REPLY TO MISS HARDAKER. 77 



ternity does make large draughts upon the energy of woman is not to 

 be overlooked. But, unless it can be shown that the mental activity of 

 man is ceaseless, that his manual labor diverts no blood from the brain, 

 that his imaginative and reasoning powers keep steadily at work year 

 in and vear out, limited only by supply of food, it does not necessarily 

 follow that women must fall behind men in the brain-work of a life- 

 time. Both men and women need mental rest no brain-worker can 

 keep at the top of his speed for ever ; and women whose duties as 

 mothers divert their energy from the brain may overtake men in their 

 voluntary holidays. This fact will have more concrete significance 

 when we reflect that the professional brain-workers in both sexes are 

 in the minority, and that women who are such are usually unmarried, 

 or mothers of small families. At the same time, the labors of men who 

 form the great masses of population are not more stimulating to brain- 

 culture than the vocations of their wives. But, granting what is prob- 

 ably true, that woman as a whole can never show as much mental prod- 

 uct as man, because some of her time and energy must be devoted to 

 motherhood, still she may be quite as capable of production. There- 

 fore, any reasoning which excludes women as a class from the advan- 

 tages of equal mental training with men, on the ground that they must 

 be the mothers of the race, is forcing the activity of women into one 

 channel, and rendering all other efforts (such as the writing of a scien- 

 tific article, perhaps) unnatural and unwomanly. 



But suppose the whole of Miss Hardaker's argument to be founded 

 on true premises, and all her conclusions to be just and accurate, it 

 may yet be pertinently asked, Cut bono ? Miss Hardaker would slam 

 the educational doors in women's faces because, being smaller, they 

 are unfit to enter the select retreats of Brobdingnag. But, if justice 

 is to prevail in the rules of admission, the woman who possesses a brain 

 of fifty-six ounces is entitled to precedence over the great majority of 

 males whose brains weigh only forty-nine and a half. Should the en- 

 vironment be more favorable to the woman whose brain-weight is 

 forty-four ounces, she can claim the advantage over the larger male 

 brain whose environment is less favorable. Then, too, the applicants 

 for entrance must be subjected to the test of an eating-match, and the 

 dyspeptic must consent to suicide or rejection. All this must be done, 

 for, although Justice carries her scales, she is blindfolded. She can 

 only weigh brains, food, environment, but can not see the sex of suitors 

 for admission into the new academy. Miss Hardaker must be aware 

 that, were every element in her assumptions true, some women must 

 be greatly superior to the average men, although the highest point 

 reached by the male could not be obtained by the female. Miss Hard- 

 aker would, perhaps, object to having the doors of journalism closed 

 against her, because she can never think as profoundly as Lord Bacon, 

 or because in general woman's literary production has not made so fair 

 a showing as man's. It is not long ago since this sort of reasoning 



