I have never been able to perceive that there was a quality or grace of
character which really belonged exclusively to either sex, or which failed
to win honor when wisely exercised by either. It is not thought necessary
to have separate editions of books on ethical science, the one for man, the
other for woman, like almanacs calculated for different latitudes. The
books that vary are not the scientific works, but little manuals of
practical application,--"Duties of Men," "Duties of Women." These vary with
times and places: where women do not know how to read, no advice on reading
will be found in the women's manuals; where it is held wrong for women to
uncover the face, it will be laid down in these manuals as a sin. But
ethics are ethics: the great principles of morals, as proclaimed either by
science or by religion, do not fluctuate for sex; their basis is in the
very foundations of right itself.

This grows clearer when we remember that it is equally true in mental
science. There is not one logic for men, and another for women; a separate
syllogism, a separate induction: the moment we begin to state intellectual
principles, that moment we go beyond sex. We deal then with absolute truth.
If an observation is wrong, if a process of reasoning is bad, it makes
no difference who brings it forward. Any list of mental processes, any
inventory of the contents of the mind, would be identical, so far as sex
goes, whether compiled by a woman or a man. These things, like the
circulation of the blood or the digestion of food, belong clearly to the
ground held in common. The London "Spectator" well said some time since,--

"After all, knowledge is knowledge; and there is no more a
specifically feminine way of describing correctly the origin of the
Lollard movement, or the character of Spenser's poetry, than there
is a specifically feminine way of solving a quadratic equation, or
of proving the forty-seventh problem of Euclid's first book."