Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/215

Rh of nature and aim—passions, namely, that of self-preservation, with the ways and means of self-defense which it inspires and stimulates, and that of propagation, with the love of offspring and other primitive feelings that are connected with it. Could we in imagination trace mankind backward along the path stretching through the ages, on which it has gone forward to its present height and complexity of emotion, and suppose each new emotional element to be given off at the spot where it was acquired, we should view a road along which the fragments of our high, special, and complex feelings were scattered, and should reach a starting-point of the primitive instincts of self-preservation and propagation. Considering, then, the different functions of the sexes in the operation of the latter instinct, and how a different emotional nature has necessarily been grafted on the original differences in the course of ages, does it not appear that in order to assimilate the female to the male mind it would be necessary to undo the life-history of mankind from its earliest commencement? Nay, would it not be necessary to go still farther back to that earliest period of animal life upon earth before there was any distinction of sex?

If the foregoing reflections be well grounded, it is plain we ought to recognize sex in education, and to provide that the method and aim of mental culture should have regard to the specialties of woman's physical and mental nature. Each sex must develop after its kind; and if education in its fundamental meaning be the external cause to which evolution is the internal answer, if it be the drawing out of the internal qualities of the individual into their highest perfection by the influence of the most fitting external conditions, there must be a difference in the method of education of the two sexes answering to differences in their physical and mental natures. Whether it be only the statement of a partial truth, that "for valor he" is formed, and "for beauty she and sweet attractive grace," or not, it cannot be denied that they are formed for different functions, and that the influence of these functions pervades and affects essentially their entire beings. There is sex in mind, and there should be sex in education.

Let us consider, then, what an adapted education must have regard to. In the first place, a proper regard to the physical nature of women means attention given, in their training, to their peculiar functions and to their foreordained work as mothers and nurses of children. Whatever aspirations of an intellectual kind they may have, they cannot be relieved from the performance of those offices so long as it is thought necessary that mankind should continue on earth. Even if these be looked upon as somewhat mean and unworthy offices in comparison with the nobler functions of giving birth to and developing ideas; if, agreeing with Goethe, we are disposed to hold—"Es wäre doch immer