hand, on their own effective plane, with the psychological
influences already referred to. All physiology and psychology lead us to
expect those results of "higher education" upon its subjects or victims
which, in fact, we find, and which, in the main, are indeed its results
and not dependent upon the exceptional natures of those subjected to it.
The more general higher education becomes, and the less selection is
exercised upon the candidates for it, the more evident, I believe, will
it appear that woman responds in high degree to the total circumstances
of her life; and that if we do not like the fruits of our labour it is
we indeed that are to blame.

CHAPTER VI

MENDELISM AND WOMANHOOD

We are accustomed to think of Mendelism as simply a theory of heredity,
by which term we should properly understand the relation between living
generations. Now Mendelism is certainly this, but I believe that it is
vastly more. Already the claim has been made, though not, perhaps, in
adequate measure, by the Mendelians, and I am convinced that their title
to it will be upheld. Mendelism has already effected a really
epoch-making advance in our knowledge of heredity--the relations between
parents and offspring; but we shall learn ere long that it has yet more
to teach us regarding the very constitution of living beings. As modern
chemistry can analyse a highly complex molecule into its constituent
elementary atoms, so the Mendelians promise ere long to enable us to
effect an _organic analysis_ of living creatures. For many decades past
theory has perceived that, in the germ-cells whence we and the higher
animals and plants are developed, there must exist--somewhere
intermediate between the chemical molecule and the vital unit, the cell
itself--units which Herbert Spencer, the first and greatest of their
students, called physiological or constitutional units. Since his day
they have been re-discovered--or rather re-named--by a host of students,
including Haeckel, Weismann, and many of scarcely less distinction. The
Mendelian "factors," as I maintain must be clear to any student of the
idea, are Spencer's physiological units. Of course neither Spencer nor
any one else, until the re-discovery of Mendel's work, had any notion at
all of the remarkable fashion in which these units are treated in the
process whereby germ-cells are prepared for their great destiny. The
rule, as we now know, is that one germ-cell contains any given u