10. To obtain the full measure of success, this experiment must have the entire cooperation of the principal, the teachers, and the students.

In closing, certain suggestions present themselves as to the organization of our city high schools. At the beginning of each term about 16,000 students enter. These students have been graded by the various elementary schools from which they come, yet we make no use of these grades. The ideal is that each of these students be examined by experts in the Binet-Simon test in its American form, or some similar test, and the results so obtained be used in organizing the entering classes; but if this is impossible, we have a substitute in the marks of the elementary schools. They do not form an ideal grading system, but they are far better than none at all. We would recommend that these students be grouped in classes according to these marks, and that the work be arranged so that those who received, let us say, AA be advanced far more rapidly than the ordinary student. Of course, as a corollary, those whose work was poor should be put in a class where the course of study is adapted to their needs and the work presented in its less abstract form. Partial "opportunity classes" may be organized in any subject. The saving to the city in such classes would be tremendous. Of greater importance is the incentive they furnish the good student to give his best; and the opportunity they open to him of knowing the satisfaction and joy in hard work well done. Sir Francis Galton has reckoned that the best man in the mathematical "Tripos" at Cambridge has 3300 times the ability that the ordinary honor man possesses. There are similar discrepancies in our high schools, and yet Sir Isaac Newton and Blind Tom, were they to enter the ordinary high school, would be chained side by side in the shackles of scholastic conservatism, and forced to keep their lockstep thru four long years. It is with the hope of bettering such conditions that this article is entitled An Experiment in Optimism. JOSEPH B. LEE

BROOKLYN, N. Y.

VI

1

SEX IN MIND AND IN EDUCATION (II) 1 Such is a picture, painted by an experienced physician, of the effects of subjecting young women to the method of education which has been framed for young men. Startling as it is, there is nothing in it which may not well be true to Nature. If it be an effect of excessive and illregulated study to produce derangement of the functions of the female organization, of which so far from there being an antecedent improbability there is a great probability, then there can be no question that all the subsequent ills mentioned are likely to follow. The important physiological change which takes place at puberty, accompanied, as it is, by so great a revolution in mind and body, and by so large an expenditure of vital energy, may easily and quickly overstep its healthy limits and pass into a pathological change, under conditions of excessive stimulation, or in persons who are constitutionally feeble and whose nerve-centers are more unstable than natural; and it is a familiar medical observation that many nervous disorders of a minor kind, and even such serious disorders as chorea, epilepsy, insanity, are often connected with irregularities or suppression of these important functions.

In addition to the ill effects upon the bodily health which are produced directly by an excessive mental application, and a consequent development of the nervous system at the expense of the nutritive functions, it is alleged that remoter effects of an injurious character are produced upon the entire nature, mental and bodily. The arrest of development of the reproductive system discovers itself in the physical form and in the mental character. There is an imperfect development of the structure which Nature has provided in the female for nursing her offspring.

1 Part I of this classic paper by Dr. Maudsley was printed in the April, 1918, issue of the REVIEW.

"Formerly," writes another American physician, Dr. N. Allen, "such an organization was generally possest by American women, and they found but little difficulty in nursing their infants. It was only occasionally in case of some defect in the organization, or where sickness of some kind had overtaken the mother, that it became necessary to resort to the wet-nurse, or to feeding by hand. And the English, the Scotch, the German, the Canadian, the French, and the Irish women who are living in this country, generally nurse their children; the exceptions are rare. But how is it with our American women who become mothers? It has been supposed by some that all, or nearly all of them, could nurse their offspring just as well as not, that the disposition only was wanting, and that they did not care about having the trouble or confinement necessarily attending it. But this is a great mistake. This very indifference or aversion shows something wrong in the organization, as well as in the disposition; if the physical system were all right, the mind and natural instincts would generally be right also. While there may be here and there cases of this kind, such an indisposition is not always found. It is a fact that large numbers of our women are anxious to nurse their offspring, and make the attempt; they persevere for a while-perhaps for weeks or months and then fail....There is still another class that can not nurse at all, having neither the organs nor nourishment necessary to make a beginning."

"Why should there be such a difference between American women and those of foreign origin residing in the same locality, or between them and their grandmothers?" Dr. Allen goes on to ask. The answer he finds in the undue demands made upon the brain and nervous system, to the detriment of the organs of nutrition and secretion:

"In consequence of the great neglect of physical exercise, and the continuous application to study, together with various other influences, large numbers of our American women have altogether an undue predominance of the nervous temperament. If only here and there an individual were found with such an organization, not much harm comparatively would result; but when a majority, or nearly a majority have it, the evil becomes one of no small magnitude."

To the same effect writes Dr. Weir Mitchell, an eminent American physiologist:

"Worst of all, to my mind, most destructive in every way, is the American view of female education. The time taken for the more serious instruction of girls extends to the age of eighteen, and rarely over this. During these years they are undergoing such organic developments as render them remarkably sensitive.... Today the American woman is, to speak plainly, physically unfit for her duties as woman, and is, perhaps, of all civilized females, the least qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man. She is not fairly up to what Nature asks from her as a wife and mother. How will she sustain herself under the

pressure of those yet more exacting duties which nowadays she is eager to share with man."

Here, then, is no uncertain testimony as to the effects of the American system of female education: some women who are without the instinct or desire to nurse their offspring, some who have the desire but not the capacity, and others who have neither the instinct nor the capacity. The facts will hardly be disputed, whatever may finally be the accepted interpretation of them. It will not probably be argued that an absence of the capacity and the instinct to nurse is a result of higher development, and that it should be the aim of woman, as she advances to a higher level, to allow the organs which minister to this function to waste and finally to become by disuse as rudimentary in her sex as they are in the male sex. Their development is notably in close sympathy with that of the organs of reproduction, an arrest thereof being often associated with some defect of the latter; so that it might perhaps fairly be questioned whether it was right and proper, for the race's sake, that a woman who has not the wish or power to nurse should indulge in the functions of maternity. We may take note, by-the-way, that those in whom the organs are wasted invoke the dressmaker's aid in order to gain the appearance of them; they are not satisfied unless they wear the show of perfect womanhood. However, it may be in the plan of evolution to produce at some future period a race of sexless beings who, undistracted and unharassed by the ignoble troubles of reproduction, shall carry on the intellectual work of the world, not otherwise than as the sexless ants do the work and the fighting of the community.

Meanwhile, the consequences of an imperfectly developed reproductive system are not sexual only; they are also mental. Intellectually and morally there is a deficiency, or at any rate a modification answering to the physical deficiency; in mind, as in body, the individual fails to reach the ideal of a complete and perfect womanhood. If the aim of a true education be to make her reach that, it can not

certainly be a true education which operates in any degree to unsex her; for sex is fundamental, lies deeper than culture, can not be ignored or defied with impunity. You may hide Nature, but you can not extinguish it. Consequently, it does not seem impossible that, if the attempt to do so be seriously and persistently made, the result may be a monstrosity-something which having ceased to be woman is yet not man-"ce quelque chose de monstreux," which the Comte A. de Gasparin forbodes, "cet être répugnant, qui déjà paraît à notre horizon."

The foregoing considerations go to show that the main reason of woman's position lies in her nature. That she has not competed with men in the active work of life was probably because, not having had the power, she had not the desire to do so, and because, having the capacity of functions which man has not, she has found her pleasure in performing them. It is not simply that man, being stronger in body than she is, has held her in subjection, and debarred her from careers of action which he was resolved to keep for himself; her maternal functions must always have rendered, and must continue to render, most of her activity domestic. There have been times enough in the history of the world, when the freedom which she has had, and the position which she has held in the estimation of men, would have enabled her to assert her claims to other functions, had she so willed it. The most earnest advocate of her rights to be something else than what she has hitherto been would hardly argue that she has always been in the position of a slave kept in forcible subjection by the superior physical force of men. Assuredly, if she has been a slave she has been a slave content with her bondage. But it may perhaps be said that in that lies the very pith of the matter that she is not free, and does not care to be free; that she is a slave, and does not know or feel it. It may be alleged that she has lived for so many ages in the position of dependence to which she was originally reduced by the superior muscular strength of man, has been so thoroly imbued with inherited habits of submission, and