332 BETIKEMENT, TO 1897 : OF BOOKS, ETC. 



sort. But what do we see ? the poor hardworking girls 

 alone take the L.U. degrees — the ladies aim at the incom- 

 parably inferior ones of Oxford and Cambridge ! Practically 

 it is a question of rich and poor after all, which degree is 

 chosen ; and this vitiates the desire for C. and 0. degrees 

 as objects of ambitious desire. In the broadest aspect, 

 male and female of the human species are anatomically, 

 physiologically, and intellectually different (I will not allow 

 inferiority), least so in the last respect, but still manifestly 

 so. They therefore require different treatment in all these 

 respects as they grow up, and this treatment must be different 

 throughout life. There is no abrupt intellectual stop at 

 the period when woman's higher education begins, whereas 

 at that period the feminine functions are exacerbated, and 

 the mind more or less disturbed (as that of the man is not) 

 in consequence of the physiological peculiarities of the 

 sex. 



To the Same 



March 2, 1898. 



Certainly the engineering trade still shows that the 

 mills of public education grind very slowly, and not finely 

 at all. 



I am no enemy of public education, but what I would 

 have is, the giving it a more practical turn. Men cannot 

 live on intellectual culture, and a mighty small percentage 

 can make use of it if they have acquired it — fewer still care 

 to use it. 



I am aghast at the folly of much of our intellectual 

 teaching of boys. It is in the hands, as a rule, of highly 

 intellectual men, who assume that the average boy will see 

 the beauties of Milton and Shakespeare, and Euripides and 

 Aristophanes, if only taught to see them. Now this is a pro- 

 found error. Take [the mass of public school boys who] have 

 had 6-8 years of classical education — not one of them can 

 now translate a simple paper of Latin or Greek, or will look 

 into a classical author, or listen to the talk about one. I 

 do not say that this branch of education has done them nc 

 good, but I do say that it is nothing as compared to the 

 time and expense, and that all talk of their having imbibed 

 the spirit or matter of the language is pure bosh. Perhaps 

 at the end of their education they could translate Livj 



