Page:Women of distinction.djvu/451

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.
369

Will you give them this higher education, and thereby open doors to congenial and paying pursuits; or will you frown them down, and tempt to'dishonor by refusing the means of self-support?. "Quoting Plato again: "Neither a woman as a woman nor a man as a man has any special function, but the gifts of nature are equally diffused in both sexes; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also."; While I do not agree with the ancient sage in his comprehensive statement I do believe that if a woman has a gift for a particular calling and she is not debarred from that calling by the natural barrier of sex, it is both presumptions and unjust for man to attempt to restrain her, on the plea that the work for which nature has evidently designed her is unfeminine. Even men with wise and statesman-like views upon other subjects turn fanatics upon this. They would not have a woman lecture, because it would make her too public; as if publicity could harm one whose only desire is to do good work in a good cause. Nor would they have her a physician, because she must study "indelicate" subjects; as if to a pure-minded person the contemplation of the workmanship of these bodies, wondrously and divinely wrought, could be indelicate.

Woman is for a helpmeet unto man. She is meant to be his assistant in every good work and his companion in the fullest sense of the word. Properly to sustain this relation she must needs have equal educational advantages. There can be no perfect companionship between two people one of whom is by far the intellectual supe-