34 EDUCATION 



unwillingly and with dread is neither a home nor a school. For the 

 criminal even the chief hope is in the power of those to whom they 

 are committed to inspire them with respect, admiration, and love. 

 The glory of the nineteenth century was its greater capacity for 

 sympathy with the poor, the wronged, and the disinherited; and if 

 the history of the twentieth is to be a record of progress, it will be 

 due to a still greater capacity for sympathy with those who need it 

 most. The meaning and end of civilization is the conversion of 

 Nature's struggle for existence into man's cooperation for higher and 

 holier life. Here, and not in devices, methods, and policies, we touch 

 the fountain-head of educational wisdom and inspiration. Struggle 

 is born of brutish instinct and appetite; cooperation, of reason and 

 conscience; and the great aim of education is to establish the supre- 

 macy of reason and conscience over appetite and instinct. The 

 domination of the animal in man had kept woman in subjection, had 

 made her a slave, a drudge, or a plaything, but faith in education 

 as a human need and right revealed to the nineteenth century the 

 duty of providing for the education of women as of men. Oppor- 

 tunity should be given them to upbuild their being, to become all 

 that their endowments permit, to do whatever thing is worth doing, 

 to make of themselves not merely wives and mothers, but individual 

 souls clothed with the liberty and the strength of the children of 

 God. In nothing is the present age superior to all others more than 

 in the intelligence and influence of its women; and this distinction 

 it owes to its readiness to accept and apply educational truth in its 

 fullness, not giving heed to those who doubt or deny or tremble for 

 the safety of a world in which all women are invited to acquaint 

 themselves with the best that is known and to take part in whatever 

 concerns human welfare. 



In developing educational ideas in the nineteenth century the 

 Germans were the leaders, but the Americans were the first to per- 

 ceive and welcome the truth that there cannot be an enlightened, 

 free, and high-minded people where the women are not enlightened, 

 free, and high-minded. We have accepted this as a principle, and 

 our action has done more to further progress in education than all 

 the speculations of all the philosophers. It is an implication of all 

 our democratic faith. It is folly to imagine that the people will be 

 wise and virtuous if the wives and mothers are not wise and virtuous. 

 The family is the true social unit. Upon it both the state and the 

 church must rely for -the inculcation and preservation of the truth 

 which makes man social and religious. In the family the father is 

 the head, the mother the heart; and great thoughts, true inspira- 

 tions, and generous deeds spring from the heart. Shall we put our 

 trust in the calculating intellect, and suffer the fountain-head of life's 

 waters to be choked by noisome weeds? 



