Page:Lily Gair Wilkinson - Revolutionary Socialism and the Woman's Movement.djvu/7

 4 ment, did we not remember the greater vitality required by women in the natural function of motherhood.

In regard to mental inferiority the main argument has been made from a comparison of the size of the male and female brain. There have been men who have passed laborious years in trying to show that the average female brain is smaller than the average male brain. Professor Bischoff claimed to have proved that on the average woman's brain weighs 100 grams less than man's brain, and from this he confidently asserted that the mental inferiority of women was demonstrated. On the death of the learned Professor it was found that his own brain weighed just five grams less than the average of the despised female sex! The pathetic irony of this case has no doubt tended to cool that particular form of anti-feminist zeal.

As a matter of, fact these experiments have proved nothing. Some of the heaviest brains ever weighed have belonged to idiots and to the insane; and in comparing the proportion of brain-mass in men and women with the weight of the entire body, it appears that the females have the advantage by ¼ per cent. This argument from brain weight is therefore totally inconclusive, even granting the unscientific supposition that the weight of the brain is the criterion of mental capacity.

Another favourite contention is that woman's inferiority is proved by the absence of transcendent genius in women. This assertion, like the other, is not proved, nor is it capable of proof. We are too apt to judge genius merely by prominence and publicity, and these are just the things which most women avoid and dread as tending to deprive them of a certain vague abstraction called "womanliness," upon which they are taught to depend for success in life. How far women (in spite of a seclusion partly enforced and partly induced) have excelled in the past, may never be known—only here and there in history do we get a glimpse behind the veil—but it is certain that renown and success have for the most part been reaped by men. The fame of Socrates was supreme in his age, and comes down with glory to ours; but Socrates acknowledged superior genius in a woman when he sat as a learner at the feet of Aspasia.

But even if women's physical and mental inferiority were fully proved we must remember that the argument cuts both ways. Bebel, Mill, and others have long ago pointed out that inferiority of the female sex would be an argument against the subjection of