SEX 
 
 AND 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 TO 
 
 DR. E. H. CLARKE'S "SEX IN 
 
 EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, 
 
 BY MRS. JULIA WARD. HOWE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 1874. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, 
 
 office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 7/ fr 2..T 
 
 Cambridge: 
 Press of John Wilson and Son. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 ART. 
 
 I. JULIA WARD HOWE 13 
 
 II. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. (From the 
 
 "Woman's Journal," Nov. 8 and 15, 1873.) . 32 
 
 III. MRS. HORACE MANN 52 
 
 IV. ADA SHEPARD BADGER 72 
 
 V. CAROLINE H. DALL 87 
 
 VI. BY C 109 
 
 VII. ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 126 
 
 VIII. FROM "BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER" .... 139 
 
 IX. MERCY B. JACKSON 150 
 
 X. PROFESSOR BASCOM 164 
 
 XI. ABBY W. MAY 170 
 
 XII. MARIA A. ELMORE ....'. 174 
 
 XIII. A. C. GARLAND. (From " Providence Journal.") 183 
 
 TESTIMONY FROM COLLEGES 191 
 
 Vassar College 191 
 
 Antioch College 196 
 
 Michigan University . . . . 199 
 
 Lombard University 201 
 
 Oberlin College 202 
 

 
 - T HK ' 
 
 XTtfivi 
 
 INTRODUCT 
 
 I DO not know that I can better introduce 
 this volume than by saying that it contains 
 the views of a number of thoughtful persons, 
 chiefly women, upon the matters treated of 
 in Dr. EDWARD H. CLARKE'S work entitled 
 44 Sex in Education," and upon the book 
 itself. Nearly all the papers here presented 
 were contributed to various publications soon 
 after the appearance of that book ; several 
 of them have been revised by their authors. 
 Each is an independent expression of opin- 
 ion, modified by no plan or intention of 
 subsequent combination. The general agree- 
 ment in their tenor, and the permission 
 to republish them at this time and in this 
 form, afford the only ground upon which 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the Editor can assume to speak for their 
 authors. Her "we" therefore must be 
 taken with this limitation. 
 
 Most of the writers are experienced in 
 the office of tuition, and in the observa- 
 tion of its effects. All of them have 
 had occasion to form their own theories 
 of what is desirable for the improvement 
 of the condition of women. The facts 
 and experience of their lives have led 
 them far from Dr. Clarke's conclusions. 
 To most of them, his book seems to have 
 found a chance at the girls, rather than a 
 chance for them. All could wish that he 
 had not played his sex-symphony so harshly, 
 so loudly, or in so public a manner. But 
 since he has awakened public attention with 
 his discovered discord, all would gladly com- 
 bine in reassuring mankind of the compati- 
 bility of its foremost interests. Dr. Clarke's 
 discord exists not in nature, but in his own 
 thought. An appeal to the great laws of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 harmony will be sure to solve it, and set it 
 out of sight 
 
 Most of us feel compelled to characterize 
 this book in one aspect as an intrusion into 
 the sacred domain of womanly privacy. No 
 woman could publish facts and speculations 
 concerning the special physical economy of 
 the other sex, on so free and careless a plane, 
 without incurring the gravest rebuke for 
 insolence and immodesty. And yet it is 
 important that mothers should know enough 
 of these to guide and influence their sons 
 in the right direction. But no man could 
 endure the thought of having the physical 
 functions peculiar to his sex so unveiled 
 before the common sight of society, so sug- 
 gested to and imposed upon its common 
 talk. However, then, people may differ 
 concerning the coarseness or refinement of 
 the book, all must, we think, agree that its 
 method violates the Christian rule of doing 
 to others exactly as we would have them do 
 to us. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Despite Dr. Clarke's prominent position 
 in this community, we do not feel compelled 
 to regard him as the supreme authority on 
 the subjects of which he treats. .'The ob- 
 ject, then, of our publication is twofold. 
 First and foremost we wish to put in a solid 
 and tangible form the impression which his 
 book makes upon men and women to whom 
 the interests of Woman and of Humanity 
 have long been the theme of careful study 
 and anxious thought. And in the second 
 place we desire to appeal to the wisdom 
 and chivalry of the two professions on whose 
 blended domain the book imposes its forced 
 and absolute conclusions. 
 
 To those most eminent in physics and 
 in sociology we would say : " Take the so- 
 cial mixture of to-day, with its antecedents 
 and concomitants. Analyze it fairly and 
 thoroughly; and then tell us if the over- 
 education of women is its most poisonous 
 ingredient." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 To the high courts of education we 
 would say : " Remodel carefully your laws 
 and ordinances. The mischiefs arising 
 from the .'separation of the sexes during 
 the period of education are such as to 
 make their co-education imperative. Youth 
 cannot be driven and overworked in one 
 sex with more impunity than in the other. 
 Boys as well as girls break down under 
 severe study, men as well as women, and 
 at least as often. Let a milder and more 
 humane regime be devised and enforced. 
 No one loses health through the lessons 
 of wisdom wisely explained. It is the hur- 
 ried, undigested (also indigestible) tuition 
 which nauseates and fatigues. Let the 
 community be careful not only of what is 
 taught, but of how it is taught. And 
 above all, in view of the good of society, 
 let not man and woman, who are to be part- 
 ners in all the earnest tasks of life, come 
 forth from a separate and unequal disci- 
 
I0 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 pline, to meet as strangers in their fiery 
 youth. What knowledge of character, what 
 insight into sympathy and compatibility, 
 may we not hope to find among young 
 people who have met in the august pres- 
 ence of wisdom and science; who have 
 assisted each other, not in the mazes of a 
 bewildering dance, but in noble operations 
 of intellect, in unravelling the problems of 
 the ages r in building the structure of the 
 social world ! " 
 
 And to parents may we not say : Do not 
 longer feel obliged to surrender your daugh- 
 ters, in the very bloom of their youthful 
 powers, to the unintelligent dominion of 
 Fashion. You subject them to the extrava- 
 gant, immodest rules of display; you ex- 
 pose them to the intercourse of flattery and 
 folly, to the poison of heated and crowded 
 rooms, late hours, and luxurious suppers. 
 You countenance the lavish waste of time, 
 talent, sensibility, and money, and all this 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 1 
 
 because without it your daughters may not 
 marry. And with it. indeed, they may not. 
 Take courage then, and come to a loftier 
 stand. Educate the future wives with the 
 future husbands. Give the two in common 
 the highest enjoyments and the happiest 
 memories. Then shall the marriage wreath 
 crown the pair in its true human dignity, 
 never to be displaced or lost. 
 
 J. w. H. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 SEX AND EDUCA 
 
 I. 
 
 BY JULIA WARD HOWE. 
 
 WHEN a book challenges public attention to 
 its especial object and intention, we may not 
 inappropriately deal with it before we consider 
 its author. As to the book, then, called " Sex 
 in Education," let us endeavor to make up our 
 minds concerning its character, before we pass 
 on to deal with the topics it suggests. 
 
 Is the book, then, a work of science, of litera- 
 ture, or of philosophy, or is it a simple practical 
 treatise on the care of health ? We should call 
 it none of these. It has neither the impartiality 
 of science, the form of literature, the breadth 
 of philosophy, nor the friendliness of counsel. 
 
I 4 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 It is a work of the polemic type, presenting a 
 persistent and passionate plea against the admis- 
 sion of women to a collegiate education in com- 
 mon with men. The advisableness of such 
 education in common is a question upon which 
 people differ greatly in opinion. So many peo- 
 ple of conscience and intelligence hold opposite 
 theories concerning this, that it may be consid- 
 ered as a question fairly open to discussion, and 
 asking to be tested in the light of experience. 
 Dr. Clarke supports his side of the argument by 
 a statement of facts insufficient for his purpose, 
 and <by reasonings and inferences irrelevant to 
 the true lesson of these facts. He makes in 
 the first place a strange confusion between 
 things present, past, and future, and in the terror 
 of the identical education to come sees identical 
 education of the sexes in the past and present 
 as the cause of all the ills that female flesh is 2 
 heir to. He asserts the fact of an ascertained 
 and ever increasing deterioration in the persons 
 of American women from the true womanly 
 standard. He finds them tending ever more 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. j 5 
 
 and more towards a monstrous type, sterile and 
 sexless ; and these facts, which some of us may 
 strongly doubt, he considers accounted for by 
 the corresponding fact that boys and girls re- 
 ceive the same intellectual education. * Accord- 
 ing to him, you cannot feed a woman's brain 
 without starving her body. Brain and body are 
 set in antagonism over against each other, and 
 what is one organ's meat is another's poison. 
 Single women of the intellectual type he char- 
 acterizes very generally, not only as agamai, 
 but as agenes ; and his portraiture of them is 
 sufficiently revolting. The powerful influence 
 of climate is lightly estimated by him. One 
 hundred years would be insufficient to change 
 the stout, heavily boned English or Irish woman, 
 with her abundant covering of flesh, into the 
 wiry, nervous Yankee woman, characterized by 
 nerve and brain, The cause of all this, of the 
 undeveloped busts, fragile figures, and uncer- 
 tain health of American women, resides in the 
 fact that with us, as he says, girls and boys 
 receive the same education. 
 
!6 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 The periodical function peculiar to women is 
 a point upon which Dr. Clarke dwells with per- 
 sistent iteration. Its neglect he considers the 
 principal source of disease among the women 
 of our land. Its repression or over-produc- 
 tion are equally fatal to health ; and, in the 
 years which nature consecrates to its establish- 
 ment, the recurrence of the function should be 
 observed by the avoidance of bodily and men- 
 tal fatigue. Dr. Clarke's reasoning upon this 
 point affirms that American women neglect 
 care in this direction beyond all other women, 
 and that the school education which our girls 
 receive is the moving cause of this neglect. 
 
 We cannot remember a single point in Dr. 
 Clarke's diagnosis of American female hygiene 
 which is not included in the present rapid rJ- 
 sumtf. The Doctor's prognosis is even more dis- 
 mal and unpromising. Open the doors of your 
 colleges to women, and you will accomplish 
 the ruin of the Commonwealth. Disease al- 
 ready, according to him, the rule among them 
 will become without exception. Your girls 
 
SEX AND ED L/C AT/ON. ij 
 
 will lose their physical stature, and your boys 
 their mental stature, since the tasks set for the 
 latter would be limited by the periodical dis- 
 ability of the girls. The result will be a physi- 
 cal and sexual chaos, out of which the Doctor 
 sees no escape save in an act akin to the rape 
 of the Sabines. Tennyson's line suits with 
 his mood : 
 
 " I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky 
 race." 
 
 A number of persons have commented wisely 
 and wittily upon this book and its contents. 
 There is, perhaps, no need of any further de- 
 tailed criticism of its scope and statement. We 
 have endeavored to give its sense and spirit in 
 little. And we will supplement this synopsis 
 by giving as briefly our own impressions con- 
 cerning these. 
 
 To begin with the observance of the periodi- 
 cal function. This is a good old grandmotherly 
 doctrine, handed down from parent to child 
 through all the ages of humanity. Ignorance 
 of the laws of health would, no doubt, in all 
 

 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 ages, induce young persons to disregard the 
 cautions of their elders on this as on other 
 points ; and the sharp proverb which tells what 
 young people think of old people, and what the 
 latter know of the former, must often recur to 
 the minds of elderly women preaching care and 
 prudence to daughters and nieces. On the 
 whole, if a pretty wide and long personal expe- 
 rience can go for any thing, I incline to think 
 that the elder generation is much more careful 
 of this point of health than of any other. Many 
 young women who are allowed to eat, dress, live, 
 and behave as they like, are periodically kept 
 from all violent exercise and fatigue, so far as 
 the vigilance of elders can accomplish this. The 
 wilfulness and ingenuity of the young, however, 
 are often more than a match for this vigilance ; 
 and a single ride on horseback, a single wetting 
 of the feet, or indulgence in the irresistible 
 German, may entail lifelong misery, which the 
 maternal or friendly guardian has done all in 
 her power to prevent. I myself once knew a 
 German lady who, married and childless for 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. I9 
 
 many years, confessed to me that a ball attended 
 in her early youth was the cause of this mis- 
 fortune. 
 
 I have known of repeated instances of incura- 
 ble disease and even of death arising from rides 
 on horseback taken at the critical period. I 
 have known fatal pulmonary consumption to 
 arise from exposure of the feet in silk stockings, 
 at winter parties. Every matron knows and 
 relates these sad facts to the young girls under 
 her charge. They are sometimes heeded, of- 
 tener not. Nothing in our knowledge of youth 
 would lead us to consider them as of rare occur- 
 rence. And yet Dr. Clarke attributes most 
 failures of the function and its concomitant, 
 maternity, to the school education received by 
 our girls. 
 
 The accusation then of systematic neglect of 
 the periodic function by the educators of youth 
 among us cannot be admitted without more evi- 
 dence than Dr. Clarke has thus far given us. 
 That women in America particularly neglect 
 their health, that women violate the laws of their 
 
20 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 constitution as men cannot violate theirs, and 
 that the love of intellectual pursuits causes them 
 to do so, this is the fable out of which Dr. 
 Clarke draws the moral that women must not go 
 to college with men. Fable and moral appear 
 equally unsubstantial. If Dr. Clarke had said that 
 the best men and women of the State, the wisest 
 and noblest, should never allow this subject of 
 education to pass out of their minds or out of 
 their care ; if he had said that, after worthily 
 receiving education, the first duty of man and 
 woman is to secure it to the succeeding genera- 
 tion, he would have pointed to the true remedy 
 for all that is amiss on this head. The great 
 increase in the study of physiology among us, 
 and especially among women, must tend, we are 
 sure, to a wiser and better self-culture and care 
 of the young. Education is necessarily "line 
 upon line and precept upon precept" The elder 
 generation can only do its best, and trust to the 
 docility and good faith of the young. 
 
 The special character of Dr. Clarke's book 
 provokes the question whether he has not un- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 21 
 
 duly specialized facts which are general, and not 
 limited to any coincidence with that which he 
 especially attacks, the education of American 
 women, and their physique as affected by it. 
 Is it wholly or principally in America that young 
 women fail of sexual development, have imper- 
 fect busts, are afflicted with ill-health and in- 
 sanity, and in marriage are sterile, or if they 
 have children cannot nurse them ? 
 
 A well-known sentence of Solomon's shows 
 that even in his time the female form sometimes 
 failed of completeness. Rousseau says of one 
 of the women whom he admired, " et de la gorge 
 comme de ma main!' with a general slur upon 
 all women so formed. In Paris has been in- 
 vented and advertised an artificial bosom war- 
 ranted to palpitate for a whole evening. It is 
 not likely that this invention has been patented 
 for the exclusive use of American women. 
 
 To return to Biblical times, one of the persons 
 healed by our Saviour was a woman suffering 
 from what Dr. Clarke would call menorrhcea. It 
 may be as well to remark by the way that 
 
22 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 during the twelve years of her suffering she had 
 spent all that she had upon physicians, and still 
 was nothing the better, but rather the worse. 
 Sterility was common in the times both of the 
 Old and of the New Testament. It is common 
 to-day among the savages of Africa. It is by 
 no means true that the women who themselves 
 show the greatest physical development are 
 always those whose offspring are the most 
 numerous and healthy. Slender women are 
 often more successful mothers and nurses than 
 the stout sisters whose full outlines attest their 
 \ own robusticity. Even as to the facts of nurs- 
 ing, women with small breasts often have an 
 abundant supply of milk ; while women with 
 fuller outward development often have little or 
 none. 
 
 Andrew Combe in his book on Infancy speaks 
 of the great number of infants who in Germany 
 are brought up by hand. He gives most careful 
 rules for rearing infants on artificial food, and 
 
 does not treat this as at all an uncommon 
 
 * 
 
 necessity. English women confined in Italy 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 2$ 
 
 and other foreign countries proverbially lose 
 their milk, and the profession of wet-nurse to 
 an English family has long been one of the 
 most common in Rome and Naples. Many 
 German women in America are obliged to feed 
 their infants wholly or in part, and many 
 American women are good nurses and prolific 
 mothers. 
 
 Again we see in Paris papers advertisements 
 of the new remedies, " which the patient herself 
 can apply, and which will spare her the un- 
 pleasant necessity of examinations," &c. Phy- 
 sicians of large practice and experience are 
 able, in all parts of the world, to chronicle many 
 cases of uterine disease, of functional derange- 
 ment, and of arrested development among 
 women, in which cases no plea of excessive 
 cerebral action induced by over-study is at all 
 admissible. But Dr. Clarke sees disease chiefly 
 in American women. In them reside leucor- 
 rhoea, dysmenorrhoea, amenorrhoea, &c. In them 
 are ateknia, agalactia, amazia. And the reason 
 why they have all these evils is simply this, 
 
24 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 some of them wish to enter Harvard College, 
 and some of them have already passed through 
 other colleges. 
 
 Now that the topics of sex and education 
 need careful study and remodelling of ideas 
 and methods, nobody is less disposed to deny 
 than the writer of these lines. She is perfectly 
 sure that the philosophy of sex is thus far 
 little understood in America, or anywhere 
 else. She has the same impression concerning 
 the philosophy of education. The physical evils 
 attendant upon the female constitution are as 
 old as that constitution itself. They deserve 
 and require the most careful investigation. But 
 the feminine hygiene will be higher and more 
 complete when it is administered by women. 
 Personal experience adds an important element 
 even to the closest and most scientific obser- 
 vation. 
 
 Before this pet theory of the incompatibility 
 of health with intellectual activity, for women 
 only, was discovered, men of science speculated 
 concerning the deficient busts of American 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. 2$ 
 
 women. The dry, stimulating climate was sup- 
 posed, in a great measure, to account for it. 
 The fact itself reaches back to the grandmothers 
 of the grandmothers of to-day/. * It was and is 
 chiefly observable in the northern and eastern 
 States. As you go south, you find fuller forms, 
 but not always combined with emptier heads. 
 The effect of the climate of this portion of the 
 country upon the masculine physique is equally 
 noticeable, and has long been a subject of re- 
 mark. Men here are for the most part wiry, 
 sinewy, nervous, and brainy. If any of us, car- 
 rying out Dr. Clarke's views, prefer to mate 
 with men in whom flesh and muscle counter- 
 poise the tyrannous nerve system, we too must 
 go over the borders, and bring the progenitors 
 of the future race from lands where the east 
 wind blows not. But this reminds us of the 
 well-known overplus of sixty thousand single 
 women in Massachusetts alone. Dr. Clarke 
 arraigns the mothers, actual and possible, for 
 being no better than they are. But what is he 
 going to do about the impossible fathers, in view 
 
26 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 of the coming generation to which he is so de- 
 voted ? 
 
 If one thing could be more astonishing than 
 another in Dr. Clarke's treatment of his subject, 
 we should give the palm to his consideration 
 of the influence of climate on the human organ- 
 ism. He is unwilling to consider it at all as 
 a factor in the alleged ill-health of American 
 women. According to him one hundred years 
 are not enough to mould the European organ- 
 ism in accordance with the American type. 
 If this is really his opinion, his experience must 
 have differed widely from that of others. I 
 have observed important effects of modification 
 produced by climate, in shorter periods of time 
 than this. Two brothers of one family, resident 
 in Boston, separated at the conclusion of the 
 Revolutionary War. One remained in this city, 
 one migrated to Nova Scotia. Those who at 
 a later day were able to compare the children 
 of these two gentlemen found the Boston family 
 marked with every characteristic of the New 
 England race, thin, nervous, wiry, alert, intense. 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 2J 
 
 The Nova Scotian family were stout, full- 
 blooded, and plethoric, altogether of the Eng- 
 lis^i colonial type. 
 
 English families resident in India soon lose 
 the freshness of their coloring and the fulnesa 
 of their outline. In fact, the adaptation of one 
 nationality to another is sometimes astonishingly 
 rapid. Mr. Burlingame looked almost like a 
 Chinaman before he died. The writer has seen 
 an American official long resident in Turkey 
 whose physiognomy had become entirely that of 
 his adopted country. The potent American cli- 
 mate works quickly in assimilating the foreign 
 material offered to it. Two generations suffice 
 to efface the salient marks of Celtic, Saxon, 
 French, or Italian descent. The Negro alone is 
 able to offer a respectable resistance. 
 
 It may occur to some that the assumed iden- 
 tity of the intellectual education given to girls 
 and boys in America may have less to do with 
 the ill-health of the former than the dissimilarity 
 of their physical training. Boys are much in 
 the open air. Girls are much in the house. Boys 
 
28 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 wear a dress which follows and allows their 
 natural movements. Girls wear clothes which 
 impede and almost paralyze their limbs. Boys 
 have, moreover, the healthful hope held out to 
 them of being able to pursue their own objects, 
 and to choose and follow the business or profes- 
 sion of their choice. Girls have the dispiriting 
 prospect of a secondary and derivative existence, 
 with only so much room allowed them as may 
 not cramp the full sweep of the other sex. The 
 circumstances first named directly affect health, 
 the last exerts a strong reflex action upon it. 
 " We are only women, and it does not matter," 
 passes from mother to daughter. A very esti- 
 mable young lady said to me the other day, in 
 answer to a plea for dress-reform, " It is better 
 to look handsome, even if it does shorten life a 
 little." Her care of herself probably does not 
 go beyond that indicated by this saying. Dr. 
 Clarke cites a few instances of functional de- 
 rangement. But by far the most frequent dif- 
 ficulty with our women arises from uterine 
 displacement, and this in turn comes partly 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TIOX. 29 
 
 from the utter disuse of the muscles which 
 should keep the uterus in place, but which are 
 kept inactive by the corset, weighed upon by the 
 heavy skirt, and drawn upon by the violent and 
 unnatural motion of the dancing at present in 
 vogue. Is it any wonder that these ill-educated, 
 over-burthened muscles give way, like other ill- 
 trained, over-powered things ? Some instances 
 of remarkable robustness in women have been( 
 the result of a physical education identical with 
 that usually given to boys. In these cases, the 
 parents, after repeated losses of children through 
 much cherishing, have at last determined to give 
 the girls a chance through athletic sports and 
 unrestricted exercise in the open air. And this 
 has again and again proved successful. 
 
 Much in Dr. Clarke's treatment of his subject 
 is objectionable. We are left in doubt whether 
 his book was written for men or for women, and 
 we conclude that his method of statement is not 
 good for either. Much of his remarking upon 
 sex is justly offensive, and his statements con- 
 cerning those single women of culture whom 
 
30 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 he terms agenes would scarcely be endured in 
 any household in which these single saints bear 
 the burthens of all the others, and lead lives 
 divinely wedded to duty. The odious expres- 
 sion which completes his picture of " the girls 
 tied to their dictionaries," &c., would exclude the 
 book, and the writer too, from some pure and 
 polite circles. And we must say to him, with all 
 due regard for the good intentions with which 
 we desire to credit him, 
 
 " These things must not be thought of on this 
 wise." 
 
 I have thus attempted a brief addition to the 
 comments of women upon Dr. Clarke's work, 
 telling pretty plainly what I think of it, and why. 
 But a full discussion of these great themes of 
 Sex and Education can hardly be had in answer 
 to a summons so sharp and so partial as his own. 
 Not to dogmatize and counter-dogmatize upon 
 these points will make either men or women 
 wiser. Not for those who think they know every 
 thing about the matter to discourse to those 
 whom they judge as knowing nothing about it. 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 31 
 
 These processes will always retard instead of 
 advancing the discovery of truth. But when 
 men and women may meet together for fair and 
 equal interchange of thought, the men not want- 
 ing in modesty, nor the women in courage, then 
 we shall be glad to listen, if we do not speak. 
 And if we do speak, we shall say, " Father, thou 
 hast made all things well, and without thy wis- 
 dom was not any thing made that was made." 
 
32 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 II. 
 
 BY THOS. WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 
 
 THOSE who are anxiously studying the prob- 
 lem of the Education of Women may be trusted 
 to read with eager interest this little book by 
 Dr. Clarke. The author takes pains to recognize 
 the intellectual ability of women ; and he puts 
 on record a most valuable and emphatic denial, 
 from his own professional experience, of the 
 common assertion that American women habitu- 
 ally desire to escape the duties of wifehood and 
 motherhood. I should not call the book gener- 
 ally coarse, but very needlessly rough and plain- 
 spoken, especially for a book destined to popular 
 perusal ; and the author certainly touches the 
 verge of coarseness in his description of a possi- 
 ble sexless woman. He, however, indulges in 
 no unfair fling against the advocates of the 
 equality of the sexes, except as far as is con- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 33 
 
 tained in the following sentences : " Woman 
 seems to be looking up to man and his develop- 
 ment, as the goal and ideal of womanhood. The 
 new gospel of female development glorifies what 
 she possesses in common with him, and tramples 
 under her feet as a source of weakness and badge 
 of inferiority the mechanism and functions pe- 
 culiar to herself." (p. 1 29.) If this is intended to 
 describe the " gospel " proclaimed by the " Wom- 
 an's Journal," for instance, there is not a num- 
 ber of the paper, from the beginning, which does 
 not contain the material wherewith to refute the 
 statement. And that it is not true of the agita- 
 tion in America, as a whole, is shown by the fact 
 that this movement has been constantly under 
 criticism from European and Roman Catholic 
 sources, for precisely the opposite tendency ; 
 that is, for encouraging the study of physiology 
 in schools, and for thus making young girls too 
 well acquainted with those special laws of their 
 own being, about which they were once studi- 
 ously kept in ignorance. The two charges de- 
 stroy each other: both cannot be true, and I 
 
 2 C 
 
34 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 think that neither is. Certainly^ thejstrongest 
 argumentsjnjavor of Wo^naji^uffrj^e-are^based 
 not on the identity, but on the difference of the 
 
 It is claimed by admiring critics, in regard 
 to Dr. Clarke's book, that " his method is purely 
 scientific." From this I should be inclined to 
 dissent. The method does not seem to me 
 purely scientific, but popular ; and not so much 
 popular as 'clinical, that is, as if familiarly ad- 
 dressed by a physician to a circle of students 
 or patients, among whom the personal authority 
 or popularity of the teacher might be relied 
 upon to fill some gaps in the argument. The 
 purely scientific method waives all such per- 
 sonal prestige. Darwin offers his basis of facts 
 as modestly and as amply - as if he were an 
 unknown man ; and proceeds step by step, still 
 fortifying himself, or stating frankly where he 
 is unfortified. I have been a pretty careful 
 reader of books on Natural History all my life ; 
 and I cannot help thinking that contemporary 
 science offers a standard, both as to facts and 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 35 
 
 inferences, whose demands are hardly met by 
 the book now under discussion. 
 
 Let us consider, first, Dr. Clarke's facts, and 
 then his inferences. 
 
 I. Dr. Clarke s Facts. 
 
 I certainly am conscious of no manner of bias 
 against Dr. Clarke, who was my townsman and 
 college classmate ; and I opened his pages, 
 honestly hoping to find an array of facts that 
 should be impressive both by their quality and by 
 their quantity. To show, by citing individual 
 instances, that the pressure of our school sys- 
 tem injures health very often, is not enough. 
 To take seven cases out of a physician's note- 
 book, and then assure us that there are a good 
 many more, is not enough. Yet this is pre- 
 cisely what Dr. Clarke does ; and, strange to 
 say, one of these is the case of an actress and 
 another of a clerk, leaving only five educational 
 instances in all. This does not seem to me 
 what would be called, in any other branch of 
 science, a satisfactory basis of facts. For in- 
 
36 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 stance, I open the last " American Naturalist," 
 and find Professor Wilder thus criticising the 
 new work on " The Cerebral Convolutions 
 of Man," by Ecker : " The value of such a gen- 
 eralization might be estimated if the author 
 had given us the number of individuals upon 
 which it is based." This is precisely the criti- 
 cism I should make on the generalizations of 
 Dr. Clarke. 
 
 That our edur^onal system is faulty on the 
 physiological side is an old story. The evil 
 has been under discussion, in a general way, 
 for years, by Horace Mann, Dr. Howe, Dr. 
 Butler of Providence, and by myself, among 
 others, in a paper called " The Murder of the 
 Innocents," published in the " Atlantic Month- 
 ly " for September, 1859, an d afterward included 
 in " Out Door Papers." It seems to me that 
 what is most needed is not the mere reiteration 
 of those facts, even if more ably and con- 
 vincingly stated, but rather to show by careful 
 and discriminating statistics to what extent 
 girls have been injured, beyond boys, by the 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 37 
 
 system. Dr. Clarke does not marshal his facts 
 in any such way as this, and in some cases 
 almost commits direct unfairness by the omis- 
 sion, as, for instance, where he cites " Bits 
 of Talk," to show the superior physique of the 
 Nova Scotia children as compared with those 
 of New England, and forgets to state that the 
 italics he introduces are his own, and that the 
 author of that book does not emphasize the 
 superiority in the one sex more than in the other. 
 
 It has been pointed out, again and again, in 
 the <4 Woman's Journal " and elsewhere, that 
 there are whole classes of facts to be had, bear- 
 ing most closely on this question, which neither 
 Dr. Clarke nor any physiologist opposed to 
 co-education has yet attempted to obtain. In- 
 stead of shrinking from these facts, we are 
 constantly begging for them. Until they are 
 obtained, systematized, and displayed, the whole 
 argument of Dr. Clarke has but an insufficient 
 basis of facts. They are such as these : 
 
 I. We need facts as to the comparative physi- 
 ology of American women in different localities. 
 
38 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 There are highly educated communities and 
 very uneducated communities. Has Dr. Clarke, 
 or any one, compared the health of women in 
 cities and in country towns ; in cities with 
 good schools and cities with poor schools ; or 
 in highly educated States like Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut, as compared with States where 
 the climate is similar, but the school system 
 less thorough ? The standard of female educa- 
 tion is not very formidably high in Pennsylva- 
 nia, where they also have an equable climate, 
 no east winds, and most comfortable living ; 
 and yet one of Dr. Clarke's severest statements 
 as to female debility (p. 113) comes from Penn- 
 sylvania. In country villages I could name, 
 where there are only very poor district schools, 
 kept for less than half the year, the traveller 
 constantly observes, among the farmers' daugh- 
 ters, cheeks as pale and vitality as deficient as 
 in the best educated metropolis. 
 
 2. Again, we need facts as to American-born 
 women of different races. Dr. Clarke says of a 
 century, "that length of time could not trans- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 39 
 
 form the sturdy German fraulein and robust 
 English damsel into the fragile American miss." 
 (p. 1 68.) How does he know it could not ? I 
 have seen this change very nearly effected, in a 
 single generation, among the children of Eng- 
 lish, Irish, French Canadians, and even the Nova 
 Scotians whom he so praises ; and this in fam- 
 ilies where even reading and writing were rare 
 accomplishments. As far as I can observe, the 
 effect of climate, change of diet, change of living, 
 on all these classes, is almost sure to produce 
 the same result of delicacy, almost of fragility, in 
 the second generation, with or without school- 
 ing ; and among the boys almost as much as 
 among the girls. A physician in a large manu- 
 facturing town once told me that the unhealth- 
 iest class of the community, in his opinion, 
 consisted of the sons of Irish parents. 
 
 3. We need also the comparative physiology 
 of different social positions. As a rule, the 
 daughters of the wealthy in America, who are 
 sent to private schools, or taught by govern- 
 esses, are far less severely taxed, as to their 
 
40 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 brains, than the daughters of the middle classes, 
 who go to the public schools. Is Dr. Clarke pre- 
 pared to show that those of the former class are 
 decidedly more healthy ? If so, this is another 
 point that would have a direct bearing on his 
 argument. My own impression is that he would 
 find it hard to prove this. ' 
 
 4. But there is still a fourth class of facts, 
 only to be obtained by an extensive record of 
 individual instances. Letting go all discrimi- 
 nations of locality, race, and social position, and 
 looking only at individuals under similar con- 
 ditions, is Dr. Clarke prepared to assert that, 
 as a rule, it is the hardest students in the school 
 who become invalids ? He would say, on a 
 priori grounds, that it must be so. But do 
 facts show it ? Looking over families and 
 schools that I have known, I certainly cannot 
 say that the young girls who have lost their 
 health were the most studious, quite as often 
 the contrary. I have asked teachers of wide 
 experience, " Have you observed that your 
 best scholars have furnished the larger proper- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 41 
 
 tion of invalids ? " and they have always said 
 " No." Yet who that knows the affection with 
 which teachers are apt to follow the later career 
 of their pupils will deny that this evidence 
 has much value. Here is a fourth class of facts 
 which have a direct bearing upon the subject, 
 and the ignoring of which weakens the value 
 of our author's statements. 
 
 5. I am struck with the farther point, that 
 Dr. Clarke seems to have entered on his inquiry 
 in the spirit of an advocate, not of a judge, and 
 to have taken absolutely no account of the 
 physiological benefits of education for WODICH. 
 There certainly are many instances all teach- 
 ers have known them of great benefit to 
 health, in case of girls, under the stimulus given 
 by study. Either Dr. Clarke knows such in- 
 stances, or he does not. If he knows them, he 
 is bound to state them in such an argument ; 
 and, if possible, to arrange and tabulate them, 
 in order to set them against the instances on 
 the other side. If he does not know them, it 
 simply shows that, while the facts of disease 
 
42 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 impress the physician, the facts of health may 
 elude him. This beneficial influence has been 
 well analyzed by a woman of great sense and 
 judgment, herself a college graduate, Miss 
 Mary E. Beedy, now residing in London. I 
 have lately had the pleasure of reading an 
 essay of hers, about to appear in " Scribner's 
 Monthly," on "The Health of English and 
 American Women." In this she incidentally 
 gives reasons why the health of studious girls 
 is often better than that of any others, 
 because their minds are happily occupied, 
 because they are thus kept from social excesses, 
 far more prejudicial than study, because their 
 mental training improves their judgment and 
 self-control, and because they are less reckless 
 about their health in proportion as they have 
 an object to gain. I quote these points from 
 memory. Coming from a graduate of Antioch 
 College, they are surely entitled to considera- 
 tion ; and yet all the thought and observation 
 of Dr. Clarke had not suggested one of these 
 points to his mind. If he had thought of them, 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 43 
 
 he would surely have mentioned them ; for 
 they were essential to the justice of his state- 
 ment. 
 
 It seems to me fair to point out, also, the 
 insufficient way in which Dr. Clarke presents 
 his authorities, when he goes outside of his own 
 observations. The single statement which I 
 have seen cited from his book, by the news- 
 papers, twice as often as all others put together, 
 is his citation of the opinion of " a philanthro- 
 pist and an intelligent observer," that *' the co- 
 education of the sexes is intellectually a success, 
 physically a failure." Yet Dr. Clarke does not 
 give the name of this informant, nor any thing 
 but the vaguest hint as to the extent or value 
 of his observations. The gentleman to whom 
 the remark has been, I find, popularly attributed, 
 Rev. C. H. Brigham, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, 
 expressly disclaims it in a private letter to me, 
 and he has recently published a statement looking 
 quite the other way. Dr. Clarke also states that 
 " another gentleman, more closely connected with 
 a similar institution of education than the per- 
 
44 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 son just referred to, has arrived at a similar 
 conclusion." (p. 144.) I must say, with due 
 deference to Dr. Clarke, that this does not 
 seem to me a scientific way of adducing evi- 
 dence. During the hurry and excitement of 
 the first days of our civil war, it was considered 
 worth while to telegraph all over the country 
 the opinions of " a reliable gentleman " or the 
 statements of " an intelligent contraband ; " but 
 we do not find such authorities gravely cited in 
 the official reports of the " Surgical Results of 
 the War." 
 
 It seems to me, therefore, that Dr. Clarke 
 by no means comes up to the recognized stand- 
 ard of science either in the quantity or the 
 quality of the facts on which he bases his argu- 
 ment. But, granting his premises sufficient, is 
 his conclusion just? 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 4$ 
 
 II. Dr. Clarke s Inferences. 
 
 In a first article on Dr. E. H. Clarke's work 
 *' Sex in Education," some criticisms were made 
 on his statements of fact ; and it was pointed 
 out that all the cases actually cited by him, of 
 special injury to the health of women through 
 school education, amounted to precisely five. 
 Since writing that article I have visited Vassar 
 College, where I found a good deal of dissatis- 
 faction to exist among the authorities, over one 
 of those five cases, as stated by Dr. Clarke. He 
 mentions a certain Miss D. who entered Vassar 
 College at fourteen. The President and the 
 Resident Physician assured me that no pupil 
 had ever entered that institution at that age. 
 Dr. Clarke says of this young lady that " she 
 studied, recited, stood at the blackboard, walked, 
 and went through her gymnastic exercises, from 
 the beginning to the end of the term, just as 
 boys do." The same authorities told me that 
 this statement, taken as a whole, was an abso- 
 lute untruth ; the gymnastic exercises being 
 
46 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 absolutely forbidden to the students at certain 
 periods, and the greatest care being enjoined 
 upon them in all respects. The President and 
 the Resident Physician also expressed some 
 surprise that, in a case of such importance, their 
 testimony should not have been at least called 
 for, instead of relying solely on that of the 
 patient. I believe that it is customary among 
 physicians to show some consideration or cour- 
 tesy to each other in such matters, before putting 
 cases in print which seem to reflect on the pro- 
 fessional fidelity of any one. Be this as it may, 
 this denial of fundamental facts leaves this in- 
 stance at least open to suspicion ; and reduces 
 Dr. Clarke's yet undisputed cases of injury to 
 the health of girls, through schooling, to four. 
 But suppose the instances were four thou- 
 sand. Grant all his premises. What is his 
 conclusion ? All that he demands of an educa- 
 tional establishment for girls is that "the 
 organization of studies and instruction must 
 be flexible enough to admit of the periodical 
 and temporary absence of each pupil, without 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 47 
 
 loss of rank, or necessity of making up work, 
 from recitation and exercise of all sorts." 
 (p. 158.) And yet he goes on to declare that 
 for Harvard College, for instance, to adapt itself 
 for the introduction of young women, would be 
 a thing so enormously difficult that it would 
 cost two millions of dollars! (p. 151.) 
 
 This is what is so inexplicable to me in the 
 conclusions of the book. Grant all Dr. Clarke's 
 facts, and all his demands, what follows ? Of 
 course, in that case, those grammar schools and 
 high schools to which girls are admitted must 
 be essentially remodelled. These I waive. But, 
 so far as our leading colleges are concerned, 
 and Harvard in particular, I not only do not 
 see why the remodelling for the admission of 
 women should cost two millions, but I do not 
 see why it should cost a cent. I do not see, 
 indeed, why there is needed at Harvard any 
 remodelling at all : only a quiet carrying out 
 of what is already the marked tendency in that 
 institution, to substitute elective for required 
 studies, voluntary attendance on exercises for 
 
48 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 required attendance, and examinations as tests 
 of scholarship in place of daily marks. Surely 
 it cannot have escaped Dr. Clarke's notice that 
 if he were having Harvard College arranged 
 on purpose to suit girls, according to his formula 
 just quoted, it could hardly be done by a more 
 effectual process than is actually going on at 
 this moment, without any reference to women 
 at all. If this be so, why not extend this new 
 system to women and let them have the benefit 
 of it ? 
 
 When Dr. Clarke and I were in Harvard 
 College, every absence from daily prayers or 
 recitation counted as an offence. Now each 
 student is allowed sixty absences from prayers, 
 almost one-fourth of the whole number, and 
 no questions are asked until that number is 
 exceeded. Then almost all rank turned on 
 marks given at the daily recitation. Now there 
 are departments in which no daily marks are 
 given, and the question of scholarship is deter- 
 mined by occasional examinations. To these, it 
 would seem, Dr. Clarke does not object, for he 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 49 
 
 says (p. 1 34) " it is easy to frame a theoretical 
 emulation, in which results only are compared and 
 tested, that would be healthy and invigorating." 
 Yet such emulation as this is all that seems 
 likely to be left at Harvard in the way of dan- 
 gerous rivalry, when the present system shall 
 have been fully developed. " The steady, un- 
 tiring, day-by-day competition " that Dr. Clarke 
 deprecates is being utterly laid aside ; and a 
 more flexible system is being introduced for 
 young men, which turns out to have also the 
 incidental advantage of being precisely what 
 young women need. 1 
 
 It is a valuable discovery that, the more you 
 transform a college into a University, the better 
 it is adapted for both sexes. The same advan- 
 tage may be noted on another point, the con- 
 
 1 An additional illustration of this is in the resolution in- 
 troduced at the meeting of Harvard Overseers, Dec. 30, 1873, 
 and since adopted : 
 
 " Resolved, That the Board of Overseers consents that for 
 the academic year 1874-5 all rules imposing penalties or marks 
 of censure upon Seniors for absences from church, and from 
 recitations, lectures, or exercises other than examinations, be 
 suspended." 
 
 3 D 
 
50 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 sideration of which may throw light on Dr. 
 Clarke's demand for two million dollars. I 
 mean the question of dormitories. * If the ad- 
 mission of girls to our colleges does nothing 
 else but to break down the present system of 
 brick barracks, and to substitute the simpler 
 boarding-house system of Michigan University, 
 it will be a work well done. Of course, if there 
 must be duplicated for girls the vast array of 
 dormitories now encumbering the scanty college- 
 yard at Cambridge, it will cost a great deal of 
 money. But just now, when all the boarding- 
 house keepers of Cambridge are deploring their 
 occupation gone by reason of these structures, 
 it is the very time to introduce young women into 
 the humbler quarters left vacant ; and why, in 
 this case, will these students cost the college 
 more than so many additional young men ? Once 
 adopt the plan, which I believe to be the true 
 one, that it is simply the office of the college to 
 provide facilities of instruction, and that of the 
 pupils and their parents (under the general super- 
 vision of the college) to look out for food and 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 51 
 
 lodging, medical attendance and spiritual guid- 
 ance, and the increased expense of joint col- 
 legiate education turns out a mere chimera. 
 Were it ever so great, I should still regard it as 
 the best way of spending money, since, in any 
 case, the expense of providing for girls equal 
 advantages in a separate college would be still 
 greater ; but I do not see it to be great, or 
 indeed to amount to any thing worth mentioning 
 at all. Nor do I see why, even if we admit all 
 Dr. Clarke's facts, he has given a single valid 
 reason why our colleges should not admit girls 
 to-morrow, making, as many of them have 
 already made on other grounds, the necessary 
 changes to secure sufficient flexibility of system. 
 It therefore seems to me that, as his facts are 
 not worked out with sufficient thoroughness to 
 justify any general conclusion whatever, so his 
 conclusion that our present colleges, and par- 
 ticularly Harvard College, cannot, except at a 
 vast expense, admit women, is utterly unsus- 
 tained by his facts. 
 
52 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 III. 
 
 BY MRS. HORACE MANN. 
 
 DR. CLARKE'S " Sex in Education " would have 
 been an invaluable addition to popular works 
 on hygiene, if it had been written in a different 
 spirit, without insult to woman, whom the 
 author professes to respect, and whom he pro- 
 nounces to be capable of as extended education 
 as men are. This admission on his part is 
 actually overlooked by many of his reviewers, 
 because their feelings are so hurt by his un- 
 gentlemanly jeers, and- his vulgar attack upon 
 the noble army of unmarried women, who are 
 often in the respectable ranks of " spinster- 
 ism," as he calls it, out of self-respect, and be- 
 cause their ideal of the marriage state is far 
 beyond that of the average woman. 
 
 The average woman has unfortunately been 
 educated to consider matrimony more respect- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 53 
 
 able than the state of single blessedness, which 
 has thus been well named when compared with 
 the heartless or heart-breaking condition of in- 
 compatible or unworthy marriage. Probably not 
 one of these women would have refused marriage 
 if the conditions she required had been fulfilled, 
 but without these her self-respect would have 
 been compromised. Probably the sentiment of 
 love has been awakened in the breasts of all. It 
 would be unnatural, I concede, if it were not so. 
 
 " God gives us love, 
 Something to love he lends us ; " 
 
 but it is far better for the soul to live in an ideal 
 union with a possible twin-soul than to enter 
 marriage upon a low plane of thought or feeling. 
 When this most vital institution of society is 
 demoralized by worldliness, cupidity, or other of 
 the manifold forms of selfishness, the greatest 
 unhappiness is sure to follow ; on the principle 
 that the corruption of the best is the worst. It 
 is in this fatal disappointment of life that we 
 see the undeveloped women ; and many a young 
 
54 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 woman, who has an opportunity to make the 
 observation, is made cautious of trusting her 
 happiness to what appears to be, and has justly 
 been called, " the lottery of life." It seems in- 
 credible that a man who has had Dr. Clarke's 
 opportunity of seeing domestic life has not real- 
 ized that unfortunate marriages are the circum- 
 stances under which the harmonious development 
 of nature is arrested and perverted. Such cir- 
 cumstances stunt growth and spoil family life, 
 and the children who are its unhappy result. 
 Indeed, the idea with which many women enter 
 into the married state, even when their affections 
 are engaged in it, pervert and maim the develop- 
 ment of the human being, and often end in a 
 loss of faith in human nature. This idea is that 
 the oneness of the union is the oneness of the 
 man, and not a new oneness born of the union. 
 The assumption of the authority of the average 
 husband extends even to the opinion of the wife ; 
 so that there is often a concession to a para- 
 mount will where the wife is the superior by 
 nature. It is the freedom from this bondage 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 55 
 
 which constitutes the happiness of single bless- 
 edness, and is at the root of the unhappy ten- 
 dency to divorce which is characteristic of our 
 times. Far higher is the unmarried state, as 
 a condition for the development of the human 
 being, than this low state of marriage, which 
 latter in its ideal form is a condition of mutual 
 growth. A new code of morals is needed in this 
 regard. It is not a mere matter of speculation, 
 for in true marriage the ideal is realized. The 
 one will is only truly one when based upon per- 
 fect freedom and mutual sacrifice, which indeed 
 is not conscious sacrifice, but only a loving con- 
 tention for self-renunciation. 
 
 I believe it is a fact that the higher the state 
 of civilization and refinement, the more unmar- 
 ried women there are ; and yet Dr. Clarke could 
 add his voice to the vulgar hue and cry against 
 them. Such is the prevalence of this hue and 
 cry that women who are not elevated above its 
 influence by early inculcations of noble princi- 
 ples, of self-respect, and of a lofty ideal, rush into 
 matrimony because they are ashamed to appear 
 to be unsought. 
 
56 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 The maternal feeling is as intense and pure in 
 many unmarried women as in their married sis- 
 ters. Indeed, if we each take an observation in 
 our own circle, we shall see it far more devel- 
 oped in many of them than in many married 
 women, to whom children are a burden and a 
 hinderance, and always considered and treated 
 as if of secondary importance to their pleasures, 
 and even to their more rational pursuits. The 
 world cannot be divided in that way. The ma- 
 ternal sentiment is planted in the heart of every 
 sympathetic and affectionate woman, indeed, 
 woman is abnormal without it, and, if not de- 
 veloped by maternity itself, this sentiment may 
 be so by right education, and thus saved from 
 becoming a root of bitterness such as opinions 
 like Dr. Clarke's are calculated to plant. How 
 many an orphan child has found the very essence 
 of motherly feeling and life-long devotion in a 
 maiden aunt ! The man is to be pitied who has 
 not seen this in his acquaintance with society : 
 one almost wishes to cite names to prove one's 
 words. Has Dr. Clarke no touch-stone within 
 
SEX AND EDUCATIOX. $7 
 
 himself to prove such characters, for he must 
 have seen many of them ? The maternal feeling 
 is often more judiciously exercised where the 
 passion of maternity what some moralists 
 have called brute maternity has not been 
 roused into activity by actual motherhood. I 
 would farther explain this by a reference to those 
 mothers in whom every other sentiment, even 
 that of good wifehood, is absorbed by the ma- 
 ternal feeling ; and where, if they are undisci- 
 plined in mind, this feeling makes it impossible 
 for them to see the faults of their children, or 
 to allow any one else to note them, or give them 
 any aid in their correction. Even the father is 
 deprived of his natural right to share in the care, 
 and is treated as their natural enemy if he criti- 
 cises them. The loving but unimpassioned aunt, 
 or co-operating educator, whose maternal feeling 
 has been cultivated by her vocation, can see the 
 facts more clearly than such mothers, and can 
 often suggest the remedies. I think it may 
 safely be asserted that the first proof of im- 
 provement in the popular feeling about marriage 
 
58 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 will be the respect for those unmarried women 
 whose independent lives bear the noble fruits of 
 culture, benevolence, and devotion to human 
 improvement. Dr. Clarke misses the truth 
 greatly also in asserting that the advocacy of 
 high education for women emanates chiefly from 
 unmarried women. None are more eloquent in 
 its cause than the mothers the good mothers, 
 of course who have felt the pain of their own 
 deficiencies of education when they found them- 
 selves mothers, and too ignorant to fulfil their 
 duties to their own satisfaction. " What can I 
 do for my child ? I do not know any thing about 
 its needs, or how to supply them : my own edu- 
 cation had no system or definite object, and 
 now I feel it worthless." Such complaints are 
 continual, and give one the feeling that every 
 woman should serve her time, be she sick or 
 be she poor, in practical education, by actually 
 being brought into contact with children, and 
 being taught how to instruct them. I have 
 often ventured the remark that the best edu- 
 cated women I knew were those who had been 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 59 
 
 practically engaged in education. I make it 
 more earnestly than ever, for education is not 
 merely the knowledge of sciences, languages, or 
 systems of philosophy, but consists in the use of 
 the faculties and their application to life thus 
 developed by these and other studies. "The 
 proper study of mankind is man," is an utter- 
 ance that has often been quoted to prove that 
 the exact sciences were inferior objects of pur- 
 suit to the study of language and philosophy ; 
 but man cannot be studied aright without a sci- 
 entific basis, and this is the greatest argument 
 for the complete education of women, in whose 
 hands is the moulding of the human race. When 
 they do not hold their normal place and func- 
 tion, which they cannot do if uncultivated, 
 the condition of such portions of the human 
 race shows it palpably. 
 
 But I must not, like many of Dr. Clarke's 
 reviewers, forget that he concedes woman's right 
 and her capacity for the most extended edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Let us now look at facts in regard to the dan- 
 
60 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 ger of systematic and persistent study for women. 
 One would think, judging by Dr. Clarke's " dread- 
 ful little book," as some one has called it, that 
 women had generally been educated to death, 
 while the deplorable fact is that she has only 
 been half educated at the best. When in those 
 instances, few and far between, where high cul- 
 ture was desired, the time for real study has 
 come, the necessity for making up for former 
 deficiencies has sometimes made it too severe. 
 In half a century's acquaintance with the details 
 of female education, I can remember no instance 
 in which study has proved injurious to those 
 who came to it in good health : excepted cases 
 are truly exceptional, and not the average. I 
 have also known instances where young women 
 who were invalids have made a studious life their 
 recreation, and have gained health and vigor 
 meanwhile, all the happier and better for the 
 intellectual life. 
 
 The best remedy for too hard study at any 
 one time of life is a thorough and gradual men- 
 tal training from childhood up. The earliest 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 6 1 
 
 education of both boys and girls is, generally 
 speaking, aimless and indefinite. A certain 
 amount of reading, writing, arithmetic, and geog- 
 raphy are considered necessary, but instruction 
 in these is not in itself cultivation* of mind. It 
 may be perfectly arbitrary and wooden, done 
 without any reference to or attempt to develop 
 the nature. Even reading and writing need not 
 be taught so mechanically as is done in the 
 scfiools. Very little attention is given usually in 
 American schools to the subject-matter of the 
 reading : each child is called upon to read a sen- 
 tence or a paragraph, in a reader, instead of 
 having a work of genius put into its hands, which 
 is to be read in company, and which is interest- 
 ing enough in itself to chain the attention and 
 to bring out the natural elocution by making the 
 rest listen while one reads.* Geography is usu- 
 ally taught by map and outline, with little or no 
 
 * In making this criticism, and other possible ones, upon 
 the schools, I ought not to forget that one teacher is expected 
 to minister to the mental wants of fifty, and sometimes even of 
 a hundred scholars, a relic of barbarism which it is hoped 
 that time will ameliorate. 
 
62 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 descriptive or picturesque explanation of scenery, 
 fauna, or remarkable natural features ; and arith- 
 metic in as uninteresting a way, instead of being 
 made living by being connected with geometri- 
 cal science. Children's industrial faculties are 
 not set at work, and the whole routine becomes 
 tedious, is disconnected with life, and is shirked 
 as much as possible. Very little training in the 
 native language is given, and even in the most 
 advanced public schools little attention is paid 
 to the art of writing down thoughts and impres- 
 sions, an exercise which can with advantage 
 be begun in childhood. Boys and girls begin to 
 study Latin thus without an interesting idea 
 about human speech. 
 
 Boys are at last set to work systematically 
 to prepare for their higher education, and every 
 aid is given them to make up for lost time. 
 Girls sometimes share this training for a little 
 while in some places ; but, as it leads to nothing 
 in particular, it soon loses its interest, unless 
 perchance they are preparing to be teachers. 
 Girls rarely go far in mathematical studies, 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 63 
 
 which are the basis of all scientific education ; 
 and, if they study what are called the higher 
 branches in schools, without this thorough 
 mathematical training that boys have, it is very 
 superficial study, and soon forgotten. In the 
 exceptional cases, consisting of those whose 
 strong native talent and favoring circumstances 
 urge on to hard study, the necessity of making 
 up for lost time may injure the weak, and even 
 break down the strong, as is often the case 
 with men. I do not believe the overstraining 
 of the brain is any more injurious to young 
 women than to young men, and it is not a thou- 
 sandth part so common. The evil effects that 
 appear at that time of life in both sexes are 
 due to other causes than those Dr. Clarke points 
 out so exclusively. He says there are other 
 causes, but he passes them over lightly. One 
 of his reviewers has pointed them out ably 
 and in detail. As far as they refer to study, 
 the system of cramming and emulation, in both 
 public and private schools, should bear the 
 brunt of his accusations. It would undoubtedly 
 
64 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 be far better for girls (or for boys) between 
 the ages of fourteen and nineteen to be with- 
 drawn from these, and study more calmly and 
 gradually without the stimulus of emulation, 
 and to defer the completion of their education 
 in colleges till that tender age is past. 
 
 I do not share in the fears expressed by Presi- 
 dent Eliot, of a demoralizing influence from 
 the co-education of the sexes. Experience has 
 amply proved that such fears are groundless. 
 Young men and women have long been edu- 
 cated together in country high schools, in acade- 
 mies and normal schools, and of late in colleges ; 
 and the result has been satisfactory, a healthy 
 stimulus, a great enjoyment, and productive of 
 mutual self-respect. But I agree with him 
 that Harvard College is not the place to try it 
 in at present, for several reasons, the tradi- 
 tional prejudice, the want of proper arrange- 
 ments, the very low moral character of the 
 college community ; but I think the history of 
 Antioch College, where the system was car- 
 ried out under great advantages, is a sufficient 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 65 
 
 testimony to the success and good effects of 
 co-education as well as to the possibility of har- 
 monious persistent study for women. 
 
 The only feature of it that was ever objec- 
 tionable in my eyes has been the gathering of 
 young girls into the preparatory school, where 
 they could enter at the age of twelve. It is 
 unfortunate enough to be obliged to send young 
 boys away from home, but it is far more ob- 
 jectionable to send young girls away. They 
 ought to live at home while getting their pre- 
 paratory education, and all the more if they 
 are to follow it up with college life. Domes- 
 tic life is made null to them thus. The only 
 apology for having a preparatory school of the 
 kind there was the fact that so many people 
 live scattered in the West that schools are not 
 accessible to them, and the preparation required 
 for a college course could be obtained in no 
 other way. My heart used to ache for the 
 lovely little girls, separated from their mothers 
 at an age when they should have been in 
 their arms every night, with all those little 
 
66 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 confidences and confessions that mothers only 
 can elicit. No matron could supply the moth- 
 er's place, even if devoted solely to the office 
 of mothering the children of a large boarding- 
 school. 
 
 But the case was very different with the 
 young women who came to take a course of col- 
 lege study. With an occasional exception, they 
 were of an age and maturity of character that 
 made them competent to take care of them- 
 selves. One of the chief principles of that col- 
 lege discipline was the absence of all emulation 
 as a motive power. There were no honors to 
 be studied for, there was not even a rank list 
 to show comparative progress, there was no 
 competition for pre-eminence in college gradu- 
 ation, for every student was called upon to 
 prepare himself or herself to speak ; and when 
 the graduating class was large the speakers 
 were determined by lot, and not by choice. No 
 pupil necessarily knew how a fellow - pupil 
 stood. If ill-health interrupted study, time and 
 opportunity were given to make up the defi- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 67 
 
 ciencies without any publicity; so that* Dr. 
 Clarke's objections to co-education on that 
 score fall to the ground, as far as that college 
 is concerned. The mental and moral influences 
 of the mutual college life were very marked in 
 the superior moral deportment and refinement 
 of manners in the young men, and the un- 
 excited and modest demeanor of the young 
 women, both meeting with mutual respect for 
 each other's intellectual and social claims. One 
 or two instances of extravagant ambition for 
 scholarship, and still more for dispatch, were 
 the only cases of failure in health among the 
 young women ; and these were not sanctioned 
 or promoted by any stimulus from the president 
 or professors. One ambitious teacher in the de- 
 partment of the preparatory school, who wished 
 the pupils in her classes to make a greater 
 show than others, was duly checked by inter- 
 ference from the seats of authority. The health 
 of both the young men and women improved 
 in a marked manner during their college life. 
 Many came with no knowledge of hygiene or 
 
68 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 theif own physiological need, and special in- 
 struction was given in those branches of knowl- 
 edge. The health of the girls was much better 
 than that of the young men. 
 
 Young women who came with their systems 
 out of order, through ignorance and unhealthy 
 living, were greatly benefited, and sent home to 
 spread the knowledge they had gained. But 
 one death of each sex occurred in six years (the 
 period of which I write), and they were both 
 cases of poisoning by food in metallic vessels ; 
 yet the hardships were great during the first 
 years, and the exposures rather exceptional, 
 owing to the poverty of the food and the in- 
 adequacy of the buildings as to ventilation and 
 water supply. 
 
 Regular occupation and mental activity are 
 as good for women as for men. Dr. Clarke 
 probably judges of women by the invalids he 
 has tended ; and his observations have been 
 chiefly limited, to all appearance, to the un- 
 healthful life and habits of cities. It cannot be 
 hard study that has chiefly injured the young 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 69 
 
 women he has known, for I suspect few have 
 ever undertaken it. It has been late hours, 
 fashionable dress, with its necessary sacrifice of 
 warmth and ease, hot houses and school-rooms, 
 and unnatural cramming to meet the demands 
 of unhealthy emulation. 
 
 The educators of our private institutions for 
 girls will testify that they have found it diffi- 
 cult to induce their pupils to a continuous and 
 thorough course of study. The demands of 
 society, as it is called, have been allowed to 
 interfere ; and fashionable schools have lived by 
 fashion rather than by merit. One of the ablest 
 teachers of a private high school in Boston tes- 
 tified that her school suddenly rose to unex- 
 ampled popularity without any internal changes, 
 because one or two fashionable girls entered 
 it ; and it as suddenly settled back to its usual 
 numbers because they and their followers left 
 it in dudgeon for some cause. All such edu- 
 cators know the frail tenure upon which they 
 hold their city schools ; and even gentlemen 
 who have taught young ladies' schools have 
 
70 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 experienced the same sudden reverses. In the 
 late movement for higher education in Boston, 
 one of the most earnest women in the cause, 
 when it was suggested to her that the girls in 
 high life did not, as far as educators could judge, 
 care for higher education, replied, " We must 
 make it fashionable, and then they will care 
 for it." 
 
 No, the demand comes from a very different 
 quarter, from those whose means cannot com- 
 mand facilities to meet literary, artistic, or scien- 
 tific aspirations, and who are willing to make 
 sacrifices for education. If Dr. Clarke had 
 assailed the abuses of society, children's par- 
 ties, fashionable dress in its features of bare 
 neck and limbs, thin shoes, sudden change of 
 costume, late hours, and a thousand hardships 
 and exposures to which the less favored classes 
 of society are subjected, he would have done 
 better service than by discouraging women's 
 systematic education, and throwing obstacles in 
 the path of their culture. Still deeper, I would 
 again testify, is the wrong he has done to 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 women by assailing those who devote 
 lives to charity, to their own culture and to the 
 culture of others, and whom those who know 
 them feel would be profaned by worldly mar- 
 riages. The children they act for rise up and 
 call them blessed, and by their affection go far 
 toward making up to them for the lost rapture 
 of actual motherhood. 
 
72 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 IV. 
 
 BY ADA SHEPARD BADGER. 
 
 No thoughtful reader can fail to appreciate 
 the nobleness of the purpose that actuated Dr. 
 Clarke in writing " Sex in Education." No lov- 
 ing and thinking mother can lay aside the book, 
 after reading the first pages, until the whole is 
 perused. But no candid woman teacher, with 
 the interests of education for girls deeply at 
 heart, can quietly allow Dr. Clarke's statement 
 to pass without wishing to suggest essential 
 modifications of its main idea. 
 
 In her double capacity of teacher and mother, 
 the writer of the present article begs leave to 
 call the attention of other mothers and teachers 
 to a few facts bearing upon the other side of 
 this quczstio vexata. 
 
 And, to begin with that branch of the subject 
 which is least essential, since education stands 
 
SEX AND EDUCATIOX. 73 
 
 \>zimz co-education in all minds, and, so that we 
 obtain the former, we will not insist too strongly 
 upon the latter, Dr. Clarke quotes the opinion 
 of "a philanthropist and an intelligent observer," 
 holding an official connection with a college for 
 men and women, that " the co-education of the 
 sexes is intellectually a success, physiologically 
 a failure." He does not state the facts from 
 which this inference is drawn. Doubtless this 
 observer has known instances where women who 
 studied in classes with men finally succumbed to 
 disease, as did some of their male classmates, in 
 all probability. 
 
 But what gives him the power to decide that 
 the proportion of the sufferers among the female 
 graduates is greater than that among their male 
 classmates, or that the seeds of the particular 
 form of malady which has prostrated any woman 
 student were not sown, before the birth of the 
 latter, in the organism of a mother to whose 
 youth the opportunity for a liberal education was 
 denied ? And how can he know that their very 
 origin was not attributable to the lack of that 
 
 4 
 
74 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 knowledge of physiology requisite to instruct a 
 woman as to the commonest facts with regard to 
 the care of herself required by the approach of 
 the sacred office of maternity ? And what proba- 
 bility is there that, had the sufferer in question 
 pursued one of the alternatives to a student's 
 course, a life of fashionable folly,, or even one of 
 common toiling, uninspired by the light of a 
 newly awakened intellectual life, these germs of 
 disease would have been less likely to come to 
 fruition ? What are the grounds of belief that 
 regular study is a prominent cause of physical 
 degeneracy ? 
 
 Facts of the nature of those stated by Dr. 
 Clarke (in Part III., chiefly clinical) would 
 doubtless be adduced by the observer above 
 cited, were he called upon to substantiate his 
 opinion. But, could we look at any one of these 
 cases with the power to judge the hidden as 
 well as the revealed causes in operation, con- 
 sidering also what would have been the probable 
 alternative adopted by the individual in question, 
 had study not been her chief pursuit, is it not 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. ?$ 
 
 quite possible that the conclusion at which we 
 should arrive would contradict that of the work 
 before us ? 
 
 One of the most striking cases mentioned in 
 Part III. chances to have been known to the 
 writer from the earliest infancy of the subject 
 And, although the details of such a case are 
 forbidden by many considerations, the circum- 
 stance of studying in and being graduated with 
 honor at a college planned for both sexes, and 
 in which, indeed, she remained through the 
 senior year only, was but a slight cause among 
 the many that converged to menace, and finally 
 to overcome, that rarely endowed but perilously 
 poised organization. The congenial pursuit of 
 the studies that were so large a part of her life 
 probably delayed for years a result that dis- 
 cerning observers saw imminent for her from the 
 dawning of her conscious life. Neither " death 
 from over-work," nor " death from unphysiolog- 
 ical work," was a verdict to pass unchallenged 
 in her case. 
 
 Who that looked upon Story's bust of Eliza- 
 
76 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 beth Browning could come away without a sym- 
 pathetic tingling, as it were, of the whole being, 
 from the possibilities of suffering beyond the 
 conception of most mortals revealed in that 
 exquisitely sensitive face ? 
 
 But Mrs. Browning did not go to a man's 
 college, or to any college. She studied with 
 her father at home, and could take all the rests 
 required by the needs of her physical life. No 
 college routine, but, possibly, the very absence 
 of its regularity, was responsible for her suffer- 
 ings throughout her life. God wrote on her 
 organism the lines that could not be effaced by 
 time or circumstance. 
 
 Yet she could write, in that patient sweetness 
 which was more wonderful than her version of 
 " Prometheus Bound," or her " Drama of Exile," 
 and which made her a glorious woman more 
 essentially than a gifted poet : 
 
 " Oh ! we live, Oh ! we live, 
 And this life that we conceive 
 Is a strong thing and a grave, 
 Which for others' use we have, 
 Duty-laden to remain. 
 
?Sv 
 
 ^TY 
 SEX AND EDUCATIONS 77 
 
 We are helpers, fellow-creatures, 
 Of the right against the wrong : 
 We are earnest-hearted teachers 
 Of the truth that maketh strong, 
 Yet do we teach in vain ? " 
 
 No generalizations can be drawn from one 
 case, or from seven cases, of women who have 
 become invalids after working continuously " in 
 a man's way." Far more numerous cases might 
 be cited, by physicians and teachers, of girls who 
 were seized upon by the Proteus of disease, as 
 a retribution, let us think, for not having worked 
 with the method of " a man's way," or for not 
 having worked at all. Nowhere in our own 
 country does the average woman present so 
 feeble and diseased an aspect as in those parts 
 of the West and South where education is of the 
 smallest moment to her. Lacking the delicate 
 beauty and the intellectual tastes of the New 
 England girl, she also leads a life of greater 
 physical suffering, and a more hopeless inca- 
 pacity for usefulness. Is unremitting study a 
 cause of the weakness of the Georgia planter's 
 wife or the Cincinnati merchant's daughter? 
 
?8 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 Facts in the writer's possession, through an 
 intimate acquaintance, during the first ten years 
 of its existence, with one of our Western col- 
 leges, established for the joint education of the 
 sexes, are somewhat significant as indicating 
 whether, notwithstanding the many difficulties 
 under which this infant college was obliged to 
 struggle on, the education there given to girls 
 was destructive or constructive. Out of twenty- 
 seven women graduates (all that memory can 
 recall in the absence of catalogues which might 
 permit a full statement), nineteen have married, 
 and eight have remained unmarried, so far as 
 the writer knows. Out of these twenty-seven, 
 graduating between 1857 and 1863, one only has 
 died. All but three, whose post-graduate his- 
 tory has been unreported, are known to have 
 done effective work, for a longer or shorter term 
 of years, in educational and other departments ; 
 and a large number of them have blooming fam- 
 ilies to "rise up and call them blessed." The 
 writer has never heard of but three cases of 
 even temporary invalidism among these women 
 
t>EX AND EDUCATION. 79 
 
 graduates, while a large number of the male 
 students of the same classes have died, or been 
 prostrated by grievous maladies. One of the 
 three cases just referred to was the indisposition 
 for some months of a lady who has since recov- 
 ered ; and who has recently taken her eldest son 
 to Germany, to pursue there her favorite study 
 of music, to which she has consecrated, as pupil 
 and teacher, a great part of her time for over 
 twenty years. Another, confessedly bearing 
 away the first honors of a class in which were 
 graduated two of our successful Unitarian 
 preachers, is now rearing a rosy family of boys 
 on the shore of a Western lake, having taught 
 most successfully for years in a high school. 
 
 Another, yet unmarried, is continuing her 
 studies in England, where her rare powers and 
 ripe culture are winning for her the appreciation 
 she years ago won from that long-time friend of 
 a wise co-education, the editor of the " Liberal 
 Christian," who wrote of her in glowing terms 
 from St. Louis, the former field of her work. 
 
 Another of these graduates, the mother of six 
 
80 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 remarkably fine, healthy children, is giving her 
 husband the most efficient assistance in his work 
 at the head of a Theological School in Eastern 
 New York. 
 
 Here, then, is a class of facts, small, it is true, 
 but significant as to some not unhappy results 
 of a liberal education for women, even though 
 obtained " in a man's way." " By their fruits 
 ye shall know them," said another Good Phy- 
 sician. 
 
 " In the development of the organization is to 
 be found the way of strength and power for both 
 sexes," says Dr. Clarke. " Limitation or abor- 
 tion of development leads to weakness and 
 failure." 
 
 Had these women been denied the privileges 
 of education which their natures craved so ear- 
 nestly that they were willing, in some cases, to go 
 alone to a distant State ; to borrow money to 
 defray their school expenses, so that the first- 
 fruits of their after-work went to cancel these 
 arrearages ; to give up the attractions of life in 
 New England, at the age when its charms are 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 8 1 
 
 most alluring ; to spend, in a new country, in 
 privation and close study, years that might 
 otherwise have been squandered in dissipation 
 or wasted in futile attempts to teach at the 
 enormous disadvantage of inadequate prepara- 
 tion ; had these women been denied the edu- 
 cation they struggled for and obtained in the 
 only way then possible, who knows what hydra- 
 headed maladies might now be racking their 
 bodies and distracting their brains ? Study, 
 severe study, if you will, was their safeguard, 
 not their peril, even in a physical point of view. 
 Dr. Clarke justly shall we say generously? 
 concedes the right of women to the highest 
 culture of which they are capable. But the 
 point of his argument turns^ upon the method 
 of obtaining this culture. And just here, in a 
 man's view of the case, seems a mighty diffi- 
 culty arising. . But put one or two wise, mother- 
 ly women on the faculty of each college where 
 girls are admitted, (and what advocate for the 
 liberal culture of women would think of sending 
 girls to study where men alone preside ?) and 
 
82 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 t 
 
 woman's wit will speedily solve the great prob- 
 lem of " the periodical remission from labor." 
 
 'Assume that each girl student must rest 
 entirely from brain-work three days out of every 
 thirty, and the average of work could be easily 
 brought up by a little exercise of common sense 
 on the part of teacher and pupil. But it is not 
 to be assumed that every girl, or that one girl 
 out of ten, must rest three days, or even one 
 day, out of thirty. Not unfrequently girls who 
 afterwards developed into sound, healthy matrons, 
 standing the wear and tear of life in a manner to 
 astonish vigorous men hardly able to hold their 
 own in the rush of our American life, have been 
 known to attend, without a single exception, 
 every recitation of their classes for years, even 
 when going daily from quite a distance to school 
 or college. A moderate and regular use of the 
 mental faculties, such as should alone be per- 
 mitted in our schools and colleges, with ample 
 margins each week for the exigencies of life for 
 both sexes, has been again and again proved to 
 be conducive to the highest physical health for 
 women as well as men. 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. 83 
 
 A few years ago a young girl of sixteen, who 
 had left school under a physician's advice, be- 
 cause of certain irregularities in her physical 
 health, was rapidly passing into such a state of 
 apathy to things ordinarily attractive to the 
 young, that wise friends feared the result of in- 
 sanity. As a last resort, she was placed in a 
 school where, amid pleasant companionship, her 
 faculties were gently though regularly stimulated. 
 She soon began to revive under a regimen of 
 mathematics, languages, and art-culture, and in 
 two years was in a state of perfect health. Dur- 
 ing these entire two years she was not absent 
 from school more than three times, nor did she 
 ever fail to prepare a lesson. Here regularity of 
 study was not a source of disease, but, appar- 
 ently, its cure. 
 
 But the instances in point, thronging the mind 
 of the writer, would tax the patience of the 
 reader unjustifiably. Passing over those omis- 
 sions and oversights in the book, so happily 
 specified in notices like that of the " Advertiser " 
 and the " Liberal Christian," a few words more 
 
84 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 must close this already too long reference to this 
 timely and, in many respects, valuable essay. 
 
 The evil to which our wise and kind physician 
 refers, is surely not to be overlooked. It exists ; 
 it stares at us from early graves, and, far worse, 
 from homes whose central figures are afflicted 
 with life-long sufferings before which the stout- 
 est-hearted men might quail. 
 
 What is its remedy ? Does our earnest-hearted 
 friend propose one which the exigencies of life 
 will permit women to adopt ? Has any writer 
 suggested a cure for this menacing ill? 
 
 If a warning trumpet is to be blown, shall no 
 one be found to herald also the hope of better 
 things ? 
 
 Let a woman's voice be heard pleading, not 
 for less work or less constant work, but for a 
 wiser method of work in our schools ! Let a 
 ban be put upon public exhibitions of both boys 
 and girls in schools ! Let the worry arising 
 from a false system of marks for recitations, and 
 from all comparisons and competitions, be ban- 
 ished forever ! Let the notion that girls must 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 8$ 
 
 recite all their lessons while standing vanish 
 from the minds of both teachers and physicians ! 
 The use of the feet is not essential to a good lo ( a 
 
 jOLtft 
 
 translation from Homer or Goethe ; and even 
 the Calculus has been mastered by students who, 
 for the most part, sat at recitations. Let even- 
 ing parties, and the various forms of tempting 
 amusements which beset our young people while 
 attending to the serious work of their education, 
 be as strictly forbidden to them as they are 
 to their infant brothers and sisters yet in the 
 nursery! Let the tyrannous fashion-plate be 
 consulted less than the laws of harmonious col- 
 oring and real fitness of contour! 
 
 Above all, let the beginnings be right I Re- 
 member that far more valuable work can be done 
 for the education of any human being, and espe- 
 cially of a girl, by reason of her threefold nature, 
 between the ages of seven and fourteen than 
 between fourteen and nineteen. Let our girls 
 remain girls till they have reached the estate of 
 womanhood. Let their development be gradual 
 and normal, not forced and spasmodic ; and we 
 
86 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 shall have no hothouse flowers to fade and die 
 at the first touch of the ruder air of real life, but 
 blossoms that are the pledge of coming fruit. 
 
 It would be unjust and ungrateful in any wo- 
 man not to recognize the fact that Dr. Clarke's 
 book was necessarily written in haste, in hours 
 snatched from his absorbing labors in alleviating 
 the sufferings of those for whose good he wrote. 
 It was doubtless this haste that rendered possi- 
 ble such a verbal error as occurs on page 35, 
 where he hides the venerable Ulysses, instead 
 of the youthful Achilles, among the maidens. 
 
 In conclusion, we would insist not only that 
 the diseases so often referred to do not originate 
 generally in the schools, but that the only way 
 in which they can be reached and cured is 
 through the instruction imparted and the reg- 
 ularity of life, in all its details, required by wisely 
 conducted schools, covering the whole period 
 from early girlhood to full maturity. 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 8/ 
 
 V. 
 
 BY CAROLINE H. DALL. 
 
 "THE hand of iron in the glove of silk!" How 
 utter one word in the face of testimony like 
 this, honest, conscientious, earnest ; adding to 
 
 * 
 
 the highest professional reputation all the force 
 of a pure and noble individual character ? How 
 do it, still further, in the face of personal ob- 
 ligations accumulating for more than twenty 
 years, and of that loving respect with which the 
 physician who is also priest is held in every 
 household ? I have anticipated this book with 
 pain. I lay it down with pain, far sharper and 
 far different from any that I foresaw. I start 
 from the same premises with Dr. Clarke ; for I 
 believe the spiritual and intellectual functions 
 of men and women to tend differently to their 
 one end ; and their development to this end, 
 through the physical, to be best achieved by dif- 
 
88 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 ferent methods. But I do not believe that any 
 greater difference of capacity, whether physical 
 or psychical, will be found between man and 
 woman than is found between man and man ; 
 and my faith in the co-education of the sexes 
 has been greatly stimulated by the present in- 
 elastic method, from which many boys do shrink 
 as much as any girl could. 
 
 Under a proper system boys and girls help 
 each other forward, not merely towards excel- 
 lent scholarship, but towards a perfect human- 
 ity, that is, a perfect self-possession, the 
 attainment for each of a sound mind in a sound 
 body. To understand this, however, not even 
 the President of Harvard will find possible un- 
 less he does more than look at a mixed college. 
 To have any fair comprehension of the elements 
 which constitute its power for good or evil, it is 
 necessary to pass at least a week within its 
 walls, sharing the " college commons " and the 
 college recreations ; studying its whole action as 
 if it were a large family. 
 
 When I laid down this book I felt the empha- 
 
S-EX AND EDUCATION. 89 
 
 sis of my pain in a direction wholly unexpected. 
 Every woman who takes up her pen to reject 
 its conclusions knows very well that it will 
 penetrate hundreds of households where her 
 protest cannot follow ; and Dr. Clarke must be 
 patient with the number and weight of our re- 
 monstrances, since he knows very well that 
 upon the major part of the community our 
 words will fall with no authority, our experiences 
 invite no confidence. We must gain the public 
 ear by constant iteration, and by our " impor- 
 tunity " prevail. This book will fall into the 
 hands of the young, and that I deplore. They 
 should be taught the proper care of their grow- 
 ing bodies ; but any such cases of disease as 
 are here recorded are fruitful of evil stimulus 
 to any girl inclined to hysterics. If this subject 
 ought to be discussed publicly at all, a matter 
 open to doubt, teachers and mothers should dis- 
 cuss it. No amount of professional skill can 
 avail in place of that sympathetic intuition of 
 causes which should spring from identical physi- 
 cal constitution. In no pages that I ever read 
 
90 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 is the need of educated women physicians so 
 painfully apparent as in these. I expected to 
 find premises from which I should dissent, but, 
 with the exception of that upon which the book 
 is based, I did not find any ; and, so far as it 
 is an argument against co-education, the book 
 utterly fails. 
 
 Co-education does not necessarily include 
 identical methods ; and, if it did, Dr. Clarke's 
 examples of broken constitutions are brought 
 from the clerk's desk, the theatre, and the 
 woman's college, as well. His examples have no 
 statistical value ; for nothing is told us of their 
 proportion to the whole number of students of 
 the other sex under the same precise conditions, 
 or to the failures in the same number of girls 
 educated tenderly at home. When the book 
 passes from the methods of education to the 
 effect of those methods on womanly functions, 
 the treatment of the subject is both one-sided 
 and incomplete. The only proper place for a 
 discussion of the latter in extenso is the columns 
 of a medical journal ; but this book is intended 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 91 
 
 for popular use, and to the people must those 
 who criticise it appeal. 
 
 The most painful thing in the book is its tone. 
 Mr. Higginson has said that it is not coarse ! 
 Surely never was a sentence written that more 
 eloquently betrayed the need women have to 
 speak for themselves ! Women read this essay 
 with personal humiliation and dismay. A cer- 
 tain materialistic taint is felt throughout the 
 whole, such as saddens most of our intercourse 
 with our young physicians, but which we had 
 hoped never to associate with this man, so long 
 and so justly revered. The natural outgrowth 
 of this tone are the sneers which disfigure its 
 pages, the motto from Plautus, and a few most 
 unhappy illustrations. 
 
 These things might be easily forgiven to the 
 immature student, as we pardon the rude man- 
 ners of growing boys ; but should not our friend 
 have denied himself the small relief of their 
 utterance ? We cannot excuse the trait merely 
 because the work has been undertaken in the 
 midst of more pressing cares. We feel that it 
 
92 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 indicates something in the author which is no 
 accident. We do not accept it as suitable in 
 the " beloved physician " for whose delicate and 
 thoughtful care so many have been grateful. 
 He, at least, should have given us pages that a 
 woman might read without a blush. 
 
 We are sorry that he thought it worth while 
 to invent a word to give point to his sneer. If 
 there are any " agenes " in the world, surely we 
 do not find them in the women who, seeking to 
 do some good work in the world, have sought 
 the development of their best powers in ways 
 unwise or absurd, and have in consequence 
 failed to satisfy the yearnings that they feel. 
 " Other tasks in other worlds " await them, and 
 the yearning may still prove the germ of a com- 
 pleted development. The true " agenes " are 
 the men who have lost manhood through vicious 
 courses, and whose innocent wives will never 
 hear the voices of their children in consequence. 
 We look from the possible mother to the father, 
 and I mean all that my words imply. It is the 
 testimony of one even more familiar with the 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 93 
 
 nursery and the sick-room than with the theo-f 
 ries of the platform. The vices of men imperil 
 the populations of the earth far more than the 
 unwise studies of women. 
 
 Very painful, also, is the witness these pages 
 bear to the small number of wise and noble 
 mothers among us, women who can so im- 
 press themselves upon their daughters that 
 they should follow modest and wholesome 
 courses, as if by instinct or habit, and should 
 shrink from all the possible unwomanly expos- 
 ure which has made these pages necessary. 
 Our author quotes a letter from a German 
 mother, as if it could not have been written 
 here. But the mothers of all my schoolmates 
 lived as if they had written it, and it gives the 
 experience of that portion of present society 
 who believe in motherly influence and exercise 
 motherly care. It is true that there are " fast " 
 young women, with whom the restraints of 
 proper feeling do not prevail ; but distinctions 
 should be made in the writing. Refined and 
 thoughtful women should be credited with their 
 
94 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 actual habits. Dr. Clarke has lost a most pre- 
 cious opportunity. It was in his power to 
 stamp the objectionable mode of life with its 
 real vulgarity. If any fathers would but guard 
 their sons as many women still know how to 
 guard their daughters ! The revelations of this 
 book are enough to chill any one with horror. 
 
 In the writing of this book acknowledged 
 statistics seem to have been wholly overlooked. 
 More female infants than male survive the 
 perils of infancy, and more girls mature into 
 womanhood than boys into manhood. Will 
 any one who looks carefully at the immature 
 half-developed figures of our young men, or 
 keeps the record of their vitality, claim that it 
 is superior to that of women ? 
 
 In all books that concern the education of 
 women, one very important fact is continually 
 overlooked. 
 
 Women, and even young girls at school, take 
 their studies in addition to their home-cares. 
 If boys are preparing for college, they do not 
 have to take care of the baby, make the beds, 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. 95 
 
 or help to serve the meals. A great many girls 
 at the High Schools do all this. Then, if a 
 man who is a student marries, he is carefully 
 protected from all annoyance. His study is 
 sacred, his wife does the marketing. If his 
 baby cries, he sleeps in the spare room. 
 
 So far women have written in the nursery 
 or the dining-room, often with one foot on the 
 cradle. They must provide for their households, 
 and nurse their sick, before they can follow any 
 artistic or intellectual bent. 
 
 When it is once fairly acknowledged that 
 women properly have a vocation, they may be 
 protected in it as a man is. At present there 
 is* no propriety in making comparisons of re- 
 sults in regard to the two sexes. 
 
 It is in " education " that Dr. Clarke seems 
 to find the sole source of numerous evils. It is 
 true that he alludes to bad food and bad habits 
 of dress, but so slightly that the reader might 
 be justified in forgetting it. Of dissipation and 
 precocious folly there is scarce a word. He 
 alludes to " the pallor of our women " as if it 
 
96 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 were a new thing, whereas the second genera- 
 tion born upon these shores bore witness to it. 
 It was observed by travellers one hundred and 
 fifty years ago. As to the endurance of the 
 duties of motherhood, and the proportion of 
 surviving children born to them, our women are 
 far in advance of the first generation, born and 
 reared across the water. It was a rare thing in 
 that generation for man and wife to live together 
 through the whole natural period of conjugal life. 
 The men lived long ; but they had two, three, 
 four, and more frequently than any one would 
 believe who had not examined five wives. Nor 
 can this be accounted for on the ground that the 
 women were subj ect to uncommon hardship. The 
 settlers of Ipswich, for example, were wealthy ; 
 they built houses more comfortable than those 
 they had left ; and they testify that one of their 
 motives in coming to this country was the lack 
 of pure water and good drainage in the old. 
 Still their wives perished by the score. " The 
 wind at Madrid will not blow out a candle," 
 says the old Spanish proverb, " but it can kill 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 97 
 
 a man." The change of climate was at the 
 bottom of this early fatality. The condition of 
 things steadily improved to the happy time that 
 we all remember. If the last thirty years has 
 checked the steady gain, let us consider patient- 
 ly the era of French fashions, vices, and habits, 
 the era of unnatural hours and pastimes. The 
 movement in behalf of the higher education of 
 woman is a very modern movement. No single 
 generation can be said to have matured under 
 its influence. It is too early to examine the 
 results, but this is certain: whatever danger 
 menaces the health of America, it cannot thus 
 far have sprung from the over-education of her 
 women. 
 
 Mrs. Badger has already shown that the 
 health of Southern and Western women, whose 
 opportunities of education have been small, is 
 even lower than that of our cultivated classes, 
 a matter easily to be tested by any one who will 
 watch the crowd pouring out of a western rail- 
 road station. " The cerebral processes by which 
 knowledge is acquired are the samp^Dt^JJq^ 
 
 f rmi 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
98 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 sexes," says Dr. Clarke ; but observing women 
 will hardly admit this statement. I believe it 
 would be hardly possible for women to become 
 students if the processes were identical. The 
 slowest woman who has any real power will con- 
 quer a new study in about half the time of the 
 average male student. Her method she does 
 not herself understand. She has ways and 
 means which are not apparent. I cannot be- 
 lieve that any " Oriental care of the body " ever 
 equalled the care given to the women of to-day in 
 America. The women who are now practising 
 as physicians in the harems of Europe and Asia 
 find fearful ignorance and absolute superstition. 
 For myself I can only say that I look for young 
 women of the strongest physique at this mo- 
 ment within the walls of academies and colleges. 
 The regular studies, the early rising and retir- 
 ing, the exercises in the gymnasium and the 
 open air, the companionship with charming and 
 cultivated women older than themselves, all tend 
 to the most perfect health. This is a reproach 
 to our homes, and perhaps indicates that care- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 99 
 
 lessness in mothers which was always avoided 
 when I was young, not so much because its re- 
 . suits were injurious as because it was in itself 
 unwomanly and indelicate. 
 
 Dr. Clarke fears that co-education will stimu- 
 late women to attempt what the method of their 
 physical life renders dangerous. Why, then, 
 does he turn from Oberlin, Antioch, and Cornell 
 to the one institution where co-education has 
 never been, and will never be, attempted, and 
 where the one fact of the resident physician 
 and the resident " lady principal " should indi- 
 cate to the most careless inspection a careful 
 adaptation to womanly needs ? Or why, if he 
 had an hysterical patient who happened to have 
 been a pupil at Vassar, did he trust, without 
 examination, to her statements ? I may chal- 
 lenge an audience when I speak of Vassar ; for 
 it is against my will if it fulfil any dream of 
 mine. From the hour that it first went into 
 operation I have been its frequent visitor. The 
 president and faculty might have banished me 
 as a spy, so thoroughly committed am I to the 
 
I0o SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 cause of co-education. Instead they welcomed 
 me warmly, and gave me liberty and opportu- 
 nity to detect every flaw. 
 
 In a meeting of the " American Association 
 for the Promotion of Social Science," held last 
 May, I drew attention to the superior health of 
 the girls at Vassar. I pointed out the fact that 
 the health of the girls continued to improve 
 up to the hour of graduation ; and while I had 
 in my audience three members of the faculty, 
 Miss Maria Mitchell, the resident physician, 
 Dr. Avery, and President Raymond himself, it 
 was observable that they heard me with indif- 
 ference rather than pride, so perfectly familiar 
 were they with the fact. The parents of all the 
 pupils are also familiar with it ; and if Dr. 
 Avery were at any moment to resign her re- 
 sponsible post she would receive a warm wel- 
 come in any community that had sent pupils to 
 Vassar. The world may be challenged to pro- 
 duce, in any one neighborhood, four hundred 
 young women of so great physical promise. In 
 the following June I met .Miss Mary Carpen- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 ter at Vassar by appointment. She 
 amazement how close the actual 
 the pupils came to the curriculum proposed ; 
 but she concluded her investigation by ejacu- 
 lating, with the peculiar emphasis that all who 
 know her will recall, "And we must admit that 
 they have superior health, it is most extraor- 
 dinary ! " This was the testimony of one accus- 
 tomed to the " rosebuds " in England's "garden 
 of girls." In regard to the case reported by Dr. 
 Clarke in connection with Vassar College, I was 
 so sure that there was some mistake that I wrote 
 at once to the resident physician, and she will 
 be glad to be held responsible for the following 
 statements. 
 
 The points will be perceived if the reader will 
 refer to the 79th page of " Sex in Education." 
 Vassar College does not receive students under 
 fifteen, even for the first preparatory year ; and 
 there is a preparatory course of two years. No 
 student ever entered the freshman class at four- - 
 teen. At the beginning of every collegiate 
 year the students are carefully instructed re- 
 
102 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 garding the periodic precautions necessary to 
 their health. They are positively forbidden to 
 take gymnastics at all during the first, two days 
 of their period ; and, if there is the slightest 
 diseased tendency, are told to forego those ex- 
 ercises entirely. They are forbidden to ride on 
 horseback, and are strongly advised not to 
 dance, nor to run up and down stairs, nor to do 
 any thing else which will give successive, even 
 though gentle, shocks to the trunk. They are 
 encouraged to go out of doors for quiet walks 
 and drives, and to do whatever they can to 
 steady irritable nerves or unnatural excitement. 
 That a student should faint again and again in 
 the gymnasium, and still be allowed to continue 
 her exercises there, is a statement that would 
 not be made by any one familiar with the per- 
 sonal physical care given at Vassar College, 
 not merely by the resident physician, but by the 
 teachers acting as a body. It is a statement 
 that will be believed by no one in the least 
 familiar with the college methods. The faculty 
 do not attempt to cut down the work of each 
 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 103 
 
 girl periodically ; but they do mean to so regu- 
 late the work of the whole time that the end of 
 no day shall find her overtaxed, even though 
 that day bear an unusual burden. The average 
 age of the graduates is twenty-one and one- 
 half. The present freshman class numbers 
 seventy-nine. 
 
 The girls begin the work of the year at the 
 following ages : 
 
 ii between 20 and 23. 
 
 14 19 20. 
 
 23 18 19. 
 
 24 17 18. 
 6 16 17. 
 i 15 l6 - 
 
 This is a fair average class, except that it is 
 singular in the last item. That is almost the 
 only instance in the history of the college of a 
 student entering as a freshman under sixteen. 
 Few are under seventeen ; seventy-two of the 
 seventy-nine are over that age. Forty-eight, or 
 three-fifths, are over eighteen. " Eighteen," 
 writes Dr. Avery, "is young ^ enough for any 
 woman to begin this course. At that age, with 
 
104 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 an average endowment of mind and body, she 
 pursues it with gladness and ends it with re- 
 joicing, as many of our classes can prove." 
 
 I consider this a most valuable exhibit, and it 
 is the book before us that has called it out. Vas- 
 sar never yet insisted on a " regimen not to be 
 distinguished " from that impressed upon boys, 
 and her pupils are guided physiologically with a 
 watchful tenderness impossible in most homes. 
 Such care is quite as much needed by boys. 
 Whenever co-education becomes a fact, the so- 
 cial head of the mixed college must be a woman 
 who will exercise loving motherly care for both, 
 and who will find no practical difficulty in the 
 natural differences. 
 
 Of one other case cited by Dr. Clarke as an 
 instance of over or unwise education, I had an 
 intimate and sorrowful knowledge. The de- 
 generacy imputed to excessive culture was, in 
 fact, the result of a tendency inherited from a 
 vicious father, a tendency recognized by its 
 unfortunate subject with morbid pain from the 
 beginning. 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. IO$ 
 
 Nothing will pain women more in this book 
 than the assertion that " old age is sexless." 
 Men and women do not lose the distinctions of 
 perfect womanhood and manhood as they draw 
 nearer to each other, unless we are prepared to 
 account these purely physical. A woman ceases 
 to be a mother only to fulfil the quite as sacred 
 functions of the grandmother. She is set free 
 from certain cares that a large experience of 
 life may show her all the more fit for certain 
 other cares, both social and philanthropic ; but 
 if she be not to her heart's core womanly, even 
 at the age of eighty, her life has been a failure. 
 Man, ripening alike through success and reverse, 
 grows nearer to woman as he grows old ; but his 
 advanced life is also worthless if it cannot offer 
 manhood's ripest fruit to her hand. Sweet 
 memories of happy firesides, where the winter 
 blaze crowned snowy heads with halos, bring 
 the quick tears to my eyes as I write. God be 
 thanked for manhood and womanhood completed 
 at fourscore, as I recall them ! It would seem 
 as if Dr. Clarke can hardly yet understand what 
 
106 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 a blow his essay deals at the industry of woman. 
 Did the world accept it, the movement now ad- 
 vancing would be checked in the bud. Thou- 
 sands of women are thrown upon themselves 
 for self-support at the age of fourteen. The 
 moment that school-tasks are remitted three 
 days out of thirty, clerks will leave the desk, 
 servant-girls their accustomed work, shop-girls 
 their counters. It is not too much to say that 
 male labor must replace service as intermittent 
 as this. 
 
 I Having shown what the facts are in reference 
 to the noblest institution for the culture of 
 girls, I will add that I am utterly tired of see- 
 ing any class of God's creatures singled out 
 for especial care. Bad habits, houses built 
 like packing-cases set on end, unwholesome 
 food, precocious reading, have much to do with 
 the ill-heath of American women. If they put 
 their money into comfort instead of flounces, 
 if they employed two servants where they now 
 have six, much of their mental lassitude would 
 disappear, and their bodies would bear witness 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. IO/ 
 
 to the release. It is time that a generation of 
 healthy men were provided : the occult causes 
 lie within their own control. 
 
 The book before us may do something by 
 rousing mothers and daughters to contemplate 
 the situation ; but, if properly trained in wise 
 homes towards average health, the ends of life 
 will be far better served by the women who for- 
 get their own inconveniences and think chiefly 
 of those endured by others. 
 
 Nothing is so absurd as to press upon a young 
 woman's thought the idea that she is to become 
 a mother. What if she is ? Let her make 
 herself a healthy, happy human being, and what 
 will may befall. What would be thought of a 
 community which definitely undertook to train 
 young men to the functions and duties of fath- 
 ers ? A shout of derision would be raised at 
 once. " Let us have citizens ! " the world would 
 cry. I echo the demand. Mothers are no more 
 important to the race than fathers. We must 
 gain both by seeking first the " kingdom of 
 God." People should live out their young and 
 
108 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 happy days, unconscious of this issue, as the 
 flowers take no thought of seed. This is best 
 done when their minds are occupied with 
 other subjects than "periodicity" or " develop- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 109 
 
 VI. 
 BY C. 
 
 A FEW years ago an eminent divine felt it his 
 mission to expound to woman " the great facts 
 of her being." He began his harangue with 
 flattering admissions of her " intuitions " and 
 " delicacy of taste ; " and, having thus secured 
 himself a hearing, he proceeded to declare that 
 "woman cannot compete with man in a long 
 course of mental labor," and that " as for train- 
 ing young ladies through a long intellectual 
 course, as we do young men, it can never be 
 done, they will die in the process." 
 
 With the same conventional concessions to 
 the equality of the sexes, Dr. Clarke introduces 
 his plea for what, with great adroitness, he calls, 
 " A Fair Chance for the Girls." 
 
 "Abstract right and wrong," he says, "has 
 nothing to do with sex. What is right or 
 
110 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 wrong for man is equally right or wrong for 
 woman. . . . 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. . . . Neither is there any such thing 
 as superiority or inferiority in the matter. Man 
 is not superior to woman, nor woman to man. 
 The relation of the sexes is one of equality, not 
 of better and worse, or of a higher and lower." 
 
 "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." 
 
 The old doctrine of woman's sphere shines 
 with equal clearness from the pages of Dr. Todd 
 and Dr. Clarke, though the latter carefully avoids 
 the obnoxious phrase. Just as plainly, though 
 in less offensive words, does Dr. Clarke announce 
 his belief that woman was made for man, and 
 that maternity is her only divinely appointed 
 mission, with an unmanly sneer at those who 
 fail to fulfil that destiny. 
 
 The sneer is too studied to be accidental, and 
 is to me the unpardonable sin of the book. Did 
 the author willingly expose himself to justified 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. Ill 
 
 attack on this point, for the express purpose of 
 reaching the ear and heart of those superlatively 
 weak women whom nothing can touch but a 
 masculine sneer? Not quite believing in his 
 own arguments, did he trust to satire to win him 
 approval with that class of people for whom his 
 book was written ? Surely he is not so ignorant 
 as not to know that the jeer will only weaken 
 the argument with all thoughtful people. But 
 was the book written for the thinking people, or 
 for those whom ridicule, not reason, convinces ? 
 For those especially who fear masculine ridicule 
 in all that relates to their external attractions ; 
 for those who can endure all loss save the loss 
 of admiration ; for those on whom an argument 
 is wasted, while a sneer converts ? One may fully 
 believe that the perfection of womanhood, as of 
 manhood, is reached in a true marriage ; one 
 may dissent from the opinion that man and wo- 
 man, being equal, are therefore identical ; one 
 may not yet be fully persuaded in her own mind 
 that the co-education of the sexes is desirable : 
 yet if she is an earnest and thoughtful woman, 
 
1 12 SEX AND EDUCA TION. 
 
 as anxious for the intellectual as for the physical 
 perfection of her sex, she must feel the gripe of 
 the iron hand under the velvet glove in all Dr. 
 Clarke's admissions, coupled as they are with 
 such limitations. "Without denying the self- 
 evident proposition," says Dr. Clarke, " 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 question, what can she 
 best do ? ... The qucestio vexata of woman's 
 sphere will be decided by her organization. 
 This limits her power and reveals her divinely 
 appointed tasks. . . . Each can do in certain 
 directions what the other cannot ; and in other 
 directions, when both can do the same things, 
 one sex as a rule can do them better than the 
 other. . . . Many of the efforts for bettering her 
 education seem to treat her as if her organiza- 
 tion, and consequently her function, were mas- 
 culine, not feminine. . . . The lily is not inferior 
 to the rose, nor the oak superior to the clover ; 
 yet the glory of the lily is one, and the glory of 
 the oak is another, and the use of the oak is not 
 the use of the clover." 
 
S-EX AND EDUCA TION. 1 1 3 
 
 " Whatever a woman can do she has a right to 
 do," is so plausible as to satisfy the credulous, 
 were it not for the ungenerous doubt contained 
 in the inquiry, " But what can she do ? and what 
 can she best do ? " questions which she is not 
 to be allowed to settle for herself, but which Dr. 
 Clarke hastens to answer by telling her "her 
 organization limits her power, and reveals her 
 divinely appointed tasks." She is entitled only 
 to what she can attain as a woman ; and, being 
 a woman, her attainment is limited by her organ- 
 ization. What mother or teacher would have 
 the heart to -say to the healthy girl of fifteen, 
 just becoming conscious of her mental powers, 
 " My girl, hitherto you have talked, romped, 
 chased butterflies and climbed fences, loved, 
 hated (and studied) with your brother, with an 
 innocent abandon that is ignorant of sex. Here 
 your paths must diverge. He will go out into 
 the world free to attain the highest mental cul- 
 ture of which a human being is capable. You 
 were predestined to be a wife and a mother, and 
 are therefore endowed with a peculiar organiza- 
 H 
 
114 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 tion. To develop that organization to that end 
 becomes now your duty and mine." High med- 
 ical authority has declared that " force must be 
 allowed to flow thither in an ample stream, and 
 not be diverted to the brain by the school ; " and, 
 as the system never does two things well at the 
 same time, you must no longer spend in the 
 study of geography and arithmetic, of Latin, 
 Greek, and chemistry, in the brain-work of the 
 school-room, force that should be spent in phys- 
 ical growth. Your power is limited by your 
 organization. What robust girl to whom this 
 should be said, but would feel her sex to be a 
 galling chain, and her tasks any thing but di- 
 vinely appointed ? " The use of the clover is 
 not the use of the oak," says Dr. Clarke. " You 
 must not try to make the anemone into an oak," 
 says Dr. Todd. Not at all. I only find it diffi- 
 cult to believe that a kind Creator intended my 
 mortal body to be a hinderance to the develop- 
 ment of my immortal mind, which physiology 
 and theology both assure me he has made equal 
 to that of my brother. 
 
SEX AND ED L/C A TION. 1 1 5 
 
 This physiological scare is the most insidious 
 form under which the opposition to the higher 
 education of woman has yet appeared. I speak 
 advisedly ; for, though this book professes to be 
 a protest against the co-education of the sexes, 
 and even against their separate identical educa- 
 tion, I think it will be felt by the careful reader 
 to be a protest against any high intellectual 
 education for women. 
 
 While the author claims to use the term edu- 
 cation only in its broadest sense as " the draw- 
 ing out and development of every part of the 
 system," including necessarily the whole manner 
 of life physical and psychical during the educa- 
 tional period, it will be seen that he lays stress 
 only upon the physical education of girls, and 
 upon their physical education only as it is con- 
 nected with the duties of maternity. Nowhere 
 does he hold out to the girls the promise that, 
 if they will carefully obey his injunctions dur- 
 ing the critical period of their lives, they can 
 with safety, and may with propriety, seek a 
 higher mental culture. Nowhere does he urge 
 
Il6 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 them finally to demand the highest mental cul- 
 ture, as he insists that they shall have the high- 
 est physical culture, as their birthright. 
 
 Moreover, that regimen which precludes the 
 regular attendance of girls upon school, between 
 the ages of fourteen and nineteen, virtually robs 
 them of any extended course of study, since be- 
 fore the end of that period their so-called duties 
 to society are thrust upon them. 
 
 Is it fair, in contrasting the ruddy cheeks and 
 vigor of the English girl with the pallor and weak- 
 ness of the American girl, to attribute the latter 
 largely to the educational methods of our schools, 
 and to credit nothing of the former to the simple 
 domestic life of the English girl ? 
 
 Let us " emphasize and reiterate until it is 
 heeded " Dr. Clarke's statement that "jwpman's 
 neglect of her own organization adds to the 
 number of her many weaknesses, and intensifies 
 their power." Let us reflect awhile before we 
 accept his statement that "the educational 
 methods of our schools are, to a large extent, 
 the causes of the thousand ills that beset Amer- 
 ican women." 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 1 1/ 
 
 "Girls of bloodless skins and intellectual 
 faces," he says, " may be seen any day, by those 
 who desire the spectacle, among the scholars of 
 our high and normal schools ; faces that crown, 
 and skins that cover, curving spines which should 
 be straight, and neuralgic nerves that should 
 know no pain. ... A training that yields this 
 result is neither fair to the girls nor to the 
 race." 
 
 Are bloodless female faces to be found only 
 among the scholars of our high and normal 
 schools ? 
 
 When found there, what effort has Dr. Clarke 
 made to ascertain how much of their bloodless- 
 ness is due to brain labor ? Does he know any 
 thing of the home life of these girls ? Is it not 
 just possible that they may have been defrauded 
 of their childhood, that in what is technically 
 and prettily called helping their mothers, lifting 
 and carrying baby, &c., their poor curved spines 
 may have got a -twist long before they had won 
 admission to the high school ? 
 
 Are there no bloodless faces among the sew- 
 
Il8 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 ing girls who do not stand at their work, whose 
 work is neither brain-work nor severe manual 
 labor, but that most often quoted to us as the 
 most suitable feminine occupation ? 
 
 " The number of these graduates who have 
 been permanently disabled, to a greater or less 
 degree, by these causes, is so great as to excite 
 the greatest alarm," says Dr. Clarke. Will he 
 give us the exact number, so that we need not 
 underrate or overrate the danger ? and, if it can 
 be proved that two out of every five of these 
 wrecks to which he sadly points, were stranded 
 on another shore than that of a sustained course 
 of mental work, it will tend to quiet the alarm. 
 
 I do not wish to put out of sight the doctor's 
 explicit declaration that "our school methods 
 are not the sole causes of female weakness." 
 He admits that "an immense loss of female 
 power may be fairly charged " to certain delin- 
 quencies of dress and diet ; yet he as distinctly 
 adds that, " after the amplest allowance for 
 these, there remains a large margin of disease 
 unaccounted for ; " that " the grievous maladies 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. 1 19 
 
 that torture a woman's earthly existence are 
 indirectly affected by food, clothes, and exer- 
 cise ; they are directly and largely affected by 
 the methods of education in our schools." Fur- 
 thermore, he makes no demand that girls shall 
 be as carefully protected from physical strain 
 and from mental excitement in their social life 
 at critical periods as he does that they shall be 
 protected from the excitements of study. A 
 paper that, after claiming to treat upon educa- 
 tion as " including the whole manner of life," 
 declares the discussion of dress and similar 
 causes of female weakness is not within its 
 scope ; that mentions these casually as indirect 
 causes, and is silent concerning the social ex- 
 citements of girls, which every teacher feels to 
 be a fruitful source of disease, directing its 
 arguments mainly against their mental training, 
 does not seem to me to be written wholly in 
 the interest of the girls. The writer leaves the 
 impression, and he means to leave the impres- 
 sion, that the regimen of the schools, if not the 
 sole cause, is the prime and direct cause of the 
 
120 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 ill-health of American women. When he gives 
 us statistics showing that the girls injured by 
 co-education or by separate identical education 
 outnumber the girls diseased by excessive muscle 
 work, excessive mental idleness, or excessive 
 social dissipation, it will not be necessary for 
 him to plead the poverty of Harvard College in 
 support of his theory. 
 
 By his logic the girls in fashionable private 
 schools, where the discipline is supposed to be 
 more lax, the course of study more flexible, and 
 the standard lower, should have better health 
 than the girls in the public schools. Is it true 
 that they have ? 
 
 Teachers of fashionable private schools for 
 girls in Boston to-day know that their pupils, so 
 far from studying harder than they themselves 
 did twenty-five years ago, study less. The hours 
 of the school session are fewer, and much less 
 time is granted for study out of school. They 
 know, too, that the absences excused by sick- 
 ness are far in excess of those of their own 
 school-days. Looking, therefore, for some other 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. 1 2 1 
 
 cause than increased brain-work, for this de- 
 generacy in the health of girls, they easily find 
 it in the increased luxury and irregularity of 
 their home life. 
 
 Teachers of long experience testify that the 
 health of studious girls is better than that of the 
 lazy ones, because their minds are occupied hap- 
 pily, and being also regularly occupied acquire 
 a habit of concentration that is stability and 
 strength for mind and body. The involuntary 
 testimony of many a school-girl goes far to con- 
 firm this. 
 
 Sadder even than the bloodless skin and in- 
 tellectual face of the normal-school girl is the 
 not uncommon spectacle of the bloodless skin 
 and unintellectual face of the girl in our fash- 
 ionable private schools, whose mind has become 
 so enervated by parental indulgence, so demoral- 
 ized by constant social excitement, that, to use 
 her own words, " the sight of a book makes her 
 head ache." 
 
 If we could make it impossible for little girls 
 of eight to solemnize paper-doll weddings, from 
 6 
 
122 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 which the precocious guests, after refreshing 
 themselves with lobster salad and candies, roll 
 home in their carriages at ten at night ; if we 
 could prevent the participation of their older 
 sisters in private theatricals and the German, 
 during the regular school-work of the year ; if 
 the education of girls could be at least so far 
 identical with that of boys that we could oppose 
 common sense and physiological reasons to that 
 absurd dictum of society which now thrusts girls 
 of eighteen out of the school-room and into the 
 matrimonial market, while their brothers of the 
 same age are considered as mere lads and just 
 beginning their education ; if we could take care 
 that they are not overburdened with domestic 
 responsibility as their brothers never are, and, 
 instead of restricting their regular routine of 
 school-work to the period between eight and 
 eighteen, could extend it to the age of twenty- 
 four, like that of their college brothers who study 
 a profession, the girls .would have the fair 
 chance which they now lack, both for physical 
 and mental development. 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. \ 23 
 
 Meantime let the well girls, and there are 
 hundreds of them, though of course not within 
 the Doctor's range of vision, aim for the highest 
 intellectual culture, not deterred by the fear of 
 being stigmatized as agates. 
 
 Can any woman read this book without feeling 
 depressed, crushed by this cosmic law of peri- 
 odicity which is to exempt her from nothing, but 
 only to debar her from a higher education ? For 
 the Doctor declares that "female operatives of 
 all sorts are likely to suffer less, and actually do 
 suffer less, from persistent work than female stu- 
 dents, . . . because the former work their brains 
 less." The regimen prescribed by the Doctor has 
 so few attractions, the reward he offers is so 
 paltry. We are to remember that " the glory of 
 the lily is one, and the glory of the oak another." 
 If we "pass middle life without the symmetry 
 and development that maternity gives," we are 
 taunted with the " hermaphroditic condition that 
 sometimes accompanies spinsterism." We are 
 not allowed to believe, with Alger, that "the 
 qualities of our soul and the fruitions of our life 
 
124 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 may be perfected in spite of the relative mutila- 
 tion in our lot." We are to "give girls a fair 
 chance for physical development at school, and 
 they will be able in after life, with reasonable 
 care of themselves, to answer the demands made 
 upon them." That is the summary. 
 
 Whether intentionally or not, this book pan- 
 ders to that sentiment of fashionable society 
 that declares it unnecessary for girls to know 
 any thing but to make themselves attractive ; and, 
 what is still more to be regretted, it will tend to 
 increase the selfishness and the imaginary in- 
 validism so prevalent among girls and women 
 who have nothing better in life to do than to 
 think of themselves. 
 
 The " wisely anxious " mothers do not need it ; 
 and the injudicious mothers, who wish to make 
 the schools responsible for their own constant 
 violation of the simplest hygienic laws in the 
 management of their daughters, confirmed in 
 their weakness by Dr. Clarke's leniency towards 
 their social sins, will eagerly seize upon it as a 
 weapon of attack. 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. 1 2$ 
 
 It is easy enough to make vague and arbitrary 
 assertions, and to point them with cruel gibes, 
 far easier than to prove them false. It is easy 
 enough to meet sneer with sneer, and to animad- 
 vert upon such assertions with a certain piquancy. 
 But neither the assertion nor the animadversion 
 amounts to any thing without facts to support 
 it. 
 
 A physician of such standing and authority in 
 the community that we are compelled to listen 
 to him has made assertions which he has not 
 yet supported by statistics. It behooves the 
 earnest women, especially the faithful teachers, 
 to satisfy themselves at least whether these as- 
 sertions can be supported, in order, if they can 
 be, to correct what is wrong in their present 
 methods, and, if they cannot be, to do their part 
 towards removing a false impression. 
 
126 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 VII. 
 
 BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 
 
 THE only really serious thing about Dr. Clarke's 
 book is the confusion of the author's ideas as to 
 the precise defining line between a work adapted 
 to popular instruction and a medical treatise. 
 An author who forgets in the drawing-room and 
 at the fireside that he is not in the lecture-room 
 of the medical school, has put himself beyond 
 the reach of knowing the real effect produced 
 by him upon either the drawing-room or the fire- 
 side. He may have done so with the deliberate 
 intention of a theorist who does not desire to be 
 answered ; he may have done so with the clear 
 conscience of a zealot who desires only to do 
 what presents itself to him as his duty. He has 
 undoubtedly done so, at least, with motives which 
 it were indelicate to call indelicate, whatever else 
 might be said of them ; but, all the same, he has 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 12? 
 
 put himself beyond this reach. From the medi- 
 cal lecture-room alone can he be answered. Only 
 a physician can reply to " Sex in Education." 
 
 It is to be hoped that, among the physicians 
 whose professional rank may entitle them to a 
 hearing as broad as Dr. Clarke's, some one who 
 joins issue with him upon his principal physio- 
 logical theory, may find the leisure to remind us 
 what a blessed fact it is that doctors always dis- 
 agree. Without the least desire to undervalue 
 either the culture or the skill of the man from 
 whom we differ, a little inquiry into the effect 
 produced upon brother and sister physicians by 
 his essay will reveal the fact that its author is not 
 without sufficiently important opponents. " Sex 
 in Education " having once been written, another 
 essay, equally to the point, if a little more regard- 
 ful of the old-fashioned prejudices of non-medi- 
 cal society, should be written to mate it. 
 
 Meanwhile it remains possible for any of us 
 to say, in deprecation of the notion of woman- 
 hood advanced by Dr. Clarke, two things. 
 
 i. The physician is not the person whose 
 
128 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 judgment upon a matter involving the welfare 
 of women can possibly be final. His testimony, 
 worth what it may be worth, should seek and fall 
 into its proper place in the physical aspects of 
 such a question ; but it shall stay in its place. 
 It is but a link in a chain. It is only a tint in a 
 kaleidoscope. A question so intricate and shift- 
 ing as that which involves the exact position of 
 woman in the economy of a cursed world is not to 
 be settled by the most intimate acquaintance with 
 the proximate principles of the human frame, with 
 the proportions of the gray and white matter in the 
 brain, or with the transitional character of the 
 tissues and the exquisite machinery of the viscera. 
 The psychologist has yet his word to say. The 
 theologian has a reason to be heard. The politi- 
 cal economist might also add to experience knowl- 
 edge. The woman who is physically and intel- 
 lectually a living denial of every premise and of 
 every conclusion which Dr. Clarke has advanced, 
 has yet a right to an audience. Nor is he even 
 the man whose judgment as to the health of 
 women can be symmetrical. No clinical opinion, 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 it will be remembered, bearing against the phys- 
 ical vigor of any^class of people, is or^ can be a 
 complete one. The physician knows sick women 
 almost only. Well women keep away from him, 
 and thank Heaven. If there be any well women 
 he is always in doubt. Thousands of women 
 will read that they are prevented by Nature's 
 eternal and irresistible laws from all sustained 
 activity of brain or body, but principally of brain, 
 
 with much the same emotion with which we 
 
 . 
 
 might read a fiat gone forth from the Royal Col- 
 lege of Surgeons in London, that Americans 
 could not eat roast beef, since, their researches 
 into morbid American anatomy had developed 
 the fact that Americans had died of eating roast 
 beef,' as well as a peculiar structure of the Ameri- 
 can stomach, to which roast beef was poisonously 
 adapted. Thousands of women will not believe 
 what the author of " Sex in Education " tells 
 them, simply because they know better. Their 
 own unlearned experience stands to them in 
 refutation of his learned statements. They will 
 give him theory for theory. They can pile up 
 6* i 
 
130 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 for him illustration on illustration. Statistics 
 they have none ; but no statistics has he. They 
 and the Doctor are met on fair fight. 
 
 Many a woman who stands at the factory loom 
 eleven hours and a half a day, from year's end to 
 year's end, from the age of eight to the age of 
 forty-eight, knows better than he tells her. Every 
 lady lecturer in the land, who unites the most 
 exhausting kind of brain and body labor in her 
 own experience, day and night after day and 
 night, for the half of every year, and unites it 
 in defiance of Dr. Clarke's prognostications, 
 knows better. Every healthy woman physician 
 knows better ; and it is only the woman physi- 
 cian, after all, whose judgment can ever approach 
 the ultimate uses of the physicist's testimony to 
 these questions. 
 
 It should be said : 2. Almost every fact brought 
 forward by Dr. Clarke goes to illustrate the exact 
 opposite of his almost every conclusion in respect 
 to the effect of mental labor upon the female 
 physique. With the serene, not to say dogmatic 
 conviction of the physician whose own patients 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 131 
 
 represent the world to him, he has copied for us 
 from his note-books a series of cases exemplify- 
 ing the remarkable unanimity with which girls, 
 after leaving school, break down in health. Over- 
 looking the blunder which he made about the 
 student from Vassar College, which has been so 
 carefully pointed out by Colonel Higginson (I 
 refer to Dr. Clarke's implicit and unhesitating 
 acceptance and publication of statements made 
 by the student, which the faculty of the college 
 have since altogether denied) ; not pausing to dis- 
 cuss the spirit which grasps at uninvestigated 
 testimony like this, run the eye over his illus- 
 trations, and what have we ? 
 
 With an affluent accompaniment of office detail 
 so evidently necessary to the public discussion of 
 an educational topic, and so unlikely to attract a 
 purely irrelevant and unworthy attention to the 
 circulation of the essay that one cannot fail to 
 note the author's generosity in this particular, he 
 calls our consideration to his list of cases, argu* 
 ing detachedly, by the way, and ingeniously con- 
 structing for our benefit very much such a 
 syllogism as this. 
 
132 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 Sumption. All women ought to be incapable 
 of sustained activity. 
 
 Subsumption. Some women whom I have 
 known are incapable of sustained activity. Miss 
 X. became an invalid soon after leaving school. 
 Miss Y. was injured by gymnastic exercises, fell 
 under my care, and will never be well. Miss Z. 
 became an invalid soon after leaving school, and 
 being for some time under my treatment was 
 sent to an insane asylum. 
 
 Therefore, 
 
 Conclusion : All women are incapable of sus- 
 tained activity, but proved especially incapable of 
 sustained brain activity ; and, since it would cost 
 Harvard College several millions of dollars to 
 admit them, co-education is a chimera, and old 
 maids a monstrosity at which physicians may 
 sneer, and by which young women should take 
 warning. 
 
 Or, to put it in another form, more compactly, 
 
 As long as girls are in school they are (with 
 exceptions so rare that I have had great difficulty 
 in finding them) in excellent health. 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 When girls leave school, they fall sick. 
 
 Therefore it is sustained study which injure 
 girls. 
 
 Here, now, is the point of fair dispute. Why 
 do girls so often become invalids within a few 
 years after leaving school ? The fact is a famil- 
 iar one. We needed no Dr. Clarke come from 
 their graves to tell us this. We are well accus- 
 tomed to the sight of a fresh young girl, a close 
 student, a fine achiever, " sustained " in mental 
 application, and as healthy in body as she is 
 vigorous and aspiring in brain, sinking, after a 
 period of out-of-school life, into an aching, ailing, 
 moping creature, aimless in the spirit and useless 
 in the flesh for any of life's higher purposes, 
 with which her young soul was filled and fired 
 a little while ago. 
 
 " You may be well enough now. Wait till 
 you are twenty four or five. That is the age 
 when girls break down." This is the doleful 
 prophecy of friends and physicians cast cold on 
 the warm hopes of our hard-working, ambitious 
 girls. " It is because you keep late hours, dance 
 
134 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 too much, eat indigestible food, or exercise too 
 little," says the hygienist " It is because you 
 wear corsets, long skirts, and chignons," says 
 the dress reformer. " It is because you are a 
 woman. Here is a mystery ! " says the dunce. 
 " It is because you study too much," says Dr. 
 Clarke. 
 
 Who of us has yet suggested and enforced the 
 suggestion of another reason more simple and 
 comprehensive than any of these, more prob- 
 able, perhaps, than any which could be found 
 outside of the effects of female dress ? 
 
 Women sick because they study ? Does it 
 not look a little more as if women were sick 
 because they stopped studying ? 
 
 Worn out by intellectual activity ? 
 
 Let us suppose that they might be exhausted 
 by the change from intellectual activity to in- 
 tellectual inanition. Made invalids because they 
 go to school from fourteen to eighteen ? Let us 
 conceive that they might be made invalids be- 
 cause they left school at eighteen ! Let us draw 
 upon our imagination to the extent of inquiring 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 135 
 
 whether the nineteenth-century girl intense, 
 sensitive, and developing, like her age, nervously 
 and fast might not be made an invalid by the 
 plunge from the " healing influences " of system- 
 atic brain exertion to the broken, jagged life 
 which awaits a girl whose "education is com- 
 pleted." Made an invalid by exchanging the 
 wholesome pursuit of sufficient and worthy aims 
 for the unrelieved routine of a dependent domes- 
 tic life, from which all aim has departed, or for 
 
 
 
 the whirl of false excitements and falser contents 
 which she calls society. Made an invalid by the 
 abrupt slide from " thinking," as poor Lamb had 
 it, " that life was going to be something," to the 
 discovery that it has " unaccountably fallen from 
 her before its time." Made an invalid by the 
 sad and subtle process by which a girl is first 
 inspired to the ideal of a life in which her per- 
 sonal culture has as honest and honorable a part 
 of her regard as (and as a part of) her personal 
 usefulness ; and then is left to find out that per- 
 sonal culture substantially stopped for her when 
 she tied the ribbon of her seminary diploma. 
 
136 SEX A ND ED UCA TION. 
 
 Made an invalid by the prejudice that deprives 
 her of the stimulus which every human being 
 needs and finds in the pursuit of some one 
 especial avocation, and confines that avocation 
 for her to a marriage which she may never 
 effect, and which may never help the matter if 
 she does. Made an invalid by the change from 
 doing something to doing nothing. Made an 
 invalid by the difference between being happy 
 and being miserable. Made an invalid, in short, 
 for just the reasons (in whatever manner, the 
 manner being a secondary point) why a man 
 would be made an invalid if subjected to the 
 woman's life when the woman's education is 
 over. That wretched, mistaken life, that ner- 
 vous, emotive, aimless, and exhausting life which 
 women assume at the end of their school career 
 would have killed Dr. Clarke, had it been his 
 lot, quite too soon for his years and experience 
 to have matured into the writing of " Sex in 
 Education." 
 
 Girls know what I mean. Women who work 
 for women have some chance to read the mind 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 137 
 
 of women on such points. We could produce 
 our own note-book over against the physician's, 
 and the contents of it would be pitiful to see. 
 
 The sense of perplexed disappointment, of 
 baffled intelligence, of unoccupied powers, of 
 blunted aspirations, which run through the con- 
 fidences of girls "left school," is enough to 
 create any illness which nervous wear and 
 misery can create. And the physician should 
 be the first man to recognize this fact, not the 
 man to ignore or discredit it ; not the man to 
 use his professional culture to the neglect of 
 any obvious appeal to his professional candor ; 
 not the man to veil within a few slippery flat- 
 teries a wilful ignorance or an unmanly sneer. 
 
 Admitting what must be in justice said of 
 " Sex in Education," that its author's pro- 
 fessional status demanded for his opinions, if 
 expressed in the proper way and in the proper 
 places, at least an intelligent hearing ; and 
 that he has called attention to some evils in the 
 training of very young girls which require, 
 whether by his means or by some other, a 
 
133 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 remedy ; and that he has made a sincere en- 
 deavor to point out these real and other imagi- 
 nary evils in a manner good, at least in his own 
 eyes, the sneer remains. 1 By it women will 
 remember him when the work which he under- 
 took to do shall be long forgotten. Through it 
 the whole character of that work is vitiated and 
 its influence marred. For it we may yet be 
 grateful, after all. 
 
 1 Any reader of the essay will recall its flings at women 
 who, either from subjective preference or objective pressure, 
 are debarred from marriage and maternity. These flings are 
 too disagreeable for pleasant quotation. 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 139 
 
 VIII. 
 
 DR. CLARKE'S book on '* Sex in Education " 
 should be read deliberately, thoughtfully, and in 
 a spirit of fairness, which seeks only to know 
 the real facts in the matter, and not to find 
 arguments for or against any special theory, 
 system, or hobby. Dr. Clarke is an eminent 
 physician. All forms of disease are not only 
 familiar to him, but are forced upon his atten- 
 tion : of course he sees the dark side of life, 
 and judges accordingly. His picture of the 
 condition of women is a terrible one, calculated 
 to excite deep anxiety in parents, and in young 
 women themselves : he sees in the future, if the 
 present system of education is continued, only 
 increasing invalidism, partial development, de- 
 formity, and the eventual failure of the Ameri- 
 can race. This alarming condition of affairs he 
 
140 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 attributes to various causes ; and among the 
 most powerful of these causes he reckons the 
 common system of continuous education for girls. 
 He calls it the boy's method, and means by it 
 not any special curriculum of study, or any share 
 in out-of-doors masculine plays or employments, 
 but simply regular study for five or six days of 
 every week. This, he thinks, is so grave an error, 
 so absolutely criminal a course, that he has given 
 to the world this book of warning, to stay, if he 
 can, this evil ; to save, if he can, American girls, 
 to enable them to become mothers ; for, he says, 
 " if these causes of evil persistent education 
 chief among them should continue for the 
 next half century, and increase in the same ratio 
 as they have for the last fifty years, it requires 
 no prophet to foretell that the wives who are to 
 be mothers in our republic must be drawn from 
 transatlantic homes. The sons of the New 
 World will have to react, on a magnificent 
 scale, the old story of unwived Rome and the 
 Sabines." 
 
 It is not education for women to which Dr. 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. 1 4 1 
 
 Clarke objects. He repeats emphatically that 
 they have a right to the best education and the 
 finest culture. He does not doubt their intellect- 
 ual ability ; but the essential thing in a good 
 education is complete development, so that 
 " boys may become men, and girls women, and 
 both have a fair chance to do and become their 
 best." Dr. Clarke's point is that the sustained 
 regularity of study which benefits a boy inevita- 
 bly harms a girl, prevents her from doing or be- 
 coming her best, and in a frightfully large pro- 
 portion of cases actually ruins her health, and 
 makes it impossible for her to nourish, and too 
 often impossible for her to bear, children. This 
 danger he discusses fully, and, as he says, with 
 great plainness of speech, and without ambiguity 
 of language or euphemism of expression. The 
 peril seems to him imminent, and he cries aloud 
 from his watch-tower of science and experience, 
 and his cry will be heard and heeded by thou- 
 sands. But there are other cries to be heard and 
 heeded ; there are other watchmen who do not 
 sleep at their posts, and who see brighter scenes 
 
142 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 and more hopeful signs, watchmen who do not 
 disregard the enemy, but who see him and the 
 causes of his strength from another point of 
 view. 
 
 The defects in the present system of education 
 are so great that it is no wonder physicians can 
 hardly find words strong enough for denuncia- 
 tion of them, especially great in the education 
 of girls. Children of both sexes have too many 
 studies ; they are crowded and hurried ; they do 
 very little really hard brain-work, but their brains 
 are bewildered ; they have a sort of mental indi- 
 gestion all the time ; and this kind of crowding 
 and driving is exciting and exhausting to the 
 nerves, and injurious to every portion of the 
 organism. Boys have some offset to it: they 
 have an easy dress, short hair, and can exercise 
 freely out of schools ; but that even their train- 
 ing is not the best is shown by the innumerable 
 invalids, imbeciles, and insane among men. With 
 girls, especially city girls, the matter is worse. 
 They cannot race and play and frolic on the 
 common or in the streets ; they wear tight boots, 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 143 
 
 burdensome clothes, not tight but cumbersome 
 masses of their own or false hair on the head, 
 that should be cool and free ; they eat unwhole- 
 some food ; dance at hot parties ; saunter along 
 the pavements, with arms a la mode; go to danc- 
 ing school and skating parties without the faint- 
 est regard to physiology or to the plain rules of 
 health ; have music lessons and masters ; and in 
 too many cases lead a life of reckless waste that it 
 makes a grown person breathless to think of. No 
 wonder they break down, no wonder they have all 
 those miserable polysyllabic diseases that decently 
 trained women never heard of ; but we believe 
 that the class who have these diseases because of 
 " sustained regularity " in study is so small that 
 it should hardly be reckoned in the account, but 
 should be treated as exceptional, like the blind or 
 the physically deformed. It is almost impossible 
 for even a physician to discover in the case of 
 young invalids how much really hard and inju- 
 rious study has been done. The imprudences, 
 wilful or ignorant, of girls, are innumerable, and 
 only when driven to the last extreme will they 
 
144 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 confess them. If the evil resulting from bad 
 diet, late and irregular hours, improper clothing, 
 exposure to cold and dampness, hereditary weak- 
 ness, and exciting reading, could be eliminated, 
 we believe there would be no difficulty whatever 
 in raising a generation of strong and noble girls 
 under the system of " sustained regularity " of 
 study. 
 
 There is something to be said from the side of 
 health. All women are not sick, and the ex- 
 perience of health teaches that girls and boys 
 should have a very large margin for repair of 
 waste and for growth, girls, perhaps, a larger 
 margin than boys, although we are by no means 
 sure of that. Nature is a wise worker, and dis- 
 tributes the repair and growth wherever it is 
 needed, to the dual organism of the boy or to the 
 tripartite one of the girl. With simple, healthful 
 habits of life, with proper diet, abundant sleep, 
 plenty of sunshine and play, and moderate, regu- 
 lar study, in school or out, girls, unless they . 
 inherited some disease, would stand a fair chance 
 for health, strength, and development as women. 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 145 
 
 Indeed, we believe the sustained regularity of 
 moderate study to be better for the health of the 
 average girl than any periodicity of study. Girls 
 educated in this way, with wise regard to the 
 general principles of health, are not likely to 
 indulge in what Dr. Clarke calls cerebral pyro- 
 technics at school examinations ; but they are 
 likely to grow up intelligent women, with good 
 common sense, who, if fate throws them into the 
 whirl of city life, will set their faces against its 
 overwhelming excitements, and seek peaceful 
 hours at home as the weight and balance-wheel 
 of life ; and, if they live in the country, make 
 happy homes there. Many of them will be, as 
 women so educated now are, mothers and grand- 
 mothers ; some will probably be childless wives, 
 and some will never marry, but none of them 
 will ever deserve the bitter sneer with which Dr. 
 Clarke speaks of torsos and of the " hermaphro- 
 ditic condition that sometimes accompanies spin- 
 sterism." 
 
 If the ruinous work of women, their standing 
 in shops and at desks, could be stopped ; if chil- 
 7 J 
 
146 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 dren between ten and sixteen were not allowed 
 to serve in shops ; if no woman under twenty 
 were allowed to teach in a public school ; if girls 
 were taught obedience and truth-telling, and if 
 mothers were wisely anxious, that is Dr. Clarke's 
 expression, and goes to the root of the matter, 
 wisely anxious about their daughters, caring 
 for their health more than for their appearance, 
 for their permanent good more than their present 
 indulgence, looking after their reading and their 
 pleasures, guarding them from imprudence and 
 making them take care of their own health, there 
 would be no trouble about regular study. The 
 same causes that dry up the youth and strength 
 of young girls break down older ones, constant 
 excitement and no real rest ; social excitement 
 at parties ; passionate excitement at operas and 
 theatres ; emotional excitement over highly 
 wrought novels and philanthropic work ; one 
 following close on the other, and all accompanied 
 by bodily fatigue and endless hurry. It is a sad 
 life to look at, in spite of the seeming beauty of 
 the garments of art, culture, and charity which 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 147 
 
 it wears. If Dr. Clarke's warning will waken 
 people to their danger, and make them lead sim- 
 pler and easier lives ; if he can make them fol- 
 low the plainest rules of health ; if he can do 
 any thing toward keeping girls girls, instead 
 of having them forced, when they are hardly in 
 their teens, into diminutive fashionable women, 
 with a smattering of forty studies and a knowledge 
 of none, he will be indeed a Good Physician, 
 and his aim will be won without taking girls out 
 of school or interfering with their regular work, 
 without even discussing the question of co-edu- 
 cation. . . . 
 
 The accounts of the training of German girls 
 given in the last chapter bear out these views. 
 To be sure, most of the German girls leave 
 school young, at about fifteen, and have lessons 
 at home. We know nothing of the regularity, 
 strictness, or requirements of these lessons or 
 lectures ; but we do know the work is regular, 
 and not periodical, for girls in average health, 
 and the health is taken care of. There is an 
 established kind of tradition, as there is in many 
 
148 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 families in this country, in regard to the regimen 
 for girls. Cold and exposure are avoided ; school- 
 girls never ride and never go to parties ; and, even 
 when school-days are over, girls do not go to 
 parties during the time when Dr. Clarke thinks 
 they ought not to go to school. Dr. Hagen 
 writes : " The health of the German girls is com- 
 monly good, except in the higher classes in the 
 great capitals, where the same obnoxious agencies 
 are to be found in Germany as in the whole world. 
 But here also there is a very strong exception, or, 
 better, a difference between America and Ger- 
 many, as German girls are never accustomed to 
 the free manners and modes of life of American 
 girls. As a rule, in Germany the " mother directs 
 the manner of living of the daughter entirely T 
 The italics are ours. Dr. Clarke adds to this 
 that "pleasant recreation for children of both 
 sexes, and abundance of it, is provided for them 
 all over Germany, is regarded as necessity for 
 them, is made a part of their daily life ; but 
 then it is open air, oxygen-surrounding, blood- 
 making, health-giving, innocent recreation, not 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TfON. 149 
 
 gas, furnaces, low necks, spinal trails, the civil- 
 ized representatives of caudal appendages, and 
 late hours." 
 
 We repeat that Dr. Clarke does not oppose 
 the education of women : he only opposes the 
 present method of education. He says distinctly : 
 Let us remember that physiology confirms the 
 hope of the race by asserting that the loftiest 
 heights of intellectual and spiritual vision and 
 force are free to each sex, and accessible by each ; 
 but adds that each must climb in its own way, 
 and accept its own limitations, and, when this is 
 done, promises that each will find the doing of 
 it not to weaken or diminish, but to develop 
 power. His book is written with force and 
 with genuine earnestness and feeling, is full of 
 valuable instruction, and is both useful and sug- 
 gestive to those who will agree with the author, 
 to those who oppose him, and to those like 
 ourselves who sympathize fully with his aim, but 
 who think that he has laid the emphasis of blame 
 wrongly. Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
ISO SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 IX. 
 
 BY M. B. JACKSON. 
 
 IN this little book, which has attracted much 
 attention, there are many excellent things ; and 
 we thank Dr. Clarke for having written it, not so 
 much for what it contains as for the attention it 
 has drawn to the subject of which it treats. 
 Coming as it does from a physician, who stands 
 so high in the profession, and who is so much 
 esteemed in social life, it naturally attracts the 
 attention of many who are thinking upon the 
 subject of co-education. But we regret to find 
 that one who should be informed of the views of 
 the prominent advocates of co-education should 
 permit himself to talk of their wishing to make 
 women as nearly as possible like men, and of 
 women as wishing to become like men, and de- 
 spising those differences in themselves which dis- 
 tinguish the sexes, when in fact these are the 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. 1 5 1 
 
 opprobriums of their opponents instead of argu- 
 ments to defeat the cause. On page 18 he says : 
 
 "It is said that Elina Carnaro, the accom- 
 plished professor of six languages, whose statue 
 adorns and honors Padua, was educated like a 
 boy. This means that she was initiated into and 
 mastered the studies that were considered to be 
 the peculiar dower of men. It does not mean 
 that her life was a man's life, her way of study a 
 man's way of study, or that in acquiring six 
 languages she ignored her own organization." 
 
 How the Doctor got this interpretation of 
 what is meant by Elina Carnaro's being edu- 
 cated like a boy he does not inform us, but no 
 woman would have thought that her life was 
 a man's life, her way of study a man's way of 
 study, or that in acquiring six languages she 
 would ignore her own organization. What wo- 
 men are now struggling for is not to be like 
 men, not to get their education by the same 
 mental processes as men, but to have the same 
 opportunities to use in a woman's way, and to 
 make the most of them in the methods their 
 
152 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 own intellect dictates ; not to have men lay out 
 the course of study for them, and oblige them to 
 follow their direction, instead of their own nat- 
 ural methods. They desire to be allowed to 
 choose the college or university that suits their 
 ! wishes, and to enter any educational institution 
 as freely as men choose and enter theirs. Dr. 
 Clarke takes it for granted that, if boys and girls 
 are educated together, the girls must follow the 
 boys' method of getting their lessons, must 
 study as many hours as the boys, but must have 
 none of the physical exercises and plays that boys 
 have to strengthen their muscles, and, by draw- 
 ing off the nerve force from the brain, let it rest 
 and be refreshed in the same degree that the 
 boys' brains are. He ignores the fact that boys, 
 too, have a period of development, and often 
 require tender care during that period, as well as 
 girls. While boys are encouraged to be out of 
 doors, and to engage in active sports, without 
 the slightest intimation that there is any impro- 
 priety in it, girls are constantly checked if their 
 inclination leads them to desire active out-of- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. ^3 
 
 door sports. They are told that they are hoy- 
 dens, that it is not proper for girls to play tag, 
 or coast, or run races, or to engage in any of the 
 activities that would render them physically 
 strong ; and so they, having much more sensi- 
 bility and more love of admiration than boys, 
 give up all amusements that are denounced as 
 unladylike, and take to crocheting or fancy 
 needlework, which in itself is sufficient to de- 
 bilitate them, and take the color from their 
 cheeks, without the strain of study imposed 
 upon them in the schools. 
 
 The Doctor takes for granted that women can- 
 not go through a college course with men with- 
 out overtaxing their brains, and then goes on to 
 show what a train of evils follows overtaxing the 
 brain. This is an easy way to manage the case, 
 and saves the trouble of proving that women 
 would be injured, and their nervous systems 
 broken down, by allowing them freedom to pur- 
 sue such a course of study as they might feel 
 able to master. It is really surprising to see 
 with what complacency the Doctor maps out a 
 7* 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 course for women, assuming that he is a better 
 judge of what they can bear than they are them- 
 selves, and assuming that if allowed to decide 
 for themselves what they could bear they would 
 destroy themselves by excessive study ! This is 
 not exactly consistent with his admission of their 
 intellectual equality with men ; but women have 
 been long accustomed to being told that they 
 are the intellectual peers of men, and, in the 
 next breath, that they do not know what is best 
 for them, and that men are their natural protec- 
 tors and supporters, and that they should defer 
 all matters relating to their welfare to the better 
 judgment of men, who will take all the trouble 
 of such decisions from them and settle such ques- 
 tions in the way that will promote their great- 
 est happiness ! When the time comes that men 
 have so far mastered the plan of the universe as 
 to perceive that the Creator has endowed each 
 class of animals with its own peculiar method of 
 defence, and capable of choosing the way of life 
 most in harmony with its nature, and that man, 
 the highest in the grade of created beings, is also 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 155 
 
 endowed with the power of seeing what will best 
 conserve his interest, and that he has not made 
 one-half of the race incapable of choosing wisely, 
 and therefore dependent upon the other half for 
 this information a great step will be taken in the 
 right direction, and equal freedom of action being 
 secured by the removal of all laws and customs 
 that limit women to narrower bounds than men 
 will give an opportunity to decide the question of 
 what women can do and will do, when allowed 
 free scope for all their powers. 
 
 The Doctor talks as if the Creator had made 
 man so perfectly that, without any special care 
 on his part, his whole nature would naturally 
 develop into a perfect and healthy human being, 
 prepared to fulfil all objects of his creation ; but 
 that He made woman so imperfectly that her 
 organism would not naturally develop into a per- 
 fectly healthy woman, fitted to fulfil the high 
 objects of her creation, unless men took charge 
 of her and directed what she must do and how 
 she must live. 
 
 Is not this impugning the wisdom of the Crea- 
 
156 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 tor in assuming that He left a being on whom 
 the welfare of the race greatly depends to the 
 poor care of erring mortals, instead of creating 
 her as He has man, so that she would naturally 
 grow into a perfect woman from the very nature 
 of her constitution ? We take no issue with the 
 Doctor in regard to the host of ills that women 
 are suffering from at this time in America ; but 
 they are certainly not to be charged to co-educa- 
 tion, for that has been so little tried that no con- 
 clusions can as yet be drawn from it. 
 
 So far as our observation goes, the number of 
 invalid women is greater in the class of fashion- 
 able women than in any other ; and they surely 
 do not overtax their brains in studies that com- 
 pose the college curriculum. The want of some 
 noble and engrossing subject of thought and 
 action is, in our opinion, a much more frequent 
 cause of ill-health than over-study, and next to 
 that, if not taking precedence of it, is the man- 
 ner in which women are clothed. The corsets 
 that confine the waists and abdomen as if in a 
 vice, preventing the action of the muscles and 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 157 
 
 pressing down the contents of the abdomen, so 
 as to displace important organs ; the great weight 
 of skirts hanging on the abdominal muscles ; the 
 long skirts that fetter the limbs and prevent a 
 natural movement of them ; the thin boots that 
 expose the feet to cold and damp ; the high heels 
 that throw the body out of the perpendicular 
 line, so that a constant strain is imposed on the 
 muscles to keep the balance, these are prolific 
 causes of invalidism. The late hours and con- 
 tinued excitements of parties and balls, the great 
 exposure to cold from changing the warm dresses 
 ^ worn in winter for the thin party dresses for 
 evening, combined with the unwholesome diet 
 on such occasions, complete the destruction of 
 health, never robust on account of the failure to 
 give girls the out-of-door active exercises which 
 boys enjoy, while as yet there is no physiological 
 reason for their being shut up in the house, or 
 only taken out to walk dressed so finely that play 
 and exercise are out of the question. 
 
 There is still another case, which to my mind 
 is as clear as the overtaxing of brains is to Dr. 
 
158 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 Clarke's ; and that is the necessity for women to 
 go to physicians of the male sex when they need 
 advice for their peculiar diseases. The medical 
 colleges, refusing admission to women, kept them 
 out of the regular avenues for acquiring a medi- 
 cal education, and consequently the number of 
 educated women physicians was so small that 
 they could scarcely be mentioned as treating the 
 diseases of women ; and the result has been that 
 for a long period women have been treated by men 
 who, having no corresponding organs, could not 
 possibly understand their diseases, and they have 
 been left uncured, only palliated, and often made 
 worse by this great error. When women are 
 permitted to add the light of science and art to 
 their personal experiences and similar organiza- 
 tions, we may look for a healthier race of 
 women. 
 
 On page 54 he says : 
 
 " This growing period or formative epoch ex- 
 tends from birth to the age of twenty or twenty- 
 five years. Its duration is shorter for a girl than 
 for a boy. She ripens quicker than he. In the 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 159 
 
 four years from fourteen to eighteen, she accom- 
 plishes an amount of cell change and growth 
 which Nature does not require of a boy in less 
 than twice that number of years. It is obvious 
 that, to secure the best kind of growth during 
 this period and the best development at the end 
 of it, the waste of tissue produced by study, 
 work, and fashion must not be so great that 
 repair will only equal it. It is equally obvious 
 that a girl, upon whom Nature for a limited period 
 and for a definite purpose imposes so great a 
 physiological task, will not have as much power 
 left for the tasks of the school as the boy, of 
 whom Nature requires less at the correspond- 
 ing epoch. A margin must be left for growth. 
 The repair must be greater and better than the 
 waste." 
 
 Did it not occur to the Doctor's mind that 
 " Nature," or the Creator, in making woman, 
 took this state of things into account, and pro- 
 vided for it, by supplying the female organism 
 at this period with a power of more rapid cell 
 growth to meet this want, and that this same 
 
l6o SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 power would be needed by the woman when 
 the great drain of reproducing the race was 
 made upon her system ? If such had not been 
 the case, women would succumb at once to the 
 great waste necessitated by child-bearing, and no 
 mother would live to have a second child. But 
 the Infinite Father knew how to make woman, 
 so that under ordinary circumstances she could 
 go on with her usual activities, and bear children 
 without injury to her health, and often with an 
 improvement of it. For, of our healthy women 
 at sixty or seventy years of age, nearly all have 
 been mothers, and most of them have had large 
 families. 
 
 When the Doctor says, "Two considerations 
 deserve to be mentioned in this connection : one 
 is, that no organ or function in plant, animal, or 
 human kind, can be properly regarded as a dis- 
 ability or source of weakness," he states a 
 well-known fact ; but when he attempts to show 
 that one of the functions of woman is a great 
 disability, and necessarily incapacitates her from 
 the performance of usual duties two or three 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 161 
 
 days out of every thirty, he directly contradicts 
 his first statement. Healthy women are able to 
 go on with their usual avocations at these times, 
 and only feeble or sickly ones require the rest 
 he speaks of. Those girls whose physical train- 
 ing has been such as to give them strong bodies 
 develop naturally and without suffering, just as 
 boys do, and find no necessity for dropping all 
 mental and physical labor two days in every 
 month. Neither men nor women can overtax 
 for a long time their mental or physical natures, 
 and remain well. There is one law for both, and 
 it is inflexible ; but is it necessary for man to ask 
 woman, or woman man, what either can bear 
 without injury ? Must not each be a law unto 
 himself ? Let women study physiology and 
 thoroughly understand their own bodies, and 
 they can be trusted to take care of them. Why 
 the Doctor supposes it necessary to co-education 
 that women should study like men, or should be 
 obliged to stand for recitations, I cannot imagine. 
 Are the rules of college inflexible, like the laws 
 of the Medes and Persians ? or are they made for 
 
162 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 the best good of the students ? If a class sits 
 during recitations, does it follow that their les- 
 sons will be less well learned ? If a girl can get 
 a lesson in an hour that requires a boy an hour 
 and a half to learn, will it be necessary for her 
 to study as many hours as the boy, to keep up 
 with him ? And does not every teacher of boys 
 and girls know that girls, as a rule, take less time 
 to commit their tasks than boys ? By the Doc- 
 tor's own showing, this is in analogy with the 
 processes in their physical frames ; for he says, 
 " In the four years, from fourteen to eighteen, 
 she accomplishes an amount of physiological cell 
 change and growth which Nature does not re- 
 quire of a boy in less than twice that number of 
 years." The trouble with the Doctor is, that he 
 has a pet theory that women must not do mental 
 or physical work during certain periods ; and so 
 he attributes all disease in women to failure in 
 securing this rest, whether it be want of devel- 
 opment of the ovaries, hemorrhages, or disease 
 of the brain ! 
 
 But we would again thank him for his book, 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 163 
 
 which is so suggestive that thinking women 
 cannot read it without seeing the necessity, for 
 reformation in many ways of the false ideas and 
 customs regarding woman's training, dressing, 
 and living ; and, having their attention called to 
 them, it is to be hoped they will make an earnest 
 effort to improve upon them. 
 
1 64 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 X, 
 
 BY PROFESSOR BASCOM. 
 
 THE following is an extract from a paper read 
 at the recent Massachusetts Teachers' Conven- 
 tion in Worcester : 
 
 To the present point of composition in this 
 paper, I had not had the opportunity of a full 
 perusal of Dr. Clarke's work, entitled " Sex in 
 Education." I wish, therefore, to add a few 
 things directly bearing on it. The considera- 
 tion chiefly dwelt on by Dr. Clarke, that of 
 periodicity and continuity, respectively, in sex- 
 ual development, is one of great importance, 
 demanding earnest and thorough attention. His 
 work is able, candid, and fair. It is not, how- 
 ever, fair in its actual practical bearing on co- 
 education. The impression is made by it that 
 it presses peculiarly upon this point, and that 
 its general conclusions, if admitted, are well-nigh 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 165 
 
 fatal to it. This is not true, and is hardly the 
 author's meaning. 
 
 In the first place, the general debility of 
 women, be it greater or less, is not due to co- 
 education in higher knowledge ; for such an 
 education has not existed among us to a de- 
 gree sufficient perceptibly to affect the general 
 constitution. It is due to an ignorance and 
 inattention to physiological law that have charac- 
 terized all our action in business, social, and 
 educational relations, in the former even more 
 than in the latter. Separate training, as that at 
 Mt. Holyoke, has been as deeply affected by it 
 as joint education, like that at Oberlin. The 
 point raised by Dr. Clarke bears on all our 
 action, not pre-eminently on one part of it, and 
 that hitherto a most insignificant part, the por- 
 tion expressed in conjoint higher education. To 
 give the hygienic considerations involved this 
 peculiar and limited application is illogical and 
 unfair. The reform called for will effect this 
 method in common with a hundred other things. 
 If the conclusions already reached by us in this 
 
1 66 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 paper are to be altered by the considerations 
 presented by Dr. Clarke, it must be by showing 
 that co-education is inconsistent with a proper 
 regard of the hygienic rules involved in sexual 
 development. The present debility of women 
 goes for nothing in the argument. This debility, 
 as due in given cases to a false training, goes 
 for nothing, since our inattention has been 
 general, and covers this field with many another. 
 We might as well argue against social inter- 
 course, since this, even oftener than lessons, 
 has been the provocation to excess. The only 
 real question, then, between Dr. Clarke and 
 co-education is this : Can co-education be so 
 altered as to respect, in both sexes, the laws 
 of development ? He himself practically con- 
 cedes that it can be. He only objects finally 
 and peremptorily to identical co-education ; 
 that is, to precisely the same tasks, at all times, 
 for all parties. To this we also object, as 
 unfitted for the best development of boys and 
 girls alike. The active and the inert, the bright 
 and the dull, cannot be harnessed together with- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 1 67 
 
 out loss on one side or the other. Our educa- 
 tion, in the interest of boys as well as of girls, 
 calls for more elasticity, less pressure, more 
 variable and proportionate stimulus. Construct 
 a method good for boys of all kinds, pliant to 
 their wants, keeping up with the best, and fall- 
 ing back to the poorest, and we shall have a 
 system sufficiently flexible to include girls, under 
 their own law of development. 
 
 Indeed, the rigidity of college courses is pre- 
 cisely that which needs modification ; and, if this 
 is to come with co-education, so much the better 
 for the joint discipline. The average girl, carry- 
 ing weight as she does in the laws of her con- 
 stitution, is not as far off from the average boy 
 as the stupid boy from the quick-witted one. 
 Unite these two well in one system, and that 
 system will have play enough to embrace girls 
 also advantageously. Our present difficulties 
 are due to bad education, not to co-education ; 
 to an ignorance of the laws of hygiene, not to 
 a knowledge of these and their witting violation. 
 Educate women more thoroughly, and they will 
 
168 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 be more cognizant and observant of these con- 
 ditions of success. As things now are, they 
 owe their disease to their ignorance : they are 
 not weak because they are wise, but weak be- 
 cause they are not wise. 
 
 The critical period, according to Dr. Clarke, 
 is found between the ages of fourteen and 
 eighteen. This is a period for the most part 
 prior, and may to advantage be always prior, 
 to that given to higher education, and one cov- 
 ered by the kind and accommodating provisions 
 of home. I have not the slightest doubt that, 
 if the general temper that is encouraged by Dr. 
 Clarke's essay, were left to shape a sexual cur- 
 riculum for women, it would issue in a feeble 
 intellectual mood, a proportionate diversion of 
 time, strength, and interest to society, sure 
 to absorb unoccupied powers, heedless and 
 headstrong in its use of . them, and thus ulti- 
 mately in strengthening the very evil warred 
 with. Society is more to be dreaded than edu- 
 cation. On the other hand, devote attention to 
 a complete elastic common curriculum, and the 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. \ 69 
 
 tastes will be elevated, the judgment sobered, 
 the conditions of success made more apparent, 
 and ultimately that breadth and strength of 
 character reached which are sure to express 
 themselves in a wise mastery of natural law. 
 If we are bound to have a thoroughly flexible 
 and fit discipline for boys, in reaching it we 
 shall also furnish appropriate conditions for 
 girls, and all the reasons for co-education urged 
 by us will apply in full force. The transition 
 from a rigid to a pliant method will necessarily 
 take place slowly ; but we do well to remember 
 that the cast-iron mode is as firmly wrought into 
 separate as into conjoint education, and consti- 
 tutes no ground of choice between them. Both 
 are to be reformed, both are capable of reform, 
 and in the interests of all parties. Dr. Clarke's 
 criticism is destructive, not constructive. Let 
 him undertake to build up a curriculum, and 
 the advantage will at once pass to his oppo- 
 nents. 
 
I/O SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 XI. 
 
 BY ABBY W. MAY. 
 
 \_Extract from Annual Report of Committee on Work 
 of the New England IV omen 1 s Club, read May 31, 
 I873-] 
 
 OUR programme for the year just closed occu- 
 pied itself with the question of women's fitness 
 for entering practical life, presented from several 
 points of view. At our first meeting, Miss Kel- 
 logg, in an able manner, set before us the views 
 of several of the most eminent scientific men on 
 the question of the relative capacity of women 
 for the highest education. The extracts Miss 
 Kellogg gave proved that there is a good deal 
 of difference of opinion among authorities ; but, 
 whatever may be the conclusion to-day of one 
 or another man, the great desideratum is that 
 the matter should be frankly discussed. Truth 
 will inevitably result sooner or later; and that 
 is what we chiefly desire, even when the lesson 
 
SEX AND EDUCA TION. 1 7 1 
 
 of patience is bitterly hard. This valuable rt- 
 snm6 of the opinions of others was followed by 
 a highly interesting paper from Dr. Edward 
 H. Clarke, upon the health of women, as af- 
 fecting steady, persistent mental application. 
 Dr. Clarke the skilful physician, the jealous 
 guardian of health, to whose notice comes daily 
 most distressing knowledge of the suffering 
 caused by a lack of it, especially among New 
 England women made a strong plea for sav- 
 ing women from the over-pressure and false 
 methods of living, under which so many men, 
 as well as women, break down. The sad fact 
 of great physical weakness among our women is 
 beyond dispute. In that respect, there is no 
 room for difference of opinion; though we 
 thought Dr. Clarke did not sufficiently recognize 
 the gain which has been made in some respects 
 within the last few years. But the discussion 
 which followed the paper showed that the ma- 
 jority could not agree with Dr. Clarke, in charg- 
 ing much of the misery upon high education or 
 the co-education of the sexes. There are many 
 
172 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 other deep and clear causes for it ; and too little 
 education, as carried up to any high plane, has 
 there been to charge it with so wide-spread an 
 evil. And, again, the statistics which have come 
 to notice are at least doubtful proofs of such 
 statements. On the contrary, they seem to 
 prove that mental training is not only good, but 
 requisite for physical health ; and why should it 
 not be so ? God has made women, as men, com- 
 pound creatures, with a fivefold nature; and it 
 cannot be that either side, physical, mental, moral, 
 affectional, or spiritual, can suffer loss without 
 injury to the whole. It is only in the harmoni- 
 ous development of all that each finds its own 
 perfection. The perfect woman must have a 
 sound body, a vigorous mind, a conscience quick, 
 and a heart large enough and true enough to 
 warm and sweeten the whole. Give her the 
 thorough training of all these, and crown her 
 with a spirit seeking the highest, and you have 
 a woman such as we conceive God meant her 
 to be. Who shall dare to say that mental cul- 
 ture must be kept on a poorer plane than the 
 
- SEX AND EDUCATION. 173 
 
 very best there is, because of danger to a woman's 
 body, a danger different in its nature from that 
 which men so often find in unwise mental effort ? 
 No one would plead for folly, as applied to the 
 training of either sex ; but that many women arc 
 feeble seems a poor reason for depriving those 
 who are strong of any advantage that the world 
 can afford them. Does he want it ? is the ques- 
 tion we ask in relation to men. Does she want 
 it ? would seem to be the only fair one to ask of 
 the other sex. For both sexes, lack of health 
 must often be practically an insurmountable bar- 
 rier. Why cannot all interested in this question 
 unite in holding up a high standard of health, in 
 themselves and for others, since no other obstacle 
 can long prevent women from having all the edu- 
 cational advantages they can use. 
 
1/4 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 XII. 
 
 BY MARIA A. ELMORE. 
 
 DR. CLARKE talks as though women in every 
 thing but college life had perfect liberty to 
 change at will their position from the erect to 
 the reclining; as though nothing else required 
 four weeks* labor in a month ; as though a regu- 
 lar, sustained, and uninterrupted course of work 
 was something of which they have never had any 
 experience ; and as though identical education of 
 the sexes was the only regimen that ignored the 
 periodic tides and reproductive apparatus of their 
 organization. 
 
 We would like to have Dr. Clarke inform us 
 what regimen there is that does not ignore 
 them ? 
 
 While but very few women are called by a 
 chapel-bell to a standing prayer, thousands and 
 tens of thousands in America are called by the 
 
SEX AXD EDUCATIOX. 1/5 
 
 bell of " that university, which has a water-wheel 
 at the bottom," to all-day standing tasks at the 
 noisy loom, and this followed from half-past six 
 in the morning till half-past six at night, with the 
 intermission only of half, three-quarters, or the 
 whole of an hour at noon, throughout every 
 working-day in the year. 
 
 Has Dr. Clarke written a book on " Sex in 
 Manufacturing Establishments " ? If he hasn't, 
 he ought to. 
 
 Women stand behind the counter, obliged to 
 be at their post just such a time every morning, 
 and to wait on customers, if need be, the livelong 
 day. Are they excused from work every fourth 
 week ? Can they sit, stand, or recline at their 
 pleasure ? Are they exempted from tending to 
 the wants of their employers' patrons because 
 they feel indisposed ? Nay, in many instances 
 are they not required to be on their feet all the 
 time, even when there are no customers ? 
 
 Has Dr. Clarke written a book on " Sex in 
 Clerkships"? 
 
 Women have, year out and year in, busily plied 
 
I / 6 SEX AND ED L/C A TfON. 
 
 the needle in tailors' and dressmakers' shops, hav- 
 ing no opportunity to change at will their position 
 from the sitting to the standing, walking, or re- 
 clining. 
 
 Has Dr. Clarke written a book on " Sex in 
 Workshops," or " Sex in Sewing " ? 
 
 School-teachers are expected to be in their 
 school-rooms promptly on the hour every school- 
 day in the year, ready to discharge their duties to 
 their pupils. Where is the school-board that ever 
 allowed its female teachers to take a week's vaca- 
 tion every month ? Where is that man who would 
 have a young woman teach in his ward or neigh- 
 borhood who should make application to him in 
 this wise : " Sir, I am very desirous of becoming 
 a teacher. I want a school, and will do all in my 
 power to bring it to a standard of high moral ex- 
 cellence and worth. But I must tell you that I 
 cannot teach for four consecutive weeks. I can 
 teach only three weeks at a time : the fourth I 
 must have to myself. Mighty and powerful de- 
 mands are then made upon my constitution, and 
 it requires all the strength and energy I can com- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 mand to meet them. To attempt at such times 
 to manage and instruct an unruly and rollicking 
 set of young urchins would derange the tides of 
 my organization, divert blood from the reproduc- 
 tive apparatus to my head, and consequently add 
 to my piety at the expense of my blood." 
 
 Women teach school under a regimen that 
 pays no more regard to their bodily organism 
 than to that of men. Yet in the face of this fact 
 Dr. Clarke tells us it is a sin under such a regi- 
 men to attend school as a pupil ! Are the duties 
 and responsibilities of a pupil so much more 
 arduous and exacting than those of a teacher 
 that a much more favorable regimen must be 
 prescribed for the former than for the latter ? 
 
 Imagine Miss Applicant, in quest of a situa- 
 tion to do housework, addressing mistress of the 
 house as follows : " You know, my dear woman, 
 that public opinion and sentiment have imposed 
 upon girls a boy's regimen ; that is, that girls 
 who go out to work are expected to work every 
 day of the month, just as boys do. Now this is 
 altogether wrong and contrary to the laws of 
 8 L 
 
178 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 nature. It is grounded on the supposition that 
 sustained regularity of action may be as safely 
 required of a girl as a boy ; that there is no 
 physical necessity for periodically relieving her 
 from standing, walking, cooking, or baking ; that 
 the striking of the clock may call her as well as 
 him to a daily morning walk with the baby, with 
 standing work at the end of it, regardless of the 
 danger that such exercise, by deranging the tide 
 of her organization, may add to her piety at the 
 expense of her blood ; that she may bother her 
 brain over bread, pies, cake, preserves, condi- 
 ments, and the like, with equal and sustained 
 force on every day of the month, thus diverting 
 blood from the reproductive apparatus to the 
 head ; in short, that she, like her brother, de- 
 velops health, strength, blood, and nerve by a 
 regular, uninterrupted, and sustained course of 
 work. All this is not justified either by expe- 
 rience or physiology. Girls lose all these by 
 doing housework all the time. By requiring a 
 girl to perform the same round of duties every 
 day of the month, you impose upon her a regi- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 1 79 
 
 men which ignores the periodical tides and repro- 
 ductive apparatus of her organization. Allow me 
 to tell you, dear madame, that work every fourth 
 week the same as the other three, lack of privi- 
 lege to change her position when she needs 
 change, persistent exercise and constant labor, 
 which you say any girl who works in your house- 
 hold will be subjected to, are wicked. It will do 
 very well for a boy ; it will toughen and make a 
 man of him ; but it can be only prejudicial to a 
 girl. Surely, ma'am, you can't expect girls to 
 work every week : they would become agenes 
 under such a regimen as that." 
 
 Would she be likely 'to secure the situation? 
 Is it the prerogative of those who go out to 
 housework, or who perform any kind of service 
 or labor, to suspend work every fourth week ? 
 Are not all women expected to do the bidding of 
 their employers, the same as men, however great 
 their disinclination ? 
 
 Does that regimen which men are ever pre- 
 scribing for woman, namely, marriage, grant her 
 one week's cessation from labor out of every 
 
180 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 four? Can a mother, when weary and over- 
 tasked, relinquish the work and care of her 
 family, and engage her thoughts upon nothing 
 save that of her own physical weaknesses, and 
 how to relieve them ? 
 
 No, women may work in the factory, in the 
 store, in the workshop, in the field, in the dining- 
 saloon, at the wash-tub, at the ironing-table, at 
 the sewing-machine, do all these things, and 
 many more equally hard, from Monday morning 
 till Saturday night every week in the year ; may 
 wear their lives out toilTng for their children, 
 and doing the work for their families that their 
 husbands ought to do, ami nobody raises the arm 
 of opposition ; but just now, because there is a 
 possibility and even probability that in matters 
 of education women will be as honorably treated 
 as men, lo ! Dr. Clarke comes forth and tells us 
 it ought not to be so, because, forsooth, the peri- 
 odical tides and reproductive apparatus of her 
 organization will be ignored ! 
 
 If there are any spheres of labor or of action 
 that have with earnest solicitude more carefully 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. l8l 
 
 and faithfully looked after the health of the girls 
 and women who every day repair within their 
 walls than have many of our seminaries of learn- 
 ing, we have yet to learn the fact. 
 
 So long as men are willing that women should 
 do all or any of the things herein specified, beside 
 the thousand and one things to which we have 
 no space to allude ; so long as men are filling 
 she should enter marriage, a regimen which im- 
 poses more duties, responsibilities, trials, bur j 
 dens, cares, and sorrows than any other can, 
 which taxes health, strength, blood, and nerve 
 infinitely more than any thing else she can ever 
 do ; so long as they are willing that she should 
 endure the wear and tear of wifehood and mother- 
 hood, the severest and most trying ordeals through 
 which human beings are ever called to pass, and, 
 in comparison to the burdens which it inflicts 
 upon her physical organization, all others are of 
 a straw's weight ; so long as men are willing that 
 woman should act, work, labor, earn her living in 
 these various capacities, not one of which gives 
 her more opportunity to favor herself than it 
 
1 82 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 gives man, is it not insulting for a physician to 
 single out one individual phase of action, and 
 declare that it is a sin for woman to share equally 
 with man in the advantages it affords, because it 
 don't pay so much attention to the subject of 
 catamenia as he thinks it ought ? 
 
 Will Dr. Clarke please tell us why colleges, or 
 places of learning of any kind, should be denied 
 to woman on the ground that an insufficient 
 amount of deference is given to her physiologi- 
 cal nature, any more than other institutions 
 which overlook it entirely ? 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 183 
 
 XIII. 
 BY A. C. GARLAND. 
 
 A VERY flattering notice of the volume bearing 
 the title " Sex in Education " having appeared in 
 the "Journal," one "ambitious woman," who is 
 not "fretting under the restraints which nature 
 imposes," but those arbitrary and unjust social 
 laws which have grown out of a false, partial, 
 and superficial view of nature's laws, and who is 
 not "meditating the dangerous experiment of 
 making herself a man," but has long claimed for 
 herself and other women the right of deciding 
 what constitutes womanhood, feels moved to 
 reply. 
 
 Not having read the book in question, we shall 
 simply attack the position of its admirer. We 
 find, first, a complaint that the "subject" of 
 woman's co-education with man "has been 
 treated as a matter purely of moral claim, not 
 
1 84 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 of natural capacity," by many. Those who have 
 claimed equal educational advantages for women 
 as a right have in nearly if not all cases done so 
 because of the following unanswerable reasons : 
 'While women are taxed for the support of higher 
 schools of instruction, they have a moral claim 
 on such institutions for the equal education of 
 both sexes. The statement of any author, that 
 " experience and careful observation have proved 
 that the higher education of women has been 
 detrimental to their health, is simply an assump- 
 tion of his own, which can be met by as deter- 
 mined and well-proven statements on the other 
 side. The fact is, that we cannot absolutely set- 
 tle the limits of woman's strength and endurance 
 by any experiments made and recorded so imper- 
 fectly as they must be at a time like the present, 
 when the majority of women who are educating 
 themselves thoroughly in public colleges are do- 
 ing so at the cost of home comforts, and under 
 a severe pressure resulting from poverty. There 
 was a time in the history of New England when 
 the great majority of young men who were study- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 1 85 
 
 ing for the Christian ministry were in such poor 
 health that sanctity and an earnest purpose 
 came to be associated in almost every person's 
 mind with a body just ready to fall a victim to 
 any disease, a cadaverous or " spiritual " face, and 
 a thin and wasted hand. Why was this ? Not 
 because the simple preparation of study injured 
 them, but because they could not afford the gen- 
 erous living and comfortable homes which the 
 body requires for its development, and their 
 necessities compelled them to work outside their 
 studies, while their student enthusiasm led them 
 to disregard many laws of health. For these 
 same reasons many a woman to-day fails in her 
 course, when so near the end that a few more 
 years would land her in competence and congenial 
 employment. The health of the young ladies 
 in Vassar College where the curriculum is 
 quite as exhaustive and exhausting as the vari- 
 ous special courses at Harvard, to say the least 
 is excellent, as statistics, not theories, show. In 
 the early history of Oberlin, the pioneer in higher 
 education of the sexes, we read the names of 
 
1 86 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 many women who, so far from being " wrecks," 
 physically at least, have lived to bear healthy 
 children, have borne their full share of woman's 
 special duties, and, in addition, have made them- 
 selves famous in various departments of literary 
 and reformatory labor. 
 
 The recent census reports show that of all 
 classes of women most subject to insanity and 
 other diseases, the "farmers' wives" are most 
 afflicted. Does higher education do this work ? 
 Our observation, neither " professional " nor very 
 " extensive," but careful and fair, has shown more 
 healthful and strong women among the better 
 educated, even the intellectual, than in those 
 whose lives have been devoted exclusively to 
 the duties which their sex imposes on them. It 
 seems reasonable that the profession which calls 
 for most varied talent, demands most strength of 
 brain and body, is the most potent power for 
 good or evil which the world knows, that of 
 motherhood, should be freely accorded every ad- 
 vantage of physical, intellectual, and moral train- 
 ing which the State has it in its power to bestow. 
 

 SEX AND EDUCATION. l8; 
 
 But we insist upon it that no person who 
 cusses the educational problem of the 
 day, with an argument " based on the postulate 
 that woman finds her normal development in ful- 
 filling the functions of wife and mother, and that 
 any education which tends to unfit her for these 
 highest offices is not a boon, but a curse," is 
 worthy to be followed by just men or women. 
 Men and women are " normally developed " when, 
 and when only, they are rounded and broadened 
 by culture of body, mind, and heart, into a sym- 
 metrical character. We have no more right to 
 say that women shall be educated to be wives 
 and mothers than that men shall be educated to 
 be husbands and fathers ; and no more right to 
 say that a woman is not fulfilling her " highest " 
 office; who is laboring for the world in some 
 other sphere than that of wifehood or mother- 
 hood, than we have to declare a man abnormally 
 or imperfectly " developed " who has deemed it 
 best to live his life unmarried. Until men are 
 willing to discuss woman's education in the same 
 way they do that of their own sex, on the broad 
 
1 88 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 basis of individual need, individual taste and tal- 
 ent, arid the necessity of thorough mental train- 
 ing of all, in order to attain the highest results 
 to the country and the world ; until men are con- 
 vinced that the human being and its needs is 
 paramount in importance, and that sex, with all 
 its relations, is a secondary question, which must 
 settle itself and needs no legislation ; until, in 
 short, men comprehend that they are not the 
 guardians of woman, and have no right to force 
 her to education, or restrain her from the same 
 through any prudential considerations not ap- 
 plied equally to themselves, every woman con- 
 scious of the facts that her soul is worth more 
 than her body, and her eternal relations are of 
 more importance than the temporal, will "per- 
 sistently " and reasonably demand that the final 
 decision in regard to her ability to endure mental 
 or physical strain, her power for study, and her 
 need for the same, shall rest with herself. In 
 spite of the author of " Sex in Education," we 
 have yet to see convincing proofs, based on facts 
 extensively gathered and compiled, of the un- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 189 
 
 healthfulness of student life for men or women, 
 boys or girls, when the laws of health, namely, 
 simple living, good food, abundant sleep, health- 
 ful clothing, and sufficient exercise in the open 
 air, are known and observed. We will only add 
 our wish that men would be as careful for the 
 health of women in other respects as they claim 
 to be in the matter of education ; and sum up all 
 we would like to say on this vexed question in 
 one sentence : That man or woman is best fitted 
 for his or her special relations who is most 
 thoroughly and harmoniously developed as an 
 individual. 
 
TESTIMONY FROM COLLEGES. 
 
 DR. EDWARD H. CLARKE. 
 
 DEAR SIR, Having held the office of Resi- 
 dent Physician in Vassar College since the school 
 opened, September, 1 865, it seems to me that 
 I have the right to make respectful but earnest 
 protest against the implied strictures upon the 
 hygienic teaching and practice of the institution, 
 which I find in the history of " Miss D.," page 
 79 of " Sex in Education." 
 
 I take it that the aim of your book is to show 
 parents and teachers the wrong they do women, 
 and so the race, by their systematic overtaxing 
 of the mental forces during the critical years of 
 girlhood, when the reproductive function is as- 
 serting itself, and when every thing that would 
 hinder its proper establishment should be care- 
 fully avoided. In that aim I bid you God-speed ; 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 and it is because I feel so strongly on that point, 
 and have labored so zealously to make practical 
 application of this physiological principle, that 
 I regret that you should have taken as your most 
 elaborately discussed and aggravated case one 
 which so misrepresents the college that any 
 person who is at all acquainted with its rules 
 and management can hardly help having his 
 confidence in the book shaken. He would nat- 
 urally say, "This being so largely false, where 
 can I be sure of finding the truth?" 
 
 Vassar College does not receive students under 
 fifteen years of age, even for the first preparatory 
 class (there is a two years' preparatory course). 
 No student ever entered the freshman class 
 at fourteen. 
 
 At the beginning of every collegiate year the 
 students are carefully instructed regarding the 
 precautions which are periodically necessary for 
 them. They are positively forbidden to take 
 gymnastics at all during the first two days of 
 their period ; and, if there is the least tendency 
 toward menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, or other 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. IQ3 
 
 like irregularity, to forego those exercises en- 
 tirely. They are also forbidden to ride on horse- 
 back then ; and, moreover, are strongly advised 
 not to dance, nor run up and down stairs, nor do 
 any thing else that gives sudden and successive 
 (even though not violent) shocks to the trunk. 
 They are encouraged to go out of doors for quiet 
 walks, or drives, or boating, and to do whatever 
 they can to steady the nervous irritation, and to 
 help them to be patient with themselves through 
 the almost inevitable excitement or depression 
 that then supervenes. 
 
 That a student should faint again and again 
 in the gymnasium, and still be pushed to con- 
 tinue her exercises there, is a statement that 
 would not be made by any one who knows the 
 personal physical care that is had here, not only 
 by the Resident Physician, but by all the teach- 
 ers. It is a statement that will be believed by 
 none who has taken any pains to inform himself 
 of the methods of training adopted by Vassar 
 College. 
 
 It is possible that a student began here to 
 9 M 
 
194 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 menstruate healthily, and ended her course a 
 victim of dysmenorrhcea ; but does it give " a fair 
 chance for the girls " to argue therefrom that the 
 functional disturbance was the result of too severe 
 or continued study ? Do you know that she pur- 
 sued a healthful regimen in every other respect ? 
 As an offset to this side of the story, I can give 
 you a hundred cases -in which dysmenorrhcea of 
 long standing and aggravated character has been 
 cured here, cured mainly, as I believe, by patient 
 persistence in the regular habits of mental and 
 physical life that here obtain. 
 
 We do not attempt to cut down the work of 
 each girl every fourth week, but we do mean so 
 to regulate the work of the whole time that the 
 end of no day shall find her overtaxed, even if 
 that day has borne the added periodic burden. 
 It is our aim so to combine opportunity for seri- 
 ous mental activity with physical training and 
 individual freedom from tiresome restraint or 
 hint of espionage, that vigor of head and heart 
 and body will be the happy result. As a rule, 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 1 95 
 
 we succeed ; the success varying of course with 
 the stuff we have to work with. 
 
 The average age of the graduates of Vassar 
 College is twenty-one and a half. 
 
 Too young, I grant you ; and we hope to 
 improve on it as the years go, and knowledge, 
 physiological and otherwise liberal, increases. 
 
 Eighteen is young enough for any woman to 
 begin this course. At that age, with average 
 endowment of mind and body, she pursues it 
 with gladness and ends it with rejoicing, as can 
 be proved by a goodly number of Vassar's 
 alumnae. 
 
 Hoping that your sense of justice will suggest 
 methods by which the erroneous impressions that 
 your book conveys concerning Vassar College 
 may be, as far as possible, corrected, 
 Lam, sir, 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 ALIDA C. AVERY. 
 
 VASSAR COLLEGE, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 
 Nov. 4, 1873. 
 
196 
 
 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 ANTIOCH COLLEGE. 
 
 Individual. 
 
 Year of 
 Graduation. 
 
 o 
 
 No. of 
 Children. 
 
 Health. 
 
 Remarks. 
 
 i 
 
 1857 
 
 Married 
 
 3 
 
 Not living 
 
 Died 1874. 
 
 2 
 
 t 
 
 n 
 
 i 
 
 Good 
 
 Taught ii years. Now in 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Indiana. 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 >j 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Has taught ever since gradu- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ating. Now in Ohio. 
 
 4 
 
 1858 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 Very good 
 
 Taught five years. Now in 
 Ohio. 
 
 s 
 
 N 
 
 ^ 
 
 6 
 
 Good 
 
 Has taught school. Slight 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 jronchial trouble. 
 
 6 
 
 1859 
 
 99 
 
 3 
 
 w 
 
 
 7 
 
 " 
 
 
 3 
 
 Uncertain 
 
 Has taught school. 
 
 8 
 
 
 >l 
 
 
 Good 
 
 Taught thirteen years, till 
 married in 1872. 
 
 9 
 
 
 )y 
 
 2 or 3 
 
 
 No recent intelligence. 
 
 10 
 
 1860 
 
 Single 
 
 
 n 
 
 Health good as far as known. 
 Taught some years. Now in 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 England. 
 
 ii 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 
 H 
 
 Married 
 Single 
 
 Married 
 
 2 
 I 
 
 Very good 
 
 Taught three years. 
 Has taught school. 
 Physician in Missouri. 
 Has taught school. 
 
 IS 
 
 
 
 Single 
 
 
 
 
 Constantly a teacher, except 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 two years in Europe. 
 
 16 
 
 
 Married 
 
 
 }j 
 
 Minister in Connecticut. 
 
 17 
 
 1861 
 
 
 
 Good 
 
 Lately married. 
 Taught three years. Journal- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ist in Ohio. 
 
 18 
 19 
 
 1862 
 
 ;; 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 Not living 
 
 Has taught school. 
 Died of hereditary consump- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tion. 
 
 20 
 
 21 
 
 J 
 
 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 "Good* 
 
 
 22 
 
 99 
 
 y, 
 
 2 
 
 Very good 
 
 Resides in Ohio. 
 
 23 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 99 99 
 
 Resides in Vermont. 
 
 24 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 Resides in New York. 
 
 
 M 
 
 }) 
 
 
 "Good 
 
 Lately married. 
 
 26 
 
 99 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 Has taught school. 
 
 27 
 
 1863 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 Very good 
 
 Taught four years, till mar- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ried. 
 
 28 
 29 
 
 1864 
 1866 
 
 Married 
 
 3 
 
 Not good 
 
 Taught one year. 
 Troubled with scrofula, dat- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ing back earlier than her schod 
 days. Practises medicine in 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Missouri. 
 
^ 
 
 (* 
 
 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 '97 
 
 | Individual. J 
 
 Year of 
 Graduation. 
 
 s m 
 
 If 
 r 
 
 No. of 
 Children. 
 
 Health. 
 
 Remarks. 
 
 30 
 
 1868 
 
 Single 
 
 
 Very good 
 
 Has just returned from three 
 years in Europe, where she took 
 
 
 99 
 
 Married 
 
 T 
 
 Good 
 
 lone pedestrian journeys. 
 Has taught school and is 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 teaching now. 
 
 32 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 99 
 
 Taught three years. 
 
 33 
 
 1869 
 
 Single 
 
 
 
 
 Taught constantly and is 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 teaching now. 
 
 34 
 
 1870 
 
 Married 
 
 
 Not living 
 
 Died in 1871. 
 
 35 
 
 M 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 
 Good 
 
 Has taught school in Mis- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 souri. 
 
 36 
 37 
 
 1871 
 
 Single 
 
 I 
 
 Unknown 
 
 Taught one year. 
 Came to college in delicate 
 health, which improved while 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 there. The youngest woman 
 
 38 
 
 .8 72 
 
 j. 
 
 
 Not living 
 
 who ever graduated at Antioch. 
 Died 1873 of hereditary con- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 sumption. 
 
 39 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 
 Fair 
 
 Teaching in Massachusetts. 
 
 40 
 
 1873 
 
 M 
 
 
 Good 
 
 
 41 
 
 " 
 
 " 
 
 
 ti 
 
 
 All the time I was at Antioch College I never 
 heard of a young lady in the college requiring a 
 physician's advice. Among the seven girls in 
 my class I never remember an instance of ill- 
 ness : they were always at recitations, and 
 always had their lessons. I spent four years at 
 Antioch, two at the theological school ; and I 
 have been over ten years a settled pastor, and 
 I never yet was absent from an engagement or 
 suspended labor on account of sickness. When 
 
1 98 SEX A ND ED UCA TION. 
 
 in Kansas, I spoke every day from the first of 
 July to the fifth of November, besides travelling 
 to my appointments each day, some days giving 
 two lectures and preaching Sundays, making in 
 all two hundred and five speeches, averaging 
 more than an hour in length, and came home 
 just as well as I went ; and this moment I am as 
 well as ever, and could walk ten miles in a day 
 with ease. To me such statements as Dr. Clarke's 
 seem absurd, and contrary to everybody's ex- 
 perience. . . . 
 
 The ill-health of the women of our time is not 
 due to study or regularity in study : it is due to 
 the want of regularity, and want of aim and pur- 
 pose, and want of discipline. If you should take 
 the whole number of women in this country who 
 have graduated from a regular college with men, 
 and place them side by side with the same num- 
 ber of women who have not had that course of 
 study, select them where you will, the college 
 graduates will be stronger in mind and body, 
 able to endure more and work harder than 
 the others. This I am sure of, as I am ac- 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 199 
 
 quainted with many of the somewhat small 
 number of women graduates ; and I know some- 
 thing of other women, having belonged to vari- 
 ous female seminaries at different times. Rev. 
 Olympia Brown. 
 
 MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY. 
 
 ABOUT eighty of the students are of the sex 
 which some call " weaker," but which here, at any 
 rate, is shown to be equal in endurance, in cour- 
 age, in perseverance, in devotion to study, and 
 in cheerful confidence, to the strong and stalwart 
 men. The health of the women who are here 
 now is in almost every instance excellent. I am 
 assured by intelligent ladies in all the depart- 
 ments that there is not a single instance of 
 sickness which has come from over-study, or 
 from any cause connected with the routine of 
 the college life. In one or two cases, the incon- 
 venience of a weak constitution, of weak eyes 
 
200 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 and sensitive nerves, has been felt ; and one of 
 the most vigorous of the sisters has been con- 
 fined to her chamber for some weeks by a 
 sprained ankle. But it is the unanimous testi- 
 mony, as I learn, of the ladies who are studying 
 law, and medicine, and science, and the arts, in 
 the class-rooms, and lecture-rooms, and library, 
 and laboratory, that their health was never 
 better, that they have had no attacks of malady, 
 and that they ask for no indulgence on account 
 of their sex. Most of them, indeed, are out of 
 their teens, and beyond the age to which the 
 warnings of Dr. Clarke's book apply. But, 
 of the twenty or more whom I personally know, 
 not one complains ; and they look to be in better 
 health than the average of young women. 
 
 Some say that it is too soon to pronounce 
 upon the success of the experiment of co-educa- 
 tion here ; but, if the opinion of the women 
 themselves, and of the teachers who teach them, 
 is to be accepted, the experiment in the present 
 season is as successful physically as it is intel- 
 lectually. The women are as strong and hearty 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 2OI 
 
 to all appearance, and have not found their sex 
 an obstacle to their activity and comfort in 
 study. Rev. C. H. Brigtiam, in Christian Reg- 
 ister. 
 
 LOMBARD UNIVERSITY. 
 
 THE testimony from Lombard University, 
 Galesburg, Illinois, is as follows : 
 
 The whole number of graduates is sixty-nine 
 men and forty-five women, of whom twenty- 
 eight of the women have graduated during the 
 last six years. There have been no permanent 
 invalids. Nine men and three women have died. 
 Twenty of the women have married, eleven of 
 whom are mothers. The president, who had 
 been here eighteen years, thinks and, so far as 
 I know, his opinion is the opinion of all who have 
 been connected with the institution that the 
 women are as healthy as the men. It frequently 
 happens that girls improve in health after coming 
 here ; and I have heard two or three of them 
 
 9* 
 
202 SEX AND EDUCATION. 
 
 say, after graduating and returning home, that 
 they should be stronger if they could come back 
 and again have regular work and a definite aim. 
 
 OBERLIN. 
 FROM Oberlin, Professor Fairchild says : 
 
 A breaking down in health does not appear to 
 be more frequent with women than with men. 
 We have not observed a more frequent inter- 
 ruption of study on this account, nor do our 
 statistics show a greater draft upon the vital 
 forces in the case of those who have completed 
 the full college course. Out of eighty-four who 
 have graduated since 1841, seven have died, a 
 proportion of one in twelve. Of three hundred 
 and sixty-eight young men who have graduated 
 in the same time, thirty-four are dead, or a little 
 more than one in eleven. Of these thirty-four 
 young men, six fell in the war ; and, leaving out 
 those, the proportion of deaths remains one in 
 thirteen. Taking the whole number of graduates, 
 
SEX AND EDUCATION. 203 
 
 omitting the theological department, we find the 
 proportion of deaths one in nine and a half ; of 
 ladies, one in twelve, and this in spite of the 
 lower average expectation of life for women, as 
 indicated in Life Insurance Tables. 
 
 Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son. 
 
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