BIOLOGY AND " WOMAN'S RIGHT Sr 205 



power. That such difference, on careful examination, Will be found to 

 exist is highly probable; but we must likewise expect that it will be 

 found less distinctly marked the lower the rank of the species. 



To return : the intellectual superiority thus claimed for the male 

 sex, in virtue of a higher cerebral development, is fully manifested in 

 the history of the various arts and sciences. In every department the 

 first, the leading, minds have belonged to the male sex. Homer, Shake- 

 speare, Phidias, Beethoven, no less than Newton, Liebig, and Darwin, 

 are men. 



In reply to this historical confirmation of what biology foretells, the 

 advocates of the movement adduce three arguments, all, in our opinion, 

 singularly inconclusive. 



Admitting the superiority of the male brain in bulk and weight to 

 that of the female, they maintain the existence of a qualitative differ- 

 ence which renders the two incommensurable. This hypothesis, how- 

 ever, is a pure assumption. "We should have an equal right to main- 

 tain that the brains of different races of men, especially as existing in 

 ages widely remote from each other, were incapable of mutual compari- 

 son. Or, in the same spirit, it might even be urged that the smaller 

 size of the muscles in woman was no proof of any inferiority in physi- 

 cal strength. 



Secondly, it is contended by those who seek to identify the duties, 

 functions, and spheres of action of the two sexes, that many women 

 have distinguished themselves in the arts and sciences. Admitting to 

 the full this fact, we can only place it on a level with the kindred phe- 

 nomenon that not a few women have, in disguise, entered the army or 

 navy, and have acquitted themselves as creditably as their male com- 

 rades ; or that others have worked long and undetected as excavators, 

 in the construction of railways, etc. The savarde — the woman of 

 science — like the female athlete, is simply an anomaly, an exceptional 

 being, holding a position more or less intermediate between the two 

 sexes. In the one case the brain, as in the other the muscular system, 

 has undergone an abnormal development. That such cases should oc- 

 cur need no more surprise us than does the converse phenomenon, the 

 existence of womanish man. We meet with subjects, otherwise of the 

 male sex, in whom the beard is scanty or wanting, the limbs slight and 

 rounded, the voice high, the chest narrow, and the pelvis broad, or who, 

 if they do not structurally approximate to the female sex, betray a 

 preference for feminine occupations, which wins for them such epithets 

 as "molly-cots," "cot-queans," etc. At the risk of somewhat antici- 

 pating ourselves we cannot suppress the remark that no one demands 

 especial laws and institutions for the benefit of such womanish men, 

 or proposes their exemption from the customary, duties of the male sex, 

 how burdensome soever these may be felt. 



The third and last plea put forward to explain, if possible, the cere- 

 bral inferiority of woman and her concomitant intellectual inferiority. 



