n, or that all responsibility may be discharged by confining
them to a sofa and a novel for one week out of every four; to believe
that a certain number of women, as of men, are always unfit for
intellectual exertion, or that all women are inevitably rendered so
unfit during one quarter of their lives at times unknown to outsiders,
and which, therefore, may be at any time; to believe that the increased
delicacy of women in civilized societies depends on a cultivated
predominance of their ganglionic nervous system and emotional functions,
or on the excessive stimulus of the cerebro-spinal system and on
intellectual cultivation.

More useful than such discussion is the consideration of the methods
that might be proposed, instead of that suggested by Dr. Clarke in the
third proposition we have formulated from his book. Dr. Clarke's method
is to provide regular intermittences in the education of girls,
"conceding to Nature her moderate but inexorable demand for rest, during
one week out of four." The method that we believe to be suggested by the
foregoing considerations would be more complex, but, we think, at once
more effectual and less inconvenient. It may be stated in the following
formula: "Secure the predominance of the cerebro-spinal system over the
activity of the ganglionic." Since the activity of the cerebro-spinal
system may be roughly[46] divided into a twofold direction, intellectual
and muscular, this predominance is to be secured by assiduous
cultivation of the intellect as compared with the emotions, and of the
muscles of the limbs as compared with the muscular fibre of the
blood-vessels. In other words, the evil effects of school competition,
and of the emotional excitement natural to adolescence, are to be
combated by a larger, wider, slower, and more complete intellectual
education than at present falls to the lot of either boys or girls. And
the dangers incident to the development of new activity in the
ganglionic nervous system by the functions of the ovaries, the dangers
of irregular circulation, vaso-motor spasm and paralysis, are to be
averted by systematic physical exercise, that shall stimulate the spinal
nerves, quicken the external circulation, and favor the development of
muscles at the moment that their activity threatens to be overpowered.

The effect of systematic training on the spinal nervous system, and on
the bones and muscles dependent upon it, has been often enough
described. Far less