chiefest interest concern her. And nowhere are those problems more
zealously studied than in America, which has thrown aside the trammels
of tradition, and is training its free muscles with intent to grapple
the untried possibilities of social life. Who can guide us in these
experiments? What master, speaking as one having authority, can advise
us? There is such a guide, such a master. The laws of woman's physical
life shape her destiny and reveal her future. Within these laws all
things are possible; beyond them, nothing is of avail.

Especially should woman herself understand her own nature. How many
women are there, with health, beauty, merriment, ay, morality too, all
gone, lost for ever, through ignorance of themselves! What spurious
delicacy is this which would hide from woman that which beyond all else
it behooves her to know? We repudiate it; and in plain, but decorous
language,--truth is always decorous,--we purpose to divulge those
secrets hidden hitherto under the technical jargon of science.

THE DISTINCTION OF THE SEXES.

The distinction of the sexes belongs neither to the highest nor to the
lowest forms of existence. Animals and vegetables of the humblest
character have no sex. So it is with spirits. Revelation implies that
beyond this life sexual characteristics cease. On one occasion the
Sadducees put this question to Christ: There was a woman who lawfully
had seven husbands, one after the other; now, at the resurrection, which
of these shall be her husband? or shall they all have her to wife? He
replied that hereafter there shall be neither marrying nor giving in
marriage, but that all shall be 'as the angels which are in heaven.'
Sexuality implies reproduction, and that is something we do not
associate with spiritual life.

It further implies imperfection, which is equally far from our hopes of
happiness beyond the grave. The polyp, which reproduces by a division of
itself, is in one sense more complete than we are. The man is in some
respects inferior to the woman; the woman in others is subordinate to
man. A happy marriage, a perfect union, they twain one flesh, is the
type of the independent, completed being. Without the other, either is
defective. 'Marriage,' said Napoleon, 'is strictly indispensable to
happiness.'

There is, in fact, a less difference between the sexes than is generally
believed. They are but slight variations from one original plan.
Anatomists maintain, with plausible argu