It may be that with sexes as with races, the subtlest physical difference
between them may have their fine mental correlatives; but no abstract
consideration of the human body in relation to its functions of sex can, in
the present state of our knowledge, show us what intellectual capacities
tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing in the present or past
condition of male and female give us more than the very faintest possible
indication of the relation of their intellectual aptitudes and their sexual
functions. And even were it proved by centuries of experiment that with
the possession of the uterine function of sex tends to go exceptional
intellectual capacity in the direction of mathematics rather than natural
history, or an inclination for statecraft rather than for mechanical
invention; were it proved that, generally speaking and as a whole, out of
twenty thousand women devoting themselves to law and twenty thousand to
medicine, they tended to achieve relatively more in the field of law than
of medicine, there would yet be no possible healthy or rational ground for
restricting the activities of the individual female to that line in which
the average female appeared rather more frequently to excel. (Minds not
keenly analytical are always apt to mistake mere correlation of appearance
with causative sequence. We have heard it gravely asserted that between
potatoes, pigs, mud cabins and Irishmen there was an organic connection:
but we who have lived in Colonies, know that within two generations the
pure-bred descendant of the mud cabiner becomes often the successful
politician, wealthy financier, or great judge; and shows no more
predilection for potatoes, pigs, and mud cabins than men of any other
race.)

That even one individual in a society should be debarred from undertaking
that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes an unnecessary
deficit in the general social assets. That one male Froebel should be