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