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which may counterbalance the discrepancy between their physical capabilities, are essential to the preservation of equality between them; but if such distinctions are rendered unnecessary, owing to the physical discrepancy being counteracted by some existing difference between the sexes in mental or moral power, this very difference is a strong argument in favour of maintaining artificial distinctions between them.

But, says Mr. Mill, I am merely carrying out to its inevitable conclusion another process of development which has ever advanced with the civilization and improvement of mankind. “Through all the progressive period of human history, the condition of women has been approaching nearer to equality with men.” Yes, to equality, but not to identity. The two are not convertible terms. You cannot have identity without equality, but there may well be the latter apart from the former. We desire equality between the sexes, and it is precisely because we do so that we oppose the scheme which Mr. Mill sets forth for our adoption. Create an absolute identity, legally, socially, and politically, between men and women, and their physical differences will be an insuperable bar to their equality. Supplement the physical differences by suitable artificial distinctions, and an equipoise of the balance may be obtained. We do not say that, in the present state of society among civilized nations, this result has been absolutely and accurately attained; to allege this, would be to ascribe to one branch of human institutions a perfection at which we do not believe that any of them can ever, in the present order of things, arrive; but we do affirm that a nearer approach to that equality may be expected from the maintenance, as respects the female sex, of certain legal and social disabilities on the one hand, and on the other of the privileges which chivalry and courtesy have, in consequence of those disabilities, accorded to women; rather than from a ruthless demolition of the former, which would at the same time involve an abrogation of the latter, and would launch women in a career of universal competition with men, in which, however complete might be their intellectual equality, their physical inferiority, no longer relieved by the customs and sentiments which now exist as a counterpoise to it, would make itself felt at every step, and would tend to reduce them to a state of irretrievable subjection and degradation. · But while such would be the result, as regards women themselves, of their identification with the stronger sex, its effect on society at large would be no less disastrous.

Mr. Mill anticipates from his scheme “a doubling of the mass of mental faculties available for the higher service of humanity.” Granted that some such advantage would be

secured; yet we very much question whether, on Mr. Mill's own showing, the gain would not be attended by a loss for which it would afford no adequate compensation. For what does he tell us of the intellectual benefit which women in their present condition confer on the human race ?

“ Looking at women as they are known in experience, it may be said of them, with more truth than belongs to most other generalizations on the subject, that the general bent of their talents is towards the practical. ...

“This gravitation of women's minds to the present, to the real, to actual fact, while in its exclusiveness it is a source of errors, is also a most useful counteractive of the contrary error. ... Hardly anything can be of greater value to a man of theory and speculation, who employs himself, not in collecting materials of knowledge by observation, but in working them up by processes of thought into comprehensive truths of science and laws of conduct, than to carry on his speculations in the companionship and under the criticism a really superior woman. There is nothing comparable to it for keeping his thoughts within the limits of real things and the actual facts of nature. A woman seldom runs wild after an abstraction.... Women's thoughts are thus as useful in giving reality to those of thinking men, as men's thoughts in giving width and largeness to those of women. In depth, as distinguished from breadth, I greatly doubt if, even now, women compared with men are at any dizadvantage.”

Now, to what do we owe these peculiar characteristics of the female mind, which are of such incomparable utility in the evolution of intellectual processes ? Mr. Mill does not speak positively on this point; but he evidently leans to the opinion, that they are due, not so much to natural differences, as to the artificial distinctions between the condition of the sexes. • “No one,” he says, “can safely pronounce that if women's nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men's, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves.”

If no one can pronounce decidedly upon this point, how can Mr. Mill think it safe to venture on an experiment which may result in depriving mankind of advantages than which “hardly anything can be of greater value”-to which " there is nothing comparable"?

In point of fact, as Mr. Mill partially recognizes when he admits that the amount of mental power resident in the female sex is even now not totally lost, woman in her present condition is, in a more or less perfect degree, fulfilling her part in the destiny of the race, as a “help meet” for man. Her func

Vol. 68.-No. 380.

tion is not inferior to his, but is its indispensable and worthy complement; and it is, we think, scarcely more reasonable to imagine that the mental power of the human race would be increased by converting this complement into that of which it was intended to supply the deficiencies, than to conceive that an electric battery could be doubled in force by removing the copper and substituting an equivalent amount of zinc, or the virtue of the atmosphere increased by changing all the hydrogen into oxygen.

And while we should anticipate from the adoption of Mr. Mill's views an irreparable intellectual loss to the human race, on the practical side the damage would, as it seems to us, be no less grievous. The relative amount of the duties which are now looked upon as peculiar to either sex would of course, under the new state of things, remain the same, and would equally as before demand attention. But the admission of the female sex to the functions and occupations of men, on becoming to any extent a practical reality, would necessarily entail the diversion of a portion of that sex from the pursuits which have hitherto been considered as its peculiar province; and the deficiency thereby created, as well as the fact that there would otherwise be a surplus amount of agency for the performance of what we will call the masculine duties, would require that a corresponding number of men should devote themselves to feminine duties. The result would, in our opinion, be a great deterioration in the manner in which both sets of duties would be performed. At present the two sets are kept distinct, and one part of the human race is from early childhood destined and educated for a public, and the other for a private and domestic life. But what shall the education of our children be under Mr. Mill's system ? Shall boys and girls alike be brought up with a view to the contingency of their filling either position? Then their education and training must needs be either lamentably colourless or flagrantly inconsistent; and when it is completed, they will prove, it may be, in a condition to fill either station of life tolerably, but assuredly neither well. Or shall this boy and that girl be brought up for public life, while another boy and another girl are educated for domestic duties? But how, in that case, shall the particular fitness of the children for the life to which they are thus arbitrarily destined be, in their tender years, ascertained; and if mistake in that respect could be avoided, how shall we so regulate the course of the affections, that a domestic man shall be wedded to a woman whose vocation is of the public and active character, and a man destined for public life select a wife who is capable of discharging the duties of home?

These considerations remind us that we have as yet made no

comment upon the views put forth by Mr. Mill on that most important of all social institutions-marriage.

"Marriage," he tells us, “is not an institution designed for the select few.” He admits that, in the present state of things, “the natural motives which lead to a voluntary adjustment of the united life of two persons, in a manner acceptable to both, do, on the whole, except in unfavourable cases, prevail.” He readily admits “that numbers of married people, even under the present law (in the higher classes of England probably a great majority), live in the spirit of a just law of equality.” And yet because, forsooth, the power of the hus. band over the wife is sometimes abused, Mr. Mill would upset the whole of the relations between married persons, and introduce the element of anarchy into every family. Marriage is to become a mere partnership on equal terms; and, for the sake of avoiding disputes, Mr. Mill suggests that the peculiar departments in which husband and wife should reign supreme might be settled before the marriage. Of course, the partnership must be carried on under the joint name of the two partners; for that the family should be known by the surname of the husband alone, would be a lingering badge of a condition of slavery wholly incompatible with the spirit of freedom which would then pervade society. We wonder that Mr. Mill has not carried his argument further, and denied the propriety of allowing parents to have authority over their children on the ground of its not unfrequent abuse. But this he distinctly disclaims; this is a point to which even the school of modern thought has not yet arrived. Meanwhile, equality in marriage is defended on account of its abstract justice. The change proposed by Mr. Mill would secure the advantage of having “the most universal and pervading of all human relations regulated by justice instead of injustice.” Now, it is easy to talk of justice in the abstract, but not always so easy to ascertain its limits in particular cases. Upon the question before us, however, Mr. Mill has pointed out where he would have us ascertain the requirements of justice. It is from a source to which we may resort with implicit confidence. He speaks of “the law of justice” as “also the law of Christianity."

In appealing to the teaching of Christianity, Mr. Mill is aware that he must meet some preconceived notions with respect to the drift of that teaching, which are the very reverse of favourable to the views which he advocates. Referring to the duty, as it is commonly considered, of submission on the part of the wife to the husband, Mr. Mill says:

“The Church, it is very true, enjoins it in her formularies, but it would be difficult to derive any such injunction from Christianity. We are told that St. Paul said, 'Wives, obey your husbands ;' but he also said, 'Slaves, obey your masters.' It was not St. Paul's business, nor was it consistent with his object, the propagation of Christianity, to incite any one to rebellion against existing laws. The apostle's acceptance of all social institutions as he found them, is no more to be construed as a disapproval of attempts to improve them at the proper time, than his declaration, The powers that be are ordained of God,' gives his sanction to military despotism, and to that alone, as the Christian form of political government, or commands passive obedience to it. To pretend that Christianity was intended to stereotype existing forms of government and society, and protect them against change, is to reduce it to the level of Islamism or of Brahminism."

Having thus, as he thinks, refuted the notion, that the positive teaching of Christianity contains anything opposed to the equality which he would establish between husband and wife, Mr. Mill appeals, in support of that equality, to the general principle of the equality of human beings, which, according to him, “is the theory of Christianity, but which Christianity will never practically teach while it sanctions institutions grounded on an arbitrary preference of one human being over another.” We fear that if the predominance of the husband over the wife in the married state is such an arbitrary preference as Mr. Mill alludes to, he must make up his mind to Christianity never teaching the equality of human beings. Mr. Mill, when he wrote this part of his Essay, can hardly have had before him the writings of the Apostle to whose teaching he refers, or he would not, we think, have ventured to dismiss the subject without offering some explanation of that remarkable passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians, which, while it points to a mystery which far transcends the limits of our present finite knowledge, grounds upon that mystery very plain and intelligible teaching on the subject of the relations between husband and wife.

“Wives, submit yourselves onto your husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church ; and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything."

If Mr. Mill's views are really, as he would make them out to be, in accordance with the teaching of Christianity, then our religion teaches us either that the relations between the Church and her Divine Lord and Master are to change as the ages roll on, and are, with the progress of human development, to approach more and more nearly to terms of equality-a proposition to be rejected as blasphemous by every Christian-or that, whereas in the earlier period of man's history marriage has been, to use the words of Mr. Birks, “a figure of the highest mystery of the Gospel, and a type and earnest of the