philosophers have been led to adopt their elevation or debasement
as on the whole the surest test and most correct measure of the
civilisation of a people or an age. Through all the progressive
period of human history, the condition of women has been
approaching nearer to equality with men. This does not of itself
prove that the assimilation must goon to complete equality; but it
assuredly affords some presumption that such is the case. 

Neither does it avail anything to say that the nature of the two
sexes adapts them to their present functions and position, and
renders these appropriate to them. Standing on the ground of common
sense and the constitution of the human mind, I deny that anyone
knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they
have only been seen in their present relation to one another. If
men had ever been found in society without women, or women without
men, or if there had been a society of men and women in which the
women were not under the control of the men, something might have
been positively known about the mental and moral differences which
may be inherent in the nature of each. What is now called the
nature of women is an eminently artificial thing--the result of
forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in
others. It may be asserted without scruple, that no other class of
dependents have had their character so entirely distorted from its
natural proportions by their relation with their masters; for, if
conquered and slave races have been, in some respects, more
forcibly repressed, whatever in them has not been crushed down by
an iron heel has generally been let alone, and if left with any
liberty of development, it has developed itself according to its
own laws; but in the case of women, a hot-house and stove
cultivation has always been carried on of some of the capabilities
of their nature, for the benefit and pleasure of their masters
Then, because certain products of the general vital force sprout
luxuriantly and reach a great development in this heated atmosphere
and under this active nurture and watering, while other shoots from
the same root, which are left outside in the wintry air, with ice
purposely heaped all round them, have a stunted growth, and some
are burnt off with fire and disappear; men, with that inability to
recognise their own work which distinguishes the unanalytic mind,
indolently believe that the tree grows of itself in the way they
have made it grow, and that it would die if one half of it were not
kept in a vapour bath and the other half in the snow. 

Of all difficulties which impede the progress of thought, and the
formation of well-grounded opinions on life and social
arrangements, the greatest is now the unspeakable ignorance and
inattention of mankind in respect to the influences which form
human character. Whatever any portion of the human species now are,
or seem to be, such, it is supposed, they have a natural tendency
to be: even when the most elementary knowledge of the circumstances
in which they have been placed, clearly points out the causes that
made them what they are. Because a cottier deeply in arrears to his
landlord is not industrious, there are people who think that the
Irish are naturally idle. Because constitutions can be overthrown
when the authorities appointed to execute them turn their arms
against them, there are people who think the French incapable of
free government. Because the Greeks cheated the Turks, and the
Turks only plundered the Greeks, there are persons who think that
the Turks are naturally more sincere: and because women, as is
often said, care nothing about politics except their personalities,
it is supposed that the general good is naturally less interesting
to women than to men. History, which is now so much better
understood than formerly, teaches another lesson: if only by
showing the extraordinary susceptibility of human nature to
external influences, and the extreme variableness of those of its
manifestations which are supposed to be most universal and uniform.
But in history, as in travelling, men usually see only what they
already had in their own minds; and few learn much from history,
who do not bring much with them to its study. 

Hence, in regard to that most difficult question, what are the
natural differences between the two sexes--a subject on which it is
impossible in the present state of society to obtain complete and
correct knowledge--while almost everybody dogmatises upon it,
almost all neglect and make light of the only means by which any
partial insight can be obtained into it. This is, an analytic study
of the most important department of psychology, the laws of the
influence of circumstances on character. For, however great and
apparently ineradicable the moral and intellectual differences
between men and women might be, the evidence of there being natural
differences could only be negative. Those only could be inferred to
be natural which could not possibly be artificial--the residuum,
after deducting every characteristic of either sex which can admit
of being explained from education or external circumstances. The
profoundest knowledge of the laws of the formation of character is
indispensable to entitle anyone to affirm even that there is any
difference, much more what the difference is, between the two sexes
considered as moral and rational beings; and since no one, as yet,
has that knowledge (for there is hardly any subject which, in
proportion to its importance, has been so little studied), no one
is thus far entitled to any positive opinion on the subject.
Conjectures are all that can at present be made;conjectures more or
less probable, according as more or less authorised by such
knowledge as we yet have of the laws of psychology, as applied to
the formation of character. 

Even the preliminary knowledge, what the differences between the
sexes now are, apart from all question as to how they are made what
they are, is still in the crudest and most' incomplete state.
Medical practitioners and physiologists have ascertained, to some
extent, the differences in bodily constitution; and this is an