Weighty opinions set forth by a great woman of letters, for whom the time has come to put an end to this quarrel over which too much time has passed.
When we say that this work or that is peculiar to woman, appointed to her by nature, we mean that it accords with femininity — not that proof has endorsed it or conviction consecrated it.
The ancients opposed the education of woman, that she might devote her care to household management, on the claim that this was her place and that no other befitted her. That was because they did not know that the home has many sides, and that a woman, if she is to shoulder its burdens well, must cultivate her learning; and that from an intelligent, educated mother there comes to her offspring a benefit surpassing the profit derived from the service of an ignorant, dull one.
Those who say that women of high culture ought to turn away from marriage and motherhood are like those who preach monasticism: they would deprive the home of the class of good and noble mothers — notwithstanding what has been famed of the nuns'
works of mercy and humanity generation after generation, and notwithstanding that among the nuns are found the finest types of women in health, beauty, and mind, women whose taking of the veil has brought upon their nation a loss equal in measure to the loss arising from educated spinsters.
In the present age, economic conditions have compelled women to compete with men in the fields of their labors, where they expend a heavy effort, and some of them work from the age of adolescence onward.
Alongside this effort they show the influence of climate, environment, upbringing, instruction, exercise, habits, and so forth.
Space here does not allow the transcription of all these researches concerning the characteristics that have been modified or changed by changing environment, kinds of nourishment, methods of upbringing, styles of instruction, and the branches of learning.
It used to be said that women were weaker than men in the manual crafts — until a certain young lady carried off the honors at typewriting.
The power of the mind is, to a great extent, the product of society's influence upon the two sexes. It has been said that mind and personality are formed by virtue of external influences. The most widespread view today goes back to the opinion that the mental difference between the sexes is owing to the opportunities that allowed one of them greater growth. Mental differences, then,
are partly natural and partly acquired over the course of the ages.
Man had to fight whenever matters called for war, and woman to raise the children. Man had to hunt and to discover lands and regions, and woman to keep to her house to watch over the little ones. Man had to plow the billows of the seas, and woman to sell and buy, to plant, to spin, and to make whatever she was obliged to make. The marks of these differences still stand, bearing witness to the character of the labors each of the two sexes has pursued.
This time I take up the mental differences at which the biologists have arrived, together with the observations other men of science have made upon them and their criticisms of them, leaving the inquiry into "Woman and Invention" to another occasion.
These scholars say that women, on the whole, have proved their strong appetite for memorization, and that they are more capable of it than male students; that the time in which they gather up the thoughts and opinions presented to them is shorter than what boys require; and that the boys have surpassed them in speed and precision of observation.
In all these theories there is an indication that mental capacity is not limited, and that we cannot distinguish between the sexes in it; and that it is not wise to build an opinion or pronounce a judgment upon such experiments and theories, however much caution has surrounded them or