Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/158

146 of the merely animal differences between the sexes, as compared with their intellectual and moral influence, it is none the less true that the origin of the latter is to be found in the former; in the same manner—to use a humble illustration—that the origin of the self-denying, disinterested devotion of a dog to his master is to be found in that self-negation which is necessary in order that a herd of wolves may act in concert under a leader, for the general good.

In order to trace the origin and significance of the differences which attain to such complexity and importance in the human race, we must carry our retrospect back far beyond the beginning of civilization, and trace the growth and meaning of sex in the lower forms of life. In so doing I shall ask attention to several propositions which may not at first appear to have any bearing upon our subject, or any very close relation to each other. I shall then try to show what this relation is, and point out its bearing upon the education of women.

Every organism which is born from an egg or seed is a resultant of the two systems of laws or conditions, which may be spoken of abstractly as the law of heredity, and the law of variation, or, to use the old teleological terms, each organism is a mean between the principle of adherence to type and the principle of adaptation to conditions.

That like produces like is universally but never absolutely true. The offspring resembles its parents in all fundamental characteristics. The human child, for instance, resembles its parents in the possession of all the characteristics which distinguish living things from not living, as well as those which distinguish animals from plants. The chemical, physical, and physiological changes which take place in its body and the histological structure of its tissues are like those of its parents, and its various organs are the same in form and function. All the characteristics which unite it with the other vertebrates, as a member of the sub-kingdom Vertebrata, are like those of its parents, and also those which place it in the class Mammalia, and in its proper order, family, genus, and species. It also shares with its parents the features or race characteristics of the particular tribe or race to which they belong. If they are Chinese, Indians, or negroes, the child belongs to the same race, and manifests all the slight, superficial peculiarities of form, constitution, and character by which that race is characterized. Even the individual peculiarities of the parents, intellectual and moral as well as physical, are now known to be hereditary. Since this holds true of any other animal or plant, we must recognize the universality of the law of heredity, but we must not overlook the equally well-established fact that each organism is the resultant of this law and another, the law of variation. The child is like its parents, but not exactly like them. It is not even a compound of characteristics found in one or the other of them, but has individual peculiarities of its own; slight variations which may not have existed in either parent, or in any more remote ancestor. The slight