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      | Transcriber's Notes:                                       |
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      |    A number of obvious typographical errors have been      |
      |    corrected in this text. For a complete list, please     |
      |    see the end of this document.                           |
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      |    This document has inconsistent hyphenation.             |
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      |    Greek has been transliterated and marked with + marks   |
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SEX IN EDUCATION;

Or, A Fair Chance for Girls.

by

EDWARD H. CLARKE, M.D.,

Member of the Massachusetts Medical Society;
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences;
Late Professor of Materia Medica in Harvard College,
Etc., Etc.







Boston:
James R. Osgood and Company,
(Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.)
1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
Edward H. Clarke,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington
Boston:
Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, & Co.




    "An American female constitution, which collapses just in the
    middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber,
    if it happen to live through the period when health and
    strength are most wanted."
    OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_.


    "He reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came
    before him, _womanhood_.... What a woman should demand is
    respect for her as she is a woman. Let her first lesson be,
    with sweet Susan Winstanley, _to reverence her sex_."
    CHARLES LAMB: _Essays of Elia_.


    "We trust that the time now approaches when man's condition
    shall be progressively improved by the force of reason and
    truth, when the brute part of nature shall be crushed, that
    the god-like spirit may unfold."
    GUIZOT: _History of Civilization_, I., 34.




CONTENTS.


PART I.

INTRODUCTORY                                              11

PART II.

CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL                                     31

PART III.

CHIEFLY CLINICAL                                          61

PART IV.

CO-EDUCATION                                             118

PART V.

THE EUROPEAN WAY                                         162




PREFACE.


About a year ago the author was honored by an invitation to address
the New-England Women's Club in Boston. He accepted the invitation,
and selected for his subject the relation of sex to the education of
women. The essay excited an unexpected amount of discussion. Brief
reports of it found their way into the public journals. Teachers and
others interested in the education of girls, in different parts of the
country, who read these reports, or heard of them, made inquiry, by
letter or otherwise, respecting it. Various and conflicting criticisms
were passed upon it. This manifestation of interest in a brief and
unstudied lecture to a small club appeared to the author to indicate a
general appreciation of the importance of the theme he had chosen,
compelled him to review carefully the statements he had made, and has
emboldened him to think that their publication in a more comprehensive
form, with added physiological details and clinical illustrations,
might contribute something, however little, to the cause of sound
education. Moreover, his own conviction, not only of the importance of
the subject, but of the soundness of the conclusions he has reached,
and of the necessity of bringing physiological facts and laws
prominently to the notice of all who are interested in education,
conspires with the interest excited by the theme of his lecture to
justify him in presenting these pages to the public. The leisure of
his last professional vacation has been devoted to their preparation.
The original address, with the exception of a few verbal alterations,
is incorporated into them.

Great plainness of speech will be observed throughout this essay. The
nature of the subject it discusses, the general misapprehension both
of the strong and weak points in the physiology of the woman question,
and the ignorance displayed by many, of what the co-education of the
sexes really means, all forbid that ambiguity of language or euphemism
of expression should be employed in the discussion. The subject is
treated solely from the standpoint of physiology. Technical terms
have been employed, only where their use is more exact or less
offensive than common ones.

If the publication of this brief memoir does nothing more than excite
discussion and stimulate investigation with regard to a matter of such
vital moment to the nation as the relation of sex to education, the
author will be amply repaid for the time and labor of its preparation.
No one can appreciate more than he its imperfections. Notwithstanding
these, he hopes a little good may be extracted from it, and so
commends it to the consideration of all who desire the _best_
education of the sexes.

  BOSTON, 18 ARLINGTON STREET, October, 1873.




PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.


The demand for a second edition of this book in little more than a
week after the publication of the first, indicates the interest which
the public take in the relation of Sex to Education, and justifies the
author in appealing to physiology and pathology for light upon the
vexed question of the appropriate education of girls. Excepting a few
verbal alterations, and the correction of a few typographical errors,
there is no difference between this edition and the first. The author
would have been glad to add to this edition a section upon the
relation of sex to women's work in life, after their technical
education is completed, but has not had time to do so.

  BOSTON, 18 ARLINGTON STREET,
      Nov. 8, 1873.




NOTE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.


The attention of the reader is called to the definition of "education"
on the twentieth page. It is there stated, that, throughout this
essay, education is not used in the limited sense of mental or
intellectual training alone, but as comprehending the whole manner of
life, physical and psychical, during the educational period; that is,
following Worcester's comprehensive definition, as comprehending
instruction, discipline, manners, and habits. This, of course,
includes home-life and social life, as well as school-life; balls and
parties, as well as books and recitations; walking and riding, as much
as studying and sewing. When a remission or intermission is necessary,
the parent must decide what part of education shall be remitted or
omitted,--the walk, the ball, the school, the party, or all of these.
None can doubt which will interfere most with Nature's laws,--four
hours' dancing, or four hours' studying. These remarks may be
unnecessary. They are made because some who have noticed this essay
have spoken of it as if it treated only of the school, and seem to
have forgotten the just and comprehensive signification in which
education is used throughout this memoir. Moreover, it may be well to
remind the reader, even at the risk of casting a reflection upon his
intelligence, that, in these pages, the relation of sex to mature life
is not discussed, except in a few passages, in which the large
capacities and great power of woman are alluded to, provided the epoch
of development is physiologically guided.




SEX IN EDUCATION.


PART I.

INTRODUCTORY.

    "Is there any thing better in a State than that both women and
    men be rendered the very best? There is not."--PLATO.


It is idle to say that what is right for man is wrong for woman. Pure
reason, abstract right and wrong, have nothing to do with sex: they
neither recognize nor know it. They teach that what is right or wrong
for man is equally right and wrong for woman. Both sexes are bound by
the same code of morals; both are amenable to the same divine law.
Both have a right to do the best they can; or, to speak more justly,
both should feel the duty, and have the opportunity, to do their
best. Each must justify its existence by becoming a complete
development of manhood and womanhood; and each should refuse whatever
limits or dwarfs that development.

The problem of woman's sphere, to use the modern phrase, is not to be
solved by applying to it abstract principles of right and wrong. Its
solution must be obtained from physiology, not from ethics or
metaphysics. The question must be submitted to Agassiz and Huxley, not
to Kant or Calvin, to Church or Pope. Without denying the self-evident
proposition, 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
further question, What can she best do? A girl can hold a plough, and
ply a needle, after a fashion. If she can do both better than a man,
she ought to be both farmer and seamstress; but if, on the whole, her
husband can hold best the plough, and she ply best the needle, they
should divide the labor. He should be master of the plough, and she
mistress of the loom. The _quaestio vexata_ of woman's sphere will be
decided by her organization. This limits her power, and reveals her
divinely-appointed tasks, just as man's organization limits his power,
and reveals his work. In the development of the organization is to be
found the way of strength and power for both sexes. Limitation or
abortion of development leads both to weakness and failure.

Neither is there any such thing as inferiority or superiority in this
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 higher
and lower. By this it is not intended to say that the sexes are the
same. They are different, widely different from each other, and so
different that each can do, in certain directions, what the other
cannot; and in other directions, where both can do the same things,
one sex, as a rule, can do them better than the other; and in still
other matters they seem to be so nearly alike, that they can
interchange labor without perceptible difference. All this is so well
known, that it would be useless to refer to it, were it not that much
of the discussion of the irrepressible woman-question, and many of the
efforts for bettering her education and widening her sphere, seem to
ignore any difference of the sexes; seem to treat her as if she were
identical with man, and to be trained in precisely the same way; as if
her organization, and consequently her function, were masculine, not
feminine. There are those who write and act as if their object were to
assimilate woman as much as possible to man, by dropping all that is
distinctively feminine out of her, and putting into her as large an
amount of masculineness as possible. These persons tacitly admit the
error just alluded to, that woman is inferior to man, and strive to
get rid of the inferiority by making her a man. There may be some
subtle