BIOLOGY AND " WOMAN'S RIGHTS:' 213 



it is important to note, till the " woman's-riglits' movement" sprung up, 

 have all been in one dLrection — the direction of increasing differentia- 

 tion. The distinction between men's work and women's work has been 

 increased, not diminished. The barbarian and the semi-civilized nation 

 allowed women to carry heavy burdens, to tug at the oar, to wield the 

 spade, the hoe, the mattock, in the fields, and even to labor in mines. 

 In our higher civilization such tasks are limited to man, and, as we 

 have already remarked, to abnormal " mannish " women. The move- 

 ment we are considering, in so far as it aims at breaking down the 

 natural barriers between the duties of the two sexes, is palpably retro- 

 grade. If advancement toward perfection is reached by differentiation, 

 anti-differentiation — if we may use the expression — whether structural 

 or functional, must be a return to a lower condition. If the first and 

 plainest step in the division of labor is to be abandoned, how can others 

 be maintained ? 



It has been already pointed out in the Quarterly Journal of Sci- 

 ence that among vertebrate animals the social unit of which nations are 

 put together is the family, whether that be monogamous or polygamous. 

 A community of rooks is made up of an assemblage of married coujdIcs. 

 A tribe of baboons consists of a number of males, each one having his 

 wives and offspring. Now the*" woman's-rights' movement " not merely 

 runs counter to Nature in the respects we have already shown, but it is 

 open to the charge of seeking to destroy family life and to constitute 

 society of individuals — of atoms instead of molecules. In so doing it 

 tends toward the condition of things prevalent in certain insect-com- 

 munities. But there the mass of the nation, and especially its working 

 and fighting members, is composed of what are commonly called neuters. 

 Of such an arrangement no trace prevails among vertebrate animals, and 

 we do not therefore see how their example can afford us any practical 

 precedent. 



We have, therefore, in fine, full ground for maintaining that the 

 " woman's-rights' movement " is an attempt to rear, by a process of 

 " unnatural selection," a race of monstrosities — hostile alike to men, to 

 normal women, to human society, and to the future dev^elopment of our 

 race. We know that the modern " honorary secretary " is always 

 ready to exclaim, " Let heaven and earth perish, so my crotchet may be 

 realized ! " But we would bid him ask himself whether the end is worth 

 the means. — Quarterly Journal of Science. 



