620 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sirable, help it on ; if avoidable and undesirable, do what we can to 

 prevent it. 



It seems to me both desirable and possible that woman should di- 

 versify her aptitudes. The process will be slow, if possible at all, but 

 it will soon begin to bear good fruit. In those cases where she must 

 depend on salaried work for a living, it will enlarge her life by en- 

 larging her pay. Her independence will make her more choice in the 

 selection of a husband, which will be a blessing not only to herself, 

 but to her offspring. I insist on the importance of the blessing to 

 herself, and on her right to it. If one were disposed to find fault with 

 the order of Nature, the worst thing to be said is that there seems alto- 

 gether too much vicarious sacrifice' in it. A majority of the lives 

 brought into this world are offered up on the altar of that sacrifice. 

 The sacrificial destruction of vegetable life need give us no pain. But 

 the animal offerings, especially the human offerings, suffer torture in 

 the ordeal, and enlist our sympathy. The economic development of 

 the human race has cost untold sacrificial agony, mitigated by little 

 or no reward to those who suffer it. "VVe can not wholly prevent this. 

 Our best efforts to reduce it often increase it. But latterly success 

 has come often enough to stimulate more determined trial. 



First of all, then, we desire that woman, for her own sake, should 

 secure a more commanding position in the economic world. We can 

 have no sympathy with the wide-spread, unmanly fear that she may 

 become a wage-reducing competitor in the masculine specialties. Nei- 

 ther can we sympathize with the fear that her devotion to them will 

 make her less enjoyable as a woman. Let it make her less a woman 

 if it makes her happier. Let it, if necessary, make her less enjoyable 

 to man. Is it of no concern that she should be enjoyable to herself ? 

 "lam a Jew," said Shylock. " Hath not a Jew eyes ? Hath not a 

 Jew hands, organs, senses, affections, passions?" And if a Jew, why 

 not a woman ? 



But even if we had a right to ask it, what right do the facts give 

 us to believe that, in order to be attractive to man, woman must spend 

 all her time and energies consciously trying to be so ? Let those who 

 coolly assume this to be the case, tell us how they know that man, 

 who has little or no time for such cares, is less attractive to woman 

 than she to him. The grimy coal-miner, without even so much as 

 a change of clothes, manages in some way to hold with a reasonably 

 firm grip the affections of at least one woman. As for the " oak-and- 

 vine " idea that one half the race can be attracted only by strength, 

 and the other half only by weakness, that will do very well for poetry 

 and flattery, but, if it is to do for science, it must be mercilessly tested. 



So far as the test has been made, the idea may fairly be said to be 

 disproved. In fact, the result is so encouraging to the parties con- 

 cerned, that the consequently growing tendency toward the enlarge- 

 ment of woman's sphere may well give us hope, and stimulate us to 



