Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/621

Rh their logic to the bitter end, they admit that, under existing conditions, and probably for long periods yet to come, the women who assume motherhood as their vocation must be prepared to renounce, more or less completely, their chance for intellectual development.

To this point our argument, on the evening of which I speak, went smoothly enough. Little or no exception was taken to Mr. Allen's position. So long as he made himself only an exponent of natural laws, and of their inevitable effect upon the social fabric, there were no dissentient voices. But there came a moment when the qnestion must be put point blank, and it was then that, for the first time, we, so to speak, came down to business.

"Now," I said, from my vantage-ground of neutrality, "you have cleared the decks. No social philosopher can demand more hearty agreement with the principles of his science than you have given; no man could desire more generous acknowledgment of man's place in creation, or of the fundamental relations of the sexes, than you offer; but the main issue is still untouched. Tell me why you, as representative individuals, have not married, do not marry, and are endeavoring, so far as educational methods can do it, to perpetuate your type?"

Masculine critics will possibly here suggest that a truthful answer to the first of these questions was far and away beyond my reach; but the women to whom I was speaking were fully in earnest, and there were no evasions.

"In the first place," said a clever woman beside me, "while we deny that our education unsexes us, we are conscious that it gives us a self-control, a balance, which is of inestimable advantage to us in the practical affairs of life, and induces us to consider marriage from more than one point of view. In the past, it is the emotional nature of women which has been cultivated, often at a heavy cost. Now, her intellect is taking charge, and we believe that there is no longer any reason why, as a rule, we should be sacrificed to our own emotions. Is it not, on the whole, desirable that women should study facts and weigh reasons as men do? You may say that it is the emotional virtues which are distinctively feminine, and that, as Mr. Allen says, 'a woman's glory is to be womanly, as a man's is to be virile&#39;; but can it be shown that the training of her intellect makes a woman any less capable of love and devotion? Does it make her any less willing to sacrifice herself for the good of others? I think, on the contrary, that there is abundant witness to the fact that the increase of a woman's intellectual power usually intensifies her susceptibility to high motives, from whatever source they may reach her, or through whatever channel they may come. But, certainly, she is no longer a passive recipient;