X
Reading edition
It may be affirmed, then, that women are more directly linked to concrete life than men, and that they naturally incline to utilitarian standards in judging the importance of things. Men create ideas, and women make use of them: women create human beings, and men make use of them: both men and women seize what they need for the service of their own purposes. Is this difference discernible in the intellectual work of educated women, in the subjects they deliberately choose for research, and in the contributions they make to knowledge? This question, and many others, remain to be answered; and, with them, the fundamental question whether the education of women, and especially their “higher education,” is planned to secure the development of an enlightened womanhood, as distinct from manhood. The present inquiry pretends to be nothing more than a stimulus to the further investigation of essential differences between men and women; but it is clear that if there is any truth in our conclusions, an honest re-statement of women’s aims is necessary. The conception of womanhood which has been adumbrated here, if it is accepted, demands so many adjustments in the attitude of women towards themselves, towards morality, religion, sex, and education that it is impossible within the limits of this essay to give even a hint of them.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH.