freedom, this greater energy, this greater power? Simply and only because, for the most part, women in America are considered as companions, and neither slaves nor inferiors. But whence does this idea of freedom and of untrammelled personal responsibility arise? It is the one great moral and social idea in this country. It has extended to women the same liberty which is allowed in worship and government. It has given the individual liberty of action, and thrown upon him the moral and social responsibility for his acts. It is the same of women. It is the one universal idea of American liberty. If we inquire whence is the origin of this great idea, this idea which must soon fill the world, modify all government, and overturn all ancient institutions; if we inquire its origin, we trace it historically to the first colonists. In the first settlements there was no other idea. The women and the men went alone into the wilderness. Together they built the first house together they erected the first church; together they provided food and raiment; together they were buried in the first green grave-yard-leaving behind them no hereditary titles; no entailed estates, to be possessed by an eldest son, to the exclusion of his sisters; no badge of that menial servitude which degraded in the old country the majority of men, and all of women. The green fields they had cultivated, went to their children, sharing equally; the society they had founded recognized their equal positions; the freedom of worship they had enjoyed was left to

their posterity. In fine, by the act of exile, they became as peculiar a people as the Hebrews, when they crossed the Red Sea from the land of the Pharaohs. But why exiles? Why fly from the time-honored governments of the Old World? Religious excitement, or, in other words, the CONVICTIONS OF THE SOUL, are the only source of the English Rebellion, the colonization of the United States, the peculiar form of the first colonies, the severity of manners, the freedom of women, and that long train of political results which have followed, and must follow, through ages of time. And what produced these religious convictions? The reading of the Bible laid open to the people, and the inquiries which that reading suggested. For twelve hundred years after the advent of Christ, the people—the masses of the people -read nothing, much less knew any thing, of the Bible. For three hundred years more, but few read any thing. The Bible was a closed book. Then the Bible was opened, and the art of printing sent it round the earth: then people read and thought; they thought and inquired; they were convinced of certain great truths, and they acted upon them; they were repelled, trampled upon, and derided by the proud oppressions of the Old World; they fled to the wilderness, and nursed the child of Christian liberty, till it has become glorious in might and beauty— going forth a deliverer of nations.

Let history be searched, and criticism examine with microscopic view the minutest facts, and the

most obscure records, and this at last is the simple sequence of causes by which American liberty and society are what they are. Take from human knowledge those views which the Bible furnishes of the nature of the human soul, of its functions and destiny, of its relations to God and its relations to society, and there is absolutely nothing left upon which to found the idea of a free society. There is no moral basis left for such a society. There is no reason left why the conqueror should not make the conquered a slave; or why women should not be regarded as inferior; or why hereditary monarchs should not be thought the natural, and therefore exclusive, rulers of mankind; or, in one word, why power should not be deemed the sole evidence of right. It is the idea of moral right, founded in the nature of the soul, and derived from the Bible, which is the sole foundation of republican government, and the sole evidence that women have equal rights in the social system, and are equal partners in whatever benefits society can confer.

Here, then, we start in the consideration of what is necessary in the education of women. It is, that in all moral and social elements they are equal before the law of God, and therefore should be equal before the law of man. In the physical system they are different; and in the political system, which is always an artificial arrangement, it may or may not be expedient to make them equal; but in both these, the differences relate to nothing which any education

can influence.

The education of men in all that

faculties of the mind, does not relate to sex.

concerns the use, strength, functions, and ultimate

Why,

then, should it do so in women? It is only after a young man has received the most valuable part of his education, and is inquiring how he can earn a livelihood, that there comes up any of those practical applications of knowledge or reason which may relate to his particular sex. In one word, it is practical business, and not precedent studies, which in the least relates to the question, whether the student be a man or a woman. It may be thought that I have stated the equal right of women to education in too strong terms. But I have turned the subject over in various ways, and can discover nothing in revelation, nature, or reason, which can absolve society from its moral obligation to give the mothers of its children the highest and best education which it is expected those children of either sex will ever attain.

Let us

consider separately some of the facts which demand this duty from society, and some of the modes in which it may be performed.

THE HUMAN NATURE IS ONE.

The human soul has no sex. Human nature is not two. I state in this proposition a broad fact, and which, if it be a fact, deserves to be seriously considered. It is not, philosophically, a necessary conse

quence from what we know of human nature, as it is known by observation; for all we know of human nature, as seen and tangible, is known of it as male and female only. But there are two species of evidence by which this fact is irresistibly established. First, we have a consciousness of a living and dominant spirit, which is, in fact, the real being; and we have, by mutual communion with others, a consciousness that the original and distinctive attributes of spirit are the same in men and women, and among all nations. This of itself would be conclusive that there is no sex in the soul. But, secondly, there is a stronger and an entirely decisive species of evidence derived from revelation. There are not two redemptions, nor two condemnations; there are not two standards of character, nor two modes of trial; there is one commandment, one baptism, one condemnation, one redemption, and one judgment. In all that concerns the existence and nature of the soul, the revealed law has made no distinction between the sexes, and acknowledged none in the world to come. This is enough it is decisive; for all the purpose of the soul and of its future, human nature is one. Neither clime, nor race, nor sex, are recognized, as affecting the attributes of spirit, in the eternal law. Therefore, neither clime, nor race, nor sex should be recognized as a reason for denying to any part of the human race an education whose object is the improvement of the soul, and whose effects will last through eternity.

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