470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 







That children are necessary to the mental and physical health of 

 married women, but that maternity is unfavorable to success in skilled 

 labor or the professions. 



That the functions of gestation and parturition are very liable to 

 be attended with mental disturbances which would totally defeat a 

 professional career. 



That the change of life is a critical period, prone to be attended with 

 mental and bodily infirmities, unfitting a woman for professional work. 



With such possibilities before her, and such necessities urging her, 

 what chance has woman of successfully competing with men of me- 

 diocrity in professional life, or in skilled labor ? It must be the intent 

 of every woman who essays a professional life to do man's work as 

 well as man can do it, and to secure man's reward for such well-doing. 

 But, I cannot avoid the conclusion that, in the present relation of the 

 sexes, such a standard is impossible of attainment. Whether the con- 

 ditions which have created and continued the present relation of the 

 sexes will operate as potently in the future as in the past, is a difficult 

 question to answer. I have already said that, in my opinion, there 

 now exist in society forces which will tend to modify the dependence 

 of women. Prominent among these is the persistence with which 

 women are working their way to new relations, which, if continued, 

 will certainly bear fruit, and evoke in its behalf the law of heredity, 

 which is now opposed to them. If we look upon society in a scientific 

 spirit, we must recognize it as a field in which antagonizing forces are 

 contending. This effort of woman to invade all the higher forms of 

 labor is a force battling with the established order of sexual relation. 

 The inertia which it encounters is the universal attendant of estab- 

 lished facts in society. If this effort of woman is continued into com- 

 ing generations, I have no doubt but her relations to society and labor 

 will be in many respects modified. But I believe a long series of 

 generations must pass before women can equal the labor value of 

 men in the professions. 



REASON AGAINST ROUTINE IN THE STUDY OF 



LANGUAGE. 



FEOM THE FKENCH OF CLAUDE MABOEL. 



Part II. 



I GRAMMAR. Can the exercises of the university and of our 

 lyceums give to pupils the advantages they ought to expect 

 in linguistic study ? No, a hundred times no ! There is little in these 

 exercises that addresses the judgment, or that will be useful in the 

 course of life. The pupils never read authors, they translate them 

 before they comprehend them ; or else translate them in fragments 

 two infallible means of never knowing them. 



