CO-EDUCATION.
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ual development. If there is error then, the organization never fully recovers. This is an additional motive for a strict physiological regimen during a girl’s student life, and, just so far, an argument against the identical coeducation of the sexes. The second reason why female operatives are less likely to suffer, and actually do suffer less, than school-girls, from persistent work straight through the year, is because the former work their brains less. To use the language of Herbert Spencer, “ That antagonism between body and brain which we see in those, who, pushing brain-activity to an extreme, enfeeble their bodies,” * does not often exist in female operatives, any more than in male. On the contrary, they belong to the class of those who, in the words of the same author, by “ pushing bodily activity to an extreme, make their brains inert.” * Hence they have stronger bodies, a reproductive apparatus more normally constructed, and a catamenial function less readily disturbed by effort, than
* The Study of Sociology, by Herbert Spencer, chap. 13.