Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/770

750 for herself a curriculum of studies suited to the requirements of her own nature?

That woman has a sphere marked out by her organization, however the notion may be scouted by the reformers, is as true as that the bird and the fish have spheres which are determined by their organic natures. Birds often plunge into the watery deep, and fishes sometimes rise into the air, but one is nevertheless formed for swimming and the other for flight. So women may make transient diversions from the sphere of activity for which they are constituted, but they are nevertheless formed and designed for maternity, the care of children, and the affairs of domestic life. They are the mothers of humankind, the natural educators of childhood, the guardians of the household, and by the deepest ordinance of things they are this, in a sense, and to a degree, that man is not. For woman in these relations, education has hitherto done but little, and humanity has suffered as a consequence. To the mothers of the race, especially, belongs the question of its preservation and improvement. The problem is transcendent, and woman's interest in it more immediate and vital than man's can be. Science has furnished the knowledge that is required, a vast mass of truth that is waiting to be applied for the conduct and ennobling of the domestic sphere. Man has originated it; is it not for woman to use it? And now, when there is so much agitation to give woman larger mental opportunities, and she is pressing for the advantages of a higher education, we have a right to expect that she will consider the subject from her own point of view, and supply the great educational need that has been so long recognized and deplored. The new departure of higher female education should unquestionably be from the results of the medical profession. We believe that physicians have by no means yet taken the share in general education that the interests of society require; but, when the mental cultivation of women is to become systematic and they have their own higher institutions, the agency of physicians will be indispensable. It is not that all women are to be doctors, but that they are to be instructed and become intelligent first of all in the sciences of life, with which also the physician has to deal. If, to get the A. M. of Yale or Harvard, would be worth the struggle for women, as qualifying them for the intelligent fulfillment of their destiny, let the doors be battered down if necessary for their entrance; but, if it would not conduce to this end, and would rather be fatal to it, let the doors remain double-locked. If the present aspiration is to be utilized, the movement must not take a false direction. New institutions are called for, that shall supply a new education on the feminine side. The system of studies may be broad and liberal in the best sense, but what we insist on is that it should be shaped with fundamental reference to the life-needs of female students. From this point of view our existing female colleges are liable to criticism; in so far as they are imitations of the old masculine establishments, they do not meet the wants of the sex, and rather obstruct than aid the true course of feminine cultivation.

is no element of human nature more noble than that sympathy with inferior creatures which leads to a kindly regard for their welfare, and protects them from wanton or careless suffering; and it is gratifying to observe that this feeling is becoming so definite, so strong, and so extended, as to have embodied itself in organizations for the systematic prevention of cruelty to animals. With all our boasted