PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 451 
fail, and in failing must carry man with her to destruction, for she will 
inevitably cease to exercise her specific womanly functions with effect, so 
delicate is the adjustment of her mechanism. The evolution of the two 
sexes has been on different lines and different qualities have been developed 
in them; it is probable that the germinal differences are profound. And 
education cannot remove the difference; although education may condition 
functional disturbances, it must be powerless to modify the structure and 
mechanism. Man is in no way what he is to-day in virtue of the education 
he has received during a few generations past; the education of the race 
throughout time has been something entirely different from what is thought 
of now as education. ‘ Nature, the dear old nurse,’ not man, has done the 
work by a severe and drastic process of selection—by picking out men 
capable of doing men’s work and by picking out women capable of doing 
women’s work: she has constituted them helpmates and has had no thought 
of their being so silly as to wish to get in one another’s way ; this is a state 
brought on by an artificial, unsuitable system of education. 
The subject has been brought before the chemical world in England 
recently by the application of a number of women to be made Fellows of 
the Chemical Society. Many of us have resisted the application because 
we were unwilling to give any encouragement to the movement which is 
inevitably leading women to neglect their womanhood, which is in itself 
proof that they do not understand the relative capacities of the two sexes 
and the need there is of sharing the duties of life. If there be any truth in 
the doctrine of hereditary genius, the very women who have shown ability 
as chemists should be withdrawn from the temptation to become absorbed 
in the work, for fear of sacrificing their womanhood; they are those who 
should be regarded as chosen people, as destined to be the mothers of future 
chemists of ability. The argument is applicable generally; it is surely 
desirable in all cases of declared ability that the education of girls should 
be directed so as to produce not merely minimum disturbance of the woman’s 
attributes and charms but full understanding of the unique position of 
responsibility she occupies in the scheme of life. 
. Questions such as I have raised are of the utmost importance as bearing 
on educational policy. Our ideas cf education are in almost as inchoate a 
state as they were in 1885. We have been led, it is true, to recognise that 
our scheme of popular elementary education is a terrible failure, that its 
whole tendency has been to emasculate our population; yet at the very time 
that we are making this discovery we are beginning to force our higher 
education along lines which experience shows must be ineffective—along 
literary lines. I should be the last to deny that there is an undercurrent 
of improvement perceptible, but this is directed only by sporadic influences 
and is in no way favoured by most of those in authority. We are still 
suffering at the hands of those who have been our persecutors in the past— 
the clerics, who control most of the schools and whose outlook is almost as 
narrow as it ever was. The saving grace of science has in no way entered 
into their souls—how can it? The Universities make no attempt to secure 
their redemption. London of late years has even reversed the enlightened 
policy the University so long pursued and has allowed Latin to figure as 
alternative to science, not as the complement of science. 
Our Association seems to have little or no effect on the public conscience.. 
And the explanation is not far to seek. Our interests are too special ; we are 
all too much wrapped up in our own affairs; too inconsiderate to co-operate 
effectively. We forget or do not realise that ‘Something is wanting in 
science until it has been humanised’; we make no attempt to organise our 
forces and make good the claim we put forward to be the possessors of 
superior knowledge. A complete change of attitude on our part is required ; 
we need to play the part of propagandists. We are almost unknown as 
GG2 
