If she can do both better than a man,
she ought to be both farmer and seamstress; but if, on the whole, her
husband can hold best the plough, and she ply best the needle, they
should divide the labor. He should be master of the plough, and she
mistress of the loom. The _quaestio vexata_ of woman's sphere will be
decided by her organization. This limits her power, and reveals her
divinely-appointed tasks, just as man's organization limits his power,
and reveals his work. In the development of the organization is to be
found the way of strength and power for both sexes. Limitation or
abortion of development leads both to weakness and failure.
Neither is there any such thing as inferiority or superiority in this
matter. Man is not superior to woman, nor woman to man. The relation
of the sexes is one of equality, not of better and worse, or of higher
and lower. By this it is not intended to say that the sexes are the
same. They are different, widely different from each other, and so
different that each can do, in certain directions, what the other
cannot; and in other directions, where both can do the same things,
one sex, as a rule, can do them better than the other; and in still
other matters they seem to be so nearly alike, that they can
interchange labor without perceptible difference.
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