ill equally exclude unfit women: while if it
is not, there is no additional evil in the fact that the unfit
persons whom it admits may be either women or men. As long therefore
as it is acknowledged that even a few women may be fit for these
duties, the laws which shut the door on those exceptions cannot be
justified by any opinion which can be held respecting the capacities
of women in general. But, though this last consideration is not
essential, it is far from being irrelevant. An unprejudiced view of
it gives additional strength to the arguments against the
disabilities of women, and reinforces them by high considerations of
practical utility.

Let us at first make entire abstraction of all psychological
considerations tending to show, that any of the mental differences
supposed to exist between women and men are but the natural effect of
the differences in their education and circumstances, and indicate no
radical difference, far less radical inferiority, of nature. Let us
consider women only as they already are, or as they are known to have
been; and the capacities which they have already practically shown.
What they have done, that at least, if nothing else, it is proved
that they can do. When we consider how sedulously they are all
trained away from, instead of being trained towards, any of the
occupations or objects reserved for men, it is evident that I am
taking a very humble ground for them, when I rest their case on what
they have actually achieved. For, in this case, negative evidence is
worth little, while any positive evidence is conclusive. It cannot be
inferred to be impossible that a woman should be a Homer, or an
Aristotle, or a Michael Angelo, or a Beethoven, because no woman has
yet actually produced works comparable to theirs in any of those
lines of excellence. This negative fact at most leaves the question
uncertain, and open to psychological discussion. But it is quite
certain that a woman can be a Queen Elizabeth, or a Deborah, or a
Joan of Arc, since this is not inference, but fact. Now it is a
curious consideration, that the only things which the existing law
excludes women from doing, are the things which they have proved that
they are able to do. There is no law to prevent a woman from having
written all the plays of Shakspeare, or composed all the operas of
Mozart. But Queen Elizabeth or Queen Victoria, had they not inherited
the throne, could not have been intrusted with the smallest of