Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/779

Rh had children, the exceptional record of good health among these children, and their low death-rate, are strong evidences that the powers of motherhood have not suffered from college work." In addition, the writer's mite of testimony may be offered. In the schools which she has attended, the majority of earnest students were in uniformly good health; a minority were delicate before beginning study. The most frequent examples of ill health were found among those who made a pretense of study and eagerly pursued social excitements. Subsequent effect upon the health may be judged when it is found that twelve years after graduation one young woman, ranking at the head of her class, is the mother of six vigorous children; two others, earnest students, have each a family of five, and a number of others have four children. No correspondence has been held with married classmates living at a distance. These mentioned are personally known to be mothers in the fullest sense, and constitute striking contradictions to the claim that education has an injurious effect upon woman. "But," it may be objected, "these are exceptionally healthy women." Undoubtedly, but if the training has any influence at all, it should make them fall slightly below the standard of the preceding generation, whereas, in several instances, they improved upon the record of their mothers, not only in general health, but in the condition and size of their families.

If, now, we review the discussion to this point, it may be summed up as follows:

I. Decrease of marriage results from a transition state in the condition of women, also from unjust laws and false social customs which discourage matrimony.

II. Able women generally are not dissatisfied with womanhood, and do not advocate celibacy. It is not evident that women of any class are becoming unfitted for motherhood, but women of the "cultivated classes" are not the best possible mothers. Independent and highly educated women are only a fraction among these, and can not be substituted for the whole.

III. The higher education of woman teaches her reverence for Nature; the development and control, not the suppression of natural instinct, therefore tends to make her the best wife and mother. The "spiritless epicene automaton" is mythical. The spinster is an eternal verity. The woman movement has not created her, but changed her condition from dependence to self-support.

IV. The education and independence of women is a step in emancipation even from Mrs. Grundy, but it can not be made responsible for the present infertility among women, for these reasons: