47 ° 
The “ Woman's Rights' ” Question [October, 
define this movement, and to formulate distinctly the de- 
mands of its supporters, is a scarcely possible task. Inno- 
vators and agitators of all kinds enjoy the advantage that 
they cannot be tied down to any fixed set of propositions by 
which and by whose logical consequences they are prepared 
to stand or fall. On the contrary, if one ground is found 
untenable another is instantly taken up ; what satisfies one 
champion of the cause is rejected by another, and what to- 
day is accepted as final — as in the case of the anti-viviseCtion 
movement — is to-morrow proclaimed a mere instalment, and 
made the basis of fresh demands. 
Perhaps we may best describe the movement as an attempt 
to obliterate all — save the purely structural — distinctions 
between man and woman, and to establish between them a 
complete identity of duties and functions in place of that 
separation which has more or less hitherto always existed. 
That certain speakers and writers, not content with mere 
identification, go on to inversion, and would assign to men 
the particular tasks now allotted to women, though a signi- 
ficant faCt, need not detain our attention. 
It is of no use laughing at this agitation as the outcome 
of a mere “ crotchet.” In certain states of the moral 
atmosphere crotchets spread just as do epidemics — which 
they closely resemble — in certain conditions of the physical 
atmosphere and other surroundings of man. Who would 
attempt to deal with the cholera or the small-pox by ridicule, 
how pungent and incisive soever ? 
We purpose therefore to examine this movement in the 
light of the principles of Natural Selection, of Differentia- 
tion, and Specialisation, and to enquire whether the relations 
of the sexes in the human species and the distribution of 
their respective functions are or are not in general harmony 
with what is observed in that portion of the Animal Kingdom 
which lies nearest to man — to wit, in the Mammalia. With 
the origin and history of the agitation, with the hopes and 
motives of its supporters, and with the ethical, sentimental, 
economical, and political arguments used on either side we 
have no direCt concern. 
Even a very superficial and popular survey of the class 
Mammalia will satisfy us that the structural differences 
between the males and the females of each species are by 
no means confined to the reproductive organs. The male 
ruminant, whale, bat, elephant, rodent, carnivore, or ape, 
is on the average a larger and heavier animal than his mate. 
The tiger, for instance, exceeds the tigress in size by a pro- 
portion of from 10 to zo per cent. In few, if any, species 
