72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



impotent." And it was Wilhelm von Humboldt who wrote of "the 

 absolute and essential importance of. human development in its richest 

 diversity." If women are to develop humanly, they must not be arbi- 

 trarily cut off from the inspirations and the rewards that stimulate the 

 growth of human mind and character. 



A discussion of this general nature seemed necessary, because it was 

 felt that prejudice against remunerating women teachers equally with 

 men was mere prejudice based on a failure to grasp the wide bearing 

 of the forces at work in the natural and historic evolution of women. 

 We have still to consider the fact that there will always be some women 

 in the profession of teaching who no longer look forward to marriage, 

 though the terminus ad quern of this hope is nowadays very problemat- 

 ical, and who have no dependents whatever. This will be true, even 

 after women have become large factors in all the professions, in most 

 of which they already are represented, and after they have invented 

 some new ones. But their number will not be very much greater than 

 that of the single men in like circumstances unless women preponderate 

 immeasurably in the population. If there were an injustice in giving 

 them the full return for their labor, it would yet be less than the sum 

 total of injustice of the old system. Moreover, dare we not hope, with 

 the special penchant of women for charity and philanthropy, with the 

 noble roll of " old maids " who are milestones in the progress of civiliza- 

 tion, Frances Willard, Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Jane 

 Addams, that the surplus energy earned will go for the improvement of 

 society? Society needs the development of all its latent energies for 

 its own purification and advance. Who dares, unless he was present 

 when the foundations of the earth were laid, brand woman's energies as 

 inferior because proceeding from a woman, and say to her, "Hitherto 

 shalt thou come, but no further " ? 



