Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/165



Our point of View

By miUUm BittU COcUs

On Cbinge Chat Should be Changed

WIT has said that an optimist is one who makes a molehill out of a mountain, and a pessimist is one who makes a mountain out of molehill. Whether this be true or not, the observation serves a good purpose. It brings out clearly the error of the extremist. Everyone knows, however, that optimism is usually a virtue and pessimism a fault. The faculty of looking on the bright side of things has al- ways been considered a valuable asset in life's struggles, but optimism shares the same fate as everything else when carried to an extreme. It is bad. Dif- ferentiated from pessimism, as it concerns the personal stand-point of happiness and health it is nearly always good. When it obscures stern realities that should be brought into the strongest, clearest light it is bad. It is almost as foolish to look always on the bright side of things as to look always on the gloomy side. Common sense is the saving grace. But it is a rara avis. You would think, for instance, that people, educators, the world, would look at things as they are: if they are bad, change them; if they could be bettered, do it, and "do it now": if they are good, let them alone. But they don't. As the urchin of the street would say, **Not on your life." The world is not constituted that way. We don't like change, so we endure the ills we have rather than fly to those we know not of. Then, on the other hand, we do a whole lot of tinkering and gen- erally make things very little better. The world "do move" anyway. Only a fool would dispute that. Still, it's in spite of the absolutely present. Now take this matter of the education of women. It approaches the acme of foolishness. It doesn't take a microscope to see that. But woman is not to blame. Men can thank their own unlucky stars for this state of affairs. They sit around and "hem and haw" about education (women have little to say about it when it comes to the real thing), and what do they do? Nothing. Women are great imitators. They are not originators. A woman likes to wear a stiff collar and a string tie because men do. If men thought, and ACTED as if they thought the education of w-oman should have a little common sense associated with it, there would be a hurrying and scurrying to accomplish that object. No doubt about that. The education of woman is a failure because men make it so. Men? Men? Men, forsooth! Are we purblind, ignorant, dilly-dallying, thoughtless that we stand idly by and see one of the most important things with which the mind of men can deal a reproach to this day of civilization, an inexcusable farce, an absolute failure! For what, think you, concerns the welfare of humanity more than the proper education of woman ? When all is said and done the work that woman has to do in this world is very much greater, much more import- ant than that which is given to man. In the truest sense man's work is the commonplace, the drudgery. Woman's work is liftedinto