Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/234

224 from a sort of bondage which the above conditions have made possible. Again, if it should be shown that woman conspicuously resembles the infant in body and mind, very unwarranted inferences might be drawn from this. It is true that the infant of the human species has certain curious points of resemblance to the lower animals, notably the ape, but it is equally true that the infant ape has certain marked resemblances to the human species which the adult ape does not have. By analogy we may infer that the human infant has closer resemblance to the more highly developed being of the future than the human adult has, and if woman is more like the child than man is, then she is more representative of the future being. The matter, in fact, reduces itself probably to this: that woman, like the child, represents the race type, while man represents those variable qualities by which mankind adapts itself to its surroundings. Every woman is, as it were, a composite picture of the race, never much worse nor much better than all. Man is, as it were, Nature's experiment, modified to reflect, if possible, the varying conditions of his environment. If superiority consists in adaptation to present environment, then man is superior; if it consists in the possession of those underlying qualities which are essential to the race—past, present, and future—then woman is superior.

The facts examined in this article, then, lend a certain amount of confirmation to all of the four theories mentioned at the beginning, except so far as woman's inferiority may have been implied in them. Woman's more intimate connection with the life history of the race, her childlike, representative, and typical nature, her embodiment of the everlasting essentials of humanity, her at present arrested or retarded development—all these are indicated by modern anthropological studies. These results are indicated, not proved. They must be verified, supplemented, and no doubt, in some instances, corrected by future studies along these lines.

From these studies there would be no want of lessons for political and social reformers, if they would learn them. From woman's rich endowment with all that is essentially human, the most devoted enthusiast for woman's rights and equality might gain new inspiration. From her retarded development the educational and political reformer might learn that woman's cause may suffer irretrievable damage if she is plunged too suddenly into duties demanding the same strain and nervous expenditure that is safely borne by man, and if it is attempted to correct in a century the evil of ages. From woman's childlike nature the thoughtful "spectator of all time and all existence" might learn yet a deeper and more significant lesson. May it not be that woman, representative of the past and future of humanity, whose