1878.] Considered from a Biological Point of View . 483 
assigned to the men most competent for their performance. 
In a savage tribe the strongest and bravest naturally leads 
in war; the man keenest of eye and ear becomes the scout, 
either as regards hostile tribes or beasts of the chase. The 
wisest and most eloquent — attributes which if necessarily 
connected in primitive times are now so no longer— took the 
foremost place in council. The man of greatest manual 
dexterity would be chief bow-maker to the tribe. The 
process in operation was, in faCt, Natural Selection. The 
man who undertook a task for which he was unfitted, or less 
fitted than others, was gradually eliminated, as far as that 
particular task was concerned. In proportion as new wants 
sprung up and new means of gratifying them were devised, 
social functions were multiplied, and the division of labour 
became more minute. Yet even in the very rudest state, as 
far at least as anthropologists have been able to trace, there 
never was a time when the duties of all persons were abso- 
lutely identical. To men and to women different duties 
were assigned on the same principle of Natural Selection. 
Changes have, indeed, taken place in the distribution of the 
tasks respectively allotted to the two sexes. But these 
changes, it is important to note, till the “ woman’s-rights’ 
movement sprung up, have all been in one direction — the 
direction of increasing differentiation. The distinction be- 
tween men’s work and women’s work has been increased, 
not diminished. The barbarian and the semi-civilised 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 labour in mines. In our higher civilisation such tasks are 
limited to man, and, as we have already remarked, to ab- 
normal “ mannish ” women. The movement we are consi- 
dering, in so far as it aims at breaking down the natural 
barriers between the duties of the two sexes, is palpably 
retrograde. If advancement towards 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 labour is to be abandoned, how can others be 
maintained ? 
It has been already pointed out in the “ Quarterly Journal 
of Science ” 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 couples. A tribe of 
baboons consists of a number of males, each one having his 
wives and offspring. Now the “ woman’s-rights’ movement” 
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