88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to the metaphysical school of thought, as much as any dogma of a 

 mediseval schoolman. They start from the assumption that living 

 women either conform, or should he forced to conform, to some a priori 

 definition of woman, evolved from the inner consciousness of a human 

 being. They ignore all the ascertained facts of anatomy and physiol- 

 ogy. They are directed not toward the perfection of womanhood in 

 all its functions, hut toward the transformation of woman into some- 

 thing different. They suggest not the study of natural laws, nor the 

 observation of facts in Nature, but the worthlessness of all facts, and 

 all laws, in comparison with a dictum issued from the study. It is 

 not wonderful that ignorant enthusiasts should have placed woman 

 in a false position through their inability to comprehend their own 

 religion, but it is perhaps the strangest feature of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury that thousands of persons advocate a still more unnatural revo- 

 lution of the sexes in blind obedience to a purely metaphysical propo- 

 sition. 



The stages into which Auguste Comte divided the progress of hu- 

 man thought are admirably illustrated by modern attempts to alter 

 the position of woman. Seventeen hundred years ago she was a 

 stumbling-block in the way of the religious enthusiasts ; to the meta- 

 physicians of to-day she is no more than an abstraction. The early 

 fathers of the Christian Church regarded her physically as a temptation 

 to sin ; some modern philanthropists regard her intellectually as the 

 equal of man. It is possible that there may be truth in both opinions, 

 but it is certain that the whole truth is not to be found in either. The 

 religious doctrine is intelligible enough at first sight, but the metaphys- 

 ical doctrine takes us back to the middle ages, to the conflict between 

 the realists and the nominalists, to the verbal quibbling in which great 

 minds, for want of better occupation, frequently expended all their en- 

 ergies. The woman for whom a vote is demanded is not, when care- 

 fully inspected, a woman of flesh and blood, but an abstract or arche- 

 typal idea for which the realists of the nineteenth century claim a posi- 

 tive existence. 



The process by which such ideas were arrived at in former times, 

 and by which, in all probability, they are arrived at now, is of the fol- 

 .owing character: Men and women possess certain attributes, or a 

 certain attribute, in common, and to this attribute, or to these attri- 

 butes collectively, may be given the name of humanity. All points of 

 difference are by the very nature of the process disregarded, or drawn 

 off, or in technical language abstracted or rather the point of resem- 

 blance is abstracted from the point of difference. Now, when humanity 

 and similar abstract terms had been thus invented by men who per 

 ceived their value as a species of mental short-hand, they were invested 

 with a substantial existence by Plato and many of his mediseval fol- 

 lowers. The " humanity " which is reached by this mental operation 

 is, of course, divested of sex along with all other differences. If the 





