WOMEN AND HEREDITY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sra,—Will you accord me space to lay bare a curious biological fallacy ? We continually find it asserted, and this frequently by men of science, that the reason why women do not show in certain lines of activity the same efficiency as men do is that women have not had the same protracted training, and con- sequently that they do not set out in life with the same accu- mulation of inherited experience. I have long considered this assertion as devoid of analytic accuracy. Have, then, men and women separate lines of heredity ? Do not their natures concurrently merge in the process of reproduction ?
The conjunctive ordering of procreation being above dispute, it would follow that all speci fir acquirements, on the part of both male and female, must needs, by virtue of crossing, become neutralized in the generic equation, before, a redis- tribution of the sex element with its diverse characteristic attributes takes effect. It all amounts to this, practically speaking and bearing in mind only the immediate point at issue : woman is intended to be woman, and if she deviates from her ordained course, by the unerring strokes of nature she is reconstituted to true form every time when the balance is struck anew. No mere euphemism is the winged phrase— The Eternal Feminine.—I am, Sir, &e.,
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