Page:The Higher Education of Women.djvu/173

 delicacy of the female mind, ought, in consistency, to carry their precautions a little farther. The atmosphere of a hothouse, judiciously darkened, abstinence from exercise, and a vegetarian diet would have an evident tendency to produce a sickly delicacy of complexion, to give languor to the limbs, and feebleness to the voice, and in every way to make girls much more unlike their brothers than they were by nature. And if this is the object of education, the appropriate means ought to be used.

In the meantime, a great part of the difficulties which beset every question concerning women would be at once removed by a frank recognition of the fact, that there is between the sexes a deep