VI.] MR. KARL PEARSON'S CONCLUSIONS.

163

The improve

monopoly of the stronger sex." ments which he anticipates from these changes in our customs and institutions are the advantage of having the most universal and pervading of all human relations regulated by justice, instead of injustice the doubling the mass of mental faculties available for the higher service of humanity; the more beneficial influence of women upon the general mass of human belief and sentiment, and in their own families: and "an unspeakable gain in private happiness to the liberated half of the species; the difference between a life of subjection to the will of others and a life of freedom."

We come now to the third English advocate of Woman's Rights, who is generally regarded as authoritative, Mr. Karl Pearson. It appears to me that this able writer is justly so regarded. In some respects he is much better qualified for his task than was Miss Wollstonecraft or Mr. Mill. He discerns what was by no means clear to either of them*-that "the supporters of women's independence must face sex problems with sexualogical and historical knowledge, and solve them, before they appeal to the market-place with all the rhetorical flourish of "justice" and of "right." He discerns, too, that the central point of the

Roscher truly remarks of Mr. Mill, "ein historisches Kopf war er nicht."

whole discussion is marriage. I cannot here follow him in detail through the three very suggestive essays in his Ethic of Free Thought, which he devotes to the discussion of this subject. It must suffice if I indicate the conclusions to which he is led, and which, apparently, are adopted, with more or less enthusiasm, by many of his fair friends. They are these: that "the attainment of an independent social and political position by women" is rapidly approaching; that this emancipation will place her in a "position of political and social influence equal to man's"; that it "will ultimately involve a revolution in all our social institutions" that, in particular, "our present marriage customs and our present marriage laws are destined to suffer great changes"; that "a field of genuine labour, freely open to men and women," is "only possible under two conditions economic independence of the individual, and a limitation of population"; which conditions "go to the very root of our present sex relationship"; that "not improbably, when woman is truly educated and equally developed with man, she will hold that the highest relation of man and woman is akin to that of Lewes and George Eliot," "not a union for the birth of children, but the closest form of friendship between man and woman"; that "all assumption of a distinction between woman and man, which reaches beyond the physical fact of childbearing, is absolutely unwarranted"; that "in the society of

vi.]

THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES.

165

the future, a birth will have [that is, will require] social sanction," and that "in times of over-popula-[ tion it might even be needful to punish positively, as well as negatively, both father and mother," guilty of causing a birth beyond the sanctioned) number; but that "for the non-child-bearing woman, the sex relationship, both as to form and substance, ought to be a pure question of taste, a simple matter of agreement between the man and her, in which neither society nor the State would have any need or right to interfere"; "a free sexual union"; "a relation solely of mutual sympathy and affection, its form and duration varying according to the feelings and wants of the individuals."

Miss Wollstonecraft very truly remarks that "in the present state of society, it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths." It will have been observed that the first principle upon which she, as well as Mr. Mill and Mr. Karl Pearson found themselves, is the equality of woman with man. In the name of this principle they contend that her rights are identical with man's. And, therefore, they claim for her unrestricted admission to all employments and occupations of public and private life, emancipation from the servitude of marriage, and co-education with the male sex. We will consider these specific

claims, in detail, a little later on.

First, let us glance at the principle on which they rest.

Now, the principle that all members of the human race, without distinction of age, sex, or condition, are equal, is, in a sense, undoubtedly true. They are all equal as persons. It is observed by Bentham: "Animals are degraded into the class of things. Their interests are neglected by jurists. Slaves have been emancipated, but the animal creation are slaves still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which are withholden from them by the hand of tyranny." Well, animals are not mere things. They are not, indeed, fully persons. But there is about them an element of personality, giving them, at all events, quasi-rights, which as the ethical sense of mankind is developed and purified, will doubtless receive more abundant recognition. Woman, at the dawn of human history, was almost as much degraded as animals. are now. In the earliest form of marriage known to us, her personality was not recognized; her volition counted for nothing. Either she was forcibly abducted by her husband from another tribe, or she was at the absolute disposal of her nearest male relative, who gave her to whom he chose. Sir Henry Maine has pointed out, with much wealth of learning, in his well-known work, Ancient Law, that the whole progress of Western Society has been a movement from status to con

VI.] THE INEQUALITIES OF THE SEXES. 167 tract. That is the jurisprudential view. Looking at the matter from the philosophical standpoint, we may say that the progress consists in the recognition and explication of personality. The Christian religion, as I have had occasion to insist, in a previous chapter,* has doubtless been a chief factor in that progress, by its revelation of human nature to itself. To women, especially, it has been the greatest benefactor, by its proclamation that "in Jesus Christ there is neither male nor female." It has done more than any other civilizing agency to vindicate her personality.

Woman, then, is a person. And all persons, qua persons, are equal; but with this fundamental equality co-exist vast inequalities arising from the degrees of personality and the conditions in which it exists; conditions physical and psychical ; conditions of history and of environment. Equality is not identity, and woman's personality is diverse from man's. The difference between her undulating outlines and his angular build at once strikes. the eye. The difference between the virile bass and the feminine treble at once strikes the ear. On an average the male brain weighs five ounces more than the female. Man, whose respiration is abdominal or diaphragmatic, inhales a far greater quantity of oxygen than woman, who breathes by merely expanding her chest; and on the amount of oxygen taken into the system, both muscular force *See pp. 49, 50.