function is in good running order; the reproductive apparatus--the
engine within an engine--has been constructed, and she will not be
called upon to furnish force for building it again. The female
student, on the contrary, has got these tasks before her, and must
perform them while getting her education; for the period of female
sexual development coincides with the educational period. The same
five years of life must be given to both tasks. After the function is
normally established, and the apparatus made, woman can labor mentally
or physically, or both, with very much greater persistence and
intensity, than during the age of development. She still retains the
type of periodicity; and her best work, both as to quality and amount,
is accomplished when the order of her labor partakes of the rhythmic
order of her constitution. Still the fact remains, that she can do
more than before; her fibre has acquired toughness; the system is
consolidated; its fountains are less easily stirred. It should be
mentioned in this connection, what has been previously adverted to,
that the toughness and power of after life are largely in proportion
to the normality of sexual development. If there is error then, the
organization never fully recovers. This is an additional motive for a
strict physiological regimen during a girl's student life, and, just
so far, an argument against the identical co-education of the sexes.
The second reason why female operatives are less likely to suffer, and
actually do suffer less, than school-girls, from persistent work
straight through the year, is because the former work their brains
less. To use the language of Herbert Spencer, "That antagonism between
body and brain which we see in those, who, pushing brain-activity to
an extreme, enfeeble their bodies,"[25] does not often exist in female
operatives, any more than in male. On the contrary, they belong to the
class of those who, in the words of the same author, by "pushing
bodily activity to an extreme, make their brains inert."[26] Hence