Women are advancing, tho at present only a small minority strives to advance, and of these again only a few are fully conscious of their aims. They not only wish to measure their strength with that of men industrially and commercially, they not only wish to hold a more independent position in the family, they also wish to employ their intellectual abilities in higher positions and in public life. They are met time and again with the argument that they are unfit by nature for intellectual occupations. The question of the practice of learned professions only concerns a small number of women in present-day society, but it is important as a matter of principle. The majority of men seriously believe that women must remain subjected to them intellectually also and that they have no right to seek equality; therefore they are vehemently opposed to the intellectual ambitions of women. The same men who do not object to women being employed in difficult and dangerous occupations that threaten their womanliness and injure their maternity, would bar them from professions that are far less difficult and dangerous and far better suited to their physical abilities. In Germany, the lively agitation for the admission of women to universities, has called forth a great number of opponents who especially oppose the admission of women to the study of medicine. Among these are Pochhammer, Fehling, Binder, Hegar, and others. J. Beerenbach seeks to prove that women are not qualified for scientific study, by pointing out that no genius had as yet sprung up among women. This argument is neither valid nor convincing. Geniuses do not drop from the sky; they must have an opportunity for development, and such opportunity women have been lacking, for since thousands of years they have been oppressed and deprived of opportunity for intellectual development, and thereby their mental abilities have become atrophied. A considerable number of distinguished women exist even to-day, and if one denies the existence of potential geniuses among them, that is as far from being true as the belief that there were no more geniuses among men than those that were recognized as such. Every country schoolteacher knows how many able minds among his pupils are never developed because they lack opportunity for development. Indeed we all have in our day met persons in whom we recognized rare ability and who, we felt, would have become a credit to the community, if circumstances had been more favorable to them. The number of talents and geniuses among men is far greater than could be revealed until now. The same is true of the abilities of women that have for thousands of years been far more hampered, repressed and cramped than those of men. We have no standard whereby we can measure the amount of intellectual strength and ability among men and women, that would unfold if they could develop under natural conditions.