Sex in Education | Page 9

be remitted enough to yield sufficient
force for the work. If the reproductive machinery is not manufactured
then, it will not be later. If it is imperfectly made then, it can only be
patched up, not made perfect, afterwards. To be well made, it must be
carefully managed. Force must be allowed to flow thither in an ample
stream, and not diverted to the brain by the school, or to the arms by
the factory, or to the feet by dancing. "Every physician," says a recent
writer, "can point to students whose splendid cerebral development has

been paid for by emaciated limbs, enfeebled digestion, and disordered
lungs. Every biography of the intellectual great records the dangers
they have encountered, often those to which they have succumbed, in
overstepping the ordinary bounds of human capacity; and while
beckoning onward to the glories of their almost preternatural
achievements, register, by way of warning, the fearful penalty of
disease, suffering, and bodily infirmity, which Nature exacts as the
price for this partial and inharmonious grandeur. It cannot be otherwise.
The brain cannot take more than its share without injury to other organs.
It cannot do more than its share without depriving other organs of that
exercise and nourishment which are essential to their health and vigor.
It is in the power of the individual to throw, as it were, the whole vigor
of the constitution into any one part, and, by giving to this part
exclusive or excessive attention, to develop it at the expense, and to the
neglect, of the others."[7]
In the system of lichens, Nylander reckons all organs of equal value.[8]
No one of them can be neglected without evil to the whole organization.
From lichens to men and women there is no exception to the law, that,
if one member suffers, all the members suffer. What is true of the
neglect of a single organ, is true in a geometrical ratio of the neglect of
a system of organs. If the nutritive system is wrong, the evil of poor
nourishment and bad assimilation infects the whole economy. Brain
and thought are enfeebled, because the stomach and liver are in error. If
the nervous system is abnormally developed, every organ feels the twist
in the nerves. The balance and co-ordination of movement and function
are destroyed, and the ill percolates into an unhappy posterity. If the
reproductive system is aborted, there may be no future generations to
pay the penalty of the abortion, but what is left of the organism suffers
sadly. When this sort of arrest of development occurs in a man, it takes
the element of masculineness out of him, and replaces it with adipose
effeminacy. When it occurs in a woman, it not only substitutes in her
case a wiry and perhaps thin bearded masculineness for distinctive
feminine traits and power, making her an epicene, but it entails a
variety of prolonged weaknesses, that dwarf her rightful power in
almost every direction. The persistent neglect and ignoring by women,
and especially by girls, ignorantly more than wilfully, of that part of

their organization which they hold in trust for the future of the race, has
been fearfully punished here in America, where, of all the world, they
are least trammelled and should be the best, by all sorts of female
troubles. "Nature," says Lord Bacon, "is often hidden, sometimes
overcome, seldom extinguished." In the education of our girls, the
attempt to hide or overcome nature by training them as boys has almost
extinguished them as girls. Let the fact be accepted, that there is
nothing to be ashamed of in a woman's organization, and let her whole
education and life be guided by the divine requirements of her system.
The blood, which is our life, is a complex fluid. It contains the
materials out of which the tissues are made, and also the débris which
results from the destruction of the same tissues,--the worn-out cells of
brain and muscle,--the cast-off clothes of emotion, thought, and power.
It is a common carrier, conveying unceasingly to every gland and tissue,
to every nerve and organ, the fibrin and albumen which repair their
constant waste, thus supplying their daily bread; and as unceasingly
conveying away from every gland and tissue, from every nerve and
organ, the oxidized refuse, which are both the result and measure of
their work. Like the water flowing through the canals of Venice, that
carries health and wealth to the portals of every house, and filth and
disease from every doorway, the blood flowing through the canals of
the organization carries nutriment to all the tissues, and refuse from
them. Its current sweeps nourishment in, and waste out. The former, it
yields to the body for assimilation; the latter, it deposits with the organs
of elimination for rejection.