WOMAN AND POLITICAL POWER. 91 



from Nature, to interpret the works of the greatest musical composers, 

 to act with taste aud discrimination all these, and a thousand similar 

 accomplishments, each requiring an effort of intellect, are now within 

 the range of women who are no more exceptional than the front rank 

 of men in every generation. Such distinctions may be attained by 

 women who lose none of the charms of womanhood ; and even a knowl- 

 edge of the latest discoveries in science is in no way incompatible with 

 any of the feminine graces. But a little consideration will lead to the 

 conclusion that all this mental activity is but the evidence of human 

 progress in general, and that its root, as well as its most perfect de- 

 velopment, is to be found in the domestic life. Long before the in- 

 vention of printing, mothers amused their children with nursery-tales, 

 lulled them to sleep with songs, and imparted to them the rudiments 

 of such knowledge as the world possessed ; maidens and wives could 

 act well enough to deceive husbands or attract lovers in the days 

 of Homer or even of the patriarchs. And many of those beautiful 

 poetical stories which constitute the mythology of all imperfectly 

 civilized nations bear the stamp of woman's imagination, and 

 have often been narrated to excite or to soothe the terrors of the 

 young. 



Women, however, with intellects truly masculine, are, and have 

 always been, even more rare than women with a masculine develop- 

 ment of muscles. There are few, if any, distinctively masculine pur- 

 suits in which any women have ever succeeded ; there is no great law 

 of Nature, no great mechanical invention, no great legal code, nor even 

 any great metaphysical system, of which any woman can say, " Of this 

 the world owes the knowledge to me." A reason for this fact is to be 

 discovered not in the inferior quality of the feminine mind, but in the 

 character of the objects to which woman's physical organization natu- 

 rally directs her attention. The practice of medicine, which is now be- 

 coming recognized as a feminine occupation in America, suggests at 

 once that instinct for nursing, which every one admits to be the spe- 

 cial gift of woman, and which is, in fact, a correlate of her pow T er to 

 become a mother. In short, if there be any truth in science, the intel- 

 lect of woman not only has, but must have, a certain relation to her 

 structure ; and, if it could be shown that there exists no difference be- 

 tween the male and female minds, there would be an end of anthro- 

 pology. But the directions in w T hich clever women have developed 

 their mental activity afford the best possible illustrations of the scien- 

 tific view of woman's position, and show how the long-inherited in- 

 stinct matures itself according to the ti-uly feminine type. All the 

 different lines, when traced back, converge through the nurse upoD 

 the mother. 



It should not, however, be forgotten that there may be individ- 

 ual peculiarities of structure, caused by circumstances either ante- 

 cedent or subsequent to birth, that the constitution of society may 



