XLIV.
4.—“... the freeman, equable ...”
“The freeman assuredly scorns equally to insult and to be insulted.”—Alexander Walker (“Woman as to Mind,” p. 205).
XLV.
2.—“... equal freedom, equal fate ...”
“As long as boys and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both precisely alike. If you catch up one half of these creatures and train them to a particular set of actions and opinions, and the other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understandings will differ, as one or the other sort of occupations has called this or that talent into action. There is surely no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning in order to explain so very simple a phenomenon.”—Sydney Smith (“Female Education”).
Id.... “Was it Mary Somerville who had to hide her books, and study her mathematics by stealth after all the family had gone to sleep, for fear of being scolded and worried because she allowed her intellect full scope? She has now a bust in the Royal Institution!... Whatever view of the case theoretical considerations may suggest, there is one fact beyond cavil, and it is this: that the female frontal lobes are not only capable of equalling in power the male lobes, but can surpass them when allowed free scope. This has been recently proved in one of the universities, where a woman surpassed the senior wrangler in mathematics—an essentially intellectual work.”—Dr. Emanuel Bonavia (“Woman’s Frontal Lobes”).
The “girl graduate” last referred to is Miss Philippa Fawcett at the University Examinations, Cambridge, in June, 1890.
3.—“Together reared ...”
“We find a good example in the United States, where, to the horror of learned and unlearned pedants of both sexes, numerous colleges exist in which large numbers of young men and women are educated together. And with what results? President White, of the University of Michigan, expresses himself thus: ‘For some years past a young woman has been the best scholar of the Greek language among 1,300 students; the best student in mathematics in one of the classes of our institution is a young woman, and many of the best scholars in natural and general science are also young women.’ Dr. Fairchild, President of Oberlin College in Ohio, in which over 1,000 students of both sexes study in mixed classes, says: ‘During an experience of eight years as Professor of the ancient languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and in the branches of ethics and philosophy, and during an experience of eleven years in theoretical and applied mathematics, the only difference which I have observed between the sexes was in the manner of their rhetoric.’ Edward H. Machill, President of Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, tells us that an experience of four years has forced him to the conclusion that the education of both sexes in common leads to the best moral results. This may be mentioned in passing as a reply to those who imagine such an education must endanger morality.”—Bebel (“Women,” Walther’s Translation, p. 131). (See also Notes to line 7, forward.)