434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing Greek and Latin verses. That the comparative absence of works 

 of creative genius among women is due entirely to the social tyranny 

 which has excluded, or is supposed to have excluded, them from lit- 

 erary and scientific careers, cannot be said to be self-evident. The 

 case of music, often cited, seems to suggest that there is another 

 cause, and that the career of intellectual ambition is in most cases not 

 likely to be happier than that of domestic affection, though this is no 

 reason why the experiment should not be fairly tried. Perhaps the 

 intellectual disabilities under which women have labored, even in the 

 past, have been somewhat exaggerated. If Shelley was a child to 

 Mrs. Mill, as Mr. Mill says, no " social disabilities " hindered Mrs. Mill 

 from publishing poems which would have eclipsed Shelley. The writer 

 once heard an American lecturer of great eminence confidently as- 

 cribe the licentiousness of English fiction in the early part of the last 

 century to the exclusion of women from literary life. The lecturer 

 forgot that the most popular novelist of that period, and certainly 

 not the least licentious, was Mrs. Aphra Behn. And this lady's name 

 suggests the remark that as the relations of the sexes have been the 

 most intimate conceivable, the action of character has been reciprocal, 

 and the level of moral ideas and sentiments for both pretty much the 

 same. 



Mr. Mill, seeing that the man is the stronger, seems to assume that 

 the relations between man and woman must always have been regu- 

 lated simply by the law of the strongest. But strength is not tyranny. 

 The protector must always be stronger than the person under his pro- 

 tection. A mother is overwhelmingly superior in strength to her in- 

 fant child, and the child is completely at her merey. The very high- 

 est conception that humanity has ever formed, whether it be founded 

 in reality or not, is that of power losing itself in affection. This may 

 be said without lapsing into what has been called the religion of inhu- 

 manity. St. Paul (who on any hypothesis is an authoritative expositor 

 of the morality which became that of Christendom) preaches frater- 

 nity plainly and even passionately enough. He affirms with the utmost 

 breadth the essential equality of the sexes, and their necessary rela- 

 tions to each other as the two halves of humanity. Yet he no less dis- 

 tinctly ratifies the unity of the family, the authority of its head, and 

 the female need of personal government ; a need which, when it is 

 natural, has nothing in it more degrading than the need of protection. 



The " Revolt of Woman " is the name given to the movement by 

 a female writer in America, who, by-the-way, claims, in virtue of." su- 

 perior complexity of organization," not only political equality, but 

 absolute supremacy over man. But, in this revolt, to what do the 

 insurgents appeal? To their own strength, or to the justice and affec- 

 tion of man? 



The main factors of the relation between the sexes have hitherto 

 been, and probably still are, natural affection — the man's need of a 



