Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/631

Rh would point in the line of the generalization already suggested; as with the cessation of college-life would cease the abnormal cloistering of the young women, while bad sanitary conditions would show comparatively permanent results. That proportionately one third more in the female colleges report emotional strain as cause of disorders, other causes showing much the same average, point in the same direction. At any rate, it is worth inquiry whether it is not possible to unite the presumed advantage of the female colleges in wise advice and proper attention to health with the freer and more natural social relations of the co-educational institutions.

It is hoped that enough has been said to show the importance of the investigations already made, and to justify the supposition that further more detailed and extended inquiries would increase their value. No educator at all acquainted with the present status of affairs will carp at the results already reached, nor will he find much but cause for thankfulness upon a survey of the field; but his outlook must be directed toward the future, not the past. Nothing could well be more fatal to the cause of woman's education than to suppose that the question is already settled. The commencement has indeed been made, but only the commencement. Mere multiplication of institutions and influences of the existing type, however valuable, as affording opportunities to individual young women, will do little toward determining the larger aspects of the case. Were the number of purely women's colleges largely increased, and were all the important boys' colleges to open their doors to girls, only the necessary basis for the solution of the problem would be obtained.

Such inquiries as we have briefly summarized can do more than aught else to furnish necessary data for a wise and comparatively permanent solution. Discussion on partisan lines is absolutely valueless, and a priori discussion will effect nothing. The unbiased study by educational experts of the fruits actually borne by experience is invaluable, and the generalizations based upon such data will show the lines upon which reform must work itself out. This is not the place to formulate the exact nature of such inquiries, but they should cover at least three heads:

—The present report offers a valuable model to follow. More attention should be given to the social and moral environment of college-life, however, even in this point; and the discussion should more definitely concern the specifically female functions.

—The brief notes respecting marriages and occupations in the report discussed are all we have on this head. It should be treated with a view to determining as accurately as may be the position which the college-educated woman holds and desires to hold in the body social and politic. When we recollect the difficulty in adjusting young men's collegiate education to their life after graduation, in spite of the accumulation of infinite experience, the