156 nePront-—1368. 
absence of provision for women. But women are supposed to have equal needs 
with men only as regards the conditions of physical life. Their moral and intel- 
lectual necessities are imagined to be widely different. The conditions which men 
find most profitable for the development of their faculties, and the promotion of 
the highest enjoyment of which a moral and intellectual being is capable, they 
appear to regard as unsuitable or unnecessary for women, Among these conditions 
are—l, a liberal education; 2, political representation. When measures are under 
discussion for securing these advantages to the people at large, it invariably 
appears that the absence of provision for women proceeds, not on the ground that 
they are included as a matter of course, but from the absolute exclusion of one- 
half of humanity, as persons who have no part nor lot in the need for a liberal 
education, nor for political representation. This systematic and wilful neglect, 
and the legislative sanction given to it, has produced its natural fruit in the pre- 
valence of the belief that women are endowed with an inferior order of intellect, 
that they are incapable of being taught to the same extent as men, and that they 
are naturally unable to appreciate the enjoyment derived from the exercise of the 
hicher intellectual powers. It is a question of serious importance to determine 
how far this belief is a sound and scientific one. Is there, in truth, such a distinc- 
tion between the moral and mental constitution of the two sexes, that what is 
found to be beneficial to the one must be assumed to be prejudicial to the other ; 
that what a man likes and desires, a woman dislikes and deprecates ; that the mind of 
one is progressive, of the other non-progressive ; or, admitting that both are capa- 
ble of development, that then nature is so diverse as to require totally ditterent 
methods of promoting this development ? Because, if there is no such difference in 
fact, the feminine portion of the race, being debarred from opportunities enjoyed 
by others of cultivating their mental and moval faculties, must suffer serious de- 
privation and loss. The magnitude of the privation may be estimated by consi- 
dering the difference it would make to the men of England if there were neither 
public schools nor universities to stimulate their intellectual powers, no career or 
profession open to them wherein they could, by the exercise of these powers, 
achieve honourable distinction; if in all public movements the position assigned 
them was that of mere spectators, if their rights and duties as citizens consisted in 
obedience to the will of others, and if their wishes and opinions were never taken — 
into account in estimating the verdict of the people on questions of national im- 
portance. If men would feel the loss of these conditions of mental life to be an 
incalculable deprivation, it necessarily follows that withholding them from the 
feminine half of the people must cause equally grievous injury, unless it can be 
proved that there is a specific and ineradicable distinction between the minds of 
the two sexes, and that what is good for men is bad for women. Whether such a 
distinction exists seemed a proper subject of investigation by a scientific society ; 
therefore the following propositions were submitted to the judgment of the Sec- 
tion :—1. That the attribute of sex did not extend to mind; that there is no dis- 
tinction between the intellects of men and women corresponding to, and dependent 
on, the special organization of their bodies. 2. That any broad marks of distinc- 
tion which may at the present time be observed to exist between the minds of 
men and women collectively are fairly traceable to the influence of the different 
circumstances under which they pass their lives, and cannot be proved to inhere 
in each classin virtue of sex. 3. That in spite of the external circumstances which 
tend to cause divergence in the tone of mind, habits of thought, and opinions of 
men and women, it is a matter of fact that these do not differ more among persons 
of opposite sexes than they do among persons of the same; that on comparing 
individuals, or classes, of men with women, the difference between their mental 
characteristics will not be greater than may be found between two individuals or 
classes compared with others of the same sex. 
On the Moral and Pecuniary Results of Prison Labour. 
By Sir Joun Bowrine, LLS. 
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