man. It is true that the advantages of intellectual education have
been, until recently, very generally on the side of man; had those
advantages been always equal, women would no doubt have had
much more of success to record. But this same fact of inferiority of
education becomes in itself one proof of the existence of a certain
degree of mental inequality. What has been the cause of this
inferiority of education? Why has not woman educated herself in past
ages, as man has done? Is it the opposition of man, and the power
which physical strength gives him, which have been the
impediments? Had these been the only obstacles, and had that
general and entire equality of intellect existed between the sexes,
which we find proclaimed to-day by some writers, and by many
talkers, the genius of women would have opened a road through
these and all other difficulties much more frequently than it has yet
done. At this very hour, instead of defending the intellect of women,
just half our writing and talking would be required to defend the
intellect of men. But, so long as woman, as a sex, has not provided
for herself the same advanced intellectual education to the same
extent as men, and so long as inferiority of intellect in man has
never yet in thousands of years been gravely discussed, while the
inferiority of intellect in woman has been during the same period
generally admitted, we are compelled to believe there is some
foundation for this last opinion. The extent of this difference, the
interval that exists between the sexes, the precise degree of
inferiority on the part of women, will probably never be satisfactorily
proved.

Believing then in the greater physical powers of man, and in his
superiority, to a limited extent, in intellect also, as two sufficient
reasons for the natural subordination of woman as a sex, we have