SEX IN MIND AND IN EDUCATION. 213 



be right they should — to fail or succeed in every career upon which 

 men enter ; that all were conceded to them which their extremest ad- 

 vocates might claim for them ; do they imagine that, if they, being in 

 a majority, combined to pass laws which were unwelcome to men, the 

 latter would quietly submit ? Is it proposed that men should fight for 

 them in war, and that they, counting a majority of votes, should de- 

 termine upon war ? Or would they no longer claim a privilege of sex 

 in regard to the defense of the country by arms ? If all barriers of 

 distinction of sex raised by human agency were thrown down, as not 

 being warranted by the distinctions of sex which Nature has so plainly 

 marked, it may be presumed that the great majority of women would 

 continue to discharge the functions of maternity, and to have the men- 

 tal qualities Avhich correlate these functions ; and if laws were made 

 by them, and their male supporters of a feminine habit of mind, in the 

 interest of babies, as might happen, can it be supposed that, as the 

 world goes, there would not soon be a revolution in the state by men, 

 which would end in taking all power from women and reducing them 

 to a stern subjection ? Legislation would not be of much value unless 

 there were power behind to make it respected, and in such case laws 

 might be made without the power to enforce them, or for the very 

 purpose of coercing the power which could alone enforce them. 



So long as the differences of physical power and organization be- 

 tween men and women are what they are, it does not seem possible 

 that they should have the same type of mental development. But 

 while we see great reason to dissent from the opinions, and to distrust 

 the enthusiasm, of those who would set before women the same aims 

 as men, to be pursued by the same methods, it must be admitted that 

 they are entitled to have all the mental culture and all the free- 

 dom necessary to the fullest development of their natures. The aim 

 of female education should manifestly be the perfect development, not 

 of manhood but of womanhood, by the methods most conducive there- 

 to : so may women reach as high a grade of development as men, 

 though it be of a different type. A system of education which is 

 framed to fit them to be nothing more than the superintendents of a 

 household and the ornaments of a drawing-room, is one which does 

 not do justice to their nature, and cannot be seriously defended. As- 

 suredly those of them who have not the opportunity of getting mar- 

 ried suffer not a little, in mind and body, from a method of education 

 which tends to develop the emotional at the expense of the intellectual 

 nature, and by their exclusion from appropriate fields of practical 

 activity. It by no means follows, however, that it would be right to 

 model an improved system exactly upon that which has commended 

 itself as the best for men. Inasmuch as the majority of women will 

 continue to get married and to discharge the functions of mothers, the 

 education of girls certainly ought not to be such as would in any way 

 clash with their organization, injure their health, and unfit them for 



