architect of his fortune, has also been the destroyer; woman ever has been the steadying, abiding influence of the race.1

In the Far East the Chinese Buddhists have named their supreme goddess, "The Manifested Voice." Now mark how near the truth is this vague intuition of the heathen mind. What faculty above all differentiates the human species from all others? The gift of speech, the supreme power of making intelligible wants, desires, aspirations. And I think it can be proved that in womanhood, perfected by suffering, self-sacrifice, devotion, patience, love, the world beholds its greatest teacher, the manifestation and outward visible sign of the Creator's last development in the ascent of man.

For Nature emphatically contradicts the fallacy that woman is the inferior being. Throughout the whole scheme of living organisms we find the female organs have had bestowed upon them the largest amount of mechanism, of contrivance, of adaptability, of efficiency. They are moreover the most carefully protected,2 take the longest in the embryo form to develop, and in maturity are endowed with a superabundance of vitality.

Bearing upon this view, we will first glance briefly, and, of necessity, superficially, at woman's physical organism. Now, as we are aware, the word "evolution means the evolving of something higher from something lower, a gradual ascent. If the thing evolved were of a lower type, we have devolution, retrogradation, atavism, decay; and in the whole scheme of Nature we find no single instance of a continued retrograde movement; the eternal law governing the universe is Progress, the watchword "Onward! Therefore it will not surprise the student to find that woman, allegorically represented as the last living creature that emerged from the Creator's hands, should be proved, by scientific research, to exhibit physically in her bodily frame a much higher organism than man.

I will here quote Professor Drummond on this most important subject:

"Life is exalted in proportion to its organic and functional complexity. Woman's organism is more complex, and her totality of function larger, than those of any other thing inhabiting our earth. Therefore her position in the scale of

1 See Note I.

2 It is well to accentuate the deeply significant fact, that, from the plant life upward, the female reproductive organs are the most jealously guarded of Nature's strongholds.

life is the most exalted, the sovereign one." Man's erect position is his greatest physical triumph over the rest of the animal creation; in this evolution it is proved woman led the way, and has actually developed a higher form of bodily structure than has man. "The pelvis of woman is a new type which has appeared on the earth. It is striking: the narrow high pelvis of the man is more ape-like than that of the woman. If the assertion is correct, that the upright gait 1 (on two feet) is the mark of distinction, and the noblest one for man, then woman certainly possesses the advantage of a pelvis particularly suitable for upright walking.2 More favourable conditions are necessary for the production of a female animal than a male, because the female embryo exhibits a greater fulness of life. Statistics have shown that under unfavourable conditions more men than women are born, also male animals die more easily than females."—Deutsche Revue, May 1893. "Statistics seem to show, that after an epidemic or a war, male-births are in a greater majority than is usually the case. In towns and in prosperous families, there seem to be more females, while males are more numerous in the country and amongst the poor. . . . Nutrition is one of the most important factors in determining sex."-"The Evolution of Sex," Geddes and Thompson. In corroboration of this statement, Professor Schenk, of the Vienna University, and President of the Embryological Institute, has just published his

1 In standing and walking the whole weight of a man's body is thrown on the legs, as in animals; the chief weight of a woman's body is thrown on the lower part of the spine. Hence the grave disorders that arise from immature girls and young women standing for any length of time, and causing undue pressure on the internal organs.

2 A little observation of the various traits characteristic of sex brings into prominence the difference of their structure. Thus a man, when tired with long walking, instinctively bends forward and rests both hands on his stick, unconsciously reverting to the support given by the fore-legs of the quadruped; the woman's impulse, on the contrary, is to throw herself on the ground, and to straighten the spine, instead of to curve it. Again, men prefer to sit in high chairs, not that their legs are longer than women's, for often they are shorter, but that the pressure upon the knee joints induced by standing may be relaxed. A woman, on the contrary, chooses a low chair, not because her length of limb is less than man's, for often it is longer, but that she may take the weight off the lower portion of the spine by placing herself in a recumbent position. "The adaptation of the pelvis to the erect position becomes a very delicate adjustment of physical forces, and as this adjustment must be carried to its highest point in women, the pelvis of women is in many respects more highly developed than that of men, which retains more animal-like characters." -"Man and Woman," Havelock Ellis.

researches in this direction, proving that the determination
of sex is simply a matter of diet, scarcity of food resulting
in the production of males, abundance of food tending to
produce females. We thus see how often men's anxious
solicitude (based on unjust sex-preference) to keep the line
of entail on the male side, has defeated its own ends, and
brought a just retribution upon unnatural distinctions. How
often has the owner of large estates looked with envious eyes
on the stalwart sons of his labourers, as he thought of the
delicate girl, who alone represented his name? Probably if
her mother had been half-starved and over-worked, he would
have been the happy father of a son. Such is the irony of
Science, and the unrelenting adjustment with which Nature
overrules the petty devices of mankind. The number of
heiresses and co-heiresses among
the upper wealthy aristocratic
and reigning classes, has always been a matter of surprise to
statisticians. As a rule, the last scion of a noble house is
generally a woman, whose husband, to perpetuate the family
name, exchanges his own for his wife's.

Again, as tending to prove a stage of higher organic develop-
ment, fewer female monstrosities are born than male; and
cases of atavism among women are comparatively rare. The
hare-lip, cleft-palate, club-foot, and supernumerary digits with
other congenital malformations seldom occur among girls. The
additional (eighth) rib, which is normal among the lower apes,
is found twice as often in men as it is in women.
born children are more frequently boys than girls.

Also still

Women show besides a higher degree of evolution than men in the relatively smaller weight of their jaws, as is proved by the investigations of Morselli. Boys, from dental observation, are found to lose their teeth sooner than girls, and to suffer more from caries.

Physically woman has greater powers of endurance and resistance than man; her organs are more complex, varied, assimilative, and adaptable; and when we study the supreme functions of the brain, we find that, when fully developed by education, the female brain is, in proportion, equal in size and weight to man's, and in some cases is above that of the average man. As this is a much disputed point, I will here give some of the latest opinions on the subject.

According to Sir James Crichton-Browne-"The occipital

1 See Note 2.

"The whole nature of male organs or elements is the physiological reverse of abundant Intrition." The volution of Sex. Geddes and Thomson.

"A very favourable condition in both obmum and sperin Larivation of a semale" densen

lobes, which preside chiefly over the physical functions of the
organism, are declared to be more voluminous in the female
than in the male. . . . The white matter of the brain, which
has no thought function, is almost identical in weight in the
two sexes; the specific gravity of the grey, or thought matter, is
decidedly higher in the male than in the female. . . . It appears
to be unquestionable that in purely intellectual endowment
the man is superior to the woman. On the other hand, in the
equally noble emotional capacity the woman is superior to the
man."-Hospital, May 1892.

Professor Lüdwig Büchner thus analyses the difference be-
tween women's brains and men's: "Not only the positive size
of the brain, but also its relative size, i.e., its size in relation
to the body, must be considered. Were this not the case,
then man, for example, would stand below the elephant and
the whale, as the brains of these animals far exceed his in
positive size, whilst, as regards relative size of brain, they
stand so far below him, that while the brain of the elephant
amounts to the five hundredth, and that of the whale to the
three thousandth, part of the bodily weight of these animals
respectively, the brain of man varies from one thirty-fifth to
one thirty-seventh of his entire weight. The anatomical ex-
planation of this is very simple, and lies in the fact that the
brain is not only the organ of the intellectual or mental
functions, but also the centre of the whole nervous system,
and consequently, in its bulk, it must stand in a fixed pro-
portion to the magnitude of the nerve cords that converge into
it from all parts of the body. . . . In general, and of course
with many exceptions, the whole structure of woman is smaller
and prettier than that of man, and in particular her delicate
nervous system is in keeping with her superior muscular
development, as would be seen could averages of the size of
these organs in both sexes be obtained. Hence it follows that
the brain of woman, considered as a nerve centre, will also be
less in bulk than that of man. As a matter of fact, when the
relative and not the positive weight of the female brain is
considered we find (according to several investigations) that
it is not less, but even slightly greater, than that of man.
In other words, woman, taking into consideration her
smaller bodily size, possesses not only not less, but pro-
bably more brain than man. . . Woman possesses more
crown and middle brain, the man more forehead and thinking
brain,"

In the shape of the breast, women have led the way to the higher evolution: primitive wonen being more brachycephalie than the men. Some obserness" found that brachycephaly tends to be associated with large

Selvis he wheel" "llan And Wolnan Havelock Ellis

"There scarcely seems ground to infer, from the existence of a smaller brain in woman than in man, that she is necessarily inferior in proportional mental powers, because it cannot be forgotten that woman has, on the average, a much smaller organism than man; and it has not yet been shown that the female brain is smaller proportionally than the male." -Lancet, 1887.

"When the size of a woman's brain is considered in comparison with the weight of her body, it is evident that a woman has more brain per pound than a man; and if that be a proper standard of comparison, then the woman is the superior."-Phrenological Journal (U.S.A.), Jan. 1891.

"The brains of male and female infants do not differ at birth ... it is impossible for even brain anatomists to specify with certitude a male from a female brain. Numerous female brains exceed numerous male brains in absolute weight, in complexity of convolutions, and in what brain anatomists would call the nobler proportions." - Dr. Spitzka, brain anatomist.

The precosity of the female brain in childhood is extremely marked; between the ages of four and seven girls possess larger brains than boys; but to balance this discrepancy a man's brain does not reach its maximum size till thirty years of age, while the woman's brain seldom grows after the age of twenty; again, in old age, it is noticeable that men suffer greater brainloss than women. Teachers aver that the girls in mixed schools are invariably cleverer than the boys. They as a rule carry off the principal prizes. Among savage peoples the superior intelligence and ready wit of the women are notable features in every traveller's records. We see the same precosity among the lower classes of civilised nations, where the women are invariably found to be the readiest speakers, and to conduct all business arrangements with the greatest intelligence and common sense.

Idiocy is everywhere more frequent in males than in females. Men are also more liable to insanity than women—who, as a rule, are more likely to recover from the attack. Superlative genius may be almost exclusively confined to the masculine intellect, but this supreme gift of the gods has its counterbalance; "we must regard," says Havelock Ellis, "genius as an organic congenital abnormality (although the evidence in proof of this cannot be entered into here), and in nearly every department, it is undeniably of more frequent occurrence