CHAPTER XXI.
AT THE GYMNASIUM.
Edith had come up on the house top in time to hear the last of our talk,and now she said to her father:
"Considering what you have been telling Julian about women nowadays ascompared with the old days, I wonder if he would not be interested invisiting the gymnasium this afternoon and seeing something of how wetrain ourselves? There are going to be some foot races and air races, anda number of other tests. It is the afternoon when our year has thegrounds, and I ought to be there anyway."
To this suggestion, which was eagerly accepted, I owe one of the mostinteresting and instructive experiences of those early days during whichI was forming the acquaintance of the twentieth-century civilization.
At the door of the gymnasium Edith left us to join her class in theamphitheater.
"Is she to compete in anything?" I asked.
"All her year--that is, all of her age--in this ward will be entered inmore or less events."
"What is Edith's specialty?" I asked.
"As to specialties," replied the doctor, "our people do not greatlycultivate them. Of course, privately they do what they please, but theobject of our public training is not so much to develop athleticspecialties as to produce an all-around and well-proportioned physicaldevelopment. We aim first of all to secure a certain standard of strengthand measurement for legs, thighs, arms, loins, chest, shoulders, neck,etc. This is not the highest point of perfection either of physique orperformance. It is the necessary minimum. All who attain it may beregarded as sound and proper men and women. It is then left to them asthey please individually to develop themselves beyond that point inspecial directions.
"How long does this public gymnastic education last?"
"It is as obligatory as any part of the educational course until the bodyis set, which we put at the age of twenty-four; but it is practicallykept up through life, although, of course, that is according to just howone feels."
"Do you mean that you take regular exercise in a gymnasium?"
"Why should I not? It is no less of an object to me to be well at sixtythan it was at twenty."
"Doctor," said I, "if I seem surprised you must remember that in my dayit was an adage that no man over forty-five ought to allow himself to runfor a car, and as for women, they stopped running at fifteen, when theirbodies were put in a vise, their legs in bags, their toes in thumbscrews,and they bade farewell to health."
"You do indeed seem to have disagreed terribly with your bodies," saidthe doctor. "The women ignored theirs altogether, and as for the men, sofar as I can make out, up to forty they abused their bodies, and afterforty their bodies abused them, which, after all, was only fair. The vastmass of physical misery caused by weakness and sickness, resulting fromwholly preventable causes, seems to us, next to the moral aspect of thesubject, to be one of the largest single items chargeable to your systemof economic inequality, for to that primal cause nearly every feature ofthe account appears directly or indirectly traceable. Neither souls norbodies could be considered by your men in their mad struggle for aliving, and for a grip on the livelihood of others, while the complicatedsystem of bondage under which the women were held perverted mind and bodyalike, till it was a wonder if there were any health left in them."
On entering the amphitheater we saw gathered at one end of the arena sometwo or three hundred young men and women talking and lounging. These, thedoctor told me, were Edith's companions of the class of 1978, being allthose of twenty-two years of age, born in that ward or since coming thereto live. I viewed with admiration the figures of these young men andwomen, all strong and beautiful as the gods and goddesses of Olympus.
"Am I to understand," I asked, "that this is a fair sample of your youth,and not a picked assembly of the more athletic?"
"Certainly," he replied; "all the youth in their twenty-third year wholive in this ward are here to-day, with perhaps two or three exceptionson account of some special reason."
"But where are the cripples, the deformed, the feeble, the consumptive?"
"Do you see that young man yonder in the chair with so many of the othersabout him?" asked the doctor.
"Ah! there is then at least one invalid?"
"Yes," replied my companion: "he met with an accident, and will never bevigorous. He is the only sickly one of the class, and you see how muchthe others make of him. Your cripples and sickly were so many that pityitself grew weary and spent of tears, and compassion callous with use;but with us they are so few as to be our pets and darlings."
At that moment a bugle sounded, and some scores of young men and womendashed by us in a foot race. While they ran, the bugle continued to sounda nerve-bracing strain. The thing that astonished me was the evenness ofthe finish, in view of the fact that the contestants were not speciallytrained for racing, but were merely the group which in the round of testshad that day come to the running test. In a race of similarly unselectedcompetitors in my day, they would have been strung along the track fromthe finish to the half, and the most of them nearest that.
"Edith, I see, was third in," said the doctor, reading from the signals."She will be pleased to have done so well, seeing you were here."
The next event was a surprise. I had noticed a group of youths on a loftyplatform at the far end of the amphitheater making some sort ofpreparations, and wondered what they were going to do. Now suddenly, atthe sound of a trumpet, I saw them leap forward over the edge of theplatform. I gave an involuntary cry of horror, for it was a deadlydistance to the ground below.
"It's all right," laughed the doctor, and the next moment I was staringup at a score of young men and women charging through the air fifty feetabove the race course.
Then followed contests in ball-throwing and putting the shot.
"It is plain where your women get their splendid chests and shoulders,"said I.
"You have noticed that, then!" exclaimed the doctor.
"I have certainly noticed," was my answer, "that your modern women seemgenerally to possess a vigorous development and appearance of power abovethe waist which were only occasionally seen in our day."
"You will be interested, no doubt," said the doctor, "to have yourimpression corroborated by positive evidence. Suppose we leave theamphitheater for a few minutes and step into the anatomical rooms. It isindeed a rare fortune for an anatomical enthusiast like myself to have apupil so well qualified to be appreciative, to whom to point out theeffect our principle of social equality, and the best opportunities ofculture for all, have had in modifying toward perfection the human formin general, and especially the female figure. I say especially the femalefigure, for that had been most perverted in your day by the influenceswhich denied woman a full life. Here are a group of plaster statues,based on the lines handed down to us by the anthropometric experts of thelast decades of the nineteenth century, to whom we are vastly indebted.You will observe, as your remark just now indicated that you hadobserved, that the tendency was to a spindling and inadequate developmentabove the waist and an excessive development below. The figure seemed alittle as if it had softened and run down like a sugar cast in warmweather. See, the front breadth flat measurement of the hips is actuallygreater than across the shoulders, whereas it ought to be an inch or twoless, and the bulbous effect must have been exaggerated by the bulgingmass of draperies your women accumulated about the waist."
At his words I raised my eyes to the stony face of the woman figure, thecharms of which he had thus disparaged, and it seemed to me that thesightless eyes rested on mine with an expression of reproach, of which myheart instantly confessed the justice. I had been the contemporary ofthis type of women, and had been indebted to the light of their eyes forall that made life worth living. Complete or not, as might be theirbeauty by modern standards, through them I had learned to know the stressof the ever-womanly, and been made an initiate of Nature's sacredmysteries. Well might these stony eyes reproach me for consenting by mysilence to the disparagement of charms to which I owed so
much, by a manof another age.
"Hush, doctor, hush!" I exclaimed. "No doubt you are right, but it is notfor me to hear these words."
I could not find the language to explain what was in my mind, but it wasnot necessary. The doctor understood, and his keen gray eyes glistened ashe laid his hand on my shoulder.
"Right, my boy, quite right! That is the thing for you to say, and Edithwould like you the better for your words, for women nowadays are jealousfor one another's honor, as I judge they were not in your day. But, onthe other hand, if there were present in this room disembodied shades ofthose women of your day, they would rejoice more than any others could atthe fairer, ampler temples liberty has built for their daughters' soulsto dwell in.
"Look!" he added, pointing to another figure; "this is the typical womanof to-day, the lines not ideal, but based on an average of measurementsfor the purpose of scientific comparison. First, you will observe thatthe figure is over two inches taller than the other. Note the shoulders!They have gained two inches in width relatively to the hips, as comparedwith the figure we have been examining. On the other hand, the girth atthe hips is greater, showing more powerful muscular development. Thechest is an inch and a half deeper, while the abdominal measure is fullytwo inches deeper. These increased developments are all over and abovewhat the mere increase in stature would call for. As to the generaldevelopment of the muscular system, you will see there is simply nocomparison.
"Now, what is the explanation? Simply the effect upon woman of the full,free, untrammeled physical life to which her economic independence openedthe way. To develop the shoulders, arms, chest, loins, legs, and bodygenerally, exercise is needed--not mild and gentle, but vigorous,continuous exertion, undertaken not spasmodically but regularly. There isno dispensation of Providence that will or ever would give a womanphysical development on any other terms than those by which men haveacquired their development. But your women had recourse to no such means.Their work had been confined for countless ages to a multiplicity ofpetty tasks--hand work and finger work--tasks wearing to body and mind inthe extreme, but of a sort wholly failing to provoke that reaction of thevital forces which builds up and develops the parts exercised. From timeimmemorial the boy had gone out to dig and hunt with his father, orcontend for the mastery with other youths while the girl stayed at hometo spin and bake. Up to fifteen she might share with her brother a few ofhis more insipid sports, but with the beginnings of womanhood came theend of all participation in active physical outdoor life. What could beexpected save what resulted--a dwarfed and enfeebled physique and asemi-invalid existence? The only wonder is that, after so long a periodof bodily repression and perversion, the feminine physique should haveresponded, by so great an improvement in so brief a period, to the freelife opened up to woman within the last century."
"We had very many beautiful women; physically perfect they seemed atleast to us," I said.
"Of course you did, and no doubt they were the perfect types you deemedthem," replied the doctor. "They showed you what Nature meant the wholesex to be. But am I wrong in assuming that ill health was a generalcondition among your women? Certainly the records tell us so. If we maybelieve them, four fifths of the practice of doctors was among women, andit seemed to do them mighty little good either, although perhaps I oughtnot to reflect on my own profession. The fact is, they could not doanything, and probably knew they couldn't, so long as the social customsgoverning women remained unchanged."
"Of course you are right enough as to the general fact," I replied."Indeed, a great writer had given currency to a generally accepted maximwhen he said that invalidism was the normal condition of woman."
"I remember that expression. What a confession it was of the abjectfailure of your civilization to solve the most fundamental proposition ofhappiness for half the race! Woman's invalidism was one of the greattragedies of your civilization, and her physical rehabilitation is one ofthe greatest single elements in the total increment of happiness whicheconomic equality has brought the human race. Consider what is implied inthe transformation of the woman's world of sighs and tears and suffering,as you know it, into the woman's world of to-day, with its atmosphere ofcheer and joy and overflowing vigor and vitality!"
"But," said I, "one thing is not quite clear to me. Without being aphysician, or knowing more of such matters than a young man might besupposed to, I have yet understood in a general way that the weakness anddelicacy of women's physical condition had their causes in certainnatural disabilities of the sex."
"Yes, I know it was the general notion in your day that woman's physicalconstitution doomed her by its necessary effect to be sick, wretched, andunhappy, and that at most her condition could not be rendered more thantolerable in a physical sense. A more blighting blasphemy against Naturenever found expression. No natural function ought to cause constantsuffering or disease; and if it does, the rational inference is thatsomething is wrong in the circumstances. The Orientals invented the mythof Eve and the apple, and the curse pronounced upon her, to explain thesorrows and infirmities of the sex, which were, in fact, a consequence,not of God's wrath, but of man-made conditions and customs. If you onceadmit that these sorrows and infirmities are inseparable from woman'snatural constitution, why, then there is no logical explanation but toaccept that myth as a matter of history. There were, however, plentifulillustrations already in your day of the great differences in thephysical conditions of women under different circumstances and differentsocial environments to convince unprejudiced minds that thoroughlyhealthful conditions which should be maintained a sufficiently longperiod would lead to a physical rehabilitation for woman that would quiteredeem from its undeserved obloquy the reputation of her Creator."
"Am I to understand that maternity now is unattended with risk orsuffering?"
"It is not nowadays an experience which is considered at all criticaleither in its actual occurrence or consequences. As to the other supposednatural disabilities which your wise men used to make so much of asexcuses for keeping women in economic subjection, they have ceased toinvolve any physical disturbance whatever.
"And the end of this physical rebuilding of the feminine physique is notyet in view. While men still retain superiority in certain lines ofathletics, we believe the sexes will yet stand on a plane of entirephysical equality, with differences only as between individuals."
"There is one question," said I, "which this wonderful physical rebirthof woman suggests. You say that she is already the physical equal of man,and that your physiologists anticipate in a few generations more herevolution to a complete equality with him. That amounts to saying, doesit not, that normally and potentially she always has been man's physicalequal and that nothing but adverse circumstances and conditions have evermade her seem less than his equal?"
"Certainly."
"How, then, do you account for the fact that she has in all ages andcountries since the dawn of history, with perhaps a few doubtful andtransient exceptions, been his physical subject and thrall? If she everwas his equal, why did she cease to become so, and by a rule souniversal? If her inferiority since historic times may be ascribed tounfavorable man-made conditions, why, if she was his equal, did shepermit those conditions to be imposed upon her? A philosophical theory asto how a condition is to cease should contain a rational suggestion as tohow it arose."
"Very true indeed," replied the doctor. "Your question is practical. Thetheory of those who hold that woman will yet be man's full equal inphysical vigor necessarily implies, as you suggest, that she mustprobably once have been his actual equal, and calls for an explanation ofthe loss of that equality. Suppose man and woman actual physical equalsat some point of the past. There remains a radical difference in theirrelation as sexes--namely, that man can passionally appropriate womanagainst her will if he can overpower her, while woman can not, even ifdisposed, so appropriate man without his full volition, however great hersuperiority of force. I have often speculated as to the reason of thisradical difference, lying as
it does at the root of all the sex tyrannyof the past, now happily for evermore replaced by mutuality. It hassometimes seemed to me that it was Nature's provision to keep the racealive in periods of its evolution when life was not worth living save fora far-off posterity's sake. This end, we may say, she shrewdly secured byvesting the aggressive and appropriating power in the sex relation inthat sex which had to bear the least part of the consequences resultanton its exercise. We may call the device a rather mean one on Nature'spart, but it was well calculated to effect the purpose. But for it, owingto the natural and rational reluctance of the child-bearing sex to assumea burden so bitter and so seemingly profitless, the race might easilyhave been exposed to the risk of ceasing utterly during the darkerperiods of its upward evolution.
"But let us come back to the specific question we were talking about.Suppose man and woman in some former age to have been, on the whole,physically equal, sex for sex. Nevertheless, there would be manyindividual variations. Some of each sex would be stronger than others oftheir own sex. Some men would be stronger than some women, and as manywomen be stronger than some men. Very good; we know that well withinhistoric times the savage method of taking wives has been by forciblecapture. Much more may we suppose force to have been used whereverpossible in more primitive periods. Now, a strong woman would have noobject to gain in making captive a weaker man for any sexual purpose, andwould not therefore pursue him. Conversely, however, strong men wouldhave an object in making captive and keeping as their wives women weakerthan themselves. In seeking to capture wives, men would naturally avoidthe stronger women, whom they might have difficulty in dominating, andprefer as mates the weaker individuals, who would be less able to resisttheir will. On the other hand, the weaker of the men would find itrelatively difficult to capture any mates at all, and would beconsequently less likely to leave progeny. Do you see the inference?"
"It is plain enough," I replied. "You mean that the stronger women andthe weaker men would both be discriminated against, and that the typeswhich survived would be the stronger of the men and the weaker of thewomen."
"Precisely so. Now, suppose a difference in the physical strength of thesexes to have become well established through this process in prehistorictimes, before the dawn of civilization, the rest of the story followsvery simply. The now confessedly dominant sex would, of course, seek toretain and increase its domination and the now fully subordinated sexwould in time come to regard the inferiority to which it was born asnatural, inevitable, and Heaven-ordained. And so it would go on as it didgo on, until the world's awakening, at the end of the last century, tothe necessity and possibility of a reorganization of human society on amoral basis, the first principle of which must be the equal liberty anddignity of all human beings. Since then women have been reconquering, asthey will later fully reconquer, their pristine physical equality withmen."
"A rather alarming notion occurs to me," said I. "What if woman should inthe end not only equal but excel man in physical and mental powers, as hehas her in the past, and what if she should take as mean an advantage ofthat superiority as he did?"
The doctor laughed. "I think you need not be apprehensive that such asuperiority, even if attained, would be abused. Not that women, as such,are any more safely to be trusted with irresponsible power than men, butfor the reason that the race is rising fast toward the plane already inpart attained in which spiritual forces will fully dominate all things,and questions of physical power will cease to be of any importance inhuman relations. The control and leading of humanity go already largely,and are plainly destined soon to go wholly, to those who have the largestsouls--that is to say, to those who partake most of the Spirit of theGreater Self; and that condition is one which in itself is the mostabsolute guarantee against the misuse of that power for selfish ends,seeing that with such misuse it would cease to be a power."
"The Greater Self--what does that mean?" I asked.
"It is one of our names for the soul and for God," replied the doctor,"but that is too great a theme to enter on now."