582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



suppose them to be of exactly the same weight ; and let us add the 

 condition of exactly the same quantity and quality of brain in both. 

 The one sex would have exactly the same capacity for transforming 

 energy as the other, and this would be the ideal condition of things 

 for which the reformers plead. But, so soon as a single child is born, 

 a certain amount of woman's energy is transformed and imparted to a 

 new individual. The development of the individual woman holds a 

 constantly inverse ratio to the multiplication of the species. The 

 maintenance of intellectual equality between the sexes is impossible, 

 because it is only supposable by the creation of impossible conditions. 

 If our original men and women, who were in all respects equal, had 

 no offspring, the equality would continue for a generation, until the 

 species should have disappeared with the death of the last of these 

 hypothetical beings. 



By reflecting that no such original equality ever existed, but that, 

 on the contrary, a considerable physical superiority has been the pos- 

 session of man from the beginning ; by remembering that, in the per- 

 petual struggle for existence, man's physical and intellectual faculties 

 have been stimulated to the utmost in gaining the means of life for 

 himself and for his weaker mate and offspring ; and by considering 

 how large an amount of woman's energy must be diverted from intel- 

 lectual pursuits to the function of maternity we see that the condi- 

 tions of intellectual development are vastly in man's favor. We also 

 see that the main features of these original conditions are permanent 

 conditions of human life on the earth. Woman's inferior size and 

 power will forbid her becoming the successful rival of man in the 

 struggle for existence. Consequently, she will miss the powerful in- 

 tellectual stimulus which this competition creates among men. Lastly, 

 while society continues to exist, she will always be obliged to expend 

 a large proportion of her energy in the function of maternity. All 

 these enumerated and inevitable facts bear upon her chances of intel- 

 lectual growth, and have a tendency to widen the intellectual gulf be- 

 tween herself and man. Mr. Darwin, in his " Descent of Man " (vol. 

 ii, p. 313), after enumerating the causes which strengthened the differ- 

 ences in mental power of the sexes, adds, " It is, indeed, fortunate that 

 the law of the equal transmission of characters to both sexes has com- 

 monly prevailed throughout the whole class of mammals ; otherwise, 

 it is probable that man would have become as superior in mental en- 

 dowment to woman as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the 

 peahen." 



It is not unlikely that the still imperfectly known laws of heredity 

 have increased the intellectual endowment of the male, for Mr. Dar- 

 win finds a general law of transmission in the line of sex. If, too, we 

 accept Mr. Spencer's proof of the inverse ratio between individuation 

 and multiplication, we see that intellectual mothers will have fewer 

 daughters than unintellectual ones ; so that the chances of transmission 



