HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 467 



a struggle for existence — not only for the existence of the particular 

 individual, but for that of his progeny, which is of far greater im- 

 portance in nature, because when the individual is wiped out, only 

 one person disappears; but when his progeny ceases to exist, an end 

 is put to countless thousands, who are thus prevented from ever being 

 born. He will endeavor to show, as he believes to be the case, that the 

 higher education of women is surely extinguishing her race, both 

 directly by its effects on her organization, and, indirectly, by render- 

 ing early marriage impossible for the average man. 



First of all, is education being carried on at present to such a 

 degree as to at all affect the bodily or physical health of women? 

 This is a very important question, because the duties of wifehood, 

 and still more of motherhood, do not require an extraordinary de- 

 velopment of the brain, but they must absolutely have a strong develop- 

 ment of the body. Not only does wifehood and motherhood not 

 require an extraordinary development of the brain, but the latter is a 

 decided barrier against the proper performance of these duties. Any 

 family physician could give innumerable cases out of his experience 

 of failures of marriage, directly due to too great a cultivation of the 

 female intellect, which results in the scorning to perform those duties 

 which are cheerfully performed, and even desired, by the uneducated 

 wife. The duties of motherhood are direct rivals of brain work, 

 for they both require for their performance an exclusive and 

 plentiful supply of phosphates. These are obtained from the food 

 in greater or less quantity, but rarely, if ever, in sufficient quantity 

 to supply an active and highly educated intellect, and, at the same 

 time, the wants of the growing child. The latter before birth must 

 extract from its mother's blood all the chemical salts necessary 

 for the formation of its bony skeleton and for other tissues; and 

 in this rivalry between the offspring and the intellect how often has 

 not the family physician seen the brain lose in the struggle. The 

 mother's reason totters and falls, in some cases to such an extent as 

 to require her removal to an insane asylum; while in others, she only 

 regains her reason after the prolonged administration of phosphates, 

 to make up for the loss entailed by the growth of the child. Some- 

 times, however, it is the child which suffers, and it is born defectively 

 nourished or rickety, and, owing to the poor quality of the mother's 

 milk, it obtains a precarious existence from artificial foods, which at 

 the best are a poor substitute for nature's nourishment. The highly 

 educated woman seems to know that she will make a poor mother, for 

 she marries rarely and late and, when she does, the number of children 

 its very small. The argument is sometimes used that it is better to 

 have only one child and bring it up with extraordinary care than to 

 have six or eight children brought up with ordinary care because in 



