THE 'CONDITION OF WOMEN. 153 



specific identity with the female. The young of hoth sexes are alike, 

 and the developing male shares with the female the characteristics 

 which unite them to the other barnacles, and which are due to descent 

 from a common form. The female keeps these hereditary character- 

 istics through life, while the male soon loses them entirely. 



These facts seem to be sufficient to prove that the specialization 

 which we should expect to find among the higher animals with sepa- 

 rate sexes does exist, and that the male organism is especially and 

 peculiarly variable, and the female organism especially and peculiarly 

 'conservative. 



Leaving this aspect of our subject for the present, let us look at it 

 from a somewhat different point of view. The history of the evolu- 

 tion of life has not only an objective side, but something which may 

 with perfect propriety be spoken of as a subjective aspect. The prog- 

 ress which is shown objectively as greater and greater specialization of 

 structure, and a closer and closer adaptation of the organism to the 

 conditions of the external world, has been well described by Herbert 

 Spencer, as the increasing delicacy, exactness, and scope of the adjust- 

 ment between internal and external relations. Seen in its subjective 

 aspect, each of the steps in the growth of this adjustment is a recog- 

 nition of a scientific law, the perception of the permanency of a rela- 

 tion between external phenomena ; for science is simply the recogni- 

 tion of the order of nature. 



When a Rhizopod discriminates between the contact of a large 

 body and that of a small one, and draws in its pseudopodia and 

 shrinks into as compact a shape as possible in order to escape the 

 danger which the past experience of the race has shown to be related 

 to the former sensation, or Avhen it expands its pseudopodia in order to 

 ingulf and digest the body which has caused the second sensation, it 

 furnishes proof that its scientific education has begun. Of course I do 

 not intend to say that the order of nature, according to which the 

 Rhizopod adjusts its actions, is consciously apprehended, but simply 

 that it is the experience of the existence of this order which deter- 

 mines the action. Throughout the whole course of the evolution of 

 one of the higher organisms each variation which served to bring 

 about a closer harmony between the organism and its environment, 

 and was accordingly preserved by natural selection, and added on to 

 the series of hereditary structures and functions, was in its subjective 

 aspect the experience of a new external connection, a new step in the 

 recognition of natural law, an advance in scientific knowledge. Hu- 

 man advancement is of course widely different from the slow progress 

 of the lower forms of life, but it is fundamentally the same. Experi- 

 ence is continually spreading over new fields, and bringing about a 

 more wide and exact recognition of the persistent relations of the ex- 

 ternal world. The scientific laws thus recognized then gradually take 

 the shape of principles or laws of conduct, according to which actions 



