It
is argued by vast numbers of men who hate or fear women, and women who
hate or fear men, as if any imaginable wisdom on this question or any
other could possibly be born of such emotions.
Yet all the while we are dealing with a problem in biology, with living
beings, obeying and determined by the laws of life, and with a species
exhibiting those fundamental facts of heredity, variation, bi-parental
reproduction, sexual selection, instinct and the like, which are mere
meaningless names to nine out of ten of the disputants, and yet which
determine them and their disputes and the issues thereof.
If these contentions be correct, there is plainly much need for an
attempt, however imperfect, to set forth the first principles of woman
and womanhood. Evidently the time for discussion of detailed questions
has not yet come, since, to take a single instance, there is not yet to
be heard on either side of the controversy a single voice asserting the
fundamental eugenic necessity that, at whatever cost, the best women
must be selected for motherhood, and the contribution of their
superiority to the future stock.
Let us briefly sum up the substance of the foregoing pages.
First, we have stated the eugenic postulate, failing to grant which we
and our schemes, our votes and our hopes, will assuredly disappear or
decay, as must all living races which are not recruited from their
best, Secondly, we have proceeded to analyze the nature of womanhood,
its capacities and conditions, assuming that we can scarcely discover
whither it should go unless we know what it is.
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