MENTAL DIFFERENCES OF MEN AND WOMEN 393 



primitive and long-protracted condition of slavery, she still continues 

 to be dominated by the man in numberless ways, which, although of a 

 less brutal kind, are scarcely less effectual as mentally dwarfing influ- 

 ences. The stunting tendency upon the female mind of all polygamous 

 institutions is notorious, and even in monogamous or quasi-monoga,- 

 mous communities so highly civilized as ancient Greece and pagan 

 Rome, woman was still, as it were, an intellectual cipher and this at 

 a time when the intellect of man had attained an eminence which has 

 never been equaled. Again, for a period of about two thousand years 

 after that time civilized woman was the victim of what I may term the 

 ideal of domestic utility a state of matters which still continues in 

 some of the Continental nations of Europe. Lastly, even when woman 

 began to escape from this ideal of domestic utility, it was only to fall 

 a victim to the scarcely less deleterious ideal of ornamentalism. Thus 

 Sydney Smith, writing in 1810, remarks : " A century ago the prevail- 

 ing taste in female education was for housewifery ; now it is for accom- 

 plishments. The object now is to make women artists to give them 

 an excellence in drawing, music, and dancing." It is almost needless 

 to remark that this is still the prevailing taste ; the ideal of female 

 education still largely prevalent in the upper classes is not that of men- 

 tal furnishing, but rather of mental decoration. For it was not until 

 the middle of the present century that the first attempt was made to 

 provide for the higher education of women, by the establishment of 

 Queen's College and Bedford College in London. Twenty years later 

 there followed Girton and Newnham at Cambridge ; later still Lady 

 Margaret and Somerville at Oxford, the foundation of the Girls' Public 

 Day-Schools Company, the opening of degrees to women at the Uni- 

 versity of London, and of the honor examinations at Cambridge and 

 Oxford. 



We see, then, that with advancing civilization the theoretical equal- 

 ity of the sexes becomes more and more a matter of general recognition, 

 but that the natural inequality continues to be forced upon the obser- 

 vation of the public mind ; and chiefly on this account although doubt- 

 less also on account of traditional usage the education of women con- 

 tinues to be, as a general rule, widely different from that of men. And 

 this difference is not merely in the positive direction of laying greater 

 stress on psychological embellishment : it extends also in the negative 

 direction of sheltering the female mind from all those influences of a 

 striving and struggling kind, which constitute the practical schooling 

 of the male intellect. Woman is still regarded by public opinion all 

 the world over as a psychological plant of tender growth, which needs 

 to be protected from the ruder blasts of social life in the conservatories 

 of civilization. And, from what has been said in the earlier part of 

 this paper, it will be apparent that in this practical judgment I believe 

 public opinion to be right. I am, of course, aware that there is a small 

 section of the public composed for the most part of persons who are 



