Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/191

Rh, we have received so many grand and noble impulses—this female individualism, with its corresponding indifference to the public good or to public duty, is even more pronounced than here; and the right of woman to her own development, though that should include what is called "the painless extinction of man," is the very heart and soul of the new creed.

Women, seeking to rule, have forgotten how to obey. Wishing to reorganize society according to their own desires, they have at the same time thrown off all sense of discipline in their own lives; and the former feminine virtues of devotion, patience, self-suppression, and obedience are flung aside as so much tarnished finery of a decayed and dishonored idol. The ordinary woman can not be got to see that she is not only herself but also a member of society and part of an organization; and that she owes, as a duty to the community, the subordination of her individualism to that organization. She understands this only in religious communities, where she obeys her director as one divinely commissioned. Outside religious discipline she refuses obedience to general principles. Society has grown so large and its disorganization is so complete that, she says to herself, her own example does not count. She is but a fractional part of a grain added to a tonweight; and by the law of psycho-dynamics she is undiscerned and without influence. It is all very well in small communities, like those of Greece for instance, or when the one grand lady of the village was the mirror for all to dress by. Then, the individual example was of value; but now—who cares for one out of the tens of thousands crowded in London; and what duty has she to the community comparable to that which she owes herself?

And this brings us round once more to the subject-matter of this paper—the effect on the community of the higher education of women, in its good and evil results on mothers and their offspring, and their own indifference to these results.

It is impossible not to sympathize with a bright girl anxious to go on with her education, and petitioning for leave to study higher matters than have been taught her at her school. It is as impossible not to feel a sense of indignation at the injustice when parents say frankly the education of their girls does not count with them; and, so long as these know how to read and write and can play the piano and are able to dance and perhaps to sew, there is nothing more necessary. We do battle then for the right of the individual to know, to learn, to perfect itself to the utmost of its ability, irrespective of sex. But if we are wise we stop short of such strain as would hurt the health and damage the reproductive energies, if marriage is to come into one of the chances of the future. A girl is something more than an individual; she is the potential mother of a race; and the last is greater and more important than the first. Let her learn by all means. Let her store her mind and add to her knowledge, but always with quietness and