Page:The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.djvu/99

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96
THE CASE AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE

of being handed down equally to her male and female descendants, were accumulated upon her daughters.

Now if that be a law of heredity, it is a law which is as yet unheard of outside the sphere of the woman suffrage societies. Moreover, one is accustomed to hear women, when they are not arguing on the suffrage, allege that clever mothers make clever sons.

It must, as it will have come home to us, be clear to every thoughtful mind that woman's belief that she will, through education and the cumulation of its effects upon her through generations, become a more glorious being, rests, not upon any rational basis, but only on the physiological fact that what is congenial to woman impresses itself upon her as true.

All that sober science in the form of history and physiology would seem to entitle us to hope from the future of woman is that she will develop pari passu with man; and that education will teach her not to retard him overmuch by her lagging in the rear.