THE CONDITION OF WOMEN. 351 



nature by intuition, or arrived at a general rule of duty or prudence 

 by it. These are results of slow and careful collection and comparison 

 of experience ; and neither the men nor the women of intuition usu- 

 ally shine in this department, unless, indeed, the experience is such as 

 they can acquire by themselves. . . . To discover general principles 

 belongs to the speculative faculty ; to discern and discriminate the 

 particular cases in which they are or are not applicable constitute prac- 

 tical talent ; and for this women, as they now are, have a peculiar ap- 

 titude." It is only necessary to change two or three words in this last 

 sentence in order to show its complete agreement with the demands of 

 our theory. Its meaning will not be altered by the following reading, 

 which serves to bring out more clearly its implications : To discover 

 general principles belongs to the progressive aspect of the mind, which 

 is most strongly developed in men ; to. preserve and apply the general 

 principles which are already established belong to the conservative 

 side of the mind, and for this women, as they have been made by the 

 evolution of the race, have and should have a peculiar aptitude. Mill 

 continues as follows : " I admit that there can be no good practice 

 without principles, and that the predominant place which quickness of 

 observation holds among a woman's faculties makes her particularly 

 apt to build over-hasty generalizations upon her own observation, 

 though at the same time no less ready in rectifying these generaliza- 

 tions as her observation takes a wider range. But the corrective to 

 this defect is access to the experience of the human race ; general 

 knowledge exactly the thing which education can best supply." 



This sentence, when viewed in connection with our present theory 

 of the relations of the sexes, gives the key to the question of female 

 education for that form of education which supplies the general 

 knowledge which is so important for the correct application of princi- 

 ples to special cases is culture, as distinguished from the technical 

 training which looks to the discovery of new laws. 



The next passage which I shall quote is of the greatest importance, 

 for, founded as Mill's autobiography and numerous passages in his 

 various works tell us it is, upon the personal experience of his life, it 

 contains the germ of the idea which, if fully investigated, might have 

 led him to entirely remodel his essay upon women ; the idea that the 

 sexes do not naturally stand in the relation of superior and inferior, 

 nor in that of independent equals, but are the complemental parts of 

 a compound whole. He says : " This gravitation of women's minds 

 to the present, to the real, to actual fact, while in its exclusiveness it 

 is a source of errors, is also a most useful counteractive of the contrary 

 error. The principal and most characteristic aberration of speculative 

 minds, as such, consists precisely in the deficiency of this lively percep- 

 tion and ever-present sense of objective fact. . . . Hardly anything 

 can be of greater value to a man of theory and speculation, who em- 

 ploys himself, not in collecting materials of knowledge by observation, 



