WOMEN PROFESSION'S AND SKILLED LABOR. 457 



The law of sexual selection also comes in as a factor to account 

 for the present relation of the sexes. Since our modern civilization 

 there have ever been women who aimed to relieve their sex of their 

 dependent relation to man. With this moral force ceaselessly antag- 

 onizing the natural relation of the sexes and the forces of heredity, 

 why has it not, in a more marked degree, accomplished the noble 

 purpose at which the more intellectual and stronger minds of the sex 

 have aimed ? To offer a reasonable explanation of this, I apply the 

 law of sexual selection. Men and women do not appear to wed out 

 of free choice, but in obedience to law which finds its expression in 

 individual preferences. This, in the human family, may be called 

 sexual selection. Mr. Walker states it in this way : " Love from a 

 man toward a masculine woman would be felt by him as an unnatural 

 association with one of his own sex; and an effeminate man is equally 

 repugnant to woman. In the vital system, the dry seek, the humid; 

 the meagre, the plump ; the hard, the softer ; the rough, the smoother ; 

 the warmer, the colder ; the dark, the fairer, etc., upon the same prin- 

 ciples ; and so, also, if here any of the more usual sexual qualities are 

 reversed, the opposite ones will be accepted or sought for." ' Dr. 

 Ryanj in speaking of selection in relation to marriage, uses nearly 

 identical language. 2 



The annals of literature show that the most eminent of the sex either 

 are unmarried, or are married late in life, and are thus often without 

 issue. The women who intellectually leave their impress upon the 

 age in which they live are the very class to which this law of sexual 

 selection applies. The chances of this order of women leaving daugh- 

 ters who will inherit their superior mental vigor are greatly inferior to 

 those of the average woman. The woman of the average, her mind 

 and ambition being of the measure of the ordinary matters of life, not 

 only seeks a husband by the force of education, but is sought by men. 

 Thus, married early in life, she becomes the source from which the 

 population is recruited. This, in my judgment, is not only a potent 

 cause of the present relation of the sexes, but will serve to explain the 

 chances of women becoming prominent in the professions of the future. 



There is another set of laws which apply to this part of the subject. 

 These are the phenomena which are observed in studying human in- 

 crease, and are called the laws of population. The forces engaged in 

 the evolution of nervous and mental (cerebral) structure are opposed 

 to those necessary to reproduction. Mr. Herbert Spencer expresses 

 it as an antagonism between Individuation and Genesis ; and that this 

 antagonism is more marked " where the nervous system is concerned, 

 because of the costliness of nervous structure and function." 3 There 

 is no part of individuation so costly as that of cerebral growth. The 

 more solid expansion of mind is accomplished after general structural 



1 "Intermarriage," by Alexander Walker, 1839, p. 116. 



2 " The Philosophy of Marriage," 1873, p. 70. 3 " Principles of Biology," ii., p. 502. 



