MENTAL DIFFERENCES OF MEN AND WOMEN 399 



On the contrary, I believe that this system represents the greatest 

 single reform that has ever been made in the way of education. I am 

 only pointing out certain grave abuses of the system which are to be 

 met with in some of these schools, and against which I should like to 

 see the full force of public opinion directed. There is no public 

 school in the kingdom where a boy of sixteen would be permitted to 

 work from eleven to eighteen hours a day, with no other exercise than 

 a few minutes' walk. Is it not, then, 6imply monstrous that a girl 

 should be allowed to do so ? I must confess that I have met with 

 wonderfully few cases of serious breakdown. All my informants tell 

 me that, even under the operation of so insane an abuse as I have 

 quoted, grave impairment of health but rarely occurs. This, however, 

 only goes to show of what good stuff our English girls are made ; and 

 therefore may be taken to furnish about the strongest answer I can 

 give to the argument which I am considering viz., that the strength 

 of an average English girl is not to be trusted for sustaining any 

 reasonable amount of intellectual work. Upon this point, however, 

 there is at the present time a conflict of medical authority, and, as I 

 have no space to give a number of quotations, it must suffice to make 

 a few general remarks. 



In the first place, the question is one of fact, and must therefore 

 be answered by the results of the large and numerous experiments 

 which are now in progress ; not by any a priori reasoning of a physi- 

 ological kind. In the next place, even as thus limited, the inquiry 

 must take account of the wisdom or unwisdom with which female 

 education is pursued in the particular cases investigated. As already 

 remarked, I have been myself astonished to find so great an amount of 

 prolonged endurance exhibited by young girls who are allowed to 

 work at unreasonable pressure ; but, all the same, I should of course 

 regard statistics drawn from such cases as manifestly unfair. And 

 seeing that every case of health impaired is another occasion given to 

 the enemies of female education, those who have the interests of such 

 education at heart should before all things see to it that the teaching 

 of girls be conducted with the most scrupulous precautions against 

 over-pressure. Regarded merely as a matter of policy, it is at the 

 present moment of far more importance that girls should not be over- 

 strained than that they should prove themselves equal to young men 

 in the class lists. For my own part, I believe that, with reasonable 

 precautions against over-pressure, and with due provision for bodily 

 exercise, the higher education of women would ipso facto silence the 

 voice of medical opposition. But I am equally persuaded that this 

 can never be the case until it becomes a matter of general recognition 

 among those to whom such education is intrusted, that no girl should 

 ever be allowed to work more than eight hours a day as a maximum ; 

 that even this will in a large proportional number of cases be found 

 to prove excessive ; that without abundant exercise higher education 



