Sex in Education | Page 2

solely from the standpoint of physiology. Technical terms have
been employed, only where their use is more exact or less offensive
than common ones.
If the publication of this brief memoir does nothing more than excite
discussion and stimulate investigation with regard to a matter of such
vital moment to the nation as the relation of sex to education, the author
will be amply repaid for the time and labor of its preparation. No one
can appreciate more than he its imperfections. Notwithstanding these,
he hopes a little good may be extracted from it, and so commends it to
the consideration of all who desire the best education of the sexes.
BOSTON, 18 ARLINGTON STREET, October, 1873.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
The demand for a second edition of this book in little more than a week
after the publication of the first, indicates the interest which the public
take in the relation of Sex to Education, and justifies the author in
appealing to physiology and pathology for light upon the vexed
question of the appropriate education of girls. Excepting a few verbal
alterations, and the correction of a few typographical errors, there is no
difference between this edition and the first. The author would have
been glad to add to this edition a section upon the relation of sex to
women's work in life, after their technical education is completed, but
has not had time to do so.
BOSTON, 18 ARLINGTON STREET, Nov. 8, 1873.

NOTE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.
The attention of the reader is called to the definition of "education" on
the twentieth page. It is there stated, that, throughout this essay,
education is not used in the limited sense of mental or intellectual
training alone, but as comprehending the whole manner of life, physical
and psychical, during the educational period; that is, following
Worcester's comprehensive definition, as comprehending instruction,
discipline, manners, and habits. This, of course, includes home-life and
social life, as well as school-life; balls and parties, as well as books and
recitations; walking and riding, as much as studying and sewing. When
a remission or intermission is necessary, the parent must decide what
part of education shall be remitted or omitted,--the walk, the ball, the
school, the party, or all of these. None can doubt which will interfere
most with Nature's laws,--four hours' dancing, or four hours' studying.
These remarks may be unnecessary. They are made because some who
have noticed this essay have spoken of it as if it treated only of the
school, and seem to have forgotten the just and comprehensive
signification in which education is used throughout this memoir.
Moreover, it may be well to remind the reader, even at the risk of
casting a reflection upon his intelligence, that, in these pages, the
relation of sex to mature life is not discussed, except in a few passages,
in which the large capacities and great power of woman are alluded to,
provided the epoch of development is physiologically guided.

SEX IN EDUCATION.

PART I.
INTRODUCTORY.
"Is there any thing better in a State than that both women and men be
rendered the very best? There is not."--PLATO.

It is idle to say that what is right for man is wrong for woman. Pure
reason, abstract right and wrong, have nothing to do with sex: they
neither recognize nor know it. They teach that what is right or wrong
for man is equally right and wrong for woman. Both sexes are bound
by the same code of morals; both are amenable to the same divine law.
Both have a right to do the best they can; or, to speak more justly, both
should feel the duty, and have the opportunity, to do their best. Each
must justify its existence by becoming a complete development of
manhood and womanhood; and each should refuse whatever limits or
dwarfs that development.
The problem of woman's sphere, to use the modern phrase, is not to be
solved by applying to it abstract principles of right and wrong. Its
solution must be obtained from physiology, not from ethics or
metaphysics. The question must be submitted to Agassiz and Huxley,
not to Kant or Calvin, to Church or Pope. Without denying the
self-evident proposition, that whatever a woman can do, she has a right
to do, the question at once arises, What can she do? And this includes
the further question, What can she best do? A girl can hold a plough,
and ply a needle, after a fashion. If she can do both better than a man,
she ought to be both farmer and seamstress; but if, on the whole, her
husband can hold best the plough, and she ply best the needle, they
should divide the labor. He should be master of the plough, and