given
in those days was not women's unfitness, but the interest of society,
by which was meant the interest of men: just as the _raison d'etat_,
meaning the convenience of the government, and the support of
existing authority, was deemed a sufficient explanation and excuse
for the most flagitious crimes. In the present day, power holds a
smoother language, and whomsoever it oppresses, always pretends to do
so for their own good: accordingly, when anything is forbidden to
women, it is thought necessary to say, and desirable to believe, that
they are incapable of doing it, and that they depart from their real
path of success and happiness when they aspire to it. But to make
this reason plausible (I do not say valid), those by whom it is urged
must be prepared to carry it to a much greater length than any one
ventures to do in the face of present experience. It is not
sufficient to maintain that women on the average are less gifted than
men on the average, with certain of the higher mental faculties, or
that a smaller number of women than of men are fit for occupations
and functions of the highest intellectual character. It is necessary
to maintain that no women at all are fit for them, and that the most
eminent women are inferior in mental faculties to the most mediocre
of the men on whom those functions at present devolve. For if the
performance of the function is decided either by competition, or by
any mode of choice which secures regard to the public interest, there
needs be no apprehension that any important employments will fall
into the hands of women inferior to average men, or to the average of
their male competitors. The only result would be that there would be
fewer women than men in such employments; a result certain to happen
in any ease, if only from the preference always likely to be felt by
the majority of women for the one vocation in which there is nobody
to compete with them. Now, the most determined depreciator of women
will not venture to deny, that when we add the experience of recent
times to that of ages past, women, and not a few merely, but many
women, have proved themselves capable of everything, perhaps without
a single exception, which is done by men, and of doing it
successfully and creditably. The utmost that can be said is, that
there are many things which none of them have succeeded in doing as
well as they have been done by some men--many in which they have not
reached the very highest r