any decision prior to
experiment. We see plainly enough the waste of time and thought
among the men who once talked of Nature abhorring a vacuum, or
disputed at great length as to whether angels could go from end
to end without passing through the middle; and the day will come
when it will appear to be no less absurd to have argued, as men
and women are arguing now, about what woman ought to do, before
it was ascertained what woman can do.

Let us once see a hundred women educated up to the highest point
that education at present reaches; let them be supplied with such
knowledge as their faculties are found to crave, and let them be
free to use, apply, and increase their knowledge as their
faculties shall instigate, and it will presently appear what is
the sphere of each of the hundred.

One may be discovering comets, like Miss Herschell; one may be
laying open the mathematical structure of the universe, like Mrs.
Somerville; another may be analyzing the chemical relations of
Nature in the laboratory; another may be penetrating the
mysteries of physiology; others may be applying science in the
healing of diseases; others maybe investigating the laws of
social relations, learning the great natural laws under which
society, like everything else, proceeds; others, again, may be
actively carrying out the social arrangements which have been
formed under these laws; and others may be chiefly occupied in
family business, in the duties of the wife and mother, and the
ruler of the household.

If, among the hundred women, a great diversity of powers should
appear (which I have no doubt would be the case), there will
always be plenty of scope and material for the greatest amount
and variety of power that can be brought out. If not--if it
should appear that women fall below men in all but the domestic
functions--then it will be well that the experiment has been
tried; and the trial better go on forever, that woman's sphere
may forever determine itself to the satisfaction of everybody. It
is clear that education, to be what I demand on behalf of women,
must be intended to issue in active life.

A man's medical education would be worth little, if it was not a
preparation for practice. The astronomer and the chemist would
put little force into