Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/836

798 man." Very well. I don't deny it, but how do you know it? How can you know it? There is but one law by which any sphere can be determined, and that is perfect liberty of development. I look into history and the society around me, and I see that the position of women which is most agreeable upon the whole to men is that which they call the "heaven-appointed sphere" of woman. It may or may not be so; all that I can see thus far is that men choose to have it so. A gentleman remarks that it is a beautiful ordinance of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines. And when I say, "Is it so?" he takes me into his garden, and shows me a poor, tortured pear-tree, trained upon a trellis. Then I see that it is the beautiful design of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines, precisely as Providence ordains that Chinese women shall have small feet; and that the powdered sugar we buy at the grocer's shall be half ground rice. These philosophers might as wisely inform us that Providence ordains Christian saints to be chops and steaks; and then point us to St. Lawrence upon his gridiron.

Has nature ordained that the lark shall rise fluttering and singing to the sun in the spring? But how should we ever know it, if he were prisoned in a cage with wires of gold never so delicate, or tied with a silken string however slight and soft? Is it the nature of flowers to open to the south wind? How could we know it but that, unconstrained by art, their winking eyes respond to that soft breath? In like manner, what determines the sphere of any morally responsible being, but perfect liberty of choice and liberty of development? Take those away, and you have taken away the possibility of determining the sphere. How do I know my sphere as a man, but by repelling everything that would arbitrarily restrict my choice? How can you know yours as women, but by obedience to the same law?

It is not the business of either sex to theorize about the sphere of the other. It is the duty of each to secure the liberty of both. Give women, for instance, every opportunity of education that men have. If there are some branches of knowledge improper for them to acquire—some which are in their nature unwomanly—they will know it a thousandfold better than men. And if, having opened the college, there be some woman in whom the love of learning extinguishes all other love, then the heaven-appointed sphere of that woman is not the nursery. It may be the laboratory, the library, the observatory; it may be the platform or the Senate. And if it be either of these, shall we say that education has unsphered and unsexed her? On the contrary, it has enabled that woman to ascertain so far exactly what God meant her to do.

The woman's rights movement is the simple claim, that the same opportunity and liberty that a man has in civilized society shall be extended to the woman who stands at his side—equal or unequal in special powers, but an equal member of society. She must prove her power as he proves his.

And so when Joan of Arc follows God and leads the army; when the Maid of Saragossa loads and fires the cannon; when Mrs. Stowe makes her pen the heaven-appealing tongue of an outraged race; when Grace Darling and Ida Lewis, pulling their boats through the pitiless waves, save fellow-creatures from drowning; when Mrs. Patten, the captain's wife, at sea—her husband lying helplessly ill in his cabin—puts everybody aside, and herself steers the ship to port, do you ask me whether these are not exceptional