is unfitted for a woman. That question may now be regarded as
settled. There is therefore no longer any need for the feverish anxiety of
the early leaders of feminine education to prove that girls can be
educated exactly as if they were boys, and yield at least as good
educational results. At the present time, indeed, that anxiety is not only
unnecessary but mischievous. It is now more necessary to show that women
have special needs just as men have special needs, and that it is as bad
for women, and therefore, for the world, to force them to accept the
special laws and limitations of men as it would be bad for men, and
therefore, for the world, to force men to accept the special laws and
limitations of women. Each sex must seek to reach the goal by following
the laws of its own nature, even although it remains desirable that, both
in the school and in the world, they should work so far as possible side
by side. The great fact to be remembered always is that, not only are
women, in physical size and physical texture, slighter and finer than men,
but that to an extent altogether unknown among men, their centre of
gravity is apt to be deflected by the series of rhythmic sexual curves on
which they are always living. They are thus more delicately poised and any
kind of stress or strain--cerebral, nervous, or muscular--is more likely
to produce serious disturbance and requires an accurate adjustment to
their special needs.

The fact that it is stress and strain in general, and not
necessarily educational studies, that are injurious to adolescent
women, is sufficiently proved, if proof is necessary, by the fact
that sexual arrest, and physical or nervous breakdown, occur with
extreme frequency in girls who work in shops or mills, even in
girls who have never been to school at all. Even excesses in
athletics--which now not infrequently occur as a reaction against
woman's indifference to physical exercise--are bad. Cycling is
beneficial for women who can ride without pain or discomfort,
and, according to Watkins, it is even beneficial in many diseased
and disordered pelvic conditions, but excessive cycling is evil
in its results on women, more especially by inducing rigidity of
the perineum to an extent which may even prevent childbirth and
necessitate operation. I may add that the same objection applies
to much horse-riding. In the same way everything which causes