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With the same conventional concessions to the equality of the sexes, Dr. Clarke introduces his plea for what, with great adroitness, he calls, "A Fair Chance for the Girls."

"Abstract right and wrong," he says, "has nothing to do with sex. What is right or wrong for man is equally right or wrong for woman. . . . Both have a right to do the best they can, Dr, to speak more justly, both should feel the duty and have the opportunity to do their best. . . . Neither is there any such thing as superiority or inferiority in the matter. Man is not superior to woman, nor woman to man. The relation of the sexes is one of equality, not of better and worse, or of a higher and lower."

"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes."

The old doctrine of woman's sphere shines with equal clearness from the pages of Dr. Todd and Dr. Clarke, though the latter carefully avoids the obnoxious phrase. Just as plainly, though in less offensive words, does Dr. Clarke announce his belief that woman was made for man, and that maternity is her only divinely appointed mission, with an unmanly sneer at those who fail to fulfil that destiny.

The sneer is too studied to be accidental, and is to me the unpardonable sin of the book. Did the author willingly expose himself to justified attack on this point, for the express purpose of reaching the ear and heart of those superlatively weak women whom nothing can touch but a masculine sneer? Not quite believing in his own arguments, did he trust to satire to win him approval with that class of people for whom his book was written? Surely he is not so ignorant as not to know that the jeer will only weaken the argument with all thoughtful people. But was the book written for the thinking people, or for those whom ridicule, not reason, convinces? For those especially who fear masculine ridicule in all that relates to their external attractions; for those who can endure all loss save the loss of admiration; for those on whom an argument is wasted, while a sneer converts? One may fully believe that the perfection of womanhood, as of manhood, is reached in a true marriage; one may dissent from the opinion that man and woman, being equal, are therefore identical; one may not yet be fully persuaded in her own mind that the co-education of the sexes is desirable: yet if she is an earnest and thoughtful woman, as anxious for the intellectual as for the physical perfection of her sex, she must feel the gripe of the iron hand under the velvet glove in all Dr. Clarke's admissions, coupled as they are with such limitations. "Without denying the self-evident proposition," says Dr. Clarke, "that whatever a woman can do she has a right to do, the question at once arises, what can she do? and this includes the question, what can she best do? . . . The questio vexata of woman's sphere will be decided by her organization. This limits her power and reveals her divinely appointed tasks. . .. Each can do in certain directions what the other cannot; and in other directions, when both can do the same things, one sex as a rule can do them better than the other. . . . Many of the efforts for bettering her education seem to treat her as if her organization, and consequently her function, were masculine, not feminine. . . . The lily is not inferior to the rose, nor the oak superior to the clover; yet the glory of the lily is one, and the glory of the oak is another, and the use of the oak is not the use of the clover."

"Whatever a woman can do she has a right to do" is so plausible as to satisfy the credulous, were it not for the ungenerous doubt contained in the inquiry, "But what can she do? and what can she best do?" -- questions which she is not to be allowed to settle for herself, but which Dr. Clarke hastens to answer by telling her "her organization limits her power, and reveals her divinely appointed tasks." She is entitled only to what she can attain as a woman; and, being a woman, her attainment is limited by her organization. What mother or teacher would have the heart to say to the healthy girl of fifteen, just becoming conscious of her mental powers, "My girl, hitherto you have talked, romped, chased butterflies and climbed fences, loved, hated (and studied) with your brother, with an innocent abandon that is ignorant of sex. Here your paths must diverge. He will go out into the world free to attain the highest mental culture of which a human being is capable. You were predestined to be a wife and a mother, and are therefore endowed with a peculiar organization. To develop that organization to that end becomes now your duty and mine." High medical authority has declared that "force must be allowed to flow thither in an ample stream, and not be diverted to the brain by the school;" and, as the system never does two things well at the same time, you must no longer spend in the study of geography and arithmetic, of Latin, Greek, and chemistry, in the brain-work of the school-room, force that should be spent in physical growth. Your power is limited by your organization. What robust girl to whom this should be said, but would feel her sex to be a galling chain, and her tasks any thing but divinely appointed? "The use of the clover is not the use of the oak," says Dr. Clarke. "You must not try to make the anemone into an oak," says Dr. Todd. Not at all. I only find it difficult to believe that a kind Creator intended my mortal body to be a hinderance to the development of my immortal mind, which physiology and theology both assure me he has made equal to that of my brother.