be legitimately compared as expressions of the same phase of intellectual activity—the creative imagination.

In the reconstruction of popular creeds, it has always been men who have formed the advanced guard. Women have lingered longer in the churches and have dropped their superstitions more reluctantly. Men, always in advance, have set up intellectual standards which women have continually endeavored to reach ; and this endeavor of women to appropriate the thinking of men has had more analogy with the overlaying of one geologic stratum by another than with the natural organic growth of plant-life. Women have picked up ideas as they have picked up specific facts, have handled them like toys or flourished them like fans, have made society capital out of them, and have used them as they have used dress and paints to win the attention and approval of men; so little conception has the ordinary well-read woman had of the sacred value of ideas as helps in the development of human nature.

Although the claim of women to intellectual equality with men is childish, and their excited denials of masculine preeminence still more so, there is a claim which may be fairly made for them, the granting of which would lessen the inequality. They have a right to the most favorable conditions for intellectual development; but, as no advantages can atone for a defective natural endowment, so women must mainly climb intellectual steeps by means of scalingladders which men have put in place. It is true that individual men may be met every day who would show inferiority to individual women in power of independent thought; but, if the comparisons be made from those reared in the same social and educational ranks, our statement will hold. The great distinction between boy and girl in grammar and high schools is that, while the girl is dreaming, the boy is thinking.

There is no discouragement in facing and accepting scientific truths. There is no humiliation in it and it is a finer and more honorable thing to see and admit one's true position in the great drama of human evolution than to contend by defiant assertion that we possess something which in the nature of things can never be ours. Women will have given proof of candor and will have made a step toward that intellectual power which they long to attain, when they can see and acknowledge that a decree of Nature has made them permanently inferior to men in intellect. If Nature had given them brains as large and as finely constituted as those of men, they might hope for the same results by exposing themselves

to the same developing influences; but, while the physiological fact remains, the psychological one must keep it company. There is nothing disheartening in a great truth evolved from an immense accumulation of facts. When we have put our feet upon an eternal truth, the desire of growth and the power of growth are born in us like strong twins of one blood. Shall we neglect music because we can not compose like Beethoven, or sing like Parepa? When we have repented and confessed our sins, we are ready for amend

ment.

It is not to be doubted that the possession and exercise of political power would do something toward increasing the disposition of women to reason and think independently. If the mind be brought into continual contact with large facts and extensive interests, it makes continual effort to take in such facts and interests. We can not find any natural law which should keep women from exercising the suffrage power. All the declamation and argument which has been spent upon it has been less needed to convince people of its rightfulness than to move inert bodies of legislators to act upon the conviction. "When women want the right, they will get it," has been the common remark from the lips of men. Now, if women do not want this power, as the greater number do not, it must be either because they fail to see that it would help them in their growth, or because, already understanding political affairs, they prefer to take no active share in them. As a matter of fact, no information is more easily acquired in our own country and in England than political information. Every newspaper is a text-book and every man a teacher. The facts of national life are just as well known to women as to men. Their acute power of understanding and judging individual character would help them in deciding upon the honesty of candidates; and doubtless the chief result of woman's participation in politics will be her insistence upon certain fixed moral standards. Into politics as into society she will carry her inclination to deal with the individual instead of with the community; and she will always better understand and better guide the individual than the community. Her mind chooses detail; and, while it can employ itself upon the individual, it is content to leave the genus to others. Women are much happier in the study of character than in the study of political economy. It has become comparatively safe for American women to enter into political life because the most difficult work has already been done by men, and because there are still men enough ready to assume all the hardest positions. If men were

now to retreat from the political arena and yield it up to women, even for one year, we should find them wholly unfit for those positions in which the largest demands are made upon them; and this, although our political machinery now runs so smoothly that secondrate men can successfully oversee it. The participation of women in politics would probably be of no benefit to the state; it lacks no element which they could contribute. The official and administrative work can be better done by men. If women were to enter the civil service, as they would certainly wish to do, they could expect only the least honorable positions; for in this market, as in every other where competition exists, it is the excellence of the work which determines precedence.

The ethical point which remains to be considered, then, is whether women are in such need of the developing influence of the suffrage as to justify them in taking a share in an institution which has no need of their coöperation, and which in every department would be better administered without them. If they can, in some other way, win the development which the suffrage is expected to confer as a matter of right they should keep free from interference in state

matters.

It is certainly a small demand upon the patriotism of women to ask them to refrain from a course which would imperil the wise conduct of public affairs. No one can deny them the right of voting. But they are not obliged to eat the cake because it is set before them. If they see that, once having obtained the power to choose, it is the highest duty to put it aside, they should be strong enough to act upon that conviction. The danger in exercising the suffrage is, that it opens the way to contention for office, and that women would not be likely to refrain from entering so tempting a field. It is to be hoped that, once having removed the barriers and legal disabilities, they will be content to turn to other matters after some harmless experimenting has convinced them that they can gain all the intellectual advantages of the suffrage without committing themselves to experimental politics. As there are only so many heartthrobs per minute, only so much blood sent to the brain per diem, only so much thinking possible, therefore all the thought expended by women upon political matters must be so much subtracted from the sum of other possible experience. What is given to the state can not be given elsewhere, and more politics means less literature, less music, and less acquaintance with the physical sciences. In all these fields women have shown good capacity, and it is a fair infer

ence that persistent devotion to these will show still finer results in the future. Women will contribute more to the civilization and elevation of the nation by devotion to literature, æsthetics, and the natural sciences, than by expending their strength in trying to solve problems of state; while the practical efficiency, physical endurance, and inductive reason of man make such work easy for him. Nor will women miss the possible benefit of politics by declining participation in it; for already, without such participation, their knowledge of the facts of public interest is very extensive, and whatever reasoning power they possess can be brought to bear upon them. As the best men do not vote, so, doubtless, the wisest women will not. When politics is a trade, and offices are scrambled for like clerkships in a commission-house, it is a rather low ambition to add one's self to such a multitude. Of all the agencies set at work for the elevation of woman, political rights will probably be the least helpful.

Along the whole course of human development we can detect an increasing tendency to the subordination of sex to the multiplication of powers and activities common to both sexes. The influence of sex is diminishing as a distinct factor in human life. Work of all kinds is rated at its simple value, irrespective of the producer. Power of all kinds is directly proportioned to the number of things which the human being can do well.

All things which men can do better than women they have the greater right to do, because the better doing constitutes the right. It is a base violation of the economy of Nature to expend more material and more power in the doing of work than is necessary to attain the end. The problem of the wise expenditure of force and the closest adaptation of means to ends is the most important question in our present civilization. There is a constant extension of the territory occupied by men and women in common. The num

ber of avocations pursued by both men and women is perhaps ten times as great to-day as was the number three centuries ago, and this creates a corresponding increase of their points of contact and common interest.

In arguments upon the sex question it is usually claimed that women have a finer moral development than men; that the ethical idea, or conception of duty, controls them more powerfully. Applying the scientific method to this inquiry, and looking at facts, we do find a more frequent solicitude to conform to fixed standards of conduct, determined by society, law, and religion, a more intense anx

iety to secure the approval of others, and a greater reluctance to refuse any individual appeal for aid. Women give sympathy as freely as the clouds give rain; and, when human hearts have been jarred or wounded, nothing is more necessary than sympathy. But a thought which will mend the hurt by preventing its repetition is of more value than a tear which expresses sympathetic suffering. Women have a preeminent power of putting themselves in the place of others, and of carefully considering every weakness and sparing any infliction of pain. This kindliness and consideration for the individual explain their exquisite power of ministering to the happiness of others. What is called conscientiousness-the careful, painstaking balancing of different courses of conduct-is very native to them; and this dealing with the minutiae of morals makes them the rightful guides of children in the school and home. Wherever the question has been one of immediate relief and of present comfort, women have been natural ministers. In many cases their benevolence has extended to a thoughtful removal of causes; but great plans of philanthropy which have involved the bettering of the condition of whole nations have originated with men. This has been due to a no less intense desire for general good upon the part of women, but from their slighter power of seeing wide ranges of facts and reasoning from them to general remedies. While the woman is ministering to the needs of one sick family, the man is organizing a plan of action which shall improve the sanitary condition of the whole village. Women have in many instances appropriated fortunes to philanthropies founded upon the thought of men; but they have seldom originated such schemes. They have been far behind in thinking upon philanthropies and reforms, though they have been prompt to feel and to act. This feeling and action are most valuable in supplementing thought, but, from their great amount, their relative value has been overrated. The one who conceives a great plan is always greater than those who execute it. He is the master, and they who follow are his servants.

Into all estimates of the comparative morality of the sexes, one specific criticism always enters, that of the greater insincerity of women. If a fair investigation could be made of the social and home life of a score of men and of an equal number of women, it would undoubtedly show a greater proportion of deceptions, affectations, suppressions, and unworthy plottings on the part of women. If the observations were made in commercial and business life instead of in society, the proportion of masculine falsehoods and con