2 2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wise to emphasize the truth of this assertion. This fact is still further 

 brought out by the observation that the hostility to the system is great- 

 est in those institutions which are most intimately in contact with 

 older ideals. If one follows the history of the development of the 

 system, one is impressed with the fact that in its inception anyhow 

 the movement possessed the true spirit of robust frontier democracy. 

 It originated in the democratic impulse to give women the highest 

 educational opportunities and to test their fitness for such opportuni- 

 ties by the use made of them, and not by a 'priori notions of the sex- 

 ually appropriate. Its typical virtues are earnestness, honesty and 

 vigor. It is frequently crude, but it is rarely shallow. It is often 

 obtuse, but it is seldom perverse. It springs from a deep-seated social 

 conviction that men and women are in the first instance human beings, 

 and only secondarily devices for continuing the race. It involves in 

 practice, whatever the theory, a vital scepticism concerning the sex- 

 uality of intellect, a position which finds interesting though generally 

 unintentional confirmation in the curricula of women's colleges and 

 annexes. Even under the guidance of learned men and women, it 

 does not seem to have proven possible to better materially the curric- 

 ula of the men's colleges, to which even the extremest variants are now 

 approximated. Individual preference operating under a liberal elective 

 system has almost everywhere displaced curricula developed under pre- 

 conceived notions of the sexually fit. Upon the catholic range of these 

 feminine preferences, we have already commented. 



Coeducation assumes that if, as is apparently the case, men and 

 women are to be thrown into increasingly intimate contact in relations 

 that do not involve reference to sex, it is desirable that the formal 

 educational process, so often falsely severed from the rest of life, 

 should recognize this fact by bringing boys and girls into contact 

 with one another all their lives. 



Like all other influences making for the higher education of 

 women, coeducation is necessarily opposed to the view that woman's 

 only function is maternity, and that her only proper attainments are 

 either of a domestic or sexual character. The condition of women in 

 continental and oriental countries in which this view of woman has 

 prevailed, and the social consequences which have sprung from it, leave 

 no question in the western mind as to the preferable extreme, if one 

 must have an extreme in this matter. On the other hand, the advo- 

 cates of coeducation regard maternity as a function for which no edu- 

 cation is too high nor too broad. 



When one brings to bear upon coeducation standards that can 

 fairly be considered intrinsic to it, one can but admit that in the past 

 anyhow its operation has been remarkably successful. The register of 



