alike, and equal in power, why did not Woman continue to maintain her original position by man's side? If it be said that man, being the stronger party physically, used his power to subjugate her and keep her back, then do we convict the Author of her being of cruel partiality, and of conniving at her certain downfall, by giving to the man such an enormous advantage in the outset of the race of life. Nature's God wisely adapts means to ends. Had her Creator designed that Woman should share equally with man in the government of the world through the past ages of material ascendency, he would have armed her with power of bone and sinew, adequate to maintain her equal position.

It may be claimed that the facts exist, nevertheless, and that the same argument might be used to defend the institution of slavery, or the extermination of a race, if its victims lacked power to resist their oppressors. The cases are by no means parallel. The two sexes start together, each indispensable to the other through all the ages of time, and no law of "natural selection," or of necessity, would warrant subjugation or extinction of either. Not so with different races and species: they may be improved by the disciplinary agencies of a temporary servitude, in which forced industry and restraint are better than the wild freedom and disorganized democracy of savagism; or the higher interests of the whole may be better promoted by their total extinction, after they have performed whatever design their existence contemplated in the divine economy. A war of races may be justified by the highest wisdom, for the purpose of diminishing the weak and inferior, and of peopling the globe with

higher and nobler types of strength and beauty; but a war of the sexes would be against nature itself, and bring life to an end. The evident intention of Nature is the ultimate perfection of human life, and to permit an absolute injury or injustice to come to either sex from the hands of the other, would defeat such a design. An injury to one sex would be felt equally by the other.

And hence the conclusion, that the subjection of Woman in ages past, has either been normal, more or less in harmony with her nature, or the wisdom and goodness of the Creator must be called in question. And in such an alternative, we are forced to lean to the side which vindicates the ways of God to man. But it does not follow that she is always to remain in this state of subjection. She is a spiritual being, and her subordination was natural only during the age of material supremacy. With the dawning of a higher spiritual era, her emancipation and enfranchisement are inevitable, and she will come into possession of her rightful empire.

The further discussion of this point in more appropriate connections, will hereafter be resumed, and the wisdom of Woman's temporary subordinancy be shown.

The arguments and conclusion which the opponents of Woman Suffrage draw from the circumstance of the variations in the mental capacities of the man and Woman, will be fully considered in another place; but the importance of this inquiry in its bearings upon the Woman Suffrage Movement is so great, that I am induced to extend here the criticism on the opposite position taken by those earnest friends of the cause,

from whom I am reluctantly obliged to differ. Could their positions be reversed, logical consistency might be maintained by both parties; but I cannot see how it is to be done now by either. The conclusions which the opposer arrives at from his premise, follow legitimately from the premise of the advocate, and vice versa.

The opposer assumes a dissimilarity of the masculine and feminine natures, such as I have set in contrast before the reader's mind; and instead of accepting his position and urging therefrom the necessity and desirableness of Woman Suffrage, in order that politics and government may receive directly an infusion of these superior moral and spiritual qualities of the feminine soul, and be purged of their grossness, and lifted to a higher standard, the Suffragist, strangely enough, while he admits that these differences exist now, denies that they are inherent; and maintains that equal opportunities and equal rights, between the two sexes, would obliterate these differences, and make the intellectual, the moral and spiritual qualities of man and Woman precisely alike; that is, alike in the sense that two men are alike. While such a conclusion does not militate against Woman's abstract right to the ballot, it does present a very serious objection against the propriety of assuming it. It implies that Woman's present moral superiority is the product of her restraint, seclusion and subordination. Hence, her emancipation and equal rights would destroy that, and tend to "make her as the man"coarse, selfish, ambitious, bold, warlike-in a word, masculine. Why not? It cannot be denied that the man is a natural production. He has enjoyed independence, opportunity and education, without

obstruction, and we see what he is. If Woman is essentially like him in mind and spirit, then the like conditions for her would produce a like character; but if the qualities I ascribe to her are inherent, if they enter into the very fiber of her soul, then are they ineradicable, and will go with her whithersoever she goes, refining and ennobling all that come within the sphere of her influence.

Much of the opposition to Suffrage which comes from Woman herself, is an inward protest of the spirit against being transformed into the material likeness of man; and while this protest has been encouraged and stimulated by the majority of their male associates, not a few of the friends of the cause have unwittingly helped to strengthen the feeling of repugnance. Upon the hypothesis of like mental characteristics existing between the two sexes, it is impossible to escape the inference, that all those finer qualities of mind which we have been wont to recognize as native to Womanthe pitying tone, the sympathetic tear, the tender compassion, the loving kindness, the sweet modesty, the intuitive perception, the faith, the hope, the charity— all these things that have been the crowning glory of Womanhood, are to be changed, and she is to take on more and more the cast of the masculine mind.

It were absurd, while still holding to such a theory, to claim that instead of the feminine nature changing, the masculine mind will assume gradually these divine characteristics; for that would be a concession that the best and highest type of mind is developed in a state of seclusion, ignorance and subjection; and that the envied independence and grand opportunities which men have enjoyed, have been to their disadvantage.

So long, therefore, as advocates of Woman Suffrage hold that there is no sex of mind, must they accept these conclusions. When they attempt to deny them (as they do of course), they are obliged virtually to shift their position, and assume what I have here labored to establish, that the special qualities of Woman's spirit are what they are by virtue of her sex; and that larger opportunities, higher education and responsible participation in public affairs, instead of destroying them, would give them an additional lustre, and make her more the Woman.

That abiding and radical differences of some kind exist in the mental structure of the two sexes, is pretty generally believed; but the character and extent of those differences, are not so clearly apprehended. While, therefore, it may readily be admitted that the man, by nature, occupies a position of supremacy over Woman in things material, the converse that Woman by nature holds a position of supremacy over the man in things moral and spiritual, is not as promptly conceded. A full admission of this kind would compel men to make other concessions, not very agreeable, perhaps, which will be considered hereafter. But both propositions are equally true; and as they lie at the foundation of our whole discussion, the importance of the case requires that I should bring forward other evidence in their support. Evidence, both deductive and inductive, exists in great abundance, much more than the limits I have fixed to this work will permit me to furnish; and while the remainder of this chapter will be devoted to special arguments and illustrations