BIOLOGY AND " WOMAN'S RIGHT Sy 201 



to feel it. If the language is poor in expressions it can be made richer. 

 Coining of words ought not to be condemned a priori. It is self-rega- 

 lating. If a person thinks something worth thinking, or feels some- 

 thing worth feeling, and cannot find an adequate expression, let him 

 coin a word — if possible, one which manifestly conveys his meaning. 

 He will have to be careful, for the public will reject what is useless, 

 ridicule a blunder, but perhaps adopt what is suitable. 



BIOLOGY AND "WOMAN'S EIGHTS." 



SINCE natural history was remodeled by Mr. Darwin it has been 

 found capable of throwing valuable lights, previously little antici- 

 pated, upon topics quite unconnected with the origin and attributes of 

 zoological or botanical species. Of this solidarity of the sciences — one 

 supplying another with methods of inquiry — a striking instance is 

 afforded by a recent work,* in which the doctrine of natural selection 

 is successfully utilized in the study of certain political subjects. That 

 further applications more or less analogous are still possible will scarce- 

 ly be doubted. There is in particular one question now agitating 

 human society which seems particularly to require such treatment. 

 Every one knows that of late years a movement has sprung up to secure 

 for women, as contradistinguished from men, certain rights, liberties, 

 and powers, of which it is contended they have been arbitrarily and 

 wrongfully deprived. To define this movement, and to formulate dis- 

 tinctly the demands of its supporters, is a scarcely possible task. Inno- 

 vators and agitators of all kinds enjoy the advantage that they cannot 

 be tied down to any fixed set of propositions by which and by whose 

 logical consequences they are prepared to stand or fall. On the con- 

 trary, if one ground is found untenable, another is instantly taken up ; 

 what satisfies one champion of the cause is rejected by another ; and 

 what to-day is accepted as final — as in the case of the anti-vivisection 

 movement — is to-morrow proclaimed a mere installment, and made the 

 basis of fresh demands. 



Perhaps we may best describe the movement as an attempt to oblit- 

 erate all — save the purely structural — distinctions between man and 

 woman, and to establish between them a complete identity of duties 

 and functions in place of that separation which has more or less hither- 

 to always existed. That certain speakers and writers, not content with 

 mere identification, go on to inversion, and would assign to men the 

 particular tasks now allotted to women, though a significant fact, need 

 not detain our attention. 



It is of no use laughing at this amtation as the outcome of a mere 



1 u 



Physics and Politics," by Walter Bagehot. (" International Scientific Series.") 



