Lectures to Women.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5272, 31 May 1895, Page 2

Lectures to Women.

Between three and four hundred ladies assembled yesterday afternoon, at tho Arb Gallery, to hear Dr Lomax-Smith'a {second lecture on " Woman in Her Emotional Relations." Before commencing . his address the lecturer referred to the correspondence that had taken place in the papers with regard to corsets and corset-wearing, and asked, as a favour to himself and to test the views of the audience, for a show ol hands for and against corset-wearing. In response, nearly the whole audience held up their hands in favour of .corsets, Rome eight or nine ladies only dissenting. Dr LomaxSmith expressed his thanks for the Bpontaneity of the response, and then proceeded with hia leoture. The firat subject dealt with was the physiological nature of an emotion. The lecturer showed how all emotion was ultimately referable to the molecular vibrations of nervous tissue, not as the cause of the emotion, but; as the material means and mechanical equivalent of its expreßEion. Having disclaimed all sympathy with the materialistic explanation of this phenomenon, which had always evaded the difficulty of bridging the gap between the material and mental, or of showing how it was possible to translate molecular movements into mental Btatee, Dr Loinax-Smith pointed out that in emotional people the molecular constituents of the nerve cells were in less stable combination than in the phlegmatic and slow-blooded. Just as nitro-glycerine was a very unstable compound, needing only a slight shock to cause the instant separation of its molecules, so the nervous organisation of highly-strung persons was liable to constant nerve storms or molecular explosions. The subject of "Hysteria" was then briefly dealt with, and its nature explained on physiological grounds. The most interesting portion of the lecture was that dealing with *;he emotional differences between men and women. - The lecturer quoted, only to condemn, the saying of Coleridge, that women showed greater j instability, men deeper sensibility. He found it impossible to recognise the distinction drawn by Galton and Havelock Ellis between sensibility and affectability. He affirmed, as his own belief, that women were both more sensitive and affectable than men, though they possessed less acute mental and moral perception and leas business aptitude. The lecturer, however, went on to state that though women felt more acutely, they did not feel so deeply or bo lastingly as men. He accounted for this fact by the greater neuro-musoular exhaustibility of women, which was due to the fact that their blood was more watery, and contained fewer red blood-cells. For this reason women broke down sooner and recovered more quickly than men ; men, having greater powers of endurance and resistance, when they broke down did so more disastrously -The close of the lecture was devoted to a consideration of the question whether women were as sensitive as men to the finer shades of meaning involved in the term " honour." Without wishing to imply that women were in any way less honourable than <cen, the lecturer gave it as his opinion that a woman's honour had been for so many centuries so intimately associated with her sexual " virtue," that this significance of the term had rather overshadowed its more extended meaning among men. He believed it was a fact that women, in their dealings with each other, were less chivalrous than men. He inferred this, however, to no innate defect or lack of moral sensitiveness, but to the subordinate and irresponsible condition in which women, up till quite recent times, had been kept; and explained the higher standard of men's code of honour as being the product of tho times when each man was liable to answer for breaohea of it at the sword's point. Dr Lomax-Smith was applauded several times in the course of his address, and was listened to with markod attention throughout.

The next lecture of the serieß will be given on Thursday, June 6, by Mr O'Bryen Hoare. The Bubjeot will be " Woman in Her Domestic Relations."