1 36 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



possession of a baby is of more value to the State than a first- 

 class in classics or a silver trophy for sport. The peasant 

 woman gazing with longing eyes upon her child at her breast 

 has an experience of the purpose of life which the highest 

 intellectual gifts alone cannot supply. 



It may now be asked why with such an ideal before them is 

 there a revolt among certain classes of women ? What are the 

 causes and how are they to be removed ? It seems clear 

 that the chief cause of the unrest is modern education, which has 

 been artificially forced and encouraged along wrong lines. Too 

 much stress has been laid upon intellectual attainments and 

 pleasures, and it has been loudly proclaimed that the education 

 of the two sexes should be the same and that a woman should 

 not be debarred from entering any profession or occupation she 

 may choose. It is maintained that a woman is a better mother 

 if she be well educated. Even if this statement be admitted, it 

 depends upon the definition of a good education. The natural 

 instincts of healthy women have for ages guided her in the 

 performance of the duties of a daughter, wife, and mother, and 

 there is little doubt that an unsuitable or bad education by 

 suppressing or blunting those instincts will make her less 

 efficient in these services which are of fundamental importance 

 to the race. The effects of education and of a specialised pro- 

 fession or occupation are obvious even in a man ; his body and 

 mind are moulded to type. The effects upon woman would be 

 greater especially if the occupation were continued for life ; her 

 sexual life begins early and ends early, and under natural 

 conditions makes a great demand upon the resources of the body. 

 Even if she can perform more efficiently than man any of the 

 work generally done by men, the race will lose thereby, if at the 

 same time she becomes unfitted for those very duties which 

 man can never assume. 



It is difficult to obtain data, but there is general agreement 

 that the more highly educated people are the less fertile. There 

 is both a comic and a pathetic side in the meetings of learned men 

 and women to discuss the subject of eugenics ; it would not be 

 an unduly rash calculation to say that the average number of 

 offspring of the married members at most meetings is not more 

 than two. 



The extension of the old doctrine of internal secretions by 

 the modern work upon the functions of the ductless glands has 



