THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MARCH, 1882. 



SCIENCE AND THE WOMAN QUESTION. 



By Miss M. A. HAEDAKEE. 



ALMOST all social reforms are made top-heavy by a false phi- 

 losophy. Facts are of easy accumulation, but the scientific rule 

 of deducing no principle which facts will not prove gets but unwilling 

 countenance from reform agitators. The reform philosophy which 

 asks for the elevation of women admits an inferiority of position and 

 power on their part, but at the same time claims that this inferiority 

 is due to temporary causes. It bridges the broad gulf between mas- 

 culine and feminine achievement by tbe excuse of a different envi- 

 ronment. If the difference is, indeed, due to temporary conditions, it 

 is, of course, removable by the removal of such conditions. It is the 

 purpose of this paper to consider whether the difference (especially in 

 intellectual power) of the two sexes is attributable to permanent or to 

 temporary conditions. The nearest way of getting at this question is 

 to attack it upon its physiological side. 



Students of physiology see that a final and conclusive law can not 

 yet be drawn from differences in brain-weights and measurements, 

 because of the present imperfection of such data. But there is an 

 even broader and better foundation from which to build up a con- 

 clusion, and I propose to stand on this more general ground. In 

 order, however, that such physiological details may have due influ- 

 ence upon the general argument, I give a few of the best-established 

 facts. Professor Bastian's work on the brain, published in 1880, sums 

 up his studies of this organ as affected by sex. I condense or quote 

 from him the following statements : " Difference of sex, in its influence 

 over capacity of skull, is often greater than difference of race. . . . 

 Difference of cranial capacity between the sexes increases with the 

 development of the race, so that the male European excels much more 



TOL. XX. 3T 



