86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



weeping for her children, Sappho burning with desire, Iphigenia griev- 

 ing, not to die, but to die unwedded, Aspasia brilliant with wit and 

 cruel in hate, the girl who, as Horace says, lied gloriously to save her 

 lover, the woman prodigal of her ointment upon the Saviour's head, 

 Cleopatra, too proud to live when she could not captivate her con- 

 queror, are immortal types of what is good and what may be bad in 

 feminine nature. It is not out of such qualities that statesmanship can 

 be developed or science advanced ; but science and statesmanship are 

 not the only good things in the world, and the world may enjoy 

 enough of them without calling in the assistance of women. If man's 

 highest prerogative is to think, woman's noblest function is to love ; 

 and this assertion is not a metaphysical dogma, nor even a generaliza- 

 tion from the history of mankind, but is an inference from the relative 

 position of the sexes throughout the whole of that class of animals to 

 which mankind belongs. The maternal instinct, as it is commonly 

 called, is shared by the females of all the mammalia, from the tigress 

 to the gorilla, and is not, as might be inferred from certain teachings, 

 the sad consequence of iniquitous legislation. 



The skull of the female gorilla differs from the skull of the male, 

 just as the skull of the woman differs from the skull of the man. And 

 this difference has not been caused by centuries of oppression ; it 

 merely gives evidence of the healthy operation of that natural law by 

 which structure corresponds more or less to function. In some re- 

 spects the skull of the female gorilla is more human in its form than 

 that of the male ; and so, also, in some respects the skull of the woman 

 exhibits, in a more striking manner, the attributes of humanity than 

 that of the man. Nor are these skull differences restricted to a few 

 species ; they extend throughout almost the whole of the vertebrate 

 family ; they are accompanied by differences of muscular development, 

 which are no less constant ; and the whole of these physical differences 

 are correlated with a psychical difference which is indisputable the 

 greater pugnacity of the male as compared with the female. Con- 

 sidered, then, apart from individual peculiarities, the diversities of 

 male and female capacities may be seen to have arisen from the wide- 

 spread action of natural laws, and are not to be annihilated by a 

 merely human decree. It is not the fault of the male human being 

 that he possesses more, than the female, of that combativeness which 

 is necessary, not only in political life, but even in the ordinary strug- 

 gles for existence. It is his privilege to protect, and hers to be pro- 

 tected. 



It may be suspected that the advocates of a sexual revolution have 

 been unfoi'tunate in their experience of the sex opposed to their own. 

 There is no doubt that, century after century, women have shown a 

 preference for men possessing the qualities which seemed to them dis- 

 tinctively masculine ; and that men have wished their wives to possess 

 the virtues which are considered distinctively feminine. In other 



