254 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



changes may occur in outward conditions, girls will always be, as tliey 

 always liave been, potential wives and motbers. The fact, however, 

 remains that the charge of young and helpless humanity belongs 

 by nature to women, and that much, if not all, of the well-being 

 and happiness of children, both present and future, depends on their 

 physical necessities being rightly understood. To a woman who 

 lives her life under the domestic conditions which it is now unfortu- 

 nately the thing to consider narrow, it is of little consequence 

 whether she understands the principle of a Torricellian vacuum or 

 the significance of the periodic law, but it means much both to her 

 and to others that she should have a correct knowledge of the 

 natural laws that govern physical well-being. This remark is of an 

 old fashion, but the truth it contains is eternally new, and therefore 

 it is not only strange, but sad, that the grace of the fashion of it 

 should be in danger of perishing. 



Scientific instruction, then, in girls' schools to-day is not carrying 

 out the honorable intention with which it was introduced into educa- 

 tion. The " crusade " spoken of by Matthew Arnold is indeed 

 responsible for much of the harm he ascribes to it. But, just as 

 "Wilkes claimed that he had never been a "VVilkesite, so the " gifted 

 leaders " would probably be little in sympathy with much that is 

 done in their name. It is only by conforming to their original con- 

 ception of the purpose of scientific instruction that we can succeed 

 in avoiding the rock of complete neglect of natural science, and 

 at the same time escape falling into the whirlpool of injury to art and 

 letters. From the former of these perils we have indeed been recently 

 delivered, but the force of our recoil has been such that there seems 

 at present some danger of our being swept into the latter. 



One point remains upon which to comment in conclusion: it is 

 essential to the success of any reform in scientific instruction that the 

 movement toward it shall proceed from the general public as well 

 as from the school authorities. I hope, and from certain signs of the 

 times I believe, that an impulse in this direction is now stirring in the 

 minds of both educators and parents. That the time is now ripe is 

 indeed my excuse for the existence of this article, which it is hoped 

 may offer some suggestions as to the cause of an educational difficulty 

 that seems to be felt at present even more by parents than it is by 

 educators. But it is of course only one of the many such difficulties 

 that beset the close of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the whole 

 question of girls' education has now become so complex that a con- 

 scientious father to-day must often be ready to echo the words of the 

 old song in the Beggar's Opera : 



'' I wonder any man alive 

 Should ever rear a daughter ! " 



