Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/96

86 weeping for her children, Sappho burning with desire, Iphigenia grieving, not to die, but to die unwedded, Aspasia brilliant with wit and cruel in hate, the girl who, as Horace says, lied gloriously to save her lover, the woman prodigal of her ointment upon the Saviour's head, Cleopatra, too proud to live when she could not captivate her conqueror, are immortal types of what is good and what may be bad in feminine nature. It is not out of such qualities that statesmanship can be developed or science advanced; but science and statesmanship are not the only good things in the world, and the world may enjoy enough of them without calling in the assistance of women. If man's highest prerogative is to think, woman's noblest function is to love; and this assertion is not a metaphysical dogma, nor even a generalization from the history of mankind, but is an inference from the relative position of the sexes throughout the whole of that class of animals to which mankind belongs. The maternal instinct, as it is commonly called, is shared by the females of all the mammalia, from the tigress to the gorilla, and is not, as might be inferred from certain teachings, the sad consequence of iniquitous legislation.

The skull of the female gorilla differs from the skull of the male, just as the skull of the woman differs from the skull of the man. And this difference has not been caused by centuries of oppression; it merely gives evidence of the healthy operation of that natural law by which structure corresponds more or less to function. In some respects the skull of the female gorilla is more human in its form than that of the male; and so, also, in some respects the skull of the woman exhibits, in a more striking manner, the attributes of humanity than that of the man. Nor are these skull differences restricted to a few species; they extend throughout almost the whole of the vertebrate family; they are accompanied by differences of muscular development, which are no less constant; and the whole of these physical differences are correlated with a psychical difference which is indisputable the greater pugnacity of the male as compared with the female. Considered, then, apart from individual peculiarities, the diversities of male and female capacities may be seen to have arisen from the widespread action of natural laws, and are not to be annihilated by a merely human decree. It is not the fault of the male human being that he possesses more, than the female, of that combativeness which is necessary, not only in political life, but even in the ordinary struggles for existence. It is his privilege to protect, and hers to be protected.

It may be suspected that the advocates of a sexual revolution have been unfortunate in their experience of the sex opposed to their own. There is no doubt that, century after century, women have shown a preference for men possessing the qualities which seemed to them distinctively masculine; and that men have wished their wives to possess the virtues which are considered distinctively feminine. In other