is not by
any means _limited to the appearance of the sexual feelings_, and
their sympathetic ideas, but, when traced to its ultimate reach, will
be found to extend to the highest feelings of mankind, social, moral,
and even religious."[21] He points out the fact that it is very easy
by improper training and forced work, during this susceptible period,
to turn a physiological into a pathological state. "The great mental
revolution which occurs at puberty may go beyond its physiological
limits in some instances, and become pathological." "The time of this
mental revolution is at best a trying period for youth." "The monthly
activity of the ovaries, which marks the advent of puberty in women,
has a notable effect upon the mind and body; wherefore it may become
an important cause of mental and physical derangement."[22] With
regard to the physiological effects of arrested development of the
reproductive apparatus in women, Dr. Maudsley uses the following plain
and emphatic language: "The forms and habits of mutilated men approach
those of women; and women, whose ovaries and uterus remain for some
cause in a state of complete inaction, approach the forms and habits
of men. It is said, too, that, in hermaphrodites, the mental
character, like the physical, participates equally in that of both
sexes. While woman preserves her sex, she will necessarily be feebler
than man, and, having her special bodily and mental characters, will
have, to a certain extent, her own sphere of activity; where she has
become thoroughly masculine in nature, or hermaphrodite in
mind,--when, in fact, she has pretty well divested herself of her
sex,--then she may take his ground, and do his work; but she will have
lost her feminine attractions, and probably also her chief feminine
functions."[23] It has been reserved for our age and country, by its
methods of female education, to demonstrate that it is possible in
some cases to divest a woman of her chief feminine functions; in
others, to produce grave and even fatal disease of the brain and
nervous system; in others, to engender torturing derangements and
imperfections of the reproductive apparatus that imbitter a lifetime.
Such, we know, is not the object of a liberal female education. Such
is not the consummation which the progress of the age demands.
Fortunately, it is only necessary to point out and prove the existence
of such erroneous methods and evil results to have them avoided. That
they can