A FEW WORDS OF RETROSPECT AND FORECAST. 863 
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English women, as to our Oriental sisters, that it was equally indelicate to be doctored by 
a man ; that if in no other, in this at least, as Mrs. Jameson earnestly pleaded, there 
should be a communion of labor. And now the Zighest sanction has been afforded to 
shose who in India and elsewhere are giving to their suffering sisters the help which only 
;hose who have gone through the scientific study of medicine can render. 
And for the women doctors themselves, I appeal fearlessly to those who have known 
them. Are they not, with few exceptions, women full of tenderness and womanly feel- 
ng, neither womanish nor mannish, but womanly and manly, too ? And surely it is a 
good vision our poet-prophet saw in coming time. ¢ when the man should be more of 
woman, she of man.” 
Surely it is well that woman, pondering these things, should learn to feel that if the 
spiritual principle is that which forms the body, yet the degraded body brutalizes the 
soul ; that they should join in the holy war against intemperance in its many forms ; 
that they, too, should descend ‘into the cruel habitations,” ‘to deliver the spirits in 
prison that have been disobedient to God’s laws; that they, too, should go down ard 
raise their sisters.” 
[s it well that women, armed like Britomart, should watch for souls in the police-court, 
she prison, the workhouse ; that they should show to the men who have learned to 
despise women that there is in the lowest a spark of good which the heat of divine pity 
can fan into a flame ? Such noble women have moved many a knight to put on “the 
bloody cross in dear remembrance of his dying Lord.” and go forth to war against the 
great dragon. 
“This may be well,” some may say, and yet ask further : ‘Is it well that the gates of 
knowledge should be thrown open, that the tree of knowledge of good and evil should 
oe allowed to grow in the garden of Zenana ? Is it well that girls should pass down the 
lanes where the hedges are made bright by the lovely berries of the deadly nightshade?” 
The choice does not rest with us; evil and good grow together in this world of ours; 
she danger surely is aggravated by ignorance. Let the eye and the taste be taught to 
discern good and evil, and the soul disciplined to obedience ; this alone is our safety. 
I appeal freely to the experience of those who have been able to contrast the system of 
dberal bodily and mental diet, of free and vigorous exercise, with that of restraint and 
seclusion. Our girls are far healthier in body and mind, more happy, more useful, more 
truly womanly, than those whose whole nature was less fully developed. Besides, a 
woman with wider intellectual interests can be a more true and helpful companion, a 
being ¢‘ breathing thoughtful breath.” That alone is a true marriage which is a union 
of souls. It is not well that the husband should live in a different region of thought and 
feeling and religion from his wife ; that mother and son, brother and sister, should 
inhabit different worlds. There are actors who learn only their own speeches and trou- 
ole themselves about nothing until they take up their own cue. Need I say these are 
failures ? - But those who have entered, like the Meiningen actors, into the whole play 
—they alone could give their own part with effect. 
And so in life ; each will have his or her own province of work, but each will do her 
own better the more she is in sympathy with others. Women will be able to do their 
work as women better from understanding better the work of men ; and men, as they 
learn to respect women, will be more desirous to be respected by them. 
This reflex influence on men is not the least of the good which comes from women 
having a higher education, and it would, I am persuaded. have no degrading influence 
apon political life. 
I would fain dwell on the blessings to the community of the increased moral influence 
of women, as they have rebelled against that profane teaching of our great poet, which 
so marred the nobility of his character and lowered the standard of right both for men 
and women : ‘“‘He for God only, she for God in him.” It has been truly said that