Household Administration Part 3

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 qua non_ for women. It would be superfluous to point 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 a.s.sociated 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 s.p.a.ce 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 punis.h.i.+ng 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 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.suredly work a change in public opinion. We have among us thousands of men and women whom we account failures in life; whose existence const.i.tutes our gravest social problem. The drunkard, the wastrel, the thief, the prost.i.tute--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 a.s.sumption 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 n.o.bler 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 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 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 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 const.i.tuted, 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.

ANTHROPOLOGY A BRANCH OF BIOLOGY

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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sumed of all women that they know the broad truths of biology, just as it is now a.s.sumed that they know the alphabet. It will be taken for granted that they have mastered the essential domestic arts with their own hands, 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, aesthetic, and hygienic, of earlier times, with the excellences, more purely intellectual and scientific, of our own day.

WOMAN'S SYNTHETIC POWERS AS AN INSTRUMENT TO EFFICIENCY

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 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 a.s.suredly 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] "The Electrical Resistance of the Human Body." Gee and Brotherton, Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc., 1910.

SCIENCE IN THE HOUSEHOLD

BY MRS. W. N. SHAW

The slow development of the demand for the training of girls of the middle and upper cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sumption 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 superst.i.tion 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. 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 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 circ.u.mstances 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 AND METHODS OF MODERN EDUCATION

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 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 quant.i.ty 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-gla.s.s tumblers, and we do not mix effervescing drinks in wine-gla.s.ses. 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 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.

THE VALUE OF A SCIENTIFIC TRAINING

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 circ.u.mstances which are selected with a view to exhibiting the reality of the relation. From that training it becomes possible for them, when confronted with circ.u.mstances 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 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s.

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 fict.i.tious 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 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 s.p.a.ce of a single article to set out the details of a systematic course of training sufficient to fit the housewife to use her judgment wisely in circ.u.mstances 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 ill.u.s.trate the application of the principles of physics and chemistry. Our purpose in doing so is to suggest ill.u.s.trations 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 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 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.