Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/397

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE AMERICAN WOMAN.
397

lengthwise of the nervous system, but these are not represented in the diagram; second, ganglionic fibers, which run from the bipolar ganglionic nerve cells in two directions, and have two terminations, one branching within the medullary tube, the other branching to form peripheral sense organs; third, peripheral sensory fibers, which spring from the nerve-sense cells; that fibers of such origin exist is well known, but that they enter the central nervous system and there ramify, as here depicted, has as yet been actually demonstrated only in the earthworm. Fifth, that all the ganglionic and peripheral sensory fibers enter the dorsal zone only, while all the medullary fibers make their exit from the ventral zone only.

If we can reason from the structure, we must conclude that all the complicated functions of the brain depend upon four primary sets of functions—namely, 1, 2, and 3, the functions of the three classes of nerve cells, together with their connected fibers; and 4, the function of transferring nerve impulse from one fiber to another. Until physiologists and psychologists shall have learned to differentiate the four sets of functions, and have invented successful means for their separate investigation, cerebral physiology is, in my opinion, likely to remain, what it has so long been, a science of unsolved problems.

THE AMERICAN WOMAN.

By M. C. DE VARIGNY.

IN essential characteristics—by tradition, by nature, and by education—the American woman is the direct antithesis of the woman of the East, of her of whom the Hitopadésa says, "A woman should be under the watch of her father during infancy, of her husband in middle age, of her sons in old age, and never independent." In the United States she is under the watch of no one, but under the protection of all.

If by the aid of historical documents we reconstitute the colonial situation in America as it was in the beginning, we find the man absorbed in daily work out of doors and the woman in her tasks within, and equality of the sexes resulting from equality of burdens and responsibilities; then, as prosperity increases, the task of the woman diminishes while the burden of the man remains the same, and the leisure of the former contrasts with the I severe labor of the other. Woman's intelligence develops and extends; man's becomes concentrated and specialized, his education is limited, and remunerative labor awaits him and takes him away early in life. She, the equal and companion of man at the begin-