The Intellectual Life Part 12

It is this absence of intellectual initiative which causes the great ignorance of women. What they have been well taught, that they know, but they do not increase their stores of knowledge. Even in what most interests them, theology, they repeat, but do not extend, their information. All the effort of their minds appears (so far as an outside observer may presume to judge) to act like water on a picture, which brings out the colors that already exist upon the canvas but does not add anything to the design. There is a great and perpetual freshness and vividness in their conceptions, which is often lacking in our own. Our conceptions fade, and are replaced; theirs are not replaced, but refreshed.

What many women do for their theological conceptions or opinions, others do with reference to the innumerable series of questions of all kinds which present themselves in the course of life. They attempt to solve them by the help of knowledge acquired in girlhood; and if that cannot be done, they either give them up as beyond the domain of women, or else trust to hearsay for a solution. What they will _not_ do is to hunt the matter out unaided, and get an accurate answer by dint of independent investigation.

There is another characteristic of women, not peculiar to them, for many men have it in an astonis.h.i.+ng degree, and yet more general in the female s.e.x than in the male: I allude to the absence of scientific curiosity.

Ladies see things of the greatest wonder and interest working in their presence and for their service without feeling impelled to make any inquiries into the manner of their working. I could mention many very curious instances of this, but I select one which seems typical. Many years ago I happened to be in a room filled with English ladies, most of whom were highly intelligent, and the conversation happened to turn upon a sailing-boat which belonged to me. One of the ladies observed that sails were not of much use, since they could only be available to push the boat in the direction of the wind; a statement which all the other ladies received with approbation. Now, all these ladies had seen s.h.i.+ps working under canvas against head-winds, and they might have reflected that without that portion of the art of seamans.h.i.+p every vessel unprovided with steam would a.s.suredly drift upon a lee-sh.o.r.e; but it was not in the feminine nature to make a scientific observation of that kind. You will answer, perhaps, that I could scarcely expect ladies to investigate men's business, and that seamans.h.i.+p is essentially the business of our own s.e.x. But the truth is, that all English people, no matter of what s.e.x, have so direct an interest in the maritime activity of England, that they might reasonably be expected to know the one primary conquest on which for many centuries that activity has depended, the conquest of the opposing wind, the sublimest of the early victories of science. And this absence of curiosity in women extends to things they use every day. They never seem to want to know the insides of things as we do. All ladies know that steam makes a locomotive go; but they rest satisfied with that, and do not inquire further _how_ the steam sets the wheels in motion. They know that it is necessary to wind up their watches, but they do not care to inquire into the real effects of that little exercise of force.

Now this absence of the investigating spirit has very wide and important consequences. The first consequence of it is that women do not naturally acc.u.mulate accurate knowledge. Left to themselves, they accept various kinds of teaching, but they do not by any a.n.a.lysis of their own either put that teaching to any serious intellectual test, or qualify themselves for any extension of it by independent and original discovery. We of the male s.e.x are seldom clearly aware how much of our practical force, of the force which discovers and originates, is due to our common habit of a.n.a.lytical observation; yet it is scarcely too much to say that most of our inventions have been suggested by actually or intellectually pulling something else in pieces. And such of our discoveries as cannot be traced directly to a.n.a.lysis are almost always due to habits of general observation which lead us to take note of some fact apparently quite remote from what it helps us to arrive at. One of the best instances of this indirect utility of habitual observation, as it is one of the earliest, is what occurred to Archimedes in his bath.

When the water displaced by his body overflowed, he noticed the fact of displacement, and at once perceived its applicability to the cubic measurement of complicated bodies. It is possible that if his mind had not been exercised at the time about the adulteration of the royal crown, it would not have been led to anything by the overflowing of his bath; but the capacity to receive a suggestion of that kind is, I believe, a capacity exclusively masculine. A woman would have noticed the overflowing, but she would have noticed it only as a cause of disorder or inconvenience.

This absence of the investigating and discovering tendencies in women is confirmed by the extreme rarity of inventions due to women, even in the things which most interest and concern them. The stocking-loom and the sewing-machine are the two inventions which would most naturally have been hit upon by women, for people are naturally inventive about things which relieve _themselves_ of labor, or which increase their own possibilities of production; and yet the stocking-loom and the sewing-machine are both of them masculine ideas, carried out to practical efficiency by masculine energy and perseverance. So I believe that all the improvements in pianos are due to men, though women have used pianos much more than men have used them.

This, then, is in my view the most important negative characteristic of women, that they do not push forwards intellectually by their own force.

There have been a few instances in which they have written with power and originality, have become learned, and greatly superior, no doubt, to the majority of men. There are three or four women in England, and as many on the Continent, who have lived intellectually in harness for many years, and who unaffectedly delight in strenuous intellectual labor, giving evidence both of fine natural powers and the most persevering culture; but these women have usually been encouraged in their work by some near masculine influence. And even if it were possible, which it is not, to point to some female Archimedes or Leonardo da Vinci, it is not the rare exceptions which concern us, but the prevalent rule of Nature.

Without desiring to compare our most learned ladies with anything so disagreeable to the eye as a bearded woman, I may observe that Nature generally has a few exceptions to all her rules, and that as women having beards are a physical exception, so women who naturally study and investigate are intellectual exceptions. Once more let me repudiate any malicious intention in establis.h.i.+ng so unfortunate and _maladroite_ an a.s.sociation of ideas, for nothing is less agreeable than a woman with a beard, whilst, on the contrary, the most intellectual of women may at the same time be the most permanently charming.

LETTER V.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.

The danger of deviation--Danger from increased expenditure--Nowhere so great as in England--Complete absorption in business--Case of a tradesman--Case of a solicitor--The pursuit of comfort dangerous to the Intellectual Life--The meanness of its results--Fireside purposes--Danger of deviation in rich marriages--George Sand's study of this in her story of "Valvedre."

Amongst the dangers of marriage, one of those most to be dreaded by a man given to intellectual pursuits is the deviation which, in one way or other, marriage inevitably produces. It acts like the pointsman on a railway, who, by pulling a lever, sends the train in another direction.

The married man never goes, or hardly ever goes, exactly on the same intellectual lines which he would have followed if he had remained a bachelor. This deviation may or may not be a gain; it is always a most serious danger.

Sometimes the deviation is produced by the necessity for a stricter attention to money, causing a more unremitting application to work that pays well, and a proportionate neglect of that which can only give extension to our knowledge and clearness to our views.

In no country is this danger so great as it is in England, where the generally expensive manner of living, and the prevalent desire to keep families in an ideally perfect state of physical comfort, produce an absorption in business which in all but the rarest instances leaves no margin for intellectual labor. There are, no doubt, some remarkable examples of men earning a large income by a laborious profession, who have gained reputation in one of the sciences or in some branch of literature, but these are very exceptional cases. A man who works at his profession as most Englishmen with large families have to work, can seldom enjoy that surplus of nervous energy which would be necessary to carry him far in literature or science. I remember meeting an English tradesman in the railway between Paris and the coast, who told me that he was obliged to visit France very frequently, yet could not speak French, which was a great deficiency and inconvenience to him. "Why not learn?" I then asked, and received the following answer:

"I have to work at my business all day long, and often far into the night. When the day's work is over I generally feel very tired, and want rest; but if I don't happen to feel quite so tired, then it is not work that I need, but recreation, of which I get very little. I never feel the courage to set to work at the French grammar, though it would be both pleasant and useful to me to know French; indeed, I constantly feel the want of it. It might, perhaps, be possible to learn from a phrase-book in the railway train, but to save time I always travel at night. Being a married man, I have to give my whole attention to my business."

A solicitor with a large practice in London held nearly the same language. He worked at his office all day, and often brought home the most difficult work for the quiet of his own private study after the household had gone to bed. The little reading that he could indulge in was light reading. In reality the profession intruded even on his few hours of leisure, for he read many of the columns in the _Times_ which relate to law or legislation, and these make at the end of a few years an amount of reading sufficient for the mastery of a foreign literature.

This gentleman answered very accurately to M. Taine's description of the typical Englishman, absorbed in business and the _Times_.

In these cases it is likely that the effect of marriage was not inwardly felt as a deviation; but when culture has been fairly begun, and marriage hinders the pursuit of it, or makes it deviate from the chosen path, then there is often an inward consciousness of the fact, not without its bitterness.

A remarkable article on "Luxury," in the second volume of the _Cornhill Magazine_, deals with this subject in a manner evidently suggested by serious reflection and experience. The writer considers the effects of the pursuit of comfort (never carried so far as it is now) on the higher moral and intellectual life. The comforts of a bachelor were not what the writer meant; these are easily procured, and seldom require the devotion of all the energies. The "comfort" which is really dangerous to intellectual growth is that of a family establishment, because it so easily becomes the one absorbing object of existence. Men who began life with the feeling that they would willingly devote their powers to great purposes, like the n.o.ble examples of past times who labored and suffered for the intellectual advancement of their race, and had starvation for their reward, or in some cases even the prison and the stake--men who in their youth felt themselves to be heirs of a n.o.bility of spirit like that of Bruno, of Swammerdam, of Spinoza, have too often found themselves in the noon of life concentrating all the energies of body and soul on the acquisition of ugly millinery and uglier upholstery, and on spreading extravagant tables to feed uncultivated guests.

"It is impossible," says the writer of the article just alluded to, "it is impossible to say why men were made, but a.s.suming that they were made for some purpose, of which the faculties which they possess afford evidence, it follows that they were intended to do many other things besides providing for their families and enjoying their society. They were meant to know, to act, and to feel--to know everything which the mind is able to contemplate, to name, and to cla.s.sify; to do everything which the will, prompted by the pa.s.sions and guided by the conscience, can undertake; and, subject to the same guidance, to feel in its utmost vigor every emotion which the contemplation of the various persons and objects which surround us can excite. This view of the objects of life affords an almost infinite scope for human activity in different directions; but it also shows that it is in the highest degree dangerous to its beauty and its worth to allow any one side of life to become the object of idolatry; and there are many reasons for thinking that domestic happiness is rapidly a.s.suming that position in the minds of the more comfortable cla.s.ses of Englishmen.... It is a singular and affecting thing, to see how every manifestation of human energy bears witness to the shrewdness of the current maxim that a large income is a necessary of life. Whatever is done for money is done admirably well.

Give a man a specific thing to make or to write, and pay him well for it, and you may with a little trouble secure an excellent article; but the ability which does these things so well, might have been and ought to have been trained to far higher things, which for the most part are left undone, because the clever workman thinks himself bound to earn what will keep himself, his wife, and his six or seven children, up to the established standard of comfort. What was at first a necessity, perhaps an unwelcome one, becomes by degrees a habit and a pleasure, and men who might have done memorable and n.o.ble things, if they had learnt in time to consider the doing of such things an object worth living for, lose the power and the wish to live for other than fireside purposes."

But this kind of intellectual deviation, you may answer, is not strictly the consequence of marriage, _qua_ marriage; it is one of the consequences of a degree of relative poverty, produced by the larger expenditure of married life, but which might be just as easily produced by a certain degree of money-pressure in the condition of a bachelor.

Let me therefore point out a kind of deviation which may be as frequently observed in rich marriages as in poor ones. Suppose the case of a bachelor with a small but perfectly independent income amounting to some hundreds a year, who is devoted to intellectual pursuits, and spends his time in study or with cultivated friends of his own, choosing friends whose society is an encouragement and a help. Suppose that this man makes an exceedingly prudent marriage, with a rich woman, you may safely predict, in this instance, intellectual deviations of a kind perilous to the highest culture. He will have new calls upon his time, his society will no longer be entirely of his own choosing, he will no longer be able to devote himself with absolute singleness of purpose to studies from which his wife must necessarily be excluded. If he were to continue faithful to his old habits, and shut himself up every day in his library or laboratory, or set out on frequent scientific expeditions, his wife would either be a lady of quite extraordinary perfection of temper, or else entirely indifferent in her feelings towards him, if she did not regard his pursuits with quickly-increasing jealousy. She would think, and justifiably think, that he ought to give more of his time to the enjoyment of her society, that he ought to be more by her side in the carriage and in the drawing-room, and if he loved her he would yield to these kindly and reasonable wishes. He would spend many hours of every day in a manner not profitable to his great pursuits, and many weeks of every year in visits to her friends. His position would be even less favorable to study in some respects than that of a professional man. It would be difficult for him, if an amateur artist, to give that unremitting attention to painting which the professional painter gives. He could not say, "I do this for you and for our children;" he could only say, "I do it for my own pleasure," which is not so graceful an excuse. As a bachelor, he might work as professional people work, but his marriage would strongly accentuate the amateur character of his position. It is possible that if his labors had won great fame the lady might bear the separation more easily, for ladies always take a n.o.ble pride in the celebrity of their husbands; but the best and worthiest intellectual labor often brings no fame whatever, and notoriety is a mere accident of some departments of the intellectual life, and not its ultimate object.

George Sand, in her admirable novel "Valvedre," has depicted a situation of this kind with the most careful delicacy of touch. Valvedre was a man of science, who attempted to continue the labors of his intellectual life after marriage had united him to a lady incapable of sharing them.

The reader pities both, and sympathizes with both. It is hard, on the one hand, that a man endowed by nature with great talents for scientific work should not go on with a career already gloriously begun; and yet, on the other hand, a woman who is so frequently abandoned for science may blamelessly feel some jealousy of science.

Valvedre, in narrating the story of his unhappy wedded life, said that Alida wished to have at her orders a perfect gentleman to accompany her, but that he felt in himself a more serious ambition. He had not aimed at fame, but he had thought it possible to become a useful servant, bringing his share of patient and courageous seekings to the edifice of the sciences. He had hoped that Alida would understand this.

"'There is time enough for everything,' she said, still retaining him in the useless wandering life that she had chosen. 'Perhaps,' he answered, 'but on condition that I lose no more of it; and it is not in this wandering life, cut to pieces by a thousand unforeseen interruptions, that I can make the hours yield their profit.'

"'Ah! we come to the point!' exclaimed Alida impetuously. 'You wish to leave me, and to travel alone in impossible regions.'

"'No, I will work near you and abandon certain observations which it would be necessary to make at too great a distance, but you also will sacrifice something: we will not see so many idle people, we will settle somewhere for a fixed time. It shall be where you will, and if the place does not suit you, we will try another; but from time to time you will permit me a phase of sedentary work.'

"'Yes, yes, you want to live for yourself alone; you have lived enough for me. I understand; your love is satiated and at an end.'

"Nothing could conquer her conviction _that study was her rival_, and that love was only possible in idleness.

"'To love is everything,' she said; 'and he who loves has not time to concern himself with anything else. Whilst the husband is intoxicating himself with the marvels of science, the wife languishes and dies. It is the destiny which awaits me; and since I am a burden to you, I should do better to die at once.'

"A little later Valvedre ventured to hint something about work, hoping to conquer his wife's _ennui_, on which she proclaimed the hatred of work as a sacred right of her nature and position.

"'n.o.body ever taught me to work,' she said, 'and I did not marry under a promise to begin again at the _a_, _b_, _c_ of things. Whatever I know I have learned by intuition, by reading without aim or method. I am a woman; my destiny is to love my husband and bring up children. It is very strange that my husband should be the person who counsels me to think of something better.'"

I am far from suggesting that Madame Valvedre is an exact representative of her s.e.x, but the sentiments which in her are exaggerated, and expressed with pa.s.sionate plainness, are in much milder form very prevalent sentiments indeed; and Valvedre's great difficulty, how to get leave to prosecute his studies with the degree of devotion necessary to make them fruitful, is not at all an uncommon difficulty with intellectual men after marriage. The character of Madame Valvedre, being pa.s.sionate and excessive, led her to an open expression of her feelings; but feelings of a like kind, though milder in degree, exist frequently below the surface, and may be detected by any vigilant observer of human nature. That such feelings are very natural it is impossible even for a _savant_ to deny; but whilst admitting the clear right of a woman to be preferred by a man to science when once he has married her, let me observe that the man might perhaps do wisely, before the knot is tied, to ascertain whether her intellectual dowry is rich enough to compensate him for the sacrifices she is likely to exact.

LETTER VI.

TO A SOLITARY STUDENT.

Need of a near intellectual friends.h.i.+p in solitude--Persons who live independently of custom run a peculiar risk in marriage--Women by nature more subservient to custom than men are--Difficulty of conciliating solitude and marriage--De Senancour--The marriages of eccentrics--Their wives either protect them or attempt to reform them.

Isolated as you are, by the very superiority of your culture, from the ignorant provincial world around you, I cannot but believe that marriage is essential to your intellectual health and welfare. If you married some cultivated woman, bred in the cultivated society of a great capital, that companions.h.i.+p would give you an independence of surrounding influences which nothing else can give. You fancy that by shutting yourself up in a country house you are uninfluenced by the world around you. It is a great error. You know that you are isolated, that you are looked upon and probably ridiculed as an eccentric, and this knowledge, which it is impossible to banish from your mind, deprives your thinking of elasticity and grace. You urgently need the support of an intellectual friends.h.i.+p quite near to you, under your own roof. Bachelors in great cities feel this necessity less.

Still remember, that whoever has arranged his life independently of custom runs a peculiar risk in marriage. Women are by nature far more subservient to custom than we are, more than we can easily conceive. The danger of marriage, for a person of your tastes, is that a woman entering your house might enter it as the representative of that minutely-interfering authority which you continually ignore. And let us never forget that a perfect obedience to custom requires great sacrifices of time and money that you might not be disposed to make, and which certainly would interfere with study. You value and enjoy your solitude, well knowing how great a thing it is to be master of all your hours. It is difficult to conciliate solitude, or even a wise and suitable selection of acquaintances, with the semi-publicity of marriage. Heads of families receive many persons in their houses whom they would never have invited, and from whose society they derive little pleasure and no profit. De Senancour had plans of studious retirement, and hoped that the "_douce intimite_" of marriage might be compatible with these cherished projects. But marriage, he found, drew him into the circle of ordinary provincial life, and he always suffered from its influences.

You are necessarily an eccentric. In the neighborhood where you live it is an eccentricity to study, for n.o.body but you studies anything. A man so situated is fortunate when this feeling of eccentricity is alleviated, and unfortunate when it is increased. A wife would certainly do one or the other. Married to a very superior woman, able to understand the devotion to intellectual aims, you would be much relieved of the painful consciousness of eccentricity; but a woman of less capacity would intensify it.

So far as we can observe the married life of others, it seems to me that I have met with instances of men, const.i.tuted and occupied very much as you are, who have found in marriage a strong protection against the ignorant judgments of their neighbors, and an a.s.surance of intellectual peace; whilst in other cases it has appeared rather as if their solitude were made more a cause of conscious suffering, as if the walls of their cabinets were pulled down for the b.o.o.bies outside to stare at them and laugh at them. A woman will either take your side against the customs of the little world around, or she will take the side of custom against you. If she loves you deeply, and if there is some visible result of your labors in fame and money, she may possibly do the first, and then she will protect your tranquillity better than a force of policemen, and give you a delightful sense of reconciliation with all humanity; but many of her most powerful instincts tend the other way. She has a natural sympathy with all the observances of custom, and you neglect them; she is fitted for social life, which you are not. Unless you win her wholly to your side, she may undertake the enterprise of curing your eccentricities and adapting you to the ideal of her caste. This may be highly satisfactory to the operator, but it is full of inconveniences to the patient.

LETTER VII.

TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE WHO FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO a.s.sOCIATE WITH PERSONS OF HER OWN s.e.x.

Men are not very good judges of feminine conversation--The interest of it would be increased if women could be more freely initiated into great subjects--Small subjects interesting when seen in relation to central ideas--That ladies of superior faculty ought rather to elevate female society than withdraw from it--Women when displaced do not appear happy.

What you confided to me in our last interesting conversation has given me material for reflection, and afforded a glimpse of a state of things which I have sometimes suspected without having data for any positive conclusion. The society of women is usually sought by men during hours of mental relaxation, and we naturally find such a charm in their mere presence, especially when they are graceful or beautiful, that we are not very severe or even accurate judges of the abstract intellectual quality of their talk. But a woman cannot feel the indescribable charm which wins us so easily, and I have sometimes thought that a superior person of your s.e.x might be aware of certain deficiencies in her sisters which men very readily overlook. You tell me that you feel embarra.s.sed in the society of ladies, because they know so little about the subjects which interest you, and are astonished when you speak about anything really worth attention. On the other hand, you feel perfectly at ease with men of ability and culture, and most at your ease with men of the best ability and the most eminent attainments. What you complain of chiefly in women seems to be their impatience of varieties of thought which are unfamiliar to them, and their constant preference for small topics.

It has long been felt by men that if women could be more freely initiated into great subjects the interest of general conversation would be much increased. The difficulty appears to lie in their instinctive habit of making all questions personal questions. The etiquette of society makes it quite impossible for men to speak to ladies in the manner which would be intellectually most profitable to them. We may not teach because it is pedantic, and we may not contradict, because it is rude. Most of the great subjects are conventionally held to be closed, so that it is a sin against good taste to discuss them. In every house the ladies have a set of fixed convictions of some kind, which it is not polite in any man to appear to doubt. The consequence of these conventional rules is that women live in an atmosphere of acquiescence which makes them intolerant of anything like bold and original thinking on important subjects. But as the mind always requires free play of some kind, when all the great subjects are forbidden it will use its activity in playing about little ones.

For my part I hardly think it desirable for any of us to be incessantly coping with great subjects, and the ladies are right in taking a lively interest in the small events around them. But even the small events would have a deeper interest if they were seen in their true relations to the great currents of European thought and action. It is probably the ignorance of these relations which, more than the smallness of the topics themselves, makes feminine talk fatiguing to you. Very small things indeed have an interest when exhibited in relation to larger, as men of science are continually demonstrating. I have been taking note lately of the talk that goes on around me, and I find that when it is shallow and wearisome it is always because the facts mentioned bear no reference to any central or governing idea, and do not ill.u.s.trate anything. Conversation is interesting in proportion to the originality of the central ideas which serve as pivots, and the fitness of the little facts and observations which are contributed by the talkers. For instance, if people happened to be talking about rats, and some one informed you that he had seen a rat last week, that would be quite uninteresting: but you would listen with greater attention if he said; "The other night, as I was going up stairs very late, I followed a very fine rat who was going up stairs too, and he was not in the least hurried, but stopped after every two or three steps to have a look at me and my candle. He was very prettily marked about the face and tail, so I concluded that he was not a common rat, but probably a lemming. Two nights afterwards I met him again, and this time he seemed almost to know me, for he quietly made room for me as I pa.s.sed. Very likely he might be easily tamed." This is interesting, because, though the fact narrated is still trifling, it ill.u.s.trates animal character.

If you will kindly pardon an "improvement" of this subject, as a preacher would call it, I might add that an intellectual lady like yourself might, perhaps, do better to raise the tone of the feminine talk around her than to withdraw from it in weariness. There are always, in every circle, a few superior persons who, either from natural diffidence, or because they are not very rich, or because they are too young, suffer themselves to be entirely overwhelmed by the established mediocrity around them. What they need is a leader, a deliverer. Is it not in your power to render services of this kind? Could you not select from the younger ladies whom you habitually meet, a few who, like yourself, feel bored by the dulness or triviality of what you describe as the current feminine conversation? There is often a painful shyness which prevents people of real ability from using it for the advantage of others, and this shyness is nowhere so common as in England, especially provincial England. It feels the want of a hardy example. A lady who talked really well would no doubt run some risk of being rather unpleasantly isolated at first, but surely, if she tried, she might ultimately find accomplices. You could do much, to begin with, by recommending high-toned literature, and gradually awakening an interest in what is truly worth attention. It seems lamentable that every cultivated woman should be forced out of the society of her own s.e.x, and made to depend upon ours for conversation of that kind which is an absolute necessity to the intellectual. The truth is, that women so displaced never appear altogether happy. And culture costs so much downright hard work, that it ought not to be paid for by any suffering beyond those toils which are its fair and natural price.

LETTER VIII.