178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is undoubtedly a fact a deplorable accident of the passing mo- 

 ment. Probably, however, even the most rabid of the Woman's 

 Rights people would admit, if hard pressed, that in the best- 

 ordered community almost every woman should marry at twenty 

 or thereabouts. We ought, of course, frankly to recognize the 

 existence of the deplorable accident ; we ought for the moment to 

 make things as easy and smooth as possible for her ; we ought to 

 remove all professional barriers, to break down the absurd jeal- 

 ousies and prejudices of men, to give her fair play, and if possible 

 a little more than fair play, in the struggle for existence. So 

 much our very chivalry ought to make obligatory upon us. That 

 we should try to handicap her heavily in the race for life is a 

 shame to our manhood. But we ought at the same time fully to 

 realize that she is an abnormity, not the woman of the future. 

 We ought not to erect into an ideal what is in reality a painful 

 necessity of the present transitional age. We ought always 

 clearly to bear in mind men and women alike that to all time 

 the vast majority of women must be wives and mothers ; that on 

 those women who become wives and mothers depends the future 

 of the race; and that, if either class must be sacrificed to the 

 other, it is the spinsters whose type perishes with them that 

 should be sacrificed to the matrons who carry on the life and 

 qualities of the species. 



For this reason a scheme of female education ought to be 

 mainly a scheme for the education of wives and mothers. And 

 if women realized how noble and important a task it is that falls 

 upon mothers, they would ask no other. If they realized how 

 magnificent a nation might be molded by mothers who devoted 

 themselves faithfully and earnestly to their great privilege, they 

 would be proud to carry out the duties of their maternity. In- 

 stead of that, the scheme of female education now in vogue is a 

 scheme for the production of literary women, schoolmistresses, 

 hospital nurses, and lecturers on cookery. All these things are 

 good in themselves, to be sure I have not a word to say against 

 them ; but they are not of the center. They are side-lines off the 

 main stream of feminine life, which must always consist of the 

 maternal element. " But we can't know beforehand," say the ad- 

 vocates of the mannish training, " which women are going to be 

 married, and which to be spinsters." Exactly so ; and therefore 

 you sacrifice the many to the few, the potential wives to the 

 possible lady lecturers. You sacrifice the race to a handful of 

 barren experimenters. What is thus true of the blind groping 

 after female education is true throughout of almost all the 

 Woman Movement. It gives precedence to the wrong element in 

 the problem. What is essential and eternal it neglects in favor 

 of what is accidental and temporary. What is feminine in 



