He becomes assertive, confident, dominating; the male taking a male’s place.  He discovers that his intellectual processes are more scientific than hers, therefore he concludes they are superior.  He finds he can outargue her, draw logical conclusions as she cannot.  He can do anything with her but convince her, for she jumps the process, lands on her conclusion, and there she sits.  Things are so because they are so.  And the chances are she is right, in spite of the irregular way she got there.  Something superior to reason enters into her operations—­an intuition of truth akin to inspiration.  In early ages women unusually endowed with this quality of perception were honored as seers.  To-day they are recognized as counselors of prophetic wisdom.  “If I had taken my wife’s advice!” How often one hears it!

One most important fact has come out of our great coeducational experiment:  The college cannot entirely rub feminity out and masculinity into a woman’s brain.  The woman’s mind is still the woman’s mind, although she is usually the last to recognize it.  It is another proof of the eternal fact that Nature looks after her own good works!

But it takes more than a college course to make an efficient, flexible, and trustworthy organ from a mind, masculine or feminine.  It must be applied to productive labor in competition with other trained minds, before you can decide what it is worth.  Set the man-trained woman’s mind at what is called man’s business, let it be what you will—­keeping a shop, practicing medicine or law, editing, running a factory—­let her do it in what she considers to be a man’s way, and with fidelity to her original theory that his way is more desirable than hers; that is, let her succeed in the task of making a man of herself—­what about her?—­what kind of a man does she become?

Here again there is ample experience to go on.  For seventy years we have had them with us—­the stern disciples of the militant program.  Greater fidelity to a task than they show it would be impossible to find—­a fidelity so unwavering that it is often painful.  Their care for detail, for order, for exactness, is endless.  Dignity, respect for their undertaking, devotion to professional etiquette they may be counted on to show in the highest degree.  These are admirable qualities.  They have led hundreds of women into independence and good service.  Almost never, however, have they led one to the top.  In free fields such as merchandising, editing, and manufacturing we have yet to produce a woman of the first caliber; that is, daring, experimenting, free from prejudice, with a vision of the future great enough to lead her to embody something of the future in her task.

In every profession we have scores of successful women—­almost never a great woman, and yet the world is full of great women!  That is, of women who understand, are familiar with the big sacrifices, appreciative of the fine things, far-seeing, prophetic.  Why does this greatness so rarely find expression in their professional undertakings?