WOMAN AND POLITICAL POWER. 85 



And so, although woman may be more at home in the drawing- 

 room or the nursery, than in the field of battle or the seventh heaven 

 of metaphysics, her walk in life may exhibit qualities as high, and 

 energies as well directed, as those of the chemist, the engineer, the 

 philologist, or even the philosopher. Nothing can be more ungenerous 

 than to flout her with her domestic cares, or to depreciate her efforts 

 to please. If her form is more susceptible of adornment than man's, 

 it is but natural that she should be more anxious to adorn it. If it is 

 a privilege of her organization that she can become a mother, the wish 

 to deprive her of it is not consistent with the teachings of science, 

 with manliness of character, or with common-sense. If her maternity 

 forces upon her the consideration of minute details which are unob- 

 served by men, or have no interest for them, the tendencies of her 

 mind are not a fit subject for detraction, unless that detraction be in- 

 tended, as it commonly is, for maternity itself, 



The elements of the female mind (to regard the mind alone, for a 

 moment) are probably, as the champions of women's rights assert, 

 identical with those of the male ; and the inference which some per- 

 sons would draw is that the mind itself ought not to be different. 

 No one would seriously deny that woman possesses emotions, will, 

 senses, and intellect ; or that man's mind is susceptible of precisely 

 the same division. It does not, however, require even a knowledge 

 of chemistry to discover that combinations of the same elements, in 

 different proportions, will produce compounds of different qualities. 

 But chemistry, perhaps, illustrates the subject better than any other 

 science. Not only may the same elements, mingled in different quan- 

 tities, produce substances of different properties ; but the same ele- 

 ments, even in the same proportions, may, under different circum- 

 stances, yield dissimilar products. Not only do the ethers differ from 

 the alcohols, and each alcohol and each ether from its namesake, 

 though all are compounded of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, in 

 different proportions; but alanine and sarcosine which are both 

 compounded of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, in exactly the 

 same proportions have properties entirely different from each other. 

 If, therefore, it could be shown that the male and female minds are, 

 in the language of chemistry, isomeric, it would not follow, according 

 to any natural law, that they should be identical in character ; still 

 less if they merely possess the same elements without being isomeric. 

 And it would surely be not more unscientific to preach the conversion 

 of all ether into alcohol, and all sarcosine into alanine, than to insist 

 that the feminine mind should undertake all the functions of the 

 male. 



While the senses, and the faculty of retaining impressions, are as 

 strong in women as in men, and perhaps stronger, it will hardly be 

 denied that in all ages and in all climates women are and have been 

 more prone to the display of emotion than of pure reason. Rachel 



