The argument from intellectual inferiority is as vacant as that from muscular inferiority. In the first place, it is an open question whether women, as a whole, are inferior in mind to men. Many intelligent judges firmly believe, that, taken as a whole, they are superior. Cornelius Agrippa wrote a book in 1509, entitled "The Nobility of the Female Sex, and the Superiority of Woman over Man." Lucretia Marinella published a book at Venice, in 1601, undertaking to prove the superiority of her sex to the other. A book entitled "La Femme Genereuse," an attempt to demonstrate "that the women are more noble, more polite, more courageous, more knowing, more virtuous, and better managers than the men," was published at Paris, in 1643. Madame Guillaume also published at Paris, in 1665, a work called "Les Dames Illustres," devoted to the proof of the proposition that the female sex surpasses the masculine in all kinds of valuable qualifications. Mrs. Farnham devotes her book "Woman and her Era," published in New York in 1864, to the support of the same thesis, with new arguments and illustrations. That woman is intellectually superior to man, was likewise the opinion of Schopenhauer, an exceedingly strong and independent thinker. The supreme examples of genius have indeed been furnished by men; but this is no disproof of the opinion, that the average height and quickness of feminine mentality are above the masculine average.
Granting, however, that women have less spiritual force than men, they certainly have greater fineness. Their smaller volume of power is compensated by their greater delicacy and tact, their more sensitive moral capacity: the power of self-sacrifice is surely higher than the power of self-assertion. The examples of queens, from Semiramis to Domna, from Zenobia to Catherine; of philosophers and scholars, like Theano, Hypatia, and Olympia Morata; of founders of orders and institutions, organizers and leaders of great enterprises, like Clara and Chantal; of actresses, like Siddons; of singers, like Malibran; of scientists, like Somerville; of heroines, like Charlotte Corday and Joan of Arc; of mystic prophetesses, like Kriidener; of religious thinkers, like Sarah Hennell; of novelists, like Madame Dudevant and Marian Evans; of artists, teachers, martyrs, saints--a host whose faces shine on us out of history, have abundantly vindicated for their sex, so far as force of will, intellect, imagination, and passion is concerned, the right of eminent domain in the whole empire of human experience. Besides, admitting the courage, knowledge, skill, and energy of average men to be greater than those of average women, the difference in their respective opportunities and training would go far towards explaining it. Women, as a class, have been excluded from a thousand lists and stimulants, under whose influences men have been sedulously educated. And, finally, even if we confess the hopeless inferiority of woman to man in some of the highest departments of action, that is no reason for denying her the chance to go as far as she can. If her mental victories must be lower and narrower than his, still she should enjoy the stimulus of the struggle, as one means of aiding the fulfilment of her human destiny. Because one can do more than another, shall he compel the other to do nothing?