n of the human body in relation to its functions
of sex can, in the present state of our knowledge, show us what
intellectual capacities tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing
in the present or past condition of male and female give us more
than the very faintest possible indication of the relation of their
intellectual aptitudes and their sexual functions. And even were it
proved by centuries of experiment that with the possession of the
uterine function of sex tends to go exceptional intellectual capacity
in the direction of mathematics rather than natural history, or an
inclination for statecraft rather than for mechanical invention; were it
proved that, generally speaking and as a whole, out of twenty thousand
women devoting themselves to law and twenty thousand to medicine, they
tended to achieve relatively more in the field of law than of
medicine, there would yet be no possible healthy or rational ground
for restricting the activities of the individual female to that line
in which the average female appeared rather more frequently to excel.
(Minds not keenly analytical are always apt to mistake mere correlation
of appearance with causative sequence. We have heard it gravely asserted
that between potatoes, pigs, mud cabins and Irishmen there was an
organic connection: but we who have lived in Colonies, know that within
two generations the pure-bred descendant of the mud cabiner becomes
often the successful politician, wealthy financier, or great judge; and
shows no more predilection for potatoes, pigs, and mud cabins than men
of any other race.)

That even one individual in a society should be debarred from
undertaking that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes
an unnecessary deficit in the general social assets. That one male
Froebel should be prohibited or hampered in his labour as an educator of
infancy, on the ground that infantile instruction was the field of
the female; that one female with gifts in the direction of state
administration, should be compelled to instruct an infants' school,
perhaps without the slightest gift for so doing, is a running to waste
of social life-blood.

Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical,
is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be
determined. And our demand today is that natural conditions, inexorably,
but beneficently, may determine the labours of each individual, and not
artificial restrictio