person call it the highest form of intellectual development to have a
clear conception of the precession of the equinoxes, or to manufacture
metaphysical conundrums, whilst remaining utterly incapable of applying
common sense to human affairs that demand at least an equal amount of
attention?

It is clear that this type of mental training does not teach people to
think at all, but has the contrary effect of restricting the
intelligence to an altitude very far beyond the ordinary requirements of
our social existence. Man may have a very broad horizon; but the broader
it becomes, the further he seems to be transported from the capacity to
exercise the normal functions of the brain. To designate this the proper
development of the mind would be manifestly absurd; yet many people seem
contented to regard it as such, and accept the anomaly without giving
its obvious contradictoriness a second thought.

Of course it is not argued that woman's mental training is, or has been,
all that can be desired. It is, in her case, more the neglect to apply
severe educational methods, than anything else, that has permitted the
negative development of her thinking faculties; and this tends to
demonstrate all the more conclusively that the real use of the brain is
practically destroyed by conventional modes of instruction.

Women, left to their own devices for countless generations, have
acquired a faculty that all the education systems in the world have
failed to pound into the mind of man. It is their superiority in this
respect that has given them far-reaching empire over the opposite sex.
That this should be generally appreciated is of the utmost importance,
because the modern metamorphosis of woman, if rightly understood, is the
best conceivable object-lesson in the evils brought about by the
educational methods of the present day. It is not that the
academically-trained woman threatens to push man out of his place in the
world, but that she is herself in danger of losing the very weapon that
has given her so large a share of power and influence.

A great deal of nonsense has been talked and written about the
spectacled Girton girl competing with men in knowledge, at the expense
of forfeiting their admiration and thereby losing her vantage-ground.
Spectacles do not enter into the matter at all. As has already been
pointed out, physical attraction has nothing, or very little, to do with
feminine wire-pulling.

Women derive their re