Article July 13, 1998 Issue

Let all people fulfill their aspirations

Robert Peel

"Shall we block the way to any individual aspiration? ... Because all women are not born with a genius for navigation, shall we say that one who is by skill and education able to take observations, who understands the chart and compass, the dangerous shores, currents, and latitudes, shall not, if she chooses, be a sea captain? Suppose we apply that rule to man. Because I can not stand on my head, shall we deny that right to all acrobats in our circuses? Because I can not make a steam engine, shall all other men be denied that right? ... Each individual has a sphere, and that sphere is the largest place that he or she can fill."

Congressman Gerrit Smith At the Syracuse National Women's Rights Convention in 1852

Quoted in The Concise History of Woman Suffrage, Mari Jo and Paul Buhle, editors (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), p. 125

"Mrs. Eddy did not ask for women half the world that men had made; instead, she demanded an entirely new world for both of them."

Robert Peel
Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society,
originally published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), p. 108

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