DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL IDEAS 35 



If right education is a sovereign thing, its highest efficacy shall 

 be shown in developing woman's power of love, sympathy, and self- 

 devotion, giving her at the same time a wider outlook on the world 

 of human achievement and a firmer grasp of intellectual truth. 



In the nineteenth century the business of school-teaching was 

 largely intrusted to women, and it was the willingness of the most 

 intelligent to undertake this task that made the rapid spread of 

 popular instruction possible. When it was found that as teachers 

 women were the equals of men, it was not difficult to believe that 

 they might compete with them in other fields of activity, and so it 

 came to be understood that for woman, not less than for man, 

 America means opportunity, inviting to larger, freer, and worthier 

 life. She who had been the world's all-suffering drudge, who even 

 as wife and mother had been held in subjection and denied the joys 

 of awakened souls, stood forth self-conscious and thinking, to do her 

 part to make truth and love, which is God's will, prevail. 



In a century in which the mind and heart of the people had been 

 more powerfully stirred by noble passions than ever before, progress 

 was intensive as well as diffusive. While there was among the 

 civilized portion of mankind a general advance toward greater liberty 

 and intelligence, there was developed in exceptional minds an un- 

 quenchable thirst for knowledge. While for the multitude the means 

 of information were provided, the more serious and far-seeing spirits 

 were busy seeking to throw a purer intellectual light on all the 

 thoughts and ways of men. Standing on the vantage-ground pre- 

 pared by the discoveries, inventions, and wisdom of the past, they 

 moved forward, permitting nothing in the heavens or on the earth to 

 escape their keen and inquiring gaze. Philosophy, religion, history, 

 language, law, government, with whatever else may be the concern 

 of man, were reexamined and submitted to the test of the most 

 searching criticism. Whatever the line of research, all felt that by 

 increasing the store of knowledge they were enriching the race and 

 creating opportunities for the progressive prevalence of mind over 

 matter, of reason over instinct, and of free will over passion. At the 

 bottom of all the feverish, persistent activity of the nineteenth 

 century there lay a deep enthusiasm for human progress; a passion- 

 ate belief that truer and wider knowledge cannot but lead to more 

 intelligent, larger, and freer life; that it is the tendency not merely 

 of vital religious truth, but of all truth, to emancipate. As the 

 field of man's activity was made more fertile by more skillful culture 

 and yielded more and more precious and abundant harvests, new 

 hope of making the world glad, beautiful, and wholesome beyond 

 the dream of past ages sprang within the heart. It was joy to be 

 alive and bliss to be young. A spirit of optimism which refused to 

 see, or at the least to be discouraged by the darker side of things, 



