Education. 291 



is it not perfectly natural, on the same principle, 

 that there should be sexual peculiarities? Nor is 

 there any necessity for supposing a radical inferio- 

 rity of intellectual power in females. It will be 

 readily granted, that with the same kind, and the 

 same degree of cultivation with men, they would 

 exhibit equal capacity of mind. But the necessary 

 reserve ot the female sex, their domestic duties, 

 their sedentary life, the infirmities and confinement 

 resulting from the peculiar sexual offices before al- 

 luded to, and the various peculiarities of their situ- 

 ation, are abundantly sufficient to produce in them 

 a different genius and character of mind from those 

 of men, whose active employments, daring enter- 

 prizes, aspiring ambition, diversified scenes and 

 occupations, familiarity with danger, and unceas- 

 ing labours to gain fame, wealth, or pleasure, im- 

 part to their minds a vigour, a courage, a solidity, 

 a wariness, and a persevering patience in exer- 

 tion, which are rarely found in women." 



n Miss Hannah More, in one of her Essays, seems to admit the idea of 

 an original inferiority of mental character in females. She expresses herself 

 in this manner: " Women have generally quicker perceptions; men have 

 juster sentiments. Women consider how things may be prettily said ; men, 

 how they may be properly said. Women speak, to shine or please ; men, to 

 convince, or confute. Women admire what is brilliant; men, what if 

 solid. Women prefer a sparkling effusion of fancy to the most laborious 

 investigation of facts. In literary composition, women are pleased with 

 antithesis ; men, with observation and a just deduction of effects from their 

 causes. In Romance and Novel-writing women cannot be excelled. To 

 amuse, rather than to instruct, or to instruct indirectly, by short infer- 

 ences drawn from a long concatenation of circumstances, is, at once, the 

 business of this sort of composition, and one of the characteristics of female 

 genius. In short, it appears, that the mind, in each sex, has some natural 

 kind of bias, which constitutes a distinction of character ; and that the 

 happiness of both depends, in a great measure, on the preservation and ob- 

 servance of this distinction." Essay, p. 9 — 13. In the sentiment here 

 expressed I cannot altogether agree with this excellent and illustrious woman. 

 That there is some such difference as she has stated between the sexes, I 

 am ready to allow ; but this appears to me to arise not so much from any 

 original inferiority in the structure of the female mind, as from a difference 

 of education and employment; from a difference in the circumstances in 

 which women are placed in society, with respect to inducements to action, 

 the nature of their amusements, &c. a difference which is necessary and 

 proper, and which, to set aside, would be to derange the order ? and destroy 

 the happiness of society. 



