Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/134

122 : first, by an improvement of the home, and, secondly, by the action of a higher public opinion on the schools. We quoted, some months ago, an eminent French writer of our own day as saying that it was necessary to put more "soul" in the public schools. That is precisely what they want, as all the best teachers are fully aware. But you can not make an appropriation for "soul." It is not quoted in the catalogues of school supplies; it is not among the prescribed subjects in teachers' examinations. It is a very real if not a very tangible thing; and it is a communicable thing. There are those who have it and can impart it; indeed, those who have it can hardly fail to impart it. If there is enough of it outside the schools, it will leak in; and our hope is that the best men and the best women of the day will so join forces as to create, especially around the public schools, an atmosphere of higher sentiment that shall affect for good the working of the state machine, and greatly strengthen the hands of all who, within the schools, have set for themselves a certain standard of spiritual as distinct from merely intellectual accomplishment.

Then as to the home. Here is where we want women with new knowledge, but not—we speak with all due fear and trembling—"new" women. The "new woman" would set every one discussing rights; but the true woman with adequate knowledge would see what the best women have always seen, that the home requires a principle of unity and not a system of scientific frontiers or an elaborately arranged balance of power. Home life and home influence have, we fear, been suffering in our day through a variety of causes; but the home, like marriage, is an institution which only needs to have its possibilities developed in order to stand forth more than justified. Without entering into the question as to whether the wisest methods are being followed to-day in the education of women, it is beyond all doubt that women have gained a vast enlargement of their intellectual horizon, and that in many cases women are not only the peers but the superiors of men in the same station in life as themselves in knowledge and culture. Such knowledge and culture can nowhere be better employed than in the home, where the physical, mental, and moral development of children has to be watched over. The question is, How far will it be employed in this way, and how far made a means of mere personal self-assertion? The true woman will use it for the good of others, and, if possible, will make it available for the improvement of the home; while others—the new type—will use it to make themselves conspicuous in the world, and, as they vainly fancy, add glory to the female sex.

The hope of the future lies mainly in well-ordered homes—homes in which children are trained to be just, reasonable, and humane, in which they are taught to look with an intelligent eye upon the phenomena alike of Nature and of society, in which they learn lessons of industry and self-reliance, of honor, purity, and self-respect, and are guarded against the vulgar worship of wealth and worldly success. It is for the wise and noble women of our time to help to make such homes, and it is for men to see to it that they are worthy of partnership in so sacred a cause. It is no time for any silly rivalry or futile opposition between men and women, who are as necessary to one another now as at any previous age in the world's history—nay, more necessary. On the contrary, it is a time for earnest counsel and vigorous co-operation on the part