The chemist who otherwise bases his
account of a reaction is wrong; the sociologist who denies it Nature
will deny. It was the sure foundation upon which Herbert Spencer erected
the philosophy of evolution; and every page of this book depends upon
the certainty that this law applies to woman and to womanhood as it does
to the rest of the universe. Further, it may be shown that certain less
universal but most important generalizations made by two or three
biologists are indeed special cases of the universal law. There is,
first, the law of Herbert Spencer, which states that for every
individual there is an inevitable issue between the demands of
parenthood and the demands of self; and there is, secondly, the law of
Professors Geddes and Thomson, which asserts that this issue specially
concerns the female as compared with the male sex, the distinguishing
character of femaleness being that in it a higher proportion of the
vital energy is expended upon or conserved for the future and therefore,
necessarily, a smaller proportion for the purposes of the individual. It
is of service to one's thinking, perhaps, to regard Geddes and Thomson's
law as a special case of Spencer's, and Spencer's as a special case of
the law of the conservation of energy. First, then, somewhat of detail
regarding the law of balance between expenditure on the self and
expenditure upon the race; and then to the all-important application of
this to the case of womanhood--for upon this application the whole of
the subsequent argument depends.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79