THE CONDITION OF WOMEN 355 



to come at any rate, must depend almost entirely upon education ; but, 

 far from holding that this conclusion will allow us to ignore or oblit- 

 erate the differences between the male and the female intellect, I be- 

 lieve that the full significance of these differences can be appreciated 

 only in their relation to higher education. The scope of the present 

 paper will only allow the space for an outline sketch of the reasons for 

 this belief. As the field of human knowledge widens in all directions, 

 as society becomes more complex, and as the points of contact between 

 man and his inorganic environment multiply, the amount of general 

 education which each individual must receive before he is in a position 

 to hold his own, and to guide himself rationally in all the emergencies 

 of life, and to enjoy his share of the benefits which our intellectual 

 advancement has placed within his reach, increases in a geometrical 

 progression, and the amount of time demanded for general liberal edu- 

 cation increases in the same ratio. Meanwhile the amount of special 

 preliminary training which must be undergone in order to fit a person 

 for new and original work in any department of knowledge or art in- 

 creases at the same rate, and makes greater and greater inroads upon 

 the time which is needed for general education. At present the most 

 important, delicate, and complicated of educational problems, the prob- 

 lem which each individual must meet and decide upon, and the prob- 

 lem which engrosses most of the thought of educational bodies, is 

 where to draw the line between general culture and practical or tech- 

 nical training. 



Culture in its widest sense is, I take it, thorough acquaintance 

 with all the old and new results of intellectual activity in all depart- 

 ments of knowledge, so far as they conduce to welfare, to correct 

 living, and to rational conduct ; that is, culture is to the intellectual 

 man what heredity has been to the physical man. Culture is con- 

 cerned only with results, not with demonstrations, and does not look 

 to new advances ; while technical training is concerned with methods 

 and proofs, and values the results of the methods and investigations 

 of the past only as they contribute to new advances. Technical train- 

 ing looks to progress in some one definite line, one radius of the grow- 

 ing circle of the domain of human intelligence, and ignores the rest of 

 the circumference. It is to the intellectual man what variation is to 

 the physical man. By culture we hold our own, and by technical 

 training we advance to higher levels. Both are equally important to 

 human welfare, and the great problem of the future is how to secure 

 each to the greatest degree without sacrificing the other. The anal- 

 ogy of the rest of the organic world would seem to indicate that this 

 is to be accomplished by "division of labor." If the female mind 

 has gained during its evolution an especial aptness for acquiring and 

 applying the results of past progress, by an empirical method and 

 without the necessity for studying proofs and reasons, it would 

 seem especially fitted for culture, as distinct from training, while the 



