Even Plato, who advocated the education of woman, held that while her
capacities did not differ in kind from those of man, they differed
in degree because of her inferiority in physical strength. It was a
broad-minded view; for the most part women have simply been held to be
by nature relatively weak-minded and therefore relatively ineducable.
They have already passed one general test of educability, by entering
schools on the same footing with men and showing themselves equally
able to achieve a high scholastic standing; yet the Platonic notion
persists that they are physically incapable of going as far as men
can go in intellectual pursuits. This question can probably not be
settled a priori to any one’s satisfaction. It must be conceded,
after the fact, however, that considering the short time that women
have been tolerated in the schools and in the practical prosecution
of intellectual pursuits, the showing they have made has really been
quite as good as might reasonably be expected, and that it certainly
has not been such as to warrant any arbitrary fixing of limits
beyond which they can not or shall not go. Moreover, the physical
weakness which is supposed to disable woman intellectually may be
itself a result of her adaptation to her environment. There is no
way that I know of to forecast with any kind of accuracy what a few
generations of freedom will accomplish specifically in the way of
spiritual development. Considering that human beings are “creatures
of a large discourse,” the matter is probably determinable only by
experiment--_solvitur ambulando_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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