"What we ask is simply this," said Phillips, "what all other classes have asked before: Leave it to woman to choose for herself her profession, her education, and her sphere. We deny to any portion of the species the right to prescribe to any other portion its sphere, its education, or its rights.... The sphere of each man, of each woman, of each individual, is that sphere which he can, with the highest exercise of his powers, perfectly fill. The highest act which the human being can do, that is the act which God designed him to do.... The tools, now, to him or her who can use them.... "While woman is admitted to the gallows, the jail, and the tax-list, we have no right to debar her from the ballot-box." He had no fears that woman's natural grace or tenderness would be marred by depositing her vote in the ballot-box. "Let education," he said, "form the rational and moral being, and nature will take care of the woman." On another occasion Mr. Phillips gave this illustration: "Goethe said, that, 'if you plant an oak in a flower-pot, one of two things was sure to happen,--either the oak will be dwarfed, or the flower-pot will break.' So we have planted woman in a flower-pot, hemmed her in by restrictions; and, when we move to enlarge her sphere, society cries out, 'Oh, you'll break the flower-pot!' Well, I say, let it break. Man made it, and the sooner it goes to pieces the better. Let us see how broadly the branches will throw themselves, and how beautiful will be the shape, and how glorious against the moonlit sky or glowing sunset the foliage shall appear!" He thought the idea that woman would have no time for political matters an absurdity, when the soldier, the busy manufacturer, the lawyer, the president of a college, and the artisan have time to vote. "Responsibility," he said, "is one instrument--a great instrument--of education, both moral and intellectual. It sharpens the faculties. It unfolds the moral nature. It makes the careless prudent, and turns recklessness into sobriety.... Woman can never study those great questions that interest and stir most deeply the human mind, until she studies them under the mingled stimulus and check of this responsibility.... The great school of this people is the jury-box and the ballot-box.... Great political questions stir the deepest nature of one-half the nation; but they pass far above and over the heads of the other half. Yet, meanwhile, theorists wonder that the first have their whole nature unfolded, and the others will persevere in being dwarfed."