Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/476

460 in the professions? This is the question I shall endeavor honestly to solve.

Mentally, I believe woman to be the peer of man; that there is nothing about law, medicine, or theology, that woman cannot learn as well as he; that her mental difference is a sexual difference, just as her bodily differences are sexual. To the question of her mental fitness for this work, other than sexual, I shall give no attention. The physical difference between the sexes will form the first part of our study of woman's future relation to the professions, and brings us naturally to the discussion of the law of anatomical development as modified by sex. In the July number of, in an article entitled the "Genesis of Woman," I endeavored to assign a proper value to the functional development of woman. In that paper, the anatomical development of woman was studied with reference to her functional genesis; but here it must be studied with reference to her fitness for competition with the opposite sex in the struggle for subsistence. Now, there are certain skilled labors which belong to man by virtue of his superior strength. The anatomical peculiarities of woman do not need to be contrasted with man's in reference to this class of labor, and women in the lower walks of life have demonstrated their ability for severe bodily toil. But the intellectual work—to which I am mainly directing my attention—to which women are reaching, implies that the candidates possess the delicate structural development, the inherited result of civilizing forces. We can draw no inference, therefore, from that fact that women, less exposed to these forces, and more nearly approximating man in physical strength, fully equal him in the value of their labor. If we examine some of the lighter and more delicate forms of skilled labor, such as we would naturally conclude were peculiarly fitted for the delicate and nice touch of women, we find them in the hands of men almost exclusively. The question of mental fitness must be excluded, for mentally they are as competent as man is to acquire and practise these arts. I think it can be shown that anatomical unfitness, aside from her inclination, is the obstacle. In the manufacture of instruments involving great delicacy, and, until the introduction of machinery, in the manufacture of watches, as a class women were excluded. While not involving any great muscular outlay, these samples of skilled labor demand great delicacy of educated touch. While we must make great allowances, as an anatomical factor, for the advantage to men so employed of the inheritance of mechanical taste and skill from fathers, oftentimes so employed for generations, yet it is a common error to suppose that employments which involve delicacy of manipulation do not require strength, as great in degree as, but differing in kind from, that demanded by more hardy labor. Educated, coördinate muscular movements depend more than any other upon strength and certainty of muscular contraction. In no particular, aside from sexual