Through the processes involved in the differentiation of sex and the consequent division of functions, it has been possible during the past six thousand or seven thousand years (a mere tithe of the time spent by mankind upon the earth) for women to become enslaved, or subjected to the lower impulses of the male nature. Through the capture of women for wives, through the exigencies of warfare, the individual ownership of land, and the various changes incident to a certain stage of human existence, the finer sensibilities which characterize women have been overshadowed, and the higher forces which originated within them and which are transmitted in the female line, have been temporarily subdued by the great sexual ardour inherent in the opposite sex; it is not, therefore, singular that the degree of progress attained should appear to be wholly the result of male activity and acumen. Yet, notwithstanding the degradation to which women in the position assigned them by physical force have been obliged to submit, their capacity for improvement has suffered less from the influences and circumstances of their environment than has that of men. As the higher faculties are transmitted through women equally to both sexes, in the impoverishment of their inheritance on the female side, men have suffered equally with women, while, through their male progenitors, they have inherited appetites and habits (the result of a ruder and less developed structure) which weaken and degrade the entire constitution. Doubtless, so soon as women have gained sufficient strength to enable them to maintain their independence, and after the higher faculties rather than the animal propensities rule supreme, men, through the imperfections in their organism, and the appetites acquired through these imperfections, will, for a considerable length of time, find themselves weighted in the struggle for supremacy, and this, too, by the very characters which under lower conditions are now believed to have determined their success. It is not unlikely, however, that through Sexual Selection the characters or qualities unfavourable to the higher development of man will in time be eliminated. The mother is the natural guardian and protector of offspring; therefore, so soon as women are free they will doubtless select for husbands only those men who, by their mental, moral, and physical endowments are fitted to become the fathers of their children. Only those women will become mothers who hope to secure to their offspring immunity from the giant evils with which society is afflicted. In this way, and this way only, may these evils be eradicated.