he big chests, the massive
brains, the vigorous muscles and stout frames, of the best men will
carry the day, whenever it is worth their while to contest the prizes of
life with the best women. And the hardship of it is, that the very
improvement of the women will lessen their chances. Better mothers will
bring forth better sons, and the impetus gained by the one sex will be
transmitted, in the next generation, to the other. The most Darwinian of
theorists will not venture to propound the doctrine, that the physical
disabilities under which women have hitherto laboured, in the struggle
for existence with men, are likely to be removed by even the most
skilfully conducted process of educational selection.

We are, indeed, fully prepared to believe that the bearing of children
may, and ought, to become as free from danger and long disability, to
the civilized woman, as it is to the savage; nor is it improbable that,
as society advances towards its right organization, motherhood will
occupy a less space of woman's life than it has hitherto done. But
still, unless the human species is to come to an end altogether--a
consummation which can hardly be desired by even the most ardent
advocate of "women's rights"--somebody must be good enough to take the
trouble and responsibility of annually adding to the world exactly as
many people as die out of it. In consequence of some domestic
difficulties, Sydney Smith is said to have suggested that it would have
been good for the human race had the model offered by the hive been
followed, and had all the working part of the female community been
neuters. Failing any thorough-going reform of this kind, we see nothing
for it but the old division of humanity into men potentially, or
actually, fathers, and women potentially, if not actually, mothers. And
we fear that so long as this potential motherhood is her lot, woman will
be found to be fearfully weighted in the race of life.

The duty of man is to see that not a grain is piled upon that load
beyond what Nature imposes; that injustice is not added to inequality.

III.

A LIBERAL EDUCATION: AND WHERE TO FIND IT.

The business which the South London Working Men's College has undertaken
is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that
college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie
ready to a man's hand just at present.

And, at length, this fact is becoming generally recognised. Y