Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/538

520 are likely to arise, there is one conclusion we may draw with certainty. Recurring to the three ends to be subserved in the order of their importance—welfare of species, welfare of offspring, welfare of parents—and seeing that, in the stages now reached by civilized peoples, welfare of species is effectually secured in so far as maintenance of numbers is concerned, the implication is that welfare of offspring must hereafter determine the course of domestic evolution. Societies which from generation to generation produce in due abundance individuals who, relatively to the requirements, are the best physically, morally, and intellectually, must become the predominant societies, and must tend through the quiet process of industrial competition to replace other societies. Consequently, marital relations which favor this result in the greatest degree must spread, while the prevailing sentiments and ideas must become so moulded into harmony with them that other relations will be condemned as immoral.

If, still guiding ourselves by observing the course of past evolution, we ask what changes in the status of women may be anticipated, the answer must be that a further approach toward equality of position between the sexes will take place. With decline of militancy and rise of industrialness—with decrease of compulsory coöperation and increase of voluntary coöperation—with strengthening sense of personal rights and accompanying sympathetic regard for the personal rights of others, must go a diminution of the political and domestic disabilities of women, until there remain such only as differences of constitution entail.

To draw inferences more specific is somewhat hazardous: probabilities and possibilities only can be indicated. While in some directions the emancipation of women has to be carried further, we may suspect that in other directions their claims have already been pushed beyond the normal limits. If from that stage of primitive degradation in which they were habitually stolen, bought and sold, made beasts of burden, inherited as property, and killed at will, We pass to the stage America shows us, in which a lady wanting a seat stares at a gentleman occupying one until he surrenders it, and then takes it without thanking him, we may infer that the rhythm traceable throughout all changes has carried this to an extreme from which there will be a recoil. The like may be said of some other cases: what were originally concessions have come to be claimed as rights, and, in gaining the character of assumed rights, have lost much of the grace they had as concessions. Doubtless, however, there will remain in the social relations of men and women, not only observances of a kind called forth by sympathy of the strong for the weak irrespective of sex, and still more called forth by sympathy of the stronger sex for the weaker sex, but also observances which originate in the wish, not consciously formulated but felt, to compensate women for certain