FEMALE EDUCATION. 221 



has now entered a new country, the face of which she does not know, 

 but which may be full of good and happiness to her. The reasoning 

 faculty acquires more backbone, but is as yet the slave of the instincts 

 and the emotions. A conception of an ideal in anything is then at- 

 tainable, and the ideal is very apt to take the place of the real. The 

 relations and feelings toward the other sex utterly change, and the 

 change makes its subject liable to tremendous emotional cataclysms, 

 that may utterly overmaster the rest of the mental life. There is a 

 subjective egoism, and often selfishness, tending toward objective 

 dualism. There is resolute action from instinct, and there is a tend- 

 ency to set at defiance calculation and reason. All those changes go 

 hand in hand with bodily changes and bodily development. There is 

 a direct action and interaction between body and mind, all through. 

 Accompanying all these there are, when health is present, a constant 

 ebullition of animal spirits, a joyous feeling, a pleasure in life for its 

 own sake, and there is a craving for light and beauty in something. 

 There should not only be enough energy in the body and mind to do 

 work, but there should be some to spare for fun and frolic, which is 

 just Nature's pleasant way of expending vital force that is not needed 

 at the time for anything else. 



For the origination, for the gradual evolution of all these mental 

 changes into perfect womanhood, there are needed corresponding bod- 

 ily developments. Without these we should have none of those mar- 

 velous mental and emotional phenomena properly evolved and de- 

 veloped. If the health is weak, the nutrition poor, the bodily functions 

 disordered and imperfect, and the nervous force impaired, we are liable 

 to have the whole feminine mental development arrested or distorted. 

 If undue calls are made on the nervous force, or the mental power, 

 or the bodily energies, the perfection of nature can not be attained, 

 and womanhood is reached without the characteristic womanly quali- 

 ties of mind or body. The fair ideal is distorted. The girl student 

 who has concentrated all her force on cramming book knowledge, 

 neglecting her bodily requirements ; the girl betrothed who has been 

 allowed to fall in love before her emotional nature was largely enough 

 developed ; and the girl drudge who has been exhausted with physical 

 labor all alike are apt to suffer the effects of an inharmonious, and 

 therefore an unhealthy, mental and bodily constitution. The body 

 and the mind go in absolute unison, just as the blush on the maiden's 

 cheek comes and goes with emotion, as the brightness and mobility of 

 her features go with mental vivacity and happiness. 



All those mental and bodily changes are not sudden, nor fully 

 completed and brought to perfection at once ; it takes on an average 

 from ten to twelve years before they are fully completed. All that 

 time they are going on, and during that time there is an immense 

 strain on the constitution. All that time the whole organic nature 

 is in a state of what we call instability : that is, it is liable to be upset 



