Page:University Education for Women.djvu/19

 reflection, observation, experiment, or research, or—more humbly—by rendering accessible the work of others. Those who advance knowledge will not probably be many—there are not many among men—but the others if they have been really interested will not have wasted their time; they will have increased their power of enjoyment, they will have received a training which will directly or indirectly help them in any work they may undertake, and they will form part of the audience—the cultivated, interested and intelligent public—without which scientific progress and literary production is well nigh impossible.

It must be borne in mind too, that a good deal of the work open to educated women—voluntary as well as paid work—cannot be entered on very young, so that there is a period of waiting after school is over to be profitably filled up. For studious women a University course is likely to be a very profitable way of utilising this time even when it does not exactly directly prepare for the future work, for it develops the powers of the mind, cultivates habits of application and thoroughness and enlarges the mental outlook—all of which things are valuable in all positions.

These advantages, however, are limited to the studious. Personally I should not recommend a woman who did not wish to study to go to a University. It is done sometimes in the case of men. Parents sometimes send their sons to the Universities, especially the older Universities, knowing, or at least suspecting, that they will not work seriously, merely to pass the time happily and under a certain amount of supervision while waiting for the moment when they can enter a profession. I doubt whether this is good for men. I am sure it would not be good for women. If a girl wishes to spend her time in amusement she had better do so at home under the eye of her mother. To take up a life which professes to have study as its main object and not to work is futile and demoralising and certainly not a good preparation for anything.

But returning to the dual outlook, in the case of women