1897] WOMAN IN EVOLUTION OF HUMAN RACE 91 



suffrage may have a tendency to approximate the ideals, the lives, 

 and the habits of women to those of men in these same highly 

 civilised races. 



(3) Such approximations in the future, while perfectly natural 

 and not in a common sense degenerative, would not belong to the 

 progressive stages of the evolution of mankind. Such changes 

 would be convergences in structure and character, and, although 

 they might lead to what we might now consider as intellectual 

 advance, this would not in any way alter the facts that women 

 would be tending to become virified * and men to become effeminised, 

 and both would have, therefore, entered upon the retrogressive 

 period of their evolution. The danger that men may become 

 effeminised may be greater than would at first sight seem probable, 

 but this might not take place at all or to such a slight extent as not 

 to affect seriously the progressive evolution of the race. On the 

 other hand, the danger to women cannot be exaggerated nor too 

 carefully considered, in view of the fact that advanced women have 

 adopted the standards of men, and have not tried as yet to originate 

 feminine ideals to guide them in their new careers and thus maintain 

 the progressive divergence of the sexes. 



(4) There is a rise of the individual through progressive stages 

 of development to the adult and a decline through old age to 

 extinction. In the evolution of the stock to which the individual 

 belongs there is a similar law, a rise through progressive stages of 

 evolution to an acme and a decline through retrogressive stages to 

 extinction. These cycles of the ontogeny (the life of the individual) 

 and of the phylogeny (the evolution of the race or stock) can be 

 illustrated by two diagrams of lines arising from a point, diverging 

 to represent the progressive stages and converging to represent the 

 retrogressive. The divergences and subsequent convergences are not 

 simply physiological analogies, as heretofore supposed, but they occur 

 in obvious relations of structures and forms which indicate that one 

 law governs the development of the individual and the evolution of 

 the stock to which that individual belongs. 



The various characteristics of an organism develop through youth 

 to the adult and end in the convergences of old age, which is termed 

 the gerontic stage. Species, genera, or genetic stocks of any kind 

 likewise progress from their origin and diverge to an acme, finally 

 converging in the phylogerontic period (the gerontic period of the 

 phylum). This last word is used because it conveys an accurate 

 meaning for which there is no exact equivalent in the English 



* This term enables one to consider the future woman who has acquired manly habits 

 and character as tending to become mannish without being necessarily a degenerate 

 being either physically or mentally. In point of fact she may be virified and yet be, 

 according to the standards of advanced women of to-day, superior in both respects, so 

 far as bodily and mental vigour are concerned to the women of the present time. 



