The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-11-13
BIOLOGISTS AND
 WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE Scientific Aspect of Struggle
 for Rights
IS TT CALLED PROGRESS?
The Power of Energizing Evolutionary Progress of Race Has Been Dis- nstrousIy Diverted Into the
 Industrial Market

| Since all sociological developments-and | races-must stand or fall according as they do or do not comply with biological | law. 1t may be interesting to consider the
 much-vexed woman question from the
 viewpoint of biology writes Dr. Arabella
 Kenealy, physician and novelist of note,
 in a recent letter to the London Times | The woman's movement may be stated
 briefly as having for its aim the estab-
 lishment of the equality and identity of
 the sexes and as having succeeded, in
 so far as it has succeeded, in eliminat-
 ing sex differences in physique, in mind,
 and in avocation.
 There is not the slightest reason, 1t Is
 urged, why women trained as men are
 trained should not do everything that men | do, become stockholders, politicians, sol
 diers and mayors-in short, enter every profession and industry hitherto regarded
 as the role -eminently of a sex which | by right of might has appropriated the
 lions share of worldly opportunities. The
 result has been an ever increasing ap- l
 cation of the sexes.
 Let us see now what biology and na-
 ture say upon the subject The general opinion is that since savage man and | woman differ less than one another than
 do civilized man and woman the greater differences of these latter are the result | of spurious artificial conditions and train | ing. It Is not recognized that these dif- | ferences are, on the contrary. the ex- | pression of evolutionary development- | the male in the realization of his type be- l coming ever more male, the female more | female. This being so, 1t is clear that | any social readjustment which approxi- mates the sexes In type Is contrary to
 normal development and is in consequence
 a retrogressive and degenerative move ment.
 To understand the question fully we
 must first understand the methods en- ployed by nature in the differentiation of ] the sexes. And immediately we see that | in developing a girl Into a woman and
 a boy into 0 man. not only does she vastly increase the differences which had | hitherto existed between these two imma- | ture beings, but we see further that she
 achieves these differences by diametrical- | ly opposite processes.
 For whereas in developing from girl
 
 evolves into more delicate, beautiful,
 and more highly organized creature,
 in passing from boy to man the boy | on the contrary, lapses from a more 1 highly and delicately organized to
 rougher, cruder, less graceful, less har-
 monious and less beautiful order. His | fute-l like voice becomes deep and | harsh, his fine pink and white, softly | grained skin becomes coarse and hir- sute, developing beard and moustache | (clearly a reversion to a lower and animal order of integument), his limbs | grow strong and sinewy, his move ! ments become abrupt and strenuous. In short, while the girl, becoming a more lovely, refined, melodlous and complex creature. climbs 0 rung higher in the ladder of evolutionary organiza ton, the boy descends a rung lower. She evolves
 he degenerates. And yet 1t Is no true degeneracy, but a phase necessary to, and admirably fitting for, the mans role In life, which is in future to be his. and for which the softer, more del- icate, puerile body would disqualify him, delver, soldier, pioneer, scientist, and other arduous worker IS he is to be.
 For in dropping him to a lower, na- ture drops him to a more active and efficient gear of development, liberat- ing in him new vigors and valors, am bitions and talents, the resources to energize which must otherwise have remained locked up, or invested, in his higher condition of body. The girl, on the other hand. becomes more com plex delicate, and lovely creature, charged with new inherent powers, emotions and values, as a result of a process of locking up, or investing in | her organization dnvolution, l. e.) of a | of hpr D. fties, physical and intellectual, are cur | tailed in achievement and output in l order that the power thus conserved may be invested in the higher evolu- | tionary condition of her mind and body. | Some of the store of muscular energy she possessed as hoyden girl for crude | physical activities became so subtly | knit up, or invested, in her limbs and
 frame as to curtail their activities, but to reappear as curves, as delicate sym | metries and grace of movement and as
 highly specialized functions. So with | her mind. Normally at this period her intellectual energies are diminished, a
 portion of her brain forces being so invested Cor involuted), as to assume
 the subtler forms of emotion. intuition, and higher moral aspiration.
 To sum up, while sex development In
 the male by lowering his grade of or | ganization liberates new forces physical | and mental, in him, sex development in l the female curtails her powers, physical and mental In order that her organiza- | tion may by means of the power so con-
 veyed be lifted to a higher grade of or | ganization. Normal woman is, there | fore inferior in strength and in talent | to man, but the strength and talent she
 possesses are of superior order to his. | As Professor Lester Ward says in his "Pure Sociology ''the idea that the
 female Is naturally and really the supe-
 rior sex seems incredible. and only the
 most liberal and emancipated minds, pos
 sessed of a large store of biological in- l formation, are capable of realizing it' | Now the reason for all this Is plain | Woman is the mother of the race, and evolution is achieved by the process of | every generation being an infinitesimal advance upon that which preceded it.. | Accordingly, in developing the girl into
 woman and a potential mother, nature
 banks, or invests in her personality some
 of her powers to serve for racial in-
 heritance (ror without involution there
 can be no evolution, without conserva- | tion of racial force there can be no fur
 ther racial progress)
 This being so, the present tidal wave
 of disease and degeneracy overtaking us l is easily explained. For in the place of | doing it's utmost to secure, by relaxing l educational strain upon growing girls, | that they should be enabled to develop | their womanhood to the full. and by vigil lantly restraining women from entering
 de-sexing industries and professions that | they should be enabled to preserve their womanhood when once attained, the | xyo,oap's movement has. on the contrary