have her reason and imagination exercised to the highest point; and then she would probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her adult daughters. The whole body of women, however, could not be thus raised, unless, during many generations, the women who excelled in the above robust virtues were married, and produced offspring in larger numbers than other women."
Though the writer appears to see no incompatibility in these two conditions of the intellectual elevation of women, doubtless many of my readers will, particularly such of them as have borne and raised large families.
Herbert Spencer says: "Taking degree of nervous organization as the chief correlative of mental capacity, and remembering the physiological cost of that discipline whereby high mental capacity is reached, we may suspect that nervous organization is very expensive; the inference being that bringing it up to the level it reaches in man, whose digestive system, by no means large, has at the same time to supply materials for general growth and daily waste, involves a great retardation of maturity and sexual genesis." This is a general statement, applicable to the race as a whole, but it follows that, in so far as reproduction is a greater physical tax upon woman than upon man, so far she labors under a natural disability to equal man intellectually, there being a necessary antagonism between self-evolution and race evolution, since energy expanded in one direction is not available in another.
Darwin, in suggesting a method—evidently impracticable, however—by which women may become the intellectual peers of men, fails to provide for the elevation of man to a moral equality with woman, although he admits that "the moral faculties are generally esteemed, and with justice, as of higher value than the intellectual powers." He says also that "the moral nature of man has reached the highest standard as yet attained, partly through the advancement of the reasoning powers and consequently of a just public opinion, but especially through the sympathies being rendered more tender and widely diffused."
In regard to the future progress of the race, Herbert Spencer asks "in what particular ways this further evolution, this higher life, this greater coordination of actions may be expected to show itself;" and concludes[1] that it will not be in the direction of increased muscular strength, but somewhat in an increase of mechanical skill, largely in intelligence, but most largely in morality.
Thus these high authorities assign to woman a place in the production of those influences which have developed and must continue to develop mankind, coextensive in importance with the moral interests of the race.
But, if I have read their teachings aright, neither man nor woman
- ↑ For argument, see "Principles of Biology," vol. ii., p. 495.
