172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and superior teachers, but female orators, female politicians, and 

 female censors all round — women who claim for themselves the lead- 

 ership of life on the ground of a superior morality and clearer insight 

 than have men. In dealing with the woman question, we can never 

 forget the prominent characteristics of the sex — their moral vanity, 

 coupled with their love of domination. The great mass of women 

 think tbey know better than they can be taught ; and on all moral 

 questions claim the highest direction and the noblest spiritual enlight- 

 enment. Judging from sentiment and feeling, they refuse the testi- 

 mony of facts ; the logic of history has no lesson for them, nor has 

 any unwelcome science its rights or its truths. They are Anglo-Israel- 

 ites, but not the products of evolution ; and ghosts are real where 

 germs are imaginary. This sentiment, this feeling, is like some other 

 things, a good servant but a bad master. When backed by religious 

 faith it stops at no superstition ; when backed by moral conviction, it 

 is a tyranny under which the free energies of life are rendered impos- 

 sible ; when backed by a little knowledge, it assumes infallibility. 

 Scarcely a week passes without some letter in the papers, wherein an 

 imperfectly educated woman attacks a master in his profession, on the 

 ground of her sentiment as superior to his facts — her spiritual enlight- 

 enment the Aaron's rod which swallows up his inferior little serpents of 

 scientific truths. This restless desire to shoot with all bows — Ulysses', 

 Nestor's, whose one will — may be, and probably is, the first efferves- 

 cence of a ferment which will work itself clear by time and use. It is 

 to be hoped so ; for the pretensions to supremacy, by reason of their 

 superiority, of women in these later times is not one of the most satis- 

 factory results of the emancipation movement. And they can not be 

 too often reminded that the higher education, with all that this in- 

 cludes, is not meant to supersede their beautiful qualities, but only to 

 strengthen their weak intellectual places and supply their mental de- 

 ficiencies. 



It would not be for the good of the world were the sentiment and 

 tenderness of women to be lost in their philosophic calmness. But 

 as little is it for the advantage of society when that sentiment rules 

 rather than influences, shapes rather than modifies. That old adage 

 about two riding on horseback together, when one must ride behind, 

 is getting a new illustration. Hitherto the man was in front. It 

 was thought that he was the better fitted to both discern the dangers 

 ahead and receive the first brunt of such blows as might be about, 

 while the woman crouched behind the shield of his broad body ; and 

 in return for that protection left the reins in his hands and did not 

 meddle with the whip — or if she did, then was she censured while he 

 was ridiculed. Now, things are changing ; and on all sides women are 

 seeking to dispossess the men of their places to take them for them- 

 selves. In the home and out of the home woman's main desire is for 

 recognized leadership, so that man shall live by their rule. The bed 



