their studies, if it was certain that they
must leave off in four or five years, and do nothing for the rest
of their lives; and no man could possibly feel much interest in
political and social morals, if he knew that he must, all his
life long, pay taxes, but neither speak nor move about public
affairs.

Women, like men, must be educated with a view to action, or their
studies can not be called education, and no judgment can be
formed of the scope of their faculties. The pursuit must be
life's business, or it will be mere pastime or irksome task. This
was always my point of difference with one who carefully
cherished a reverence for woman, the late Dr. Channing.

How much we spoke and wrote of the old controversy, Influence vs.
Office. He would have had any woman study anything that her
faculties led her to, whether physical science or law, government
and political economy; but he would have her stop at the study.
From the moment she entered the hospital as physician and not
nurse; from the moment she took her place in a court of justice,
in the jury box, and not the witness box; from the moment she
brought her mind and her voice into the legislature, instead of
discussing the principles of laws at home; from the moment she
announced and administered justice instead of looking at it from
afar, as a thing with which she had no concern, she would, he
feared, lose her influence as an observing intelligence, standing
by in a state of purity "unspotted from the world."

My conviction always was, that an intelligence never carried out
into action could not be worth much; and that, if all the action
of human life was of a character so tainted as to be unfit for
women, it could be no better for men, and we ought all to sit
down together, to let barbarism overtake us once more.

My own conviction is, that the natural action of the whole human
being occasions not only the most strength, but the highest
elevation; not only the warmest sympathy, but the deepest purity.
The highest and purest beings among women seem now to be those
who, far from being idle, find among their restricted
opportunities some means of strenuous action; and I can not doubt
that, if an active social career were open to all women, with due
means of preparation for it, th