Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/104

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94
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eering woman in modern Britain, and not to an inhabitant of Utopia. In that, or some other republic of the future, not only is woman to be different, but man also; the sexes are to lose their characteristic distinctions not simply by the conversion of woman into man, but by the partial conversion of man into woman. As soon as this sexual compromise has been effected, by means not clearly described, the world will enjoy what enthusiastic heathens used to call the golden age, and what modern enthusiasts of another school now call the millennium. Envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, will disappear, there will be neither wars nor rumors of wars, and an angelic population will know its own place and limit itself to its own number. Mankind will then have developed itself into a species of gigantic trade union, in which women and their accomplices will infallibly be "rattened" if they create too much competition among men.

A state of society in which humanity shall no longer be human, in which not only sex, but intellect and emotion, shall have been remodelled, and the aspect of the outer world changed by a new and metaphysical cosmogony, is, like the doctrine of abstract right, beyond the grasp of the humble Anthropologist. His occupation will be gone as soon as that era shall commence. But, until then, until murder, theft, and villany of every kind, shall have been extinguished, until that struggle for existence, which pervades all Nature and constitutes the only healthy check upon population, shall have been abolished, until every evil passion shall have been rooted out, he may perhaps be permitted to raise his feeble protest against innovations which would not only subvert man's civilized customs but contradict Nature's first lessons. If statesmanship can amend the laws which press hard upon some unfortunate and exceptional women, if ingenuity can devise harmless occupations for mothers whom prosperity or adversity has deprived of their maternal cares, in short, if any grievance can be met with a remedy which is not opposed to the teachings of science, every human being will have cause for gratitude. If men have met with women who prefer political to domestic life, and despise all conceptions but those which are purely mental, let them in the name of liberty cultivate their acquaintances; but let them also, in the name of liberty and in the name of Nature, permit other men and other women to choose for themselves. If they have but little liking for women who are womanly, if they care nothing for the conversation and the tone of thought which are most in accordance with woman's voice, and mouth, and brain, if they are unable to realize that pleasure which either sex may derive from the sense of intellectual difference, let them by all means endeavor to gratify themselves, according to their own constitution, but let them not, Vandal like, attempt to destroy those beauties which they do not appreciate.—Anthropological Review