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But we insist upon it that no person who discusses the educational problem of the present day, with an argument "based on the postulate that woman finds her normal development in fulfilling the functions of wife and mother, and that any education which tends to unfit her for these highest offices is not a boon, but a curse," is worthy to be followed by just men or women. Men and women are "normally developed" when, and when only, they are rounded and broadened by culture of body, mind, and heart, into a symmetrical character. We have no more right to say that women shall be educated to be wives and mothers than that men shall be educated to be husbands and fathers; and no more right to say that a woman is not fulfilling her "highest" office, who is laboring for the world in some other sphere than that of wifehood or motherhood, than we have to declare a man abnormally or imperfectly "developed "who has deemed it best to live his life unmarried. Until men are willing to discuss woman's education in the same way they do that of their own sex, on the broad basis of individual need, individual taste and talent, and the necessity of thorough mental training of all, in order to attain the highest results to the country and the world; until men are convinced that the human being and its needs is paramount in importance, and that sex, with all its relations, is a secondary question, which must settle itself and needs no legislation; until, in short, men comprehend that they are not the guardians of woman, and have no right to force her to education, or restrain her from the same through any prudential considerations not applied equally to themselves, -- every woman conscious of the facts that her soul is worth more than her body, and her eternal relations are of more importance than the temporal, will "persistently "and reasonably demand that the final decision in regard to her ability to endure mental or physical strain, her power for study, and her need for the same, shall rest with herself. In spite of the author of "Sex in Education," we have yet to see convincing proofs, based on facts extensively gathered and compiled, of the unhealthfulness of student life for men or women, boys or girls, when the laws of health, namely, simple living, good food, abundant sleep, health- ful clothing, and sufficient exercise in the open air, are known and observed. We will only add our wish that men would be as careful for the health of women in other respects as they claim to be in the matter of education; and sum up all we would like to say on this vexed question in one sentence: That man or woman is best fitted for his or her special relations who is most thoroughly and harmoniously developed as an individual.

TESTIMONY FROM COLLEGES.

DR. EDWARD H. CLARKE.

DEAR SIR, - Having held the office of Resident Physician in Vassar College since the school opened, -- September, 1865, -- it seems to me that I have the right to make respectful but earnest protest against the implied strictures upon the hygienic teaching and practice of the institution, which I find in the history of "Miss D.," page 79 of "Sex in Education."

I take it that the aim of your book is to show parents and teachers the wrong they do women, and so the race, by their systematic overtaxing of the mental forces during the critical years of girlhood, when the reproductive function is asserting itself, and when every thing that would hinder its proper establishment should be carefully avoided. In that aim I bid you God-speed; and it is because I feel so strongly on that point, and have labored so zealously to make practical application of this physiological principle, that I regret that you should have taken as your most elaborately discussed and aggravated case one which so misrepresents the college that any person who is at all acquainted with its rules and management can hardly help having his confidence in the book shaken. He would naturally say, "This being so largely false, where can I be sure of finding the truth?"

Vassar College does not receive students under fifteen years of age, even for the first preparatory class (there is a two years' preparatory course). No student ever entered the freshman class at fourteen.

At the beginning of every collegiate year the students are carefully instructed regarding the. precautions which are periodically necessary for them. They are positively forbidden to take gymnastics at all during the first two days of their period; and, if there is the least tendency toward menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, or other ride on horseback then and, moreover, are strongly advised not to dance, nor run up and down stairs, nor do any thing else that gives sudden and successive (even though not violent) shocks to the trunk. They are encouraged to go out of doors for quiet walks, or drives, or boating, and to do whatever they can to steady the nervous irritation, and to help them to be patient with themselves through the almost inevitable excitement or depression that then supervenes.