inctive than the zebra,
and a curious instance of this was yielded by certain horses in the
South African war, which were unable to crop the grass because they had
always eaten from mangers. Civilization, we may say, had caused the
horses to degenerate, but nobody will contend that the horse is not more
intelligent than the zebra, more capable of love, even of thought.
Briefly, the horse approximates more closely to a reasonable being than
does the instinctive wild beast.
[6] _La Femme dans le Theatre d'Ibsen_, by FRIEDERICKE BOETTCHER.--THE
AUTHOR.
The Feminists therefore propose, by training woman's reason, to place
her beyond the scope of mere emotion and mere prejudice, to enable her
to judge, to select a mate for herself and a father for her children,--a
double and necessary process.
There is a flavor of eugenics about these ideas: the right to choose
means that women wish to be placed in such a position that, being
economically independent to the extent of having equal opportunities,
they will not be compelled to sell themselves in marriage as they now
very often do. I do not refer to entirely loveless marriages, for these
are not very common in Anglo-Saxon states, but to marriages dictated by
the desire of woman to escape the authority of her parents, and to gain
the dignity of a wife, the possession of a home and of money to spend.
In the Feminist view, these are bad unions because love does not play
the major part in them, and often plays hardly any part at all. The
Feminists believe that the educated woman, informed on the subject of
sex-relations, able to earn her own living, to maintain a political
argument, will not fall an easy prey to the offer held out to her by a
man who will be her master, because he will have bought her on a truck
system.
Under Feminist rule, women will be able to select, because they will be
able to sweep out of their minds the monetary consideration; therefore
they will love better, and unless they love, they will not marry at all.
It is therefore probable that they will raise the standard of masculine
attractiveness by demanding physical and mental beauty in those whom
they choose; that they will apply personal eugenics. The men whom they
do not choose will find themselves in exactly the same position as the
old maids of modern times: that is to say, these men, if they are unwed,
will be unwed because they have chosen to remain so, or because they
were not sought in marria
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