Whether women will ever do the world’s highest work as well as men, I consider, in all fairness, yet undecided. She has not 197 had time to recover from centuries of no-education and mis-education: She is only just beginning to understand that neither beauty nor tact can take the place of skill, and that to do a man’s work she must prepare for it as a man prepares; but even if time proves that in creative works she cannot attain masculine grandeur of conception and power of execution, she may be just as excellent in her own way; and there are and always will be people who prefer Mrs. Browning to Milton, and George Eliot to Lord Bacon.
At first sight there seems some plausibility in the assertion that woman’s physical inferiority will always render her unfit to do men’s work. But all physical excellence is a matter of cultivation; and it would be very easy to prove that women are not naturally physically weaker than men. In all savage nations they do the hardest work, and Mr. Livingstone acknowledged that all his ideas as to their physical inferiority had been completely overturned.
In China they do the work of men, with the addition of an infant tied to their back. 198 In Calcutta and Bombay, they act as masons, carry mortar, and there are thousands of them in the mountain passes bearing up the rocky heights baskets of stone and earth on their heads. The women in Germany and the Low Countries toil equally with the men. During the late war I saw American women in Texas keep the saddle all day, driving cattle or superintending the operations in the cotton-patch or the sugar-field. Nay, I have known them to plough, sow, reap, and get wood from the cedar brake with their own hands.
Woman’s physical strength has degenerated for want of exercise and use; but it would be as unfair to condemn her to an inferior position on this account as it was for the slave master to urge the necessity of slavery because of the very vices slavery had produced. However, if women are really to succeed they must give to their preparation for a profession the freshest years of life. If it is only taken up because marriage has been a failure, or if it is pursued with a divided mind, they will always be behind-hand and inferior. But the compensation 199 is worth the sacrifice. A profession once acquired, they have home, happiness, and independence in their hands; the future, as far as possible, is secure, the serenity and calmness of assurance strengthens the mind and sweetens the character, and from the standpoint of a self-sustaining celibacy marriage itself assumes its loftiest position; it is no longer the aim, but the crown and completion of her life; for she need not, so she will not, marry for anything but love, and thus her wifehood will lose nothing of the grace and glory that belongs to it of right.
Little Children
The teachers of a people have need of a far greater wisdom than its priests. The latter are but the mouthpiece of an oracle so clear that a wayfaring man, though a fool, may understand it. The former are the interpreters in the mysterious communings of ignorance with knowledge.
“Only a few little children,” says the self-sufficient and the inefficient teacher. Twenty-five years’ experience among little children has taught me that in spiritual and moral perceptiveness, and intuitive knowledge of character, they are far nearer to the angels than we are.
Consider well what a mystery they are! Who ever saw two children mentally alike? More fresh from the hands of the Maker, they still retain the infinite variety which is one of the marks of his boundless wealth of creation. In a few years, alas! they will take 201 on the stereotyped forms of the class to which they belong; but for a little space heaven lies about them, and they dwell among us—so much of this world, and so much of that.