Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Endowments, Position and Education of Woman: An Address Delivered Before the Hemans and Sigourney Societies of the Female High School at Limestone Springs, July 23, 1850
It does not concern us now to dwell upon the different style of manly and womanly beauty, for it is the intellect, and not the person which now employs us. It is enough for you and for us that the Creator has cast you in his finest mould, and confer red upon you those attractive graces and beauties of form anc motion, of which both you and we are sufficiently aware. But what are the intellectual endowments and what the moral sen timents which characterise the fairer portion of the human race? It would be exceedingly unfair if we should resort to those barbarous tribes where woman is made the slave of man, in order to resolve this question. Long continued degradation transmits its benumbing effects, by causes, physical as well as moral, from parent to child, and there is a continual sinking of human nature to lower and still lower depths while these nu favorable influences operate. We should rather have recourse to those regions and nations where all the causes have com bined to elevate her position in society, and where she ap pears most instinct with knowledge and most invested with power.
But, first, let us enquire whether the slightness and delicacy of her frame, which point her out as inferior to-man in strength, and him as the one destined to rule on the earth, and to ven ture forth in enterprises of hazard, implies at the same time any inferiority, on her part, of mental vigor. If any one in sist on this point, upon phrenological tests, at best exceeding ly dubious, it may be asserted that the brain of man is larger and heavier than that of woman, and that therefore he must be her superior. But it may he replied that absolute size of brain is no sure test of native ability, and that if so, the brain of woman is said by some to bear a greater proportion to her size than that of man to his.* So that she should be, accord ing to this, more intellectual than he.
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