Page:The Influence of University Degrees on the Education of Women.djvu/8

Rh University for ordinary graduates? Why, the candidate is required to pass in nearly the whole range of pure arithmetical science,—in geometry, plane and solid; in simple and quadratic equations; in the elements of plane trigonometry; in elementary Latin; in the history of Rome to the death of Augustus; in English composition, and English history to the end of the seventeenth century; in either French or German; in statics and dynamics treated with elementary mathematics; in an experimental knowledge of physics and optics, and a general conception of plane astronomy; in animal physiology; in elementary Greek, and Greek history to the death of Alexander; and in the elements of logic and moral philosophy. Does any one in his (or her) senses suppose that the understanding of average young ladies would be the better for passing this examination well, or for trying to pass it anyhow, as the proper aim of their education? We might get one or two clever women, several Miss Cornelia Blimbers, and many Miss Tootses—if we may suggest an intellectual sister to Mr. Toots—out of such a system, but certainly not an improved standard for ordinary women. I believe that we should have half the young women in the country in brain fever or a lunatic asylum, if they were to make up their minds to try for it."

It is perhaps equally probable that we should have half the young men in the country in brain fever or a lunatic asylum, if they were to make up their minds to try for it. Graduates are a very small minority of the men of England, and yet their education has determined the education of the great majority who are not graduates. It is by no means obvious that it would do women any harm to know enough for the B.A. (London) pass-examination. They are already expected to learn not much less at Queen's College, in Harley Street; and a degree would be to women, in their present stage of cultivation, what honours are to men.

Women are expected to learn something of arithmetical science, and who shall say at what point they are to stop? Why should simple equations brighten their intellects, and quadratic equations drive them into a lunatic asylum? Why should they be the better for the three books of Euclid, which they are required to master at Queen's College, and "stupefied" by conic sections or trigonometry? Why should Latin give them a deeper insight into the philosophy of language, and introduce them to a literature and history which may raise them above the narrowness or the extravagance of their own age, and the language of the New Testament be forbidden, as too exhausting a labour, a toil fruitful only of imbecility or death? Is it really necessary that women should be shut out from the knowledge of the physical sciences? Would a knowledge of physiology make them worse mothers, and an