hese come first, and absorb the bulk of
its life, whether the individual be male or female. This _Antiope_
butterfly, that flits at this moment past my window,--the first of the
season,--spends almost all its existence in a form where the distinction
of sex lies dormant: a few days, I might almost say a few hours,
comprise its whole sexual consciousness, and the majority of its race
die before reaching that epoch. The law of sex is written absolutely
through the whole insect world. Yet everywhere it is written as a
secondary and subordinate law. The life which is common to the sexes is
the principal life; the life which each sex leads, "as such," is a minor
and subordinate thing.

The same rule pervades nature. Two riders pass down the street before my
window. One rides a horse, the other a mare. The animals were perhaps
foaled in the same stable, of the same progenitors. They have been reared
alike, fed alike, trained alike, ridden alike; they need the same exercise,
the same grooming; nine tenths of their existence are the same, and only
the other tenth is different. Their whole organization is marked by the
distinction of sex; but, though the marking is ineffaceable, the
distinction is not the first or most important fact.

If this be true of the lower animals, it is far more true of the higher.
The mental and moral laws of the universe touch us first and chiefly as
human beings. We eat our breakfasts as human beings, not as men or women;
and it is the same with nine tenths of our interests and duties in life.
In legislating or philosophizing for woman, we must neither forget that
she has an organization distinct from that of man, nor must we
exaggerate the fact. Not "first the womanly and then the human," but
first the human and then the womanly, is to be the order of her training.

DARWIN, HUXLEY, and BUCKLE

When any woman, old or young, asks the question, Which among all modern
books ought I to read first? the answer is plain. She should read Buckle's
lecture before the Royal Institution upon "The Influence of Woman on the
Progress of Knowledge." It is one of two papers contained in a thin volume
called "Essays by Henry Thomas Buckle." As a means whereby a woman may
become convinced that her sex has a place in the intellectual universe,
this little essay is almost indispensable. Nothing else quite takes its
place.

Darwin and Huxley seem to make woman simply a lesser man, weaker in body
and mind,--an