this development, yet in its infancy, and pursued with much crudeness and misconception of the end, is not enough.  Woman would not only be equal with man, but would be like him; that is, perform in society the functions he now performs.  Here, again, the notion of equality is pushed towards uniformity.  The reformers admit structural differences in the sexes, though these, they say, are greatly exaggerated by subjection; but the functional differences are mainly to be eliminated.  Women ought to mingle in all the occupations of men, as if the physical differences did not exist.  The movement goes to obliterate, as far as possible, the distinction between sexes.  Nature is, no doubt, amused at this attempt.  A recent writer—­["Biology and Woman’s Rights,” Quarterly Journal of Science, November, 1878.]—­, says:  “The ’femme libre’ [free woman] of the new social order may, indeed, escape the charge of neglecting her family and her household by contending that it is not her vocation to become a wife and a mother!  Why, then, we ask, is she constituted a woman at all?  Merely that she may become a sort of second-rate man?”

The truth is that this movement, based always upon a misconception of equality, so far as it would change the duties of the sexes, is a retrograde.—­["It has been frequently observed that among declining nations the social differences between the two sexes are first obliterated, and afterwards even the intellectual differences.  The more masculine the women become, the more effeminate become the men.  It is no good symptom when there are almost as many female writers and female rulers as there are male.  Such was the case, for instance, in the Hellenistic kingdoms, and in the age of the Caesars.  What today is called by many the emancipation of woman would ultimately end in the dissolution of the family, and, if carried out, render poor service to the majority of women.  If man and woman were placed entirely on the same level, and if in the competition between the two sexes nothing but an actual superiority should decide, it is to be feared that woman would soon be relegated to a condition as hard as that in which she is found among all barbarous nations.  It is precisely family life and higher civilization that have emancipated woman.  Those theorizers who, led astray by the dark side of higher civilization, preach a community of goods, generally contemplate in their simultaneous recommendation of the emancipation of woman a more or less developed form of a community of wives.  The grounds of the two institutions are very similar.” (Roscher’s Political Economy, p. 250.) Note also that difference in costumes of the sexes is least apparent among lowly civilized peoples.]—­One of the most striking features in our progress from barbarism to civilization is the proper adjustment of the work for men and women.  One test of a civilization is the difference of this work.  This is a question not merely of division of labor, but of differentiation with regard to sex.  It not only takes into account structural differences and physiological disadvantages, but it recognizes the finer and higher use of woman in society.