A closer analogy than this, however, exists between these human individuals and the eunuchs of Oriental civilization. Except the secretary of the treasury, in the cabinet of Candace, queen of Ethiopia, who was baptized by Philip and Narses, Justinian's general, none of that class have made any impression on the world's life, that history has recorded. It may be reasonably doubted if arrested development of the female reproductive system, producing a class of agenes,[16] not epicenes, will yield a better result of intellectual and moral power in the nineteenth century, than the analogous class of Orientals exhibited. Clinical illustrations of this type of arrested growth might be given, but my pen refuses the ungracious task.

Another result of the present methods of educating girls, and one different from any of the preceding, remains to be noticed. Schools and colleges, as we have seen, require girls to work their brains with full force and sustained power, at the time when their organization periodically requires a portion of their force for the performance of a periodical function, and a portion of their power for the building up of a peculiar, complicated, and important mechanism,—the engine within an engine. They are required to do two things equally well at the same time. They are urged to meditate a lesson and drive a machine simultaneously, and to do them both with all their force. Their organizations are expected to make good sound brains and nerves by working over the humanities, the sciences, and the arts, and, at the same time, to make good sound reproductive apparatuses, not only without any especial attention to the latter, but while all available force is withdrawn from the latter and sent to the former. It is not materialism to say, that, as the brain is, so will thought be. Without discussing the French physiologist's dictum, that the brain secretes thought as the liver does bile, we may be sure, that without brain there will be no thought. The quality of the latter depends on the quality of the former. The metamorphoses of brain manifest, measure, limit, enrich, and color thought. Brain tissue, including both quantity and quality, correlates mental power. The brain is manufactured from the blood; its quantity and quality are determined by the quantity and quality of its blood supply. Blood is made from food; but it may be lost by careless hemorrhage, or poisoned by deficient elimination. When frequently and largely lost or poisoned, as I have too frequent occasion to know it often is, it becomes impoverished,—anemic. Then the brain suffers, and mental power is lost. The steps are few and direct, from frequent loss of blood, impoverished blood, and abnormal brain and nerve metamorphosis, to loss of mental force and nerve disease. Ignorance or carelessness leads to anemic blood, and that to an anemic mind. As the blood, so the brain; as the brain, so the mind.

The cases which have hitherto been presented illustrate some of the evils which the reproductive system is apt to receive in consequence of obvious derangement of its growth and functions. But it may, and often does, happen that the catamenia are normally performed, and that the reproductive system is fairly made up during the educational period. Then force is withdrawn from the brain and nerves and ganglia. These are dwarfed or checked or arrested in their development. In the process of waste and repair, of destructive and constructive metamorphosis, by which brains as well as bones are built up and consolidated, education often leaves insufficient margin for growth. Income derived from air, food, and sleep, which should largely, may only moderately exceed expenditure upon study and work, and so leave but little surplus for growth in any direction; or, what more commonly occurs, the income which the brain receives is all spent upon study, and little or none upon its development, while that which the nutritive and reproductive systems receive is retained by them, and devoted to their own growth. When the school makes the same steady demand for force from girls who are approaching puberty, ignoring Nature's periodical demands, that it does from boys, who are not called upon for an equal effort, there must be failure somewhere. Generally either the reproductive system or the nervous system suffers. We have looked at several instances of the former sort of failure; let us now examine some of the latter.

Miss F—— was about twenty years old when she completed her technical education. She inherited a nervous diathesis as well as a large dower of intellectual and aesthetic graces. She was a good student, and conscientiously devoted all her time, with the exception of ordinary vacations, to the labor of her education. She made herself mistress of several languages, and accomplished in many ways. The catamenial function appeared normally, and, with the exception of occasional slight attacks of menorrhagia, was normally performed during the whole period of her education. She got on without any sort of serious illness. There were few belonging to my clientele who required less professional advice for the same period than she. With the ending of her school life, when she should have been in good trim and well equipped, physically as well as intellectually, for life's work, there commenced, without obvious cause, a long period of invalidism. It would be tedious to the reader, and useless for our present purpose, to detail the history and describe the protean shapes of her sufferings. With the exception of small breasts, the reproductive system was well developed. Repeated and careful examinations failed to detect any derangement of the uterine mechanism. Her symptoms all pointed to the nervous system as the fons et origo mali. First general debility, that concealed but ubiquitous leader of innumerable armies of weakness and ill, laid siege to her, and captured her. Then came insomnia, that worried her nights for month after month, and made her beg for opium, alcohol, chloral, bromides, any thing that would bring sleep. Neuralgia in every conceivable form tormented her, most frequently in her back, but often, also, in her head, sometimes in her sciatic nerves, sometimes setting up a tic douloureux, sometimes causing a fearful dysmenorrhoea and frequently making her head ache for days together. At other times hysteria got hold of her, and made her fancy herself the victim of strange diseases. Mental effort of the slightest character distressed her, and she could not bear physical exercise of any amount. This condition, or rather these varying conditions, continued for some years. She followed a careful and systematic regimen, and was rewarded by a slow and gradual return of health and strength, when a sudden accident killed her, and terminated her struggle with weakness and pain.

Words fail to convey the lesson of this case to others with any thing like the force that the observation of it conveyed its moral to those about Miss F——, and especially to the physician who watched her career through her educational life, and saw it lead to its logical conclusion of invalidism and thence towards recovery, till life ended. When she finished school, as the phrase goes, she was considered to be well. The principal of any seminary or head of any college, judging by her looks alone, would not have hesitated to call her rosy and strong. At that time the symptoms of failure which began to appear were called signs of previous overwork. This was true, but not so much in the sense of overwork as of erroneously-arranged work. While a student, she wrought continuously,—just as much during each catamenial week as at other times. As a consequence, in her metamorphosis of tissue, repair did little more than make up waste. There were constant demands of force for constant growth of the system generally, equally constant demands of force for the labor of education, and periodical demands of force for a periodical function. The regimen she followed did not permit all these demands to be satisfied, and the failure fell on the nervous system. She accomplished intellectually a good deal, but not more than she might have done, and retained her health, had the order of her education been a physiological one. It was not Latin, French, German, mathematics, or philosophy that undermined her nerves; nor was it because of any natural inferiority to boys that she failed; nor because she undertook to master what women have no right to learn: she lost her health simply because she undertook to do her work in a boy's way and not in a girl's way.

Let us learn the lesson of one more case. These details may be tedious; but the justification of their presence here are the importance of the subject they illustrate and elucidate, and the necessity of acquiring a belief of the truth of the facts of female education.

Miss G—— worked her way through New-England primary, grammar, and high schools to a Western college, which she entered with credit to herself, and from which she graduated, confessedly its first scholar, leading the male and female youth alike. All that need be told of her career is that she worked as a student, continuously and perseveringly, through the years of her first critical epoch, and for a few years after it, without any sort of regard to the periodical type of her organization. It never appeared that she studied excessively in other respects, or that her system was weakened while in college by fevers or other sickness. Not a great while after graduation, she began to show signs of failure, and some years later died under the writer's care. A post-mortem examination was made, which disclosed no disease in any part of the body, except in the brain, where the microscope revealed commencing degeneration.

This was called an instance of death from over-work. Like the preceding case, it was not so much the result of over-work as of un-physiological work. She was unable to make a good brain, that could stand the wear and tear of life, and a good reproductive system that should serve the race, at the same time that she was continuously spending her force in intellectual labor. Nature asked for a periodical remission, and did not get it. And so Miss G—— died, not because she had mastered the wasps of Aristophanes and the Mecanique Celeste, not because she had made the acquaintance of Kant and Koelliker, and ventured to explore the anatomy of flowers and the secrets of chemistry, but because, while pursuing these studies, while doing all this work, she steadily ignored her woman's make. Believing that woman can do what man can, for she held that faith, she strove with noble but ignorant bravery to compass man's intellectual attainment in a man's way, and died in the effort. If she had aimed at the same goal, disregarding masculine and following feminine methods, she would be alive now, a grand example of female culture, attainment, and power.

These seven clinical observations are sufficient to illustrate the fact that our modern methods of education do not give the female organization a fair chance, but that they check development, and invite weakness. It would be easy to multiply such observations, from the writer's own notes alone, and, by doing so, to swell this essay into a portly volume; but the reader is spared the needless infliction. Other observers have noticed similar facts, and have urgently called attention to them.

Dr. Fisher, in a recent excellent monograph on insanity, says, "A few examples of injury from continued study will show how mental strain affects the health of young girls particularly. Every physician could, no doubt, furnish many similar ones."

"Miss A—— graduated with honor at the normal school after several years of close study, much of the time out of school; never attended balls or parties; sank into a low state of health at once with depression. Was very absurdly allowed to marry while in this state, and soon after became violently insane, and is likely to remain so."

"Miss A—— graduated at the grammar school, not only first, but perfect, and at once entered the normal school; was very ambitious to sustain her reputation, and studied hard out of school; was slow to learn, but had a retentive memory; could seldom be induced to go to parties, and, when she did go, studied while dressing, and on the way; was assigned extra tasks at school, because she performed them so well; was a fine healthy girl in appearance, but broke down permanently at end of second year, and is now a victim of hysteria and depression."

"Miss C——, of a nervous organization, and quick to learn; her health suffered in normal school, so that her physician predicted insanity if her studies were not discontinued. She persevered, however, and is now an inmate of a hospital, with hysteria and depression."

"A certain proportion of girls are predisposed to mental or nervous derangement. The same girls are apt to be quick, brilliant, ambitious, and persistent at study, and need not stimulation, but repression. For the sake of a temporary reputation for scholarship, they risk their health at the most susceptible period of their lives, and break down after the excitement of school-life has passed away. For sexual reasons they cannot compete with boys, whose out-door habits still further increase the difference in their favor. If it was a question of school-teachers instead of school-girls, the list would be long of young women whose health of mind has become bankrupt by a continuation of the mental strain commenced at school. Any method of relief in our school-system to these over-susceptible minds should be welcomed, even at the cost of the intellectual supremacy of woman in the next generation."[17]

The fact which Dr. Fisher alludes to, that many girls break down not during but after the excitement of school or college life, is an important one, and is apt to be overlooked. The process by which the development of the reproductive system is arrested, or degeneration of brain and nerve-tissue set a going, is an insidious one. At its beginning, and for a long time after it is well on in its progress, it would not be recognized by the superficial observer. A class of girls might, and often do, graduate from our schools, higher seminaries, and colleges, that appear to be well and strong at the time of their graduation, but whose development has already been checked, and whose health is on the verge of giving way. Their teachers have known nothing of the amenorrhoea, menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, or leucorrhoea which the pupils have sedulously concealed and disregarded; and the cunning devices of dress have covered up all external evidences of defect; and so, on graduation day, they are pointed out by their instructors to admiring committees as rosy specimens of both physical and intellectual education. A closer inspection by competent experts would reveal the secret weakness which the labor of life that they are about to enter upon too late discloses.

The testimony of Dr. Anstie of London, as to the gravity of the evils incurred by the sort of erroneous education we are considering, is decided and valuable. He says, "For, be it remembered, the epoch of sexual development is one in which an enormous addition is being made to the expenditure of vital energy; besides the continuous processes of growth of the tissues and organs generally, the sexual apparatus, with its nervous supply, is making by its development heavy demands upon the nutritive powers of the organism; and it is scarcely possible but that portions of the nervous centres, not directly connected with it, should proportionally suffer in their nutrition, probably through defective blood supply. When we add to this the abnormal strain that is being put on the brain, in many cases, by a forcing plan of mental education, we shall perceive a source not merely of exhaustive expenditure of nervous power, but of secondary irritation of centres like the medulla oblongata that are probably already somewhat lowered in power of vital resistance, and proportionably irritable."[18] A little farther on, Dr. Anstie adds, "But I confess, that, with me, the result of close attention given to the pathology of neuralgia has been the ever-growing conviction, that, next to the influence of neurotic inheritance, there is no such frequently powerful factor in the construction of the neuralgic habit as mental warp of a certain kind, the product of an unwise education." In another place, speaking of the liability of the brain to suffer from an unwise education, and referring to the sexual development that we are discussing in these pages, he makes the following statement, which no intelligent physician will deny, and which it would be well for all teachers who care for the best education of the girls intrusted to their charge to ponder seriously. "I would also go farther, and express the opinion, that peripheral influences of an extremely powerful and continuous kind, where they concur with one of those critical periods of life at which the central nervous system is relatively weak and unstable, can occasionally set going a non-inflammatory centric atrophy, which may localize itself in those nerves upon whose centres the morbific peripheral influence is perpetually pouring in. Even such influences as the psychical and emotional, be it remembered, must be considered peripheral."[19] The brain of Miss G——, whose case was related a few pages back, is a clinical illustration of the accuracy of this opinion.

Dr. Weir Mitchell, one of our most eminent American physiologists, has recently borne most emphatic testimony to the evils we have pointed out: "Worst of all," he says, "to my mind, most destructive in every way, is the American view of female education. The time taken for the more serious instruction of girls extends to the age of eighteen, and rarely over this. During these years, they are undergoing such organic development as renders them remarkably sensitive." ... "To show more precisely how the growing girl is injured by the causes just mentioned" (forced and continued study at the sexual epoch) "would carry me upon subjects unfit for full discussion in these pages; but no thoughtful reader can be much at a loss as to my meaning." ... "To-day the American woman is, to speak plainly, physically unfit for her duties as woman, and is, perhaps, of all civilized females, the least qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man. She is not fairly up to what Nature asks from her as wife and mother. How will she sustain herself under the pressure of those yet more exacting duties which now-a-days she is eager to share with the man?"[20]

In our schools it is the ambitious and conscientious girls, those who have in them the stuff of which the noblest women are made, that suffer, not the romping or lazy sort; and thus our modern ways of education provide for the "non-survival of the fittest." A speaker told an audience of women at Wesleyan Hall not long ago, that he once attended the examination of a Western college, where a girl beat the boys in unravelling the intracacies of Juvenal. He did not report the consumption of blood and wear of brain tissue that in her college way of study correlated her Latin, or hint at the possibility of arrested development. Girls of bloodless skins and intellectual faces 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. Later on, when marriage and maternity overtake these girls, and they "live laborious days" in a sense not intended by Milton's line, they bend and break beneath the labor, like loaded grain before a storm, and bear little fruit again. A training that yields this result is neither fair to the girls nor to the race.

Let us quote the authority of such an acute and sagacious observer as Dr. Maudsley, in support of the physiological and pathological views that have been here presented. Referring to the physiological condition and phenomena of the first critical epoch, he says, "In the great mental revolution caused by the development of the sexual system at puberty, we have the most striking example of the intimate and essential sympathy between the brain, as a mental organ, and other organs of the body. The change of character at this period is not by any means limited to the appearance of the sexual feelings, and their sympathetic ideas, but, when traced to its ultimate reach, will be found to extend to the highest feelings of mankind, social, moral, and even religious."[21] He points out the fact that it is very easy by improper training and forced work, during this susceptible period, to turn a physiological into a pathological state. "The great mental revolution which occurs at puberty may go beyond its physiological limits in some instances, and become pathological." "The time of this mental revolution is at best a trying period for youth." "The monthly activity of the ovaries, which marks the advent of puberty in women, has a notable effect upon the mind and body; wherefore it may become an important cause of mental and physical derangement."[22] With regard to the physiological effects of arrested development of the reproductive apparatus in women, Dr. Maudsley uses the following plain and emphatic language: "The forms and habits of mutilated men approach those of women; and women, whose ovaries and uterus remain for some cause in a state of complete inaction, approach the forms and habits of men. It is said, too, that, in hermaphrodites, the mental character, like the physical, participates equally in that of both sexes. While woman preserves her sex, she will necessarily be feebler than man, and, having her special bodily and mental characters, will have, to a certain extent, her own sphere of activity; where she has become thoroughly masculine in nature, or hermaphrodite in mind,—when, in fact, she has pretty well divested herself of her sex,—then she may take his ground, and do his work; but she will have lost her feminine attractions, and probably also her chief feminine functions."[23] It has been reserved for our age and country, by its methods of female education, to demonstrate that it is possible in some cases to divest a woman of her chief feminine functions; in others, to produce grave and even fatal disease of the brain and nervous system; in others, to engender torturing derangements and imperfections of the reproductive apparatus that imbitter a lifetime. Such, we know, is not the object of a liberal female education. Such is not the consummation which the progress of the age demands. Fortunately, it is only necessary to point out and prove the existence of such erroneous methods and evil results to have them avoided. That they can be avoided, and that woman can have a liberal education that shall develop all her powers, without mutilation or disease, up to the loftiest ideal of womanhood, is alike the teaching of physiology and the hope of the race.

In concluding this part of our subject, it is well to remember the statement made at the beginning of our discussion, to the following effect, viz., that it is not asserted here, that improper methods of study and a disregard of the reproductive apparatus and its functions, during the educational life of girls, are the sole causes of female diseases; neither is it asserted that all the female graduates of our schools and colleges are pathological specimens. But it is asserted that the number of these graduates who have been permanently disabled to a greater or less degree, or fatally injured, by these causes, is such as to excite the gravest alarm, and to demand the serious attention of the community.

The preceding physiological and pathological data naturally open the way to a consideration of the co-education of the sexes.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] It appears, from the researches of Mr. Whitehead on this point, that an examination of four thousand cases gave fifteen years six and three-quarter months as the average age in England for the appearance of the catamenia.—WHITEHEAD, on Abortion, &c.

[14] The arrest of development of the uterus, in connection with amenorrhoea, is sometimes very marked. In the New-York Medical Journal for June, 1873, three such cases are recorded, that came under the eye of those excellent observers, Dr. E.R. Peaslee and Dr. T.G. Thomas. In one of these cases, the uterine cavity measured one and a half inches; in another, one and seven-eighths inches; and, in a third, one and a quarter inches. Recollecting that the normal measurement is from two and a half to three inches, it appears that the arrest of development in these cases occurred when the uterus was half or less than half grown. Liberal education should avoid such errors.

[15] Physical Degeneracy. By Nathan Allen, M.D., Journal of Psychological Medicine. October, 1870.

[16] According to the biblical account, woman was formed by subtracting a rib from man. If, in the evolution of the future, a third division of the human race is to be formed by subtracting sex from woman,—a retrograde development,—I venture to propose the term agene (a without, genos sex) as an appropriate designation for the new development. Count Gasparin prophesies it thus: "Quelque chose de monstreux, cet etre repugnant, qui deja parait a notre horizon," a free translation of Virgil's earlier description:—

"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademtum." 3d, 658 line.

[17] Plain Talk about Insanity. By T.W. Fisher, M.D. Boston. Pp. 23, 24.

[18] Neuralgia, and the Diseases that resemble it. By Francis E. Anstie, M.D. Pp. 122. English ed.

[19] Op. cit., p. 160.

[20] Wear and Tear. By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.

[21] Body and Mind. By Henry Maudsley, M.D. Lond. p. 31

[22] Op. cit., p. 87.

[23] Op. cit., p. 32.



PART IV.

CO-EDUCATION.

"Pistoc. Where, then, should I take my place?

1st Bacch. Near myself, that, with a she wit, a he wit may be reclining at our repast."—BACCHIDES OF PLAUTUS.

"The woman's-rights movement, with its conventions, its speech-makings, its crudities, and eccentricities, is nevertheless a part of a healthful and necessary movement of the human race towards progress."—HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

Guided by the laws of development which we have found physiology to teach, and warned by the punishments, in the shape of weakness and disease, which we have shown their infringement to bring about, and of which our present methods of female education furnish innumerable examples, it is not difficult to discern certain physiological principles that limit and control the education, and, consequently, the co-education of our youth. These principles we have learned to be, three for the two sexes in common, and one for the peculiarities of the female sex. The three common to both, the three to which both are subjected, and for which wise methods of education will provide in the case of both, are, 1st, a sufficient supply of appropriate nutriment. This of course includes good air and good water and sufficient warmth, as much as bread and butter; oxygen and sunlight, as much as meat. 2d, Mental and physical work and regimen so apportioned, that repair shall exceed waste, and a margin be left for development. This includes out-of-door exercise and appropriate ways of dressing, as much as the hours of study, and the number and sort of studies. 3d, Sufficient sleep. This includes the best time for sleeping, as well as the proper number of hours for sleep. It excludes the "murdering of sleep," by late hours of study and the crowding of studies, as much as by wine or tea or dissipation. All these guide and limit the education of the two sexes very much alike. The principle or condition peculiar to the female sex is the management of the catamenial function, which, from the age of fourteen to nineteen, includes the building of the reproductive apparatus. This imposes upon women, and especially upon the young woman, a great care, a corresponding duty, and compensating privileges. There is only a feeble counterpart to it in the male organization; and, in his moral constitution, there cannot be found the fine instincts and quick perceptions that have their root in this mechanism, and correlate its functions. This lends to her development and to all her work a rhythmical or periodical order, which must be recognized and obeyed. "In this recognition of the chronometry of organic process, there is unquestionably great promise for the future; for it is plain that the observance of time in the motions of organic molecules is as certain and universal, if not as exact, as that of the heavenly bodies."[24] Periodicity characterizes the female organization, and developes feminine force. Persistence characterizes the male organization, and develops masculine force. Education will draw the best out of each by adjusting its methods to the periodicity of one and the persistence of the other.

Before going farther, it is essential to acquire a definite notion of what is meant, or, at least, of what we mean in this discussion, by the term co-education. Following its etymology, con-educare, it signifies to draw out together, or to unite in education; and this union refers to the time and place, rather than to the methods and kinds of education. In this sense any school or college may utilize its buildings, apparatus, and instructors to give appropriate education to the two sexes as well as to different ages of the same sex. This is juxtaposition in education. When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teaches one class of young men chemistry, and another class engineering, in the same building and at the same time, it co-educates those two classes. In this sense it is possible that many advantages might be obtained from the co-education of the sexes, that would more than counterbalance the evils of crowding large numbers of them together. This sort of co-education does not exclude appropriate classification, nor compel the two sexes to follow the same methods or the same regimen.

Another signification of co-education, and, as we apprehend, the one in which it is commonly used, includes time, place, government, methods, studies, and regimen. This is identical co-education. This means, that boys and girls shall be taught the same things, at the same time, in the same place, by the same faculty, with the same methods, and under the same regimen. This admits age and proficiency, but not sex, as a factor in classification. It is against the co-education of the sexes, in this sense of identical co-education, that physiology protests; and it is this identity of education, the prominent characteristic of our American school-system, that has produced the evils described in the clinical part of this essay, and that threatens to push the degeneration of the female sex still farther on. In these pages, co-education of the sexes is used in its common acceptation of identical co-education.

Let us look for a moment at what identical co-education is. The law has, or had, a maxim, that a man and his wife are one, and that the one is the man. Modern American education has a maxim, that boys' schools and girls' schools are one, and that the one is the boys' school. Schools have been arranged, accordingly, to meet the requirements of the masculine organization. Studies have been selected that experience has proved to be appropriate to a boy's intellectual development, and a regimen adopted, while pursuing them, appropriate to his physical development. His school and college life, his methods of study, recitations, exercises, and recreations, are ordered upon the supposition, that, barring disease or infirmity, punctual attendance upon the hours of recitation, and upon all other duties in their season and order, may be required of him continuously, in spite of ennui, inclement weather, or fatigue; that there is no week in the month, or day in the week, or hour in the day, when it is a physical necessity to relieve him from standing or from studying,—from physical effort or mental labor; that the chapel-bell may safely call him to morning prayer from New Year to Christmas, with the assurance, that, if the going does not add to his stock of piety, it will not diminish his stock of health; that he may be sent to the gymnasium and the examination-hall, to the theatres of physical and intellectual display at any time,—in short, that he develops health and strength, blood and nerve, intellect and life, by a regular, uninterrupted, and sustained course of work. And all this is justified both by experience and physiology.

Obedient to the American educational maxim, that boys' schools and girls' schools are one, and that the one is the boys' school, the female schools have copied the methods which have grown out of the requirements of the male organization. Schools for girls have been modelled after schools for boys. Were it not for differences of dress and figure, it would be impossible, even for an expert, after visiting a high school for boys and one for girls, to tell which was arranged for the male and which for the female organization. Our girls' schools, whether public or private, have imposed upon their pupils a boy's regimen; and it is now proposed, in some quarters, to carry this principle still farther, by burdening girls, after they leave school, with a quadrennium of masculine college regimen. And so girls are to learn the alphabet in college, as they have learned it in the grammar-school, just as boys do. This is grounded upon the supposition that sustained regularity of action and attendance may be as safely required of a girl as of a boy; that there is no physical necessity for periodically relieving her from walking, standing, reciting, or studying; that the chapel-bell may call her, as well as him, to a daily morning walk, with a standing prayer at the end of it, regardless of the danger that such exercises, by deranging the tides of her organization, may add to her piety at the expense of her blood; that she may work her brain over mathematics, botany, chemistry, German, and the like, with equal and sustained force on every day of the month, and so safely divert blood from the reproductive apparatus to the head; in short, that she, like her brother, develops health and strength, blood and nerve, intellect and life, by a regular, uninterrupted, and sustained course of work. All this is not justified, either by experience or physiology. The gardener may plant, if he choose, the lily and the rose, the oak and the vine, within the same enclosure; let the same soil nourish them, the same air visit them, and the same sunshine warm and cheer them; still, he trains each of them with a separate art, warding from each its peculiar dangers, developing within each its peculiar powers, and teaching each to put forth to the utmost its divine and peculiar gifts of strength and beauty. Girls lose health, strength, blood, and nerve, by a regimen that ignores the periodical tides and reproductive apparatus of their organization. The mothers and instructors, the homes and schools, of our country's daughters, would profit by occasionally reading the old Levitical law. The race has not yet quite outgrown the physiology of Moses.

Co-education, then, signifies in common acceptation identical co-education. This identity of training is what many at the present day seem to be praying for and working for. Appropriate education of the two sexes, carried as far as possible, is a consummation most devoutly to be desired; identical education of the two sexes is a crime before God and humanity, that physiology protests against, and that experience weeps over. Because the education of boys has met with tolerable success, hitherto,—but only tolerable it must be confessed,—in developing them into men, there are those who would make girls grow into women by the same process. Because a gardener has nursed an acorn till it grew into an oak, they would have him cradle a grape in the same soil and way, and make it a vine. Identical education, or identical co-education, of the sexes defrauds one sex or the other, or perhaps both. It defies the Roman maxim, which physiology has fully justified, mens sana in corpore sano. The sustained regimen, regular recitation, erect posture, daily walk, persistent exercise, and unintermitted labor that toughens a boy, and makes a man of him, can only be partially applied to a girl. The regimen of intermittance, periodicity of exercise and rest, work three-fourths of each month, and remission, if not abstinence, the other fourth, physiological interchange of the erect and reclining posture, care of the reproductive system that is the cradle of the race, all this, that toughens a girl and makes a woman of her, will emasculate a lad. A combination of the two methods of education, a compromise between them, would probably yield an average result, excluding the best of both. It would give a fair chance neither to a boy nor a girl. Of all compromises, such a physiological one is the worst. It cultivates mediocrity, and cheats the future of its rightful legacy of lofty manhood and womanhood. It emasculates boys, stunts girls; makes semi-eunuchs of one sex, and agenes of the other.

The error which has led to the identical education of the two sexes, and which prophecies their identical co-education in colleges and universities, is not confined to technical education. It permeates society. It is found in the home, the workshop, the factory, and in all the ramifications of social life. The identity of boys and girls, of men and women, is practically asserted out of the school as much as in it, and it is theoretically proclaimed from the pulpit and the rostrum. Woman seems to be looking up to man and his development, 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 peculiar to herself. In consequence of this wide-spread error, largely the result of physiological ignorance, girls are almost universally trained in masculine methods of living and working as well as of studying. The notion is practically found everywhere, that boys and girls are one, and that the boys make the one. Girls, young ladies, to use the polite phrase, who are about leaving or have left school for society, dissipation, or self-culture, rarely permit any of Nature's periodical demands to interfere with their morning calls, or evening promenades, or midnight dancing, or sober study. Even the home draws the sacred mantle of modesty so closely over the reproductive function as not only to cover but to smother it. Sisters imitate brothers in persistent work at all times. Female clerks in stores strive to emulate the males by unremitting labor, seeking to develop feminine force by masculine methods. Female operatives of all sorts, in factories and elsewhere, labor in the same way; and, when the day is done, are as likely to dance half the night, regardless of any pressure upon them of a peculiar function, as their fashionable sisters in the polite world. All unite in pushing the hateful thing out of sight and out of mind; and all are punished by similar weakness, degeneration, and disease.

There are two reasons why female operatives of all sorts are likely to suffer less, and actually do suffer less, from such persistent work, than female students; why Jane in the factory can work more steadily with the loom, than Jane in college with the dictionary; why the girl who makes the bed can safely work more steadily the whole year through, than her little mistress of sixteen who goes to school. The first reason is, that the female operative, of whatever sort, has, as a rule, passed through the first critical epoch of woman's life: she has got fairly by it. In her case, as a rule, unfortunately there are too many exceptions to it, the catamenia have been established; the function is in good running order; the reproductive apparatus—the engine within an engine—has been constructed, and she will not be called upon to furnish force for building it again. The female student, on the contrary, has got these tasks before her, and must perform them while getting her education; for the period of female sexual development coincides with the educational period. The same five years of life must be given to both tasks. After the function is normally established, and the apparatus made, woman can labor mentally or physically, or both, with very much greater persistence and intensity, than during the age of development. She still retains the type of periodicity; and her best work, both as to quality and amount, is accomplished when the order of her labor partakes of the rhythmic order of her constitution. Still the fact remains, that she can do more than before; her fibre has acquired toughness; the system is consolidated; its fountains are less easily stirred. It should be mentioned in this connection, what has been previously adverted to, that the toughness and power of after life are largely in proportion to the normality of sexual development. If there is error then, the organization never fully recovers. This is an additional motive for a strict physiological regimen during a girl's student life, and, just so far, an argument against the identical co-education of the sexes. The second reason why female operatives are less likely to suffer, and actually do suffer less, than school-girls, from persistent work straight through the year, is because the former work their brains less. To use the language of Herbert Spencer, "That antagonism between body and brain which we see in those, who, pushing brain-activity to an extreme, enfeeble their bodies,"[25] does not often exist in female operatives, any more than in male. On the contrary, they belong to the class of those who, in the words of the same author, by "pushing bodily activity to an extreme, make their brains inert."[26] Hence they have stronger bodies, a reproductive apparatus more normally constructed, and a catamenial function less readily disturbed by effort, than their student sisters, who are not only younger than they, but are trained to push "brain-activity to an extreme." 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 that may be made upon them.

The identical education of the sexes has borne the fruit which we have pointed out. Their identical co-education will intensify the evils of separate identical education; for it will introduce the element of emulation, and it will introduce this element in its strongest form. It is easy to frame a theoretical emulation, in which results only are compared and tested, that would be healthy and invigorating; but such theoretical competition of the sexes is not at all the sort of steady, untiring, day-after-day competition that identical co-education implies. It is one thing to put up a goal a long way off,—five or six months or three or four years distant,—and tell boys and girls, each in their own way, to strive for it, and quite a different thing to put up the same goal, at the same distance, and oblige each sex to run their race for it side by side on the same road, in daily competition with each other, and with equal expenditure of force at all times. Identical co-education is racing in the latter way. The inevitable results of it have been shown in some of the cases we have narrated. The trial of it on a larger scale would only yield a larger number of similar degenerations, weaknesses, and sacrifices of noble lives. Put a boy and girl together upon the same course of study, with the same lofty ideal before them, and hold up to their eyes the daily incitements of comparative progress, and there will be awakened within them a stimulus unknown before, and that separate study does not excite. The unconscious fires that have their seat deep down in the recesses of the sexual organization will flame up through every tissue, permeate every vessel, burn every nerve, flash from the eye, tingle in the brain, and work the whole machine at highest pressure. There need not be, and generally will not be, any low or sensual desire in all this elemental action. It is only making youth work over the tasks of sober study with the wasting force of intense passion. Of course such strenuous labor will yield brilliant, though temporary, results. The fire is kept alive by the waste of the system, and soon burns up its source. The first sex to suffer in this exhilarating and costly competition must be, as experience shows it is, the one that has the largest amount of force in readiness for immediate call; and this is the female sex. At the age of development, Nature mobilizes the forces of a girl's organization for the purpose of establishing a function that shall endure for a generation, and for constructing an apparatus that shall cradle and nurse a race. These mobilized forces, which, at the technical educational period, the girl possesses and controls largely in excess of the boy, under the passionate stimulus of identical co-education, are turned from their divinely-appointed field of operations, to the region of brain activity. The result is a most brilliant show of cerebral pyrotechnics, and degenerations that we have described.

That undue and disproportionate brain activity exerts a sterilizing influence upon both sexes is alike a doctrine of physiology, and an induction from experience. And both physiology and experience also teach that this influence is more potent upon the female than upon the male. The explanation of the latter fact—of the greater aptitude of the female organization to become thus modified by excessive brain activity—is probably to be found in the larger size, more complicated relations, and more important functions, of the female reproductive apparatus. This delicate and complex mechanism is liable to be aborted or deranged by the withdrawal of force that is needed for its construction and maintenance. It is, perhaps, idle to speculate upon the prospective evil that would accrue to the human race, should such an organic modification, introduced by abnormal education, be pushed to its ultimate limit. But inasmuch as the subject is not only germain to our inquiry, but has attracted the attention of a recent writer, whose bold and philosophic speculations, clothed in forcible language, have startled the best thought of the age, it may be well to quote him briefly on this point. Referring to the fact, that, in our modern civilization, the cultivated classes have smaller families than the uncultivated ones, he says, "If the superior sections and specimens of humanity are to lose, relatively, their procreative power in virtue of, and in proportion to, that superiority, how is culture or progress to be propagated so as to benefit the species as a whole, and how are those gradually amended organizations from which we hope so much to be secured? If, indeed, it were ignorance, stupidity, and destitution, instead of mental and moral development, that were the sterilizing influences, then the improvement of the race would go on swimmingly, and in an ever-accelerating ratio. But since the conditions are exactly reversed, how should not an exactly opposite direction be pursued? How should the race not deteriorate, when those who morally and physically are fitted to perpetuate it are (relatively), by a law of physiology, those least likely to do so?"[27] The answer to Mr. Greg's inquiry is obvious. If the culture of the race moves on into the future in the same rut and by the same methods that limit and direct it now; if the education of the sexes remains identical, instead of being appropriate and special; and especially if the intense and passionate stimulus of the identical co-education of the sexes is added to their identical education,—then the sterilizing influence of such a training, acting with tenfold more force upon the female than upon the male, will go on, and the race will be propagated from its inferior classes.[28] The stream of life that is to flow into the future will be Celtic rather than American: it will come from the collieries, and not from the peerage. Fortunately, the reverse of this picture is equally possible. The race holds its destinies in its own hands. The highest wisdom will secure the survival and propagation of the fittest. Physiology teaches that this result, the attainment of which our hopes prophecy, is to be secured, not by an identical education, or an identical co-education of the sexes, but by a special and appropriate education, that shall produce a just and harmonious development of every part.

Let one remark be made here. It has been asserted that the chief reason why the higher and educated classes have smaller families than the lower and uneducated is, that the former criminally prevent or destroy increase. The pulpit,[29] as well as the medical press, has cried out against this enormity. That a disposition to do this thing exists, and is often carried into effect, is not to be denied, and cannot be too strongly condemned. On the other hand, it should be proclaimed, to the credit and honor of our cultivated women, and as a reproach to the identical education of the sexes, that many of them bear in silence the accusation of self-tampering, who are denied the oft-prayed-for trial, blessing, and responsibility of offspring. As a matter of personal experience, my advice has been much more frequently and earnestly sought by those of our best classes who desired to know how to obtain, than by those who wished to escape, the offices of maternity.

The experiment of the identical co-education of the sexes has been set on foot by some of our Western colleges. It has not yet been tried long enough to show much more than its first fruits, viz., its results while the students are in college; and of these the only obvious ones are increased emulation, and intellectual development and attainments. The defects of the reproductive mechanism, and the friction of its action, are not exhibited there; nor is there time or opportunity in college for the evils which these defects entail to be exhibited. President Magoun of Iowa College tells us, that, in the institution over which he presides, "Forty-two young men and fifty-three young ladies have pursued college courses;" and adds, "Nothing needs to be said as to the control of the two sexes in the college. The young ladies are placed under the supervision of a lady principal and assistant as to deportment, and every thing besides recitations (in which they are under the supervision of the same professors and other teachers with the young men, reciting with them); and one simple rule as to social intercourse governs every thing. The moral and religious influences attending the arrangement have been most happy."[30] From this it is evident that Iowa College is trying the identical co-education of the sexes; and the president reports the happy moral and religious results of the experiment, but leaves us ignorant of its physiological results. It may never have occurred to him, that a class of a hundred young ladies might graduate from Iowa College or Antioch College or Michigan University, whose average health during their college course had appeared to the president and faculty as good as that of their male classmates who had made equal intellectual progress with them, upon whom no scandal had dropped its venom, who might be presented to the public on Commencement Day as specimens of as good health as their uneducated sisters, with roses in their cheeks as natural as those in their hands, the major part of whom might, notwithstanding all this, have physical defects that a physiologist could easily discover, and that would produce, sooner or later, more or less of the sad results we have previously described. A philanthropist and an intelligent observer, who has for a long time taken an active part in promoting the best education of the sexes, and who still holds some sort of official connection with a college occupied with identical co-education, told the writer a few months ago, that he had endeavored to trace the post-college history of the female graduates of the institution he was interested in. His object was to ascertain how their physique behaved under the stress,—the wear and tear of woman's work in life. The conclusion that resulted from his inquiry he formulated in the statement, that "the co-education of the sexes is intellectually a success, physically a failure." Another gentleman, more closely connected with a similar institution of education than the person just referred to, has arrived at a similar conclusion. Only a few female graduates of colleges have consulted the writer professionally. All sought his advice two, three, or more years after graduation; and, in all, the difficulties under which they labored could be distinctly traced to their college order of life and study, that is, to identical co-education. If physicians who are living in the neighborhood of the present residences of these graduates have been consulted by them in the same proportion with him, the inference is inevitable, that the ratio of invalidism among female college graduates is greater than even among the graduates of our common, high, and normal schools. All such observations as these, however, are only of value, at present, as indications of the drift of identical co-education, not as proofs of its physical fruits, or of their influence on mental force. Two or three generations, at least, of the female college graduates of this sort of co-education must come and go before any sufficient idea can be formed of the harvest it will yield. The physiologist dreads to see the costly experiment tried. The urgent reformer, who cares less for human suffering and human life than for the trial of his theories, will regard the experiment with equanimity if not with complacency.

If, then, the identical co-education of the sexes is condemned both by physiology and experience, may it not be that their special and appropriate co-education would yield a better result than their special and appropriate separate education? This is a most important question, and one difficult to resolve. The discussion of it must be referred to those who are engaged in the practical work of instruction, and the decision will rest with experience. Physiology advocates, as we have seen, the special and appropriate education of the sexes, and has only a single word to utter with regard to simple co-education, or juxtaposition in education.

That word is with regard to the common belief in the danger of improprieties and scandal as a part of co-education. There is some danger in this respect; but not a serious or unavoidable one. Doubtless there would be occasional lapses in a double-sexed college; and so there are outside of schoolhouses and seminaries of learning. Even the church and the clergy are not exempt from reproach in such things. There are sects, professing to commingle religion and love, who illustrate the dangers of juxtaposition even in things holy. "No physiologist can well doubt that the holy kiss of love in such cases owes all its warmth to the sexual feeling which consciously or unconsciously inspires it, or that the mystical union of the sexes lies very close to a union that is nowise mystical, when it does not lead to madness."[31] There is less, or certainly no more danger in having the sexes unite at the repasts of knowledge, than, as Plautus bluntly puts it, having he wits and she wits recline at the repasts of fashion. Isolation is more likely to breed pruriency than commingling to provoke indulgence. The virtue of the cloister and the cell scarcely deserves the name. A girl has her honor in her own keeping. If she can be trusted with boys and men at the lecture-room and in church, she can be trusted with them at school and in college. Jean Paul says, "To insure modesty, I would advise the education of the sexes together; for two boys will preserve twelve girls, or two girls twelve boys, innocent amidst winks, jokes, and improprieties, merely by that instinctive sense which is the forerunner of matured modesty. But I will guarantee nothing in a school where girls are alone together, and still less when boys are." A certain amount of juxta-position is an advantage to each sex. More than a certain amount is an evil to both. Instinct and common sense can be safely left to draw the line of demarcation. At the same time it is well to remember that juxtaposition may be carried too far. Temptations enough beset the young, without adding to them. Let learning and purity go hand in hand.

There are two considerations appertaining to this subject, which, although they do not belong to the physiology of the matter, deserve to be mentioned in this connection. One amounts to a practical prohibition, for the present at least, of the experiment of the special and appropriate co-education of the sexes; and the other is an inherent difficulty in the experiment itself. The former can be removed whenever those who heartily believe in the success of the experiment choose to get rid of it; and the latter by patient and intelligent effort.

The present practical prohibition of the experiment is the poverty of our colleges. Identical co-education can be easily tried with the existing organization of collegiate instruction. This has been tried, and is still going on in separate and double-sexed schools of all sorts, and has failed. Special and appropriate co-education requires in many ways, not in all, re-arrangement of the organization of instruction; and this will cost money and a good deal of it. Harvard College, for example, rich as it is supposed to be, whose banner, to use Mr. Higginson's illustration, is the red flag that the bulls of female reform are just now pitching into,—Harvard College could not undertake the task of special and appropriate co-education, in such a way as to give the two sexes a fair chance, which means the best chance, and the only chance it ought to give or will ever give, without an endowment, additional to its present resources, of from one to two millions of dollars; and it probably would require the larger rather than the smaller sum. And this I say advisedly. By which I mean, not with the advice and consent of the president and fellows of the college, but as an opinion founded on nearly twenty years' personal acquaintance, as an instructor in one of the departments of the university, with the organization of instruction in it, and upon the demands which physiology teaches the special and appropriate education of girls would make upon it. To make boys half-girls, and girls half-boys, can never be the legitimate function of any college. But such a result, the natural child of identical co-education, is sure to follow the training of a college that has not the pecuniary means to prevent it. This obstacle is of course a removable one. It is only necessary for those who wish to get it out of the way to put their hands in their pockets, and produce a couple of millions. The offer of such a sum, conditioned upon the liberal education of women, might influence even a body as soulless as the corporation of Harvard College is sometimes represented to be.

The inherent difficulty in the experiment of special and appropriate co-education is the difficulty of adjusting, in the same institution, the methods of instruction to the physiological needs of each sex; to the persistent type of one, and the periodical type of the other; to the demand for a margin in metamorphosis of tissue, beyond what study causes, for general growth in one sex, and to a larger margin in the other sex, that shall permit not only general growth, but also the construction of the reproductive apparatus. This difficulty can only be removed by patient and intelligent effort. The first step in the direction of removing it is to see plainly what errors or dangers lie in the way. These, or some of them, we have endeavored to point out. "Nothing is so conducive to a right appreciation of the truth as a right appreciation of the error by which it is surrounded."[32] When we have acquired a belief of the facts concerning the identical education, the identical co-education, the appropriate education, and the appropriate co-education of the sexes, we shall be in a condition to draw just conclusions from them.

The intimate connection of mind and brain, the correlation of mental power and cerebral metamorphosis, explains and justifies the physiologist's demand, that in the education of girls, as well as of boys, the machinery and methods of instruction shall be carefully adjusted to their organization. If it were possible, they should be adjusted to the organization of each individual. None doubt the importance of age, acquirement, idiosyncrasy, and probable career in life, as factors in classification. Sex goes deeper than any or all of these. To neglect this is to neglect the chief factor of the problem. Rightly interpreted and followed, it will yield the grandest results. Disregarded, it will balk the best methods of teaching and the genius of the best teachers. Sex is not concerned with studies as such. These, for any thing that appears to the contrary physiologically, may be the same for the intellectual development of females as of males; but, as we have seen, it is largely concerned about an appropriate way of pursuing them. Girls will have a fair chance, and women the largest freedom and greatest power, now that legal hinderances are removed, and all bars let down, when they are taught to develop and are willing to respect their own organization. How to bring about this development and insure this respect, in a double-sexed college, is one of the problems of co-education.

It does not come within the scope of this essay to speculate upon the ways—the regimen, methods of instruction, and other details of college life,—by which the inherent difficulties of co-education may be obviated. Here tentative and judicious experiment is better than speculation. It would seem to be the part of wisdom, however, to make the simplest and least costly experiment first; that is, to discard the identical separate education of girls as boys, and to ascertain what their appropriate separate education is, and what it will accomplish. Aided by the light of such an experiment, it would be comparatively easy to solve the more difficult problem of the appropriate co-education of the sexes.

It may be well to mention two or three details, which are so important that no system of appropriate female education, separate or mixed, can neglect them. They have been implied throughout the whole of the present discussion, but not distinctly enunciated. One is, that during the period of rapid development, that is, from fourteen to eighteen,[33] a girl should not study as many hours a day as a boy. "In most of our schools," says a distinguished physiological authority previously quoted, "the hours are too many for both boys and girls. From a quarter of nine or nine, until half-past two, is with us (Philadelphia schools for girls) the common schooltime in private seminaries. The usual recess is twenty minutes or half an hour, and it is not filled by enforced exercise. In certain schools,—would it were the rule,—ten minutes' recess is given after every hour. To these hours, we must add the time spent in study out of school. This, for some reason, nearly always exceeds the time stated by teachers to be necessary; and most girls between the age of thirteen and seventeen thus expend two or three hours. Does any physician believe that it is good for a growing girl to be so occupied seven or eight hours a day? or that it is right for her to use her brains as long a time as the mechanic employs his muscles? But this is only a part of the evil. The multiplicity of studies, the number of teachers,—each eager to get the most he can out of his pupil,—the severer drill of our day, and the greater intensity of application demanded, produce effects on the growing brain, which, in a vast number of cases, can be only disastrous. Even in girls of from fourteen to eighteen, such as crowd the normal school in Philadelphia, this sort of tension and this variety of study occasion an amount of ill-health which is sadly familiar to many physicians."[34]

Experience teaches that a healthy and growing boy may spend six hours of force daily upon his studies, and leave sufficient margin for physical growth. A girl cannot spend more than four, or, in occasional instances, five hours of force daily upon her studies, and leave sufficient margin for the general physical growth that she must make in common with a boy, and also for constructing a reproductive apparatus. If she puts as much force into her brain education as a boy, the brain or the special apparatus will suffer. Appropriate education and appropriate co-education must adjust their methods and regimen to this law.

Another detail is, that, during every fourth week, there should be a remission, and sometimes an intermission, of both study and exercise. Some individuals require, at that time, a complete intermission from mental and physical effort for a single day; others for two or three days; others require only a remission, and can do half work safely for two or three days, and their usual work after that. The diminished labor, which shall give Nature an opportunity to accomplish her special periodical task and growth, is a physiological necessity for all, however robust they may seem to be. The apportionment of study and exercise to individual needs cannot be decided by general rules, nor can the decision of it be safely left to the pupil's caprice or ambition. Each case must be decided upon its own merits. The organization of studies and instruction must be flexible enough to admit of the periodical and temporary absence of each pupil, without loss of rank, or necessity of making up work, from recitation, and exercise of all sorts. The periodical type of woman's way of work must be harmonized with the persistent type of man's way of work in any successful plan of co-education.

The keen eye and rapid hand of gain, of what Jouffroy calls self-interest well understood, is sometimes quicker than the brain and will of philanthropy to discern and inaugurate reform. An illustration of this statement, and a practical recognition of the physiological method of woman's work, lately came under my observation. There is an establishment in Boston, owned and carried on by a man, in which ten or a dozen girls are constantly employed. Each of them is given and required to take a vacation of three days every fourth week. It is scarcely necessary to say that their sanitary condition is exceptionally good, and that the aggregate yearly amount of work which the owner obtains is greater than when persistent attendance and labor was required. I have never heard of any female school, public or private, in which any such plan has been adopted; nor is it likely that any similar plan will be adopted so long as the community entertain the conviction that a boy's education and a girl's education should be the same, and that the same means the boy's. What is known in England as the Ten-hour Act, which Mr. Mundella and Sir John Lubbock have recently carried through Parliament, is a step in a similar direction. It is an act providing for the special protection of women against over-work. It does not recognize, and probably was not intended to recognize, the periodical type of woman's organization. It is founded on the fact, however, which law has been so slow to acknowledge, that the male and female organization are not identical.[35]

This is not the place for the discussion of these details, and therefore we will not dwell upon them. Our object is rather to show good and imperative reason why they should be discussed by others; to show how faulty and pregnant of ill the education of American girls has been and is, and to demonstrate the truth, that the progress and development of the race depend upon the appropriate, and not upon the identical education of the sexes. Little good will be done in this direction, however, by any advice or argument, by whatever facts supported, or by whatever authority presented, unless the women of our country are themselves convinced of the evils that they have been educated into, and out of which they are determined to educate their daughters. They must breed in them the lofty spirit Wallenstein bade his be of:—

"Leave now the puny wish, the girlish feeling, Oh, thrust it far behind thee! Give thou proof Thou'rt the daughter of the Mighty,—his Who where he moves creates the wonderful. Meet and disarm necessity by choice."

SCHILLER: The Piccolomini, act iii. 8. (Coleridge's Translation.)

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Body and Mind. Op. cit., p. 178.

[25] The Study of Sociology, by Herbert Spencer, chap. 13.

[26] The Study of Sociology, by Herbert Spencer, chap. 13.

[27] Enigmas of Life. Op. cit., by W.R. Greg, p. 142.

[28] It is a fact not to be lost sight of, says Dr. J.C. Toner of Washington, that the proportion between the number of American children under fifteen years of age, and the number of American women between the child-bearing ages of fifteen and fifty, is declining steadily. In 1830, there were to every 1,000 marriageable women, 1,952 children under fifteen years of age. Ten years later, there were 1,863, or 89 less children to every thousand women than in 1830. In 1850, this number had declined to 1,720; in 1860, to 1,666; and in 1870, to 1,568. The total decline in the forty years was 384, or about 20 per cent of the whole proportional number in 1830, a generation ago. The United-States census of 1870 shows that there is, in the city of New York, but one child under fifteen years of age, to each thousand nubile women, when there ought to be three; and the same is true of our other large cities.—The Nation, Aug. 28, 1873, p. 145.

[29] Vid. a pamphlet by the Rev. Dr. Todd.

[30] The New Englander, July, 1873. Art., Iowa College.

[31] Body and Mind. Op. cit., p. 85.

[32] Use of the Ophthalmoscope. By T.C. Allbutt. London. P. 5.

[33] Some physiologists consider that the period of growth extends to a later age than this. Dr. Anstie fixes the limit at twenty five. He says, "The central nervous system is more slow in reaching its fullest development; and the brain, especially, is many years later in acquiring its maximum of organic consistency and functional power."—Neuralgia, Op. cit., by F.E. ANSTIE, p. 20.

[34] Wear and Tear. Op. cit., p. 33-4.

[35] It is a curious commentary on the present aspect of the "woman question" to see many who honestly advocate the elevation and enfranchisement of woman, oppose any movement or law that recognizes Nature's fundamental distinction of sex. There are those who insist upon the traditional fallacy that man and woman are identical, and that the identity is confined to the man, with the energy of infatuation. It appears from the Spectator, that Mr. and Mrs. Fawcett strongly object to the Ten-hour Act, on the ground that it discriminates unfairly against women as compared with men. Upon this the Spectator justly remarks, that the true question for an objector to the bill to consider is not one of abstract principle, but this: "Is the restraint proposed so great as really to diminish the average productiveness of woman's labor, or, by increasing its efficacy, to maintain its level, or even improve it in spite of the hours lost? What is the length of labor beyond which an average woman's constitution is overtaxed and deteriorated, and within which, therefore, the law ought to keep them in spite of their relations, and sometimes in spite of themselves."—Vid. Spectator, London, June 14, 1873.



PART V.

THE EUROPEAN WAY.

"And let it appear that he doth not change his country manners for those of foreign parts, but only prick in some flowers of that he hath learned abroad into the customs of his own country."—LORD BACON.

One branch of the stream of travel that flows with steadily-increasing volume across the Atlantic, from the western to the eastern continent, passes from the United States, through Nova Scotia, to England. The traveller who follows this route is struck, almost as soon as he leaves the boundaries of the republic, with the difference between the physique of the inhabitants he encounters and that of those he has left behind him. The difference is most marked between the females of the two sections. The firmer step, fuller chest, and ruddier cheek of the Nova-Scotian girl foretell still greater differences of color, form, and strength that England and the Continent present. These differences impressed one who passed through Nova Scotia not long ago very strongly. Her observations upon them are an excellent illustration of our subject, and they deserve to be read in this connection. Her remarks, moreover, are indirect but valuable testimony to the evils of our sort of identical education of the sexes. "Nova Scotia," she says, "is a country of gracious surprises."

"But most beautiful among her beauties, most wonderful among her wonders, are her children. During two weeks' travel in the Provinces, I have been constantly more and more impressed by their superiority in appearance, size, and health, to the children of the New-England and Middle States. In the outset of our journey, I was struck by it; along all the roadsides they looked up, boys and girls, fair, broad-cheeked, sturdy-legged, such as with us are seen only now and then. I did not, however, realize at first that this was the universal law of the land, and that it pointed to something more than climate as a cause. But the first school that I saw, en masse, gave a startling impetus to the train of observation and influence into which I was unconsciously falling. It was a Sunday school in the little town of Wolfville, which lies between the Gaspereau and Cornwallis Rivers, just beyond the meadows of the Grand Pre, where lived Gabriel Lajeunesse, and Benedict Bellefontaine, and the rest of the 'simple Acadian farmers.' I arrived too early at one of the village churches; and, while I was waiting for a sexton, a door opened, and out poured the Sunday school, whose services had just ended. On they came, dividing in the centre, and falling to the right and left about me, thirty or forty boys and girls, between the ages of seven and fifteen. They all had fair skins, red cheeks, and clear eyes; they were all broad-shouldered, straight, and sturdy; the younger ones were more than sturdy,—they were fat, from the ankles up. But perhaps the most noticeable thing of all was the quiet, sturdy, unharassed expression which their faces wore; a look which is the greatest charm of a child's face, but which we rarely see in children over two or three years old. Boys of eleven or twelve were there, with shoulders broader than the average of our boys at sixteen, and yet with the pure childlike look on their faces. Girls of ten or eleven were there, who looked almost like women,—that is, like ideal women,—simply because they looked so calm and undisturbed.... Out of them all there was but one child who looked sickly. He had evidently met with some accident, and was lame. Afterward, as the congregation assembled, I watched the fathers and mothers of these children. They, too, were broad-shouldered, tall, and straight, especially the women. Even old women were straight, like the negroes one sees at the South walking with burdens on their heads.

"Five days later I saw, in Halifax, the celebration of the anniversary of the settlement of the Province. The children of the city and of some of the neighboring towns marched in 'Bands of Hope,' and processions such as we see in the cities of the States on the Fourth of July. This was just the opportunity I wanted. It was the same here as in the country. I counted, on that day, just eleven sickly-looking children; no more! Such brilliant cheeks, such merry eyes, such evident strength,—it was a scene to kindle the dullest soul! There were scores of little ones there, whose droll, fat legs would have drawn a crowd in Central Park; and they all had that same quiet, composed, well-balanced expression of countenance of which I spoke before, and of which it would be hard to find an instance in all Central Park.

"Climate, undoubtedly, has something to do with this. The air is moist; and the mercury rarely rises above 80 deg., or falls below 10 deg.. Also the comparative quiet of their lives helps to make them so beautiful and strong. But the most significant fact to my mind is, that, until the past year, there have been in Nova Scotia no public schools, comparatively few private ones; and in these there is no severe pressure brought to bear on the pupils.... I must not be understood to argue from the health of the children of Nova Scotia, as contrasted with the lack of health among our children, that it is best to have no public schools; only that it is better to have no public schools than to have such public schools as are now killing off our children.... In Massachusetts, the mortality from diseases of the brain and nervous system is eleven per cent. In Nova Scotia it is only eight per cent."[36]

It would be interesting and instructive to ascertain, if we could, the regimen of female education in Europe. The acknowledged and unmistakable differences between American and European girls and women—the delicate bloom, unnatural weakness, and premature decay of the former, contrasted with the bronzed complexion, developed form, and enduring force of the latter—are not adequately explained by climate. Given sufficient time, difference of climate will produce immense differences of form, color, and force in the same species of animals and men. But a century does not afford a period long enough for the production of great changes. That length of time could not transform the sturdy German fraulein and robust English damsel into the fragile American miss. Everybody recognizes and laments the change that has been and is going on. "The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat, New-England kitchens of olden times,—the girls that could wash, iron, brew, bake, harness a horse and drive him, no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and read innumerable books,—this race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and, in their stead, come the fragile, easy-fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things."[37] No similar change has been wrought, during the past century, upon the mass of females in Europe. There—

"Nature keeps the reverent frame With which her years began."

If we could ascertain the regimen of European female education, so as to compare it fairly with the American plan of the identical education of the sexes, it is not impossible that the comparison might teach us how it is, that conservation of female force makes a part of trans-Atlantic, and deterioration of the same force a part of cis-Atlantic civilization. It is probable such an inquiry would show that the disregard of the female organization, which is a palpable and pervading principle of American education, either does not exist at all in Europe, or exists only in a limited degree.

With the hope of obtaining information upon this point, the writer addressed inquiries to various individuals, who would be likely to have the desired knowledge. Only a few answers to his inquiries have been received up to the present writing; more are promised by and by. The subject is a delicate and difficult one to investigate. The reports of committees and examining boards, of ministers of instruction, and other officials, throw little or no light upon it. The matter belongs so much to the domestic economy of the household and school, that it is not easy to learn much that is definite about it except by personal inspection and inquiry. The little information that has been received, however, is important. It indicates, if it does not demonstrate, an essential difference between the regimen or organization, using these terms in their broadest sense, of female education in America and in Europe.

Dr. H. Hagen, an eminent physician and naturalist of Koenigsburg, Prussia, now connected with the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, writes from Germany, where he has been lately, in reply to these inquiries, as follows:—

NUREMBERG, July 23, 1873.

DEAR SIR,—The information, given by two prominent physicians in Berlin, in answer to the questions in your letter, is mostly of a negative character. I believe them to prove that generally girls here are doing very well as to the catamenial function.

First, most of the girls in North Germany begin this function in the fifteenth year, or even later; of course some few sooner, even in the twelfth year or before; but the rule is after the fifteenth year. Now, nearly all leave the school in the fifteenth year, and then follow some lectures given at home at leisure. The school-girls are of course rarely troubled by the periodical function.

There is an established kind of tradition giving the rule for the regimen during the catamenial period: this regimen goes from mother to daughter, and the advice of physicians is seldom asked for with regard to it. As a rule, the greatest care is taken to avoid any cold or exposure at this time. If the girls are still school-girls, they go to school, study and write as at other times, provided the function is normally performed.

School-girls never ride in Germany, nor are they invited to parties or to dancing-parties. All this comes after the school. And even then care is taken to stay at home when the periodical function is present.

Concerning the health of the German girls, as compared with American girls, the German physicians have not sufficient information to warrant any statement. But the health of the German girls is commonly 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 Germany, 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.

I shall have more and better information some time later.

Yours, H. HAGEN.

A German lady, who was educated in the schools of Dantzic, Prussia, afforded information, which, as far as it went, confirmed the above. Three customs, or habits, which exert a great influence upon the health and development of girls, appear from Dr. Hagen's letter to make a part of the German female educational regimen. The first is, that girls leave school at about the age of fifteen or sixteen, that is, as soon as the epoch of rapid sexual development arrives. It appears, moreover, that during this epoch, or the greater part of it, a German girl's education is carried on at home, by means of lectures or private arrangements. These, of course, are not as inflexible as the rigid rules of a technical school, and admit of easy adjustment to the periodical demands of the female constitution. The second is the traditional motherly supervision and careful regimen of the catamenial week. Evidently the notion that a boy's education and a girl's education should be the same, and that the same means the boy's, has not yet penetrated the German mind. This has not yet evolved the idea of the identical education of the sexes. It appears that in Germany, schools, studies, parties, walks, rides, dances, and the like, are not allowed to displace or derange the demands of Nature. The female organization is respected. The third custom is, that German school-girls are not invited to parties at all. "All this comes after the school," says Dr. Hagen. The brain is not worked by day in the labor of study, and tried by night with the excitement of the ball. 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 gas, furnaces, low necks, spinal trails, the civilized representatives of caudal appendages, and late hours.

Desirous of obtaining, if possible, a more exact notion than even a physician could give of the German, traditional method of managing the catamenial function for the first few years after its appearance, I made inquiries of a German lady, now a mother, whose family name holds an honored place, both in German diplomacy and science, and who has enjoyed corresponding opportunities for an experimental acquaintance with the German regimen of female education. The following is her reply. For obvious reasons, the name of the writer is not given. She has been much in this country as well as in Germany; a fact that explains the knowledge of American customs that her letter exhibits.

MY DEAR DOCTOR,—I have great pleasure in answering your inquiries in regard to the course, which, to my knowledge, German mothers adopt with their daughters at the catamenial period. As soon as a girl attains maturity in this respect, which is seldom before the age of sixteen, she is ordered to observe complete rest; not only rest of the body, but rest of the mind. Many mothers oblige their daughters to remain in bed for three days, if they are at all delicate in health; but even those who are physically very strong are obliged to abstain from study, to remain in their rooms for three days, and keep perfectly quiet. During the whole of each period, they are not allowed to run, walk much, ride, skate, or dance. In fact, entire repose is strictly enforced in every well-regulated household and school. A German girl would consider the idea of going to a party at such times as simply preposterous; and the difference that exists in this respect in America is wholly unintelligible to them.

As a general rule, a married woman in Germany, even after she has had many children, is as strong and healthy, if not more so, than when she was a girl. In America, with a few exceptions, it appears to be the reverse; and, I have no doubt, it is owing to the want of care on the part of girls at this particular time, and to the neglect of their mothers to enforce proper rules in this most important matter.

It has seemed to me, often, that the difference in the education of girls in America and in Germany, as regards their physical training, is, that in America it is marked by a great degree of recklessness; while in Germany, the erring, if it can be called erring, is on the side of anxious, extreme caution. Therefore beautiful American girls fade rapidly; while the German girls, who do not possess the same natural advantages, do possess, as a rule, good, permanent health, which goes hand-in-hand with happiness and enjoyment of life.

Believe me, Very truly yours, —— ——.

JUNE 21, 1873.

This letter confirms the statement of Dr. Hagen, and shows that the educational and social regimen of a German school-girl is widely different from that of her American sister. Perhaps, as is intimated above, the German way, which is probably the European way also, may err on the side of too great confinement and caution; and that a medium between that and the recklessness of the American way would yield a better result than either one of them.

German peasant girls and women work in the field and shop with and like men. None who have seen their stout and brawny arms can doubt the force with which they wield the hoe and axe. I once saw, in the streets of Coblentz, a woman and a donkey yoked to the same cart, while a man, with a whip in his hand, drove the team. The bystanders did not seem to look upon the moving group as if it were an unusual spectacle. The donkey appeared to be the most intelligent and refined of the three. The sight symbolized the physical force and infamous degradation of the lower classes of women in Europe. The urgent problem of modern civilization is how to retain this force, and get rid of the degradation. Physiology declares that the solution of it will only be possible when the education of girls is made appropriate to their organization. A German girl, yoked with a donkey and dragging a cart, is an exhibition of monstrous muscular and aborted brain development. An American girl, yoked with a dictionary, and laboring with the catamenia, is an exhibition of monstrous brain and aborted ovarian development.

The investigations incident to the preparation of this monograph have suggested a number of subjects kindred to the one of which it treats, that ought to be discussed from the physiological standpoint in the interest of sound education. Some, and perhaps the most important, of them are the relation of the male organization, so far as it is different from the female, to the labor of education and of life; the comparative influence of crowding studies, that is of excessive brain activity, upon the cerebral metamorphosis of the two sexes; the influence of study, or brain activity, upon sleep, and through sleep, or the want of it, upon nutrition and development; and, most important of all, the true relation of education to the just and harmonious development of every part, both of the male and female organization, in which the rightful control of the cerebral ganglia over the whole system and all its functions shall be assured in each sex, and thus each be enabled to obtain the largest possible amount of intellectual and spiritual power. The discussion of these subjects at the present time would largely exceed the natural limits of this essay. They can only be suggested now, with the hope that other and abler observers may be induced to examine and discuss them.

In conclusion, 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. Physiology condemns the identical, and pleads for the appropriate education of the sexes, so that boys may become men, and girls women, and both have a fair chance to do and become their best.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Bits of Talk. By H.H. Pp. 71-75.

[37] House and Home Papers. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. P. 205.



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