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consequences of unchastity in the two sexes. physical difference is the counterpart of it. Το enlarge upon what is so abundantly manifest is not necessary. Nor would it serve any useful purpose to point the moral taught by the distinctive characteristics of the female organism. Nothing is easier than to close the eyes of the understanding. Nothing is harder than to induce the voluntarily blind to come out of "their own private darkness." Argument is thrown away upon strongminded ladies who refuse to read the most obvious lessons of their own corporal constitution. It is precisely because "Nature's own sweet and cunning hand" has framed woman as it has, that marriage is a much graver matter to her than to man. A young girl sacrifices to her husband her maidenly modesty, her physical purity. Matrimony is the union of two distinct personalities, and is fraught with momentous consequences to both: but to the woman they are far more momentous. "Elle met dans l'association une mise disproportionée, énorme, en comparaison de ceile de l'homme. Elle s'y met toute et sans retour. La plus simple comprend bien que tout changement est contre elle: qu'en changeant elle baisse très vite que du premier homme au second elle perd déjà cent pour cent. Et qu'est ce donc au troisième? que sera-ce au dixième ? hélas !" * So Michelet, with equal

*L'Amour, p. 32.

VI.]

FEMININE EDUCATION.

179

beauty and truth. IIence it is, that an utterly indissoluble union, a "consortium omnis vitæ," is the only true guarantee of woman's wifely dignity, and the first of her rights. The most flagrant wrong inflicted upon her in England, during the present century, is the establishment of the Divorce Court.

It remains to speak of the co-education of the two sexes, so loudly demanded by the advocates of Woman's Rights, from Miss Wollstonecraft's days to our own. I say, then, that the best education for woman is that which best fits her intellectually and physically for her work in the world. Is such to be found in co-education with man? It appears to me on the contrary, that in woman's education, distinctive womanhood should ever be kept in view. There is a profound saying of Hegel that the difference between man and woman is something like that between an animal and a plant: "Woman is quietly unfolded." And I cannot doubt that this unfolding takes place best in the calm atmosphere of the home, or of a religious house. Lord Tennyson, in a line no less beautiful than hackneyed, speaks of woman's mission as being to

"set herself to man

As noble music unto noble words."

Woman is the perpetual priestess of the ideal. And

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those studies are best for her girlhood that best fit her for this function; at once educing and disciplining the emotional, the poetic element which is the foundation of her sexual character. I do not know who has written on this theme with more practical wisdom, or greater delicacy of feeling, than Fénelon in his book, L'Éducation des Filles, that treasure of wisdom and knowledge, in every line of which is reflected the beautiful soul of the writer; the noblest treatise on the subject, as I judge, ever given to the world. I do not say that after the lapse of a century and a half it is wholly sufficient for actual guidance. But its main principle is as true now as it was then: that woman's work should be done in woman's way, and that her educational training should be womanly, not manly.

And there is another side to this subject, a physiological side, which we cannot neglect under penalties. If we are to speak of it to any purpose, we must speak plainly. And that I shall take leave to do. Now assuredly, not the least important of Woman's Rights is that her physical development should not be marred; that her qualification for maternity should, as far as possible, be assured. How does co-education affect this right? Here we are not left to the guidance of speculation or conjecture. In the United States of America the experiment of co-education, which means in prac

VI.]

THE PROTEST OF PHYSIOLOGY.

181

tice, and cannot well keep from meaning, identical education, has been tried on a large scale; and there is a very strong consensus of medical testimony as to its disastrous results. There can be' no doubt that it is the fruitful source of a too well known class of uterine diseases, and of their inevitable concomitants, hysteria, anemia, neuralgia. From a great cloud of witnesses who might be adduced to this effect, I will select one, Dr. Clarke, of Boston, who in his striking work, Sex in Education, brands the American system as "a crime before God and humanity that physiology protests against, and that science weeps over." "The growth of the peculiar and marvellous apparatus," this very competent authority observes, "in the perfect development of which humanity has so large an interest, occurs during the first few years of a girl's educational life. No such extraordinary task, calling for such rapid expenditure of force, building up such delicate and extensive mechanism within the organism-a house within a house, an engine within an engine is imposed upon the male physique at the same epoch. . . . . The importance of having our methods of female education recognize this peculiar demand for growth, and of adjusting themselves to it . . . . cannot be overestimated. . . . . There have been instances, and I have seen such, of females in whom the special mechanism I am speaking of remained germinal,

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undeveloped. It seemed to have aborted. They graduated from college or school excellent scholars, but with . . . . only a portion of a breast or ovary, or none at all." It may be hoped that

Elu mischief of this gravity is not the normal result

of educating women as men.

is, of course, impossible to obtain statistics. But, so far as I can learn, the experience regarding it of our leading English physicians is at one with that of their American brethren. I am satisfied that the instances are rare in which the acquisition by woman of certain virile faculties, through participating in virile education, is not purchased by the impairment of her feminine attributes, physical as well as psychical.

I take leave, then, to hold that the things so loudly demanded as Woman's Rights would really be found to be Woman's Wrongs. The acquisition of them would tend seriously to injure her sexual character, would vastly harm distinctive womanhood. Dr. Maudsley has summed the matter up in a few weighty words. "While woman preserves her sex, she will necessarily be feebler than man, and having her special bodily and mental characteristics, will have, to a certain extent, her own sphere of activity. When she has become thoroughly masculine in nature, and hermaphrodite in mind-when, in fact, she has pretty well divested herself of her sex-then she may take his ground and do his work; but she will have lost

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