5 54 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



blesome amount of affection in woman's 

 composition, she could by her greater 

 force of will and character drive man 

 into a corner of the universe, just as the 

 inferior races of the past have been 

 driven before the superior ones only 

 more so, the disparity being greater. 



This is not wholesome. If men 

 have abused their power in the past, it 

 is only what holders of power, who were 

 also fallible mortals, might have been 

 expected to do ; and if women were wise, 

 the lesson they would learn, now that 

 they are more and more being placed in 

 the way of acquiring power themselves, 

 would be, if possible, not to abuse it so 

 much as men in their day have done. 

 There is little to be gained by turning 

 the shafts of feminine wit against men, 

 nor will the feminine character be im- 

 proved by much indulgence in the prac- 

 tice. Better far will be a serious effort 

 to rise to the level of their new oppor- 

 tunities and responsibilities. A man 

 may be a great scholar and a great fool, 

 and so, we venture to say. may a wom- 

 an. It is a much easier thing to stim- 

 ulate the intellect than to strengthen 

 and enrich the moral nature; and it 

 does not follow that, because women 

 now have access to most colleges and 

 universities, they are going at once to 

 show a higher type of cliaracter. It is 

 not impossible even that a reliance on 

 those methods of culture which have 

 been devised for men may tend to im- 

 pair in a greater or less degree those finer 

 intuitions which are claimed as the glory 

 of the female sex, and in which we are 

 quite prepared to declare our own firm 

 belief. The intellectual differences be- 

 tween the sexes may be less than has 

 hitherto been supposed ; but there are 

 differences nevertheless, and it is the 

 manifest interest of the race that these 

 should be developed and made promi- 

 nent, rather tiian weakened and ob- 

 scured. So greatly have tlie claims of 

 women been advanced within the last 

 half generation that it seems almost like 

 offering an indignity to her present state 



to quote the lines of Tennyson so greatly 

 admired in their day : 



"For woman is not undeveloped man. 

 But diverse; could we make berastheman, 

 Sweet love were slain." 



Still, perhaps, there is wisdom in the 

 words, and, if so, it might be well to 

 suggest a caution lest, in the eager as- 

 sertion on her part of equality in all 

 points with man not to say of superi- 

 ority to him something of inestimable 

 value be, if not lost, allowed to fall into 

 comparative disuse, with more or less of 

 resulting injury. 



If the human race is to endure, and 

 if civilization is to advance, the relations 

 between the sexes must not permanently 

 be relations of rivalry. Men and wom- 

 en were not made to struggle with one 

 another for the advantages of life, but 

 mutually to aid one another in reaping 

 those advantages. That "sweet love" 

 of which the poet speaks is given as 

 the reward of right relations between 

 man and woman ; and, where other 

 guidance is lacking, we may profitably 

 ask whether any given line of conduct 

 tends to the gaining or the sacrificing 

 of that rewai-d. If to the former, 

 then it may safely be said to be , right 

 conduct; if to the latter, wrong. "What 

 it is clear that man has to do in these 

 later days is to frame tohimself a higher 

 and completer ideal of manhood than 

 he has hitherto, on the whole, enter- 

 tained, and try to live up to it. The 

 awakened womanhood of the age 

 when allowance has been made for all 

 that is hysterical and morbid and heart 

 less in contemporary feminine utter- 

 ances summons him most clearly and 

 distinctly to walk henceforth on higher 

 levels in the strength of a nobler self- 

 control. Then he bas to recognize in 

 the fullest sense, without a particle of 

 reservation, that he has in woman not a 

 weaker shadow of himself, not a reflec- 

 tion of his glory nor a minister to his 

 pleasures, but a divinely bestowed help- 

 meet, to whom special powers and fac- 



