influence upon both sexes is alike a doctrine of physiology, and an
induction from experience
That undue and disproportionate brain activity exerts a sterilizing
influence upon both sexes is alike a doctrine of physiology, and an
induction from experience. And both physiology and experience also
teach that this influence is more potent upon the female than upon the
male. The explanation of the latter fact--of the greater aptitude of
the female organization to become thus modified by excessive brain
activity--is probably to be found in the larger size, more complicated
relations, and more important functions, of the female reproductive
apparatus. This delicate and complex mechanism is liable to be aborted
or deranged by the withdrawal of force that is needed for its
construction and maintenance. It is, perhaps, idle to speculate upon
the prospective evil that would accrue to the human race, should such
an organic modification, introduced by abnormal education, be pushed
to its ultimate limit. But inasmuch as the subject is not only
germain to our inquiry, but has attracted the attention of a recent
writer, whose bold and philosophic speculations, clothed in forcible
language, have startled the best thought of the age, it may be well to
quote him briefly on this point. Referring to the fact, that, in our
modern civilization, the cultivated classes have smaller families than
the uncultivated ones, he says, 'If the superior sections and
specimens of humanity are to lose, relatively, their procreative power
in virtue of, and in proportion to, that superiority, how is culture
or progress to be propagated so as to benefit the species as a whole,
and how are those gradually amended organizations from which we hope
so much to be secured? If, indeed, it were ignorance, stupidity, and
destitution, instead of mental and moral development, that were the
_sterilizing_ influences, then the improvement of the race would go on
swimmingly, and in an ever-accelerating ratio. But since the
conditions are exactly reversed, how should not an exactly opposite
direction be pursued? How should the race _not_ deteriorate, when
those who morally and physically are fitted to perpetuate it are
(relatively), by a law of physiology, those least likely to do
so?'[27] The answer to Mr. Greg"s inquiry is obvious. If the culture
of the race moves on into the future in the same rut and by the same
methods that limit and direct it now; if the education of the sexes
remains identical, instead of being appropriate and special; and
especially if the intense and passionate stimulus of the identical
co-education of the sexes is added to their identical education,--then
the sterilizing influence of such a training, acting with tenfold more
force upon the female than upon the male, will go on, and the race
will be propagated from its inferior classes.[28] The stream of life
that is to flow into the future will be Celtic rather than American:
it will come from the collieries, and not from the peerage.
Fortunately, the reverse of this picture is equally possible. The race
holds its destinies in its own hands. The highest wisdom will secure
the survival and propagation of the fittest. Physiology teaches that
this result, the attainment of which our hopes prophecy, is to be
secured, not by an identical education, or an identical co-education
of the sexes, but by _a special and appropriate education, that shall
produce a just and harmonious development of every part_.
