, all men need mothers of strong
frames.

Moreover, there is no harm in admitting that all the rules of our structure
are imperative; that soul and body, whether of man or woman, are made in
harmony, so that each part of our nature must accept the limitations of the
other. A man's soul may yearn to the stars; but so long as the body cannot
jump so high, he must accept the body's veto. It is the same with any veto
interposed in advance by the physical structure of woman. Nobody objects to
this general principle. It is only when clerical gentlemen or physiological
gentlemen undertake to go a step farther, and put in that veto on their own
responsibility, that it is necessary to say, "Hands off, gentlemen!
Precisely because women are women, they, not you, are to settle
that question."

One or two points are clear. Every specialist is liable to overrate his own
specialty; and the man who thinks of woman only as a wife and mother is apt
to forget, that, before she was either of these, she was a human being.
"Women, as such," says an able writer, "are constituted for purposes of
maternity and the continuation of mankind." Undoubtedly, and so were men,
as such, constituted for paternity. But very much depends on what relative
importance we assign to the phrase, "as such." Even an essay so careful, so
moderate, and so free from coarseness, as that here quoted, suggests, after
all, a slight one-sidedness,--perhaps a natural reaction from the
one-sidedness of those injudicious reformers who allow themselves to speak
slightingly of "the merely animal function of child-bearing." Higher than
either--wiser than both put together--is that noble statement with which
Jean Paul begins his fine essay on the education of girls in "Levana."
"Before being a wife or mother, one is a human being; and neither motherly
nor wifely destination can overbalance or replace the human, but must
become its means, not end. As above the poet, the painter, or the hero, so
above the mother, does the human being rise preeminent."

Here is sure anchorage. We can hold to this. And, fortunately, all the
analogies of nature sustain this position. Throughout nature the laws of
sex rule everywhere; but they rule a kingdom of their own, always
subordinate to the greater kingdom of the vital functions. Every
creature, male or female, finds in its sexual relations only a
subordinate part of its existence. The need of food, the need of
exercise, the joy of living, t