THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMAN. 171 



our scantling of medical women. But, if a girl is not to be one of 

 these three things, the money spent on her college career will be em- 

 phatically wasted, so far as relates to the wise employment of funds 

 in reference to a remunerative future. 



And then there is always that chance of marriage, which knocks 

 the whole thing to pieces ; save in those exceptional cases where two 

 students unite their brains as well as their fortunes, and the masculine 

 M. A. marries the feminine, for the better perfecting of philosophic 

 literature. Even in this rare instance the fact of marriage nullifies the 

 good of the education ; and, after a father has spent on his daughter's 

 education the same amount of money as would have secured the for- 

 tune of a capable son, it can not give him retrospective satisfaction to 

 see her married to some one who w T ill make her the mother of a family 

 where nothing that she has gained at so much cost will tell. Her 

 knowledge of Greek and German will not help her to understand the 

 management of a nursery ; nor will her ability to solve all the prob- 

 lems of Euclid teach her to solve that ass's bridge of domestic econ- 

 omy — the co-ordination of expenditure with means, and the best way 

 of extracting the square root of refinement out of that appalling x of 

 insufficiency. 



To justify the cost of her education a woman ought to devote 

 herself to its use, else does it come under the head of waste ; and to 

 devote herself to its use she ought to make herself celibate by philoso- 

 phy and for the utilization of her material, as nuns are celibate by relig- 

 ion and for the saving of their souls. As things are, it is a running 

 with the hare of self-support and hunting with the hounds of matri- 

 mony — a kind of trusting to chance and waiting on the chapter of ac- 

 cidents, which deprives this higher education of anything like noble 

 stability in results, making it a mere cast of the die which may draw 

 a prize or throw blank. But very few women would elect to renounce 

 their hope of marriage and maternity for the sake of utilizing their 

 education, or would voluntarily subordinate their individual desire to 

 that vague thing, the good of society. On this point I shall have 

 something to say further on. Yet this self-dedication would be the 

 best answer to those who object to the higher education for the daugh- 

 ters of struggling professional men, because of the large chance there 

 is of its ultimate uselessness. It would give, too, a social purpose, a 

 moral dignity, a philosophic purity, and a personal earnestness to the 

 wmole scheme which would make it solid and organic, instead of, as 

 now, loose and accidental. 



So far as we have yet gone, has this higher education had a su- 

 premely beneficial effect on the character of women themselves ? As 

 intelligences, yes ; as women, doubtful. We are not now taking the 

 individual women who have been to Girton or Newnham, but the whole 

 class of the quite modern advanced women. These are the direct 

 product of the movement which has not only given us female doctors 



