potatoes. Therefore, obviously, girls should not."

The analogy between physical and spiritual food is precisely in point.
The simple truth is, that, amid the vast range of human powers and
properties, the fact of sex is but one item. Vital and momentous in
itself, it does not constitute the whole organism, but only a small part
of it. The distinction of male and female is special, aimed at a certain
end; and apart from that end, it is, throughout all the kingdoms
of Nature, of minor importance. With but trifling exceptions, from
infusorial up to man, the female animal moves, breathes, looks, listens,
runs, flies, swims, pursues its food, eats it, digests it, in precisely
the same manner as the male; all instincts, all characteristics, are the
same, except as to the one solitary fact of parentage. Mr. Ten Broeck's
race-horses, Pryor and Prioress, were foaled alike, fed alike, trained
alike, and finally ran side by side, competing for the same prize. The
eagle is not checked in soaring by any consciousness of sex, nor asks
the sex of the timid hare, its quarry. Nature, for high purposes,
creates and guards the sexual distinction, but keeps it humbly
subordinate to still more important ones.

Now all this bears directly upon the alphabet. What sort of philosophy
is that which says, "John is a fool; Jane is a genius; nevertheless,
John, being a man, should learn, lead, make laws, make money; Jane,
being a woman, shall be ignorant, dependent, disfranchised, underpaid."
Of course, the time is past when one would state this so frankly, though
Comte comes quite near it, to say nothing of the Mormons; but this
formula really lies at the bottom of the reasoning one hears every day.
The answer is: Soul before sex. Give an equal chance, and let genius and
industry to the rest. _La carrière ouverte aux talens_. Every man for
himself, every woman for herself, and the alphabet for us all.