Having been bested by Davison’s superior citations and trenchant response, A. Knox in

refers to “our womenfolk.”

Friday, Nov. 1, 1912, To the Editor of The Morpeth Herald, “The Woman Suffrage

Question”

Sir, –Miss Davison’s letter in your last issue will doubtless be read by many

with interest, for the opinion of a woman upon a subject which she has such

fine opportunities of judging cannot fail to command attention. She devotes

the main part of her letter to refuting the old theory that women’s brains are

smaller than men’s. Miss Davison’s contention carries with it some great names,

and is a weighty one, which not only impresses your readers with confidence,

but predisposes them to accept her arguments with something more than

acquiescence. But her weakness, as well as mine, lies in the fact that she relies

too much on doctors’ evidence, seeing that other medical authorities can be

brought to disprove it. Therefore, to the opinion I have already expressed, I still

adhere. And yet I cannot deny that if I had written in the light of the evidence

which Miss Davison has brought forward, I should have been less confident in

expressing it. For if doctors disagree, how can a poor layman be expected to

judge?

I am, however, pleased to see Miss Davison refuting the old theory

with all the evidence at her command. Let us for a moment waive all doctor’s

evidence, as it does not carry with it complete conviction, and trust a little to our

own observation. We naturally would ask ourselves that if a woman has, as Miss

Davison contends, larger brains than a man, would she not have in a greater

measure more will power? We think so: and yet it is not so. Do we not find in

the male that firm tenacity of purpose and determination to overcome obstacles

which are sadly lacking in the female mind? When a woman is urged to any

prolonged exercise of volition, the prompting cause may be found in the

emotional side of her nature; whereas, in a man, the intellectual is alone

sufficient to supply the needed motive. A similar deficiency may be noted in

close reading or studious thought. Women are usually less able to concentrate

their attention, their minds are more prone to wander, and they have not

specialized their studies or pursuits the same as man.

This comparative weakness of will is further manifested by indecision

of character. The ready firmness of decision in man is rarely to be met with in

women. It is no unusual thing to find among women indecision of character, so

habitual and pronounced, leading to timidity and diffidence in adopting almost

any line of conduct where important matters are concerned, and leaving them in

the condition of not knowing their own minds. And have we not observed that

women are almost always less under the control of the will than men, more apt

to break away from the restraint of reason, which sometimes takes the shape

of hysteria or childishness. These we recognize as feminine rather than as

masculine characteristics.

It would take too great a space to specify more of the failings of the

female; but we can draw our conclusions that where women are deficient in will

power, there must also be considered a deficiency in brain power. In justice, it

may be admitted that there are instances where women display better judgment

than men. But as a general rule that the judgment of women is inferior to that of

men has been a matter of universal recognition from the earliest times. The man

has always been regarded as the rightful lord of the woman to whom she is by

nature subject, as both mentally and physically the weaker vessel.

Miss Davison will probably tell us that giving a woman the same

education and the same social advantages as men will enable her to rise in time

to the level of man. As the movement for revolutionizing the education of women

in this country is of recent date, we are not able to speak from experience. But in

America woman has been subject for many years past to the same kind of

training as man in schools and in college. While advocates of woman suffrage

have borne favourable witness, American physicians are raising their voices in

warnings and protests. The girls have ambition: they succeed in running the

intellectual race set before them; but do they do it at the cost of their strength

and health, which often incapacitates them for the adequate performance of the

natural function of their sex. Without pretending to endorse these assertions I

may point out they are entitled to our consideration, for they come from

physicians of high popular standing, and they agree, moreover, with what

perhaps might have been feared on physiological grounds.

So long as the differences of physical power and organization between

man and woman are what they are, it does not seem possible that they should

have the same type of mental development. Women are entitled to have all

the mental culture and all the freedom necessary to their nature. But the

education, Miss Davison, should be in the development, not of manhood, but

of womanhood; so may women reach as high a grade of development as men,

though it be of a different type.

I have been told by many people who do me the honour to read me that

I under-rate women, that I do not recognize the political value and the capacity

of the fair sex. That is not so. Keeping apart from politics, I give in to no one in

respect for the virtues and commonsense which characterize our womenfolk, and

no one more clearly discerns and more ungrudgingly confesses their real merits.

–Yours, etc.,

A.KNOX

Bedlington Colliery

Friday, October 25, 1912, To the Editor of The Morpeth Herald, “The Woman

Suffrage Question”

Emily Davison’s reply to the preceding letter:

Sir, –I was very glad indeed when I opened the pages of your last issue to find

that Mr. A. Knox had not, as I feared, been chased from the lists, but was willing

to break another lance with me.

Mr. Knox at once plunges into the thick of the fight with what is apparently

his best lance, the differences of the male and female brain, clinging as

tenaciously to his ancient theory as did any of the upholders of the once custom-

established theory that the earth was flat, and that the sun bore to it a very

different relation to what is now known to be the case. The hoariness of theories

is, alas for Mr. Knox, no proof of their validity! So it is with this one, as Mr. Knox

can prove for himself if he will take the trouble to consult the standard authority

on this question, especially in its most recent developments, where he will find

that even so rabid an anti-suffragist as Sir James Crichton Browne is quoted on

the very point as to which Mr. Knox lays so much stress and also many other

equally, if not more, distinguished authorities.

The source to which I refer Mr. Knox is Mr. Harry Havelock Ellis in his

masterly study on Man and Woman in the ‘Contemporary Science Series,’ but it

is necessary to turn to the fourth edition, revised and enlarged in 1904, and to

the chapter ‘The Head.’

After an interesting weighing of the theories until recently held of the

superiority of the average male brain to that of the average female, and showing

their absurdity in light of comparative modern research, on page 117 Mr. Knox

will read: ‘The larger amount of brain in woman which we have found to exist

after the elimination of fallacies caused by indirect criteria of proportion is co-

related with the precocity and earlier arrest of growth in women which exists as

well for the brain as for the general proportions of the body….A relatively large

mass of brain tissue is a characteristic which women share with short people

generally and with children.’

So much for size. With regard to Mr. Knox’s further suggestions as to the

vascular supply of the brain, may I refer him to page 118, where he will find,

after a general discussion on the male and female cerebrum (which is summed

up in favour of the female cerebrum), the following passage: –‘Several

distinctions in the important matter of the vascular supply of the brain have as yet

received little attention. Sir James Crichton Browne and Dr. Sidney Martin have,

however, made a few observations. They found that the combined diameters of

the internal carotid and vertebral arteries which supply the brain taken together

are relatively to the brain mass RATHER LARGER IN WOMEN THAN IN MEN

[caps EWD]. So that women’s brains receive a proportionately larger blood

supply than men’s and would not suffer as they otherwise would from the

comparative poverty which, as we shall see later, characterizes their blood.’ The

latter part of this passage indicates the source of the error into which Mr. Knox

had quite naturally and willingly fallen, having been, as he owns, trained up in the

older school, which was the school that encouraged that comparative poverty of

feminine blood by cramping and enervating influences.

On page 119 Havelock Ellis discusses the theories of the average

cerebellum of man and woman and sums up his conclusions in the following

passage: –‘The most reliable evidence points on the whole to the cerebellum

being RELATIVELY [caps EWD] distinctly larger in women, than men, as stated

long ago by Gall [Franz-Joseph Gall] and Cuvier [George Cuvier].

Broca’s [Pierre Paul Broca] figures show that to a slight extent the

medulla and cerebellum, but especially the latter, are RELATIVELY LARGER

[caps EWD] in women. Dr. Philippe Rey, who has worked up Broca’s figures

with much elaboration, finds that with scarcely an exception all the centres below

the cerebrum are relatively larger in women.

The impartial, scientific and scholarly nature of this part of Havelock Ellis’

treatise is well displayed at the end of the chapter in the following passage on

page 122:–‘While, however, the brain is at present an unprofitable region for the

study of sexual difference, it is as we have seen an extremely instructive region

for the study of sexual equality. Men possess no relative superiority of brain-

mass: the superiority of brain-mass so far as it exists is on the woman’s side:

this, however, implies no intellectual superiority, but is merely a characteristic of

short people, and children….From the present standpoint of brain anatomy and

brain study there is no ground for attributing any superiority to one sex over

another. Broca, the greatest of French anthropologists….believed many years

ago (in 1881) that women are naturally and by cerebral organization slightly less

intelligent than men….This opinion has been very widely quoted: it is not so well

known that with riper knowledge Broca’s opinion changed, and he began to think

it was a mere matter of education…. and thought that IF LEFT TO THEIR

SPOTANEOUS IMPULSES MEN AND WOMEN WOULD TEND TO RESEMBLE

EACH OTHER, AS HAPPENS IN THE STATE.’ [caps EWD]

I would especially draw Mr. Knox’s attention to the fact that the greatest

scientists never lay down absolute theories, but that their greatness consists in

their willingness to re-adjust and even change their ideas and theories in the light

of increasing knowledge, that nowadays empirical statements are

discountenanced, and every theory put forward with caution and reservation. I

would also call his attention to the now rapidly growing feeling that men and

women are both human beings with a large field of common endeavour in the

commonwealth. The old figment, ‘that man has a sex, but woman is a sex’ is at

last making way before the forces of evolution. The ‘manly man’ is beginning to

realize that he wants a ‘womanly woman’ for his helpmate and comrade; not the

masculine product of centuries of one-sided legislation, but a human being ‘nobly

planned, to warn, to comfort and to command,’ left free to develop every side of

her nature, as nature intended.

What woman’s organization or physique will fit her to do none can tell yet,

but in the light of her success during the past half century or so in many spheres

hitherto held to be exclusively male, and that despite the fiercest opposition and

apparently insuperable obstacles we can only exclaim at the crass stupidity, the

arrant obstinacy and wicked prejudice of a world that has deliberately refused to

open an inexhaustible mine of treasure!

Mr. Knox asks me if I think that men would willingly submit to laws being

passed by women if the latter were in the majority, and in the next sentence he

reasserts the old bogey of the absolute necessity of brute force. If Mr. Knox

really thinks that brute force rules the world (save the mark!) can he doubt that

12 million men could not if necessary assert themselves against 13 million

women? If he does not, he is clearly afraid that the women are cleverer than the

men, and has a pretty opinion of human nature! But in either case, Mr. Knox is

no true democrat or believer in self-government and the rights of the people! –

Yours, etc.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

Longhorsley

The Knox Correspondence October 18, 25, November 1, 1912

This letter of Friday, October 18, 1912, in The Morpeth Herald, is Mr. A. Knox’s

after the catastrophe of the First World War.

Here is the exchange between Knox and Davison on October 18th and 25th:

October 18, 1912, To the Editor of The Morpeth Herald, “Woman Suffrage”

Sir,–I shall be grateful is you will allow me to respond to the kind and courteous

letter of Miss E. Davison. There can be but little doubt that a movement has

been initiated for the emancipation of women, and that Miss Davison is one

of its able advocates. I am almost persuaded the movement she upholds is

destined to grow, and when I take into consideration the many willing workers

who are prepared to suffer for their cause, I am led to believe the day is not far

distant when woman’s suffrage will be accepted as part of the Government’s

programme.

Miss Davison is within her rights in characterizing my arguments

as ‘antediluvian.’ They are old, but they are arguments that have lost none of

their strength by being old. If I am in error, I beg to be excused, for we men have

had drilled into us, by the medical faculty, that a woman’s brain weighed less

than a man’s and from this we were led to expect a marked inferiority in that of

the female. Although Miss Davison has taken great pains to assure us of the

contrary, yet we cannot force ourselves to accept her statement that it is an

exploded theory; neither can we take in that the quality of the grey matter in the

female is superior to that of the male. Can we do otherwise when we have the

evidence of a great authority, Sir J. Crichton Brown, before us which says that

as the result of many observations which he is now making, not only is the grey

matter or cortex of the female brain shallower than that of the male, but also

receives less than a proportional supply of blood.

Has Miss Davison ever observed that as soon as the brain has reached

its development there is a greater power of amassing knowledge on the part of

the male? The field has always been open to both sexes, yet in no department

can women be said to have approached men, save in fiction. We have

thousands of women who have [hole in page enjoyed?] a better education and

better [hole in page ] social advantages than a Robbie Burns or a Farraday, and

yet we have neither heard nor seen their work. It has been said the cause of this

is that the female mind has been unjustly dealt with in the past, and that they

cannot be expected all at once to rise to the level of man. The treatment of

women in the past is much to be regretted, but we cannot get over the fact that

this fact indicates one of the causes that go to mark the inferiority of women at

the present day. That she now has exhibited a disposition to emancipate herself

may be owing partly to the easy means of intellectual inter-communication in this

age, where a few women, who have felt the impulses of a higher aspiration, have

been enabled to co-operate in a way that it was impossible in former times and

partly to the views of a great many men, which have led to the encouragement

and assistance, instead of suppression, of their efforts.

It is quite evident Miss Davison did not give proper consideration to the

nature of women’s organization when she advocated the social status of women.

If we look the matter honestly in the face, it is apparent that woman is marked

out by nature for different positions in life, and that her organization renders it

improbable that she will succeed in running on the same lines and at the same

pace with man. Hence the necessity of woman keeping to her own sphere of life.

Supposing, Miss Davison, women had the franchise, would they imagine

that if they, being in the majority, combined to pass laws which were unwelcome

to men, the latter would quietly submit? Would they expect that men should fight

for them in war, if by a majority of votes they should determine upon war? Would

they no longer claim a privilege of sex in regard to the defence of the country by

arms? Legislation would be of little value unless there were a power behind it to

make it respected; and where would Miss Davison look for that power but only

where she could expect to find it, in the opposite sex?

The experiment of giving the women the vote will be tried some day and

may be it will not be so black as it is painted. We can only, as a great Cabinet

Minister said, ‘wait and see,’ Yours, etc.,

A. KNOX

Bedlington Colliery