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Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / By Alexander Walker.

  • Walker, Alexander, 1779-1852.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / By Alexander Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    thing in an orderly manner, is a most important precept, which women, who, generally speaking, receive only a disorderly kind of education, sel- dom attend to.” This prevents their generalizing matters of fact, or their extracting, from many scattered ideas, a greater idea that embraces the whole. And therefore Rousseau observes that “‘ The re- search for abstract and speculative truths, for principles, for axioms in the sciences, for all that tends to generalize ideas, is not the province of women; their studies ought all to refer to prac- tice,” Yet Mrs. Wolstonecraft says, ‘“‘ The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge.—This power has not only been denied to women; but. writers have insisted that it is inconsistent, with a few exceptions, with their sexual character. Let men prove this, and I shall grant that woman only exists for man.”— This has been already proved by the smallness in women of the middle and posterior part of the brain—the seats of the highest faculties ;* by that of the cerebel and ce- rebellic ring—the organs of will, attention, &c.; * The posterior lobes are wanting in lower animals—a fact sadly opposed to the dreams of Phrenology.