to civilization" has not advanced general human welfare. These humanitarian and partly socialistic ideas are developed in a series of recurrent essays between 1882 and 1903, including "The Nationalization of Land," and "Studies Scientific and Social."
He returned to this subject in what we believe to be his last published essay, namely his "Social Environment and Moral Progress" of 1913, wherein he considers the so-called "feministic" movement and future of woman:
While she will be conceded full political and social rights on an equality with men, she will be placed in a position of responsibility and power which will render her his superior, since the future moral progress of the race will so largely depend upon her free choice in marriage. As time goes on, and she acquires more and more economic independence, that alone will give her an effective choice which she has never had before. But this choice will be further strengthened by the fact that, with ever-increasing approach to equality of opportunity for every child born in our country, that terrible excess of male deaths, in boyhood and early manhood especially due to, various preventable causes, will disappear, and change the present majority of women to a majority of men. This will lead to a greater rivalry for wives, and will give to women the power of rejecting all the lower types of character among their suitors.
It will be their special duty so to mould public opinion, through home training and social influence, as to render the women of the future the regenerators of the entire human race.
In closing this review of a great life, we can not refrain, from reflecting on the pendulum of scientific opinion. The discovery of a great truth such as the law of Selection is always followed by an over-valuation, from which there is certain to be a reaction. We are in the midst of such a reaction at the present time, in which the Darwin-Wallace theory of natural selection is less appreciated than it will be in the future when there comes a fresh readjustment of scientific values.
It is well to remember that we may not estimate either the man of science or his conclusions as of our own period, but must project ourselves in imagination into the beginnings of his thought and into the travails of his mind, considering how much larger he was than the men about him, how far he was an innovator, breaking away from the traditions of his times, how far his direct observations apart from theory are true and permanent, and how far his theories have contributed to the great stream of biological thought.
Our perspective has covered a long, honorable span of sixty-five years into the beginnings of the thinking life of a natural philosopher whose last volume, "The World of Life," of the year 1911, gives as clear a portrayal of his final opinions as that which his first essay of 1858 portrays of his early opinions.
