and exact relation between the individual and the external world. It
follows that any change in the environment will cause a change in the
individual. To live differently from what one had been living is to be
different from what one has been. These are simple biological facts.

Now, how does woman stand in this respect? No one can deny the
difference of environment that in the past has acted on women and on
men. Speaking from a biological standpoint, it would seem that any
present inferiority of woman is mainly social, due to her adaptation
to an arbitrary environment. It has been truly said[6] that "man, in
supporting woman, has become her economic environment." By her
position of economic dependence in the sex relation, sex distinction
has become with her "not only a means of attracting a mate, as with
all creatures, but a means of gaining her livelihood, as is the case
with no other creature under heaven." Can we wonder that the
differences between the sexes assume such great and, in certain
directions, such unnatural importance? Woman to a far greater extent
than man is in process of evolution; her powers dormant for want of
liberating Nurture stimuli. We know that Alpine plants brought from
their natural soil change their character and become hardly
recognisable, and these marked modifications will reappear in many
generations of plants, but as soon as the plants are taken back to
grow in their natural environment they are transformed to their
original Alpine forms. May we not then entertain as a possibility that
woman's modern character, with all its acknowledged faults--all its
separation from the human qualities of man--is a veneer imposed by an
unnatural environment on succeeding generations of women? If the
larger social virtues are wanting in her, may it not be because they
have not been called for in a parasitic life? How splendid a hope for
women rests here! There is a biological truth, not usually suspected
by those who quote it, in the popular saying: "Man is the creature of
circumstance." And this is even more true of women, who are less
emancipated from their surroundings than are men--more saturated with
the influences and prejudices of their narrowed environment.

It would seem, then, that Nurture is more important than Nature in
seeking to explain the character of woman to-day. Yet, let me not be
mistaken, nor let it be thought for one moment that I do not realise
the importance of Nature. The fi