Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigour and capacity.  We have heard a great deal lately about the physical disabilities of women.  Some of these alleged impediments, no doubt, are really inherent in their organization, but nine-tenths of them are artificial—­the products of their modes of life.  I believe that nothing would tend so effectually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness, and that “over-stimulation of the emotions” which, in plainer-spoken days, used to be called wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work, directed towards a definite object, combined with an equally fair share of healthy play during the years of adolescence; and those who are best acquainted with the requirements of an average medical practitioner will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that standard is likely to prove exhausting to an ordinarily intelligent and well-educated young woman.

Twenty years later he supported the entry of women into public life in a plainly reasoned letter, which he himself thought highly complimentary, although a number of estimable ladies flew at him for writing it:—­

The best of women are apt to be a little weak in the great practical arts of give-and-take and putting up with a beating, and a little too strong in their belief in the efficacy of government.  Men learn about these things in the ordinary course of their business; women have no chance in home life, and the boards and councils will be capital schools for them.  Again, in the public interest it will be well; women are more naturally economical than men, and have none of our false shame about looking after pence.  Moreover, they don’t job for any but their lovers, husbands, and children, so that we know the worst.

Directly, then, as teacher, lecturer, and essayist indirectly as organizer, he ranks among the great educators of his age.  But he did not establish a “school” of his own; such a thing was abhorrent to him.  A resolute seeker after truth, he bade others seek also; but he refused to impose his own conclusions on any man.

Of all possible positions [he wrote in 1892], that of master of a school, or leader of a sect, or chief of a party, appears to me to be the most undesirable; in fact, the average British matron cannot look upon followers with a more evil eye than I do.  Such acquaintance with the history of thought as I possess has taught me to regard school, parties, and sects as arrangements, the usual effect of which is to perpetuate all that is worst and feeblest in the master’s, leader’s,