to know about are habit, activity, inter-relation and use to 48 human beings. In respect to these, the presence of one organism will react upon others, and therefore no plant or animal within the area should be lightly overlooked.
We must not, however, confine attention to the higher multicellular animals and plants. One of the most important factors in the environment is the existence of bacteria; and it is of great importance that an outline of bacteriology should be included in our course of Common-sense Biology. This outline should be kept close to the common necessities of everyday life. For the sake of making clear and real to the mind the manner in which bacteria multiply and the extreme rapidity of the process, a certain amount of microscopical work ought to be done, the examples being few, but carefully chosen. This kind of work, nevertheless, should be kept subordinate. The effects wrought by bacteria in water, earth and air, in stored foodstuffs, and in the tissues of the living body are the important subjects for study; and naturally, connected with these, the conditions which permit the access of bacteria or which, in the case of noxious bacteria, will best ensure protection.
The rationale of toxins and anti-toxins, with the relations of these to the blood-serum should also, in a general way, be known; and moreover the student should be prepared to learn that many 49 diseases, which are at present very imperfectly understood—we may take, for instance, forms of insanity—have their vera causa in the action of toxins, and require to be treated accordingly.
Perhaps, for those who cannot take more than the shorter courses of our Common-sense Biology, it will be sufficient to consider only those forms of inimical bacteria which we have to combat in our own islands. But the writer would strongly urge that, at least among women of the leisured classes, this instruction should be extended to cover the bacterial and other minute parasitic forms of disease most prevalent in our colonies and in our foreign possessions. The wives of officers, civil servants and missionaries ought to know, in a clear, scientific way, the causes, modes of attack, and methods of prevention of the principal tropical diseases, so far as these have at present been made out.
What should be the method of this study?
The sketching out of a course would be far beyond the scope of this paper. Here it may only be said that the work must, of necessity, fall into two main parts. There must be, on the one hand, field-naturalist’s work, for the greater proportion of the animals and plants studied ought—so far as is in any way practicable—to be observed in their natural surroundings; and there must be, on the other hand, work allied to that of the gardener and farmer, the rearing of selected 50 plants and animals for purposes of experiment and of closer examination. Nothing worth mentioning can be done on either of these lines without some study of the food and climatic conditions required by each creature; and this will involve a study of soils, temperature, atmosphere, and so on—and also a study of the nutrient properties of those organisms which furnish forth the food of other organisms. From this knowledge, gained thus through direct observation and experiment, would be deduced the general principles which—so to express it—govern life; and upon it as foundation would be reared the more specialised knowledge of all that pertains strictly to the life of mankind. Throughout the aim should be to use books mainly for reference.
It is not necessary—as it might have been a few years ago—to show that a training on these lines is better, as a preparation for life, than that offered by the ordinary school and university curriculum; but it may be worth while to show how far and why it is superior to a well-planned course in the analytical biology of the laboratory. The superiority is surely twofold: in that the kind of knowledge acquired is of greater practical utility; and, again, in that the development which it ensures, to the powers, bodily and mental of the student, is more varied, thorough, and effective.
As has been said, this Common-sense Biology partakes of the nature of an art. Now it is 51 characteristic of any art that, for its satisfactory exercise, it demands not only knowledge, but also intuition;—not only conscious volition, reflection, and endeavour, but also subconscious nervous and muscular activity, and, together with that, a certain emotional state—a trend, tendency, disposition of the whole being, which likewise is chiefly subconscious.
Without such a disposition to begin with you cannot have an artist. Neither will you get an artist, if, on the other hand, this disposition is never given an opportunity for displaying itself and developing its capacities. You cannot play an instrument properly if you have no music in you, and the music in you will never come forth if you have no instrument to play upon. When disposition and opportunity are happily met, and the true artist arises, it is in the subconscious that the chief riches, gained by her work and experience, are stored, and from the subconscious that she draws her skill; while in the subconscious, again, lie the mysterious sources of original inspiration. We all know well how over-consciousness spoils art, as it spoils most kinds of action. The happiest effects, the loveliest deeds spring, as it were, spontaneously.
What is true of such arts as music and poetry is at least equally true of the art of living. The rich and well-harmonised subconsciousness is the proximate source whence all that is strongest and most beautiful in human activity is derived. The domestic arts, conversation, power of rapid judgment 52 at a crisis, the care of the sick, the care of children, tactful daily dealing with one’s fellows, all these, and so much else, we recognise to be dependent for perfection upon practice; and that is only another way of saying that they depend on the efficiency and the character of the subconscious. But the character and efficiency of each person’s subconscious being depend in their turn—not solely, yet principally—first, upon the knowledge she has acquired, and secondly, upon the actions she has habitually performed. Action and being, as we all know full well, are for ever acting and reacting upon one another.
Action is a more potent influence upon the subconscious even than knowledge; and when to mere activity there is added emotion—such emotion, for instance, as pleasure or love, or solicitude, or desire for truth—we may feel assured we have brought into play the most powerful of all the forces which, in an ordinary way, go to vivify and to form human character.
The subconscious is even more important for women than for men, because women have more calls upon their emotions, and more need for intuition, and also more need for general resourcefulness and skill. It is because the Common-sense Biology whose claims we are urging involves so much activity, such care, quickness of observation, patience and ready wit, that it makes a better preparation for life than the more highly specialized work in the Biology of the laboratory alone could be.
Is there, it may now be asked, anywhere any definite evidence to bear out this contention. There is: and in abundance. For it, however, we must look away from civilised communities, especially from the educated portion of their populations. Civilisation, no doubt, gives much; but it also takes much away. It has taken away much of the traditional lore of women, and more and more of their traditional activities. This does not merely mean that the practical ability and knowledge of civilised women is greatly restricted; it means also that the peculiar intuitive wisdom of women—the fruit of a richly-stored subconsciousness—is much diminished. In capacity for pure thought the educated woman of civilised communities no doubt excels all the rest: in most other respects the barbarian or savage woman will—with some few exceptions—probably be found her superior, whether judged merely by her mastery of the conditions amid which she has to work, or, more broadly, by the amount of her real knowledge and the range of her effective capacities.
Take, as an example, the Eskimo woman, who is considered to represent the woman of palæolithic times. As there is no Eskimo Board of Education—no paraphernalia of Primary, Secondary, Technical, and other Schools, with their red tape and officialism—she is free to carry on the tradition 54 of her ancestresses, and to rear, in the good old ways, children who grow up to be sturdy men and women. The preparation she had for her task was chiefly that of watching and imitating her own mother. Thus, as a child, she followed all the processes of turning the dead reindeer to account—learning thereby an economy and an unwillingness to waste which were essentially scientific—learning, too, subconsciously. She saw the flesh of the reindeer made into pemmican—cut into thin slices, and dried in the sun or in the smoke of a slow fire, then pounded between stones (the use of stones is worth noticing) and stored under a cover of melted fat, poured over it in due proportion. She saw the bones—after the marrow had been extracted from them—pounded down and boiled to get out the residual fat; the horns set aside to make fish-hooks, chisels, needles, and fishing-spears, work for the long winter evenings; the skin carefully dressed with a split bone and cut into shape to make clothing, and snow-shoes, thongs, bow-strings, fishing-nets, and so on. The very tendons make threads for sewing: and the garments thus fashioned are not only strong and serviceable, but beautiful with that particular beauty, which may perhaps be called barbaric, but which almost invariably denotes vigour and fulness of subconscious life. The Eskimo women also make their own boats and their own tools; they are good fishers and hunters. Their year’s work comprises an exercise of dexterity and quick wit of which the ordinary Englishwoman can have no idea.
We might take as another example the North American Indian woman, with her varied forest-lore; but, since space is limited, let us pass for one further illustration to the despised Australian aboriginal. She too knows and does things worthy of our admiration and imitation. For instance the English housewife’s preparation of the household food is nothing like so conscientious as the Australian’s, whose proceedings have the keen disinterested concentration proper to a bit of scientific research. Thus, to take but one example of the processes connected with the preparation of one form of food—a seed of a species of eucalyptus: “With a hooked stick she pulls down the terminal branches of the tree and spreads them out to dry on a piece of ground cleared for the purpose. After allowing them to lie there for a period determined by temperature, she collects the distal ends of the branches, damps them and brushes the seeds off into water. For a period of two or more hours these seeds are kept soaking, but the water is repeatedly changed, so as to remove all traces of the ‘gum.’ After this they are dried and ground on a stone. Again, she builds their rough, but wisely devised home most carefully according to ancient tradition. She takes her little girl, armed with a miniature digging-stick, out to track the honey-ant with her, and to learn by the way what are the birds and beasts and plants, friendly or inimical, which surround their home-camp.”
Alongside of this direct learning about nature goes the learning of the legends and traditions of 56 the tribe, together with the customary dances, rituals, and religious practices. The activity of savage life is everywhere such that no anomalies like our physical exercises are needed,—for the physique of the young men and women is as graceful, strong, and enduring as need be.
If we turn to savage or barbarian peoples higher in the scale we shall find their knowledge, abilities, and accomplishments higher and also more varied. But, on the whole, until we come to the average modern woman of a civilised community, we shall find that the women—through their happily developed subconsciousness—are equal to the best the community requires of them. They do not call their training Common-sense Biology, but that is what it practically is. They know all about their surroundings, and what to do therein. And grace and beauty wait upon what they do.
This ideal is not, however, quite without parallel among the more highly civilised peoples. The Greeks conceived of Athene, the great goddess of wisdom and of war, as also Athene Ergane, the Workwoman, the goddess of handicrafts in the home. In our own country—to take examples near to us and familiar—the names of Caroline Herschel, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Mary Somerville, and George Eliot not only attest the fact that exquisite skill in domestic arts is not, in a woman, incompatible with learning and genius, but may also lead us to suspect that the exercise of this 57 skill actually aided and furthered their better-known achievements.
In our civilised communities—from the point of view of the subconscious—women are in two ways at a disadvantage. First, excessive division of labour, with our dependence upon machinery, has made the life of the State far more complicated than in former days; and secondly, the activity of the individual, from the same causes, is far more monotonous, far less well-calculated to bring out all her powers and train her being as a whole, than it used to be. Hence, as we said, women have lost a good deal subconsciously—even though, in consciousness, they may have gained.
There is nothing in which the character of the subconscious is more clearly seen than in a person’s attitude towards the great mysteries of life: towards birth and marriage and death on the one hand—towards religion on the other. It is, of course, matter of common knowledge that in regard to marriage the customs of some savage tribes are what we should describe as licentious. A truer understanding of the savage mind has, however, mitigated many of the judgments passed even upon the worst of these practices—at least in so far as they were taken to indicate gross inward depravity on the part of the women. And among many peoples there are found laws and customs of real beauty and noble significance, witnessing to reverence, fine intuition, and real care for the highest good of the tribe. And in general of all savage races it may be said that whatever 58 their laws and customs are—though perhaps born of ignorance and selfishness—they feel seriously about them as about sacred things, and observe them scrupulously.
The better side is exemplified chiefly by the women. When anthropological work is more largely undertaken by women, and when, through their sympathy, the jealously guarded secrets of the women’s tradition, now almost entirely unknown, are yielded up to us, it is probable that our conceptions of savage life and thought will have to be radically modified. However that may be, it is even now sufficiently well known that the women do not leave the question of reproduction and marriage to chance in the education of their girls. The girls are definitely, carefully, and it would seem often tenderly, taught; and if, among some peoples, they are made to undergo great sufferings, a closer study usually reveals in these the effects of the long subjection of the women to the cruelty and uncontrolled passions of the men. All this should not blind us to the fact that the maternal instinct is here actively grappling with the great realities of life: and we may contrast this with the ways of the modern woman who, less developed in subconsciousness, is not so forcibly impelled to make any such attempt, and, for the most part, practically lets the whole thing slide. Here, as in other directions, the fuller development of the subconscious would compel and also enable us to correct a grave omission: while the knowledge 59 necessarily acquired concerning reproduction and birth in the course of biological work would fill up that which has hitherto often been wanting even in the best-inspired women who have dealt with this question.
It must by now have been made clear that our object in advocating this Common-sense Biology is to recover what was excellent in the equipment of the women of the past, and to unite it with what is most excellent, and most germane to woman’s life, in the methods and knowledge of the present. Since modern household life is deficient in the requisite opportunities we are obliged to have recourse to definite educational schemes. But education of this sort will assuredly continue to be necessary even after many improvements in the home have been brought to pass; because it will always be necessary to keep the knowledge and activities of women in correspondence with the advance of science. At the same time it is worth while to remember that the earlier the child begins to observe living things, to live with them, learn about them, and take care of them, the better the final result will be; while the ideally trained mother in the ideal home, herself practical and active, will be able to do more for her children in this regard than most people, perhaps, would now dream of.
Biological training of the order we have been considering is, we believe, desirable for all women in the interests, first, of the home and of the rearing of children. But it is equally desirable for the women who are not destined to be wives and mothers, and particularly so as a foundation for any kind of university work, even for the different literary or philosophical schools.
Here it is, perhaps, worth while to urge upon women the claims of the other great division of Biology, that of the laboratory. A considerable number of women who go up to the universities have, indeed, intellectual abilities deserving special cultivation, yet abilities which show no very distinct inclination in any one direction. These have been very commonly drafted into the study of history. It may be questioned whether some branch of Biology would not be better for them, and more useful to the community. Women working at Biology in the universities ought to serve, and to aim at serving, as the channels by which each fresh addition of scientific knowledge finds its way to, and its appropriate place in, the schemes of Common-sense Biology generally obtaining.
In another field—the field of public work—it is to be hoped that ere long a knowledge of biology will come to be considered a sine quâ non for women. It would be superfluous to point 61 out in how many kinds of public work women are gradually coming to the fore—in those especially which deal with education and with the care of the disabled. Already the influence and the peculiar gifts of women have in some degree made themselves felt; but these might operate much more powerfully if they were more commonly associated with scientific knowledge—with a knowledge of those branches of biology, more especially of bio-chemistry and bio-physics, which bear most nearly upon humanity.
It would take up too much space to give an account of the many ways in which biology is here of service: two great lines of utility may just be indicated as examples.
First, biology would lead to certain modifications of practice—particularly in our treatment of children, and of persons deemed criminal or insane. The biologist, when anything was amiss—before she pronounced any one to be mentally or morally unsound, defective, or bad—would presume, to start with, that there was some definite physical trouble to be set right, not necessarily anything dangerous in itself or mysterious. In New York they now make it a rule to examine for adenoids every young offender against the law, before punishing him; and it is amazing how often adenoids are found, and when removed carry the child’s wickedness away with them. Adenoids and divers glands are responsible for a great proportion of youthful wrongdoing; and yet other physical troubles will account for a great 62 proportion of the rest. The writer herself once came across a young girl who was, in intention and attempt, a murderess—yet was so only through the effect of a common physical condition, easy enough to treat when once ascertained. Until our general conception of a child—or indeed of a human being—is a more truly biological one, framed more closely upon the facts of its bodily life, we shall have but little effective intuition into its state. And such a sound biological conception is not to be had apart from some good measure of sound biological knowledge.
When, however, the most careful observation reveals no local or definite mischief to be dealt with in the person under consideration, the biologist will still not hastily set him down as bad—or even as unsound or defective. He will next suspect that he is one whose physical organisation is not fitted for its environment: if he can be placed in a better environment perhaps he will grow better. If this change is, from whatever circumstances, impossible, the biologist in treating him, however troublesome he may be, will still never regard him as wholly responsible for what he is, will still try to ascertain the exact ways in which the environment presses injuriously upon him, and to help him in those definite particulars. If we desire the work of our reformatories and prisons and the disciplinary work of our schools really to be and not merely to appear effective, it is only by such nicely-calculated methods that we shall attain our object.
This brings us to our second point. Biology, when a knowledge of it is more widely spread among us, will assuredly work a change in public opinion. We have among us thousands of men and women whom we account failures in life; whose existence constitutes our gravest social problem. The drunkard, the wastrel, the thief, the prostitute—these are characters whom society thrusts out. They have proved themselves unfitted for their environment; they cannot act in it with any regularity or seemliness: its laws are not their laws. And the assumption most generally is that these are beings of a lower stamp than the average, unhappily surviving in, or at war with, an environment which postulates a nobler sort of men and women. Is it so?
The finer and more delicately poised a mechanism—whether it be chemical balance, galvanometer, electroscope or what not—the more sensitive is it to its surroundings. Thus the instruments once at Kew Observatory have had to be transferred to the wilds of Scotland to ensure their perfect working—rendered impossible at Kew by the noise and vibrations of encroaching London. Thus, again, the mind of Darwin required for its proper functioning the quiet of a study at Down, in the heart of the country. A ray of light will spoil a delicate experiment: the presence in an observatory of one steel key will hinder the work of the instruments. A boy commits suicide because of the noise of the factory in which he is compelled to work. A girl drowns herself 64 because the worries of her home are intolerable.
The point I would press is that these different examples belong fundamentally to the same category. Whether it be the instrument devised by man, or whether it be the human nervous system itself, that which we are looking at is a mechanism too delicate for the cruel exigencies of an unyielding gross environment. We have but to reflect on one organ alone—on the exceeding fineness of structure, and nicety of adjustment, and definiteness of sense-limit, of the eye—in order to realise that the comparison between the human nervous system and the most delicate of our delicate instruments is more than justifiable.
How do we know, when dealing with any given drunkard, that we have not before us a fine, fine nature, to which the harsh and low conditions of our Western civilisation have simply proved intolerable? How do we know that, instead of blaming him and trying to adjust him to the world, we ought not rather to blame the world, and try to make it a fit place for him to live in?
This consideration—strictly scientific as it is—ought to have very great weight in that new department of biological work which has been named Eugenics. Before lightly saying of any stock that it is not good to breed from, or that it is good to breed from, pains should surely be taken to ascertain whether irregularities and disease evinced by members of that stock do not in 65 reality proceed from their superiority to their environment and to the average men and women about them. Individually they may be irreclaimable, yet, thrown out of gear, miserable and wasted as they are, they may be the carriers of the finest hopes of humanity, of a promise for the fulfilment of which we are not yet ready. Perhaps there is a tendency to be a little over-hasty in our estimates of good and bad stocks to breed from. Perhaps we have not yet fully learnt either the significance of recessive characters or the importance of the mere fact that the unit-characters of a human being are immensely numerous, and their inter-relations therefore extremely intricate. And yet, again, perhaps we are too intolerant of variety, too eager for uniformity.
Here in England we have a mixed population, sprung from many diverse origins. The differences between individuals are many and great. Yet the majority of the population is thrust into the grooves of one educational system, and thereafter compelled to settle down to occupations and modes of life which are the same for thousands together. Any attempt to leave the common rut is looked at askance. What wonder that there are rebels, and that the rebels are unhappy! A society constructed in conformity to true biological principles, instead of suppressing variety would give it welcome as one of the most precious of national characteristics, and would purposely adjust itself and its systems with more 66 accuracy so as to give every sort and type of person the best possible chance for developing his or her peculiar gifts. In a society so constituted, very rare indeed would be the occurrence of insanity.
These considerations should have weight in yet another direction: in determining the counsel which ought to be given to girls as to the choice of a mate.
The importance of soundness of stock has here too been well brought into prominence by the workers in Eugenics; and perhaps it may not be amiss to make one or two suggestions with a view to obviating a too narrow application of the principle of the sound stock.
We must remember, first, that disease is not necessarily evidence of unsoundness. Like some forms of moral obliquity, it may be merely evidence of a quality in the stock which renders it unable to tolerate a given environment. And this quality may be in itself an excellence of the most precious kind. This would be the true account of many cases of insanity, while others would be covered by the action of toxins on the brain. Heredity, we are told in many instances of “insanity,” is more probably a heredity of “special liability to the production of toxins or to the action of toxins on the brain,” than heredity of insanity proper. This view will naturally entail modifications in our methods of treating the “insane,” as well as a considerable change in public opinion with regard to the significance of insanity.
And, secondly, we must remember the importance of the environment, more especially of the human part of it. A man of sound stock is very commonly brought up as a sportsman, whose first idea is to kill; or as an idler, whose chief occupations are eating, drinking, and smoking, with travel and some amount of gambling thrown in by way of variety. Or he may easily be above all things a money-maker and a lover of money. His habits of this sort will determine to a very great extent the early—and that is the critical—environment of his children. The tendency in his family will be towards uniformity, towards one level, and that not a high level, of thought, activity, and character. His example and influence will go very far to counteract the advantages presumably ensured by the soundness of his stock.
On the other hand, a man whose ancestry is eugenically not flawless may have such wide interests, so many and such fine powers, so much skill in different activities, and so high and generous a personal ideal, that the environment which his manner of life would make for his children—the inspiration he would be to them—might well be expected very largely, if not wholly, to counteract the disadvantages of defects in the stock.
No doubt this principle should be applied with all reasonableness and care, but it is extremely important for the highest welfare, for the development of the best possibilities of the people, that it should be definitely recognised.
A word must here be said as to the importance—more especially to the biological student who aims at social work—of some knowledge of Anthropology. Biology is, in fact, incomplete without anthropology; for in its absence there is a danger of applying biological principles too summarily, and therefore unscientifically, to humanity. Anthropology, of course, goes behind art and history and the literary ideas current among civilised peoples. It gives life and meaning to customs, legends, handicrafts, details of dress, ornament, and furniture which otherwise go unheeded or misunderstood. It helps to interpret for us the ways of contemporary peoples and classes which are on a level different from our own. It gives a unity in infinite diversity to our whole conception of humanity. When more widely studied, there can be little doubt that it will cause us to reconstruct many of our judgments, both concerning the history of the past and concerning the civilisations of the present day.
We cannot but believe that a time will come when it will be assumed of all women that they know the broad truths of biology, just as it is now assumed that they know the alphabet. It will be taken for granted that they have mastered the essential domestic arts with their own hands, 69 just as we now take for granted they can write with their own hands. We shall have reached then the beginning of a new era—an era which we may hope will unite the excellences, moral, æsthetic, and hygienic, of earlier times, with the excellences, more purely intellectual and scientific, of our own day.
The most effective instruments for bringing this about are the synthetic powers of woman herself, combined with her practical skill and her ready intuition. As we have tried to show, the best chance for the eliciting and the disciplining of these powers of hers, so as best to fit them for the struggle of modern life, is afforded by biology.
It must be clear how many reforms—impossible to the nominally educated women of the present day—would flow easily from this better training of women; for those so trained could certainly not endure the futility of some of our educational ideals, nor that haphazard disregard of the nature and needs of the child, which still characterises so much of our educational method. They could not support the continuance of many of the common evils of modern life—the noise and dirt, the brutality of manners, the scamping of work, the rush for pleasure. These, however they may or may not affect the adult, are plainly impairing the best 70 promise of the children; and that fact will be enough for the truly educated woman.
Knowing, too, as she will, more accurately and scientifically than women to-day generally know, how largely energy and depression, irritability and calm strength are questions of right or wrong food, the educated woman may be trusted to find a means to put an end to the crying iniquity of adulteration. Directly or indirectly, by the pressure of her determination that the race shall no longer be offered a sacrifice to Mammon, she will assuredly find a way to put an end to all not absolutely necessary dangerous trades.
The opposition of such women to what is wrong in social custom, in government, in education, will be a very different thing from the opposition of well-meaning but imperfectly instructed women on the one hand; or, on the other, that of a few thoroughly trained and informed ones working more or less in isolation, scattered over the country. It would mean a body of sound, enlightened, disinterested public opinion, so vast, so far-reaching, yet so intimately cognisant of all the little daily details of life in the home, that it is difficult to see what other body of opinion could be found mighty enough to resist it.
If, unhappily, this advance should not be made—if our present Western civilisation be allowed to run unchecked down the groove into which it has sunk—there seems nothing before it but destruction.
“The Electrical Resistance of the Human Body.” Gee and Brotherton, Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc., 1910.
The slow development of the demand for the training of girls of the middle and upper classes in the details of household management has been to a great extent due to the common observation that persons of imperfect education are frequently proficient in the domestic arts, and to the assumption that good housekeeping consists entirely in the efficient exercise of those arts.
The fact that in the early Victorian period girls living much at home learned, almost insensibly, from their mothers the routine of daily duties in the house, has made elder women look askance on the lectures dealing with domestic economy which appear to them so needless, and has led them to foster the superstition that woman qua woman should be equal to any demand that may be made upon her as organiser of her own household.
That the housekeeping of to-day is more complex than that of half a century ago is incredible to the older woman who remembers the baking and brewing, and divers other matters, that demanded the attention of the notable housewives of the forties and fifties of the nineteenth century. 74 That the horizon of women’s lives has widened, and that other interests than those appertaining to their immediate circle claim their attention, is not acceptable to all; it is however the claims of these outside interests that have awakened in the more thoughtful the desire so to order their households that they may in some degree free themselves from petty cares, and be able to help in the amelioration of the lives of less fortunate persons; or to pursue other branches of knowledge in which they have learned to take a keen intellectual pleasure.
It is a paradox that one of the difficulties with which the modern mistress has to contend is the fact that her house is “replete with every modern convenience.” Every labour-saving contrivance, every mechanical convenience, calls for vigilance to ensure its proper use, and for knowledge as to the ways in which it may fail, and of the method of readjustment if it should happen to do so. No apparatus which is not thoroughly understood by the mistress will be well used by the servants, and servants will rarely if ever exercise any knowledge they possess to prevent the expense of calling in a workman. If the mistress of a house can use such ordinary tools as a hammer, a screwdriver, a gluepot, and a soldering-iron, a great deal of expense may be saved in small repairs; on the other hand, ignorant meddling with scientific apparatus may be worse than useless. There can be no doubt that a course of instruction in natural philosophy, combined with work in 75 a well-equipped laboratory and workshop, should find a place in the curriculum of every girls’ school, whether elementary or secondary, as this training lays the surest foundation for a superstructure of experimental domestic science. The argument against including the application of the physical sciences to domestic methods in the ordinary educational course of every girl, namely, that she may not be called upon to keep a house of her own, cannot be sustained; there are no circumstances in which knowledge of the laws which govern the health and well-being of human beings can be useless. We all live in houses, either our own or other people’s, and we are all liable to disease and discomfort caused by the faulty construction of the house or the unhealthy practices of the inmates.
The aim of education is to enable a person to act wisely in every emergency of life whatever his particular calling may be, but it is hardly possible to act wisely without some knowledge of the relation between cause and effect. This is true whether we are engaged in the practical affairs of life, in the pursuit of knowledge, or in the effort to extend knowledge by research. It is sometimes argued that a woman of trained intellect can easily acquire the art of housekeeping, and this is no doubt 76 the case if we limit the art to the choice and supervision of competent domestics, but there can be no doubt that there are many women of trained intellect who not only suffer themselves but entail suffering on others from inability to discern good housekeeping, in our sense of the word, from bad. It must be remembered that courses of education should be framed for the training of unmethodical and unpractical minds, which may and often do accompany the highest forms of intellect, as well as for those of a naturally orderly and practical bent.
We all consciously or unconsciously make use of the facts of science: we do not send eggs by parcel post merely placed in a box, we do not even send one egg in a box that exactly fits it, we are careful to surround each egg with soft paper or some other elastic material in sufficient quantity to distribute the effects of the blows that we know the box will be subjected to in the post, so that the eggs may not be broken; if we place a tray of china on a table, we are careful that it should not project beyond the table so as to fall when we let it go; we do not pour hot water into cut-glass tumblers, and we do not mix effervescing drinks in wine-glasses. We should call a person ignorant who was unaware of the probable results of doing the things enumerated above; but if the accidents following want of knowledge were always so simple, ignorance would not be a matter of much importance, and we might be willing to let our girls learn by experience. Unfortunately, the neglect of a 77 scientific law has led in the past, and may lead in the future, to much more serious, even fatal results, and Solomon has applied a not very complimentary epithet to those who have wisdom forced upon them by involuntary experience. It is to the publication of statistics which show the alarming spread of such diseases as consumption and the terrible waste of infant life, that we owe the awakening of the public mind to the need for systematic training in science and scientific method.
Scientific method seeks to establish relations between isolated facts or phenomena, and the relation generally takes the form of cause and effect; so that persons with a scientific training are accustomed to examine the grounds for considering this relation of cause and effect in circumstances which are selected with a view to exhibiting the reality of the relation. From that training it becomes possible for them, when confronted with circumstances presenting some difficulty, to form a better opinion as to what is the cause of the difficulty than they could if they were confronted with the same difficulty without the previous training. Any attentive observer of human nature will be struck by the fact that every person is accustomed to refer every event to some cause; if it is an illness, the occasion for 78 contracting the illness is defined; if it is any unforeseen event in the domestic economy, a reason is nearly always forthcoming; the question which the housewife is called upon to decide is whether the reason offered is a real and sufficient one. Meteorologists tell a familiar story of an Indian nabob who found that there was a deposit of moisture on the outside of his tumbler of brandy and water, and tasting it with his finger, remarked it was very curious that the water came through the glass but the brandy did not. Plenty of reasons offered for domestic incidents have no better ground of fact than the nabob’s opinion that the water came through the glass.
A good deal of the comfort of a modern house turns upon a right judgment as regards cause and effect, and therefore some preparation which will fit the housewife to appreciate the rights and wrongs of domestic reasoning is an indispensable qualification for success. It is not always possible for the most profound student to offer offhand the true explanation of various facts of domestic life, but it is possible to approach the consideration of these questions with some hope of deciding whether the explanation offered is a true or a fictitious one. The ability for this is largely a question of habit of mind or training; and for our purpose the training must include those departments of knowledge, the laws of which find daily expression in the manifold experiences of domestic life. The ultimate foundation for these laws is to be found in the study of Physics, which deals with those 79 changes in the state of matter which stop short of the alteration of its composition; of Chemistry, which deals with changes involving an alteration of the composition of the substances under consideration; and of Physiology, which is the identification of the processes which take place in living animals and plants and their relation to the laws of physics and chemistry. Without a knowledge of the fundamental principles of these sciences and of the methods by which those principles are established, it is not to be expected that any person can deal adequately with the common experiences of life.
It is true that experience, if it is sufficiently extensive and prolonged, may lead to the formulation of a set of practical rules that will carry a housewife through the ordinary household round without discredit, but the question which we have to put to ourselves is whether, by organising and directing the experience, success may not be made certain and more instructive. In these days domestic life is more complicated than it used to be; at the same time experience is in a sense more restricted. Many of the instructive processes, practical experience in which conveyed valuable if unconscious scientific training, are now conducted on a large scale, and are outside the range of domestic duties, and the housewife has to supply, by special training in scientific principles, the judgment that in days gone by was acquired as a matter of habit.
It is impossible in the short space of a 80 single article to set out the details of a systematic course of training sufficient to fit the housewife to use her judgment wisely in circumstances which require a knowledge of the principles of the fundamental physical sciences. The most that we can attempt is to give a few examples which illustrate the application of the principles of physics and chemistry. Our purpose in doing so is to suggest illustrations which appeal to every householder, and may create a desire for fuller knowledge rather than to supply a course of instruction. What we aim at is not to provide the equipment of scientific training, but to show that the scientific habit of mind will find opportunities for useful employment in many of the most ordinary affairs of life. The problems that present themselves in the course of experience are sometimes difficult and intricate; patience and careful observation as well as knowledge are required for their solution. Sometimes this solution is beyond the immediate resources of those concerned, and it is a part of scientific training to recognise when this is the case, so that effort and money may not be wasted in endeavours which are foredoomed to failure. We may cite a case in point where an extra bell was desired in a system of electric bells in a flat at a time when electric installations in private houses were somewhat rare, and workmen with any knowledge beyond that necessary for carrying out instructions were not easily found. To the confusion of the tenant, the introduction of this extra bell caused all the bells in the flat to strike 81 work. A mathematical lecturer living in the same building was consulted, and opined that the battery of two somewhat small-looking cells was insufficient, so he obtained and added a larger cell, but the bells were obdurate and did not resume work. A lady with knowledge of physics examined the installations and discovered that the wire connections as altered were entirely wrong and did not connect the bells to the battery. A plan of the correct connections was shown to the workman, who a few days later reported that now all the bells rang at once, and he had had to disconnect the battery! He produced a sketch of the connections he had made, and on his error being pointed out he was able to rectify it, and the bells answered to touch without the use of the extra cell. Generally speaking, a failure on the part of electric bells is corrected by filling up the cells which compose the battery with water, an operation which any one may undertake.
It is not safe, however, for an inexperienced person to interfere with electric light fittings further than to remove a worn-out lamp and place a new one in the socket, and even this operation may be attended with disaster. A young friend of ours who was taking part in some private theatricals obtained the loan of a row of electric footlights. It did not occur to any one concerned to ask the voltage of the lamps or of the current to which they were to be applied. When the footlights were turned up they blazed for a brief period, and then every light in the house went 82 out! Electrical science for the housewife has been resolved into a knowledge of electric terms and of a few practical rules useful and interesting in themselves, but not immediately suitable for our purpose of showing how scientific study may aid the housewife in her daily routine.
We may for this purpose examine some of the laws of common physical and chemical phenomena, neglect of which has resulted in much needless discomfort in daily life, and even more serious consequences. For instance, the laws of expansion of gases and liquids with heat, and their subsequent behaviour, are phenomena that are often imperfectly realised. There is probably no person who is unacquainted with the law of gravitation, but there are many persons who accept literally the statements that smoke rises and that balloons ascend. A clear understanding of what actually takes place when gases and material masses appear to move in opposition to the law of gravitation is essential to any scheme for warming and ventilating the house.
A very simple experiment will serve to reconcile the apparent contradiction of the universal law by the observed fact. Suppose we have two fluids, oil and water, of which oil is, bulk for bulk, lighter than water. If the oil be poured into a glass beaker, it will be seen to rest at the bottom of the beaker; if water be now poured into the same 83 beaker the water will go to the bottom of the beaker and will displace the oil and lift it up so that the oil will float on the water; the oil may be lifted to any height we please if sufficient water be poured in to lift it to that height. If a single drop of oil be introduced into the water by means of a pipette and be liberated at the bottom of the beaker the water will close in under it, and lift it up to the surface. In both cases the oil “rises” through the water. Oil, however, has no tendency to “rise” by itself, and in this case it lay motionless until it was lifted by the heavier fluid. We may use colloquial language when describing phenomena if we bear in mind what is really taking place.
A balloon “rising” through the air is exactly analogous to the drop of oil in the water. The balloon is, bulk for bulk, lighter than air; the air therefore closes in under it and lifts it just as the water lifted the bubble of oil.
Let us apply this to air. Air when warmed expands, and therefore warm air is, bulk for bulk, lighter than cold air. Warm air behaves in the presence of cold air as the balloon: it is displaced and lifted by the cold air, the result being an ascending stream of warm air, which is called a convection current.
The movement of ascending smoke is essentially 84 the same as that of the warmed air. Smoke is warm air made visible by the particles of soot with which it is laden. The particles of soot would fall to the ground except that they are carried upwards in the stream of warm air. Dr. W. N. Shaw has called attention to the importance of these phenomena in his book on “Air Currents and the Laws of Ventilation,” in the Cambridge Series of Physical Text-books. He there says: “The dominant physical law in the ventilated space is the law of convection. It is at once the condition of success and the cause of most failures. Without convection, ventilation would be impossible; in consequence of convection, nearly all schemes of ventilation fail.
“The law of convection is the law according to which warmed air rises and cooled air sinks in the surrounding air. Its applications are truly ubiquitous. Every surface, e.g. a warm wall, or a person warmer than the air in the immediate neighbourhood, causes an upward current; every surface colder than the air in contact with it causes a downward current.
“Ventilation would be much easier if warmed air or cooled air could be carried along at any height required; but the law of convection is inexorable: warmed air naturally finds the ceiling, cooled air the floor.”
It is true that the ventilation of a house is generally considered to be the business of the builder and architect, yet there are many unpleasant phenomena that come under the observation 85 of the housewife which are due to this law of convection, and it will be useful to consider a few of them.
Let us take first the universal annoyance to housewives caused by the sight of dirt on the ceiling. That all air is full of dust is seen when a stream of sunlight crosses a room; the particles of dust are then clearly perceived moving rapidly in all directions in the air. These dust particles, when air is at rest, constantly fall to the ground under the action of gravity, and are deposited on shelves and ledges, from which they have to be removed daily by the housemaid. When air is warmed and ascends it carries the dust particles with it, and these particles striking against any cold surface with which they come into contact stick to it. This is the cause of the necessity for the periodical sweeping of chimneys. The walls of the chimney are colder than the smoke that comes into contact with them, and the particles of soot in the smoke striking against them are deposited on them. In the house the effect of the bombardment of surfaces by dust-laden streams of air is seen most conspicuously over burning gas-lights. Burning gas does not itself produce all the dirt which is found on the ceiling above it, but it causes upward streams of hot air, which carry up the dust and deposit it on the ceiling. The practice of suspending a shade over the gas-light does not lessen the amount of dust and smoke in the air, but the shade serves to spread out the air over a larger surface, and thus to render the dirt on the ceiling less apparent. 86 That the shade itself remains clean is due to the fact that it gets hot. A heated surface promotes the activity of the motion of the air-particles in its neighbourhood, and by this local activity the dust is repelled, so that a surface remains clean or becomes coated according as it is more or less hot than the invading current. The validity of this explanation may be tested by holding a cold spoon over a lighted candle when it will be seen that the spoon becomes blackened; if a hot spoon be substituted for the cold one it will remain clean.
In order that the hot, vitiated air of a room may escape easily, it has been in many cases the custom to place an exit opening for it in the chimney over the room fireplace. The wall in the neighbourhood of this ventilator invariably becomes black; but as this wall is warm it is not probable that dust is deposited on it by the outgoing air, the explanation given by the housewife that the smoke from the chimney gets through the ventilator into the room is probably correct, though these ventilators are supplied with mica flaps which should swing open when air from the room strikes against them, and close when the air from the chimney does so.
When a house is heated by hot-water pipes and radiators, the walls over these pipes are another source of trouble (Fig. 1). A good deal of scientific ingenuity is required if the walls are to be kept clean.