456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of her social equality, which she had wrung from man during the 

 period of classic civilization. Of all things, mediaeval woman alone 

 did not retrograde. I believe the modern woman to he the natural 

 outgrowth of the woman of chivalry. 



And here let me apjdy to this question the laws of heredity and 

 sexual selection. These laws touch the human family with as much 

 force as the lower forms of animal life. The fact that man is marked 

 by intellectual power in no way exempts him from the operation of 

 the fundamental laws of biology. Objections which, at the first glance, 

 may appear to be well taken against applying these law T s to explain the 

 existing relation of women to the other sex, become of small moment 

 when we consider that, in his sexual relations, man approximates to 

 nearly the level of the lower animals. M. Quetelet, who has made 

 this a special study, remarks as follows : " It is curious to see man, 

 proudly entitling himself King of Nature, and fancying himself con- 

 trolling all things by his free-will, yet submitting, unknown to him- 

 self, more rigorously than any other being in creation, to the laws he 

 is under subjection to." ' Mr. Buckle, in the introduction to his "His- 

 tory of Civilization," carries the argument of Quetelet to even a 

 greater extent. I think this will satisfy any possible objection to the 

 propriety of applying these laws to the exposition of my subject. 



Whatever may be woman's fitness in the future to become man's 

 peer in the professions and skilled labor, there is this fact against her 

 in the present : she is laboring under the accumulated inherited ten- 

 dency of countless generations. That which had its origin in common 

 with sister animals in physical and moral subjection to the male, has, 

 in spite of the operation of that intellectual force which we see oper- 

 ating so potently at the present day to cast off this subjugation, con- 

 tinued in full force. I can explain this in no other way except as the 

 result of heredity. This position of woman is as clearly a sexual 

 trait as in lower animals. Darwin says that, " as peculiarities often 

 appear in one sex, and become hereditarily attached to that sex, the 

 same fact probably occurs under nature, and, if so, natural selection 

 will be able to modify one sex in its functional relation to the other 

 sex." 2 Dr. Maudsley, in speaking of one relation of woman to man, 

 says : " Through generations her character has been formed with that 

 chief aim (marriage) ; it has been made feeble by long habits of de- 

 pendence ; by the circumstances of her position, the sexual life has 

 been undesignedly developed at the expense of the intellectual." 3 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer insists upon this. " Certain powers which man- 

 kind have gained in the course of civilization cannot, I think, be 

 accounted for, without admitting the inheritance of acquired modi- 

 fications." 4 



1 Popular Science Monthly, vol. ii., p. 4G. 2 "The Origin of Species," p. 83. 



3 " The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind," p. 203. 



4 " Principles of Biology," vol. ii., p. 249. 





