26Q Heredity. 



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 principles 

 to special cases is culture, as distiuguishedfrom the tech- 

 nical-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, 

 hut 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 ex- 

 clusiveness it is a source of errors, is also a most useful 

 counteractive of the contrary error. The principal and 

 most characteristic aberraticm of speculative minds, as 

 such, consists precisely in the deficiency of this lively 

 perception and ever-present sense of objective fact. . . . 

 Hardly anything can be of greater value to a man of 

 theory and speculation, who employs himself, not in col- 

 lecting materials of knowledge by observation, but in 

 working them up by processes of thought into compre- 

 hensive truths of science and laws of conduct, than to 

 carry on his speculations in the companionship, and un- 

 der the criticism, of a really superior woman. There is 

 nothing comparable to it for keeping his thoughts within 

 the limits of real things, and the actual facts of nature. 

 Women's thoughts are thus as useful in giving reality to 

 those of thinking men as men's thoughts in giving width 

 and largeness to those of women." Here we have a clear 

 recognition of the law that width and largeness, mental 



