To Mr. E. L. Godkin.

Cambridge, June 3, 1874.

I do not think that, in the talks of which you write, I mistook or misstated the argument in your article on woman’s submission, in the way you suppose. The reference is to an article in the “Nation,” of May 14, 1874 (No. 463), on “Woman Suffrage in Michigan.” Some conversation with Wright relating to this article had been incorrectly reported to Mr. Godkin; who then wrote to him, in order to get at his views upon the points in question, and received this reply. ⁷⁵ It was clear to me that you did not agree with Mill’s theory (and without important qualifications I do not); and it was clear that the “fallacy” to which you wished to call attention was a fallacy of reasoning from his own assumptions, — namely, the assumptions that submissiveness in one sex and imperiousness in the other had become through ages of subjection heritable dispositions, which, nevertheless, legislation and opinion might alter or gradually eliminate. These assumptions seemed to you (and they seem to me) to involve the farther assumption, that such acquired qualities are sexually limited in their transmission; the one going down to the males alone and the other to the females alone, — or for the most part, — and passing, half the time, latently through the opposite sex, as from the maternal grandfather to a grandson, or from the paternal grandmother to a grand-daughter.

Now you think that such a mode of transmission is limited to natural (non-acquired) qualities alone; that is, to the natural or (relatively speaking) fixed distinctions of sex. You think that the contrary opinion would be, if true, “one of the most extraordinary facts in anthropology,” and would need more evidence to substantiate it than appears in the case. “The non-transmission of paternal imperiousness to daughters would be a most extraordinary fact,” you think, if we suppose this quality to be an acquired one; yet Mill has virtually assumed the fact without explanation. This is what I understood you to mean as the “fallacy” of the argument; and it might readily be admitted to be an omission of an important part in the exposition of the argument, — though not a very serious one in view of existing and published physiological evidence, or even of the not uncommon common-sense of unlearned but observant folks, on the subject of heredity. But I could not see the fallacy of this assumption, especially as it is true that “new characters often appear in one sex [both in men and animals], and are afterwards transmitted to the same sex, either exclusively or in a much greater degree, than to the other.” (Darwin on Animals and Plants under Domestication, ch. xiv. Vol. II. p. 92, Am. ed.)

Under domestication (and no race has been longer or more completely under domestication than the human, especially the civilized branches), the secondary sexual characters are often found to be very variable, and “to differ greatly from the state in which they exist in the parent species.” Now, it makes no difference in the argument whether we suppose the imperiousness of male men and the submissiveness of the female to be derived from a very remote animal race (as is most probable to the evolutionist); or suppose, with Mill, that these qualities were acquired, or at any rate increased, through the social conditions of barbarism. The fact is that the most fixed and the most uniformly transmitted physical

qualities are not more governed by sexual limitation in inheritance than are the variations, whether normal or abnormal, which physiologists have studied.

. . . From the various facts recorded by Dr. Lucas, Mr. W. Sedgwick, and others, Mr. Darwin concludes that “there can be no doubt that peculiarities first appearing in either sex, though not in any way necessarily or invariably connected with that sex, strongly tend to be inherited by the offspring of the same sex, but are often transmitted in a latent state through the opposite sex.” Analogous evidence from domestic animals is also given,—such as the unusual difference in size in the two sexes of the Scotch deer-hound, and the peculiar color of a variety of cats, called the tortoise-shell, being “very rarely seen in a male cat, the males of this variety being of a rusty tint.”

But such evidence would perhaps have little force with those who are interested mainly in its bearing on the woman question. The purely physical character of these examples of inheritance, as limited by sex, would also rule them out of the case with many such judges, —unless, perhaps, the rather numerous and conspicuous cases of the psycho-physical peculiarity of color-blindness were admitted in evidence.

That some mental and moral peculiarities are inherited in men, as some are well known to be in domestic animals, would doubtless be admitted by disputants, who would, nevertheless, deny that there is any evidence of sexual limitation in the transmission of them; and who might, on the contrary, assume, in spite of the resemblance of them to corporeal peculiarities in being heritable, that they are not sexually limited in the line of inheritance, — seeing that “mind and matter differ by the whole diameter of being,” and that the mind has no sex! Mr. Galton has done something towards clearing up the matter, by his researches on hereditary genius. It is certain, however, that the evidence in respect to the heritability

of mental and moral peculiarities is much less clear in general, and especially in reference to sexual limitation, than that of physical peculiarities. But here Stuart Mill’s fundamental assumption comes in for the explanation of this fact. Without denying the reality and importance (assuming them rather) of hereditary elements in the formation of mental and moral character, he ascribes a very large and important influence to education; including, in the meaning of this term, the unintended and unsystematic discipline of circumstances as well as the designed. The mental and moral characters are not born with the body of a man, and are, according to him, almost as much the offspring of teachers and society as of parents in the flesh. This assumption is probably near enough to the truth to explain why so little evidence appears in the human race, like what the mental and moral peculiarities of breeds of race-horses and dogs afford, in reference to the principles of inheritance.

But Mill seems to me to go altogether too far in this matter, and to attribute a disproportionate power to discipline, custom, and legislation; though it would be difficult to say what the true proportion of these influences to inherited ones really is, in the growth of individual minds and characters. I agree with you that the imperiousness of the man and the submissiveness of the woman are natural dispositions, or are fixed characters, so far as legislation can directly and designedly affect them, or so far at least as they can be immediately affected by any other legislation than that of Plato’s Republic, — or where the state is a grand selective human breeding institution, conducted on scientific principles, and with unlimited powers. But I nevertheless agree with Mill that, natural as they are, they are still alterable, and have been altered by civilization. I do not think it improbable that savage conditions of society have increased these dispositions from what

they may have been in a primitive human or more remote animal ancestry, and that civilization has again diminished them.

It has been noticed by more than one student of anthropology that civilization tends to assimilate the mental and moral characteristics of the sexes; and that, in moral characteristics at least, men have been more changed toward a common type than women. This anthropological observation agrees significantly with the more general biological fact, which I have quoted above; namely, that the male is commonly more variable than the female, and most variable in respect to secondary sexual characters. In the human race, the beard is a familiar illustration. It is wanting in most races of men, and is very variable in the bearded ones. Even allowing the full force which Mill seems to claim for disciplines, customs, sanctions, and institutions, when acting persistently, to modify inherited dispositions, — there would be no fallacy, but, on the contrary, very great reasonableness, in supposing these modifications to be sexually limited in their transmission; seeing that they are so limited in their direct effects on the parents. The male Scotch deer-hound has thus acquired, and is at the present time, from the want of his old training, actually losing, his abnormal superiority over the female in size and fleetness.

There is, however, one fundamental physiological fact accordant with your views, and pertinent to what women may do or become in the future, which Mill has almost entirely overlooked, and which late physiological writers on this subject have not sufficiently emphasized; namely, the difference of the human sexes in main or brute strength and courage, and its relations to mental and moral superiority. At first sight, this difference would seem, however firmly fixed or natural, to be only one among many cases of sexually limited inheritance, alterable by civilization, and not essentially related to primary

sexual differences; or to be merely due to the savage’s necessity of capturing, maintaining, and defending his spouse or spouses. There seems, however, to be a physiological relation of mere strength, or of unappropriated energies available for emergencies, which is more direct and essential, and is possibly sufficient to raise this difference to the rank of a primary one, or at least to an essential relation with the primary sexual differences; namely, its relation to child-bearing. Not only is the normal strength less in the female, but its resources are kept in reserve by a special check of constitutional habit during this period of life, except in gestation; for which occasions this general reserve, or restraint of force in all other directions, appears to be especially adapted. Whatever the ambition or energy of purpose in the woman may be, she cannot draw on her resources of main strength at much more than half the rate the idlest men ordinarily do. This conclusion is founded, so far as its estimate of quantity is concerned, on the ultimate physiological measure of expended energy, — the waste of the system, — and especially that determined by its gaseous exhalations in the form of the carbonic acid gas of respiration, the measure of oxygen consumed, which is, in the average, twice as great in the adult man as in the female (except in gestation) during the child-bearing period. This looks very like a natural check put on the ambition of the female, and a compulsion of nature, beneficent on the whole, which assigns her to her natural functions, however vehemently the individual’s ambition may determine otherwise, or rebel against this lot.

Even Mill recognizes one point of inferiority in the mental power of women, which it appears to me is ultimately referable to this physiological necessity; and not, as he seems to suppose, to an alterable inheritance. He says, “The things in which man most excels woman are those which require most plodding and long hammering at single thoughts.” This is

analogous to the muscular strength manifested in the stout bearing of burdens. Darwin regards it as an admission of greater energy and perseverance in the man; qualities which, with his greater courage, will (other qualities being equal) give him the victory in most competitions. But there is an ambiguity in the terms, energy, perseverance, and courage, which makes this conclusion far from clear or completely satisfactory. There is a moral as well as a physical courage, and a strength of purpose not altogether dependent on strength of nerves. The spiritual sources of untiring patience and perseverance are quite as important for the victories of genius as the available physical resources of work. But these, in turn, must set limits to the most urgent ambition or to the efficacy of the greatest spiritual strength. The woman, very likely, since she is most susceptible to moral and social influences, is apt to live more nearly up to the limit of her available strength. Whether this expenditure equals in effective amount, on the average, the average work which the consciences of men (less susceptible to spurs) call out from their uninvested resources, would be a very difficult problem. It is much easier to see that the most efficient patience and perseverance, or the genius, in which the greatest susceptibility to motives to work, and the greatest available resources of energy are combined, is most likely to be found in the man; even supposing the mental machinery to be, on the average, as perfect in one sex as in the other. It was upon this last element of genius, its machinery, which is mainly a product of discipline, that Mill fixed his attention too exclusively; to the neglect especially of the differences of sex in uninvested or available resources of mere energy or motor power.

Touching the suffrage question, I agree entirely with you, and not at all with Mill, and solely on grounds of public policy,—on which I conceive the right and justice of the

suffrage to rest. If, instead of the more probable effect of long-continued civilization in softening the imperiousness of men, women could be made by it Amazonians, there might be occasion to conciliate them, and secure the state from anarchy by making them participate in the responsibility of its government. Or if, on the contrary, this basis of the suffrage — the anarchical basis, I call it —should become in the far future less important than it is now, the suffrage might become restricted to a much smaller body of electors than now; and individual women with the requisite qualifications, which would probably have no relation to sex, might be included in this body. On the first supposition, however, the Amazonians would probably conquer by a more primitive form of election than what they would have gained through the suffrage; a form of choice of rulers, which they would have by natural rights, or without political endowment, — namely, sexual selection. As imperious men would have become intolerable to them, that variety would become extinct, and power would have passed involuntarily from its unnerved hands. The qualities of imperiousness and submissiveness, which have for so many ages been associated constitutionally with sex, or been sexually limited in inheritance, would probably, in this not unparalleled case, still remain associated with sex; but would have changed the line of descent, — as supernumerary and deficient digits, color-blindness, and other peculiarities sometimes do.

Agreeing, as I do, with your main practical conclusions on the woman’s suffrage question, there was no occasion for me to publish my dissent from one of your arguments, — or from your objections, rather, to one of Mill’s; especially as the interested partisan does not distinguish with clear logic between an objection to an argument and opposition to the conclusion.

Excuse the great length of this letter; for being engaged

in the matter I was tempted to make clear, at least to myself, my views on the subject.