1. _Woman and her Era._ By ELIZA W. FARNHAM. In Two Volumes. New York: A. J. Davis & Co.
2. _Eliza Woodson; or, The Early Days of one of the World's Workers._ A Story of American Life. New York: A. J. Davis & Co.
In the three and a half centuries since Cornelius Agrippa, no one has attempted with so much ability as Mrs. Farnham to transfer the theory of woman's superiority from the domain of poetry to that of science. Second to no American woman save Miss Dix in her experience as a practical philanthropist, she has studied human nature in the sternest practical schools, from Sing-Sing to California. She justly claims for her views that they have been maturing for twenty-two years of "experience so varied as to give it almost every form of trial which could fall to the intellectual life of any save the most favored women." Her books show, moreover, an ardent love of literature and some accurate scientific training,--though her style has the condensation and vigor which active life creates, rather than the graces of culture.
The essence of her book lies in this opening syllogism:--
"Life is exalted in proportion to its organic and functional complexity;
"Woman's organism is more complex and her totality of function larger than those of any other being inhabiting our earth;
"Therefore her position in the scale of life is the most exalted,--the sovereign one."
This is compactly stated and quite unequivocal, although the three last words of the conclusion are a step beyond the premises, and the main fight of her opponents would no doubt be made on her definition of the word _being_. The assumption that either sex of a given species is a distinct "being" cannot probably be slid into the minor premise of the argument without some objection from the opposing counsel. However, this brings us at once to the main point, and the chapter called "The Organic Argument," which opens with this syllogism, is really the pith of the book, and would, perhaps, stand stronger without the other six hundred pages. In this chapter she shows the strength of a system-maker, in the rest the weaknesses of one; she feels obliged to apply her creed to everything, to illustrate everything by its light, to find unexpected confirmations everywhere, and to manipulate all the history of art, literature, and society, till she conforms them all to her standard. She recites, with no new power, historical facts that are already familiar; and gives many pages to extracts from very well known poets and very ill known prose-writers, to the exclusion of her own terse and vigorous thought. All this is without a trace of book-making, but is done in single-hearted zeal for views which are only damaged by the process.