e for the presentation of this knowledge and standpoint to
the young members of society, and for localizing their attention in
special fields of interest. When for any reason a class of society is
excluded from this process, as women have been historically, it must
necessarily remain ignorant. But, while no one would make any question
that women confined as these in New Ireland and China, as shown above,
must have an intelligence as restricted as their mode of life, we are
apt to lose sight altogether of the fact that chivalry and chaperonage
and modern convention are the persistence of the old race habit of
contempt for women, and of their intellectual sequestration. Men
and women still form two distinct classes and are not in free
communication with each other. Not only are women unable and unwilling
to be communicated with directly, unconventionally, and truly on many
subjects, but men are unwilling to talk to them. I do not have in mind
situations involving questions of propriety or delicacy alone, but a
certain habit of restraint, originating doubtless in matters relating
to sex, extends to all intercourse with women, with the result that
they are not really admitted to the intellectual world of men; and
there is not only a reluctance on the part of men to admit them, but
a reluctance--or, rather, a real inability--on their part to enter.
Modesty with reference to personal habits has become so ingrained and
habitual, and to do anything freely is so foreign to woman, that even
free thought is almost of the nature of an immodesty in her.

In connection also with the adventitious position of woman referred
to in another paper,[277] the feminine interests and habits are set so
strongly toward dress and personal display that they are not readily
diverted. Women may and do protest against the triviality of their
lives, but emotional interests are more immediate than intellectual
ones, and human nature does not drift into intellectual pursuit
voluntarily, but is forced into it in connection with the urgency of
practical activities. The women who are obliged to work are of the
poorer classes, and have not that leisure and opportunity preliminary
to any specialized acquirement; while those who have leisure are
supported in that position both by money and by precedent and habit,
and have no immediate stimulation to lift them out of it. They
sometimes entertain ideas of freedom and plan occupational interests,
but they have u