Woman & womanhood : a search for principles / by C.W. Saleeby.

  • Caleb Saleeby
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Woman & womanhood : a search for principles / by C.W. Saleeby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/416 page 2
    many creeds have supposed, then indeed it would be a question of relatively small moment how the moth- ers of the future were chosen. Our ingenious devices for ensuring the supremacy of man lend colour to this idea. We name children after their fathers, and the fact that they are also to some extent of the maternal stock is obscured. But when we ask to what extent they are also of maternal stock, we find that there is a rigorous equality between the sexes in this matter. It is a fact which has been ignored or inadequately recog- nized by every feminist and by every eugenist from Plato until the present time. Salient qualities, whether good or ill, are more commonly displayed by men than by women. Great strength or physical courage or endurance, great ability or genius, to- gether with a variety of abnormalities, are much more commonly found in men than in women, and the eugenic emphasis has therefore always been laid upon the choice of fathers rather than of mothers. Not so long ago, the scion of a noble race must marry, not at all necessarily the daughter of another noble race, but rather any young healthy woman who prom- ised to be able to bear children easily and suckle them long. But directly we observe, under the micro- scope, the facts of development, we discover that each parent contributes an exactly equal share to the mak- ing of the new individual, and all the ancient and modern ideas of the superior value of well-selected fa- therhood fall to the ground. Woman is indeed half the race. In virtue of expectant motherhood and her
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