have nothing to do with
it. When you are driving with your carriage along the track of
the horse-railroad, your wheels run very smoothly; but if you are
obliged to turn out, it wrenches the wheels and jars your
carriage; and the deeper the ruts, the more disturbance and
trouble will you have if you are obliged to move out of them. We
all move in the ruts of habit and custom; and it disturbs and
troubles us to be asked to move out of them--to do or think
anything unusual. This _vis inertiae_ is what stands in the way,
first and most of all, of the success of this movement, of the
reception of these ideas, as of every other movement of reform.
And this dead-weight of prejudice, this _vis inertiae_ of old and
traditional thought, is concentrated in this phrase, uttered with
tones of indifference or with tones of self-satisfaction and
pride, "I think, for my part, that woman's sphere is home." This
phrase you hear everywhere--in the parlors, in the streets, in
conventions, and in pulpits, and read in books--"Woman's sphere
is home!" (Applause). "Well, is it not?" some one asks among you,
perhaps. Now, I have no desire to deny that the home is for
woman, as for man, the most noble sphere of life. I am sure that
there is not one who will stand upon this platform, or speak or
write in this cause, who will deny that; not one but will declare
that they count home a sacred and noble sphere for woman, as for
man--a sphere for grand and high influence, for noble
consecration and devoted work; whether it be the simple duties of
housekeeping, which a high and cultivated soul can make beautiful
by the spirit in which they are done--or whether it be the care
of children and the training up of the youthful mind into noble
thought and preparation for noble action, which is a sphere so
high, that none of us, perhaps, know how high it is--or whether
it be as the friend and comforter, encourager and inspirer, to
all things noble in thought and grand in action, of man. But if
home be the sphere of woman--as none of us deny or doubt for a
moment--if it be a sphere for woman high and noble, and to some
altogether sufficient to bound their capacities and bound their
desires, it is also a sphere for man--a sphere which he
altogether too much neglects, not knowing how h