A closer analogy than this, however, exists between these human
individuals and the eunuchs of Oriental civilization. Except the
secretary of the treasury, in the cabinet of Candace, queen of
Ethiopia, who was baptized by Philip and Narses, Justinian's general,
none of that class have made any impression on the world's life, that
history has recorded. It may be reasonably doubted if arrested
development of the female reproductive system, producing a class of
agenes,[16] not epicenes, will yield a better result of intellectual
and moral power in the nineteenth century, than the analogous class of
Orientals exhibited. Clinical illustrations of this type of arrested
growth might be given, but my pen refuses the ungracious task.
Another result of the present methods of educating girls, and one
different from any of the preceding, remains to be noticed. Schools
and colleges, as we have seen, require girls to work their brains with
full force and sustained power, at the time when their organization
periodically requires a portion of their force for the performance of
a periodical function, and a portion of their power for the building
up of a peculiar, complicated, and important mechanism,--the engine
within an engine.
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