Page:The Higher Education of Women.djvu/78

 this consideration, the duties of women of the higher class are such as to demand varied knowledge as well as a disciplined mind and character. Difficult cases in social ethics frequently arise, on which women are obliged to act and to guide the action of others. However incompetent they may be, they cannot escape the responsibility of judging and deciding. And though natural sagacity and the happy impulses of which we hear so much often come to their aid, prejudice and mistaken impulses ought also to be taken into the account as disturbing elements of a very misleading kind. In dealing with social difficulties, the value of a cultivated judgment, able to unravel entangled evidence, and to give due weight to a great variety