should look out for, the most gifted and aspiring being able to
reckon on the most desirable prizes; and if, when this prize had
been obtained, they had been shut out by a wall of brass from all
interests not centring in him, all feelings and desires but those
which he shared or inculcated; would not serfs and seigneurs,
plebeians and patricians, have been as broadly distinguished at
this day as men and women are? and would not all but a thinker here
and there, have believed the distinction to be a fundamental and
unalterable fact in human nature? The preceding considerations are
amply sufficient to show that custom, however universal it may be,
affords in this case no presumption, and ought not to create any
prejudice, in favour of the arrangements which place women in
social and political subjection to men. But I may go farther, and
maintain that the course of history, and the tendencies of
progressive human society, afford not only no presumption in favour
of this system of inequality of rights, but a strong one against
it; and that, so far as the whole course of human improvement up to
the time, the whole stream of modern tendencies, warrants any
inference on the subject, it is, that this relic of the past is
discordant with the future, and must necessarily disappear. For,
what is the peculiar character of the modern world-- the difference
which chiefly distinguishes modern institutions, modern social
ideas, modern life itself, from those of times long past? It is,
that human beings are no longer born to their place in life, and
chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they are born to,
but are free to employ their faculties, and such favourable chances
as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most
desirable. Human society of old was constituted on a very different
principle. All were born to a fixed social position, and were
mostly kept in it by law, or interdicted from any means by which
they could emerge from it. As some men are born white and others
black, so some were born slaves and others freemen and citizens;
some were born patricians, others plebeians; some were born feudal
nobles, others commoners and roturiers. A slave or serf could never
make himself free, nor, except by the will of his master, become
so. In most European countries it was not till towards the close of
the middle ages, and as a consequence of the growth of regal power,
that commoners could be ennobled. Even among nobles, the eldest son
was born the exclusive heir to the paternal possessions, and a long
time elapsed before it was fully established that the father could
disinherit him. Among the industrious classes, only those who were
born members of a guild, or were admitted into it by its members,
could lawfully practise their calling within its local limits; and
nobody could practise any calling deemed important, in any but the
legal manner--by processes authoritatively prescribed.
Manufacturers have stood in the pillory for presuming to carry on
their business by new and improved methods. In modern Europe, and
most in those parts of it which have participated most largely in
all other modern improvements, diametrically opposite doctrines now
prevail. Law and government do not undertake to prescribe by whom
any social or industrial operation shall or shall not be conducted,
or what modes of conducting them shall be lawful. These things are
left to the unfettered choice of individuals. Even the laws which
required that workmen should serve an apprenticeship, have in this
country been repealed: there being ample assurance that in all
cases in which an apprenticeship is necessary, its necessity will
suffice to enforce it. The old theory was, that the least possible
should be left to the choice of the individual agent; that all he
had to do should, as far as practicable, be laid down for him by
superior wisdom. Left to himself he was sure to go wrong. The
modern conviction, the fruit of a thousand years of experience, is,
that things in which the individual is the person directly
interested, never go right but as they are left to his own
discretion; and that any regulation of them by authority, except to
protect the rights of others, is sure to be mischievous. This
conclusion slowly arrived at, and not adopted until almost every
possible application of the contrary theory had been made with
disastrous result, now (in the industrial department) prevails
universally in the most advanced countries, almost universally in
all that have pretensions to any sort of advancement. It is not
that all processes are supposed to be equally good, or all persons
to be equally qualified for everything; but that freedom of
individual choice is now known to be the only thing which procures
the adoption of the best processes, and throws each operation into
the hands of those who are best qualified for it. Nobody thinks it
necessary to make a law that only a strong-armed man shall be a
blacksmith. Freedom and competition suffice to make blacksmiths
strong-armed men, because the weak armed can earn more by engaging
in occupations for which they are more fit. In consonance with this
doctrine, it is felt to be an overstepping of the proper bounds of
authority to fix beforehand, on some general presumption, that
certain persons are not fit to do certain things. It is now
thoroughly known and admitted that if some such presumptions exist,
no such presumption is infallible. Even if it be well grounded in
a majority of cases, which it is very likely not to be, there will
be a minority of exceptional cases in which it does not hold: and
in those it is both an injustice to the individuals, and a
detriment to society, to place barriers in the way of their using
their faculties for their own benefit and for that of others. In
the cases, on the other hand, in which the unfitness is real, the
ordinary motives of human conduct will on the whole suffice to
prevent the incompetent person from making, or from persisting in,
the attempt. 

If this general principle of social and economical science is not
true; if individuals, with such help as they can derive from the
opinion of those who know them, are not better judges than the law
and the government, of their own capacities and vocation; the world
cannot too soon abandon this principle, and return to the old
system of regulations and disabilities. But if the principle is