FEMALE EDUCATION. 



219 



one or two great men, and then relapse into greater obscurity than be- 

 fore, or become degenerate and die out altogether ! 



Another fact in the body and mind history of human beings is this, 

 that there are certain physiological eras or periods in life, each of 

 which has a certain meaning. The chief of such eras are childhood, 

 puberty, adolescence, maturity, the climacteric, and senility. We have 

 to ascertain, What does Nature mean by these eras ? What does it 

 strive to attain to in each period ? What are the ideal conditions of 

 each ? No one of these periods can be studied from a bodily point of 

 view alone, or from a mental point of view alone. They must be re- 

 garded from the point of view of the whole living being, with all its 

 powers and faculties, bodily and mental. Not only so, but in most 

 cases the inherited weaknesses must be taken into account too. Those 

 eras of life can not be fully understood looked at with reference to the 

 individual. Their meaning is only seen when the social life, the an- 

 cestral life, and the life of the future race, are all taken into account. 

 And this is what makes some proper attention to those eras so very 

 important from the social as well as the physician's point of view. If 

 they are not understood, and so are mismanaged, not only the individ- 

 ual suffers, but society and the race of the future. Particularly the 

 era of adolescence is important, for it is the summer ripening time in 

 the vital history. If the grain is poorly matured, it is not good for 

 either eating or sowing. 



Such is the physician's, or perhaps I should rather say the physiolo- 

 gist's, way of regarding a woman, her development, and her education. 

 It is because we do not think the average parent and the professional 

 educator in the technical sense always take this wide view, but that 

 the professional enthusiasm of the latter takes account of, and tries to 

 cultivate, one set of faculties only, viz., the mental ; because we think 

 the public mind is getting to regard as all-important in female educa- 

 tion what we think is not so important, and so to take little account of 

 what we regard as of supreme importance to the individual and to the 

 race viz., the constitution and the health that I think that the physi- 

 ological view of female education should be brought forward and pre- 

 sented to the public mind more frequently than is the case ; while the 

 bad results in after-life of disregarding Nature's laws, as these results 

 come under the notice of the physician, should be strongly and clearly 

 brought before the general mass of parents and educators. It is not a 

 matter that concerns the physician and his immediate patient only. It 

 concerns the whole of the people. 



I shall now enter more into detail in illustration of the general 

 principles I have mentioned, as applied to that period of the life of a 

 young woman when the chief part of her education is going on. I am 

 not going to speak much of the period of childhood, or up to the age 

 of thirteen or so. Before that time it is no doubt important that edu- 

 cation should be conducted on physiological principles, with due regard 



