Why not simply reason about woman's intellect as we should about every other case of gradual development? For some reason or other, mere physical size had priority on this planet-first the reptile one hundred feet long, then the man six feet long. This great change made, it seems credible that even the w6man, who is only five feet long, may not be wholly crushed by her smallness, but may have her place in the universe. As, by the modern theory, man is gradually developed out of utter ignorance, so is she, but, for some reason or other, more slowly. It is but yesterday that her brain was regarded with contempt; but yesterday that it was held worth educating. How should she develop confidence in it all at once? We know nothing of the laws that occasionally bring out genius in men — that create a Shakespeare, for instance-and in her case we know still less. We only know that slowly, at long intervals, and in spite of all the obvious disadvantages of physical weakness, social discouragement, and insufficient education, she is beginning to do, here and there, what may fairly be regarded as first-class intellectual work.
Until within a century but one single instance of this success was recorded — that of Sappho, in lyric
