Page:The Higher Education of Women.djvu/41

 ascetic contempt for wifely and motherly and daughterly ties is no part of the Christian ideal. But the view which teaches women to think of family claims as embracing their whole duty—which bids them choose to serve man rather than God—sets before them a standard of obligation which, in proportion as it is exclusively adhered to, vitiates not their lives only, but those of the men on whom their influence might be of a far different sort. That such a theory is radically inconsistent with the divine order might easily be shown. That its action on society is profoundly demoralising is a lesson taught by mournful experience.