MENTAL DIFFERENCES OF MEN AND WOMEN. 397 



this feeling we have the true safeguard of womanhood ; and we can 

 hope for nothing better than that the deep, strong voice of social opin- 

 ion will always be raised against any innovations of culture which may 

 tend to spoil the sweetest efflorescence of evolution. 



But, while we may hope that social opinion may ever continue op- 

 posed to the woman's movement in its most extravagant forms or to 

 those forms which endeavor to set up an unnatural, and therefore an 

 impossible, rivalry with men in the struggles of practical life we may 

 also hope that social opinion will soon become unanimous in its en- 

 couragement of the higher education of women. Of the distinctively 

 feminine qualities of mind which are admired as such by all, ignorance 

 is certainly not one. Therefore learning, as learning, can never tend 

 to deteriorate those qualities. On the contrary, it can only tend to 

 refine the already refined, to beautify the already beautiful " when 

 our daughters shall be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of 

 a palace." It can only tend the better to equip a wife as the helpmeet 

 of her husband, and by furthering a community of tastes, to weave 

 another bond in the companionship of life. It can only tend the better 

 to prepare a mother for the greatest of her duties forming the tastes 

 and guiding the minds of her children at a time when these are most 

 pliable, and under circumstances of influence such as can never again 

 be reproduced. 



It is nearly eighty years ago since this view of the matter was thus 

 presented to Sydney Smith : 



If you educate women to attend to dignified and important subjects, you are 

 multiplying beyond measure the chances of human improvement by preparing 

 and medicating those early impressions which always come from the mother, 

 and which, in the majority of instances, are quite decisive of genius. The in- 

 struction of women improves the stock of national talents, and employs more 

 minds for the instruction and improvement of the world : it increases the pleas- 

 ures of society by multiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a com- 

 mon interest, and makes marriage an intercourse of understanding as well as of 

 affection. The education of women favors public morals; it provides for every 

 season of life, and leaves a woman when she is stricken by the hand of Time, not 

 as she now is, destitute of everything and neglected by all, but with the full 

 power and the splendid attractions of knowledge diffusing the elegance of 

 polite literature, and receiving the homage of learned and accomplished men. 



Since the days when this was written, the experiment of thus edu- 

 cating women to attend to dignified and important subjects has been 

 tried on a scale of rapidly-increasing magnitude, and the result has 

 been to show that those apprehensions of public opinion were ground- 

 less which supposed that the effect of higher education upon women 

 would be to deteriorate the highest qualities of womanhood. On this 

 point I think it is sufficient to quote the opinion of a lady who has 

 watched the whole course of this experiment, and who is so well quali- 

 fied to give an opinion that it would be foolish presumption in any 



