第50章

But, it may be said, what if, in the ages to come, it should never again be possible for any man to stand bowed with the same respect in the presence of any other of earth's mighty toilers, who should also be mother and woman? What, if she, who could combine motherhood with the most unending muscular toil, will fall flaccid and helpless where the labour becomes mental? What if, struggle as she will, she can become nothing in the future but the pet pug-dog of the race, lying on its sofa, or the Italian greyhound, shivering in its silken coat? What if woman, in spite of her most earnest aspirations and determined struggles, be destined to failure in the new world that is rising because of inherent mental incapacity?

There are many replies which may be made to such a suggestion.It is often said with truth, that the ordinary occupations of woman in the past and present, and in all classes of society in which she is not parasitic, do demand, and have always demanded, a very high versatility and mental activity, as well as physical: that the mediaeval baron's wife who guided her large household probably had to expend far more pure intellect in doing so than the baron in his hunting and fighting; that the wife of the city accountant probably expends today more reason, imagination, forethought, and memory on the management of her small household, than he in his far simpler, monotonous arithmetical toil; that, as there is no cause for supposing that the tailor or shoemaker needs less intellect in his calling than the soldier or prize-fighter, so there is nothing to suggest that, in the past, woman has not expended as much pure intellect in the mass of her callings as the man in his; while in those highly specialised intellectual occupations, in which long and uninterrupted training tending to one point is necessary, such as the liberal professions and arts, that, although woman has practically been excluded from the requisite training, and the freedom to place herself in the positions in which they can be pursued, that yet, by force of innate genius and gifts in such directions, she has continually broken through the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and again and again taken her place beside man in those fields of labour; showing thereby not merely aptitude but passionate and determined inclination in those directions.With equal truth, it is often remarked that, when as an independent hereditary sovereign, woman has been placed in the only position in which she has ever been able freely and fully to express her own individuality, and though selected at random by fate from the mass of women, by the mere accident of birth or marriage, she has shown in a large percentage of cases that the female has the power to command, organise, and succeed in one of the most exacting and complex of human employments, the government of nations; that from the days of Amalasontha to Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth of England, and Catharine of Russia, women have not failed to grasp the large impersonal aspects of life, and successfully and powerfully to control them, when placed in the supreme position in which it was demanded.It may also be stated, and is sometimes, with so much iteration as to become almost wearisome, that women's adequacy in the modern fields of intellectual or skilled manual labour is no more today an open matter for debate, than the number of modern women who, as senior wranglers, doctors, &c., have already successfully entered the new fields, and the high standard attained by women in all university examinations to which they are admitted, and their universal success in the administration of parochial matters, wherever they have been allowed to share it, proves their intellectual and moral fitness for the new forms of labour.

All these statements are certainly interesting, and may be unanswerable.

And yet--if the truth be told, it is not ultimately on these grounds that many of us base our hope and our certitude with regard to the future of woman.Our conviction as to the plenitude of her powers for the adequate performance of lofty labours in these new fields, springs not at all from a categorical enumeration of the attainments or performances of individual women or bodies of women in the past or present; it has another source.

There was a bird's egg once, picked up by chance upon the ground, and those who found it bore it home and placed it under a barn-door fowl.And in time the chick bred out, and those who had found it chained it by the leg to a log, lest it should stray and be lost.And by and by they gathered round it, and speculated as to what the bird might be.One said, "It is surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we took it to the water it would swim and gabble." But another said, "It has no webs to its feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose it will scratch and cackle with the others on the dung-heap." But a third speculated, "Look now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, and can crack nuts!" But a fourth said, "No, but look at its wings; perhaps it is a bird of great flight." But several cried, "Nonsense! No one has ever seen it fly! Why should it fly? Can you suppose that a thing can do a thing which no one has ever seen it do?" And the bird--the bird--with its leg chained close to the log, preened its wing.So they sat about it, speculating, and discussing it: and one said this, and another that.And all the while as they talked the bird sat motionless, with its gaze fixed on the clear, blue sky above it.And one said, "Suppose we let the creature loose to see what it will do?"--and the bird shivered.But the others cried, "It is too valuable; it might get lost.If it were to try to fly it might fall down and break its neck." And the bird, with its foot chained to the log, sat looking upward into the clear blue sky; the sky, in which it had never been--for the bird--the bird, knew what it would do--because it was an eaglet!