462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



intellectually, the two sexes must move side by side to future evolu- 

 tion. At present, woman must unlearn part of her innate education, 

 and acquire some of that of man ; otherwise she cannot equal him in 

 value of skilled labor. Woman must be content to grow up, to evolve, 

 generation by generation, to a position from which she can compete 

 with man in the fields of labor. I believe this condition of things not 

 only can be realized, but in the course of generations will be reached. 

 When we reflect that the present impaired value, in a labor point of 

 view, of educated women is but the result of civilizing forces and the 

 increment of inherited traits, and that women in lower or savage 

 life fairly equal men in the value of their muscular development, we 

 have every reason for this belief. The reader must bear in mind that 

 I am treating of the sex as a unit. Individual exceptions, which always 

 have occurred, and, however prolonged the existing relation of the sexes 

 may be, probably will ever occur, do not apply as negative facts to my 

 argument. The laws of sexual selection, of population, and of hered- 

 ity, will oppose the advance of women, other than in this exceptional 

 way. But there exists in society a force which is tending to the par- 

 allel evolution of the sexes. This force lies in the large excess of fe- 

 males in the adult population of many countries. Stern necessity will 

 force if this condition of affairs continues in the future a large per- 

 centage of this excess to compete with man in the professions and 

 skilled labor. Many of these trained women will marry and have 

 children, and thus form nuclei, divergent lines from which will extend 

 into posterity, ever adding increment upon increment to the forces 

 which tend to parallelism in the evolution of the sexes. 



The purely sexual anatomical differences I shall say nothing about ; 

 but the functional resultants of these anatomical conditions, both men- 

 tally and physically, must be studied with reference to their effect 

 upon woman's chances of success. If we examine carefully the men- 

 tal action of women, we perceive in it an undercurrent of sex. As 

 there are organs which characterize sex, so also is there a sexual cere- 

 bration. We know from experience that this unconscious dominance 

 of sex in cerebration in no way interferes with high culture, and the 

 exercise of the best qualities of mind.- It is a normal condition of 

 mental action in women, but its existence implies conditions which 

 may at any moment render mental action abnormal. Take the emo- 

 tions, for instance, the undue exercise of which are so liable to assume 

 morbid proportions, as in hysteria. Here sex, when it asserts itself 

 unduly, obtrudes inharmoniously into what otherwise would be healthy 

 mental action. It is in this class of mental actions, termed the emo- 

 tions, that the mind of woman forms part of the sexual cycle. Some 

 of these actions are so elementary that they are called instincts. The 

 maternal affection, and also love, partakes of this instinctive character. 

 The exercise of the sympathies is more general and active in women 

 than in men. This is one of the features which give such beauty to 



