75 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



greater trust in Nature, that she will be able to maintain the dif- 

 ferences necessary to a continuance of the race.* Clothes and 

 customs vary with time and place ; sex is stable and not injured 

 by anything but physical condition. The traditional idea that 

 womanhood can be modified in some occult t way by occupation, 

 training, or environment, is wholly unscientific and baneful ; for 

 it undoubtedly serves to nurse in many a woman that " slavish- 

 ness of soul " which Mr. Allen, as a true well-wisher of woman, 

 deplores. Physical condition, then, is the constant coefficient in 

 the problem. Anything injurious to the health of either man or 

 woman incapacitates each just so much for the fullest require- 

 ment of life. 



Mr. Allen claims that the result of the higher education in 

 England and America has been to convert woman into " a dulled 

 and spiritless epicene automaton." Now, this peculiar product, 

 which I take to mean the opposite of a healthy woman, must be 

 wholly within the reach of statistics, else she, or it, is a fabulous 

 affair. In England it is possible she may exist, but the best avail- 

 able statistics of Girton, Newnham, and Cheltenham prove that 

 she is not typical. The following testimony in regard to women 

 students is given : \ 



" I have known intimately Girton and Newnham Colleges and 

 what is now the women's department of Owens College, Manches- 

 ter. . . . Were an impression to get abroad that a thorough school 

 and college education is injurious to tolerably healthy women, it 

 would be as mistaken as it would be unfortunate " (Miss Bulley). 



" My unqualified testimony is, that the intellectual quickening 

 resulting from advanced education is of great benefit to their phys- 

 ical condition " (Miss Mackillip, Londonderry Collegiate School). 



" I have been head of this college for more than twenty-eight 

 years. . . . We have kept the minutest possible statistics # these 

 show that girls, working under proper conditions, are exception- 

 ally healthy " (Miss Beale, Cheltenham College). 



Mr. Fitch, inspector of training schools, testifies : " There are 

 in England twenty-six training colleges for schoolmistresses, 

 containing in all eighteen hundred resident students. It is my 

 duty, on behalf of the Government, to make an annual visit to 

 these institutions, and I have seen every one of them during the 

 last twelve months. ... It is the uniform opinion of the medical 



* The average notion of manliness or womanliness is very fluctuating. A young man 

 showing great interest in laces and hosiery would be considered to-day an effeminate fel- 

 low ; yet in the time of Charles I such attention to fripperies was deemed manly enough. 



f " Principles of Biology," Herbert Spencer ; " Sex in Mind and in Education," Henry 

 Maudsley, M. D. 



X " Woman and Work," Emily Pfeiffer, pp. 115, 111, 128. 



* Six hundred and twenty-seven pupils passed senior and higher university examina- 

 tions. 



