WOMEN MEDICAL STUDENTS 121 



finally recognized as the end of government, and the complete 

 responsibility of governors to the people as its means ; and that 

 the dependence of natural phenomena in general on the laws of 

 action of what we call matter has become an axiom." 



The British Association was held at Belfast this year, 

 and on August 24 Huxley delivered an address " On the 

 Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History" 

 (Coll. Essays, i, p. 199). This demonstrates that the 

 foundations of neuro-physiology were laid down by 

 Descartes, though the position that brutes are unconscious 

 machines is discarded as untenable. It is worth noting 

 that in this essay Huxley categorically denies the charges 

 of fatalism, materialism, and atheism, made at various times 

 against himself. 



The views upon women's medical education, alluded 

 to in connection with Miss Jex Blake's letter of the 

 previous year, were further elaborated and expressed in 

 1874. This lady had failed in the Edinburgh examina- 

 tions, and Huxley pronounced adversely upon her papers 

 when these were referred to him for report. The follow- 

 ing extract from the Times for July 8, 1 874, clearly 

 explains his position : — 



" As Miss Jex Blake may possibly think that my decision 

 was influenced by prejudice against her cause, allow me to add 

 that such prejudice as I labour under lies in the opposite direction. 

 Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the 

 average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, 

 I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much 

 better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am 

 at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public 

 policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish 

 of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of capacity. 



" We have heard a great deal lately about the physical dis- 

 abilities of women. Some of these alleged impediments, no 

 doubt, are really inherent in their organization, but nine-tenths 

 of them are artificial — the products of their modes of life. I 



