Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1888 — The Real “Woman Problem.” [ARTICLE]

The Real “Woman Problem.”

Recognizing heredity as the distinctive attribute of the female sex it become 5 clear that it must be from the steady advance of woman rather than from the uncertain fluctuations of man that the sure and solid progress of the future is to come. The attempt to move the whole race forward by elevating the sex that represents the principle of instability has long enough been tried. The many cases of superior men, the sons of superior mothers, coupled with the many more cases of degenerate sons of superior sires, have taught us over and over again that the way to civilize the race is to civilize woman. Anl now, thanks to modern biologic science, we see why this is so. Woman is the unchanging trunk of the great genealogic tree, while man, with all his vaunted superiority, is but a branch, a grafted scion, as it were, whose acquired qualities die with the individual, while those of woman are handed on to futurity. Woman is the race, and the race can be raised up only as she is raised up. There is no fixed rule by which Nature has intended that one sex should excel the other, any more than there is any fixed point beyond which either cannot further develop. Nature has no intentions and evolution has no limits. True science teaches that the education of woman is the only sure road to the evolution of man. — Prof. Lester F. Ward.