stocks, of both sexes, contribute to the composition of future generations? In other words, the very first thing that the feminist movement must prove is that it is eugenic. If it be so, its claims are unchallengeable; if it be what may contrariwise be called dysgenic, no arguments in its favour are of any avail. Yet the present champions of the woman's cause are apparently unaware that this question exists. They do not know how important their sex is.

Thinkers in the past have known, and many critics in the present, though unaware of the eugenic idea, do perceive, that woman can scarcely be better employed than in the home. Herbert Spencer, notably, argued that we must not include, in the estimate of a nation's assets, those activities of woman the development of which is incompatible with motherhood. To-day, the natural differences between individuals of both sexes, and the importance of their right selection for the transmission of their characters to the future, are clearly before the minds of those who think at all on these subjects. On various occasions I have raised this issue between Feminism and Eugenics, suggesting that there are varieties of feminism, making various demands for women which are utterly to be condemned because they not merely ignore eugenics, but are opposed to it, and would, if successful, be therefore ruinous to the race.

Ignored though it be by the feminist leaders, this is the first of questions; and in so far as any clear opinion on it is emerging from the welter of prejudices, that opinion is hitherto inimical to the feminist claims. Most notably is this the case in America, where the dysgenic consequences of the so-called higher education of women have been clearly demonstrated.

The mark of the following pages is that they assume the principle of what we may call Eugenic Feminism, and that they endeavour to formulate its working-out. It is my business to acquaint myself with the literature of both eugenics and feminism, and I know that hitherto the eugenists have inclined to oppose the claims of feminism, Sir Francis Galton, for instance, having lent his name to the anti-suffrage side; whilst the feminists, one and all, so far as Anglo-Saxondom is concerned—for Ellen Key must be excepted—are either unaware of the meaning of eugenics at all, or are up in arms at once when the eugenist—or at any rate this eugenist, who is a male person—mildly inquires: But what about motherhood? and to what sort of women are you relegating it by default?

I claim, therefore, that there is immediate need for the presentation of a case which is, from first to last, and at whatever cost, eugenic; but which also—or, rather, therefore—makes the highest claims on behalf of woman and womanhood, so that indeed, in striving to demonstrate the vast importance of the woman question for the composition of the coming race, I may claim to be much more feminist than the feminists.

The problem is not easily to be solved; otherwise we should not have paired off into insane parties, as on my view we have done. Nor will the solution please the feminists without reserve, whilst it will grossly offend that abnormal section of the feminists who are distinguished by being so much less than feminine, and who little realize what a poor substitute feminism is for feminity.

There is possible no Eugenic Feminism which shall satisfy those whose simple argument is that woman must have what she wants, just as man must. I do not for a moment admit that either men or women or children of a smaller growth are entitled to everything they want. "The divine right of kings," said Carlyle, "is the right to be kingly men"; and I would add that the divine right of women is the right to be queenly women. Until this present time, it was never yet alleged as a final principle of justice that whatever people wanted they were entitled to, yet that is the simple feminist demand in a very large number of cases. It is a demand to be denied, whilst at the same time we grant the right of every man and of every woman to opportunities for the best development of the self; whatever that self may be—including even the aberrant and epicene self of those imperfectly constituted women whose adherence to the woman's cause so seriously handicaps it.

But it is one thing to say people should have what is best for them, and another that whatever they want is best for them. If it is not best for them it is not right, any more than if they were children asking for more green apples. Women have great needs of which they are at present unjustly deprived; and they are fully entitled to ask for everything which is needed for the satisfaction of those needs; but nothing is more certain than that, at present, many of them do not know what they should ask for. Not to know what is good for us is a common human failing; to have it pointed out is always tiresome, and to have this pointed out to women by any man is intolerable. But the question is not whether a man points it out, presuming to tell women what is good for them, but whether in this matter he is right—in common with the overwhelming multitude of the dead of both sexes.

As has been hinted, the issue is much more momentous than any could have realized even so late as fifty years ago. It is only in our own time that we are learning the measure of the natural differences between individuals, it is only lately that we have come to see that races cannot rise by the transmission of acquired characters from parents to offspring, since such transmission does not occur, and it is only within the last few years that the relative potency of heredity over education, of nature over nurture, has been demonstrated. Not one in thousands knows how cogent this demonstration is, nor how absolutely conclusive is the case for the eugenic principle in the light of our modern knowledge. At whatever cost, we see, who have ascertained the facts, that we must be eugenic.

This argument was set forth in full in the predecessors of this book, which in its turn is devoted to the interests of women as individuals. But before we proceed, it is plainly necessary to answer the critic who might urge that the separate questions of the individual and the race cannot be discussed in this mixed fashion. The argument may be that if we are to discuss the character and development and rights of women as individuals, we must stick to our last. Any woman may question the eugenic criterion or say that it has nothing to do with her case. She claims certain rights and has certain needs; she is not so sure, perhaps, about the facts of heredity, and in any case she is sure that individuals—such as herself, for instance—are ends in themselves. She neither desires to be sacrificed to the race, nor does she admit that any individual should be so sacrificed. She is tired of hearing that women must make sacrifices for the sake of the community and its future; and the statement of this proposition in its new eugenic form, which asserts that, at all costs, the finest women must be mothers, and the mothers must be the finest women, is no more satisfactory to her than the crude creed of the Kaiser that children, cooking and church are the proper concerns of women. She claims to be an individual, as much as any man is, as much as any individual of either sex whom we hope to produce in the future by our eugenics, and she has the same personal claim to be an end in and for herself as they will have whom we seek to create. Her sex has always been sacrificed to the present or to the immediate needs of the future as represented by infancy and childhood; and there is no special attractiveness in the prospect of exchanging a military tyranny for a eugenic tyranny: "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

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