74 EMANCIPATION BLACK AND WHITE m 



tlie prizes of life with the best women. And the 

 hardship of it is, that the very improvement of 

 the women will lessen their chances. Better 

 mothers will bring forth better sons, and the 

 impetus gained by the one sex will be transmitted, 

 in the next generation, to the other. The most 

 Darwinian of theorists will not venture to pro- 

 pound the doctrine, that the physical disabilities 

 under which women have hitherto laboured in 

 the struggle for existence with men are likely to 

 be removed by even the most skilfully conducted 

 process of educational selection. 



We are, indeed, fully prepared to believe that 

 the bearing of children may, and ought, to become 

 as free from danger and long disability to the 

 civilised woman as it is to the savage ; nor is it 

 improbable that, as society advances towards its 

 right organisation, motherhood will occupy a less 

 space of woman's life than it has hitherto done. 

 But still, unless the human species is to come to 

 an end altogether a consummation which can 

 hardly be desired by even the most ardent advo- 

 cate of " women's rights " somebody must be 

 good enough to take the trouble and responsibility 

 of annually adding to the world exactly as many 

 people as die out of it. In consequence of some 

 domestic difficulties, Sydney Smith is said to 

 have suggested that it would have been good for 

 the human race had the model offered by the hive 

 been followed, and had all the working part of the 



