Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/180

 minds than in the other. Now, if a very few instances are excepted, it may I think be affirmed that the female mind almost wants the genuine faculty of abstraction, especially that form of it whence result philosophical generalization, and mechanical invention. This deficiency in the leading mental power makes itself felt in all the higher processes of culture, and in whatever involves ratiocination. Women indeed are oftenvery often, sooner in possession of the most important practical truths than men; and when possessed of them, hold them more firmly; but they reach these useful principlesprinciples of conduct, by the clue of instinct and sentiment; that is to say, by the immediate guidance of nature, not by ascertaining premises, deducing inferences, and drawing conclusions. Men err so often as they do by reasoning illogically, or on false assumptions: when women err it is by yielding to illusive representations, or from want of some instinctive feminine sentiment.

Parents therefore, in conducting the education of their daughters, and especially when conjoined with that of their sons, need not perplex themselves with the attempt to lead the former on the path of abstraction, in any one of those studies which involve it. They may indeed be made acquainted with all the facts whence abstraction takes its start, or in which it ends; but with the process itself they need not much concern themselves. A due regard to this point of difference will affect, in some instances, the choice of studies, and oftener the methods of teaching, and the kind of exercises allotted to the two classes of minds. Much disappointment and loss of time may be saved by a clear perception, from the first, of that difference which nature has made in the very structure of the female mind.

Once more, and as it is very obvious, the methods of teaching, and the objects of study, should have respect to the very different DESTINATION of men and women in life.