Page:The Higher Education of Women.djvu/183

 general conditions of soil and atmosphere are good for both, but you make no attempt to influence variations of colour or of perfume; so the Christian theory of education implies an essential resemblance between the sexes, without interfering in any way with native differences. If, indeed, you adopt the analogy, not without a certain fanciful charm, according to which men are trees and women flowers, the separate system is right. You do wisely to plant the oak in the forest, and to shelter the delicate geranium in the hothouse. But this view implies that men and women are of a different genus, which no one in his senses would maintain. The popular simile of the oak and the ivy is equally