greater boon either to the aspirants themselves or to the nation than it has been in the factory and the workshop? A friend, of original habits of thought, points out[1] that upon man alone was laid the penalty of labor as upon woman the sorrow of child-bearing. This is in fact the very same lesson, clothed in theological language, which we learn from biology. Among the lower animals, who, as compared with man, may be called the proletariate[2] of creation, both sexes indeed seem merely or mainly to exist in order to perpetuate their species. Still, even here, the female is more exclusively constructed for, and more totally absorbed in, the task of reproduction than the male. The share of the latter in this function is, strictly speaking, momentary, while during the stage of maturity the energies of the normal female are more or less completely devoted to the nurture, intra-and extrauterine, of her offspring. Even when she never becomes a mother the generative system exercises a modifying influence upon her whole career. This consideration throws a strong light upon the ground taken by certain of the more "advanced" female advocates of the movement. The femme libre (free woman) of the new social order may, indeed, escape the charge of neglecting her family and her household by contending that it is "not her vocation to become a wife and a mother." Why then, we ask, is she constituted a woman at all? Merely that she should become a sort of second-rate man? We have already declared, and we repeat, that we wish a free career for every talent. If an abnormal woman possesses a man's muscular strength and adaptation for toil, we would not, either by law or by social influences, seek to debar her from working at the oar, or the forge, or even from wielding the policeman's truncheon or the soldier's rifle. But we would not calculate on such anomalies; we would not legislate for their special protection, or seek to increase their number. In a manner perfectly analogous, if a woman possesses the taste and the power for scientific research usually confined to men—and far from common even among them—we would not wish to restrain her from the cultivation of her peculiar faculties; but we would not foster the growth of such a class of females. We would not seek to entice women into the observatory, the laboratory, or, above all, into the dissecting-room, nor erect colleges for the training of savantes, any more than we would organize female regiments and open institutions where muscular young ladies might perfect themselves in the management of heavy artillery.
It is generally—too generally—assumed that every novelty, every change from what has hitherto been customary and recognized, commends itself, on the mere ground of its novelty, to men of science, as, indeed, to all unfettered inquirers, and will be resisted merely by those
