204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hubscher wenii man die Kinder von den Baumen schuttelte ; " it must 

 still be confessed that for the great majority of women they must re- 

 main the most important offices of the best period of their lives. More- 

 over, they are work which, like all work, may be well or ill done, and 

 which, in order to be done well, cannot be done in a perfunctory man- 

 ner, as a thing by the way. It will have to be considered whether 

 women can scorn delights, and live laborious days of intellectual exer- 

 cise and production, without injury to their functions as the conceiv- 

 ers, mothers, and nurses of children. For, it would be an ill thing, if it 

 should so happen that we got the advantages of a quantity of female 

 intellectual work at the jjrice of a puny, enfeebled, and sickly race. 

 In this relation, it must be allowed that women do not and cannot 

 stand on the same level as men. 



In the second j^lace, a proper regard to the mental nature of wom- 

 an means attention given to those qualities of mind which correlate 

 the physical differences of her sex. Men are manifestly not so fitted 

 mentally as women to be the educators of children during the early 

 years of their infancy and childhood ; they would be almost as much 

 out of place in going systematically to work to nurse babies as they 

 would be in attempting to suckle them. On the other hand, women 

 are manifestly endowed with qualities of mind which specially fit them 

 to stimulate and foster the first growths of intelligence in chilren, 

 while the intimate and special sympathies which a mother has with 

 her child as a being which, though individually separate, is still al- 

 most a part of her nature, give her an influence and responsibilities 

 which are specially her own. The earliest dawn of an infant's intelli- 

 gence is its recognition of its mother as the supplier of its wants, as 

 the person whose near presence is associated Avith the relief of sensa- 

 tions of discomfort, and with the production of feelings of comfort ; 

 while the relief and pleasure which she herself feels in yielding it 

 warmth and nourishment strengthen, if they were not originally the 

 foundation of, that strong love of offspring which with unwearied pa- 

 tience surrounds its wayward youth Avith a thousand ministering at- 

 tentions. It can hardly be doubted that, if the nursing of babies were 

 given OA^er to men for a generation or two, they would abandon the 

 task in despair or in disgust, and conclude it to be not worth while 

 that mankind should continue on earth. But " can a woman forget 

 her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of 

 her womb?" Those can hardly be in earnest who question that 

 woman's sex is represented in mind, and that the mental qualities 

 which spring from it qualify her especially to be the successful nurse 

 and educator of infants and young children. 



Furthermore, the female qualities of mind which correlate her 

 sexual character adapt her, as her sex does, to be the helpmate and 

 companion of man. It was an Eastern idea, which Plato has ex- 

 pressed allegorically, that a complete being had in primeval times 



