estimony in its favor, so far as it
has fallen under their observation and experience. But, on the other
hand, the co-education of the sexes may imply that both girls and boys,
by similarity of studies, are to be educated for the same sphere. Boys
study the higher mathematics not merely for mental discipline, but in
order to be engineers, astronomers, surveyors, and the like; so, too,
they study chemistry, in its higher branches, to be chemists and
physicians and miners. If girls wish to do this rough work, let them
know that they seek to do men's work. If they are to do women's work, it
would seem that they should give more attention to music, the modern
languages, and ornamental branches than boys do, since few men pursue
these things as a business.

The question is, Is it wise for boys and girls to pursue the same
studies in the more difficult branches of knowledge? I would withhold no
study from a woman on the ground of assumed intellectual inferiority. I
believe that a woman can grasp any subject as well as a man can, so far
and so long as her physical strength will permit her to make exhaustive
researches. There are some studies which task the physical strength of
men to its utmost tension. If any woman has equal physical power with
men to master certain subjects, let her pursue them; for success, even
with men, depends upon physical endurance as well as brain-power. And
thus the question is one of physical strength and endurance; and women
must settle for themselves whether they can run races with men in
studies in which only the physically strong can hope to succeed.

Then, again, I would educate women with reference to the sphere in which
they must forever move,--a sphere settled by the eternal laws of Nature
and duty, against which it is folly to rebel. Does any one doubt or deny
that the sphere of women _is_ different from the sphere of men? Can it
be questioned that a class of studies pursued by women who are confined
for a considerable period of life to domestic duties,--like the care of
children, and the details of household economy, and attendance on the
sick, and ornamental art labors,--should not be different from those
pursued by men who undertake the learned professions, and the government
of the people, and the accumulation of wealth in the hard drudgeries of
banks and counting-houses and stores and commercial travelling? There is
no way to get round this question except by maintaining that men shoul