two sexes in the same class-rooms, especially when we consider that many
eminent educators have given their testimony in its favor, so far as it
has fallen under their observation and experience. But, on the other
hand, the co-education of the sexes may imply that both girls and boys,
by similarity of studies, are to be educated for the same sphere. Boys
study the higher mathematics not merely for mental discipline, but in
order to be engineers, astronomers, surveyors, and the like; so, too,
they study chemistry, in its higher branches, to be chemists and
physicians and miners. If girls wish to do this rough work, let them
know that they seek to do men's work. If they are to do women's work, it
would seem that they should give more attention to music, the modern
languages, and ornamental branches than boys do, since few men pursue
these things as a business.

The question is, Is it wise for boys and girls to pursue the same
studies in the more difficult branches of knowledge? I would withhold no
study from a woman on the ground of assumed intellectual inferiority. I
believe that a woman can grasp any subject as well as a man can, so far
and so long as her physical strength will permit her to make exhaustive
researches. There are some studies which task the physical strength of
men to its utmost tension. If any woman has equal physical power with
men to master certain subjects, let her pursue them; for success, even
with men, depends upon physical endurance as well as brain-power. And
thus the question is one of physical strength and endurance; and women
must settle for themselves whether they can run races with men in
studies in which only the physically strong can hope to succeed.

Then, again, I would educate women with reference to the sphere in which
they must forever move,--a sphere settled by the eternal laws of Nature
and duty, against which it is folly to rebel. Does any one doubt or deny