138 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



The so-called higher education of women is not a good ideal 

 for either woman, man, or the State. Education at a University 

 for three or four years makes a considerable demand upon the 

 bodily, mental, and pecuniary resources of the woman, and there 

 is little doubt that these would be more useful to all concerned 

 if they were devoted to, or reserved for, marriage. There is no 

 evidence that the middle-aged intellectual woman makes a better 

 wife or mother. The indications are all the other way. The 

 mental training causes the woman to be self-centred and more 

 sensitive to any discomfort or pain associated with child-bearing 

 and distracts her attention from those domestic duties which 

 mean so much for the health and training of her children. So 

 little is known of the conditions determining the transmission of 

 intellectual capacity that an anticipation of the propagation of 

 intelligence or genius by the marriage of the highly intellectual 

 is even less justified than the prediction of mediocrity or insanity. 

 The woman who is married for her services as a cheap secretary 

 or assistant in her husband's intellectual pursuits is as much 

 degraded as the wife who is valued only as a cheap housekeeper 

 and cook. The physiological test of woman's efficiency is 

 motherhood. 



To all these arguments it may be objected that marriage as 

 a career is not open to all women, because there are about a 

 million and a half more women than men in this country. 

 Why, if it is maintained that women are equal to men, should 

 not women take their share in building up the Empire by 

 emigration to the Colonies, where there is a dearth of women ? 

 In Australia and New Zealand they might obtain both husbands 

 and votes, and might reintroduce the old-fashioned morality of 

 family life. In these Colonies where the women have the vote, 

 the artificial and immoral limitation of offspring has resulted 

 in a decline of about 30 per cent, in the birth-rate. Some 

 details of the opportunities for marriage in Canada were given 

 at the recent meeting of the Central Emigration Board ; a lady, 

 who had spent the greater part of the last four years in the 

 Dominion, is reported x to have said that " if a woman went out 

 to the West she married almost inevitably. She had had seven 

 proposals in seven weeks. She did not know even the names 

 of some of the men, one of whom was a cook in a Canadian 

 Pacific Railway train. A party of forty-five girls went from 



1 The Daily Telegraph, May 2, 19 13, p. 15. 



