WOMAN AND POLITICAL POWER. 83 



is neither superiority nor inferiority ; but it does not therefore follow, 

 as has been hastily assumed, that there is equality. No two things 

 can be pronounced equal or unequal, superior or inferior, unless there 

 is some common standard by which they can be measured. The color 

 blue is not equal nor inferior, nor superior to the color yellow ; and the 

 green, which is produced by the mixture of the two, owes no more to 

 one than to the other. In the same way, humanity is perpetuated 

 by the coexistence of male and female; and, if the functions of either 

 one sex or other were radically changed or perverted, humanity itself 

 would cease to exist. 



The most vital point in my present argument is that woman must 

 be regarded as woman, not as a nondescript animal, with a greater or 

 less capacity for assimilation to man. The question, regarded from a 

 scientific point of view, is not how far the female intellect can be 

 trained to imitate the male ; but what it may be shown to be from ob- 

 servation, or inferred to be from correlations of physical structure. 

 The argument, from observation, which would be considered sufficient 

 by most men of science, is controverted on the ground that human 

 laws have been stronger than the laws of Nature. It is said that man 

 has oppressed woman by his superior muscular power, and has im- 

 peded the natural development of her intellect. If this be true, and if 

 mere strength of body can thus get the better of mind, it is certainly 

 strange that horses and elephants have not become the masters of 

 men ; and hardly less strange that the stalwart Negro should long 

 have been the slave of the more intellectual, but not more muscular, 

 white man. But, as it is useless to prove the relations which have 

 existed, to those who preach of relations which ought to exist, be- 

 tween the two sexes, it becomes necessary to investigate the matter 

 from the point of view of physical structure and its correlated func- 

 tions. , 



Among other and better-known features distinguishing the female 

 sex from the male, are the smallness of the brain-case, the width of the 

 pelvis, and the tendency to deposit adipose tissue, rather than mus- 

 cular fibre. To the rule, of course, there are exceptions ; there are 

 masculine women just as there are effeminate men, and those excep- 

 tions I propose to consider before concluding, but they ought not to 

 affect the broad general treatment of the subject. To these and other 

 differences of structure, correspond numerous differences of function. 

 Both the capacity and the desire for muscular exertion are less in the 

 female than in the male ; the strength of the system develops itself 

 in another direction. So also the desire, if not the capacity, for the 

 prolonged study of abstruse subjects, is less in the female than in the 

 male ; and mental activity pursues another course. It does not follow 

 that, because a man can lift a greater weight on the average than a 

 woman, he is therefore her superior, any more than that he is her 

 inferior because she can bear children and he cannot. Nor is 



