252 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



merely associated with one sex but having no essential connection 

 with the sex itself, such as the brilliant plumage of the peacock, 

 or, as Mr. Darwin suggested, the baldness of Englishmen. These 

 in a majority of instances depend upon the preferences of the op- 

 posite sex, the last example being a probable exception. So men 

 have only themselves to blame if an undesirable type of woman 

 persists. 



In addition to these, artificial differences, mere resultants of 

 specific treatment, may also disappear. The foot of a Chinese 

 woman is quite unlike that of a man, and possibly an aristocratic 

 Celestial dame would be fearful of approaching the masculine type 

 if she allowed her daughter's feet a natural development. Bar- 

 barous nations are not usually content with Nature ; they delight 

 in differentiating their women from men by blackening their 

 teeth or boring holes in their lips, ears, and noses. We follow 

 their fashions in a mild way and have created several artificial 

 types of women, but it is hardly scientific to call the exaggerations 

 which distinguish them " sexual differences." 



Among animals we can, by breeding and training * through 

 several generations, increase desirable qualities, such as the pace 

 of horses or flight of pigeons, but it is not claimed by any breeder 

 or zoologist that the sexes are any nearer each other than they 

 were in protozoan times. It is also an assumption to declare that 

 the " graces of womanhood — affection, tenderness, and sympathy " 

 — have sprung from the relation of the sexes. According to all 

 authorities, the general relation of the sexes in all but recent 

 times has been characterized by anything but " affection, tender- 

 ness, and sympathy." So far as we have proof of the origin of 

 these qualities, they have arisen from the offices of motherhood ; 

 and just in the degree that we elevate, ennoble, and endow the 

 mother with moral, mental, and political responsibility, do we 

 put it in her power to exercise the wisest affection toward her 

 offspring, the fullest sympathy with her mate. 



Our antisuffragist " fears to drag woman from her high estate 

 wherein man is her servant." This has for me the melodramatic 

 ring of " a hysteric fancy." With all the opportunities for prog- 

 ress which recent years have given her, it does not appear to me 

 that woman is yet on so high a plane as man. She is, however, 

 climbing step by step, and all unprejudiced, men and women will 

 welcome the day when she may stand beside him as his coworker 

 in life. That the ballot, officeholding, or any other right which 

 she can exercise or pursuit which she will undertake can render 

 her less a woman, is a hypothesis without a grain of evidence. No 



* In every case of change, breeding is certified to be more potent tlian mere condition- 

 ing; vide Alfred Russel Wallace, in the Popular Science Monthly, vol. xxxviii, ]>. 94. 



