460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in the professions ? This is the question I shall endeavor honestly to 

 solve. 



Mentally, I believe woman to be the peer of man; that there is 

 nothing about law, medicine, or theology, that woman cannot learn as 

 well as he; that her mental difference is a sexual difference, just as 

 her bodily differences are sexual. To the question of her mental fit- 

 ness for this work, other than sexual, I shall give no attention. The 

 physical difference between the sexes will form the first part of our 

 study of woman's future relation to the professions, and brings us 

 naturally to the discussion of the law of anatomical development as 

 modified by sex. In the July number of The Popular Science Month- 

 ly, in an article entitled the " Genesis of Woman," I endeavored to 

 assign a proper value to the functional development of woman. In 

 that paper, the anatomical development of woman was studied with 

 reference to her functional genesis ; but here it must be studied with 

 reference to her fitness for competition with the opposite sex in the 

 struggle for subsistence. Now, there are certain skilled labors which 

 belong to man by virtue of his superior strength. The anatomical 

 peculiarities of woman do not need to be contrasted with man's in ref- 

 erence to this class of labor, and women in the lower walks of life 

 have demonstrated their ability for severe bodily toil. But the intel- 

 lectual work to which I am mainly directing my attention to which 

 women are reaching, implies that the candidates possess the delicate 

 structural development, the inherited result of civilizing forces. We 

 can draw no inference, therefore, from that fact that women, less ex- 

 posed to these forces, and more nearly approximating man in physical 

 strength, fully equal him in the value of their labor. If we examine 

 some of the lighter and more delicate forms of skilled labor, such as 

 we would naturally conclude were peculiarly fitted for the delicate 

 and nice touch of women, we find them in the hands of men almost 

 exclusively. The question of mental fitness must be excluded, for 

 mentally they are as competent as man is to acquire and practise these 

 arts. I think it can be shown that anatomical unfitness, aside from 

 her inclination, is the obstacle. In the manufacture of instruments 

 involving great delicacy, and, until the introduction of machinery, in 

 the manufacture of watches, as a class women were excluded. While 

 not involving any great muscular outlay, these samples of skilled labor 

 demand great delicacy of educated touch. While we must make great 

 allowances, as an anatomical factor, for the advantage to men so em- 

 ployed of the inheritance of mechanical taste and skill from fathers, 

 oftentimes so employed for generations, yet it is a common error to 

 suppose that employments which involve delicacy of manipulation do 

 not require strength, as great in degree as, but differing in kind from, 

 that demanded by more hardy labor. Educated, coordinate muscular 

 movements depend more than any other upon strength and certainty 

 of muscular contraction. In no particular, aside from sexual differ- 



