and sound judgments of woman's mind.

This is not all fustian for the flattery of women; it is the deliberate
conviction of our best and wisest minds. And yet a great majority of
these same minds can not get rid of the idea that woman's intellect is
inferior.

Though the mass of women of all countries have been intellectually
undeveloped, we have instances enough to show that the woman-mind is as
powerful, close-sighted, and active as man's. Women have ruled the
mightiest nations, mastered the abstruse sciences, led vigorous armies
to victory, written powerful books, made vigorous and brilliant
achievements in eloquence, commanded vessels, conducted complicated
commercial relations, edited influential journals and papers, sat in
chairs of learning and done every thing necessary to show that the
female mind is not wanting in power. Yet if the female mind were weaker,
it is not an argument against its education. Mind should be educated,
whether little or much, weak or strong. And woman's natural position is
such, that all the mind she has should be developed and richly
cultivated.

We talk much about female education; we have female schools and
colleges; and one might think, to read of them, that we educated the
female mind. But it is a sad mistake. The greater part of our female
seminaries and colleges are mere shams. They do not develop mind. They
do not train its muscles to hard work; they do not discipline its nerves
to close application and vigorous research; they do not harden its hands
to the toil of thinking, nor strengthen its arms to battle with the
intricacies of science nor the problems of metaphysics. They are mere
gilding shops, whitewashing establishments, paint factories, where girls
are polished to order with the etiquette of boarding-school finish.

We send our girls to these schools to be educated; but educated for
what? Why, nothing in particular; but to be educated because it is
fashionable; to go home and sit in the parlor _educated ladies_; to talk
about novels and poetry with the gentlemen that come in; to go into
ecstasies over some boy's _last_; to set up for a professional husband.
It is to go _over_, not _through_, some of the sciences, but do it
because it is fashionable; recite and write and go through all the forms
of school training, just because it sounds well and will give a lady
social position, not literary standing or scientific character,
intellectual influence, or dignity of thou