520 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are likely to arise, there is one conclusion we may draw with certainty. 

 Recurrinir to the three ends to be subserved in the order of their ini- 

 portance welfare of species, welfare of offspring, welfare of parents 

 and seeing that, in the stages now reached by civilized peoples, wel- 

 fare of species is effectually secured in so far as maintenance of num- 

 bers is concerned, the implication is that welfare of offspring must 

 hereafter determine the course of domestic evolution. Societies which 

 from generation to generation produce in due abundance individuals 

 who, relatively to the requirements, are the best physically, morally, 

 and intellectually, must become the predominant societies, and must 

 tend through the quiet process of industrial competition to replace 

 other societies. Consequently, marital relations which favor this re- 

 sult in the greatest degree must spread, while the prevailing senti- 

 ments and ideas must become so moulded into harmony with them 

 that other relations will be condemned as immoral. 



If, still guiding ourselves by observing the course of past evolu- 

 tion, we ask what changes in the statics of women may be anticipated, 

 the answer must be that a further approach toward equality of po- 

 sition between the sexes will take place. With decline of militancy 

 and rise of industrialness with decrease of compulsory cooperation 

 and increase of voluntary cooperation with strengthening sense of 

 personal rights and accompanying sympathetic regard for the personal 

 rights of others, must go a diminution of the political and domestic 

 disabilities of women, until there remain such only as differences of 

 constitution entail. 



To draw inferences more specific is somewhat hazardous : proba- 

 bilities and possibilities only can be indicated. While in some direc- 

 tions the emancipation of women has to be carried further, we may 

 suspect that in other directions their claims have already been pushed 

 beyond the normal limits. If from that stage of primitive degrada- 

 tion in Avhich they were habitually stolen, bought and sold, made 

 beasts of burden, inherited as property, and killed at will, Ave pass to 

 the stage America shows us, in which a lady wanting a seat stares at 

 a gentleman occupying one until he surrenders it, and then takes 

 it without thanking him, we may infer that the rhythm traceable 

 throughout all changes has carried this to an extreme from which 

 there will be a recoil. The like may be said of some other cases : 

 what were originally concessions have come to be claimed as rights, 

 and, in gaining the character of assiamed rights, have lost much of the 

 grace they had as concessions. Doubtless, however, there will remain 

 in the social relations of men and women, not only observances of a 

 kind called forth by sympathy of the strong for the weak irrespective 

 of sex, and still more called forth by sympathy of the stronger &ex for 

 the weaker sex, but also observances which originate in the wish, 

 not consciously formulated but felt, to compensate women for certain 



