f the race, lying on its
sofa, or the Italian greyhound, shivering in its silken coat? What
if woman, in spite of her most earnest aspirations and determined
struggles, be destined to failure in the new world that is rising
because of inherent mental incapacity?

There are many replies which may be made to such a suggestion. It is
often said with truth, that the ordinary occupations of woman in the
past and present, and in all classes of society in which she is not
parasitic, do demand, and have always demanded, a very high versatility
and mental activity, as well as physical: that the mediaeval baron's
wife who guided her large household probably had to expend far more pure
intellect in doing so than the baron in his hunting and fighting; that
the wife of the city accountant probably expends today more reason,
imagination, forethought, and memory on the management of her small
household, than he in his far simpler, monotonous arithmetical toil;
that, as there is no cause for supposing that the tailor or shoemaker
needs less intellect in his calling than the soldier or prize-fighter,
so there is nothing to suggest that, in the past, woman has not expended
as much pure intellect in the mass of her callings as the man in his;
while in those highly specialised intellectual occupations, in which
long and uninterrupted training tending to one point is necessary,
such as the liberal professions and arts, that, although woman has
practically been excluded from the requisite training, and the freedom
to place herself in the positions in which they can be pursued, that
yet, by force of innate genius and gifts in such directions, she has
continually broken through the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and
again and again taken her place beside man in those fields of labour;
showing thereby not merely aptitude but passionate and determined
inclination in those directions. With equal truth, it is often remarked
that, when as an independent hereditary sovereign, woman has been placed
in the only position in which she has ever been able freely and fully
to express her own individuality, and though selected at random by fate
from the mass of women, by the mere accident of birth or marriage, she
has shown in a large percentage of cases that the female has the power
to command, organise, and succeed in one of the most exacting and
complex of human employments, the government of nations; that from the
days of Amalasontha to Isabella of Sp