The Subjection of Women — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Subjection of Women
John Stuart Mill · en
Hence, in regard to that most difficult question, what are the
natural differences between the two sexes--a subject on which it is
impossible in the present state of society to obtain complete and
correct knowledge--while almost everybody dogmatizes upon it, almost
all neglect and make light of the only means by which any partial
insight can be obtained into it. This is, an analytic study of the
most important department of psychology, the laws of the influence of
circumstances on character. For, however great and apparently
ineradicable the moral and intellectual differences between men and
women might be, the evidence of their being natural differences could
only be negative. Those only could be inferred to be natural which
could not possibly be artificial--the residuum, after deducting every
characteristic of either sex which can admit of being explained from
education or external circumstances. The profoundest knowledge of the
laws of the formation of character is indispensable to entitle any
one to affirm even that there is any difference, much more what the
difference is, between the two sexes considered as moral and rational
beings; and since no one, as yet, has that knowledge, (for there is
hardly any subject which, in proportion to its importance, has been
so little studied), no one is thus far entitled to any positive
opinion on the subject. Conjectures are all that can at present be
made; conjectures more or less probable, according as more or less
authorized by such knowledge as we yet have of the laws of
psychology, as applied to the formation of character.