248 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



but, according to this document, her natural delicacy is owing to 

 them, and she is warned that she may part with womanhood if 

 she persists in her unnatural endeavor to change her occupations. 

 The bee is cited as an example that " sex itself may be determined 

 by continuous special regimen or diet." 



Now, so far as any naturalist has observed, sex is not altered * 

 by any regimen or diet ; and as the subject of our inquiry is not 

 a neutral bit of protoplasm, but a developed individual, woman, 

 we do not need to study the origin of her differentiation so much 

 as its possible modification. 



The bees, with instinctive wisdom, feed the male and female 

 larvsB differently, just as we, regardful of distinct uses, furnish 

 varying food to the cow and ox. Yet, as the utmost change in 

 nutrition does not result in transference of function in the mature 

 organism, we need not fear that a different environment will ever 

 rob woman of her essential womanhood. This specter, used to 

 frighten girls from a higher education, is still the favorite totem 

 of the tribe of viriolaters. 



Our antisuffragist falls into another grave error when he 

 seeks for " the instinctive tendencies of the dominant sex " in an 

 era and in localities where woman has partial sway. It is not 

 generally in the United States — certainly not in a city of New 

 England — that we should look for the gross masculine ignorance 

 that makes woman a beast of burden. It is in primitive com- 

 munities that the anthropologist investigates the habits of man 

 as the best exponents of his natural instincts. If we find in all 

 such states of society the male is not inclined to relieve the female 

 from hardship and toil, we can hardly argue that the divisions of 

 labor found among civilized people arise from man's wish to 

 exempt his mate from the arduous tasks of life. The Russian 

 mother toiling in the fields, the Viennese woman laying bricks, 

 the peasant girl harnessed to a cart, are better instances of man's 

 " instinctive tendencies " than any to be found in American cities, 

 where men have learned in some degree to subordinate instinct to 

 reason. 



Yet if one, being a woman, was forced to choose between toil 

 in the fields, laying bricks in the sun, or a day at the washtub, it 

 is not altogether certain that the last would be regarded as a 

 privilege. It is possible that some women might prefer the first 

 employments and desire exemption from the scrubbing-board. 

 Moreover, if a child is needed to complicate the case, its chances 

 of life may be vastly better with the flies in the open air than 

 with the germ-laden atmosphere of a tenement. 



* The genesis of sex in certain orders seems to depend upon differing temperature and 

 nutrition. 



