Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/225

Rh be right they should—to fail or succeed in every career upon which men enter; that all were conceded to them which their extremest advocates might claim for them; do they imagine that, if they, being in a majority, combined to pass laws which were unwelcome to men, the latter would quietly submit? Is it proposed that men should fight for them in war, and that they, counting a majority of votes, should determine upon war? Or would they no longer claim a privilege of sex in regard to the defense of the country by arms? If all barriers of distinction of sex raised by human agency were thrown down, as not being warranted by the distinctions of sex which Nature has so plainly marked, it may be presumed that the great majority of women would continue to discharge the functions of maternity, and to have the mental qualities which correlate these functions; and if laws were made by them, and their male supporters of a feminine habit of mind, in the interest of babies, as might happen, can it be supposed that, as the world goes, there would not soon be a revolution in the state by men, which would end in taking all power from women and reducing them to a stern subjection? Legislation would not be of much value unless there were power behind to make it respected, and in such case laws might be made without the power to enforce them, or for the very purpose of coercing the power which could alone enforce them.

So long as the differences of physical power and organization between men and women are what they are, it does not seem possible that they should have the same type of mental development. But while we see great reason to dissent from the opinions, and to distrust the enthusiasm, of those who would set before women the same aims as men, to be pursued by the same methods, it must be admitted that they are entitled to have all the mental culture and all the freedom necessary to the fullest development of their natures. The aim of female education should manifestly be the perfect development, not of manhood but of womanhood, by the methods most conducive thereto: so may women reach as high a grade of development as men, though it be of a different type. A system of education which is framed to fit them to be nothing more than the superintendents of a household and the ornaments of a drawing-room, is one which does not do justice to their nature, and cannot be seriously defended. Assuredly those of them who have not the opportunity of getting married suffer not a little, in mind and body, from a method of education which tends to develop the emotional at the expense of the intellectual nature, and by their exclusion from appropriate fields of practical activity. It by no means follows, however, that it would be right to model an improved system exactly upon that which has commended itself as the best for men. Inasmuch as the majority of women will continue to get married and to discharge the functions of mothers, the education of girls certainly ought not to be such as would in any way clash with their organization, injure their health, and unfit them for