While the religion of Jesus elevates women to great consideration in the social scale, it imposes a salutary restraint upon human passions, and checks every approach to the assumption of an unnatural superiority. Its principles allow neither the barbaric treatment of uncivilized nations, nor the follies of the chivalrous ages. The great principles of Christianity secure to women, as an unquestionable right, equality with men. “Let every one of you so love his wife as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.” Paley writes, “The manners of different countries have varied in nothing more than in their domestic constitutions. Less polished and more luxurious nations have either not perceived the bad effects of polygamy; or, if they did perceive them, they who in such countries possessed the power of reforming the laws, have been unwilling to resign their own gratification.” In all Christian countries, polygamy is universally prohibited; and the marriage of a second wife during the lifetime of the first, is ranked with the most dangerous and cruel of those frauds by which a woman is cheated out of her fortune, her person, and her happiness. In the early days of the generation which is fast fading away from among us, as in that which immediately preceded it, we know that the education of women, if bestowed at all, was confined to the shallowest acquirements and the most superficial of accomplishments. In courtly circles, a few external graces, and a sufficient acquaintance with polite phraseology were enough to constitute the woman of refinement. That woman is slowly making her way into freer life is evinced by the fact that professed authorship does not involve loss of caste in society. Many widely known as writers, were placed in the genteel ranks of society by birth; but are universally regarded with increased respect, because they have enlarged their bounds of usefulness, to strengthen and refresh thousands of minds.
INTELLECTUAL EQUALITY.
Phrenologists affirm that the female head does not measure so much round as the male; neither is it so wide, so high, nor so long. On the other hand, many authorities, English and foreign, say that the brains of women are larger than those of men in proportion to the size of their bodies, while their temperaments are more nervous and sensitive; hence female mental inferiority would be a hasty generalization; for although the brain is the intellectual organ, size is not the only measure of power. Woman, like man, was created perfect; but the powers of her mind are essentially different from those of man. The male intellect is logical and judicious, while that of the female is instructive and emotional. “They are one in the warp and woof of their mental nature; but the interwoven threads are in bulk so differently proportioned in the two, that they differ very considerably in superficial colour and finish.” The theory that the strong, or male mind, prefers the weak, or female mind, in its hours of leisure, is contradicted by experience. Poets, philosophers, and orators, prefer the fellowship of kindred souls. On the same principle, clever men naturally court the society of clever women. A creature of inferior mental powers would not be a help meet for man.
Who have a better right to speak to this theme than teachers of youth? Their vocation leads them to see boys and girls studying the same subjects, and they are pretty unanimous in their opinion that the memories, perceptions, and understandings of girls are quite equal to those of boys. Plato was of opinion that males had no superiority over females, except in physical strength. Dugald Stewart was of the same opinion, and ascribed the difference in the sexes to education. Several of the school inspectors in England and Scotland report that they found the capabilities of the girls as good in general as those of boys; that although part of the school-day was devoted rightfully to needlework, they made as much progress as lads of the same amount of training when taught by the same masters. Of the six ladies who attended the separate classes for women authorized by the university of Edinburgh, five were found in the prize list—one, Miss Pechey, received a bronze medal, and ought to have been a Hope scholar; Miss Blake, got a first-class certificate of merit; while Mrs. Masson, Mrs. Thorn, and Miss Chaplin, have certificates of merits of second-class. The Aberdeen lady students’ classes were organized late last year. The lecturers were Mr. M’Bain, formerly Assistant-Professor of Greek in the university, and Dr. Beveridge—both eminently qualified; and the subjects undertaken, were English Literature and Chemistry, and Experimental Physics. From an address delivered by M. Krueger, we notice that eight ladies attended the first of these classes, and eleven the second, and that the students are highly spoken of alike for attention and ability. The past session, especially seeing it may be regarded as merely experimental, having been thus successful, it is hoped that in future there will be a larger number of students, and that other subjects of study besides those already engaged in may get encouragement. We are informed that at the examination of Mr. M’Bain’s class, Miss Sherar obtained the highest certificate. At the examinations of the Metropolitan University, females have demonstrated the possession of acquirements sufficient to procure them high honours at the elder seats of learning on the banks of the Isis and the Cam. These facts ought to make us pause before condemning Sidney Smith for claiming, in the pages of the Edinburgh Review, perfect equality in mental endowment for women. “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 occupation has called this or that talent into action; there is surely, therefore, no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning in order to explain so very simple a phenomenon.”
What is there in science, literature, or art, which the genius of woman cannot accomplish? If we have had starry sons of science, we have had starry daughters too. Not only has woman lifted the telescope, but she has lifted the pen, and written treatises of great learning and originality. “The Mechanism of the Heavens” and “The Connection of the Physical Sciences,” by Mrs. Somerville, would not have disgraced the pen of Sir Isaac Newton. We have had chemistry represented by Mrs. Marcet, and botany by Mrs. Loudon. Woman has risen to eminence in divinity. Miss Jane Taylor was thoroughly acquainted with that science. Medicine has had its female students. In early times, and also in the middle ages, female physicians and surgeons were as common as male; and sometimes the patient got enamoured of his doctor:—
“No art the poison could withstand;
No medicine could be found,
Till lovely Isolde’s lily hand
Had probed the rankling wound.
With gentle hand and soothing tongue,