Are Women Intelligent ?
This is Mr. Geoffrey Sainsbury's first book, so far as we know. In it he reveals himself as a powerful thinker and, on the whole, an attractive writer. There is, in our opinion, a fault, and a rather serious one, in the manner of presentation, a fault Which may "put off" some readers ; there is something in his writing which they may feel as "cockiness," as an unflattering attitude towards them on the part of the author. But it would be a pity if this feeling should be so strong as to prevent them reading this book through.
Mr. Sainsbury's "theory of polarity" is familiar in one form or other to all of us. Broadly speaking, all he means by polarity is that in every sphere of life he can find an antithesis. Thus, he contrasts extravagance and economy, barbarism and decadence, man and woman, energy and passivity, fanaticism and intelligence, profundity and superficiality. But his special point is that he claims to have discovered a principle which will divide all these antitheses into two clearly defined groups, a principle which will connect, for example, barbarism, masculinity, extravagance, fanaticism, energy on the one hand, and economy, decadence, femininity, passivity, intelligence on the other. These two groups correspond for him to the positive and negative poles of electricity. That is to say, the masculine, extravagant, energetic group corresponds to a pole or centre of energy stronger than that of its environment ; a pole from which, therefore, energy will flow out in all directions ; and the decadent, intelligent, feminine group corresponds to a negative centre of energy ; a centre, that is, at which energy is weaker than it is in its surroundings, and into which, therefore, energy will flow.
We cannot possibly follow out in a brief space this interesting theory. Mr. Sainsbury's book is quite a short one and he himself states his theory with considerable economy of words. But to give the reader some sense of it, we will take for example his connexion of the feminine and the intelligent. A man, he implies, cannot be intelligent, in so far as he is purely male, for the male, which corresponds to the hard nucleus of the cell, is a point which radiates energy outwards ; but intelligence can only be developed by taking in, through the senses and nervous system, impressions from the outside. Therefore, to be intelligent one must be sensitive ; to be sensitive one must be weak. Therefore, weakness, at any rate of the surface, is necessary to intelligence. This theory gives Mr. Sainsbury some interesting things to say about the eternal subject of the " sex " :— "Woman's outlook is intensely realistic, and as realist she is apt to react truly and faithfully to all that impinges upon her consciousness. Having no real momentum of her own, she registers immediately and infallibly the influences by which she is beset. She bends to forces rather than resists them, and is carried hither and thither by the social currents of her milieu. Marriage is itself for woman an act of formidable intelligence, for it is she who adapts herself, who makes all the necessary adjustments. She catches on to the impetus of her husband and very soon has fallen into step. Man rarely realizes the intelligence which is required of his wife. He lays down the law and so thinks himself the more intelligent, and woman readily subscribes to the same pretence, having no wish to take from him the responsibility of choice. But though intelligence cp.n learn values, it can never create them, and what gives man the authority is not intelligence but faith, bias, direction, prejudice and purpose."
From this attitude he is able to take up and counter the smashing attacks upon women that have been made by most modern writers on the subject. As he says, all the more profound modern psychologists—Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Strindberg, Weininger—are "famous for the vehemence of their indictments of women." "So far as I am aware," he adds, "such attacks as these have never been properly met. To meet them with idealistic feminism is only the more likely to strengthen their case. To brush them aside is equally impossible, for the fact is that they are built upon the most expert psychology and contain a great measure of truth."
As an example of these attacks, he takes Weininger's well-known remark :—
"The possession of genius is identical with profundity, and if anyone were to try and combine woman and profundity as subject
and predicate, he would be contradicted on all aides." What is the answer ?—for there is no possibility of denying that superficiality and woman go together, and profundity and man :— "And the proper answer to make to these accusations is to ask what is wrong with surface. The only answer which could be made to that question is that surface is not deep. And if we in turn rejoin that profundity has no surface, the whole problem of polarity is already on foot. All other polar factors are now involved, and if we face them squarely we soon come to realise that in repudiating woman and surface we repudiate the nervous system, we repudiate intelligence, we repudiate the very intellect that has been turned so unsparingly against her."
And he adds that, after all, these philosophers and critics of women are themselves no models of masculinity, for if they were, they would never have been philosophers at all, but would have burnt their books and rushed out upon some improbable, and probably unprofitable, adventure.
We have no space to follow out his application of the theory of polarity to the rise and fall of civilization. In part he confirms, in part answers, Spengler's famous analysis. Here is a Spenglmian definition of civilization, which is, incidentally, the best epigram in the book :— " Civilisation is a use of energy. It begins as soon as that energy can be put in harness, and it ends as a harness without a horse.
But it must not be thought that his analysis necessarily leads to the gloomy Spenglerian conclusion of the decline of the West. It only points to the necessity of civilized man refreshing himself perpetually at the fount of barbarism ; and no one can complain that there is no barbarism left in the world, from which we can draw stores of yet untapped energy !
Mr. Sainsbury's book is not one which attempts to give us a final philosophy of the world. We may say of him what he says of the scientist : "He opens doors with his questions, but does not need to lock them with his answers." The reader may complain that such a process makes but a draughty universe. But draughtiness, in philosophy at any rate, is far to be preferred to stuffiness.
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