Throughout the whole of this period it seems to have been ungallant in the highest degree in an author not to place woman decidedly above man in every particular. Even in intellectual power she was considered as superior; and in perusing the voluminous proofs which were so industriously, and sometimes so ingeniously brought forward to prove it, we find ourselves as bewildered as the _femme de chambre_ of Molière, under the learned remarks of the doctor upon the death of the coachman. The poor woman at last exclaims, "Le Medecin peut dire ce qu'il veut, mais le cocher est mort." Whatever may have been written or said in praise of the intellectual powers of woman during the very gallant period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it is now a conceded point, that under the actual constitution of society, and with the superior education of our sex, the intellectual endowments and developments of man are generally found superior to those of woman at the age of maturity. In fact, the remark is susceptible of the greatest possible extension. Among all the barbarous nations--among the half civilized, as well as among the refined and polished, we find the intellectual powers of man every where and in every age superior to those of woman.[3] [Footnote 3: I do not mean to assert here that woman has been found inferior to man in _every_ department or modification of the intellect; for in some kinds of intelligence she always has been, as we shall soon see, man's superior;--but my meaning is, that in the higher department of the intellectual powers, and in the general range of the mind, man is superior to woman.]