Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/215

Rh seem, the organs for the nutrition of the young are exclusively confined to the female. Are we to suppose that these sexual differences are devoid of meaning, merely accidental, or artificial in their origin?

We must next inquire to what functional distinctions these structural differences correspond, and what is their signification? It is generally admitted that among animals of one and the same species the larger will be found to be the stronger, and generally speaking physically the superior. Exceptions doubtless occur, but, if we were to take one hundred men in normal health whose "fighting-weight" ranged from eleven to twelve stone each, and compare them with another hundred averaging a stone less, we should find the former set able to lift greater weights, strike harder blows, and in every way excel the second lot in athletic performances.

Again, it is found that the size of the chest, and consequent volume of the lungs, affords a very good standard by which the general vigor, the vital energy, of either man or beast, may be gauged. The more a man, free from corpulence, measures round the chest, the better are his stamina, and the greater his power to support fatigues and hardships. Of this fact the military and the sporting world are perfectly aware, and never fail to take it into account in estimating the eligibility of a recruit or the probable performances of an athlete.

Having seen, then, that male animals are not merely actually larger than their respective females, but surpass them proportionally in the size of the thorax, we naturally expect the former to be decidedly the stronger, gifted with a more intense and exuberant vitality. Nor are our expectations disappointed. The bodily strength of a cow is trifling indeed compared with that of a bull of the same breed. In races a filly is very frequently—merely as such—allowed to carry less weight than a horse. A lady gorilla would be in evil case indeed if her husband did not treat her with a gentleness and kindness which many of our own species would do well to imitate. And as to mankind—is not, perhaps, the most legitimate source of the very movement we are criticising an attempt to secure women against the superior strength of men? Yet at a meeting at Manchester a male agitator actually sought to deny the superior physical power of man, because it would be easy to find a fish-wife stronger than a cotton-weaver. The argument, being intensely illogical, was frantically applauded.

Persons are not, however, wanting who—while admitting the general inferiority of women to men in physical strength—contend that this weakness is the result of continued and systematic repression. Woman, they say, has been forcibly debarred from invigorating pursuits, and comparative feebleness is the natural result. We would ask such advocates whether this systematic repression has been also carried out among the lower mammals, and, if not, what is the origin of the weakness of the female sex in their case, which is at least as well marked as among mankind? Has the "subjugation" of woman had